I used to be an actor. That may surprise you. Truthfully, it kind of surprises me. While studying acting at a small acting studio in Hollywood, I learned a lot about the craft. I learned from my acting coach, I learned from the playwrites I read on a weekly basis, I learned from experience, and I learned from the other actors in my class. But  of all I learned and read, the thing that most shaped my acting and has stuck with me to this day, was a single phrase uttered by my acting coach.  

“Chris, it’s not how you say your lines, it’s why.” 

It was simple, but profound. No matter how hard I worked on how I said the lines, they held no meaning, no value, and no power without discovering why my character was saying them.  

I know how to celebrate Christmas. I have been doing it in virtually the same way for all of my 31 years. But this year, as Christmas quickly approaches, I’m sincerely asking the question, “why?”  

“Chris, it’s now how you celebrate Christmas, it’s why.”  

How we celebrate Christmas is virtually meaningless. It is the why that holds the meaning, value, and power of Christmas. I hope you will join me in focusing with all our hearts on why we celebrate this season.

This could very well be the most important time of our year. Or at least the time of year that is connected to the most important concept of our year. That concept is gratitude. The giving of thanks. The realization of what is good. The perspective shift from what we do not have, to what we do have. From bitterness because of entitlement, to happiness because of contentment. From comparison with others to satisfaction with self.  

Usually when I write this blog, I try to find a story to illuminate my point or I will often share an experience that taught me something I value. This is not that blog. Partly because you don’t need a story or illustration to understand the benefits of thankfulness, and partly because a blog full of the impactful stories I have experienced of someone choosing to be grateful, would take you a very long time to read. 

It’s interesting how elusive we believe God’s will is for our lives, when He simply and eloquently lays it out for us is a short letter at the end of His New Testament in the Bible. In 1 Thessalonians the Apostle Paul tells us what the will of God is.

 Be joyful.  Never stop praying.  Give thanks in all of life’s circumstances.

 It’s no wonder that these holidays often bring peace on earth. For a couple of days each fall and winter, many people find a way to give thanks in all their life’s circumstances. Many people, all at once, choose to do God’s will. And in those moments, there is peace on earth.

 Here’s to thanks giving. Here’s to peace on earth.

 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

Last week at Quest we talked a lot about heaven, but we didn’t say anything about hell. If heaven is a physically, reconstituted earth where people dwell bodily and God restores all of His creation to its intended state then where the hell is hell going to be? Most prominent scholars have concluded that hell is going to be a contained, geographical section on God’s reconstituted earth. While there is some disagreement on the exact location, most scholars locate this future site at what is today: Latitude: 25°50′N to 36°30′N Longitude: 93°31′W to 106°39′W – also known as the great state of Texas. JUST KIDDING!! Texas is awesome!!

 To be frank I’m not really sure what hell is going to look like or much about hell at all, but I do know that there is one major misconception that I believe most of us have when we think about hell. Whenever I see hell depicted in cartoons or paintings there is always this picture of Satan holding a pitchfork with a huge smile on his face telling people what to do. It is almost as if Satan rules hell! But this could not be further from the truth. What the Bible says about hell is that it is not the destination where Satan goes to rule in glory, but it is a place where he goes to suffer – check out Revelation 21:10. This is not something that Satan can negotiate, it’s a done deal and he knows it. Satan has already been sentenced, it’s just a matter of time before he gets what is coming. If you are wondering why Satan keeps messing with people if he knows no matter what he is going to lose – pay careful attention next time someone is getting thrown into the pool with their clothes on and they realize there is no way they are going to stay dry. They don’t mellow out and wait to get dunked, they do everything they can in those last seconds to bring as many people down with them as they can.

 The interesting thing is that if there is any place where one might say “Satan rules”, it would be here on earth. The Bible talks about Satan as a “roaring lion,”“the prince of the air,” and a being who is not to be trifled with. However, even here on earth Satan still does not have the power or the authority to out muscle God. The devil’s only hope is to take advantage of the free will God has given all people and deceive us into thinking that pursuing his kingdom or our own kingdoms is better than pursuing the Kingdom of God. Regardless, the fact remains that hell is not a place where Satan will go to rule and be a total punk for all eternity, rather it is the place that has already been determined for him to go to and receive his due justice.

