Notes from the Northland

What You Can Do in the Storm that Rages in Spite of You

2012-01-03T16:33:00.003-06:00

Paul and Larry and I loved to hit the road to Nags Head when the hurricanes were landing. We were college students, single guys, with cars, and time, and more dollars than sense. Nags Head, on North Carolina's Outer Banks, was only a short drive from Norfolk, VA, maybe as far as Duluth from Grand Marais. We'd hear of an impending landfall and off we went, road tripping to meet the storm.

There is only one bridge to and from the barrier islands where Nags Head and Kitty Hawk are located. The sheriff's department usually turned both lanes into one way to the mainland as the storms came in, and closed the bridge entirely once the storm arrived. We had to get to the beach, do our gawking, and leave while the bridge was still open. If we waited too long, we'd be stuck on the island in a hurricane with no where to go.

It was worth the risk back then. There is something incredible and frightening about an advancing hurricane. You can see and feel the power in the wind, the surf, the clouds, the rain. You can see it, feel it, taste it, hear it, and smell it, but you cannot, not even in the least, control it. A storm is something that happens in spite of you. You can run and hide, but you cannot stop its onslaught nor divert its arrival.

Once, Jesus was in a boat with his disciples on the Sea of Galilee when one of the infamous gales that spring up suddenly and violently on that inland ocean overtook their skiff. The fishermen in the group fully realized the danger they were in. The boat was in danger of capsizing as wave after wave crashed over the gunwhales, the wind relentless in its assault. They were helpless before the power of the storm. It raged in spite of them and in spite of their Passenger.

The men baled. They did what they could. Finally, they went to Jesus, who had been sleeping the entire time in the stern of the boat. "Teacher!" they cried, "Do you not care that we are perishing?" They were terrified and more than a little desperate. Jesus woke up, rebuked the wind and said to the sea, "Peace! Be still." And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm.

Storms blow in spite of us. Life can take ugly turns and suddenly the winds of adversity or trouble overtake us, and there is nothing we can do. Well . . . almost nothing we can do. If you are facing a storm in your life today, you can do what Jesus' companions did. First, you can realize the storm is bigger than you and stop wasting time and energy on paltry efforts that might make you feel better but aren't going to save you.

Second, you can humbly concede that there are some situations that are beyond your control and require a power greater than you possess. Third, you can turn to Christ in faith, even desperate faith, because you know if anyone can save you, he can. Then, tell him what you need. Expect him to do something. Count on the fact that he loves you and because he loves you will act inyour life for the greatest good. You don't have to be calm, just be trusting.

The disciples saw Jesus still the storm, not because they attempted to save themselves, but because they turned to him and asked for his help. They experienced God's peace because they came to the right state of heart to ask Him for it.

Are you in a storm? Trouble raging in spite of you? Not much you can do to make it better? God waits to pronounce his peace in your life. Just turn to him in faith and ask.

That's the Good News.

Something More

2011-12-06T10:33:00.000-06:00

It should mean something to us that we belong to Christ. It should mean something more that the life we labor to live in devotion and obedience to him. It should mean something about who he is more than what we attempt to be, no matter how noble or faithful the reason for our efforts. Jesus, God's beloved Son and our beloved Savior should mean more than just a reason to try harder.

How might we arrive at this "something more"? First, we must put forth faith in the Lord Jesus revealed by the Spirit in the word of God. He is who he says he is, and this we must see with the eyes of faith, else we will only see what we allow him to be. If we gaze upon Christ with only the eyes of duty and obedience we may see only a taskmaster worthy of our efforts, a Master to be served but not a Savior to be loved.

If we look upon him with only the eyes of grace, we may see an equal friend worthy of our consideration but not necessarily of our loyalty. If, though, we consider Jesus with the eyes of faith, we will see the promise-making, promise-keeping Savior, the King of kings and the Lord of lords who, in love and mercy, sacrificed himself to make the least of these like unto the greatest, most Beloved of all.

Second, we must surrender to the Spirit of God who alone makes known to us the deep things of God. That which is spiritual makes no sense to the unspiritual man until the Holy Spirit illumines the mind and turn the Light of God upon the spirit of a man. All is darkness in a room before someone knowledgeable flips the switch on the wall. Darkness is the natural phenomenon until light sheds its grace.

We must set before the Holy Spirit all our "I don't knows" and "I don't get its" and allow him to fulfill his role as Teacher and Guide. If we resist him, spurn the methods and tools he uses; if we quench the Spirit, we turn out the light and there is nothing left for us but the blackness and bleakness of spiritual ignorance.

How hard it seems for the people of this time to be students. Each wants to be his own teacher, master of his own thinking. Mary's earnest position at the feet of Jesus remains empty while many take the role of Martha, preferring not to listen but to make demands, telling Jesus what to do and defining for him what role he ought to have in their lives.

How might we arrive at this "something more" we already have in Christ? We must set aside our arrogant self-indulgence and learn to listen with all our heart. We must let Christ set the terms of our relationship with him. Love is the better thing, from him and for us. He will not abandon love to satisfy us with some lesser thing. He will have us come to treasure Love best of all. Love with him is the best thing and he will not suffer us to lose love to lesser things.

Finally, like Sir Hilary attaining the summit of Everest, we must press on, in faith, in surrender, in learning, and in love, for Christ is the prize of perseverance and most worthy of the climb.

"Will it be easy, this climb to Christ?" It will not. The mountain to be climbed is Calvary and at the top a cross and none may pass but through it.

"Will it be fraught with obstacles and peril?" It most certainly will. There more who would have you fail than would support your success. But there is One who overcomes them all, who both waits for you and walks with you.

"Shall I be discouraged, fearful, anxious?" At times, but as well there will be exhilaration, adventure, insight, and accomplishment which fill the soul with purpose and overflow in praise.

"But will it, in the end, be worth it, this attaining 'something more,' this gaining Christ?" Eternal life in the presence of the Glory who created us and redeemed us for indescribable joy testifies it is so . . . very . . . worth it!

Do not falter today or turn aside to lesser pursuits that attain no more than the temporary and fading pleasures connected to this world. Just beyond that dark and threatening ridge, just a mile further down the winding and wearisome road lies a city whose builder and maker is God.

