In the context of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is speaking of two different perspectives.  The first perspective is the worldly one where your focus is worrying about your own provision (what you will eat, what you will wear, etc.).  The true and right perspective, in contrast, is a focus on the Kingdom of God and the righteousness that results from that focus.

You prove the focus on the Kingdom or your own worldly needs by the choices you make.  The choices you make prove where your priorities lie, not your words or pieces of paper you may have signed.  Proverbs lets us know that even a child is known for what he does.

One of the many aspects of seeking first the Kingdom of God is making your local fellowship a priority.  Jesus spent the bulk of His time with a select few people.  Sure He ministered and called the multitudes, but there was a special relationship with those that, although they also annoyed Him, ministered to Him as He intimately discipled them.  Jesus even testifies in Luke how they “have continued with Me in my trials.”

Every believer needs a local fellowship that they are intimate with and live life with as a family.  This by nature goes beyond your natural family.  Jesus said, “Who are my mother and my brothers?  Those who do the will of my Father.”  Do we really believe this?  Do we really believe that our true family is our spiritual one, not the one of blood?  Hebrews tells the Church to encourage one another daily to keep from unbelief.  The first church in Acts spent all day every day with one another.

The fact that we live differently than the testimony of those that turned the world upside down should not cause us to seek to justify our own lifestyle but to seek the higher way.

This isn’t about a mental belief but a true conviction that determines our perspective and, by extension, how we make choices.

For many Christians, worldly concerns take precedence over treating their local fellowship like a family.  But Jesus tells us that the Kingdom of God is within us.  The greatest expression of the Kingdom of God is in His people, and if your investment and focus and priority is there, these other worldly concerns will be taken care of.

A couple more scriptures before we get a little practical.  Jesus says that those that give up these worldly things (houses, lands, family) for Him will receive a hundred fold in THIS LIFE and in THE LIFE TO COME.  So often we hold onto these worldly concerns under a pseudo Christian idea of being a “good steward” and miss the greatest return investment we could imagine.  Ask any investor how much you should invest in an opportunity that truly guarantees a hundredfold profit … they would say everything.

In the parable of the soils, one of the plants was choked out by “the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches”.  This creates an unfruitful plant.  And it can be scary what Jesus does with unfruitful plants.

In the search for the things of this world, many allow themselves to be drawn away from the spiritual family God has for them.  This happens with new jobs that make more more money and take more time.  This happens with new houses that are just a little too far now from the fellowship you felt so intimate with.  All because worldly concerns took precedence.

I wish I could find it now, but I heard a sermon once that I still remember vividly.  This pastor said that his church lost more people to their front yards than to sin.  He explained the process.  A man buys a house, usually claiming God’s blessing in his life.  This house is big and nice.  In order to pay for this house, this man has to work a good amount of time during the week, so he doesn’t have time available for the Body and barely enough time for his own family.  Then he’s got the house itself to take care of.  The only time he has to work on the house is on the weekends, so he doesn’t have time to come to Sunday worship times, either.

In some search to have “better things” in life for himself and his family, this man has essentially hid his talent in the ground instead of investing in the most sure way of acquiring true, spiritual and eternal wealth.  You never lose the eternal investments.

Sometimes the new house of the new job takes people physically away from where they fellowship.  The drive, the traffic, becomes too far and people become slowly less involved and have to start “looking for a new church home” … all because they chose to buy a new house.

I’m going to say something that many people won’t agree with and/or won’t like, but it is true.  You shouldn’t choose where to live based on your job or where your physical family lives or the area of town you like or where you found a great deal on the perfect house.  You should choose where you live based on where God has called you to fellowship with other believers as an intimate spiritual family.  This is one very important and overlooked aspect of seeking first the Kingdom.  You must then have faith that other things will “be added to you”.  Instead we seek the worldly things first and think the Kingdom of God and fellowship will be added to us.   Doesn’t work that way.

On to some random thoughts before I close.