By Steve Smith

Each year for my roomate’s birthday we throw a party that is, hands down, one of my favorite events of the year. My two roomates and I live in a 3 bedroom house in Sherman Oaks with a big back porch and a decent sized yard. Cory, the roommate who’s birthday we celebrated this weekend, is a member of a blue-grass band called the Dustbowl Cavaliers. And they are GOOD.  Each year for his birthday, the Cavaliers stand out on the  porch for hours playing good ole’, foot stompin’ blue grass. We fire up the grill, throw some logs in the fire pit, and hang out with all our friends while our feet move involuntarily to the sound of the deep South. It is a beautiful thing.

And each year at this party, I find myself transported to another time and place. In the middle of one of the world’s largest cities known for cutting edge technology, style, and entertainment, we’re on my back porch pickin’ and grinnin’, dressed in overalls, and singin’ at the top of our lungs! My friends will even swear that I start talking with a thick Texas accent.  To which I respond, “sounds a bit like heaven, don’t it?”

This same phenomenon happens when I’m with you, The Quest community. Seriously! When I hear your voices singing in worship, your laughter with each other, your encouragement of a friend, and your reading of the scriptures, I’m transported to another place. A place that sounds like Heaven.

This week at Quest Wednesday Night, Steve will be talking about the Kingdom of Heaven. And I think you’ll find that it is sometimes found right here – in this crazy city, on our back porches, and in Evans Chapel where we have Quest.

Matthew 16:27 says this with reference to the end of the world: “For the Son of Man (Jesus) is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what he has done.” It goes on to say “…this will take place on December 20, 2012…so go see the movie!!” Just kidding…it doesn’t say that. This is just one example of a number of verses in the New Testament that, on first reading, seem to imply that God will give people rewards in heaven.

What the heck? Does this mean that some people will get bigger clouds in heaven and that there will be a hierarchy of those who earned more “bliss” than others? What is even more troubling is that the Bible also talks about “grace” – meaning that even our best attempts at righteousness are like “dirty rags” to God. In other words our actions cannot and do not merit us any special favors  (i.e. rewards)with God.  So what gives?

While there are a number of perspectives on the issue of how these two opposing ideas can fit, here is one that makes sense to me. When the Bible talks about rewards in heaven it only does so when it is talking about the day Christ returns to earth. What this could mean is that the “rewards” people will receive will be the satisfaction of knowing that their lives and their actions were well spent doing things with everlasting significance as opposed to people who reflect back on their lives and realize how meaningless and empty all of their efforts were.

Of course the Bible does not say exactly what these rewards are. However, if this theory is right and the reward Jesus is talking about is the satisfaction of knowing that my life was spent doing things that matter as opposed to things that vanish like steam off a turd it makes me stop and seriously think about where I am investing my energy and if the things that I am spending all my time on are ultimately “rewarding” or not.  

By Steve Smith

If you ever want to see adults turn into children, just take them to a fire station. 

This morning, all the staff at Bel Air Pres went down the street to the local fire station to host breakfast for the firemen stationed there. It was our way of showing our appreciation for them and the hard work they do to keep us safe up on this fire-prone hill. 

As soon as the station captain offered us the opportunity to look around the station, grown women and men were crawling all over the big red fire trucks and in and out of the station doors like 5 year olds. And I was one of them. 

After me and my 5 year old brain climbed off the cherry-red fire engine, I struck up a conversation with the youngest fireman there; Aaron. As we talked about his young career as a fireman, I asked him how firemen choose where they get to work. He said, “Most guys want to be in the busiest stations. They try to go where the action is. Nobody wants to be sitting around twiddling their thumbs. We’ve been trained to fight fires, and we want to get some action out there.” 

Go ahead and call me super-spiritual, but as I got an understanding of the fireman’s mentality, I couldn’t help but think about out lives as Christians. As Christians, do we want to be where the action is?  Are we ready to go to the most dangerous places, to help those with the most immediate and desperate need, to answer the call of something greater than ourselves? And are we creating times of rest for ourselves between these times of “action” so that we are re-charged and ready for God’s next call?

 As I continue to grow in this Christian life, I hope to “grow up” to be a fireman. I hope to be somebody that when the alarm goes off in somebody else’s life, or when God says “go”, that like the fireman I met today, I will be anxious to go where the action is.

 Isaiah 6:8

What can our imaginations do to enrich our faith and spirituality? 

One education expert says that there are eight facets in learning styles: community, presentation, experience, reflection, individual, discussion, study, and confrontation.  It seems interesting to me when I look at those eight learning approaches, they are all focused on helping individuals to process and think creatively by themselves and to grow further through their learning experience. 

Peter Senge, a leading organizational theorist at MIT says that the excellent companies are ones that keep learning and adjusting to changing world as a whole organization which consists of individuals that keep learning and generate themselves creatively.  Either individually or organizationally, it is not the ones who cling to conventional answers but it is those who keep learning, processing and thinking creatively by themselves that keep growing and make unique contributions.

