The Greatest Love of All

Dear Crosswalkers,

On April 14, 1912, the Titanic struck an iceberg and sank in the icy waters of the North Atlantic. In a couple of weeks we our culture will mark the 100th Anniversary of this disaster that has captured the hearts and minds of so many. It was touted as being "unsinkable." Yet more than 1,500 people perished as "the ship that not even God could sink" sank. One third of the passengers survived to give testimony to the horror that unfolded around them.

There have been a seemingly endless series of books, articles, movies, documentaries and exhibits dedicated to the memory of the Titanic. Phrases and images ("rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic") have stuck with us. Lessons and analogies have been continuously spun from the tragedy. Here's what gets me: Although the death toll was immense, the fact is many more people could have been rescued. The Titanic was certified to offer 1,178 people lifeboat space. But of the twenty lifeboats lowered overboard, only a few were filled to capacity. In fact, records reveal that many were less than half full!

Exhibit A is the first lifeboat that was lowered, boat seven. Records indicate it had room for 65 people, yet history tells us just 28 boarded. Lifeboat one could accommodate 40 people but left the sinking oceanliner with only 12 people on board! There are many more tragic examples. Only 40 percent of the available lifeboat spaces were filled, and thus only 711 passengers and crew were rescued. When the Titanic went down, hundreds of people floated in the open water wearing life jackets. Yet only one of the vessels went back in search of other survivors.

Why were so many spaces left unfilled?

Investigators found a couple of reasons. First, some of the Titaniccrewman wrongly assumed that filling the lifeboats to their "sea capacity" would cause the boats to break during the lowering process. Such misplaced caution cost people their lives. Secondly, some of the passengers, believing the ship was "unsinkable," didn't board the lifeboats because they didn't feel that there was really a pressing need.

For God has rescued us from the kingdom of darkness and transferred us into the Kingdom of his dear Son,who purchased our freedom and forgave our sins.   

                                                                                                                             - Colossians 1:13-14

Easter is all about rescue. It shows us the greatest love of all. At Crosswalk, God wants us to "make room" for people who need the salvation ("rescue") that Jesus alone provides. Are there misconceptions that prevent us from rescuing those around us? Salvation is available, but we have to see our need and get into the lifesaving boat.

The next two weeks at Crosswalk will celebrate and make available this divine rescue mission. Here is our schedule:

April 1, PALM SUNDAY! This will be a great day as we look at one of the most important and foundational teachings the Lord has given us. The message is entitled, "How to Avoid Ruining Your Life!" Lord willing, we will feature a powerful testimony from Whitney Houston! This would be a most excellent day to invite a friend or family member to church.

April 5, HOLY THURSDAY COMMUNION SERVICE @ 7:00 p.m. This is the most devotional and worshipful service of the year. Please plan to join us as we celebrate our Lord's death on the cross for us. The devotional is called, "Behold the Man!"

April 6, GOOD FRIDAY SERVICE, 11:00 a.m. to Noon. Sunnyvale Christian School hosts this service for the students and their families, but of course everyone is welcome to attend!

April 7, COMMUNITY EASTER EGG HUNT @ Washington Park! Check in at 9:45 a.m., hunt begins at 10:15 a.m. Please use the invitation cards and talk up this event! Post the cards at coffee houses, etc. And then on the day of the hunt help us invite people to our Easter services at Crosswalk!

April 8 EASTER SUNDAY! This will be a grand celebration of the Good News. The message is"What Easter Means Today." It will be a practical message that you can freely invite friends and family to attend. People are very open to visiting a church on Easter. Please invite them to Crosswalk!!

Love in Jesus,

Pastor John Christie

How Money Changes Us

Dear Crosswalkers,

Money is a very important part of our lives. It always has been and probably always will be. That's why the Bible has a lot to say about money. In fact, the Bible devotes 500 verses to prayer; less than 500 verses to faith; but over 2,000 verses to money and possessions.  In fact, Jesus talked about money in one out of every 10 verses in the Gospels.  The Lord talked about money more than he talked about heaven and hell!

And get this:  The Bible says that the way you handle your money determines how much God will bless your life.  Strange but true.  How you manage your money is evidence of your spiritual maturity.  Here’s what Jesus said,

“If you are untrustworthy about worldly wealth, who will trust you with the true riches of heaven?”                                                                                                          - Luke 16:11

Interestingly, a recent article in the Boston Globe was devoted to this question: Does money change you? The article reported:

As a mounting body of research is showing, wealth can actually change how we think and behave—and not for the better. Rich people have a harder time connecting with others, showing less empathy to the extent of dehumanizing those who are different from them. They are less charitable and generous. They are less likely to help someone in trouble. And they are more likely to defend an unfair status quo. If you think you'd behave differently in their place, meanwhile, you're probably wrong: These aren't just inherited traits, but developed ones. Money, in other words, changes who you are.

