GIVE US THE EYES FOR THE LONELY

Can you see them? Do you know who they are?

They sit among us in the congregation, sometimes at the heart of the body, sometimes on the fringes. They worship on Sundays and gather for Bible studies. Some come to events and activities, hoping that maybe if they come enough and do enough, they will start to belong.

You’re part of the church, we say. They smile and nod. How they desperately want to believe that it’s true — true that they belong, true that the local church feels like home, truly among brothers and sisters in Christ, truly no longer invisible as they are every place else they turn. But if we’re honest, too often this is not true for those among us who are widows and widowers, orphans and strangers, parents without children and children without parents. They feel so alone — in life and even in the body of Christ.

Look with the Eyes of the Lord

As the church gathers this weekend, try to look around with the eyes of Christ. You may be amazed at what you see.For the widow who sits in the same pew each Sunday, the dullest, most ordinary order of worship is full of life compared to the home from which she came and will soon return. It sits quiet and empty day after day. Pictures of her husband adorn the walls, subtle reminders of what she no longer has. She misses the joy of companionship. The loneliness is a fog she can’t seem to break through.

Nearby sit the parents of a child who’s run away. Their home is broken in a different way, but it’s no less broken. They call. She doesn’t answer. They pray. She doesn’t come home. Every time she updates her Facebook they are flooded with emotion — joy that she is alive, sadness at what’s been lost, anxiety about what lies ahead. Sunday is their respite as they fight for faith in God’s goodness.

Behind them sits the fifteen-year-old boy, the only Christian in his house. Every word he hears from the pulpit encourages a life that is vastly different from the one at home. The tension in his family is palpable, and his faith is the source. Even to be here on Sunday is against the grain of everything else in his life. Was being here just a huge mistake?

They come to church where there is no belt, bottle, or pill. No yelling, screaming, or fighting. No darkness, no silence, no emptiness. For these precious people, “sanctuary” is not the name of the building. It’s the rest that they find here. They are lonely and wandering, but for a brief time they feel like they belong. They sing with us and pray with us. They stand when we stand, and they sit when we sit. Here, amid all the smiles, handshakes, and hugs, they feel a closeness that’s missing everywhere else.This is the only part of their week that feels right. All of the happy, unbroken, picture-perfect families around them seem oblivious to their struggles. Not that the happy people don’t care — they’re just not paying attention. They’re keeping children quiet, focusing on the sermon, preparing for lunchtime or game-time or nap-time.

Love the Groom — and the Bride

When the service ends, the happy and the lonely go their separate ways.

For widows, orphans, and outliers, the Sunday afternoon journey back home is a portal back to reality. For the lonely, it hardly matters whether their front door opens to a mansion of fine things or a hovel of poverty. Inside is a desolate place. Are these not Jesus’s people — and our people, too?

Stretching out his hand toward his disciples, [Jesus] said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.” (Matthew 12:49–50) O, that we would increasingly love the body of Christ as we grow in our love for the Head (Colossians 1:18); that we would love the branches like we love the Vine (John 15:5), and every living stone that’s joined to the Corner of God’s great church (Ephesians 2:19–22).

Loving his church is an opportunity to love Jesus himself. You cannot divorce the Groom and his Bride. What God has joined together, let no man separate. If every happy, intact family among us took it upon itself to initiate toward and welcome the lonely, making visible those around us who feel invisible, what a joyful place our sanctuaries would be.

Give Your Best Love

Each time we gather, we have a fresh opportunity to be a son to the man whose own won’t see him. Every Sunday is a new chance to be a mother to the teenager whose own mother is unbelieving. Each assembly is an avenue to love the family of God with the same passion and devotion reserved for our own blood.Let the birthday cards and phone calls, Thanksgiving dinners and Christmas feasts, the outings to movies and basketball games flow from the heart of the strong and happy into the wells of the weak and lonely. Will we love them with our best love, and not relegate them to second-class love on account of their not having the same last name? Will we give them the primary love, the best of yourself, the part that the rest of the world holds back?

Thank God that Jesus did not love us with his second best. With nail-pierced hands stretched out in agony, he loved us with his best. And if we belong to him, we have access to the resources to love his people with our best, as well.

Look around you this weekend and look for the lonely — and reach out and love them! Love them with initiative and creativity and energy they would never expect — and never find anywhere else. And when you love them like that, the world will see it and glorify our Father, who empowers such unexpected love.

God, give us eyes to see the lonely.    By Reggie Osborne II

http://www.desiringgod.org/articles/give-us-eyes-for-the-lonely?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=feedpress.me&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+dg-articles

What Is Love? [yHi Promo] on Vimeo

What Is Love? [yHi Promo] on Vimeo

Why Bible Study Doesn’t Transform Us by Jen Wilkin

“When all your favorite preachers are gone, and all their books forgotten, you will have your Bible. Master it. Master it.” — John Piper 

I meet with women all the time who are curious about how they should study the Bible. They hunger for transformation, but it eludes them. Though many have spent years in church, even participating in organized studies, their grasp on the fundamentals of how to approach God's Word is weak to non-existent. And it's probably not their fault. Unless we are taught good study habits, few of us develop them naturally.