The same can be said of our faith and spirituality.  One theologian uses Shakespeare as a metaphor, “we are not here to repeat a drama Shakespeare had written, but we are to write our own new chapter following Shakespeare’s drama.”

How do we learn the Bible?  Do we keep learning the Bible in a way to foster our theological imaginations and generate creative stories in our own living?  Or do we read the Bible and just input some principles and applies to our lives without inquiry or creativity?   If true learning takes place not by memorizing, but by inquiring questions and thinking creatively by ourselves, it means that we come to understand and grow in the Bible when we engage the Bible in the same way.  What impact can it make as we keep learning the Bible with theological imagination and live creatively!  We are invited to create another chapter of God’s redemptive story.

By Ryo Goto

A few months ago I watched a movie called “Taken”. The actor Liam Neeson plays a man whose daughter is kidnapped while travelling in Europe. Neeson’s character, Bryan Mills, then goes on a one-man hunt for her captors and in true Hollywood fashion, single-handedly catches and destroys all the bad guys. This theme has been repeated hundreds of times in Hollywood movies.  Bruce Willis has starred in 12 or 15 versions of “Die Hard” with a very similar plot line. And while these movies are quite violent, Hollywood knows that we love them and will go see them because of one simple fact. As human beings, we want things to be RIGHT. We want JUSTICE to win out. That’s why in movies like “Taken”, we want so badly for the good guys to win! Mills represents the regular guy trying to make things right. And somewhere, in us, is that normal guy or girl who desperately wants this world to be better; unbroken; fair; peaceful; good; right. 

While watching “Taken”, I cheered louder than usual for the good guy to win. Instead of chasing a tyrannical mad man with a foreign accent and a penchant for blowing up the world (like the typical villain in every “Die Hard” or “James Bond” movie), Mills chased men who operated a sex trade and human trafficking operation. And they had caputred his daughter to make her one of their slaves.

Is there anything viler than this? Are there any people more evil? The sad thing (and the great thing) about this film, is that it sheds light on something that happens every day in our world. EVERY DAY THERE ARE MILLIONS (THAT’S MILLIONS!) OF HELPLESS WOMEN AND CHILDREN WHO ARE FORCED BY EVIL MEN AND WOMEN TO PERFORM SEX ACTS WITH STRANGERS. REPEATEDLY. EVERY DAY. 

Yesterday at Bel Air Pres, a real life version the character in “Taken” spoke at our Sunday services. His name is Gary Haugen. Gary is the President and CEO of International Justice Mission. As you may already know, IJM is a remarkable agency. With 16 offices around the world, IJM employs lawyers, criminal investigators, and social workers in various countries to work with local, state, and national authorities to bring freedom to the victims, and justice to the perpetrators, of slavery and sexual exploitation. 

In short, Gary and IJM are the real world version of Bryan Mills in “Taken.”  They are regular guys and girls trying to make the world a better place. And when you meet Gary, or hear about the mission of IJM, you will cheer loudly for them because their work is real, it is powerful, and it is making the world right. 

To get involved, visit www.IJM.org 

To hear Gary’s message from Sunday, visit http://www.belairpres.org/default.aspx?page=500226 and click on “Outreach” 

To find out what inspires Gary and his colleagues to make the world right and to get a taste of God’s plan for dealing with injustice in this world, look in your Bible at Micah 6:8, Isaiah 1:17, Matthew 5:14-16, Matthew 23.23.

In my mind one of the scariest aspects about God is that He honors our decisions. As a baby I can remember having very little freedom to make wrong decisions (okay so I don’t remember it, per se, but go with me on this one…). No sooner had I thought “Oh look, a busy street! I’d better investigate” or “yummy, I wonder what this giant spider tastes like” than one of my parents would swoop down to save me from my own poor decisions. As I got older my parents intervened less and less and my decisions got dumber and dumber. I can still remember the night my potato gun landed me in the back of police car while my best friends were interrogated by an unbelievably foul-mouthed fireman. Lesson learned, no more spud guns! Now that I am an adult I am fully aware that, except on rare occasions, no one is going to intervene in my life to keep me from making stupid decisions. That is why I do the best I can to make good life choices because I know my choices have a real, lasting effect on my life.