We are almost home to the city of Something More, our eternal habitation. We are almost home where Christ is the all-satisfying answer to every question. We are almost home, dear saint, where the shadows of doubt lurk no longer in the silent recesses of the heart and mind and spirit, for the Son is the sun of that city and nothing is hidden from his sight. We are almost home, almost home to that place where secret sin no longer hobbles us, where fear no longer frightens us, where guilt no longer plagues us, where pride no longer burdens us, where comparisons among men fade forever in the incomparable glory of the One Who sits upon the throne and of the Lamb.Take heart, my brother. Be of good courage, my sister. For "he who endures to the end will be saved." It is only a little farther. We are almost home.

The final means of gaining this "something more" is looking ahead, watching where you're walking, and heading where you actually want to go. If you want to go to Target, don't drive to Walmart. If you want more of Jesus, don't bury yourself in Asimov. Take the appropriate action for the outcome, for, in the end, you will arrive exactly where you were headed. Only if action and intention coincide will destination and expectation meet.

In the infinite, inexhaustible God, there is always something more to be known and experienced. He invites us to spend our life energy exploring our desire for him and his glorious availability to us. Put forth faith, surrender to the Spirit, learn of love, press, look ahead. Gain your heart's something more in Christ alone.

Second Sunday in Advent:: Finding Peace with God

2011-12-04T09:45:00.000-06:00

Scripture Focus (GOSPEL)        Matthew 10:34-39
“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

Message    Advent: Finding Peace with God

Does it seem odd to you that the Prince of Peace himself would declare from his own lips that peace on earth is not his purpose? Does it seem kind of weird that instead of resolving the conflicts people have with one another, Jesus seems intent on making them worse, creating conflict in the most basic and precious of relationships? On this second Sunday of Advent, when our hearts turn to the cry for peace, it is important we understand the reality of the truth Jesus proclaims in these words.

People long for peace. Conflict is hard. Conflict is costly. It takes great emotional and spiritual energy to fight against God, against other people, against circumstances, and even against our own conscience and will. Deep within us we know that we were made for peace. We know that we were created for rest in the goodness of our sovereign and trustworthy God. We know that our lives are meant to radiate his perfections. But we struggle against His purpose for us, demanding for ourselves the glory that belongs to God. We want to be our own gods, determine our own paths, set our own goals, fulfill our own desires. We have no delight in the righteousness and holiness of God. We have all sinned and fall short of the glory of God. We hear “peace, peace,” but we know there is no peace. We long for peace.

At first glance, the answer Jesus provides here to our cry for peace seems somewhat disappointing, at the very least. Jesus appears to say that peace is not his mission. But, consider this, in the synagogue in Nazareth, Jesus reads the passage from Isaiah 61:1-4. Find the passage in Luke 4:16-21.

And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read.    And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”     And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
At that very moment, Jesus tells them, everything they looked forward to in regard to the Messiah they longed for was sitting right in front of them. He himself was the One who would deliver them, set them free, bless them, redeem them, and bring them peace.

Now, along with these verses, consider also the words of Jesus to his disciples in the hours just before he is betrayed and taken away to be crucified: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid." (John 14:27).

How then can Jesus say he did not come to bring peace on the earth? I believe what Jesus means for us to understand is this: the peace he brings to those who commit themselves to him will be rejected by others creating a spiritual division between those who surrender their lives to him and those who do not. Following Jesus as Savior and Lord may cost you your most precious relationships, but only those who are willing to pay the price are worthy of the peace Jesus brings. Following Jesus will always require a trip to the cross where we lay down our lives to him just as he laid down his life for us.

The faith to count the cost and trust Jesus with our lives is the path to real peace. Jesus calls us to a singular love for him above anyone and anything else in this world. He is quite clear about this. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.

Many Christians today live with Jesus as simply one of many loves. They are as committed to him as they are to their own self-preservation, or their own families, or their own futures. Few throw themselves upon the Savior as the love of their life for whom they would do anything, even lay down their lives. But wholehearted, single-hearted love for Jesus is the way of peace, so it is no wonder so many today have found a religion in Christ but have not found a true and lasting peace.

Think with me, for a moment, about Jesus, through whom we do in fact find peace with God. Jesus fulfilled every requirement of God’s covenant with man. There is no longer a reason to fear God as the just Judge, for Christ’s obedience and God’s choice to accept Jesus’ death on the cross fully satisfy all the demands of the law. We are free by faith to engage with God on the basis of love, not fear. And where there is no fear, peace reigns. Peace is possible for everyone who puts their faith in Jesus.

Through Jesus Christ, the just wrath of God against us is removed. Through Jesus Christ, the mercy of God is applied. Through Jesus, the forgiveness of God is offered. Through Jesus, the way to God is opened. Through Jesus, peace with God is gained.

But peace with God only comes through Jesus. If we do not come to God through faith in Christ, then we must come bearing our own sin and shame and guilt and stand before God as rebels who have much to fear in the light of eternal justice. Finding peace with God means finding faith in Jesus Christ alone and loving him above all other loves.

And how do we come to faith and love for Jesus? Through repentance. Through acknowledging and confessing to God our rejection of him and turning to him for forgiveness and the ability to live in loving accord with him. We find peace by baring our hearts to God and asking him in faith to make us new and keep us new as we live in obedience to his commands.

The second candle is the peace candle. It beckons us to come to Jesus, not because we will necessarily find our peace with everyone else, but because in him we will find our peace with God. And only when we are at peace with God can we be at peace with ourselves, with others, and with the lives we live in a world hostile to true peace.

Sometimes, God removes his peace from us in order to create a deeper sense of dependence on him. Sometimes, the believer’s peace is interrupted by the effects of living in a fallen world (illness, etc). Sometimes, we permit our attention to be turned away from God and engrossed in our trials. Sometimes, we forget that the faith to which peace is promised is a working faith that expresses itself in good works. Sometimes, and I believe more often than not, peace flees because of sin, and most often that sin is loving something or someone more than Jesus. We know that Jesus is not in the position of Lord and Savior and Love that he deserves to be in our hearts and our confidence before him is undermined, our trust in him is sabotaged, our reliance on him is abandoned, and we are left on our own to stand against the world.

The way to peace is through the cross to the Christ. Wherever you are today, whatever your heart condition, the invitation of Advent is to prepare your heart for peace, to find your peace with God through new or renewed faith in Jesus Christ.

God loves you. He has made the path to peace crystal clear. Jesus has come. Jesus is coming. Come to Jesus. Find your peace with God.

