Jojo Agot

Just to be Clear

Some people are under the impression that they are doing God a favor when they come to church on Sundays. They feel like God owes them something whenever they show up, say their prayers and give their offerings. What pride, what foolish idea to entertain in anyone’s head.

God doesn’t need our sacrifices and gifts. He is God and He will always be God even without our input. He is not some petty Greek deity that must be appeased and offered to. His power and majesty remain the same whether we recognize Him or not. His Lordship and dominion over all creation is not dependent whether we go to church or not. His greatness is not diminished by our indifference or increased by our worship. He is God, He is complete, He is whole.

The reason why we need to love Him and worship Him and give our lives to Him is not to boost His ego. He doesn’t need that from us. We worship because that is the only way we make sense of this life. We love Him because that is the only way our spirits are sustained. We give our lives to Him because that’s the only way we find meaning and purpose.

Our adoration is not for His benefit. It is for OUR benefit that He calls us to a life of surrender.

Sand Castles

But our citizenship is in heaven… Phil. 3.20

You do not belong to this earth. You are just a passerby, a traveler who has to do your business quick and right, pack up and leave and get back to your Master’s house.

You are not of this world. You belong to a higher order of God’s creation. You have an eternity to look forward to, an eternity that God planned even before you were born into this journey.

Stop living as if this whole earthly life is the whole point of your existence. This is not your home, stop trying to feel at home here. You have a life hidden with Christ in the high heavens. You have a glorious inheritance in the kingdom of God.

Stop setting your mind on earthly things. Everything that you see around you will pass. Like a sand castle in the shore, everything here will be washed back to the sea by billowing waves. Why would you spend your whole life building a sand castle and glorying in that precarious accomplishment when you could be taking a ride in the boat of God’s grace and sail with Christ to the shores of heaven?

You may have built the best sand castle in the whole world, you may have decorated it with all your other accomplishments and prided yourself of being the sole architect and builder of your life, but that sand castle will always remain at the mecry of the raging waves of the sea. You can fortify it with your bank accounts and medals and plaques of appreciation but you can never sleep well at night because you will never know when the unmerciful waves will strike your castle down.

And no matter how you comfort yourself with the idea that you are a self made person, your best efforts are nothing but dry, boring sand in comparison to the glittering gold that adorn the streets of the heavenly city. It’s like a child priding himself of his chopsticks music in front of Beethoven, or a caricature of stick figures standing next to Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.

The absurdity of the illustrations I mentioned point to one thing: your citizenship is in heaven, make your business on earth be the business our Master sent you here for. Take no other detours and side jobs. Live like the foreigner that you are. Don’t feel at home here. Don’t hold on too much to the comforts and glories of this foreign land. You are supposed to get your business done and go home.

Yes, home. Take that ship of God’s grace in Christ and leave your sand castles, no matter how good they seem now.

Finishing With Fire

I am determined to end my life more passionate than I began it. I want to finish on fire, more fiercely focused on following Jesus and living for His purposes in the earth than I was when I was twenty years old and trying to figure what my ministry was going to be.

Floyd McClung, YOU SEE BONES, I SEE AN ARMY

Total Depravity

Today, you shake hands with somebody and you gotta count your fingers to make sure you got five fingers back.

Everybody’s Fine, a Robert De Niro Movie

Talker’s Block

No one ever gets talker’s block. No one wakes up in the morning, discovers he has nothing to say and sits quietly, for days or weeks… until the moment is right, until all the craziness in his life has died down…

—Seth Godin

Discipleship and Karate

On our way home from dinner yesterday night, Pastor Noel was talking about karate. Now the one thing I know about karate is that I don’t know anything about it. That’s the reason why I was so struck with the parallels he drew about karate and ministry.

In karate, the higher level you attain, the more gentle you are with the people around you and the more you treat everyone right. That’s because you don’t have to prove anything to anyone. You are secure with your karate skill level.

Whenever you see karate people who are loud, aggressive, and showy, you’ll know that they are new, untrained, and immature. They seem to feel the need to show off so people will recognize their skills.

The same thing with the ministry. The higher you go, the gentler you become. The more you do in the kingdom of God, the more it makes you a humble person. Mature people don’t have to prove themselves to anyone.