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Hopefully we all understand that we have a little bit of Judas in us.  It’s a little depressing at times.  We feel like we make so much progress and then our sinful heart rears its ugly head.  My sinful heart seems WAY too comfortable behind a steering wheel.  Its incredible the effort that I will go to in order to ensure that somebody does not get into my lane if he/she does not deserve that spot.  Or how I will tailgate somebody so that they will realize that they are going 5 mph slower than what I have deemed acceptable.  I made the decision that I should probably work on this area of my life before I put a Fripple sticker on my back window. 

It’s encouraging to me to realize that God redeems people.  Let’s take a quick look at Peter.  Matthew 26:69-75 below describes the moments that Peter denies any association with Christ.  Take a moment to read through this passage.  It wasn’t a light-hearted denial.  At first, Matthew says he denied Jesus.  Then he denied with an oath.  Finally, he cursed himself and swore that he did not know Christ!  Granted, Peter’s emotions were probably all over the place after seeing his leader arrested, but in the midst of this, he vehemently denied knowing Christ!  He then wept in remorse, just as Judas did. 

Matthew 26:69-75:

    69 Now Peter was sitting out in the courtyard, and a servant girl came to him. “You also were with Jesus of Galilee,” she said.

    70 But he denied it before them all. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. 
    71 Then he went out to the gateway, where another servant girl saw him and said to the people there, “This fellow was with Jesus of Nazareth.”
    72 He denied it again, with an oath: “I don’t know the man!”
    73 After a little while, those standing there went up to Peter and said, “Surely you are one of them; your accent gives you away.”
    74 Then he began to call down curses, and he swore to them, “I don’t know the man!”     Immediately a rooster crowed. 75 Then Peter remembered the word Jesus had spoken: “Before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times.” And he went outside and wept bitterly.

Now take a look at John 21:15-17.  When Jesus appeared to the disciples after His resurrection, He asks Peter three times whether he loved Christ.  Each time, Peter responded with “Yes Lord, you know that I love You.”  And each time, Jesus told him to “Feed my sheep.”  After his denial, Peter understood the grace that Jesus’ was offering and chose to love Him.  Once Jesus heard Peter say those words (three times to match the three denials), Jesus instructed Peter to take care of his sheep, or in other words, pastor the other believers.  Peter was given the blessing of influencing others, even after he denied Christ!  And God redeems us from our past and gives us the opportunity to be a blessing to others.  We all have a chance to be generous!  Instead of focusing on our past and missed opportunities, we need to grab onto today and see how we can live as generous people.  Take a moment to think through your day and pray that God would show you a way to be a blessing to somebody. 

Judas.  Was he just dumb?!  I have often thought that.  How can you walk around with Jesus, Son of Man, Creator of the Universe, the Big JC, while witnessing his many miracles, and then choose a measly 30 silver coins (30 days’ wages)?  If I was in his place, I would not have made the same mistake.  Or even the Israelites.  Are they seriously grumbling as they wander in the desert?  Do they not remember that whole water-parting thing?  If I had witnessed that, I would have followed Moses no matter what.  I’m convinced!  No questions asked!

That first paragraph would have a lot more validity if it wasn’t for this thing called reality.  True, maybe walking with the Son of God and seeing water part ways seem amazing in magnitude, but I have seen the power of God in my own life as well.  Salvation alone is amazing.  What about the different ways He has provided in the past?  And the joy and peace that comes when I choose God in a decision. 

And yet, I seem to forget all of that on a daily basis.  I constantly choose the world over God even when history shows that ultimate fulfillment is in God.  Why can we not believe John 10:10? 

John 10:10:  The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.

“Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak.  We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.  We are far too easily pleased.”   - C.S. Lewis

This quote by Lewis is one of my favorites.  We are offered a relationship with the King of the Universe!  And yet we try to balance it with the world.  We try to follow God just enough that it qualifies, and then add in as much worldly joy as possible before it becomes wrong.  Why can we not trust that what God offers us is “a holiday at the sea” compared to the mud pies we can create through the world?  Why do we not believe God when He offers us unimaginable joy?  I am a people-pleaser.  I constantly try to please God while being as popular as I can be.  That is not going to work.  What part of the world do you have trouble giving up?  Is it success?  Material possessions?  Sex?  Spend some time wrestling with God.  Meditate on Philippians 3:7-8.  Ask Him for help in trusting Him alone for your joy and worth.  Generosity is a natural result of a joy found in Christ.