Love One Another (Part 3) John 15:9-17

2011-10-08T15:07:00.000-05:00

Love One Another (Part 3)
John 15:9-17

The question of love IS a question of specific, quantifiable activities that actively and accurately express an internal commitment to radiate the character of God toward other people. But this love, this love with which Jesus loves, before it can be adequately or accurately portrayed in action, must be experienced as condition. Before we can do love, we must have love.

Before we can love one another as Christ loves us, the moral and spiritual character of God must be instilled in us as it was in him. If we attempt to follow the command to love without accepting the invitation to be filled with God’s love, we risk becoming merely another generation of Christian Pharisees, following the letter of the command without the heart or spirit of the One who issues the command.

Jesus warned the Pharisees of his day, acknowledging their commitment to doing what they were told, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. (Matthew 23:23) When Jesus answered the man’s question about what is the greatest commandment, he defined the “weightier matters of the law” again. Love was what the Pharisees left undone. They followed the letter and left the love out. Unless we gain Christ’s own character, his own heart, we may well become men and women who speak the words of Christ but lack the substance of Christ; who do the works of Christ, but lack the Spirit of Christ; who follow the command of Christ but lack the love of Christ; men and women described by the apostle Paul as having a “form of godliness, but lacking the power thereof.” [2 Tim. 3:5]

The command to love as Jesus loves is more than a command to action. It is a command to become, a command to spiritual formation, a command to BE, in spiritual character and physical action, like Jesus.

Now, practical-oriented people, when they encounter the requirements of spiritual formation, of becoming like Jesus, often want a grocery list of specific actions. They think to themselves, “I don’t really need all this spiritual, theological stuff. Just tell me what I have to do.” Be concrete. Be practical. Speak to my hands, not my spirit.

Let me remind the practical-oriented folks among us of two important truths. First, when God created human beings, he created them for what they would be, not for what they would do. Read the creation account in Genesis 1. Pay special attention to Genesis 1:26-27. Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

Human beings are created in the image of God. Before they are sent to multiply and fill the earth they are created to BE the physical and spiritual representation of the moral character and spiritual nature of God. They were not created to be God, but to be God’s personal portrait in the physical world. In our persons and in the relationship as male and female, we were created to give all the created order an accurate picture of who God is by being like him.

If we do the things God does, but we do them without manifesting God’s true character in our character, then we actually represent our selves and not God. Only when external action flows from internal godliness can we fulfill our purpose as those who bear the image of God. The condition of our hearts, our spiritual conformity to the moral nature of God is absolutely essential to validate the things we do. We’ve got to get the heart right first so that what we do, we do out of the right heart.

The second important truth we need to remember is this: God redeems and re-creates human beings first and foremost to be conformed to the image of His Son. (Romans 8:29 For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.) Hebrews 1:3 reveals the Jesus “is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature.” He perfectly fulfils the purpose for which human beings were created by God. When we are born again, when the gospel of Jesus Christ comes to us and we are enabled to believe unto salvation by the Holy Spirit through faith, God makes us a new creation which is to be like Jesus. The man Jesus Christ bore the image of God, redeemed men and women are to bear the image of Christ. That means, believers, that experiencing the moral and spiritual nature of Christ must be as high a priority in our lives as doing the mercy and compassion and righteous work of Christ.

Practical-folks, being like Jesus is no less important than doing like Jesus. Being like Jesus requires that we be filled with the Spirit of Jesus who, according to God’s word, is responsible for spreading abroad the love of Christ in our hearts.

Are you prepared to be filled with the Holy Spirit? Are you ready to let God have full, complete, unhindered control of your heart, your life? Are you prepared for God to make you into what you are not yet, conformed to the image of his Son?

When the Holy Spirit comes, he will not merely make room for Jesus in your life, he will take over your life for Jesus. When the Holy Spirit comes, Christ will not be just one of several guiding influences in your decision making and value system, he will be the decision maker and THE guide. When the Holy Spirit comes, you will no longer belong to yourself, but to God, who purchased you with the blood of his Son. When the Holy Spirit comes, you will want Jesus more than life itself.

When the Holy Spirit comes pride falls, jealousy fades, hatred ceases, arrogance ends, selfishness dies, greed grovels, immorality withers, anger wilts. When the Holy Spirit comes, love will be your priority, joy will be your reward, peace will be your outreach, patience will be your clock, kindness will be your response, goodness will be your character, faith will be your agenda, gentleness will be your manner, and self-control will be your witness.

God is prepared to fill you with his Spirit. Are you prepared to be filled with the Spirit? When the Holy Spirit comes, you will be endued with power and you will be witnesses of Jesus to the uttermost ends of the earth. When the Holy Spirit comes he will convict the world of sin, and righteousness and judgment. When the Holy Spirit comes he will teach you all you need to know and remind you of everything Jesus said. When the Holy Spirit comes he will be your comforter and your counselor. When the Holy Spirit comes, he will turn the world upside down through you. Are you prepared to be filled with the Holy Spirit?

Some of you are prepared, but many of you are not. The disciples were not prepared. To them Jesus gave these instructions: “Stay where you are and actively wait for God’s promise.” Get together with God and stay there until he pours out his blessing. Pray, fast, seek, ask, and when he has prepared you, receive. If you are to fulfill the command of Christ, then you must be filled with the Spirit of Christ. Practically-oriented people, are you prepared to be filled with the Spirit?

And let me speak this morning to the spiritually-oriented people as well. Spiritually-oriented people often just want to be left alone. They think to themselves, “I am tired of being told what to do. I have Jesus in my heart. I’ve been saved. I have a relationship with God. That’s all I need. I’m spiritually aware and theologically sound. I pray. I read my Bible. I know Jesus and that’s enough. I love people in my heart, now enough with this ‘to do’ list stuff.”

Let me remind the spiritually-oriented folks among us of two important truths. First, you were created to do good works. The Spirit reveals through the apostle Paul that Christians, true followers of Jesus, are “God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Eph. 2:10). The apostle writes to those who are “created in Christ Jesus.” He writes to those who have Jesus in their hearts. He writes to the saved, to the people of faith, to the spiritually aware and theologically sound, to those who glory in the Spirit and word of God. (Come on, spiritually-oriented people, you know you want to put your name in that verse!) The Spirit writes to those who have been worked on by God and instructs them to got to work on God’s “to do list!”

