The Last Act is Tragic

This is a column I wrote for our local paper, the Oakland Independent. It is the first in a series that uses different parts of the paper to encourage people to examine their lives.

What is one of the first places you flip in a local newspaper? I bet most of us look pretty quickly at the obituaries. Did you turn there to see if someone you know or someone famous or someone too young died.

Why are we the living so interested in death? Might it be because we know that death is a destination where we are all inevitably headed. No matter what modern medicine might do, we have not conquered death. No matter how significant your life here might be, it will someday, perhaps someday soon all be over.

Blaise Pascal wrote about our situation like this, "Let us imagine a number of men in chains and all condemned to death, where some are killed each day in the sight of the others, and those who remain see their own fate in that of their fellows and wait their turn, looking at each other sorrowfully and without hope. It is an image of the condition of men."

No matter what we do to try to ignore and put it off, death is inevitable. Whenever we read the obits or watch the news of another war or murder, we are reminded of our fate. Even if your life now is great, you will eventually die, and as Pascal also said, "The last act is tragic. They throw earth over your head and it is finished forever." Ecclesiastes declares that everything under the sun is vanity or a vapor, and this includes our very lives. They are here today and gone tomorrow, and if this world is all there is, then death is the final word.  

But Christians have hope that death on this earth is not the end. We believe that Jesus conquered death, and so we do not view death as the same kind of tragedy as those who do not know their fate or who believe death is the final end. In fact, we believe that Jesus conquered death and that when we trusted Him as our Savior, that He gave us eternal life. So we can now declare with the Apostle Paul, "Death where is your victory? Where is your sting?" 1 Corinthians 15:55, because we believe that death in this life simply transfers us to a new and even better kind of life.

This kind of confidence makes a huge difference, and if you don't believe me, then just join me for a funeral of someone who knows Jesus. We have had three such funerals at our church this last year. While there is sadness for us at parting from someone we love, there is also an incredible joy in the confidence that they are now with Jesus and that we will one day see them again.

If death comes for you today, tomorrow, or 50 years from now will you be ready? Are you confident that death is not the end? Are you confident in where you will spend eternity? The time to examine death and life is now, not some time later. If life is not just about what you can do while living under the sun, then you should figure out why you are here and where you are going before they throw dirt over your head.

Incarnation — Putting on Flesh

At Christmas we celebrate the coming of Jesus. This is one of the most amazing miracles of the Bible. It is called the incarnation or "putting on flesh." The infinite, uncontainable God of the universe came down and put on human nature and took a human body. 

The incarnation has several meanings for us.

First, it means that God bridged the gap between humans and Himself. Sin and our own finite nature stop us from ever reaching God on our own. All other religions of the world are based on human effort to reach up to god or to reach some perfected state based on our own efforts. For us, we celebrate a God who came to us, to bring us to Himself, because our efforts would never be enough to come into His perfect presence.

Second, the incarnation means that we have a God who identifies with us in our trials and temptations. Jesus wept with and for his friends. He go tired and was hungry. He was tempted, but did not sin. God the Son became fully human, and because of that when He comes to us, we can know that He understands and cares for us right where we are.

Third, because He is both God and man, He is the perfect high priest to stand as a mediator between God and man. Furthermore, he is also the perfect sacrifice who paid the debt for our sins. Therefore, as He stands before the Father interceding on our behalf, we can have confidence that our sins are indeed forgiven and that we are accepted by God.

Fourth, we, who are His followers, are called to be like Jesus. In fact we are called the body of Christ, which means that we are called to live “incarnationally.” When we are going out into a lost and dying world, we should be bringing Jesus to them. As we live and speak the gospel, we are helping to bridge the gap to God for others. To do this we need to enter into their lives. This will likely be hard, messy and painful as we walk with broken people in a fallen world. Fortunately, we do not have to fix them ourselves, but rather we simply point them to Jesus, God who took on flesh to bring people to Himself and to fix the broken world.

At Christmas, we remember the incarnation which means that God entered into His world, and we are also reminded that God calls us to be incarnational by entering into the lives of others so that they too can meet the God who came down.

Missions versus Mission

Recently at our church we had a Missions Sunday where we brought in a number of missionaries that we support to hear what God is doing through them and to encourage them. Our church has a fine missions program and I want to affirm it and support it.

In fact, I have made a commitment not to make or even suggest any major program changes at the church for at least the first year so that I can focus on getting to know the church (the people) better.

That begin said, if I am going to be faithful to the Lord, then I cannot help but continue to be on the mission that God has given me. He has called me to make biblical disciples through authentic and intentional relationships. Because of this mission, I am constantly seeking to encourage the people currently in the church to grow closer to Jesus, and I am constantly asking God to help me form new relationships outside the church to help draw more people to Him.

As a result of desiring deeper relationship with them, my family and I (and hopefully many of you) are naturally going to invite new people to join us for studies, worship time, kids ministries, and various other activities with our friends in the church.