Yesterday, I invited you to spend some time focusing on God’s grace in your life.  I would also invite you to do that for a couple minutes every day.  As Christians, we often forget how amazing the offer of salvation actually is. 

I want to take a look at the story from last week, but focusing on Judas instead of Mary of Bethany.  In John 12:1-8, we read how Judas questioned the actions of Mary of Bethany, since he saw it as a waste of the money that could be used for the poor.  Jesus responded by putting Judas in his place since He knew his heart.  Now read Matthew 26:6-13 below.   

Matthew 26:6-13:

 6While Jesus was in Bethany in the home of a man known as Simon the Leper, 7a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, which she poured on his head as he was reclining at the table.

8When the disciples saw this, they were indignant. “Why this waste?” they asked. 9″This perfume could have been sold at a high price and the money given to the poor.”

10Aware of this, Jesus said to them, “Why are you bothering this woman? She has done a beautiful thing to me. 11The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me. 12When she poured this perfume on my body, she did it to prepare me for burial. 13I tell you the truth, wherever this gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.”

Take a look at verse 8.  In this version of the story, Judas is not highlighted and the hearts of all the disciples is revealed.  They all responded in a similar fashion by questioning the action, but John focused on the different heart condition of Judas.  What really stood out to me when I read Matthew’s version is that I would have responded the same way as all of the disciples.  Using all of the perfume is just unwise!  It is not practical!!  My nerdy excel spreadsheet says that Mary is not being a good steward!  We all have a bit of Judas in us.   

The difference is how Judas reacted to his sinful heart.  When we have those selfish moments, how do we react?  The other disciples heard the response from Jesus and took it to heart.  What did Judas do?  He immediately went to the chief priests to figure out what he could receive if he turned over Jesus.  Instead of recognizing his selfishness, he acted on it.  And this betrayal was a culmination of many small decisions where he chose himself over Jesus.  His character had become corrupted. 

Think through moments that you have had today, yesterday, or sometime this week where you saw a piece of Judas shine through.  How did you respond when you realized that you were selfish?  Did you immediately turn to the words of Jesus?  Did you give the issue over to God in prayer?  Or did you dwell on it and let it influence your heart?  We all have selfish moments, but we all have the choice of what to do when they arise. 

As I have wrestled through generosity over the past couple of weeks, I have attempted to figure out my motivation, or lack of motivation, for being generous.  Let me share a short story with you.

Eric was a frugal man.

That pretty much sums it up.  I could elaborate with specific examples, but it’s unnecessary.  Apply that sentence to any possible situation, and you will get a good picture of my life.  I have always tried to be generous with my time, but my money and possessions have been held close.  Unfortunately for my lifelong goal of always being right, I married an amazingly generous woman.  She has constantly stretched me out of my comfort zone.  She has had to hold my hand (probably so I don’t run away) as we walk down this path of generosity.

Through this process, one thing that will not leave me alone is the magnitude of God’s generosity in my life.  And this has nothing to do with the fact that I am a middle-class American, have a tremendous family, and actually “married up.”  Take all of that away and I would still have to praise God for the generosity that he has lavished on me.  That generosity can be summed up in one word:  GRACE!

Eph 1:7-8:  In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding.

I have included the definition for the word lavish, because it continues to blow me away.

Lavish:  to expend or give in great amounts or without limit

Romans 5:8 expresses that Christ died for us when we were still sinners.  God did not merely give us grace because we were already 80% there.  He gave us that grace, through Jesus life, death, and resurrection, while we were still sinners!!  I love the line “without limit” in the definition.  There isn’t a cutoff point in God’s grace.  There isn’t a past that is so bad that God cannot muster up enough grace to cover it.   God is waiting for us to put full trust in Him, despite what our life has looked like.

If we truly understand the generosity of God, and are able to grasp the magnitude of our salvation, I think we will be overwhelmed with gratitude and joy.  That gratitude and joy could not be described in words.  And yet we have the power to respond to others with generosity to give them a small picture of that same gratitude and joy.

I want to invite you to spend 10-15 minutes meditating on the amazing gift of grace that Jesus offers us.  Realize how undeserving you are.  Realize the blessings that are offered.  Be blown away!  Sit in amazement!

Eric Lehman
EricLehman@DIVEintoFLOOD.com

“It’s All or Nothin’”

We’ve spent the last week looking at generosity as an act of “not withholding.” I hope you’ve been challenged to think through some areas of your life where you might be tempted to withhold and assess for yourself how you might make some different decisions in those areas.