God has a list. Did you see that? We were created in Christ, redeemed by his blood, saved by his grace, transformed by his love, given a new heart and a new spirit, made a new creation to do the good works which God “prepared in advance for us to do.” “Prepared in advance.” God has a list. Spiritually-oriented folks, God actively works in the world to spread his glory and advance his kingdom. He created you to participate, to be in the world but not of the world, so you could actively, through daily engagement, spread his glory and advance his kingdom.

Now, please listen, spiritual-oriented people, if you fail to do the good works for which God has saved you, recreated you, you fail as well to actively and accurately bear his image in the world. God’s love for people is practical and personal. He cares for both the spiritual AND the physical condition of these people for whom he sent his Son to die! Jesus fed. Jesus healed. Jesus wept. Jesus touched. Jesus gave. Jesus died. Jesus loved. Wounded, hurting, lost people loved by God abound. There is more than enough work to do. There is work for you.

The second truth I need to set before the spiritually-oriented folks is this: knowledge of God leads to godliness and true godliness leads to good works. Read Paul’s letter to Titus, please. He opens the letter by telling us his whole purpose in ministry is to assist God’s people in gaining the knowledge of God that leads to godliness. Godliness is the spiritual condition of heart and life whereby we are conformed to the likeness of Jesus. He summarizes the teaching in the letter with these instructions: (Titus 3:8) "The saying is trustworthy, and I want you to insist on these things, so that those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works. These things are excellent and profitable for people." Then he concludes the letter saying, “And let our people learn to devote themselves to good works, so as to help cases of urgent need, and not be unfruitful” (Titus 3:14).

Godly people do good works. Godly people engage in lives that reflect God’s moral character and his active concern for others. Godly people don’t avoid the “to do list.” Filled with the Spirit they are empowered and enabled and motivated to accomplish God’s “to do” list.

Spiritually-oriented folks, being like Jesus means doing what Jesus does for the reasons Jesus does them. Being like Jesus means doing like Jesus. And doing what Jesus does requires that we be filled with the Spirit of Jesus who, according to God’s word, is responsible for spreading abroad the love of Christ in our hearts and drawing that love out of our hearts.

Are you prepared to be filled with the Spirit? Are you ready to let God have full, complete, unhindered control of your heart, your life? Are you prepared for God to send you into the world to manifest the very heart and life of Jesus among spiritually dead and blind people whose greatest need at the moment is to see Jesus with their own eyes by seeing him in you?

When the Holy Spirit comes, he will bestow spiritual gifts, divine enablements, so that you can serve him according to his will. When the Holy Spirit comes, he will thrust you into the life of the church and the life of people to manifest the power and grace of God. When the Holy Spirit comes, worship and service will be all one glorious, purposeful activity. When the Holy Spirit comes, Jesus will fill the vistas of your desire and your life’s purpose will be bound up in him. When the Holy Spirit comes, you will think of Christ first and yourself last. When the Holy Spirit comes, all that God loves will be your love. When the Holy Spirit comes, nothing will matter more than Jesus. When the Holy Spirit comes you will take up your cross daily, deny yourself, and follow Jesus.

God is prepared to fill you with his Spirit. Are you prepared to be filled with the Spirit? When the Holy Spirit comes, you will be endued with power and you will be witnesses of Jesus to the uttermost ends of the earth. When the Holy Spirit comes he will convict the world of sin, and righteousness and judgment. When the Holy Spirit comes he will teach you all you need to know and remind you of everything Jesus said. When the Holy Spirit comes he will be your comforter and your counselor. When the Holy Spirit comes, he will turn the world upside down through you. Are you prepared to be filled with the Holy Spirit?

Jesus commanded his followers to love one another as he has loved us. Practically-oriented people will want to make sure their hearts and spirits are right before God, that they are aligned with him and conformed to the image of his Son, in order to fulfil this commandment properly. Spiritually-oriented people will want to take specific action toward the people around them in order to fulfil this command properly. Each will want to be filled with the Holy Spirit, filled with Christ as they set out to keep the command.

But let me ask, is there a risk? Is there a risk in just shrugging all this off and treating it as just more Sunday morning words? Is there a risk to not examining our heart condition or not engaging in God’s good works? I’ll close this morning with two passages of Scripture, both from the lips of Jesus himself, one for the practical people and one for the spiritual people.

The first is found in Matthew chapter seven in Jesus’ sermon on the mount. He says, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’ On the day we stand before God, it will not matter what we have done in Jesus’ name. It will only matter that we have borne Jesus’ name. It is not what you’ve done, but who you know, more so, who knows you. Make sure that relationship is in place.

The second passage is also found in the gospel of Matthew, chapter 25, verses 31-46: “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’

Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’

“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?’ Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

Ultimately, the risk of ignoring God’s messages can be eternal. God is here today. His Spirit is among us, speaking to us about the condition of our hearts, our spirits, our lives. I know what he is saying to me. You know what he is saying to you.

Perhaps God is calling you out of sin and selfishness into a new relationship with him. Perhaps he is pressing you to surrender your all to him and be filled with his Spirit. Perhaps he is laying some person or some need upon your heart to which he would have you lay your hands. Whatever God is saying, now is the time to respond. Now is the time to say “yes” with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. Now is the time to say “yes” to God with all your yesterdays, today, and all your tomorrows. “Now,” is the appointed time. Today is the day. Say “yes” to God.

Love One Another (Part 2)

2011-10-02T09:25:00.003-05:00

Love One Another (Part 2)
John 15:9-17

Jesus gave his disciples a specific command, and told them that if they loved him they would keep his commandments. He added to the authority of the command the requirement of relationship. Their obedience is more than a fulfilment of obligation, a duty performed. Their obedience is an expression of their own heart for Jesus himself (just as their disobedience would be an expression of their true heart toward Jesus.) If they truly loved him, their love for him would show in their love for one another. If they did not truly love him, it would show in their disdain for one another.

This is the commandment that Jesus gave to his followers then. It is the commandment that comes through the eternal word to His followers today: “That you love one another as I have loved you.” (John 5:12)

We have begun to identify three broad categories into which Jesus’ own acts of love fall into place. Jesus loved incarnationally. He was and remains the embodiment of God’s love, love both for God’s glory and the people God creates. When a man came to Jesus and asked him what is the greatest commandment, Jesus responded by saying, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.” He continued by pointing out the second greatest commandment, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Jesus embodies these two love commands. Every act and every attitude toward God and the people around him expresses the love within him. He loves the Lord with all his heart, mind, soul, and strength; he loves his neighbor as himself.

