B-Swag's Cookie Jar

I love watching the game show Wipeout, or this season the Winter Wipeout.  If you haven’t seen it, you should check it out at least once.  Basically it’s a race through a 4–round obstacle course (touted as the world’s largest) stationed over pools of water.  The winner is crowned Wipeout Champion and receives $50,000.  The game starts with 24 players in the first round and continues to eliminate half the players until only 3 remain for the final round (24 down to 12, 12 down to 6, and 6 down to 3).  The final 3 then race through the final round, called the Wipeout Zone, and the fastest player wins.  The concept is very simple, but running and completing the race is extremely difficult.

The course the players run has a wide variety of obstacles to face such as:

• Walking by walls that either punch or push you off
• Bouncing across a set of 4 large red balls
• Holding onto the handle of a turning platform while dodging large arms circling the opposite direction
• Climbing up and down a moving, segmented staircase

Those are just a few examples of the many types of obstacles the players have to fight through.  On some obstacles the players are also hit with large balls, food, or other things.  Each time a player fails an obstacle they are knocked into the pool at which point they either have to swim to the next obstacle, restart the obstacle, or in later rounds are simply eliminated.

As I was watching the latest Winter Wipeout episode, a couple verses came to my mind.

Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.  But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it. (Matthew 7:13-14)

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. (1 Corinthians 9:24)

Those verses sound a lot like the Wipeout game show.  Every week 24 people run the race, but only 1 gets the prize.  The road to the prize is not a straight line from start to finish; there are obstacles put in the way for one purpose…to knock the people off the course.  The course is a narrow road; the path through the course is barely body-width size at its max and the obstacles themselves have a very narrow window of opportunity to get through them.

The race is difficult!…kind of like life.

We start our Christian walk full of energy and excitement towards our goal of reaching the prize:  eternity in heaven with God.  Then we hit an obstacle, then another one, and another one.  Just like on Wipeout, some of these obstacles will trip us up or knock us off course (maybe many many times) while others we will make it through easily.  The longer we go in life, we face more rounds of obstacles, more challenging obstacles…and the temptation to give up, to take our eye off the prize, gets greater and greater with each obstacle.

Fortunately we don’t have to bounce across big red balls to get to heaven.   However, we may have to face obstacles like these:

• The death of family and friends
• Parents getting divorced
• Friendships and relationships breaking up
• Temptations (drugs, alcohol, sex, lying, cheating…)
• Doubting God, our purpose and ourselves

That’s obviously the short list, but we all face many obstacles.  Some are simply a factor of this life and some are from Satan, who will find which obstacles we struggle with then continually throw them in our path to try and knock us out of the race and off the narrow road.

The point is this:  we are in a Wipeout race…a race not for $50,000 but for our lives, our eternal lives.

God knows the race is difficult, He knows there will be obstacles, and He knows that some of these obstacles we will struggle through.  That’s why He sent Jesus.  Jesus came to this world, ran the Wipeout course of life for us, completed every obstacle we will ever face, and won.  He knows the path to the prize and He is always standing with us at each obstacle, ready to show us how to beat it.  As Jesus said:  “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)

Some people will be eliminated from the race, they won’t make it.  Remember the Matthew 7 verses, many won’t make it. 

Many will not look to Jesus for help through the obstacles.
Many will not persevere through the obstacles put before them.
Many will not reach the prize…will not reach heaven.
Many will not be called the Wipeout Champion of life.

Will you?

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.  Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:1-2)

As you know, we consider blessed those who have persevered. (James 5:11a)

So here we are, Valentine’s Day.  One day that is set aside each year as the one day to show the people we care about that we love them.  Whether showing love to a husband or wife, boyfriend or girlfriend, parents, kids, or friends, everyone has an opportunity to participate.  People spend days if not weeks arguing about whether Valentine’s Day is a good thing or a bad thing, but I’m going to throw out a completely insane thought.

If we can go to such extravagant measures to express this much love on 1 day a year, what are we doing the other 364 days?

Now before a bunch of you start sending me messages or comments defending that you love your spouse/parents/kids/friends, let me say this:  I am NOT trying to say that you don’t love those people throughout the year.  I’m quite sure you do.