So much of our Christian subculture defines us by our flesh and temporal things, and it is tragic.  Many ministries have separate programs based on worldly designations.  Young marrieds.  Singles.  Divorced.  Widows.  Youth.  The elders.  Children.  Personalities.  Political ideas.  Even most churches are racially homogenus.  The larger Christian culture is so segregated that some people actually feel uncomfortable with others not like them.  And they are even encouraged to seek such segregation out by spiritual leaders I can only assume think they are doing something good.

We prove nothing spiritual by being attracted to others who are like us in the flesh. What speaks of Heaven is a people who no longer know one another after the flesh but by the Spirit.  This should be our testimony, but sadly for many, it isn’t.  In fact, giving validity to these concerns keeps us from being spiritually fruitful.  You want to see God teach you and see real discipleship happen in the Body?  Embrace relationships with people who are not like you in the world but are fully committed to Christ and living out the Kingdom and Heaven on earth.  I guarantee it will be uncomfortable, but you’ll end up having a spiritual family based on spiritual things and not because you both like football.

I’ve known people that once they find their spouse, the Body sees less of them, if they see them at all.  Once they have children and a family, the Body must then get squeezed in here and there.  Often in search of being a good father or mother or husband or wife, the Body of Christ gets the raw end of the deal.  Should never happen.

Believe it or not, but this principle works here, too.  You want to be a good husband and father, wife or mother?  Raise your children and love your wife  in context of the Body of Christ as your intimate family.  Include them in your search of the Kingdom above all else.  I speak from experience when I say that the spiritual reward in your family is worth it.

What does it mean to have a hundredfold return on your investment?  This doesn’t mean that if you give money to a ministry God will make you monetarily wealthy.  God might make you monetarily wealthy as you obey Him and seek Him, but that’s not the main principle here.  If you choose the Body over your own career advancement or upward mobility in housing or some other idea of American suburban success, you get more than you gave up.

It is one of the principles of the Kingdom that you cannot give more than you get.  Becca and I have spiritual family around the world, people we feel just as close to, if not closer, than our own family.  We have a fellowship now that fills homes and, more importantly, our hearts with love and support and challenge and encouragement and even rebuke at times.  There are homes around the world that are as open to us as our own physical family might be, if not more.

I’ve lost my job and my family has not wanted for a thing.  The Body has been more of a support to us than the government ever could be.

I can tell you with all honesty that I will probably not die materially wealthy, but I am the richest man I know.

As a final aside, I know many of my military friends might be frustrated with some of this teaching because much of their choices are made for them, especially where they are stationed.  But for many of you, I know you well enough, that those choices you do have prove that you understand this more than you think.  And when the time comes that even that choice is open for you to make, remember the things I’ve said if they ring true to you.

Congrats if you made it to the end of this post!  It was a long one.  Love God and His people above all else.

Peace.

My motivation for fasting is both spiritual and physical. Spiritual in the sense that I feel several changes coming on the horizon, and I want God’s will done. This includes the birth of my child and growth among the fellowships I am a part of. Fasting goes hand in hand with seeking the eternal will of God. As Andrew Murray says, prayer reaches to heaven, fasting teaches you to let go of this world.

Physically, I’ve wanted to fast to detox my body, clean it out, so to speak. Pure fasting accomplishes this the best, as your body switches from processing food to deep cleansing of toxins, but juice fasting does this fairly well, too.

I generally fast once a week anyway, but I wanted to get through two weeks with this particular fast. I would have gone longer, but the upcoming baby and holidays didn’t feel right to continue the fast. I’ll probably do it again in January for a full 30 days or so.

I’m actually getting more nutrients from juice than three meals of solid food could produce. Most of the time, the fresh juice is pretty good, too.

My biggest struggle hasn’t been hunger. I’ve craved the taste of food more than anything, like my mouth is particularly addicted to the taste and feeding that desire. This is where most people mess up what good they could have achieved on their fast: they gorge themselves with food and severely hurt their bodies when coming off a longer fast. A quick admission: I’ve done okay with this, but the potato skins the other night when I was hungry were a bad idea …

Living in community means always being around food. Most of the time, food I really enjoy eating.