We know that because Jesus was raised from the dead that he perfectly fulfilled every command of God upon men without failure or flaw. We know then, by virtue of his resurrection, that Jesus is the perfect embodiment of love for God and love for one another. Jesus loves incarnationally and commands his followers, the Body of Christ in the world, to love incarnationally as well, to embody in our lives, individually and corporately the love of God for God’s glory and the love of God for God’s people.

We also identified that the only way we can love incarnationally, as Jesus loves, is to be born again and filled with the Holy Spirit. We cannot be filled with the Holy Spirit until we are genuinely born again, and we cannot genuinely love incarnationally until we are filled with the Holy Spirit.

The first and greatest fruit of the Spirit, the true evidence of being filled with the Holy Spirit is love, love for Christ and love for one another. Paul listed the fruit of the Spirit for us in Galations 5:22-23, “But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.” In the middle of his discussion on spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 12, 13, and 14 Paul points to this fruit of the Spirit as the greatest priority in the entire discussion, suggesting that the condition of our heart in the Spirit is of greater priority than the work of our hands in the Spirit. He writes, “So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love. Pursue love” (1 Corinthians 13:13-14:1).

Within the context of Paul’s teaching on spiritual gifts and Christian life and community he essentially says, above all, be filled with the Spirit from whom you gain the ability to love, for, “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. (1 Cor. 13:1-3) Without love, we are nothing. Love is the condition of faith and the command we follow, but unless we are filled with the Holy Spirit we cannot love as Jesus loved.

But let’s take a step back here and ask an important question. What is this love that we are talking about? Is Jesus commanding us to have a specific and consistent emotional response to the people around us? Is he asking us to feel about everyone the way we feel toward our beloved spouse or our precious children? Is Jesus saying that in order to follow and obey him we must have a warm, fuzzy feeling about all the other Christians we may encounter? Is Jesus commanding us to take a specifically prescribed action toward every other Christian we encounter? Are we being asked to treat the people around us in a “cookie cutter” fashion, doing the same thing for everyone as though love has only one single strategy we are to continually and consistently apply? Is love an emotional response or a prescribed action?

Before I give you a “yes” or “no” answer to that question, let me suggest this: Love, as Jesus loves, is a condition of the heart that influences the emotions and directs the will toward seeking the greatest good for those who are the objects of love.

Emotions serve an important purpose. Created within us by God himself, emotions provide the context in which we respond from the world within us to the world around us. Emotions are about us. They are personal. They are self-derived. They are self-focused. They give a means of self-expression for self-experience. They are created by God to be self-centered so that we have a way of interpreting and coping with our life experiences.

When we talk about love as an emotion, we are often talking about the feelings of joy, security, pleasure, encouragement, meaning that we derive from someone or something else. It is possible that taking seriously Jesus’s command to love one another will result in some pleasant responses from within ourselves to the people with whom we develop these relationships, but it is also possible that our investment of love in other people will reap sorrow, pain, anxiety, fear, or some other unpleasant emotional response to our experience. While we will undoubtedly experience some emotional response as we love one another, I do not believe Jesus is primarily commanding us to seek an emotional response for ourselves when he command us to love one another. I believe he is commanding us to obtain from him, through faith and the Holy Spirit, a condition of the heart that influences our emotions AND directs our will toward seeking the greatest food for those who are the objects of love.

Love as Jesus loves, may be accompanied by a pleasant emotional response or it may not. When Jesus, dying on the cross, looks upon those whom he loves and who have demanded his death and nailed him to a cross, he says, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” Whatever Jesus’ emotions may be at that moment, he makes a choice. He expresses an act of will. He chooses what is the greatest good for them regardless of what it costs him or what he may or may not feel in that moment. That is the way Jesus loves. The condition of his heart is love and he brings his emotions and his will into conformity with love and does that which is best for those he loves. He gives his life for them. And as he said, “No greater love has any man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”

Love as Jesus loves is a condition of the born again, Spirit-filled heart that influences the emotions and directs the will toward seeking the greatest good for those who are the objects of love.

Now, since love seeks the greatest good for those who are the objects of love, let’s nail down two ideas. One, Jesus commands that fellow believers be the objects of our love. There are other instructions, commands and life examples that apply to non-believers, but this command is to Jesus’ disciples that they are to love one another. The followers of Jesus focus their love under this command on the other followers of Jesus they encounter in their lives.

Take a moment and look around you. While Jesus does require us to think and act globally in our discipling mission, he commands us to love locally, to love one another, to practice compassion for the world by expressing genuine, incarnational love for the Christians in our lives. Love one another.

The second idea we need to get a hold of is this: the greatest good for any person at any time, but especially for believers, is a genuine, vital relationship with God through faith in Jesus Christ. Love one another means helping one another to have the clearest, purest, holiest, most Christ-centered, Spirit-filled love for God through a relationship with Christ that we can possibly have in this world. God is the greatest good there is. A relationship with God in which he is rightly cherished, adored, honored, respected, obeyed, loved is the greatest good to which we can possible lead one another.

We may need at times to provide resources to one another, point out sin to one another, extend forgiveness to one another, practice discipline of one another, offer comfort to one another, teach truth to one another, but whatever specific action we take, we must be guided by a commitment to seek the greatest good for those who are the objects, the recipients of our love.

The command to love one another as Christ has loved us is a command to do everything necessary, within the power of the Holy Spirit, to help one another know and love God, even if it costs us our life. Love aims for the greatest good in the life of the beloved, so Jesus says, “Love one another as I have loved you.” He loved us with his life for God’s sake.

Now, if you truly love Jesus, love one another.

By Request: Sunday's Sermon

2011-05-02T12:26:00.000-05:00

Several folks asked me to post yesterday's sermon (5/1/2011). Each has interest in it for a different reason. Here it is in its entirety:

Got Jesus? Moving from Religion to Relationship
Mark 1:1-14; Matthew 24:1-4

Religion can be a very good thing. Religion, often marked by special ritual and traditional routine, provides a means of expressing one’s thoughts and understanding of the eternal. Ritual offers tangible connections with intangible realities. Tradition and routine can bring real comfort in chaotic times. But when practicing religion becomes a substitute for a personal relationship with God, religion becomes a problem. Religion should open a pathway to God, but when we let it become a fortress in which we hide from God, then change is called for.

