Archives February 2011

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Passion: People (Part 2)

by Matt Bullen

Passion For People Continues With Feeling

In my last post we looked at how Jesus passion began with seeing. The next thing we see in the life of Jesus is that His “seeing” resulted in feeling. He didn’t just see and then remain unmoved and untouched by what He saw. Here are a few places where the scriptures give us insight into the heart of Jesus.

Matt 8:9 He marveled

Matt 9:36 He felt compassion for them

Matt 15:32 “I feel compassion for the people

Matt. 20:34 Moved with compassion, Jesus

Matt 26:38 “My soul is deeply grieved, to the point of death

Mark 1:41 Moved with compassion, Jesus

Mark 3:5 After looking around at them with anger,

Mark 3:5 grieved at their hardness of heart,

Mark 6:34 He saw a large crowd, and He felt compassion

Mark 8:12 Sighing deeply in His spirit

Mark 10:13 He was indignant and said to them

Mark 10:21 Looking at him, Jesus felt a love for him

Luke 7:8 He marveled at him,

Luke 10:21 He rejoiced greatly

Luke 22:44 And being in agony

Luke 22:44 He was praying very fervently;

John 11:33 He was deeply moved in spirit and was troubled,

John 11:35 Jesus wept

John 11:38 So Jesus, again being deeply moved within,

John 13:21 He became troubled in spirit

The Lord Jesus Christ was the opposite of apathetic! He not only saw, He felt strongly about the needs of the people around Him. This was not a man who was afraid of passion in His ministry! His fervor was so great that those around Him noticed it enough to comment on it when they wrote their gospel accounts long after the events had actually taken place.

Yet in religious films today, Jesus is nearly always depicted only as meek and quiet and He seems to be moving in slow motion. One person has pointed out that if you look closely, Jesus never blinks, He never cries, He never gets angry, He never smiles in these movies. The cinema version of Jesus is not the Bible version.

Jesus was a man who felt deeply and expressed His feelings openly. If Jesus was walking the earth today many churches and Christians would consider Him fanatical, unstable, crazy, or worse, just as they did in His own day.

Mark 3:21-22 When His own people heard of this, they went out to take custody of Him; for they were saying, “He has lost His senses.” the scribes who came down from Jerusalem were saying, “He is possessed by Beelzebul,” and “He casts out the demons by the ruler of the demons.”

I believe that we should be worried about the authenticity of our conversion if we can preach about, sing about, and believe in things such as heaven and hell, sin and death, poverty and disease, Satan and evil without becoming passionate about it. If we can look around at the suffering in our world and not be torn up about it, if we can read about human trafficking and not weep, if we can see pictures of hungry orphans around the world and not be moved to give and/or go, does the Jesus of the Bible really live inside of us? Because when He saw, He was “moved with compassion.”

An 18 year old girl who my family is ministering to recently sent me this message that touches perfectly upon this subject with a boldness that is refreshing…

“We call ourselves Christians…We profess to know Christ…What then is wrong in churches today? What causes such turmoil…such overthrow of harmony…such strife and malice…? What is it that is the deciding factor of the prosperity of the Church today as we know it? It is simply this: If we want to allow pharisees to lurk in the dark corners of the church and sulk in the shadowed pews…we should quit calling ourselves “Christians”…it is at this miserable point that we should give up…we cannot allow apathy to poison our churches…for by simple inaction on our part, we petition satan to come sit on our doorstep…we plead with him to make himself at home in our god-forsaken churches…we unashamedly invite him to join in our “worship”…by our apathy…we call down the wrath of God…”For you were neither hot, nor cold, but lukewarm…therefore I shall spew you out of my mouth, saith the Lord”…Look around you friends…are you beckoning the Lord’s anger? Can you in good faith call yourself a “Christian”? Do you have a zeal for God that consumes you…this is where I want to be…I want to be so consumed with Christ that it would appear that our candles are melting into one…our hearts kindled together into one flame…This is the vision…who will pursue it?”

Lord, help us to feel like Jesus!

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Passion: People (Part 1)

by Matt Bullen

On the second day of our recent trip to Colombia I shared another “P” from the ministry of Jesus, Passion, and I would like to expand on that topic further in the next few posts.

Jesus’ Passion is People and begins with Seeing…

One of my all-time favorite songs is What Now by Steven Curtis Chapman. The first line of the song says, “I saw the face of Jesus in a little orphan girl. She was standing in the corner on the other side of the world.” The tears well up in my eyes and my heart burns every time I hear those words because I remember the first time I saw my two little Colombian Goddaughters, Heidy and Ginary. The compassion and love that flooded my soul as I spent a few hours with them was overwhelming. I wept like a child when I had to leave them. God wanted me to see them, to see their life, and to see their “home” because He knew me and He knew the response that seeing them would elicit from me. He wanted me to know what He felt for them and to spend the rest of my life loving them and helping them by every means at my disposal. Seeing made all the difference.