As a way to wrap up this week, I thought about an incredible example of “not withholding” that we learned about recently. Last Sunday at Flood we heard the story of the woman from Bethany who interrupted Jesus and the religious leaders as they were eating and, because she was so moved, poured perfume on Jesus’ feet and wiped them with her hair and her tears.

When I think about this story, I don’t just think about the great expense of the perfume. Though that is important. And I don’t just think about the fact that this woman is grateful for forgiveness. Though that is also important. I think about the fact that this woman did not withhold; she didn’t hold back.

I try to picture what it must have been like to be at a dinner party with Jesus and to have this woman barge in and kneel down at his feet right in the middle of hors d’oeuvres. And what it was like to see her break the bottle of excessively expensive perfume and pour it over him. What it must have been like to smell the pungent fragrance of the perfume and hear her sobs as she wept at his feet, to see her let down her hair and use it as a rag. What it must have been like to witness someone so moved that she would act with such abandon.

It is an incredible story of generosity and it shows us that true generosity isn’t just about one area of our lives. It’s about all of us! Generosity is about “not withholding” all that we are and all that we have. It’s holistic giving. And the woman at Bethany got it right. She gave—perfume, posture, passion, praise—it all!

May we have the courage to be people who can give this liberally, this abundantly, this generously, knowing that we have been blessed to be a blessing!

- Leeana
LeeanaTankersley@DIVEintoFLOOD.com

“Rooftop Evangelism”

If you attended SOMA last weekend, you heard our keynote speaker, Chris Brown, share the story of the paralytic man from Mark 2, also known as “Paralyzed Pete,” as Chris referred to him. You’re probably somewhat familiar with the story even if you didn’t hear his retelling of it (not to be missed).

Four friends are on their way to hear Jesus speak at a house in their neighborhood. As they’re walking, they decide to go get their friend, Paralyzed Pete, and bring him to the house so that Jesus might heal him.

When they got to the house with Pete in tow, they realized they couldn’t get into the room where Jesus was teaching because of the huge crowd. So they did what anyone in their shoes would have done. Naturally, they decided to crawl up on top of the house, dig a hole in the roof, and lower Pete down so he’d be dangling right in front of Jesus. That’s a sure fire way not to be missed.

When Jesus saw Pete hanging there in front of him, he told Pete that his sins were forgiven and then he healed him of his paralysis. The healing was not only physical but spiritual as well. It was Jesus flexing his God-muscles for all to see—“in order that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” (Mark 2:10).

As was pointed out at SOMA, one of the more remarkable elements of this story is the four friends who stopped at nothing to get their friend, Pete, to Jesus. I loved how that story was used as an example of generosity. I had never thought of it that way. These friends of Pete went over and above to be sure Pete got to experience the life changing power of Christ.

There’s a nuance to this story that I really love. It’s the kind of thing that could be missed but is very important all the same. Mark 2:5 tells us, “when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ‘son, your sins are forgiven.’”

Who’s faith is being referred to here? That’s right. The four friends who brought Pete to Jesus. Because of their faith, Pete was healed.

We could learn a lot from these four friends. They teach us the delicate balance of faith and works. We need to believe on behalf of those who don’t know Christ—believe that someday they will know him. But we also might need to do something about it!

If the four friends would have never gone to Pete’s house and picked him up and brought him to the house where Jesus was teaching, chances are, things would have turned out a lot differently. What good would it have done if the four friends just believed but never took Paralyzed Pete to hear the message?

If we believe that Jesus can heal, save, and set free, are we giving that message to others? Or are we just praying without proclaiming?

It’s easy to withhold the message of Christ. We do it all the time. There are all sorts of things that get in the way—our fears, our insecurities, our doubts, our schedules. If we have a message we believe in, the generous thing to do would be to share it with another, right? Like the four friends from Mark chapter 2, that might mean doing something radically unexpected, even something revolutionarily uncouth.

I think Jesus commented on the faith of the four friends because it was faith in action. It wasn’t just sit-around-a-circle-and-pray-for-Pete kind of faith. It was bring-him-to-the-home-and-saw-a-hole-in-the-roof-so-Jesus-can-touch-him kind of faith. I bet that impressed Jesus. Those were his kind of guys. Hearers and doers.

Are we those kind of guys? Are we bringing people to the message of Christ and/or bringing the message of Christ to people? Are we sharing with others how Christ has changed our lives? If we are those kind of people, I believe we’re exhibiting a kind of generosity that matters and matters and matters . . . all the way to eternity.