If religion has become our hiding place, if religion has simply become a set of constants that lull us into spiritual complacency, then when the day of persecution or adversity comes, our fortress will fall. Our hiding place will be overwhelmed.

Religion becomes a hiding place when we use ritual and routine to avoid God. For instance, some people trust that their weekly attendance at worship services is all the attention they need to pay God. They spend little time in prayer, little time studying and reflecting on God’s word, little time putting into practice the few tidbits of spiritual food that falls by their heart’s table.

Other people count on a long history of attachment to a theology to carry them on their spiritual journey. They believe as long as they generally conduct themselves as “Baptists,” for instance, their duty to faith and obedience is fulfilled. For them, they need not look for any pertinent word from God today, because they have what they have always had, and what their fathers before them had, and that, surely, is enough.

Others for whom religion has become a hiding place, sing the songs, and make the offerings, and do the ministries. They are publically redolent in their faith, but personally, privately, their hearts are filled with doubt and fear. They live just hoping that if somehow they present the right face and do the right things, that someday God will be happy with them, maybe . . . perhaps . . . but they’re not sure.

Still others use religion to mask anger, jealousy, rage, despair. They hide the darkness of their hearts in the light of grace, never actually letting grace into their lives, else they would have nothing left of their old selves to hold on to. Religion is not a pathway to peace, but a prison for the soul, where the sinful nature is whitewashed and pretty, but down deep they are tombs of death full of dead men’s bones.

For the deepening of true, life-giving faith today and for victory over death, and sin, and the devil tomorrow, we must, each of us must, all of us must move from mere religion to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Otherwise, what will happen when ritual fails? What will we do when routine falters? Christians, we must move from mere religion to personal relationship with God through Spirit-inaugurated faith in and wholehearted devotion to Jesus Christ!

The Bible demands of us that we “examine ourselves to see whether we are in the faith.” Again, the imperative directed to us implores, “Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall” (1Co 10:12, ESV). And again, Paul directs us, “Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” (Php 2:12, ESV). Each of these directives can be understood in the larger context of the New Testament as a provocation from God to be continually on the move from mere religion to a vital, authentic, biblical relationship with God through Christ.

The question we face, then, is an eternally important one. If we answer it wrongly, we will simply build more layers of religion that will insulate us even further from the relationship God plans for us. The question is, “How? How do I move from religion to relationship, especially when I think my religion is my relationship? How do I engage in an authentic relationship with Jesus when all along I’ve thought that the traditions, and rituals, and routines, and theologies were supposed to accomplish exactly that?”

That question is the question the Gospel of Mark sets out to answer. Probably written by John Mark shortly after the death of the apostle Peter at the hands of the Romans in 64 or 65 AD, this gospel paints a clear picture of Jesus for the Christians in Rome who will themselves soon face severe persecution under the emperor Nero. Mark purposes to show the church how to stand in faith under the most severe pressure to recant, to give up, to give in. The message of this gospel is simple: know this Jesus, the Son of God, and you will face persecution, even death, just as He did, with grace, truth, and in the power of the Holy Spirit.

We’re going to spend some time here in the Gospel of Mark. We are going to share Mark’s purpose: to know Jesus in order to leave mere religion behind (as the Pharisees should have) and enter into a relationship with the Son of God that will change our lives, and through us, call the whole world to Him (as did the disciples of Jesus’ day, and all those wholehearted disciples since.)

It may well be that the church in America stands on the eve of a wave of persecution such as it has never experienced before. The church throughout the world, as they have given themselves without reservation in faith to Jesus, has suffered. The global church that knows Jesus the way he intends to be known, knows suffering. They have come to know him and love him even more deeply in and through their sufferings. And there is much evidence that suggests the church in America will share in these sufferings in the days ahead. Believe me when I tell you, life cannot, and will not continue as it has, with the world quietly assimilating the church and the church quietly acquiescing to the world. The Bible promises a day when God himself will “purify the sons of Levi.” Paul reminds us that Christ is active in the world today preparing a Bride for himself, “without spot or wrinkle.” That Bride is the church, and that church will be pure and holy and blameless.

Kate Middleton may have chosen to wear white on her wedding day, but after ten years of living with William it is unlikely she deserved to wear white. However, God will work in the church and when Christ takes his Bride she will deserve to wear the white robes of righteousness in which he will dress her for eternity. How will this purification take place? Jesus explained it to his disciples in Matthew 24.

[READ MATTHEW 24:1-14]

Jesus taught his disciples about the “signs of [his] coming and the end of the age.” He speaks to them of false Messiahs, of wars and rumors of wars, of nation and kingdom rising up against nation and kingdom, of famines and earthquakes in various places. Let your mind think of the civil unrest in the Middle East, the increasing frequency of earthquakes around the globe, the famines, both physical and spiritual, that plague the peoples of the world. All these things we can document today, even as happening within the last few months. But Jesus said of these things, they are just the beginning of the birth pains. They are just the onset of labor, the twinges that capture your attention and let you know something momentous is on its way. He goes on to tell of conditions when full labor sets in.

Brothers and sisters, persecution of Christians characterizes full labor. Jesus tells his disciples they will be delivered up to tribulation and put to death. He warns them they will be hated by all nations for his name’s sake. Let me tell you, friends, mere religion will not be adequate in the day when persecution breaks out against the church! Jesus said, “At that time many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another.” We ought to gasp for breath at this teaching! Jesus shows us that persecution will not only arise outside the church. It will also burst out within the church.

Even today people sit in churches with other people they hate. Their hearts are filled with bitterness and rage, which Jesus said is the same as murder. People name the name of Christ, but hold grudges against their brothers and sisters in the Lord. One day, the hatred that today boils silently beneath the surface will burst out. One day, unforgiveness will bring forth its offspring: jealousy, accusation, persecution, and death. Like the huge volcano that exists beneath Yellowstone, or the mother of all earthquakes that will send California tumbling into the ocean, resentment and bitterness foment in the heart waiting for the day of their release. And that day will come. Listen, what we are in hearts, what we are when no one is looking but God, that’s what we truly are. Jesus said, “Out of the heart come the things that defile a man.” If the heart is bad, so is the man. Fresh water does not flow from a salt water spring.

Merely religious people, people who have lived the routine and practiced the ritual will suddenly turn on one another like ravenous wolves on a weak, old moose. Betrayal rather than loyalty, and hatred rather than love will devastate the church. Many false prophets will arise to attempt to justify themselves in their error with error. And many who have practiced religion but neglected their relationship will be led astray.