But surely this is not the case with God! God doesn’t let His kids do stupid stuff – He swoops in to save the day like a parent does for a…baby. Doesn’t He?  When I read Matthew 8:18-22, which talks about how difficult and costly it is to follow Jesus, I immediately think to myself “…so what if I don’t? What if rather than taking the difficult path and following Jesus I grab my spud gun and head out on the town? Or, what if rather than following Jesus I play it safe – focus on my personal achievements, get a high paying job, go to the best grad school, and do what works for me.  I mean if it were THAT big of a deal God would stop me, right? He wouldn’t let me miss out on anything too awesome, would He?” While it freaks me out to admit it, I find that God is much more prone to treat us like adults and honor our decisions than treat us like babies and keep us from making any bad choices. God is always willing to guide and direct our decisions if we are willing to hear from Him, and sometimes He does intervene in dramatic ways to try and save us from ourselves, but more often than not God does not steer our lives like a Divine Driver’s Ed teacher with a steering wheel in the passenger’s seat. Rather, He waits for us to pull over and ask Him to drive – or rushes to the scene of the accident to help us mend our wounds. I think for God it is better to have real, adult relationships with His children (even if it means allowing for bad decisions) than treating His beloved like babies and keeping them from making any independent decisions.

Looking back to Matthew 8:18-22 what makes me twinge a little bit is that making the decision to not follow the difficult road that Jesus often calls us to is not going to result in an immediate crash. Chances are we can go most if not all of our lives enjoying worldly success, following our parent’s plan for our lives or our own plan for our lives and not realize what we are missing out on. Then someday when we are older and wiser or when we meet God face to face we reflect back on parts of our lives and think CRAP! why didn’t I live dangerously for Jesus?!!? Why didn’t I follow His difficult path, it would have been so much better!!  The terrifying fact of the matter is that God honors our decisions, even the bad ones. He is not going to stop us from playing it safe, from living for worldly standards, from following our own plans for our lives. Of course, God is also not going to stop us from choosing to live with reckless abandon for Him and to choose His way even when it seems more difficult. What God offers us is genuine relationship and the promise to guide our lives if we seek Him and to pick up the pieces when we don’t. What we offer God is an individual with free choice that says, Lord I CHOOSE to follow you in this – I CHOOSE to trust you – I CHOOSE to believe that Your way is the best way for me, and You will use this difficult path I walk to bring glory to Your name and bring Your kingdom to earth.

By Steve

You know what used to annoy me?  The people who walk down my street, pulling a loudly rattling grocery cart full of bottles, and dig through my trash cans for recyclables. 

It was now Saturday night, and I sat at a sidewalk table in Studio City enjoying some fro-yo and an interesting Rob Bell book. For those of us who feel the extreme societal pressure to be busy with cool people in cool places on Saturday nights, this was, by all accounts, lame. But for me, it was just what I needed; a quiet ending to a quiet day. 

As I finished up another chapter, something out of the corner of my eye caught my attention. I turned to find a short man, meagerly dressed, digging through a trash can 15 feet from where I sat. Much like the people who make their way down my street on trash day, I paid him little notice…at first.   

As I closed my book and rose to leave, I noticed a glass bottle on the ground near my seat. And the thought went through my mind; “I bet that guy could use this glass bottle.” So, I caught his eye, and pointed to the bottle. He nodded “thank you” and then went back to digging. Then I thought, “Chris (that’s what I call myself), don’t just point at the bottle. Take it over to him; just like you take something to someone who does not dig through trash.” So I picked up the bottle and handed it to him. 

And it may sound cheesy, but in that moment, I felt the pure joy of helping another human being.  An act so little. So simple. And so meaningful. 

Then, I spotted a aluminum coke can on the sidewalk. I picked it up too and walked over to his car, full of bags of recyclables, and handed him the can. He had a scruffy face, sad eyes, and the posture of someone who has had a rough go of it. He smiled.

He smiled, took the can, and said “ah…these are like gold.” 

Soon, I found myself also digging through trash cans for more pieces of “gold”. Something I have never done before. And, I’m sad to say, for someone I would have never helped before. 

The truth is, that man and I are not that different. I too am looking for “gold”. I’m looking for things of value to make my life better. And just because my “gold” comes in the form of a weekly pay-check, I think I’m better than him…and the people who pull grocery carts down my street. 

But on that quiet Saturday night, God patiently reminded me that we’re all the same. And God loves all of us the same. And God has chosen to show His love to us by acting through us. He has chosen us to help others find the “gold” in this life. 

I saw the lady with the loud cart come down my street again this morning. And I was not annoyed. 

Galatians 3:28     Romans 12:3, 9-13     1 Peter 1:3-9

Thank you Jesus. Thank you that you change me, even the greatest of sinners. Teach me to love even more.