John Fischer The Catch

Has anybody here seen my old friend Abraham?
Can you tell me where he’s gone?
He freed a lot of people,
But it seems the good they die young.
You know, I just looked around and he’s gone.

Anybody here seen my old friend John?
Can you tell me where he’s gone?
He freed a lot of people,
But it seems the good they die young.
I just looked around and he’s gone.

Anybody here seen my old friend Martin?
Can you tell me where he’s gone?
He freed a lot of people,
But it seems the good they die young.
I just looked around and he’s gone.

Didn’t you love the things that they stood for?
Didn’t they try to find some good for you and me?
And we’ll be free
Some day soon, and it’s a-gonna be one day …

Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he’s gone?
I thought I saw him walkin’ up over the hill,
With Abraham, Martin and John.

Well it’s been about 24 hours since writing my last Catch and nothing much has changed. I have been flat on my back that whole time feeling like a freight train had just run over me, after first being hit by a semi. It has been humbling, to say the least. Two days ago, when Marti was in this predicament, I was starting to feel sick, but still up and around. In fact, I allowed myself a morsel of praise for the fact that I was up and she was down. Thinking that I felt as badly as she did but was able to drive myself on gave me a false sense of superiority. But alas, that was not to last. I got my taste of why she was in bed. When it hits you, it hits you; there’s no going on.

And now, with my first taste of feeling better, I have no Catch to deliver to you, except to remember that each day comes with its own grace. Take what is yours and don’t compare it with anyone. Receive each day what you have as coming from the hand of God and live accordingly.

Our telephone conference Bible study begins tonight (Wednesday, January 11) at 7 pm PST (10 pm EST). You can access the conference by calling 218-237-3840 and entering the access code #124393. To get the most out of this hour together, email Marti at [email protected] to obtain a download of our study guide ahead of time. We are looking forward to meeting you!

I married an agent of change. I didn’t mean to, really. I just fell in love. The fact that she was already leading a national organization of Christians in her industry (Fellowship of Christian Airline Personnel) after just becoming a Christian herself should have been a big clue that being married to this person was going to be a ride. Well it has been (we celebrate 37 years together a week ago. Actually I have the tenses right: we have yet to celebrate it. One of the worst things about having an anniversary so near the end of the holidays is that your money and effort are spent by the time you get to it. We still have our anniversary gifts to each other wrapped and sitting in a little sack in the kitchen).

My biggest mistake in 37 years with her is that I have kept her under wraps for most of the time. I have spent most of my career in the evangelical subculture, and I have been afraid Christians wouldn’t accept Marti. I’m probably right, but that shouldn’t have stopped me. She’s brash. She’s blunt. She’s sometimes wordy, but she has no clue about how evangelical Christians are supposed to talk and act. She’s from outside, and because of that I’ve kept her outside. Now I couldn’t be happier because she is the one who is pulling me out. She is the one who is keeping me honest. She is the one who is always asking “So what?” to all my neat flowery arguments and teachings that wrap up so nicely as long as there isn’t anyone around like her to question me. (That’s the wonderful thing about lecturing: unless you take questions at the end, you can finish up with everything sounding so perfect.)

This is why it’s so great to be doing this teleconference study together. It’s the first time we’ve done something together in ministry since we taught a new couples seminar after three years of marriage. (That’s another story I’ll have to tell sometime.) And Marti’s got her stamp all over this. She finally gets to do what she’s always wanted to do – interrupt my talks. Take my word for it… she will mess things up. But didn’t we just decide that’s what the marketplace is… messy? So I just wanted to prepare you for this. Some of our people from the last study are still scratching their heads.

Now if we can just get her to slow down a little and keep her cell phone off speaker, we might be able to keep up with her.

Phillip, one of our readers, wrote me about a difficulty he was having with the title of our teleconference study: “Transforming the Marketplace.” “I grew up in Africa,” he wrote, “so a marketplace is a crazy wild noisy mess of people hawking stuff and people wanting to buy the stuff; a lot of loud haggling, various animals running around and strong smells everywhere.”