I struggle with fasting in a community. Breakfast is probably the only meal during the wekk where I am not around people … although I could be even then. This makes it difficult to strictly adhere to Jesus’ command to not let anyone know you’re fasting. I don’t tell anyone, but they know. In community, you are confronted with food out of love.

I also deeply believe that sharing meals together is a form of worship, a very important one. We don’t eat together enough … even Baptists. So my inability to physically break bread is in some ways grevious to me. Eating is an intimate thing. Despite my presence, not eating separates me from the Body somehow; I can’t fully explain it.

It comes to me that Paul deals with this when speaking of in marriage: “Do not deny one another except for times of fasting.” Perhaps I give myself too hard of a time, as intimacy will be affected during times of fasting.

I also struggle with my own physical image. Of course I will lose weight, but that is the focus for some people. I have not weighed myself – and will not – but get the question, “how much weight have you lost?” I know people are trying to be encouraging to me, but I am struggling to not focus on that aspect of the fast. My image and weight are not a primary concern … although losing a little bit of weight is part of the physical healing process.

My final struggle deals with others perceptions of what is going on. When others see me fast, there is a spiritual tension there that I guess is natural, but I still desire to fix it. (I’m probably not supposed to fix it, though) The tension arises from what others feel about seeing my example. They see their own weakness more clearly (”I could never do that”) or feel convicted about their own lack of fasting (perhaps they should … I don’t know) or even try to vehemently talk me out of it (”that’s dangerous and unhealthy! you have to eat something!”). Of course there are also those with experience with fasting that want to share with me.

So all of this goes on while I try to keep my motivation pure. It is not my motivation to expose or convict or worry or confirm others. The only pure motivation is to fast out of obedience to the Spirit of God and to sacrifice towards seeking first the Kingdom and His righteousness.

Part of me wonders how they fasted in the early church. I suppose they just allowed and encouraged as people felt personally convicted, taking from passages in Romans and elsewhere about the importance and freedom of each ones personal convictions. I could also see the early church fasting as a group, as a body, and seeking God through that, although it is unwise for some people to fast and I would find it uncomfortable to pressure anyone into fasting if not personally convicted to do so.

Anyway, fasting is great, and I find that when done with the right motivation and conviction, God’s voice becomes clearer and it enhances your intercession at the right hand of the Father. Maybe in January I’ll do some more on fasting.

Peace.

A little background: While in India with Pastor Daniel, he shared with me the existence of this group, Rose Creek Village, who all lived together on this piece of land in Tennessee. It sounded interesting, but as we transitioned back to the States from Korea, it was one of the many things put on the back burner.

A few months later, Daniel visited us in Atlanta, sharing a DVD made about the Mercy Homes by Rose Creek. He and I spoke even more about this community that has so supported Pastor Daniel’s Mercy Homes, and he encouraged me to go and visit them sometime.

Almost a year later, I got an email from someone about a conference to be held at Rose Creek Village where Pastor Daniel would be speaking. My love for Daniel is deep, so I endeavored to go, trying to get a few others to go with us. Ultimately, only Becca and I made it to this little village about an hour outside of Memphis.

The conference was wonderful, and so was our time there. Becca and I stayed in the village with a household (several families and individuals live per house) and were able to really visit and talk to many in the Village. Seeing that we were interested in moving more towards an idea of shared life, we witnessed and heard much that encouraged us. That was in June of this year.

During the conference, we heard about VillageFest and desired to return. Becca’s pregnancy makes it difficult to endure long trips in the car, and Micah was pretty exhausted from our beach trip, so Adam R. and I went down Friday night and returned Sunday evening for house church.

I was probably more ready to learn about what Rose Creek was about than others might be. Pastor Daniel, a man I highly respect, vouches for them, and I was already meditating on how to share more life among believers in the US, even in seemingly radical ways. Despite my openness, the skeptic in me also had my feelers out, spiritual discernment and all that, but probably not any more so than if I were to visit a more neo-traditional fellowship locally.