These new relationships will bring change to the church, because new people will bring new and different ways of doing things. Some of the differences will simply be cultural like, how they dress, how they speak, what they like to do for fun. Further, they will not understand our Christian culture and probably could not find the book of Genesis, let alone the book of Hezekiah. Other differences will be because many of these people are not yet Christians or are new or very young Christians, and so they do not behave as we expect Christians to behave. They might cuss sometimes. Some of them struggle with money management, addictions, anger, broken families with all of their messiness, and sometimes even basic life skills like how to work, how to do laundry, etc.

While these behaviors might make you uncomfortable around new people, I would like to remind you that these should all be expected because we are all in the process of growing. In fact, if you dig deep enough with any of us, you will find that we are all still pretty messy at some points, and that God has lots of work still to do in our lives. As long time Christians we often get good at hiding our issues, but how many of us still struggle with lack of faith, gossip, conflict, pride, greed, and lack of love. We all need Jesus every day, and any changes in our life and character are to His credit not ours.

Most Bible believing Christians agree that one of the primary missions of the church is to reach out to the lost, and that is one of the reasons that we support missions. On the other hand, when it comes to fulfilling our mission to reach the lost, we often talk a good game, but do not in fact fulfill the mission very well. One of the reasons is that being on a mission means change and risk and being uncomfortable. God specifically calls us on mission to help stretch us and cause us to see our need for Him.

Therefore, while I am not proposing any new programs for the church, I would like us to be aware of the fact that if we are obedient to God's mission for the church, then the church is going to change even if we don't change a single program. Beyond that, we will change, because as God uses us to reach more people, the Holy Spirit will also change us so that we can minister to them like Jesus. I am praying that God will continue to change us, so that everyday is a Missions celebration.

Hospitality and Outreach

Outreach & Hospitality

Among the qualities of church leadership listed in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1, outreach or evangelism is not mentioned among the qualities of a leader, but both places mention that a leader should be hospitable. We might take this to mean just be friendly or perhaps think of a gift of hospitality, but in biblical times hospitality was one of the primary ways that the church would reach out to new people.

In the Old Testament, hospitality was a duty to welcome and provide for strangers and aliens in your land. Abraham exemplified this when he welcomed in three men who ended up being angels, one being the angel of the Lord (Genesis 18:2-8).  In the New Testament, we see that Jesus received hospitality as the stranger and wanderer who was frequently welcomed into people’s homes.He was also the one who practiced hospitality by breaking down barriers and welcoming people into his friendship who would other wise have been outcasts to a Jewish leader (John 4:1-42, Luke 19:1-10).

Being hospitable is one of the easiest and most natural forms of outreach, because anyone can do it even if they have never read a how to book on evangelism or taken an evangelism class.  I would like to encourage us to be hospitable in three areas of our lives.

First, in your personal lives you can be hospitable by having a welcoming attitude. Pray that God would give you His heart for the people around you, whether you are at school, work, shopping or in your neighborhood. A smile and a hello go a long way in making a connection. You could open a door for a stranger or help a neighbor bring in groceries. These seemingly small kindnesses can open a door for a connection that God can use to build deeper relationships. We need to be prepared to open our lives to the new people that God puts in front of us. This is the hardest part of hospitality, because it will often mean making sacrificial choices of things we like to do to open up space in our lives.

Our homes and families are a second place where we can be hospitable. We can invite neighbors over or develop deeper relationships within the church by opening our homes and families to outsiders. Perhaps your house can become the cool hangout place where all the kids from school or the team like to come because yours is a safe and welcoming home. The front door to the church and the first place that many people see the gospel lived out is most frequently in the homes of Christians who show Christ’s love in this very personal way.

Finally, we need to be hospitable when we come together as a church body, whether at Sunday worship or other meetings throughout the week. When someone new comes, they have taken a personal risk to come into a strange setting with new people, so we need to help them overcome the barriers by being very welcoming. When you see someone new at church, give them a smile and a handshake. We need to listen to their story and be ready to invite them into our lives. Often they look different and behave different, but it is those very differences that help us learn to love like God does. He reached out to us when we were not just different, but His enemies. When we learn to overcome barriers, we are learning to look beyond the differences and see the person that God loves and He wants to show His love through us. 

My prayer is that hospitality would be a hallmark of my life, my family's life, and my church's life. With God's help we would be known as safe and welcomed people whether at a Sunday service, in our homes, or on the street. 

Personal Evidence for Faith

The last in my series on faith and evidence for the local paper, the Oakland Independent.

Over the last couple of weeks I have written about faith and evidence. Last week’s article pointed to physical and historical evidence that can help us trust God and His message of salvation. But, while this type of evidence is good for helping secure our faith in the face of doubt or challenges, few of us actually come to believe in Jesus by reading a textbook and then constructing a logical argument for faith.

 Many of us came to faith in Jesus because we felt His love and heard the truth about Jesus from our parents who believed in Him. Likewise, pastors, teachers, church leaders, neighbors and friends with authentic faith often play a major role in a person deciding to follow Jesus. Their changed lives are real evidences of the truth of the message, because Jesus promised that we would be changed if we follow Him (Matthew 4:19).

