Go out Hwy 25, turn off the main highway at Old Field Road and go all the way to the Stone Bridge, there make a left on a well tended driveway and go to the end. Past the gently sloping fields on the right and the big trees on the left, you’ll come to a cafe with a bright door of sorts … an entrance to other places. i’m Social Porter and this is Outposts, a semi-live broadcast from the late night, cascading banks of the Okluhwahhah River, where the trees gently lean over the river’s edge, and every evening is pleasant.

So glad you are here this evening, we always enjoy spending some time with you in contemplative conversation. Speaking of contemplating, i’m still learning to sip life, taking time to taste, rather than gulp and swill. One time my son and i stopped at a burger place to eat. As we unfolded our lunch i watched as my darling boy, before my very eyes, turned into a total animal and consumed that large double cheeseburger in about 4 bites. i’m not even sure he chewed it. As i was incredulously watching him i asked the Lord, where did my son learn to eat like that? His reply: From you. “Oh,” and then i remembered my mother nearly threatening my life if i didn’t slow down eating. The Lord continued on speaking to me saying He wanted me to learn to sip life and enjoy what He gave me instead of being such a predatory consumer. i’ll admit, it’s been a real struggle to be so controlled, but i’m beginning to realize how much i miss when i don’t take my time to enjoy the details of people and life.

All week, it seems, almost everyone i’ve met was in a hurry to do something, or go somewhere. A line by the White Rabbit from the book “Alice In Wonderland” comes to mind, “Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late,” as if they’re about to be late for something, somewhere. There are days when it seems faster isn’t fast enough, like everyday life is driving us and we are just along for the ride. The world around us has a need for hustle and hasty commotion it seems. No time to pause, no time to pray, we must produce and accomplish in order to feel like good people who have value in our society. In order to keep up with production. Our life theme has become, “I’m late, I’m late, I’m oh so very late! No time to say hello, goodbye, I’m late, I’m late, I’m late.”

Our topic is are we Accomplishment Driven or Character Led? That’s a real can of worms. Everyone has a drive of some sort, in one fashion or another, for better or worse. What is it which motivates you, what or who drives you?

i think most would agree God is always working to increase our “C.P.F.”, our character, disposition and frame. Personal holiness is another way of saying “character”, and in light of that i’ve wondered how many of us take seriously our practice of personal holiness. Is personal holiness our ability to get it right and effectively constantly toe the line of the grid of some moral code? i say, no, that’s not it. At … all. i don’t know about anyone else, but it is important to me. Now i’m not speaking of an obsessive view where we are so focused on ourselves and getting life right, we lose sight of the Lord, being all focused on getting life right which only ends wrecked in a ditch someplace. You know, rule keepers never win, not really. So, again as to “getting life right”, well, that’s not it. Toeing the line of a moral code only gets us being rule keepers, and, sadly, this is something i know, again, rule keepers never win. If Jesus doesn’t care our sins then there is nothing.

As we were talking during the music moment, one of the patrons was saying that in the western church we all seem to be in production mode, and, in general we have a built-in bias against anything that’s not full-blast production. We are taught do good, get good. If we do a good job, we keep getting paid, and if we do a poor job, our employer quits paying us. When we were in school if we made good grades, people seemed more inclined to like us, if we made poor grades we are subtly shunned to only have similar friends who also made poor grades. In Christianity it’s called “retributive theology”, again, do good get good, do bad get bad.  We think we’re “good people” because we’re being productive. We feel good about life when we have days in which we appear to ourselves as movers and shakers … you know, really “making it happen” so to speak. Corporate world seems to always stage everything for measuring efficiency and productivity and then at the performance review your value is based on your production numbers. Teddy Roosevelt said that “comparison is the thief of joy.” It seems we’re always measuring and being measured. Is being employed by a church any different many times? How many got saved? How many re-dedications were there? How many healings and deliverances? What were the numbers? Were there any membership applications? It’s a way of measuring our effectiveness. i can not begin to count the number of pastors who were specifically hired to get the church numbers up, and were let go when it didn’t happen.