Much of what I witnessed over those two weekends impressed me. I have written a book, The Better Way: A Case for Love, that will be self-published soon. They live many of my conclusions in that book, if not all of them in principle. Their story is unique, as all stories tend to be, but love among the brethren is their goal. They do everything together. One of their sayings is, “We share everything but our wives.”

They have brothers and sisters to talk to, mentor, be mentored, confess, forgive, and mediate conflicts when they occur. Boys have a community of men to have deep relationship with, as do girls with the women. One twelve year old boy (the kid who gave me his bed for two nights) initiated a hug with me and Adam after we encouraged him for doing well in a play earlier that day.

One of the most amazing thigns I saw regarded the teenagers in the Village. As a high school teacher, I can be something of an expert on them. The teens of the Village were very involved in the festival. I felt tired just watching them. Amazingly, however, I saw no flirting among the teens (or young adults, for that matter). They danced together and worked together, but no batting of the eyes or love taps or any of the like. Their relationships seemed very pure and appropriate … like they were siblings and friends instead of potential suitors.

The kids were all encouraged to be creative, and you could see how the Village supported what the kids were interested in: whether it be hand art or Chinese puppetry or dance or music or drama. The kids were not hurting for options of constructive things to do.

One of the “founders” (although he probably wouldn’t like that term) said to me, “People comment on how great and talented our kids are. I tell them its amazing what happens when you don’t let them watch TV.”

Although it sounds idyllic, and in many ways it is, there has been a rough road to get there. They’ve been mocked, reported to the authorities, kicked out of houses promised to them (by Christians), lived in tents and buses and barely ate at times. Not to mention the personal denial that must occur for such a close knit community to have survived so long, and it continues to grow. There are approximately 260 people living in the Village now.

They wouldn’t claim to be perfect, but to them, that’s kinda the point. They came together because they needed one another to grow and be complete, not to start a community but to be the family they believed the Church should be. They desired to fulfill the prayer of Jesus, “that they be one as We are one.”

I feel I still have much to learn from Rose Creek and will try to keep up communication and relationship. But my goal is not to copy Rose Creek. I admire much of how they have grown, and take what God has taught them seriously, but just as no two trees are the same, whatever God will do through us here in the Atlanta area will have its own organic eccentricities.

For those of you rolling your eyes and inwardly mocking a “Christian commune,” I challenge you to visit them. They will welcome you with open arms, love you with mercy and grace, and ask when you’ll be coming back when you leave. They wil ltreat you like family and give up their own beds to house you. They will give and ask nothing in return.

I believe all of us need to learn a mountain of that.

Peace.

So why do it? Why move in with another couple? Why be intentional about living with other believers?

The answer is really very simple, at least for me. There are certain principles in scripture that are lacking in many ways in the lives of many Christians.

First of all, in Hebrews, it tells us to “forsake not the assembling of yourselves,” because if we lose fellowship, “an evil heart of unbelief” is the possible, and likely, outcome.

There are some difficult aspects to this shared life (and the simplicity it almost necessarily requires), and those aspects seem very distinct from our experience in Korea.

To begin with: our own expectations. Something weird happens when you cross over the Pacific Ocean. This process has further challenged our notions of comfortable and successful living. In Korea, we had no expectations … we didn’t know what to expect. Here we do.

In Korea, we ate Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwiches for a month because that’s all we could recogninze at the local market (and bread, cereal and milk). Anything, including furniture found on the street (known as “roadkill”), became an immediate blessing. People shared junky cars and common vans, which then translated into better communication and possible improved character.

Everything else was put aside. We cared less about things and more about people. We felt lighter, more free. We had food to eat, clothes to wear, and a place to lay our head. What more did we need?

Then we crossed a boundary and things mattered again. I didn’t have my own car, and my eye was pulled in the direction of everyone else’s. I paid attention to car commercials that were so silly months before. Every house for sale caught my stare. All the things that didn’t matter to us in Korea mattered to us now.

This is exacerbated by other’s expectations. For four years, no one cared that we were renting an apartment. Now they have a problem understanding why we are renting a house. While we were “missionaries”, no one mentioned concerns about retirement money or building equity or living the American Dream.