Now I understand how he brings something else to the picture than those of us who have not shared his experiences in an African marketplace, although we can imagine since he has painted it so well. But I think, in an almost humorous way, he is onto something without realizing it, because he has explained, quite well, in fact, how many people react to the marketplace in this country.

So this would be a good opportunity to try and explain what we mean when we use the term “marketplace.” In its broadest sense the marketplace means the world. It’s the culture we live in. It’s where people live, work and play – where ideas are exchanged and business is transacted. Some Christians might call it the secular world, though I do not believe the term is accurate since God is most definitely in this world redeeming a people for Himself. Secular implies something devoid of God, which this world is not.

In another sense, however, for those who are hoping to create a safe environment to live and raise a family, the marketplace is the world outside of one’s comfort zone – outside of how they would like to define things. Of course we would rather have a safer world where the mess of the marketplace doesn’t encroach upon our sensitivities and our values all the time. It is in this manner that Phillip has done us a service, because his definition of an African marketplace really does translate to how lots of people view this world as “a crazy wild noisy mess of people… a lot of loud haggling, various animals running around and strong smells everywhere.” It’s perfect.

Yes, it is exactly into that noisy, messy world with strong smells and various “animals” running around (that would be anybody we don’t agree with) that we follow Christ. It is precisely to that world that He came, and it is that world that is full of people He loves so much that He would die to bring them eternal life. And it is into that world that He asks us to come alongside people and walk with them through the messy marketplace – as captured in our picture above – and it is through our study that we will learn how to do that.

So thank you, Phillip. You nailed it!

Our telephone conference Bible study will begin tomorrow night (Wednesday, January 11) at 7 pm PST and 10 pm EST. You can access the conference by calling 218-237-3840 and entering the access code #124393. To get the most out of this hour together, email Marti at [email protected] to obtain a download of our study guide ahead of time. We are looking forward to meeting you!

Those who think they know something do not yet know as they ought to know. (1 Corinthians 8:2)

I love this picture. You will recognize it from last Friday’s post. I’m using it again because I want you to study it. In many ways it says everything you need to know about transforming the marketplace.

A picture, like all of art, is so much more than a picture. A picture is full of what you bring to it. I can see God in this picture. I can see everything we are going to be talking about on Wednesday nights in this picture. We could talk for hours about this picture, and you would all come up with things I can’t see here. Others of you could tell stories that would keep us up half the night based on what this picture brings to the surface from your memories. Still others would not see anything very significant here at all… just two people walking and two other people window-shopping. It all depends on what you bring to the picture.

What you bring to the picture is always more than the picture. You bring the sum of your life until now. You bring your experiences and your thoughts in process, and if you remain open and able to learn, you will continually see more in the picture – indeed in any picture – than you thought was there. In this way, what you bring to the picture will always be growing.

The only barrier to this kind of growth is thinking you already know what there is to know about something. I am doomed if I bring to this Bible study what I brought before. If I teach only what I taught last time, I am bringing nothing new to the picture. As long as I realize how little I know, the truth will grow in my experience, even as it stays the same in the Bible.

This is why Wednesday night’s study is so important, and why it’s so important to hear it again and again, because we have been hearing something else, subtly, for as long as we have been alive.

What we’re going to be talking about is not just a Christian thing; it’s a human thing. And it matters not where you are in the scheme of things – whether you are a Christian or not, or whether you’ve been a Christian for a day or for 60 years. You will get something out of this if you don’t know everything already.

The end result, of our time together should be that your life on one level will become much simpler, while on another level it will become much more complicated because of what you will be bringing to the picture that isn’t there now.

What do you bring to this picture? Let’s find out.

Let me reiterate how important it is for you to make plans to join our Wednesday night teleconference Bible Study starting next Wednesday, especially if you have been intrigued by my first three Catches of this New Year. These are the things we delve into much more deeply than possible in a Catch.