Now listen. This is Jesus talking. He’s talking to his disciples. He’s talking to those he loves and those who genuinely love him back. He is teaching them. He is preparing them and preparing us for what is coming. Christ demonstrated his love for us on the cross, but he also expressed his love for us by teaching us what we needed to know to love him and stand in him in the day when faith is challenged to the core.

He says to us that in that day, as it already is in our day, lawlessness will increase. This doesn’t mean criminals will multiply. It doesn’t mean we will have more murderers, more rapists, more thieves, more drug addicts, even though that may be an outcome of lawlessness. What Jesus means is that people will increasingly jettison God’s moral law as a personal and social guideline. Neither the public court nor the private heart will have room for God’s commandments. Lawlessness means people will increasingly deny and reject God’s claim on their lives. And because of this increasing lawlessness, the love of many will grow cold. Listen now! Jesus is speaking of the love of many in the church! Many who have laid claim to Jesus and professed faith will prove to have been merely practicing religion. They will be revealed as nothing more than modern day Pharisees having a form of religion but lacking the power thereof. These same people will abandon God and His word. The love they will have seemed to have had will fade away and their true hearts will be revealed.

Ritual will fail. Routine will falter. Mere religion will flounder. And what then?

Jesus says, “The one who endures to the end will be saved.” The one for whom faith is not mere religion but a true relationship will be rescued, delivered, saved in and through these persecutions. How? How will Christ’s disciples be saved? The Gospel of Mark tells us: through the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. At the end of the parallel passage in Mark’s gospel he states the purpose of the entire book: “Everyone will hate you because of me, but those who stand firm to the end will be saved.” Stand firm. Stand firm in Jesus. Stand firm in this one whom you know in your heart and soul by faith. Stand firm in him on whom you have staked your life because he gave his life for you. Stand firm in this one, the knowledge of whom will give you the will and the heart to stand.

Several years ago an ad campaign burst on the scene that had an amazingly effective outreach. You’ve very likely seen the ads featuring prominent sports, movie, and television stars wearing a while milk mustache and asking the question, “Got milk?” The ads, created by Goodby, Silverstein and Partners, first began running October 24, 1993. Today the creators of that ad claim it has 90% awareness in the US. That means nine out of 10 Americans will think of their ad if you walk up to them and say, “Got milk?”

Do you know what I mean if I pose the question to you, “Got Jesus?” Do you know and have a personal relationship with this Jesus, whom Mark introduces in the opening paragraphs of his gospel as the Son of God who is greater than the greatest prophet. Jesus offers a baptism greater than even the baptism of John, which was wildly accepted? Jesus bestows God the Holy Spirit. Jesus brings God from heavenly theory to personal experience.

Do you really, truly have a relationship with the One whom God Himself claimed as His beloved Son at his baptism? Imagine, God Himself declares Jesus to be his own beloved Son, and you can know him, love him, be led by him, and through the working of the Spirit, become like him.

Are you in love this morning with this man from God, who faced temptation at the hands of Satan himself and was sustained in the aftermath of the challenge by angels from heaven? Temptation comes from both the outside and the inside and is the ever present potential to disregard God and take our lives into our own hands. Jesus faced temptation from Satan himself. And Jesus won. Jesus remained faithful, so completely faithful that wild animals didn’t eat him and angels took care of him.

Honestly, where are you this morning? Wrapped up in a religion or deep in a relationship?

Have you repented and been baptized with God’s Holy Spirit? Have you believed and accepted with all your heart that God’s beloved Son is your beloved Savior? Do you face the temptations that come from outside you and inside you through the power you gain from your deep love of Jesus? Do you have a mere religion that concedes these things are needy, but not for you, or do you have that relationship with this Jesus that would never let an unrepentant heart, or lovelessness, or lawlessness come between you and Jesus?

The Lord has indicated that for some of you, this may be the last opportunity you will have to respond to the message of repentance. For years you’ve hidden behind a screen of dishonesty and pretense regarding the true condition of your soul. You’ve claimed a relationship, but in truth you have little more than a self-centered religion. Your heart has longed for more, but like Pilate who crucified Jesus, you’ve been guided more by pride in your reputation than any real urgency to do right by Jesus. The word for you today is a final mercy before judgment comes.

Repent. Let nothing keep you from accepting God’s new life in Christ. Confess your sins. Turn from your self-centered religion and Spirit-quenching ways. Acknowledge Jesus as your Lord and Savior once and for all. Receive the Holy Spirit on His terms. Now is the appointed time. Today is the day of salvation. There is no other sacrifice for you than the one Jesus made on the cross. No amount of good works done under false pretense will save you from the wrath of God that is coming on the children of obedience. No language of the Spirit will save the heart that turns from Jesus to follow its own way. God knows what you have claimed to be and God knows what you truly are.

He will separate the sheep from the goats according to his knowledge, not of their deeds, but of their hearts. Their religion will not stand when God compares its eternal value against a faithful relationship to His Son. Some of you are trusting in a broken reed, and God says it will pierce your hand unless you repent. Though you have done good things, if there is no true relationship, he will say to you, “Depart from me, you workers of iniquity. I never knew you.”

Some of you in this very room know God’s Spirit is speaking these very words to you, and you are building resistance in your heart against them. You want to reject the word because Dale McIntire is speaking it. I urge you, do not. The messenger is nothing. The message is everything. You want to reject this good word this morning because you do not trust Cornerstone to surround you, and love you, and support you. I urge you, do not reject this word from God. Even if Cornerstone Community Church fails you, God will not fail you. The Spirit will not fail you. You want to dismiss this word because you will have to rewrite your reputation in your family, among your friends, and out in the community. No one knows the struggle you’ve endured. You don’t want them to know. I urge you, do not dismiss the Spirit and the call that echo in your soul today. The peoples of this world need nothing so much as to see the real transforming, forgiving, life-giving grace God offers those who will turn over their hearts, their secret loves and lives to him.

You have every reason to repent today and no real reason to resist. Yield to God’s Spirit as He calls to you and invites you to relinquish your religion and take up a new relationship with Jesus. Yield to mercy. Yield to grace. Before the invitation is withdrawn, before God closes the book, before the opportunity passes, repent and turn to Christ with all your heart.

