Month: April 2017

Jesus, Social Media and Me

Posted on by Kyle Fuller

I’m up front with everyone, it’s understood that I use social media to accomplish a specific agenda: sharing Jesus by every available means. But this morning I felt the Spirit calling me out, challenging me as to the authenticity of my claim. Is sharing the love of God really my motivation?

It’s easy to deceive ourselves (at least it is for me) about a great many things. I can convince myself that what I’m doing is for God when the reality is that I’m really trying to fulfill a need for acceptance- receiving an “attaboy” from men instead of God. On Twitter I see the popular, hip preachers who daily provide their followers with cool tweets, and there’s a part of me that wants to be a part of the club. While I can’t pretend to judge the motives of these guys, I most certainly am required to judge my own. And lately, they’ve been mixed at best.

I believe that social media is both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, we can potentially touch more people than we would ever physically be able to encounter. But on the other hand, it can feed the narcissistic, megalomaniac tendencies we all have to some degree. We can share  the Gospel with the click of a mouse, but we can also become addicted to “likes,” “retweets,” and “mentions.” Or maybe it’s just me-I know how sick and twisted I can be.

I’ve been thinking of some things the Apostle Paul said to the church in Corinth about “ministers and ministries.”

 Not that we dare to classify or compare ourselves with some of those who are commending themselves. But when they measure themselves by one another and compare themselves with one another, they are without understanding.

According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done.  If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.

We find ourselves in the day of hash-tag theology and clever quips. Social-media enables us to feed our innate need for validation, and would be prophets and teachers clamor about seeking to impress with fancy talk and highfilutin prose. In times such as these, I find myself falling increasingly more in love with the One who, while being the embodiment of all truth and wisdom, used mustard seeds, nets, lost coins and farmers to explain heaven’s grandest mysteries.Yeah, I’m going to continue to use social media to share Jesus. But I’m also going to pay more heed to Paul’s words, praying that I will be conscious of the REALITY the verses cited above reveal. If I may be so presumptuous as to tell you what I think the bottom line is concerning Jesus and social media, it is this: folks don’t need us to be cool and clever, they need us to speak the truth in love.

 

He Sees

Posted on by Kyle Fuller

This is going to sound very weird to some of you, but for the longest time I’ve had this weird, negative vibe thing going with one of the names of God that we learn back in the book of Genesis: Jehovah-Jireh or God provides/sees. I would like to blame it on the pseudo-religiosity I saw and imitated in my youth. I’d love to blame it on the fact that the Name had its own song, and people would always say, “God will provide brother. He is Jehovah-Jireh!” (They meant well, I know they did. Shoot, I meant well too.)  Truth is, I just simply didn’t have any idea of what I was talking about.

There’s a difference between repeating religious dogma and verbiage and knowing something from an intimacy that has developed through time walking with God. I would sing the song and agree that yes, God does provide. But I didn’t own it. I didn’t truly know it from personal experience. And now, with a perspective that only time can afford, I can say with experiential knowledge, “Yes, our God is Jehovah-Jireh.”

Like Abraham who “coined the phrase,” more often than not, it is in time of trial and great need that we come into intimate communion with the God who sees and provides. The problem is that we tend to avoid the places in which God would choose to reveal himself to us. To our own detriment we seek deliverance from the “valley of death” when it is the very tool by which God would bring us into greater revelation of  himself. As we walk through uncertain times, enduring hardship, and the pain of not being able to see; we come to know the God who does see and provides.

“My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord,
nor be weary when reproved by him.
For the Lord disciplines the one he loves,
and chastises every son whom he receives.

“It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.”

 

The Best Part

Posted on by Kyle Fuller

“Seems that I was busy doing something close to nothing
But different than the day before…”

(“Raspberry Beret”- Prince)

If you’ve been around “church” long enough you’ve probably been told all about the simplicity of just enjoying the presence of the Lord. And I know you’ve heard your share of sermons from Luke 10: “Martha, you’re so anxious and worried about many things. Mary has chosen the better part.” But please, indulge me a bit because the idea of “the best part” and the sweetness of his presence has taken on new life for me as of late. And I wanted to pass it along.

The Lord has my wife & I in a different kind of place right now. Without giving you all the particulars, let me just say that I (and her too probably) have been totally out of my comfort zone. And to be quite honest, I haven’t known exactly what to do. But I figured I BETTER DO SOMETHING!! So, all my “figuring”  wound up producing a lot of “what ifs,” “maybe I shoulds,” and “this could be disastrous” kind of stuff. Thank you Lord for your precious Holy Spirit!!

I guess I’d better say right out front that I’m not encouraging you to be lazy, quit your job, and let God feed you by having birds bring you crumbs of bread. But I do want to tell you that God would not have us herded like cattle into a pen or driven by fear into a course of action. Instead, we are to be led by his Spirit. And so often, we get so busy with being busy or thinking that we have to be busy that we forget the best part- the sweetness of his presence. Yes, there is purpose and intention. There is a race and a mission and a task and ministry, but the best part lies in the simplicity of abiding in/with him. And the irony of it all is that it is that “abiding” out of which everything else- the purpose, intention, ministry, and LIFE ITSELF- flows.

“I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”

Do you think he may have meant exactly what he said? Apart from me, you can do nothing. Sure, with determination and hard work, anyone can have some measure of success, the world does it everyday. But that which possesses eternal substance and significance flows out of our abiding union in Jesus. It is the Spirit that gives life. And before you’re tempted to think that your relationship with Jesus is somehow disconnected from your intention or your purpose or your effort or your JOB; for you my precious bother and sister, there is no such division. Apart from him, we can do nothing. NO-THING.

Keep up the hard work my friend, but remember that it is in your abiding intimacy in and with him that everything else will come. The sweetness of his presence is the best part.