Would you give me a soda?

Today was our last day of lecture phase. On Sunday we will begin a 4 day team-building challenge camp in the jungle, and then our outreach begins. During outreach we will be serving for 2 weeks in Talamanca, in an impoverished community. We'll be partnering with existing ministries, going into elementary schools and working with the Red Cross, among other things. After that we will head to Jacó, a beach town that also happens to have one of the highest rates of prostitution and child trafficking in the country. We'll be working there with youth from a very poor neighborhood along the river that feeds into the ocean.

Our outreach will take us to several more locations in Costa Rica over the next 2 months. There are 10 students in our group and an estimated group cost of $8,000 total for 2 months of missions for all 10 of us. We have half the money raised already, but still need around $4,000. Five of our students are Costa Ricans. Monthly wages here are around $200 and minimum wage is roughly $2 an hour, so for them, raising $800 is a much more difficult task than for those of us from the United States. Their friends, family, and churches don't have as much to give.

During lecture phase we read a book called Daring to Live on the Edge. It was about money and missions. One of the things that stuck out to me was the question, if you were at your friends house, would they be willing to give you a soda? Of course, the answer to that is almost universally yes. Their point was, that in support raising for missions, you just need a core group of friends who would give you a soda if you came to visit, who are willing to support you faithfully for just that amount.

So, that is what each of us is doing. We are all asking our friends, "Will you give me the price of a soda to support our outreach?" If every one of our friends gives a dollar, we'll be close to reaching our goal. Would you please give a dollar, or more if you feel led?

When you Confess with Your Mouth

I just finished reading the book Crazy Love by Francis Chan (I highly recommend it). The book provided a lot of food for thought. One of the things Francis says in his book is that lukewarm Christians are an oxymoron. If people claim to be Christians, but are not following God whole-heartedly, than they are not really Christians. That’s a hard statement to accept.

I was thinking today about that statement and comparing it with what the Bible has to say about salvation when this verse came to mind: “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). At first glance, it appeared to be a simple task- believe, acknowledge, and then salvation follows. There doesn’t seem to be anything about whole-hearted following. But then I thought a bit more about the first statement- “if you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord”. I think that today we’ve spiritualized the word “Lord”. We’ve given it a Christianese meaning somewhere along the way, making it a synonym for God or divinity, and we’ve forgotten what the word originally meant.

In John 13 Jesus says, “you call me Master and Lord, and you say well, for so I am” (v.13) Here Jesus is using the word Lord in it’s traditional context. Your Lord was your master. He commanded and you obeyed. In Medieval times, the lord controlled all that his serfs could and could not do. What he asked for, they gave without questioning. When he commanded them to follow into battle, they went without a choice. In Strong’s concordance, the Greek word used in Romans 10, Kurios, is defined as, “he to whom a person or thing belongs, about which he has power of deciding; master, lord, the possessor and disposer of a thing, the owner; one who has control of the person, the master.”

When we confess Jesus as Lord, we are not merely acknowledging his deity. We are swearing fealty. We are promising obedience. We are surrendering our wills and agreeing to follow where he goes. Have you truly confessed Jesus as your Lord?