Here’s a sticky statement we all need to hear: Being in leadership in the Body of Christ is stewardship, not ownership. Did you get that? Stewardship not ownership.i have wondered if maybe the reason David got himself in hot water with God in 2 Samuel 24 was because he sent Joab throughout the land to count the people, after all, political arithmetic comes along with other policies when you’re the king. Maybe it was pride in that it was David measuring how well he was doing and how powerful he was. i’m sure someone more astute than myself would have better answers probably. Don’t get me wrong, it can be profitable to know how effective our efforts are … but unfortunately we also use those numbers to judge if God is in the house or not. We think “lots of people = God is here”, “not many people” = God is not here, and that is just not true. i would far, far more be involved with a spiritually effective church than a socially successful church. Every day, all day. Is being productive and having accomplishments really what constitutes character and being a “good person”? Being productive and accomplishment driven caters to a society which is always measuring our personal value based on what we have accomplished, and if we are judged as being productive, others call us “a good person”, and in God’s economy that holds about as much water as a colander. Some of the world’s most intelligent people with great accomplishments under their belt have also been among the most horrible. And on the other side of that nor is ignorance and being unschooled a prerequisite for poor character and being a criminal. Do you believe you’re a good person? By what standard did you decide that? How good is good enough and how bad is too bad? How much sin are we willing to live with? Again, how wrong is too wrong, and how right is right enough? We can not live on the grid of a moral code, always toeing the line of how well we are keeping “the rules”. Piercing questions for sure.

When trouble comes, and Jesus did promise that in this world we would have trouble in John 16:33, how often have we heard someone say, “What did i do to deserve this?”, or, “He was a good person. He didn’t deserve to be so sick.” As if there are others we judge as definitely deserving some horrible illness? “She was so pretty! She didn’t deserve that!” What? If she was not pretty and was quite the opposite, then, yes THEN would she have been worthy of unkind circumstances? The victim in our heart blames God and cries out, “Why would these terrible things happen to me?”, and “Why would God let this happen to me? I’m a good person!” Whether or not we are “a good person” seems to be a very troubling question in our hearts. So i am compelled to ask again, by what standard do we decide if we are good people or not? How did you come to that conclusion? What’s your evidence?

Are we always measuring ourselves and others, fretting over where we rank on the average “goodness” scale as to whether we are “good people” or not? Godly character supports the generation of righteous people, and declaring ourselves a “good person” only qualifies us in the eyes of the world. You were qualified to receive every blessing of the Lord by being made right with God because you accepted Christ as your Savior. The Father declares those who beieve “righteous” because of the death and resurrection of the Son. Did you get that? It’s because of the Son, Jesus, not because we keep rules, observances, holidays, or traditions. You don’t have to do anything other than to “believe in your heart and confess with your mouth (Romans 10:9) in order to qualify for being righteous. This is not retributive theology, do good – get good, do bad – get bad. It’s a gift! God’s love isn’t based on a merit/demerit system, and neither is character gotten on a similar system of measurement and production. 1Thessalonians 1:3 says hope inspires endurance, love prompts us to labor, and faith produces accomplishment, faith, hope and love are FIRST. If i turn that around it means, production never creates faith, labor never prompts love, and endurance does not come before hope. Listed by importance, our Godly character should always precede work and production.

Religious people seem to have a propensity to play in the merit/demerit system, but that isn’t love, hope, or faith. We, who hold Jesus as Lord and Savior can’t remain the same in our religious struggle between grace and doing the law, and i’ve wondered in my own life where i draw the line when it is too painful to remain the same. It would seem many today want to play both sides of the line on law and grace. When it suits us we quote the O.T., but when it more makes our agenda work, we abandon the old and quote the new. We can’t be in both camps. i’ll say this about that, if it doesn’t change in the new testament, then it still stands from the old, and i think that’s a good rule.

