occupied

Today I preached on being occupied by the Sprit. While preaching I talked about how most Americans are so occupied with other stuff that we can't hear the Spirit. In Gal 5:16 it says to be occupied by the Spirit. Maybe we must must stop being occupied first.
Most of America is occupied by our own “culture”, that is no really no culture at all. In this "culture" we pay an outrageous price for burnt coffee and call it good. We like wine that taste like wood instead of grapes. We feel it is our right to drive slow in the fast lane because it’s a free country. We think that a good restaurant is a place that serves food from a different country because we can’t make any good food here. We think that our cities should be replaced with malls and movie theaters, as if the American dream can only live in the suburbs. We have redefined the word “friend” to someone that wants to read our worthless status updates on facebook. We escape reality by watching someone else’s life on TV and calling it entertainment. We vote for who we want to be the next American idol but forget to vote for our local representatives who make the laws by which we live. We send our kids to public school to be educated but are afraid to fire bad teachers because it might hurt our economy. We listen to our ipod while we ski, ride or study and wonder why no one cares about the world around us. We think that the internet ought to be warp speed fast on our phone so we can watch a video of a cat using the toilet on youtube. We have become the most worthless occupied culture on earth!

freedom

For far too long we have told people that they have freedom in Christ but we have forgot to tell them the backstory. Paul spent 4 chapters in Galatians explaining the backstory...but we jump oh so quick to chapter 5. We are free, and we ought not subject ourself again to the yoke of slavery. The yoke of the law, the yoke of others opinion, the yoke of our traditions ...
So what does this look like in our churches, our gatherings, our gospel communities?

When we follow the story we see that Abraham was declared righteous because of his faith, then he was told to walk blameless before God in his faith and that circumcision was a sign of the covenant. God blessed him to be a blessing. Abraham and his family were to show the world what it is like to love God and live in His ways.

But we are sons of the promise, sons of the a new covenant that Jesus fulfills. In Jesus we have the blessing of the covenant and the freedom of the covenant. Jesus has fulfilled our side of the covenant and it can't be undone. That is our freedom. We have been declared righteous because of our faith in Jesus, we have been told to walk blameless before God and the Spirit is the sign of our covenant. But it's not up to us to keep it! Jesus has kept it for us! We are free! So all that we have (our time, money, stuff...) are HIS not ours. We are blessed in Jesus to be a blessing!

So our blessings are not about us. We didn't earn them and we can't keep them. What if the church lived like this in our communities? Living freely with all that we had, living freely with our time and our money? Living freely with our talents and gifts?
It would be an unstoppable force! A force where "circumcision or uncircumcision meant nothing, but faith working through love."

Oh how we sell the people of God short and try to make it about them, their comfort, their wants, their desires...
Maybe we ought to tell the backstory to our freedom and call the family of God to live in that Freedom... to show the world what it is like to love God and live in His ways!