For instance, our title is “Transforming the Marketplace,” and let me tell you that each one of you is the key to accomplishing this. You and I are God’s strategy for change in the world. Nothing more; nothing less. It’s not politics. It’s not religion. It’s not organization. It’s not television. It’s not evangelism. It’s not outreach. It’s not marketing. It’s not education. It’s not numbers. It’s not even church (if by church you mean anything other than you and I). It is you. You are it. I am it. We are God’s plan for changing the world. Period.

Now immediately some of you panic. All sorts of excuses crop up in your mind. You’re not ready for this. You’re not mature enough. You have too many questions yourself to try and be the answer to anyone else’s. You are too sinful. You are too shy. The last thing you want to do is go out and corral people for Christ (and on and on…). Here’s the point: none of these things matter. None of these things have anything whatsoever to do with how you are going to or not going to transform the marketplace.

But there’s another way some of you will react to this strategy for changing the world. You’ve heard this before. You are ready to try this again. As soon as you are convinced God’s strategy is you, you will show up with bells on. You are ready to go – hot to trot. Just show me what to do, God, and I’ll do it! Well… that’s not it either, and you are headed for disaster or burn out (or maybe you have already gone through both and that’s why you do not want to have anything more to do with any of this!). Because here’s why: Transforming the marketplace has everything to do with you, and nothing to do with you, and if you don’t know solidly in what way each of these contradicting things are both absolutely true in your life, then you’d better be on the phone with us on Wednesday night even though we don’t start until 10:00 o’clock Eastern. (And if you can’t afford to be on the phone long distance, figure out roughly how much it will cost you to be on the phone one hour a week for 8 weeks, and we will send you a check to cover it. And if you have any other excuse why you want to do this but can’t, let us know and we will figure out a way around it. This is too important to excuse.)

So is this Catch an advertisement? You bet it is. It’s an advertisement for what could most certainly change your life and affect your world. Are we asking for money again? No! This is where we get to give you what your money is worth.

This weekend, think about committing an hour a week on Wednesday nights for 8 weeks, and if you are ready, email Marti and she will send you a free download of our study guide to get you started. It will be like no other study guide you’ve experienced because Marti wrote it and she is right-brain nuts. You will wonder: What are we doing this for? And then you will find out when you get hit between the eyes with something important when you least expect it. But do it now so you can get an early start transforming the marketplace. Write Marti at [email protected] to obtain your study guide or to tell us why you can’t join us so we can see if we can shoot down your reason.

We need to spend some more time on this from yesterday’s Catch: “You and I are the skin around God, but the God part is really God.”

Having God in our lives is not something we dare throw around lightly. This can’t be you and I coming up with something religious and calling it “God.” We use a lot of “God did this,” and “God did that,” in our lives without really knowing for sure what God is up to.

In fact from history, God has had a tendency to show up in unexpected ways. He appeared to Abraham in the form of two strangers and once as Melchizedek, King of Salem, to Elijah in a still, small voice, to Joseph and Mary as an angel, and to the rest of the world as a baby in a manger.

I think I’m trying to say that having God in our lives is a form of invasion. He sets Himself apart from us. He is more likely to manifest Himself in spite of us than because of us.  In 2 Corinthians 4:7, and indeed in the rest of New Covenant passage we have been studying in our teleconference study (“But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us”), the power of God is purposely juxtaposed against our human frailty so that God’s presence and action in our lives will be obvious.

If God is really in my life there has to be an element of danger – at least the presence of the unexpected. “I didn’t do this,” or “I didn’t come up with that.” God likes to be the only explanation.

For this reason, it just might be that God shows up more in our weaknesses than in our strengths, more in bad times than in good, more in hunger than in satisfaction, more in our failures than in our successes.

Or I suppose it could be quite the opposite if we were expecting the worst…

If these last three Catches have peaked your interest, you really need to consider joining our teleconference Bible study next Wednesday. Marti and I will be repeating the New Covenant study we conducted at the close of the year with the assistance of a few leaders who surfaced out of that session. We will give you more details as we go, but you might want to start making your plans now.

