If You Fall I Will Catch You

Psalm 94:18-19

When I thought, “My foot slips,”
    your steadfast love, O Lord, held me up.
When the cares of my heart are many,
    your consolations cheer my soul.

So here we are again Restore. This coming Sunday, August 29, will be our final Sunday at 21 Pleasantview drive. Starting Sunday, September 5, we will be moving into our new facility at Faith Reformed, 95 Prospect Street in Midland Park. Over the course of 2021, the staff and elders have been working feverishly to find a place for Restore to call home. We spoke with numerous churches, commercial realtors, and even a school to find a place for us to land in the fall.

It wasn’t until we surrendered to the idea Faith wasn’t going to work out that everything came together. We had a plan in place that would work but was far from ideal. Just when we thought our foot was slipping, God swooped in and saved the day. Only God could have put things together for things to work out this way for Restore.

Restore, in its 10(ish) year existence, counting this current move, has had four separate locations. Speaking as someone who has moved A LOT, even I would say that’s too many. However, despite that, the community remains strong. Restore, more than any other church I have ever been a part of knows what it means to do life together. If we ended up with an abandoned warehouse or out in a field, this church would remain strong because of this community’s devotion to one another.

There are times in your life when you feel overwhelmed, when the cares of your heart are many. These are the times when we can look to God for support. And the amazing thing about this is that we get to see God work out this support through our community. 

When you experience something traumatic, I pray that there are people around you that can hold you up. And, when you’re back on your feet, you now know what it’s like to come out the other side. You now have the strength to hold up someone else. We get to meet at 95 Prospect St because one member of the community of Christ saw how they could support another member.

God comes through in amazing ways, and He uses the community to do it.

Love One Another

John 13:34-35 - 34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

In John 13, after Jesus washed the disciple’s feet, he started explaining to them that he wasn’t going to be around much longer. For us reading today it is only a few pages until Jesus is arrested, put on trial, and eventually crucified. Jesus knew that this was the plan. He knew Judas would betray him, he knew Peter would deny him, and he knew that the disciples would need to take the leadership position in getting the cause of Christ to the world.

In this passage Jesus is laying out some pretty heavy news for the disciples. He is telling them that he is going somewhere that they cannot follow. This news devastates them. These disciples were prepared to follow Jesus for the rest of their lives, and now they are learning that they will need to do the hard work without him. And what does Jesus tell them is first and most important? It’s not how to spend the money. It’s not what political affiliation is correct. It’s not how to “own” the other side on social medio. He simply tells them to love one another. 

In Jewish writing the importance of something is indicated through repetition. We see this in descriptions of the angels in heaven worshiping God by saying, “Holy, holy, holy.” God is not just holy, or even just holy, holy, God is holy, holy, holy! In this passage Jesus keeps telling them to love on another.

We have plenty of examples of the disciples missing the point and bickering with one another, and this was when Jesus was with physically them. What are they (or we) going to do when Jesus isn’t physically with us? We need to fall back to basics. Love is mentioned about 57 times in the Gospel of John. In chapter 14 Jesus says, “if you love me, keep my commandments.” And what is that commandment? Love one another.

Our increasingly divided world is easy to see. However, our increasingly divided church is where we can use our influence. Standing up for truth is important, but are you walking in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time? Is your speech always gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may show love to the people around you?

How can you help love come first?

Have Mercy

Matthew 9:10-13 - 10 And as Jesus reclined at table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were reclining with Jesus and his disciples. 11 And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” 12 But when he heard it, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. 13 Go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”

When we read the Bible, we often like to visualize ourselves in the hero’s position. We are David when he slew Goliath. We are the good Samaritan who stopped to help the injured man. We like seeing ourselves as the good and faithful servant. More often, though, the truth is that we are the helpless one, the one caught gloating over their own power, or the one who doubts Jesus. We are the sinners! Jesus is seen reclining with us.

The Pharisees had setup boundaries to keep themselves holy. Unfortunately, this was only holiness in their own minds. They thought, “If I never associate with those ‘bad’ people then everyone will know that I am a ‘good’ person.” This is something that they added to the law that God never intended.

The Pharisees would have loved today’s social media echo chambers—those places you go where any dissenting thought is shouted down so everyone thinks “the correct way.” The Pharisees take a shot at Jesus by asking how this person who claims to be a teacher can associate with all these “bad” people. And Jesus answers them plainly, “those who are sick are the ones who need the doctor.”

Jesus then tells them, “Go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’” Here Jesus is quoting Hosea 6. In Hosea’s day the people were diligent about bringing their sacrifices, but it had become a rote habit. They were neglecting the purpose, and they were neglecting mercy.

The Pharisees who heard this would have been taken aback because they thought they already knew everything. For us it means we need to take Jesus’s Great Commission to heart and make disciples everywhere we go. They don’t need to look like you, they don’t need to think like you, they just need you to embody the grace and mercy that you have already experienced as a follower of Christ.

Let’s tell everyone we know that Jesus came for them.

Open Eyes

John 9:1-4a - As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. 2 And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” 3 Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. 4 We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day…

In this passage, Jesus and the disciples meet a man who has been blind since birth. The disciples, who exist to show us how we would react in similar situations, immediately ask Jesus who we should blame for this. Did his parents do something wrong to have a child like this? Did he do something and deserve to be blinded? Often, we have a voice inside us that tries to convince us not to help someone in need. 

We have thoughts that say, “they probably deserve this because of the choices they made,” or “they got themselves into this situation they should get themselves out.” Unfortunately for those thoughts, we were never called to be the arbiters of who deserves what. You can see this in Jesus’s response.

It wasn’t about the man, his parents, or anything they had done, it was about an opportunity for God’s work to be displayed. And this is the key to anyone in need that you might come across in your day-to-day life. You did not meet them to feel better about yourself or to look down on them. You met them so you would have an opportunity to be the hands and feet of Jesus in a world that so desperately needs to be healed of blindness.

Jesus leaned down to the man, spat in the dirt, rubbed mud in his eyes, and told him to go wash in the pool of Siloam. The man did it and came back with his sight! Jesus didn’t give the man a sermon, he didn’t make him feel bad about who he was, Jesus saw a person that needed his help, and gave it happily. 

You may not be able to heal the blind, but you have the opportunity every day to reach into someone’s life and show them the light of Jesus. Even if, like Jesus, you need to get your hands a little dirty to do it.