Joy at my Expense

Sam Marcum – Small Groups Pastor, Cornerstone Church

I was very young in my faith when I came to San Francisco from the Midwest on a road trip with some friends from AmeriCorps*NCCC. We arrived with dreams of working in a non-profit environment, with no prospects and nowhere to live. As we headed West, I examined my limited finances and wondered it would be like to live on non-profit wages in a city that has one of the highest costs of living in the nation. AmeriCorps had taught me how to live on a tight budget ($4 per day plus room and board) with a lot of housemates (a 10-person team), so I was optimistic about squeaking by.

I added up rent (thanks, Craigslist), public transportation, food, other necessities, and taxes, and calculated that I would need a job that paid at least $24K per year – $12 an hour. This would cover necessities, and I’d have a whopping $10 per month for fun! Woo hoo!

Soon after I arrived in San Francisco, a friend brought me to Cornerstone. As soon as I walked through the door I felt at home – a sensation I’ve heard many others express since that day. Now that I’d found my church home, I began working on the other items on my to-do list. I started applying for jobs and was pleased to find that most non-profit jobs offered at least $24K per year. My thoughts ran to having a “fun budget” or being able to save a little. My naiveté about the ease of finding a job soon became apparent.

I sent out dozens of resumes and often received no response, although sometimes I got polite rejections. Nobody wanted to jump at the chance to hire a wide-eyed Midwestern boy with little to no experience, so I moved to Plan B: “temping”. I signed up with three temp agencies and landed some administrative work. At one point I interviewed for a job that was offering $40K per year. That would have made for a ridiculous “fun budget”! The interviewers called and informed me I was over-qualified. I didn’t understand what that meant, but it felt better than being under-qualified. Maybe it meant I could earn even more!

Eventually, I interviewed for a great non-profit. I made it through the interview process and found out I was one of two final candidates. Some friends told me the other candidate was a fellow AmeriCorps*NCCC alum with experience and qualifications nearly identical to mine. I prayed that the best candidate (hopefully me) would get the job. I was offered the position and they told me what I’d be making. $12 an hour. $24K per year. My hypothetical budget became my actual budget.

Around this time, I took Cornerstone’s Connection Classes. We discussed tithing, and I started thinking about Malachi 3:10-12 where God invites us to test Him. The pastors taught us that God loves joyful givers (2 Corinthians 9:6-8). I wanted to give joyfully, but it was hard. The logical, practical part of my brain was skeptical, but what I learned in class about God’s faithfulness motivated me. I had a little buffer via savings, so I wrote my first tithe check.

At this point I should probably mention that I was a math major in college, was on the math team in high school, and that I have always excelled at basic arithmetic. I knew that if I gave God one tenth of my income, my budget would not add up.

The next month, I found out about a large bedroom in a shared house for $525 per month – utilities included. This allowed me to be more flexible with my budget. Then my grandmother sent a card with a check that more than covered my tithe. I asked her why, and she said she was thinking of me.

I tithed again the next month. I got a raise at work. I tithed again. My job gave me a bonus – which they had never done before for first-year employees. Each time I gave, the Lord showed His ability to provide beyond logical expectation. That entire year I was able to live, have fun with friends, and save a little.  I learned to give back to God a tenth of what He had given to me, and He blessed me.

I have learned to enjoy giving to the Lord, and seeing how much more He can do with 90% than I could have with 100%.  I can now honestly say that I find great joy at my expense.

Yes, He Really, Really Loves You

Barbara Jimenez – Pastoral Care Team, Cornerstone Church

Sometimes life throws us a curve that can test our core beliefs.  When we find ourselves in challenging situations, it can be hard to trust that God has a plan for us.  I don’t know about you, but there have been moments in my journey with Jesus where I experienced difficulty believing that He really loves me.

In Romans 8:38 the apostle Paul speaks about the depth of God’s unconditional love.  “For I know that nothing can separate us from the love of God [italics added].”  This simple statement encapsulates one of the most amazing spiritual truths.  Just think about it for a minute.  No matter what happened in the past, what you have done, or not done, or what was done to you, God loves you!  Our response to Jesus may be, “I know that.” But deep down inside, do we really believe it?  Do we dare to believe that nothing, absolutely nothing, can separate us from God’s love?

