wisdom

We all want to be wise. We want the ability to make right choices. My kids attended a Vacation Bible School last week that had James 1:5 as its theme: “If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God…” There’s a connection between wisdom and our relationship with God.

So what keeps us from being wise? The same thing that keeps us from God: lack of humility, i.e., pride. Pride isn’t thinking that I know it all or that I know more than God. It’s merely thinking that I know more than someone else.

I’ve spent my life trying to know more than other people. It’s one of the reasons I try to read so widely. Knowledge in itself isn’t a bad thing. In Proverbs 8:12 wisdom speaks and declares that “I possess knowledge.” The problem is not in the knowledge itself, it’s when I use the knowledge as a shield or a weapon. It can become a shield, keeping me from getting to know someone else because I’m trying to prove that I know more than her/him. Or it can be a weapon that allows me to emerge victorious from an argument, but impoverished because I have lost the opportunity to listen and to learn from someone with a different perspective.

Pride severs relationships. It’s the cause of disunity. It quenches the work that the Spirit of Christ is seeking to do in and through his church. Pride doesn’t have to be all-encompassing to be destructive, it just needs to get between me and one other person.

“All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because, ‘God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.’" 1 Peter 5:5

persecution

Yesterday Dale preached on how the early church fled persecution in Jerusalem and as a result the gospel was carried to Samaria and even into Ethiopia. The day before, 10 members from a Christian aid organization were murdered in Afghanistan.

As I listened to the news reports today, I was outraged. I heard how members of this organization had left their own countries to serve the medical needs of a country in need. Some had raised their families there. But then I asked myself, what motivated them to serve and to give up dreams of comfort and prosperity in such a risky environment?

Even though the early Christians seemed to leave Jerusalem in the interests of self-preservation, they continued to take great risks for the sake of the good news. Samaria was a hostile place for Jews, yet the early Christians (all Jews at the time) went there, Philip preached, and as a result a whole town turned to Christ.

Where would I be willing to go to declare the good news? To my neighbor’s house? To the cubicle next to mine? To a family gathering with my anti-Christian relatives? Do I really believe that I have good news?

worshiping together

On Aug 1 we worshiped together with Foothill Covenant Church and Alum Rock Covenant Church. What happened?

We had a great time in worship. There’s something invigorating about worshiping with twice as many people as you have on a typical Sunday. And Foothill’s sanctuary is beautiful, a wonderful setting for re-telling, re-living, and re-creating God’s gracious work in and through us.

The kids made a bunch of money for LemonAid, raising money to bring fresh water to needy villages in Africa. And it was a beautiful day for lemonade and conversation on Foothill’s spacious front patio.

But the most important thing that happened was somewhat intangible. It was the bringing together of people with a shared mission, the mission of God in Silicon Valley. We tend to think of ourselves as islands of God’s light in a sea of secular darkness. It was good to realize that although our common mission takes on different expressions in our various church communities, we still have a common experience of God’s grace in Christ. Our light shines brighter when it shines together.