I’m enjoying a wonderful book right now entitled Love Walked Among Us by Paul E. Miller. (who is the author of another of my most favorite books A Praying Life) In Love Walked Among Us, Miller looks closely at the life of Jesus and how He loved and draws out wonderful principles by which we can imitate our sweet Savior. He starts with “love shows compassion” and talks about how Jesus had compassion on the widow of Nain and raised her only son from the dead. The thing that really intrigued me was that Miller points out that first Jesus saw her and then His heart went out to her in compassion. It prompted me to do a little study of the gospels and look at every time the Lord looked at someone or taught about looking at someone and having compassion. This is what I found.

Matt. 9:36 Seeing the people, He felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd.

Matt. 14:14 When He went ashore, He saw a large crowd, and felt compassion for them and healed their sick.

Matt. 25:37 “Then the righteous will answer Him, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry, and feed You, or thirsty, and give You something to drink? 38 ‘And when did we see You a stranger, and invite You in, or naked, and clothe You? 39 ‘When did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?’

Mark 5:32, 34 And He looked around to see the woman who had done this… And He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace and be healed of your affliction.”

Mark 10:14 But when Jesus saw this, He was indignant and said to them, “Permit the children to come to Me; do not hinder them; for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.

Mark 10:21 Looking at him, Jesus felt a love for him and said to him, “One thing you lack: go and sell all you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.”

Luke 7:13 When the Lord saw her, He felt compassion for her, and said to her, “Do not weep.”

Luke 19:5 When Jesus came to the place, He looked up and said to him, “Zaccheus, hurry and come down, for today I must stay at your house.”

Luke 10:33 “But a Samaritan, who was on a journey, came upon him; and when he saw him, he felt compassion,

Luke 13:12 When Jesus saw her, He called her over and said to her, “Woman, you are freed from your sickness.”

Luke 15:20 “So he got up and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion for him, and ran and embraced him and kissed him.

Luke 17:14 When He saw them, He said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they were going, they were cleansed.

Luke 19:41 When He approached Jerusalem, He saw the city and wept over it,

Luke 21:2 And He saw a poor widow putting in two small copper coins. 3 And He said, “Truly I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all of them;

John 4:35 “Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, and then comes the harvest’? Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look on the fields, that they are white for harvest.

John 5:6 When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he had already been a long time in that condition, He *said to him, “Do you wish to get well?”

John 6:5 Therefore Jesus, lifting up His eyes and seeing that a large crowd was coming to Him, *said to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread, so that these may eat?”

John 9:1 As He passed by, He saw a man blind from birth.

John 11:33, 35 When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, He was deeply moved in spirit and was troubled… Jesus wept.

John 19:26 When Jesus then saw His mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing nearby, He *said to His mother, “Woman, behold, your son!”

Lord, help us to see like Jesus!

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Pure Pleasure: The Motivation For Missions

by Matt Bullen

Another of the “P’s” from the ministry of Jesus that the team and I explored on our recent trip to Colombia was Pleasure. If we want to have a ministry like Jesus ministry then we must have His pleasure. Our motivation for ministry must be our joy, delight, and pleasure in God. Duty will never suffice as a suitable motivation for missions…

Enjoyment empowers effort. Doing is the fruit of delighting. Performance is energized by pleasure. – Sam Storms

I want to elaborate on that thought some more. God was motivated by joy, delight, and pleasure, first in Himself, and then in us…

God’s complete joy in Himself as a Trinity led Him to want to double that joy by extending it beyond Himself to the human beings He created. Likewise, we will want to double our joy by seeing how adequate God is to meet our need – love as we use our resources to perform the greatest service to others – helping them to experience the joy in believing in God’s wonderful promises, guaranteed by the finished work of Christ. – Daniel Fuller

The Father’s pleasure is His people…

Psalm 149:4 For the LORD takes PLEASURE in His people;

He will beautify the afflicted ones with salvation.

Therefore He found great pleasure in His plan to draw us back to Him by the sacrifice of His beloved Son…

Isaiah 53:10 But the LORD was PLEASED to crush Him, putting Him to grief; if He would render Himself as a guilt offering, He will see His offspring, He will prolong His days, and the good PLEASURE of the LORD will prosper in His hand.

The Bible says in Hebrews 12:2 that we are to look to Jesus as our example and then it goes on to say that Jesus’ motivation for enduring the cross and despising the shame was the JOY that was set before Him.

fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the JOY set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

That joy was redeeming us back to Himself! So the Father’s pleasure and the Son’s pleasure is the redeeming of lost sinners. And He wants us to share in His pleasure by first knowing and loving Him,

Psalm 16:11 You will make known to me the path of life; In Your presence is fullness of JOY; In Your right hand there are PLEASURES forever

Psalm 36:8 They drink their fill of the abundance of Your house; And You give them to drink of the river of Your DELIGHTS.