In his book The Gift of Being Yourself, David Brenner writes about the importance of the experience of God’s love for transformation and change: “Neither knowing God nor knowing self can progress very far unless it begins with a knowledge of how deeply we are loved by God…. Genuine transformation requires vulnerability.  It is not the fact of being loved unconditionally that is life changing.  It is the risky experience of allowing myself to be loved unconditionally.”

So how can we move from knowing that God loves us unconditionally to experiencing God’s unconditional love?  We have to risk meeting with God in a place of vulnerability.  Vulnerability means being “susceptible to physical or emotional attack or harm.”  In order to be vulnerable we have to go to the places of pain in our life.  We have to allow ourselves to be honest and real with God.  We cannot force ourselves to feel God’s love and keep emotions such as anger, fear, frustration and sadness to ourselves.  “No,” God says to you and me, “Come as you are. Invite me into your places of sorrow and pain, and I will give you rest. You don’t have to be alone in this challenge. Come, and share with me how you really feel, and we will face it together.”  No matter what the challenges of our life are, let’s invite Jesus into them.  Let’s walk through our difficult life situations with Him at our side rather than alone.

Let us make our home in the reality and truth of God’s word.  You are the one whom Jesus loves.  You are the one who Jesus chose and in whom He delights.  You are precious in His eyes, and honored, and He loves you.  Yes, you!  It is true.  Jesus really, really, really loves you.  You are the beloved daughter, the beloved son of God.

Anthony DeMello said,  “Behold God beholding you…and smiling.”  How cool is that?  Can you imagine it?  Can you see Jesus standing before you, looking at you with a big smile on His face?  Go ahead, close your eyes right now, and give it a try.

Integrity Check

Rusty Rueff
Reposted and updated from the blog – “Purposed worKING“

“I don’t want anyone to think more highly of me than what they can actually see in my life and message.”

The recent removal of Yahoo!’s CEO is a front page news story because once again, we see a senior executive not telling the truth.  And we wonder why we don’t trust CEOs and companies?  I know the process of hiring a senior executive very well and in this case there were many “misses” that could have been easily avoided had everyone from the candidate, the recruiting agency, the internal HR team who may have been working with the Board, to whomever had responsibility for the background check, and of course the Board itself and those leading the search committee, done what they were supposed to. Wow, this story not only shows how a mistake can be magnified, but it also points to the importance of ensuring that integrity is the backbone of the values and principles of a company.  Beyond the “misses”, there was also an issue about the number of days that passed from the time of disclosure to when the Board decided to oust the CEO.  For many, this was just as troubling as the company missing the fact that he had falsified his education credentials.  That there was still some debate over his removal could also be seen as a sign of integrity not being a foundational value of the company. Reflecting upon this incident, we should be reminded that who we say we are and what we do are significantly intertwined and that our words and actions are being closely watched by others.

This is not simply a business case study; it holds true in our own professional and personal lives as well. The apostle Paul tells us that he had real, legitimate, and documented feats to boast about; but in the likeness of Jesus, he chose not to do so and instead wanted to be sure that the congruity between who he said he was and what he did was as flawless as a man could make it. Likewise, there are many moments when have an opportunity to inflate a story, or to embelish our part in the effort, or to position ourselves in a slightly better light than others.  Let’s examine our lives today, performing our own “background check” to make sure that we are aren’t allowing ourselves to think more highly of who we are than what others can see.

Reference: 2 Corinthians 12:6b (New Living Translation)

The Passing of a Mentor

Carlos Jimenez – Pastoral Care Team, Cornerstone Church
Also posted on the blog – “Land’s End”

Chuck Colson passed away on April 21 at the age of 80. He was, as William Bennett recently said, “a man in full”. This is my own small appreciation of his life.

It was the early 1970s and the poster on the left was taped to the wall of my room at college. (Parenthetically, in searching for this image, I saw an original poster for sale on EBay for almost $1,000!) As a freshman I had become eligible for the draft and drawn a very low lottery number (around 30). It was said that anyone with a number less than 50 would be inducted and likely end up in Vietnam (in 1971 there were still over 150,000 troops stationed there). Sure enough, I was called for a pre-induction physical but because I have very flat feet and couldn’t hear high frequency sounds, I was declared 1-H and told that I might be called for another physical in a year. Shortly thereafter, the draft was terminated. Like most of my peers, I was vehemently opposed to the war and to many of President Nixon’s domestic policies. When the Watergate scandal broke in 1972 much of my anger was somehow focused on Chuck Colson, whom I perceived to be the most ruthless of Nixon’s “henchmen” – a characterization shared by many and which he later admitted was fairly accurate (Chuck is pictured above in the second row, second from the right).