On the other hand, if others' testimonies remains the primary evidence for your faith, then it is susceptible to challenge, because many other belief systems claim the same thing. I have had friends from other religions who live moral lives and sincerely believe something different. They claim that you should believe what they believe based upon their lives. Furthermore, if our faith in Jesus is based primarily on the faith of others, then it can be shaken when they mess up or fall away. Therefore, while this evidence is often very important in leading us to Jesus, we should not believe simply because others do.

We each need a personal experience with God. Each one of us has to decide if Jesus is really God and if He has really died for our sins. The Apostle Paul  says, "If you confess with your mouth, 'Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved" (Romans 10:9).

So the last gap to overcome for faith in Jesus is a personal decision to trust Him. This can be hard because if Jesus is really is God, then this is no mere intellectual exercise. He does not just want a place in our mind, rather He wants all of us. When we really trust Him as our Lord and Savior, He radically changes us into the people He created us to be. The barrier to faith for many people is not intellectual, but rather the fear of losing the “good life." The famous Christian author C. S. Lewis wrote that he was the most "reluctant convert” (he was an atheist), because even after his doubts had been answered he still resisted, because he understood that belief in Jesus meant a change in His life.

Fortunately, Jesus tells us He wants to give us an "abundant life,” and I can testify that trusting Jesus has been worth it both intellectually and personally. Don’t just take my word for it though, examine the evidence and have faith in Him.

Evidence for Faith

This was the third article published for the Oakland Independent, and the second in my series on faith and evidence. It follows the post, "Don't Just Have Faith."

In last weeks article, I wrote that Christian faith is not just a leap in the dark, but rather learning to trust Jesus because He has proven Himself trustworthy. In this article I will list the three types of evidence that anyone can examine and that can help them learn to trust Jesus.

The first evidence, the natural world, convinces most people that a god of some sort exists. King David in Psalm 19 says, "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork." The Apostle Paul in Romans 1 says, "For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made."

That fact that the universe exists at all, and the exquisite detail in nature is enough to convince most people that God exists. From the youngest child looking up in awe at the stars to the molecular biologist examining the information of life found in DNA most people become convinced that something beyond ourselves must have created the universe.

A second piece of evidence that brings us closer to having faith in Jesus is the Bible. Taken as a historical document, it is filled with many pieces of verifiable history, such as the locations of a number of archeological sites, which can give us confidence in its message. Furthermore, when you study its transmission and consistent story from over 40 authors writing over a period of 1500 years, its uniqueness as a collection of books where God reveals Himself becomes clear.  Finally, it is unique in the story it tells of God reaching out to bring us to Himself rather than expecting humans to make themselves good enough to deserve to be with Him.

This leads to the third and most important evidence, namely the person of Jesus himself. His life, death and particularly His resurrection are unique in history and the writers of the Gospels along with the Apostle Paul encourage us to examine the evidence of His life to see if He is really who He claimed to be. Paul writing within 30 year of the event told the Corinthians to examine the evidence of the resurrection. He even encouraged them to go talk to some of the over 500 people who had seen Jesus alive after the crucifixion. 

Matthew, Mark, Luke and John all wrote to convince others of what they believed, namely that Jesus was the unique son of God. The more we examine evidence in the world and the scriptures the more confidence we will have that Jesus is God and Savior, and that He is worthy of our trust.

A New Home

Here is the first article I wrote for the Oakland Independent. It was published the first week of July, 2015.

Hello, my name is Mike Sechler, and I am the new pastor at Oakland Evangelical Free Church. I recently moved from Litchfield, a town in south central Minnesota, where we have lived and ministered for the last 10 years. My wife, Traci, and our four kids with us are now calling Oakland our home. While Traci and I have lived a number of places in our lives, this is a big change for our kids who really have only really remember one hometown. We hope to live in Oakland many years and get to know you and love you in the same way we love the people of Litchfield. No matter how long we live in Oakland though, it will always only be a temporary home for us. 

In fact, no matter how long you and your family have lived in this area, Oakland and Northeast Nebraska is really only a temporary home for you too. You see we are all just passing through somewhere here on this earth, because we are all going to spend eternity somewhere.

Jesus said, “I go and prepare a place for you . . . that where I am you may be also” (John 14:2 & 3). My hope is to really love my temporary home here, but to live for my eternal home with Jesus. A couple of years ago, I sat with my 11 year old son, Micah as he left this earth, and went to live with Jesus. Micah is now in his true home. This event has even made me see the temporariness of this earth, and makes me long for my true home even more. I suspect if you too have lost someone close to you, that it has also caused you to see how temporary this life is. 

The Apostle Paul in his letter to the Philippians said, “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” He loved the people here on this earth, but he loved Jesus even more and desired to me with Him. My hope and prayer while living here with you, is that we can learn to love one another, and that you will see Christ in coming from our family, so that you too might desire to join Him in the eternal home that He is preparing for those who love Him. Then, we can learn to live on this earth even more abundantly as we live for Jesus, because we know our future is secure with Him.