John 15:11 “These things I have spoken to you so that My JOY may be in you, and that your JOY may be made full.

John 16:24 …so that your JOY may be made full.

John 17:13 “these things I speak in the world so that they may have My JOY made full in themselves.

I bear my testimony that there is no joy to be found in all this world like that of sweet communion with Christ. – C.H. Spurgeon

The most precious truth in the Bible is that God’s greatest interest is to glorify the wealth of His grace by making sinners happy in Him. – John Piper

and second by sharing Him with others. When we are full of Him, His love and joy will naturally spill out on others. I think Joni Eareckson Tada says it so well…

“God happily shares His gladness, His joy comes flooding over heaven’s walls filling my heart in a waterfall of delight, which then in turn always streams out to others in a flood of encouragement, and then erupts back to God in an ecstatic fountain of praise. He gets your heart pumping for heaven. He injects His peace, power, and perspective into your spiritual being. He puts a song in your heart. I want to know God like this! Shove me under the waterfall of the Trinity’s joy, which splashes and spills over heaven’s walls. If He’s always in a good mood, I want to catch it”

But how do we stay under this waterfall? John Piper says it like this…

“Grace is power from God to do good things in us and for us. It is an ever cascading, infinitesimal waterfall. How then do you serve God? You posture yourself, and you maneuver your life, and you devote energy and effort and time and creativity to positioning yourself under the waterfall of God’s continual blessing, so that he remains the source and you remain the empty receiver. You remain the beneficiary, he remains the benefactor; you remain hungry, he remains the bread; you remain thirsty, he remains the water. You find out where the waterfall of grace is falling and you get under it. When it moves, you follow it so that you stay wet. And usually it takes you overseas…”

Our joy in God is magnified and doubled when we share it with others in missions and evangelism…

For all of us it should be unthinkable to keep to ourselves the knowledge that God’s ultimate delight is to do the greatest good for others by letting them share in the supreme joy He has in Himself. How could any of us enjoy heaven unless we mobilized our time, talents and treasure to do our utmost to get the good news to the rest of the world? – Daniel Fuller

Missions is the automatic outflow and overflow of love for Christ. We delight to enlarge our joy in Him by extending it to others. As Lottie Moon said, “Surely there can be no greater joy than that of saving souls.” – John Piper

Missions is the overflow of our delight in God because missions is the overflow of God’s delight in being God. – John Piper

Most men are not satisfied with the permanent output of their lives. Nothing can wholly satisfy the life of Christ within His followers except the adoption of Christ’s purpose toward the world He came to redeem. Fame, pleasure and riches are but husks and ashes in contrast with the boundless and abiding joy of working with God for the fulfillment of His eternal plans. The men who are putting everything into Christ’s undertaking are getting out of life its sweetest and most priceless rewards. – J. Campbell White, The Laymen’s Missionary Movement, 1909.

I believe that I have experienced in 28 years of ministry a little taste of joy in God both by knowing Him and by sharing Him with others. I have stood in the pulpit and felt His mantle on my shoulders. I have seen Him do incredible things and I have enjoyed seeing His fingerprints all over my ministry. I have walked through the orphanages and felt His presence so thick I thought I could reach out and touch Him. I have seen Him in a thousand faces. But I want more… so much more…

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

Ministry Partners

Our Fellow Soldier

by Matt Bullen

In Paul’s greeting in Philemon 2 & 3 he says, “to Archippus our fellow soldier, and to the church in your house: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”

I am blessed to know some fellow soldiers. One of them is a girl named Hannah that I pastored for several years and is like a daughter to me. She comes from a family of fellow soldiers. I remember Hannah and her brothers and their shining smiles sitting under my preaching as I would thunder out the call to “Go to the nations.” God was eating my own heart up about missions and it spilled over into many of my sermons. Sermons like “Lift up your eyes” and “Other Sheep”. I remember how I would pray that God would send some of the young people in my church to the nations.

Hannah was the quiet one who served faithfully but never out in front. She always had a baby in her arms, one of her many siblings or another baby in the church, and a smile on her face. She and her mother held a little Bible study once a week called Young Women of Purpose. My daughters loved to go. They benefitted greatly from the books studied and the God saturated conversations.

Later when Hannah was in Bible College we communicated often and it was such a joy to hear her heart and to say a “you can do it” or “God is faithful, He will take care of you.”

Today Hannah lives in an orphanage in Uganda, being the hands and feet of Jesus. She is loving and serving the children of Uganda.

I am so humbled and blessed and thrilled to call her Our Fellow Soldier.