Are you a good person? Can we be productive enough to qualify for “being good”? How did we come to that conclusion? Knowing we can’t be 100% good, how good is good enough? 85%? 92%? You know, the closer we get to 100% the steeper the curve gets and the more unobtainable the standard of “Good person” becomes. Like C.S. Lewis said, “i would not have known what a crooked line was if i didn’t have some idea of what a straight line was.” In order for us to “fall short” in our own eyes, we must have, somewhere within ourselves, some idea of what perfection is.  The “self-goodness” measurement seems to be very subjective. Genesis 3:11 “And God asked of Adam, “How do you know that?”” In other words, where’d you get your information? What does God say? Oh and you KNOW He’s got something to say about this. Sure, we all know our righteousness is as filthy rags, gosh haven’t we had that pounded into us, but there’s more to it than just the negative, there’s a positive also. Being Defined by the Divine is where our real answers are about being a good person and having Godly character. Character inspires us to be productive, but being productive is not the measure of our character. Even people with terrible character can be productive. i really believe God has our answers on this. It would seem in our society we have been seduced into thinking if we do our job well, perform what is asked of us accurately and on-time, pay our bills, take care of ourselves and families, be measurably productive, that if we do all that we believe we are people of good character. i think we live in a culture that’s obsessed with wringing an external result from everything we do, and we measure our character accordingly. But that … sense of accomplishment … is that real character?

God’s idea of accomplishment and man’s idea of accomplishment are greatly different. Afterall, James 5:16 says, “The prayer of a righteous person accomplishes a great deal”. Let us remember that the measure of our accomplishment is according to God and His purposes, not according to men. God sees us through the Blood of Jesus. IN Christ, “i am a good person”, and “in” is “in” and we can’t be anymore “in” than “in”. But the scales of men for weighing and measuring accomplishment and the value of people … is almost certainly subjective, fluid, and often undefined. If the scales of men are fluid and mobile, then your value, in the eyes of other men, is also fluid and mobile, meaning today you are seen as a “good person”, but tomorrow, ahhh, tomorrow could be an entirely different story. Today you’re given all sorts of kudos, tomorrow you may be back in the dog house.

Listen: You are qualified to be completely forgiven. You are qualified to be filled with God’s Holy Spirit. You are qualified to receive healing. You are qualified to get prayers heard and answered all by the benefit of being washed in the blood of the Lamb and believing He is who He says He is.

   According to God, accomplishment, or being measureably productive, does not constitute high character or being a good person. It is not in how many houses we build, people we feed, ministries we start, or how well we do the one we’ve got. Character is not created by the mighty empire we’ve built, are building, or didn’t build. Character should drive our works, not our works driving our character. And i’ll tell ya’, either we drive or we are driven, but one way or another somebody is going to drive. Even a serial killer can accomplish good things, consistently, so having good, measurable accomplishments is not a sign of “being a good person”. Jeffrey Damer was well thought of by some of his neighbors. They all said he was a nice fellow, at first. Yea, sure, he ate a few people but he was productive and pleasant.

What was Jeff qualified for then? Ok, so let’s practice some good boundaries. That was him, and for you who are in Christ, this is you: You are qualified to prosper. You are qualified to speak the gospel. You are qualified to live with God in Heaven. You are qualified to do what-so-ever God has asked you to do with all power and authority. If He has called you, then you are qualified to go forward in His Name, and you don’t need any man’s endorsement in order to do God’s bidding. You may say, “But mister, you don’t know me. You don’t know what I have done.” You’re right, i don’t know you and i don’t know what you’ve done, but i know me and i know what i’ve done and i am here to testify, Jesus changed my life and destiny. What did that well known preacher say? “You can either be a man of your history or a man of your destiny, what’s it gonna be?”  In Ex3:11, Moses was admitting to feeling like a nobody. He said, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?”. He was saying that any fame or social credibility he may have once had was gone. But God said, “Your objection is overruled! I will be with you.” The calling upon Moses was not based on his credibility but on God’s. The Lord didn’t want Egypt or Israel impressed with Moses, He wanted them impressed with Himself, the Lord.