- Leeana
LeeanaTankersley@DIVEintoFLOOD.com

If you would like to learn more about the message of Christ, join us at our next New to Faith class. Email MindiHopper@DIVEintoFLOOD.com for more information.

“Grace Us with Your Presence”

“Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?”
Psalm 139:7

On February 16, my lifelong friend, Tina, delivered a beautiful baby boy named Trevor (cue “Hells Bells”). This isn’t any baby. This is a very special baby, born at 28 weeks, three whole months before he was supposed to come into the world and grace us with his presence.

Tina had to wait a long time to get pregnant with Trevor, her body not cooperating with her plans (can you relate?). I think God must have felt bad for all that trouble, so he didn’t want Tina to have to wait any longer for Trevor to arrive.

It’s scary when a baby is born weighing in at 1 pound and 14 ounces. It’s so overwhelming that it’s hard to know what to do. You want to celebrate this precious gift. And you want to help in all the many ways that are required to do life with a preemie. And you want to pray that God will be very near to this little guy as he endures heart murmurs and brain scans. You just want to be there in a way that is meaningful. It’s hard to know how to “be present”—available, engaged, with—when the circumstances are significant.

God was/is big on presence. Throughout the Old Testament, he was careful to always give his people a symbol of his presence—the cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night that we read about in Exodus, for example. The Arc of the Covenant was a biggie as well. In the New Testament, he was sure to remind his disciples that even though he was going back to heaven, he would “be with them always, to the very of the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). Presence is important because it’s an act of generosity. It’s the gift of comfort, security, and companionship.

The same week Trevor was born, I had bronchitis. That meant I couldn’t be in the same room with Tina because she wouldn’t be able to visit her baby in the NICU if she got so much as a sniffle. It was hard to know she was going through something so huge and not be able to give her a hug. It really made me think about the importance of presence—what a gift it is for us to be able to sit with someone, hug them, hold their hand.

There’s an ancient Jewish tradition called “sitting shiva” (I think I learned about this from Rob Bell—either from a Nooma or from his book Velvet Elvis). Sitting shiva is the generosity of presence. In Jewish culture, when there is a death, the friends of the surviving family members come to the house and just sit, sometimes for days or weeks. They don’t talk or help or solve or give advice. They just sit. And this is how they help the loved one grieve.

I love this. The idea that our presence—nothing more and nothing less—is one of the most powerful gifts we can offer another person. It has the power to buoy people even in the most difficult and overwhelming circumstances. It has the power to speak even more than words can at times.

Is there an area of your life where you’ve been withholding your presence? Maybe you’ve been staying away from church and it’s time to return and be present with God and with others in worship. Maybe there’s someone in your life who could really use your presence even though that person feels cumbersome or difficult. Maybe you know someone who needs some help—a chore, an errand, a couple hours of babysitting. Could the generous gift of your presence be an incredible encouragement to this friend?

As the saying goes, gracing someone with our presence is just that. It’s grace. Generous grace.

- Leeana
LeeanaTankersley@DIVEintoFLOOD.com

To follow the progress of Trevor Jalen Rose or to find out how you can help the Rose family, visit www.ourlittlewarrior.blogspot.com for daily updates and opportunities.

“A Generous Contribution”

One of our five values at Flood is the value of creativity. I think it’s a very misunderstood concept, personally. When people think of creativity, they often think of something subjectively strange like obtuse contemporary artwork or cryptic modern dance. For many, it’s frivolous fluff. It’s not the stuff the world is run on.

For me, creativity is something very different. It is the indispensable raw material of our faith. And I don’t think that’s overstating it. Without creativity, we are all the same, making the same contributions to the world, translating God in the same ways, using the same language, constructing the same ideas. It is through our individual creativity that God speaks to us and we speak to the world.

Believe it or not, I think creativity is something we all possess. It’s not just for those who hang out in painter’s smocks and read poetry in coffee shops. Creativity is the God-given ability each of us has to think and act uniquely. Our creativity is the person God created us to be and the one-of-a-kind fingerprint he invites each of us to leave on this world.

When I looked up “creativity” in my computer’s dictionary, I found the following synonyms:
Vision
Resourcefulness
Inventiveness
Ingenuity
Inspiration
Originality
Innovation
Uniqueness

Those are some powerful words! Certainly more consequential than the frivolity some associate with creativity.

Do you have a sense of where your vision could be utilized? Or where your resourcefulness meets up with a need? Or where your own personal inspiration could help inspire others? Where your problem solving could create needed movement and innovation?