The article went on to summarize research studies conducted by Kathleen Vohs, a professor at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management. Carlson and her colleagues have found that even the mere suggestion of getting more money—a technique known as "priming"—makes people less friendly and less sensitive to others. Moreover, the suggestion of getting more money showed people to be more likely to support statements like "some groups of people are simply inferior to others."

The article noted that "if you win the lottery and you want to avoid becoming an insensitive lout," there is a simple solution. One of the researchers summarized it this way: "Give at least half the money away."

This Sunday is Faith Promise Sunday. We will be challenged by an incredibly gifted speaker, Dr. Hormoz Shariat, who is featured in the article below. We will also be challenged to to make a faith promise. This is a promise to give, as God provides, over and above our tithe to support missions both here and abroad. This is a promise we make by faith. Honestly, it's hard to live by faith in today's world. We have insurance for everything. Here we make a faith promise and then "watch and pray" for God to provide.

God does provide, because God wants his world to be reached with the good news.The Lord is looking for people like you who will be open channels through which he can provide for the gospel to be preached in every people group. This is God’s plan A, to reach the world through his church, and there is no plan B! 

How does God provide for our faith promises?  From the experiences of many individuals and churches, there are three general ways God provides:

1. In Unexpected Ways:  These can be retroactive pay raises, bonuses, unexpected gifts, inheritance or tax refunds.

2. By Reordering of our Priorities:  When we manage our lives as God would have it, we can generate additional income for the Lord’s work.  This would include a commitment to live more simply, to fast once a week and give the money for that meal to missions, to cut down on unnecessary expenses, etc.

3. In Creative ways:  There are creative ways to generate extra income, such as having a garage sale and giving the proceeds to missions, using a hobby to generate income, a fun job to keep busy during your retirement, etc. 

Here's some good news: Money can change us for the better! But only if we recognize it as a blessing from God given to bless others. God wants us to be a channel through which his blessing flows!

Love in Jesus,

Pastor John Christie

How Civilization Will End

Dear Crosswalkers,

It's time for my latest book report. I recently finished reading a fascinating account of world history, which of course is "His story." The author is Niall Ferguson, who is a life-long atheist. His wife is an atheist activist whose recent article on the persecution of Christians across the globe was appreciatively featured in my post a month ago. Sometimes I like to read from atheist/agnostic authors to see the perspective of those on the other side. In this case, it was eye-opening in a surprising way!

Ferguson's work is entitled Civilization: The West and the Rest, and it's a vast, big picture look at the history of the world. His aim is to answer the question, "Why, for the past 500 years, have the civilizations of the West dominated the civilizations of the East ("the Rest")?" Put another way, "Why did Western Civilization become the greatest civilization in the history of the world?" The answer is presented in six factors: competition, science, property rights, medicine, the consumer society, and the work ethic.

The book is loaded with wise and thought provoking statistics and quotes. For example, he writes: "The current world population makes up approximately 7 per cent of all the human beings who have ever lived... we ignore the accumulated experience of such a huge majority of mankind to our peril." In reviewing the history of the colonization of the Americas, Ferguson says it was one of history's biggest natural experiments: "Take two Western cultures, export them and impose them on a wide range of different peoples and lands - the British in the north, the Spanish and Portuguese in the South. Then see which does better." The reason why North America vastly outpaced Central and South America, he writes, is "an idea about the way people should govern themselves." 

He also launches into a fascinating account of the history of how clothing, especially blue jeans, has been instrumental and indicative of the ascendency of the West!

Getting more quickly to the point, this atheist author, taking an honest look at world history and tossing political correctness to the wind, ends up repeatedly praising Christianity, more particularly Protestant Christianity. In reporting on the vast missionary activity of Protestant Christians to the developing world, the author writes: "The level of Protestant missionary activity has also proved to be a very good predictor of post-independence economic performance and political stability."

Shockingly, Ferguson details the alarming rate that Western Europeans are leaving the faith that was foundational in making their own civilization great. He also shares why the United States is generally keeping the faith in a culture that proclaimed God dead back in the 1960s. Furthermore, he explores the remarkably deep attraction Christianity has to the Chinese people (not their government) today!  According to one scholar from the Chinese Academy of the Social Sciences: "We were asked to look into what accounted for the... pre-eminence of the West all over the world... At first, we thought it was because you had more powerful guns than we had. then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity. That is why the West has been so powerful... We don't have any doubt about this."