I wasn’t alone in greeting the news of his spiritual conversion the next year with great skepticism. From my perspective, it only got worse when he pleaded guilty to the relatively minor charge of obstruction of justice. Nevertheless, I still remember being oddly struck by something he said that day – it was like a hairline crack in the eggshell of my life that would eventually split open. Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, I can share those words with you today: [pleading guilty was] “a price I had to pay to complete the shedding of my old life and to be free to live the new.” Imagine that…going to jail in order to be free, in order to gain a “new” life…and what a life it would be!

Although I never met him, Chuck Colson was one of my mentors because he had a profound influence on my life through his post-conversion speaking and writing. Time and space don’t permit me to expound here, but one thing in particular stands out from all the others. Through the example of his life, Chuck showed me there really is such a thing as redemption and that no one is beyond God’s reach. I also came to realize that God didn’t say to Chuck: “Now that you’ve been redeemed, I want you to become someone else”.

As with the apostle Paul, God wanted and needed a man with Chuck’s particular qualities to do His work (1 Tim. 1:12-17). His life reminded me that I was also created by God to be a certain kind of person and that He wants me to live that life to its fullest – not try to be someone else. Chuck was a hard-nosed Marine, he was a hard-nosed attorney, he was Nixon’s “attack dog”, and he ended up being a hard-nosed guy for God. To be sure, some of his sharp points were filed down over time – but Chuck never stopped being who God made him to be. He was all-in, all the way and while none of us will ever know for sure on this side of eternity – I can see him as someone whom God recently welcomed into heaven with the words “Well done, my good and faithful servant” (Matthew 25:31). As for me, I’m still aspiring.

Lessons I Learned On My Trip to the Dentist – Part 1

Terry Brisbane – Lead Pastor, Cornerstone Church

It began last week when I started to feel pain shooting through my back molar as I applied pressure. I could tell something was wrong, and even though I would have preferred to ignore it, the pain forced me to make an appointment with my dentist. That’s one of the things that pain can do: it can push us into places where we would rather not go because as much as we may want to avoid addressing our problem, the alternative is worse.

In my case, the intense desire to avoid a visit to the dentist was outweighed by an even more intense desire to stop the pain. I can’t help but think that many of us are driven to places of healing and breakthrough for the exact same reason. Sometimes pain can be a gift because it motivates us to address things we might otherwise choose to neglect if it wasn’t for the pain.

My visit to the dentist confirmed that I had a cracked molar, which meant I needed a crown. Suffice to say, I was not overwhelmed with happiness thinking about the shots of Novocain and drilling that I knew would be coming my way. I’d also like to point out that a dentist’s office has a unique, distinct smell all it’s own. It’s hard to describe, but many of you know what I mean. That smell alone can trigger a variety of reactions because most of us associate it with memories that are less than joyful. So as I made the loathsome walk that dreary, drizzling, gray San Francisco day, I knew I had arrived when I was met by that special dental office aroma. Then it was just a matter of waiting for my turn – O the joy! Seriously –  it’s like waiting for your turn at the gallows. Well, maybe I’m exaggerating… I mean, after all, my dentist is someone I’ve known for twenty years. He’s nice and he’s skilled at what he does. I trust him, and yet if it wasn’t for the pain, I wouldn’t have been there.

Again, this illustrates a great spiritual truth. Some of us are driven toward a deeper and healthier life in Christ because our hearts are warmed and we know we should (Psalm 73:28, Jeremiah 20:9, Luke 24:32), but there are other times when the only thing moving us to address certain “cracks” in our walk with Christ is pain: pain from brokenness; pain from shame; pain from deep discouragements; or pain from dissatisfaction with the status quo, which can actually be good for us. Very good for us. I think that’s part of what the apostle Paul was getting at when he talked about thorns in the flesh and suffering (2 Corinthians12:5-10). We can either be defeated by such things or made better because they draw us closer to Christ.

An unpleasant visit to the dentist can be a really good thing if it makes us better!