Our world is constantly in need of new ideas and new approaches for all kinds of things. Being generous means not withholding our God-given creativity. It seems simple, but there are all sorts of reasons why we hold back when it comes to finding out how we can make a unique contribution.

Some of us are scared of failure worried that we’re not quite good enough to matter. Some of us are just plain lazy thinking it’s someone else’s turn to change the world. Some of us are burnt out from being busy with all these things that don’t energize us. Well, here’s the truth: No matter what your age or life stage, the world needs your creativity.

Moms, raise your children uniquely, reinforcing the things that make them original.

Business Owners, treat your employees with ingenuity and run your business with vision and innovation.

Workers, inspire those around you with your resourcefulness and inventiveness.

Let’s bring creativity out of the galleries and into the marketplace, the church, the classroom, the home. Let’s inspire the world with our fresh eyes, our awakened minds, our stirred souls.

Now that’s a generous contribution!

- Leeana
LeeanaTankersley@DIVEintoFLOOD.com

To read more about all five of the Flood values, visit www.diveintoflood.com/values.

“It’s a Dirty Job But Somebody’s Got To Do It”

There’s a woman at Flood named Lupe. She’s someone I really admire though I’ve never told her that. So in the spirit of yesterday’s devotion (generosity = not withholding our words), I think I’ll tell her of my admiration via the world wide web. ☺

I don’t know Lupe really well, but what I do know of her tells me pretty much all I need to know. First off, she is on our Flood security team. And from what I hear, she’s very well suited for that area of service. Love it. Second, she works with mentally disabled adults. That’s probably one of the highest callings I can think of. Third, I got to watch Lupe in action last year in a stunning display of generosity. Here’s what went down . . .

It was our annual “Shine Day” (coming up this year on April 12), and I had been asked to be the team leader of the group that was going to tackle the bathrooms in the hall next to the auditorium. For those of you who don’t know, “Shine Day” is a day our church cleans, beautifies, improves, and repairs anything and everything on the Kearny High School campus. Last year was the first annual “Shine Day” and we did some serious work including scraping gum off every conceivable surface for hours on end. It was incredible!

I assembled my team (including MVP Lupe) and we went to work cleaning, disinfecting, bleaching, and scrubbing so we could then repaint the bathrooms. I had a stellar team. They worked as if they were cleaning their own homes, scrubbing grout with toothbrushes.

But it was Lupe who I remember having one of the worst imaginable jobs of the entire day. I can’t believe that anyone did anything on “Shine Day” that could have been less “shiny” of a job. Without being asked, Lupe found a ladder and climbed to the top of it dawning rubber gloves and a large sponge with some sort of bleach solution and began scrubbing human fecal matter off the ceiling of the women’s bathroom.

Don’t ask me how it got there. I have no idea. And, frankly, it was the kind of thing you could have ignored and acted like you didn’t see and no one would have blamed you. But not Lupe. She raised the bar in our group. And I’ll tell you, others followed her lead. When everyone else realized what she was doing, another group from our team headed over to the men’s restroom down the hall and started cleaning the same kind of refuse off the stall doors. Wow.

I can’t think of a more generous offering than volunteering to interact with human excrement. This is what we call generosity of the hands.

It reminds me of what Christ did in the New Testament when he took five loaves and three fish and he broke it and broke it until it fed a huge crowd. The lesson here is about taking something small and mundane and making something large and significant out of it just by getting up off our duff and, in Jesus’ name, using our hands.

That’s what Lupe did at Kearny. She took simple products like bleach and a sponge and did something incredibly spiritual and magnificent. She multiplied what she had been given into a blessing for hundreds of people. What’s a greater act of generosity than cleaning a stranger’s bathroom? Lupe, I’ll tell you, nothing. Nothing is greater.

It’s so easy to keep our hands in our pockets, our hands pre-occupied with meaningless pursuits, our hands busy with destructive habits, our hands caught up in our own business without so much as a thought toward anyone else. Instead, what would happen if we used our hands to pick up a couple of tools and do something that could make a difference? I bet there would be some serious multiplication.

Withholding our hands from the right kind of work is dangerous territory. It reinforces the myth that life is better when it’s all about me. And if we practice that myth long enough, we start to believe it.

So let’s take a lesson from Lupe this week. Let’s generously offer our hands in a way that is counter-intuitive and counter-cultural. God just might use our simple act of generosity to feed a few (thousand).

- Leeana
LeeanaTankersley@DIVEintoFLOOD.com

To find out ways you can use your hands to serve generously at Flood, contact LinseyWildey@DIVEintoFLOOD.com.