Jesus paid the price to qualify you. Right now, because of Jesus’ blood, you qualify for all of God’s blessings. Stand up church.

i am intentionally posing these ideas and questions in hopes we, as the people of God, will have these kinds of conversations and dialogues with our friends and neighbors, to meet them where they are, engaging them on their ground, in terms they will understand. Of course, we must continue to hold the standard of God’s values as our own, but also willing to engage people beyond the safety of our church walls. Let us open doors, don’t close doors. The Lord poses us questions, not because He’s ignorant, as if needing an answer, but to bring our issues to light to be resolved. i believe ALL of God’s questions are to draw us into a personal and relational conversation with Him.

i’ve thought to myself and said outloud to the Lord, “People will probably think i’m crazy if i tell what’s in my heart. Lord, I can believe in you myself because you’re revealing yourself to me. But i’m always hidden away in a safe place. Of myself i am unremarkable and alone in some back room where no one sees, entertaining no risk of reputational degradation. I’m a no-name nobody and nobody’s going to listen to the words of a nobody, especially if it’s a nobody like me, claiming to be speaking for God!” His reply to me is still, “I am with you. I want Egypt and Israel to be impressed with me, not you. Don’t be afraid, just tell it. I will be with you and your unremarkable mouth.” After many years of being encumbered with the constant downward spiral in my thinking, i finally said, “Ok, if You say so.” And out the door i went to whatever God would bring my way. You know, it all worked out just fine once i turned down the volume of my constant self-criticism.

The persistent measuring of whether we are “a good person” or if we are “qualified enough” inspires us to lower our eyes below the Lord to man’s weights and scales, influencing us to be someone we’re not. The world’s standards influence us to re-evaluate ourselves based on measurable production, according to corporate standards. A young man asked me this with a sarcastic tone in his voice, “Why do we want Godly character??”

   Godly character, personal holiness in balance with our God-given-gifting, re-enforces God’s work of expanding our persistence, competence, and confidence in Christ, empowering our inner fortitude, and develops our social skills, which we are so desperately in need of. Godly character brings us upgraded, upgraded, upgraded self-esteem and a sense of being anchored, taking us beyond our perceived sense of limitations. Don’t we know well the world and the devil love to constantly remind us of our perceived limitations.

When we worship the Lord in spirit and truth, there comes the lack of a quantifiable result. Did you get that? When we worship the Lord, we’re not in just a good place, but a God place which cannot be measured. Don’t worry if others don’t sing, raise their hands, or bow down. You do it because you do it and you didn’t ask anyone if it was ok. If we are just following along, standing when we’re instructed, singing, giving, and sitting when we’re told to, where are you in all that telling? Stand, sing, give, and sit because it’s the right thing to do at the feet of the Lord, not because someone told you to. We all need to know at the core of our person, it’s always the right time to do the right thing. Worship allows us to tap a more meaningful place which satisfies core needs and reveals the authentic person behind the masks of job and accomplishments. Here’s a sticky statement, remember: Godly conception gives birth to Godly perception, and righteous imagination gives birth to righteous understanding.

    Are you tired? Worn out? Are you weary of trying to produce enough good works that you might qualify for God’s blessings? Are you burned out on religion? i think there has been a mass exodus from organized-to-pieces Christianity, because the Jesus people met when they got saved, is not the Jesus they met when they got to church. The Lord says, Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” Think about it.

i’m Social Porter and thank  you for joining us here at Outposts, a semi-live broadcast from the late night cascading banks of the Ockluhwahhah River, where the trees gently lean over the rivers edge, and every evening is pleasant.

If you get the opportunity, go to livinginhisname.org where there are other good things to hear.

You were qualified to receive every blessing of God by being made right with God by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. You don’t have to do anything else so you can qualify. By the blood of Jesus, you are qualified to be completely forgiven, qualified to be filled with the Holy Spirit, qualified to receive healing, and are qualified for your prayers to heard and answered. As we all go our way this week, present God’s character to others, His character in us is the fruit of rubbing shoulders with God, not the performance identity of a job, or the presentation identity that we display to others. Every day with Jesus is a day of defining, moments which bring us solid, consistent definition in a very fluid, mobile, and inconsistent world.

Have you been arguing with God over your qualifications because maybe, in your eyes, you’re not productive enough? If so, remember God’s call on you is not about you. It’s about Him. And the question is, are you willing for God to use you to show the world how impressive He is?

Drive carefully, and allow the Lord to birth in you the courage to dream, believe, and imagine…you were born for it. i’ll talk to you later. Peace my friends, peace, in the name of Jesus.