Christianity isn't true because it works, it works in people's lives and in civilizations because it is true.

Near the end of his study, Ferguson notes that civilizations are formed by the literature they read. "But what are the foundational texts of Western civilization, that can bolster our belief in the almost boundless power of the free individual human being?" His own answer to this question begins: "I would suggest the King James Bible …."

Lastly, this world class historian deals with the demise of civilizations over the centuries. His conclusion is that civilizations generally end rather swiftly. He affirms the question that he himself asks, a question that should send chills down the spine of every non-believer, but a question that is strangely not worrisome for those who love the Lord:"Above all, what if collapse is not centuries in the making but strikes a civilization suddenly, like a thief in the night?"

Love in Jesus,

Pastor John Christie

Victoria's Secret Model Reveals Faith!

Dear Crosswalkers,

Here's a secret about one of Victoria's most popular models that has just been revealed! At the age of 19, Kylie Bisutti beat out 10,000 other contestants in the 2009 Victoria's Secret Model Search contest. This had been one of the major dreams she had for her life. But Kylie said that getting married and growing in her Christian faith caused her to see her career in a different light. In an interview Kylie said,

[The modeling world] is a very hard industry to be in without falling into things you don't want to do …. It's a very tempting industry …. Victoria's Secret was my absolutely biggest goal in life, and it was all I ever wanted career-wise …. [But] I'm a Christian, and reading the Bible more, I was becoming more convicted about it …. My body should only be for my husband, and it's just a sacred thing. I didn't really want to be that kind of role model for younger girls because I had a lot of younger Christian girls that were looking up to me and then thinking that it was OK for them to walk around and show their bodies in lingerie to guys. It was pretty crazy because I finally achieved my biggest dream, the dream that I always wanted, but when I finally got it, it wasn't all that I thought it would be.

That last sentence could be written over the lives and on the gravestones of millions of people! Kylie was interviewed by George Stephanopolous of ABC's Good Morning America, and predictably he didn't delve very deeply into questions about her faith. However, Kylie proudly proclaimed it and shared the profound life lesson that beauty is not an outer issue but a matter of the heart. You can see her interview by clicking HERE.

Personaly, I am greatly blessed when someone makes a stand for his or her faith and does the right thing. To swim against the powerful cultural forces in America takes a tremendous amount of courage. May God grant us that courage as well!

Love in Jesus,

Pastor John Christie

"Entitlement" Spirituality for Today's World

Dear Crosswalkers,

Of course we are living in what some are calling "the age of entitlement." In other words, people think they are entitled to all good things in life, and if they aren't experiencing those good things, they blame a political party, or wealthy people, or their parents, or their environment, and of course, many blame God. The following prayer is satire. It looks at "entitlement spirituality," which is characterized by superficiality, a shallow view of sin, and a perception that God is like a kindly grandfather. This prayer is a contemporary take of a traditional public confession of sin found in the Book of Common Prayer.

Benevolent and easy-going Parent: We have occasionally had some minor errors of judgment, but they're not really our fault. Due to forces beyond our control, we have sometimes failed to act in accordance with our own best interests. Under the circumstances, we did the best we could. We are glad to say that we're doing okay, perhaps even slightly above average. Be your own sweet Self with those who know they are not perfect. Grant us that we may continue to live a harmless and happy life and keep our self-respect. And we ask all these things according to the unlimited tolerances which we have a right to expect from you. Amen.

Compare this with a biblical prayer of confession that is potent and heartfelt and effective, from the book of Nehemiah (1:4-7) -

When I heard this, I sat down and wept. In fact, for days I mourned, fasted, and prayed to the God of heaven. Then I said, “O LORD, God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps his covenant of unfailing love with those who love him and obey his commands, listen to my prayer! Look down and see me praying night and day for your people Israel. I confess that we have sinned against you. Yes, even my own family and I have sinned! We have sinned terribly by not obeying the commands, decrees, and regulations that you gave us through your servant Moses.

This weekend over 60 of our men will be at our annual Men's Retreat at Redwood Christian Park. Our former associate pastor Jerry Ingalls will be leading us in living "The Epic Life." This is a life filled with prayer, trust in God, and a courage to do the will of God. But it all begins with confession; with a brutally honest self evaluation and understanding that we need God's forgiveness for our past, and his empowerment for our future. The Bible says,"If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9).

Please PRAY against the entitlement spirituality that is rampant in our culture today, and for a powerful outpouring of confession and cleansing of the Holy Spirit for the men of our church family!

Love in Jesus,

Pastor John Christie