So you and I are the skin around God now. We are the kingdom. When Jesus said that the kingdom had come, He was referring to Himself. He had arrived. When He told us to pray, “Thy kingdom come,” He was referring to us. We are the kingdom come. We are the doers of the will of God we are praying for. The Lord’s Prayer isn’t magic. It is really a prayer for us to realize our identity and our calling. We are the skin God is in now.

So far this is at least understandable. We can grasp at it. It’s challenging, far-fetched, humbling, and audacious, but we get it; we just don’t know how to do it. We are praying for something to be done in and through us that we are not sure how to do.

Here’s where this often goes off track. People may correctly realize this but then go out under their own strength and try and be the best version of God they can possibly think of. That can’t be it. There was a name for that when Jesus was here. It’s called: Pharisee.

No… you and I are the skin around God, but the God part is really God. This is the real God in us: not us acting out our idea of Him. And God in us is a risky, scary, audacious, unpredictable proposition. This is precisely why Paul says, “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose” (Philippians 2:12-13).

When you pray, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” you are really praying for God to be God in your life. You don’t know any more about God’s heavenly will than I do, so this is not something necessarily manageable by us. This is asking someone to manage us, and putting ourselves in a place and an attitude where we can be managed.

And finally, it is not us doing nothing, either. That’s the other way this goes off track. We assume that if God is fulfilling His purpose in our lives then we don’t have to do anything, so we become religious slackers. That’s not it either, because Paul started this with “Work out your own salvation…” In other words: Manage your life with the realization that God is managing you. You still have to do it; you are just not alone. You are acting, but you are finding out what God is doing in your life at the same time and it is not always what you think.

Confused? Maybe a little. Predictable? Definitely not. Mysterious? Always. Adventurous? Man, you bet it is!

Remember when 1984 was a fictitious unimaginable milestone? Now it’s just a bad year for pop music. It’s 2012, people! How did this happen? And how are we still here?

We are here, but the world is a very fragile place. There are huge gaps and discrepancies in people’s experiences. The chasm is widening between the haves and the have-nots and those in the middle are stretched to the breakpoint. Honesty, integrity, trust are concepts we remember and still value though we are not sure what they are anymore because getting by any which way seems to have replaced them all. True value is a hardware store.

And yet the kingdom of God has come to earth in the form of a Savior and all of its truths are as relevant today as they were when Christ was born. But they are different than what many purport, especially in America. The kingdom of God is not just a more conservative approach to life and culture.

The kingdom of God is an unseen reality where individuals take their cues from God through the direction of His Holy Spirit. It is a way of seeing, feeling and experiencing everything around you that makes you alert to another reality where love rules, people matter and Jesus saves. It’s simple stuff, really – God, with skin around Him, lived, touched, died and lived again, and nothing has been the same ever since, including 1984 and 2012.

The numbers are irrelevant. The truth has come. For as long as this fragile world spins, the kingdom of God will go forth, reaching, touching, loving, saving. Whatever your day job is, this is the reason for it. This is solid.

You are it. Live it today.

You can’t really expect to get rid of it all in one day. Is Christmas really over just because it’s December the 27th? Then why do I still have a tree lighting up my living room? And why am I snacking right now from a Christmas cake? And why are all the houses in the neighborhood that were glowing two days ago still spreading Christmas cheer?

Because we don’t want it to be over. As it is it all happened too fast. It seems as if I put all this stuff out just yesterday.

So we’re going to have leftover Christmas from now until the New Year, let’s be sure and take along with us all the great things Christmas is known for: a spirit of giving, a childlike attitude of wonder, a mind-set of anticipation, a strong sense of hope, and most of all, the ability to believe

If we’re going to keep Christmas hanging around for a few more days, then we can continue to foster all the good things Christmas represents.

Merry Christmas.