However, why does the way we show our love, the measures we take to do so, and the amount of time we plan for it drastically increase for just this 1 day?  If we can commit ourselves to doing that much for 1 day, does that mean we are only expressing “OK” love the other 364 days because they aren’t as special?  Are we purposely holding back so that Valentine’s Day remains the big event we make it to be?

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:27)

Twice in 1 John 4 Scripture makes the statement that “God is love.” (1 John 4:8 and 16)

If we are created in the image of God, and God is love, then we should be people of love…and as far as I know, God is not a God of love 1 day a year.  He doesn’t give us “OK” expressions of love for 364 days while He plans something big to do for us on 1 special day.  He doesn’t hold back; He shows the same love to us whether it’s February 14th, October 14th, or our birthday.

The entire law is summed up in a single command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Galatians 5:14)

I will let you make your own decisions on whether Valentine’s Day is good or not, but I will throw a number out for your consideration.

If we only show our absolute best demonstration of love on this 1 day out of the year, then we are giving our best 0.3% of the time.  That’s less than 1/3 of 1% of the year!

This means that for 99.7% of the year, we are planning and building up expectations to give our best for 1 day.

In that context, is this 1 day really that important?
Does all this effort to make 1 day special take time and energy away from making the other 364 days better than just “OK”?
Are we really loving our neighbors all 365 days the same as we love ourselves, or just on 1 of those days?

What would happen if we took the time and effort that goes into Valentine’s Day to show those expressions of love for the entire year?

I was having a religious conversation at work the other day and one of my coworkers stated how he wanted to “get his church on”.  We laughed about the phrase but later I got to thinking about it, and I got to wondering about how many people think church is something we “get on”…and if church is something we “get on” to, does that also mean at some point we “get off” of it?

A lot of the world sees Christians as people who “talk the talk” but don’t “walk the walk”.  Why is that?  What impressions are we giving people that we’re talkers but not walkers?   Think about these statements for a second:

“I have church at that time”
“I’ll miss church.”
“What church do you go to?”
“Church is cancelled.”

Have you heard these statements or others like them?  Have you said any of them?  I got to thinking about how others in the world might interpret those statements.  For instance, if you can miss church and still call yourself a Christian then church must not be that important, and church must only be able to happen at certain places (particularly places that have “church” in their name).

Isn’t that true though?  Isn’t that how we as Christians make church out to be a lot of times, as something we “get on” then “get off” a couple times each week?  Don’t we “get our church on” Sunday mornings, spend the first part of the week struggling to make it until we can “get our church on” again Wednesday night, spending the last of the week struggling again to make it until we come back around to Sunday morning?  Why do we let church be a break in the middle of our struggles, instead of letting our struggles be a break in the middle of church?

What if…

What if God didn’t design church to be something we go to or “get on” a couple times a week?
What if church wasn’t designed to just be a gasp for air in the middle of our struggling week?
What if God designed church to be who we are and what we do?

Think about a standard church service, there’s usually a few things in common:  praise and worship, prayer, ministry, and fellowship?  What does God say about these things?  Here’s what I found (NIV, all emphasis mine):

And pray on the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. – Ephesians 6:18

And again, “Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles, and sing praises to him, all you peoples.” – Romans 15:11

Is any one of you in trouble?  He should pray.  Is anyone happy?  Let him sing songs of praise. – James 5:13

Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts.  They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. – Acts 2:46-47

Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another–and all the more as you see the Day approaching. – Hebrews 10:25

He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation.” – Mark 16:15

Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise–the fruit of lips that confess his name.  And do not forget to do good and share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased. – Hebrews 13:15-16

Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God–this is your spiritual act of worship. – Romans 12:1

Hmm, interesting isn’t it?  When I read these scriptures, I don’t see anything about only doing church a couple times a week.  I see church as something we should ALL be living out ALL the time; not a place to go but who we are.  Yet how many of us (myself included) really do that, really live that?  How much different would the world look at us, how much more serious would they take us, if we were living these scriptures out every day?

So here’s my call to myself and to all of you:  don’t go to church…BE the church.  Don’t let church be a break in the week, let church BE your week.

Don’t just be someone that “gets your church on!”…be someone who “lives the church out!”