The guys on the Ticket (DFW’s premier sports radio station) used to have an expression for a player who wasn’t ready for game time situations that developed: “That guy needs to get his head right with ball.”

God, I’m bringing your word, your message, to your people this morning. Help me get my head right with ball.

I know you gave me this message. I know you love your people. I know you want to speak this message to them of your goodness and grace, the ferocity of your love. So USE ME. Speak through me. Speak through me. Speak through me.

Give me confidence to go off script. Give me confidence in your voice in what I’ve written. Give me confidence in the chapel setting, the musicians, the testimony.

Let me empty myself, so you can fill my words.

Let me empty myself, so you can fill me.

Let me empty myself of myself.

Empty me of myself.

Empty me of myself.

Empty me of all but  you.

You.

---

 

Luke 18.9-14  “Hi, I’m Perry, and I’m a bad Christian.”

Are you a good Christian or a bad Christian? Hi, my name is Perry, and I’m a bad Christian.

Story Jesus tells in Gospel of Luke: (Luke 18.9-14 on the slide; don’t read, paraphrase)

Two men went to pray in Temple, a Pharisee and a tax collector.

• Pharisee: professionally religious.
  • Very holy: fasted & prayed twice a week, tithed a straight 10% of all his income. Everybody knew: the Pharisees were the super-religious. Everybody thought these guys were closest to God.
• Tax collector: member of the dregs of society, a reject.
  • Jews hated tax collectors, because tax collectors helped the Romans oppress. Jews said that they were traitors, collaborated with idol-worshipping gentiles.
  • Plus, tax collectors were always cheating people, collecting more taxes than Rome demanded, because that’s how the tax collectors made themselves rich.
• The Pharisee stands on Temple steps, middle of crowds streaming in, and prays:
  • “God, thank you for making me so special! Thank you for making me so righteous & holy!
  • Look at all the great stuff I do for you! Look at how devoted!”
• Looks at the tax collector:
  • “Thank you for not making me a sinful wretched person like that tax collector.”
• Tax collector doesn’t even approach the Temple; crouches, face down, pours out his heart: “God, have mercy on me, for I am a sinner.”

Jesus says: “This man (tax collector), rather than the other (the Pharisee), went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Are you a good Christian or a bad Christian?

Some of us here today think of ourselves as good Christians. If you’re one of these people: you build your identity, the way you think of yourself and way you present yourself to the world.

Feel strong call to ministry; passion about serving God. ” ” ” to live holy lives; see how destructive sin can be, trouble it causes, wreckage it leaves.

That’s the good side of being a “good Christian.” And all good things; at DCC, we LOVE people who want to be in ministry. We’re passionate about serving God. We want to see God glorified in the ways our students live, the choices you make.

Maybe you think of yourself as a GOOD Christian.

Or maybe you think of yourself as a BAD Christian. You believe in Jesus, and you want to do what God wants you to do, but DCC is just overwhelming. You look at all the super Christians around you and you think they must be from Mars. You don’t know what to do with all the God stuff; “mandatory Jesus.”

You want to live a good life, but you can’t seem to pull it off.

The people who live down the hall from you will be missionaries in Africa; you just want to be able to stand up to peer pressure and quit drinking with your friends until you black out, …

Or quit giving in to your boyfriend to have sex, …

Or quit thinking about the awful thing that your stepfather or your uncle or your older brother or your neighbor did to you, …

Or quit feeling so guilty and filthy over thing YOU did.

If you’re a bad Christian, I’m here to welcome you. I’m a bad Christian, too. I fight against temptation, and sometimes fail and give in. I’m selfish and petty. I know what it’s like to struggle with lust and greed and anger. I know what it’s like to be deathly ashamed of what you’ve done.

If you’re a bad Christian, I’ve got some good news for you. The good news is that God loves you the way you are, not the way you think you’re supposed to be. God loves you completely, and absolutely, and he doesn’t insist that you fix yourself, that you make yourself worth his love.

And if you’re a good Christian, I’ve got some good news for you, too. The good news is that you don’t have to be a good Christian for God to love you, accept you, or use you.

There’s a dark side to building your identity on being a “good Christian.”

• Can’t always live up to what we know; still fail. Sometimes ashamed, hide or deny.
• Easy to notice people around who AREN’T good Christians. They’re NOT headed into ministry. “They’re here for the wrong reasons.” Their lives are messy. Easy to condemn, judge; nice to take attention off our own faults. I understand that.

Did you notice the way Luke begins the story in Luke 18? “To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: …”

It’s awfully easy to be that guy, isn’t it? To look at the other person and their behavior, or their attitude, and judge or reject, and take attention off our own failures?

Good news for us all, good Christians and bad: God’s love 4 U is absolute. Perfect, consistent, unchanging.

• You can spend the rest of your life living the best life possible: be a missionary, give everything you own to the poor, and God won’t love you any more.
• You can spend the rest of your life struggling to be good and falling on your face, failing over and over, and God won’t love you any less.

His love for you is absolute, perfect, and consistent. And he loves you the way you are, not the way you think you’re supposed to be.

We tend to trivialize love: romance, or feelings, or we overuse it for everything. In the Bible, God’s love isn’t a feeling. It’s his commitment to never let his people go. God’s love is a thunderstorm. God’s love is like an earthquake that always wants what’s right for you. He LOVES you. He knows you and he LOVES you.

Think about an earthquake that loves you, how it tears things up and puts them together again in new ways–but always for your benefit.  That’s how God loves you.  He wants to shake up your world.  He wants to take away from you everything that you think matters, so he can give you back so much more.

He knows all your garbage and all your drama and all your hurts and all your shame and all your dreams and all your rage and all your fears and all the things you never want to admit to anyone, never even want to admit to yourself, …

… he knows all that, and he LOVES you. He loves you fiercely, like a mama bear loves her cubs. And nothing you do, good or bad, is going to change that.

---

There’s a wideness in God’s mercy I cannot find in my own,

And it keeps a fire burning to melt this heart of stone, 

Keeps me aching with the yearning, keeps me glad to have been caught

In the reckless, raging fury that they call the love of God.

 

Well, I’ve seen no band of angels, but I’ve heard the soldier’s songs,

Love hangs over them like a banner, love within them leads them on

To the battle, on the journey, and it’s never gonna stop,

Ever widening their mercies in the fury of his love.

 

Joy and sorrow are this ocean, in their every ebb and flow;

Now the Lord a door has opened that all Hell could never close.

Here I’m tested and made worthy, tossed about and lifted up,

In the reckless, raging fury that they call the love of God.