Blog - tangible theology

Feeling Fruitful?

August 26, 2013 by Chris Sicks Leave a Comment

I think Jesus must have had Psalm 1:3-4 in mind when He said,

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. If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. (John 15:5-6)

Jesus and the author of Psalm 1 describe two types of people, those who abide in the Lord and bear fruit, and those who dry up because they reject fellowship with the Lord. He is the Source of power, of energy, of nutrients. We are branches that receive these things, and our ministry only bears fruit when we abide in Him.

Fruit in ministry does not depend on our performance, obedience, or cleverness. Fruit comes from connection to Christ.

The person in Psalm 1 is blessed and fruitful because he sinks his roots into the Word of God, all the time. And Jesus, the Word, invites us to hang out with Him, all the time. I know other things often seem more urgent. But think of this: The Creator of the universe actually wrote to you for a purpose: to nourish you and equip you to do things you never could on your own.

I need that nourishment desperately. How about you?

How Jesus Shows Me Mercy

August 18, 2013 by Sara Sicks 1 Comment

my-power-made-perfect-in-weakness

By Sara Sicks

When I was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2008, my husband was the director of mercy ministry at our church. Because of Chris’ position, one might think that his wife understood and practiced mercy ministry herself.

Looking back, I think I understood mercy mostly as an idea. Yes, I had provided meals to others in their tough times. I spoke with and prayed for people going through difficult circumstances. And it’s true, doing those things can communicate Christ’s love and compassion.

But I had a lot more to learn about the power and depth of mercy the Body of Christ is capable of. It was Stage III cancer (while raising three young children) that helped me learn about true mercy. To learn for myself how to love suffering people, I first had to receive deep and profound love in the midst of my own suffering. (See 2 Cor 1:3-7)

I have a friend who actively demonstrates such love to me. She has walked closely beside me through every step of my breast cancer battle for 5-½ years. I am choosing to focus on this friend and not individuals in my family (like my mother) because one would expect your family to go the extra mile for you. Praise God for his provision through such family members. Less common is a friend (I’ll call her Corinne) who moves deliberately and directly into painful and dark places with you.

Walking toward pain can be costly. It requires time and energy. You must be ready for the person in pain to flounder, be dramatic, and cry buckets of tears. When you serve hurting people well, you become deeply invested, often grieving and suffering yourself.

My friend Corinne has consistently listened to me talk about cancer, my fears, my faith, my emotions, my anger—ad nauseam. No matter how I feel, I know that I am loved and accepted for who I am at that moment. She doesn’t move the conversation back to herself or try to wrap things up when she is eager to change the subject. She is fully present. When I am with her, I feel like I am the most important person in the world. I do not feel like I am wasting her time.

Corinne has given me the great gift of her time. She has accompanied me to many a medical appointment—whether it be for chemo, a scary biopsy, or yet another scan. She has actually made many awful medical appointments FUN! Time goes quickly when I am with her, and we never seem able to fully finish a conversation!

Corinne is a faithful prayer warrior and lets me know how she is praying. She has prayed for me throughout daytime hours as well as through the night as the Lord leads her. This follower of Jesus has tangibly loved me, and her acts of love point me to our Savior.

Jesus gave me Corinne as an example of how to be more like Him. I now want to resemble Jesus, as Corinne does when she loves others. Of course, Corinne’s love for others is only the result of her own rescue and transformation by Jesus.

I praise the Lord that He left the most incredible palace ever to descend to Earth to rescue me. Because of Jesus, I am His and He is mine. And I also praise Him that He uses and equips Corrine to love me deeply. His love through Corinne has transformed me. I now want to be more like Jesus and love others the way that Corinne has loved me.

How about you? Leave a comment, and tell us who Jesus has used to love you in deep, tangible ways.

Credible Love

July 31, 2013 by Chris Sicks Leave a Comment

Do Something image When I was an atheist, I wanted Christians to show me tangible proof of God’s existence. Without proof, the Christian message lacked credibility.

While you and I can’t provide nonbelievers with proof that God exists, we can provide evidence. Deeds of mercy are tangible evidence that what we believe about God is true. No one has to take a “blind leap of faith.” We offer tangible love and then declare the intangible gospel so that people will see Christ. And then we trust the Holy Spirit, the only one who can persuade someone to believe, to give the gift of faith to the ones we serve.

So, here’s my question: are God’s people providing evidence of His existence to the world? When the world looks at us, do they discover a radical love that makes Christianity credible? Not often enough, I’m afraid. Christians are known for being against so many things these days. The world should know what we are for — peace and justice, the oppressed and downtrodden — as much as what we are against. We should be known for our servant position rather than our political position.

What evidence do you see? Where are God’s people making God’s love credible to hurting people?

Tangible Grace

July 25, 2013 by Chris Sicks Leave a Comment

Offer Tangible Love
“The kingdom of God is the structure of reality. . . It is the church’s purpose to keep this threatened, difficult-to-believe kingdom of God constantly before people’s eyes.”
—Dale Bruner

When he graduated from college, John Meinen was a Zen Buddhist with a heart for serving the poor. A “poster child for postmodern relativism,” John believed that morality is culturally conditioned, that people are inherently good, and the world is an illusion. Then he went to Bangladesh.

“The beggars pulling on my clothes were no illusion,” John says. After four months of studying how microenterprise might help the poor, he left Bangladesh shaken. He had seen too many oppressed people oppressing one another to believe that people are inherently good. His youthful optimism was gone: “When I left Bangladesh, Dhaka was under siege. Jostled in the backseat of a rickshaw on my way to the airport, I saw cars being smashed, people being bloodied, and smoke billowing on the horizon. My heart was broken. My head was spinning. My world was falling apart.”