Why, with so many study options available, do many professing Christians remain unschooled and unchanged? Scripture teaches clearly that the living and active Word matures us, transforms us, accomplishes what it intends, increases our wisdom, and bears the fruit of right actions. There is no deficit in the ministry of the Word. If our exposure to it fails to result in transformation, particularly over the course of years, there are surely only two possible reasons why: either our Bible studies lack true converts, or our converts lack true Bible study.

I believe the second reason is more accurate than the first. Much of what passes for Bible study in Christian bookstores and church resource libraries just isn't: while it may educate us on a doctrine or a topic, it does little to further our Bible literacy. And left to our own devices, we pursue a host of unsavory (and un-transformative) self-constructed approaches to “spending time in the Word.” Here are several that I encounter on a regular basis.

The Xanax Approach: Feel anxious? Philippians 4:6 says be anxious for nothing. Feel ugly? Psalm 139 says you are fearfully and wonderfully made. Feel tired? Matthew 11:28 says Jesus will give rest to the weary. The Xanax Approach treats the Bible as if it exists to make us feel better. Whether aided by a devotional book or just the topical index in our Bibles, we pronounce our time in the Word successful if we can say, “Wow. That was touching.” The Problem: The Xanax Approach makes the Bible a book about us. We ask how the Bible can serve us, rather than how we can serve the God it proclaims. Actually, the Bible doesn't always make us feel better. Quite often it does just the opposite (feeling awesome? Jeremiah 17:9 says you're a wicked rascal). Yes, there is comfort to be found in the pages of Scripture, but context is what makes that comfort lasting and real. The Xanax Approach guarantees that huge sections of your Bible will remain unread, because they fail to deliver an immediate dose of emotional satisfaction.

The Pinball Approach: Lacking a preference or any guidance about what to read, you read whatever Scripture you happen to turn to. Releasing the plunger of your good intentions, you send the pinball of ignorance hurtling toward whatever passage it may hit, ricocheting around to various passages “as the Spirit leads.” The Problem: The Bible was not written to be read this way. The Pinball Approach gives no thought to cultural, historical or textual context, authorship, or original intent of the passage in question. When we read this way, we treat the Bible with less respect than we would give to a simple textbook. Imagine trying to master algebra by randomly reading for ten minutes each day from whatever paragraph in the textbook your eyes happened to fall on. Like that metal pinball, you'd lose momentum fast. And be very bad at algebra.

The Magic 8 Ball Approach: You remember the Magic 8 Ball—it answered your most difficult questions as a child. But you're an adult now and wondering if you should marry Bob, get a new job, or change your hair color. You give your Bible a vigorous shake and open it to a random page. Placing your finger blindly on a verse, you then read it to see if “signs point to yes.” The Problem: The Bible is not magical, and it does not serve our whim. The Magic 8 Ball Approach misconstrues the ministry of the Holy Spirit through the Word, demanding that the Bible tell us what to do rather than who to be. And it's dangerously close to soothsaying, which people used to get stoned for. So, please. No Magic 8 Ball.

The Personal Shopper Approach: You want to know about being a godly woman or how to deal with self-esteem issues, but you don't know where to find verses about that, so you let [insert famous Bible teacher here] do the legwork for you. The Problem: The Personal Shopper Approach doesn't help you build “ownership” of Scripture. Much like the Pinball Approach, you ricochet from passage to passage, gaining fragmentary knowledge of many books of the Bible but mastery of none. Topical studies serve a purpose: they help us integrate broad concepts into our understanding of Scripture. But if they're all we ever do, we're missing out on the richness of learning a book of the Bible from start to finish.

The Jack Sprat Approach: This is where we engage in “picky eating” with the Word of God. We read the New Testament, but other than Psalms and Proverbs we avoid the Old Testament, or we read books with characters, plots, or topics we can easily identify with. The Problem: All Scripture is God-breathed and profitable. All of it. Women, it's time to move beyond Esther, Ruth, and Proverbs 31 to the rest of the meal. Everyone, you can't fully appreciate the sweetness of the New Testament without the savory of the Old Testament. We need a balanced diet to grow to maturity.

Discipleship Defined

Why do these six habits of highly ineffective Bible study persist in the church today? Why does biblical ignorance continue to dog the church, despite the good intentions of leadership to obey the Great Command to make disciples? I believe the answer lies in our definition of a disciple. A disciple is, literally, a learner—one who follows another's teaching. But the modern church has tended to define a disciple as a “doer” instead of as a “learner.” We have been asked to do service projects, join home groups, find an accountability partner, get counseling, fix our marriages, sing on the worship team, get out of debt, help in the nursery, hand out bulletins, go on mission trips, give to the building fund, share the gospel at Starbucks—but we have so rarely been challenged to pursue the most fundamental element of discipleship—earnest study of the Word. Yes, a disciple does, but we're motivated to act by love for the God revealed in the Word. Stop waiting for your community of believers to call you to be what Christ already has. Be a student. Be a good student. Read repetitively and in context, line by line. Keep the God of the gospel at the center of your study. Strive for comprehension before interpretation. Give application ample time to emerge from a passage. Watch ignorance flee and transformation flourish. Study the Word. Master it, master it.