Now they do. And this makes living as missionaries in America much more difficult. Because as we fight our own materialistic expectations, we hear those same ideas reinforced by those still in the midst of things we have been set free from.

And once you’ve been set free, sometimes you have to fight to stay free. You have to let certain comments roll off of your back.

“You mean, your kids are going to SHARE a room?”
“Don’t you want your own space?”
“You know, there are some great houses for sale in my neighborhood.”
“Aren’t you just throwing your money away?”

Thankfully, God has brought others to a similar place, a place of simplification, freedom, community and mobility. These few, these “happy few”, bless us by looking us in the eye, saying, “You’re not alone … you may be crazy, but crazy people are the ones who hear directly from God.”

God must love me because He has had these people stuck in lonely corners of the world all throughout my life. They are true, spiritual family.

Peace.

Before we left for Korea, I don’t know that Becca and I would have seriously considered this. Oh, there were pie in the sky conversations with Larry T and other house church members about living together on some sort of compound, but I’m not sure any of us took it seriously enough past a desire to live more of life together since we lived fairly far from one another.

Then Becca and I moved to Korea, not knowing that the primary blessing of our time there would be inclusion in a community of believers like none we had previously experienced. We lived in an apartment building commonly referred to as the “ICS dorm” since many of the teachers at our school lived there. ICS teachers squatted in 5 of the 6 apartments in the building. Becca and I learned what it meant to have an open door policy with people who live across the hall (kinda like Joey, Chandler, Monica and Rachel in Friends). Lifelong relationships were forged in weeks or months. It was amazing. Coupled with a meeting we began in our living room, discipleship, worship, prayer and fellowship spontaneously erupted … and often.

As others left our hobbit-like community, we heard the same qualifier over and over: “This doesn’t exist anywhere else.” And so they would move back to America and resign themselves to the individualistic life of suburban Christianity.

Becca and I were then called away from Korea back to Atlanta … but why? God clearly answered: to foster more fellowship and community among the Body in Atlanta. We knew it would be long and ardous, challenging in ways we haven’t yet dreamed, and we have not been disappointed.

Of course, one of the main thoughts we had was to share living space (a house, apartment, etc) with other believers we were in fellowship with, much as we had in Korea. Our initial idea did not materialize, and so we waited for God to open other doors.

God had been working on other’s hearts, as well. The d10s and another couple in their house church, Eric and Heather, had similar musings. All along the way I learned this idea of shared living had been given a label (doesn’t everything need a label?): new monasticism.

Yuck. Being who I am, its growing popularity caused me to hesitate, to self-evaluate. Why are we looking at this? Is it truly of God or are we attempting to reproduce something meant to be unique?

One of my main meditations hinged around an attraction to dorm living in our culture. For many who have gone away to college, dorm living can be a very romanticized time of their life. Even most college students who lived in an apartment had to have roommates, many times several to survive.

Look at the most popular TV sitcoms. Friends and Seinfeld gave this feeling of close living, easy accesibility to one another … in a way, Everybody Loves Raymond is very similar.

Was this new monasticism only a desire to return to the Neverland of college living? A part of me will always be a Toys R US kid who never wants to grow up. Are we attempting to live out this sitcom utopia fed to us by the idiot box? Is new monasticism a Christian attempt at a worldly system? Or is it perhaps that the frathouse mentality has tapped into a truly spiritual principle in decadent disguise?

I don’t honestly know. Maybe a little of both, I suspect. But I know when God speaks to me, and I know He is doing this in the Body of believers around me. And I know I’m meant to be a part of it, even to initialize it on some level.

So Becca and I had preliminary discussions with Eric and Heather. We even discussed moving in with Ben and Gina. Ultimately, it seemed moving in with E and H was the direction we needed to go. So we talked money and intent and expectations and my general messiness.

And here we are. Since moving back from Korea, we’ve seen Jeremy and Saji move in with the d10s; Adam move in with Alice, a widow; and we moved in with Eric and Heather. And I believe more is to come, whatever that may look like.

My prayer for all of us is that as we spend more time with Christ (one another) that we would love as Christ. For He is the goal, after all.

Peace.