A few months later, John was in Nairobi. Unemployed with little to do, he had accepted an invitation to work with a sports outreach organization. One day he was following his guide, a poor local man. They came upon a small child rummaging in the trash. John’s guide suddenly scooped up the homeless boy and held him, speaking gently to him.

Time out, John thought. Why would this man, who is suffering himself, pick up this child and enter into a world of even more suffering? How does someone do that? Why would someone do that? The selfless love this man showed was an affront to John’s conscience.

So John asked him why he had reached out to help the child. The man said, “I love Jesus.”

“I’m not proud to say it, but I kind of laughed,” John says. “I thought it was a trite answer. You love Jesus? Give me a break.” But in that village John witnessed many tangible acts of love: impoverished women praying for their neighbors, people in the slums serving and loving one another, and men and women with insufficient resources sharing the little they had with one another.

When he saw these deeds of mercy, John wanted to know more about the motivation behind them. He asked people, “Why do you do that? What enables you to love like that?” Again and again, their reply was “I love Jesus.” John says, “I realized I didn’t know who Jesus was, but I had to meet Him.”

John and Jesus did meet. They now know one another well, because the all-powerful God of the universe revealed Himself to one young man on the streets of Bangladesh and in the slums of Africa. John saw love in transformed people, and then met the Source of that love. Today as an ordained campus minister at the University of Vermont, John tells college students about that Source.

Two thousand years ago, another man named John wrote about other-centered love and how it testifies to God’s existence: “No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us” (1 John 4:12).

The invisible God continues to reveal Himself to people today in very visible ways. When God’s children pour out love and compassion into the lives of hurting and broken people, we declare, “Yes! There is a God! Despite all the data to the contrary in this broken world, there really is a Rescuer in heaven, and He cares about your suffering, your sadness, and your soul.”

—This is an excerpt from Tangible: Making God Known through Deeds of Mercy and Words of Truth, pages 15-17.

Give to the winds thy fears

July 16, 2013 by Chris Sicks Leave a Comment

ship tossed at sea Tomorrow, Sara and I learn from her neurosurgeon how effective her May 13 radiation treatment was. (In other words, how much damage did the radiation do to the two areas of cancer on her brain.)

Waiting and wondering caused me to recall this account, written in 1871. That is long ago, but because the Subject does not change, these hopeful words remain true:

A number of years ago Captain D. commanded a vessel sailing from Liverpool to New York, and on one voyage he had all his family with him on board the ship. One night, when all were quietly asleep, there arose a sudden squall of wind, which came sweeping over the waters until it struck the vessel, and instantly threw her on her side, tumbling and crashing everything that was moveable, and awakening the passengers to a consciousness that they were in imminent peril. Everyone on board was alarmed and uneasy, and some sprang from their berths and began to dress, that they might be ready for the worst. Captain D. had a little girl on board, just eight years old, who, of course, awoke with the rest.

“What’s the matter?” said the frightened child.

They told her a squall had struck the ship.

“Is father on deck?” said she.

“Yes; father’s on deck.”

The little thing dropped herself on her pillow again without a fear, and in a few moments was sleeping sweetly in spite of winds or waves.

Blessed child! How her confidence shames our doubts, fears, and restless vague surmisings. She had faith in father, and she had no room for fear.

And how is it with us? We have our storms, and troubles, and temptations. We fear and tremble. What is the matter? Is it not time for us to ask, “Is father on deck?” Father understands all about the vessel, the winds, the waves, the rocks, the storms, the squalls, the tempests;—”Is Father on deck?”

Yes, blessed be God, Father is “on deck” all the time. “He that keepeth Israel shall never slumber nor sleep.” He is “on deck,” for He says, “Lo, I am with you always.” He is “on deck,” for he has said, “I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.”

Tempted, troubled, distressed, and frightened soul, look up. Give to the winds thy fears. Rest in God’s faithfulness and love. Cast every care upon his arm.

Fear not the windy tempests wild,
Thy bark [boat] they shall not wreck;
Lie down and sleep, O helpless child!
Thy Father’s on the deck.

—From Horace Lorenzo Hastings’ The Family Circle: Original and Selected Anecdotes, published in 1871. p91-93.

Are Christians Naive?

June 12, 2013 by Chris Sicks Leave a Comment

Do Christians ever seem naive to you? Have you heard someone say, “God is good!” and then thought, “You aren’t in touch with reality…how can you say God is good when so many people are suffering?”

It’s harder to think that, however, when you really know the one who says, “God is good!” I’ve pasted below a short email from a friend at church. Before you read it, you have to know that this man was a federal judge in his home country. He ruled against the government in a case, for which they took his job and his wife’s job, then tortured him. He fled for his life, leaving behind two daughters and his pregnant wife. After a six-year separation from his family, our church helped reunite them all. At Dulles airport he held his six-year-old daughter for the first time.

That’s only a summary of all he’s suffered. I share it because his words of encouragement to Sara carry more weight, are harder to dismiss as naive optimism, when you know something of his story. He wrote:

Dear Sara! My heart is broken! Don’t be afraid! Jesus is with you, everything is under control of God! Nothing is impossible to him. You will be ok! I and my family are praying every day for you. Already Christ has suffered in behalf of us. So no more sorrow for us!

Our lord is honest, we should believe on him, we have been saved through his blood. God loves you and he has care about you! Everlasting God bless you!

Our friend can offer that comfort because he himself has received comfort from “The Father of all comfort.” (See 2 Cor 1:3-5 and 2 Cor 12:7-10 … Paul suffered far more than our friend, making him a legitimate comforter. Moreover, Hebrews 4:15 reminds us that Christ’s own suffering is foundational to His encouragement toward us.)

Question: Do you know someone who says naive-sounding things about God, yet has experience to back them up? Tell us about it…