God loves you so much and wants this relationship with you, this relationship that makes sense of and gives substance to true religion. In his mercy he sent His Son, Jesus, to take on himself the punishment for sin so that his judgment would be no obstacle to this relationship. By his grace, he sends his Spirit to woo and invite us, to entreat us and empower us to respond to God’s desire for a covenant with us. He declares in his word, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” If we will but take our loving and holy God at his word, he will work on behalf of His Son to change our lives, to forgive our sins and wipe away our debt, to set us on the right track in a right relationship with him where Christ is our exalted head and God is our goal.

Have you “Got Jesus?” this morning, truly? Is God’s grace a living reality in your heart? Do you have his hope, his peace, his joy, or are you striving day after day to produce a replica, a copy, a fake? His love is here. God is here. Take the step today and move by faith from religion to relationship.

You Can Only Do What You Can Do

2011-03-10T11:48:00.000-06:00

John the Baptist came preaching and baptizing. Dressed in camel hair and leather and eating gross desert stuff he must have cut quite a figure. Mark tells us that the "whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were flocking to him." Guess he caused quite a commotion in his day.

The people to whom John preached confessed their sins and were baptized by John in the Jordan River. Imagine, the whole countryside and the entire population of the capital city experiencing spiritual revival and a God-wrought change of heart. Nothing like that had happened since the whale belched up Jonah at the doorstep of Nineveh.

But here's John, preaching a baptism of repentance. Here's John, dressed like a desert hermit calling people to identify, acknowledge and turn away from their sins and commit through baptism to living a new life, and everybody's buying in. Here's John not letting folks get away with anonymous conversion but making a public event of evangelism, and people are responding. Here's John, preaching, baptizing, doing what he can for the kingdom.

But here's John recognizing that for all the success he appears to be having in ministry, he can only do what he can do. He says to his audience, "Someone more powerful than I will come after me. I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the strap of his sandals. I have baptized you with water, but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit." John recognizes God has given him some spiritual power, but it's nothing compared to what the One will bring. John acknowledges God has given grace for repentance but there is yet more, more that John cannot give. More than what John's preaching can initiate. More than baptism with physical water can accomplish. Here's John telling the people, "You can only do what you can do."

Today, you can act in faith. You can preach the gospel. You can enjoy a measure of success, but in reality, you can only do what you can do. The real glory, the real Spirit comes not from the hands of men but from the heart of God. We can baptize with water, but only Jesus can baptize with the Holy Spirit, God Himself in the heart and lives of believers. We can minister to the outside, but only Jesus can minister to the inside.

And we need to be okay with this arrangement. "I am not worthy to stoop down and untie His shoes," John said. He felt no need to compete with Jesus. He felt no need to exalt himself. He needed only to prepare the people for the coming of Jesus. It was Jesus, not John, who would give them the Promise of the Father, the Holy Spirit, so it was Jesus, not John, to whom John pointed the people.

I think the challenge will often be contentment. I think the obstacle will often be stepping back and taking the approach that John took to his dying day: "He must increase and I must decrease." You know what? Like John, you can only do what you can do, but the glorious truth is that as we live and act in faith, God will do what only He can do both in our lives and in the lives of others. And that is the foundation of our contentedness, that God will do what only God can do.

So Lord, let my heart be at rest in the labors to which you've called me, knowing that I can only do what I can do, but as I live and minister faithfully and obediently, You will do what only You can do, pour out the Holy Spirit for Your glory and for our joy. Let me give up both the straining and the guilt that come with taking up more responsibility than is rightfully mine. And let my life be marked by John's attitude: "Increase, increase, increase, O Lord, while I decrease."

Old Blog, New Blog

2011-03-04T11:35:00.000-06:00

Blogs come and go as bloggers' and readers' needs change. Notes from the Northland is headed for a slight change. Instead of blogging the results of my reading and thinking and praying, I'd like to try blogging the process. I'm reading and praying through the book of Mark. The very nature of pastoral ministry, the administrative and leadership demands, seems to inevitably draw my heart and attention away from Jesus and on to the needs, actual and perceived, that surround all of us. In and of itself, being sensitive and available to the needs of others is not a bad thing, but right now, having just turned 50, facing the needs of aging parents and dispersed family, attempting to be meaningfully present in the lives of a church and a community, right now, I miss Jesus. I miss the time spent with him, just thinking about the immensity and purity of his person, the glory of his purpose, and the love of his intention. I miss being around him and experiencing the overflow of his heart into my worldview and my hope. I find myself often just sitting and longing to be with Jesus.

So that's what I'm going to do here. I'm going to just sit and be with Jesus, and, Lord willing, I'm going to do it "out loud," so if you want to, you can come and sit here with us and enjoy him too. I'll record my thoughts, my prayers (some of them), the struggles of life that I so much want Jesus to enter into with the eternally adequate wisdom he offers. But in the end, my desire is that Notes from the Northland will not be about me, or about you, but about Jesus.

This morning I was sitting in Rooster's Coffee and Cafe in Arab, Alabama (where my wife's parents live). I've been trying to lay out a preaching schedule through the book of Mark for this summer. I opened my Bible (the one with half the book of Revelation and all the concordance falling out) and realized I'd skipped the final event in chapter five. A man, the ruler of the local synagogue, comes to Jesus with a request that Jesus come and minister to his twelve year old daughter who is deathly ill. On the way Jesus is pressed by the mob. A woman reached out in faith and was healed of a disease she's suffered with for twelve years. Jesus stopped to minister to her soul and her position in the community, and there are so many lessons in grace, and compassion, and mercy to be gained from their interaction. But while he was ministering life to this woman, news came that the young girl they were headed to see had died.

That's where my thoughts picked up this morning. People come from the synagogue leaders house. They say to him, "Your daughter is dead. Why bother the Teacher any further?" I have so been there, haven't you. I haven't lost a daughter, but I have seen a long time dream die before my very eyes. I have seen hopes dashed. I have seen confidence and security terminated. You have too, haven't you? Some of our most precious things, dearest to our hearts, come to an end and are taken from us unexpectedly. And what advice do we hear? "Let it go. Move on. Get over it." Without realizing it these advisers diminish the value of our dreams AND the value of Jesus and his love for us and the things that are precious to us.

Jesus, however, gloriously, does not support these worldly advisers. He says, "Do not fear, only believe." At the end of our dreams, in that moment when hope teeters at the edge of the abyss, Jesus offers himself as our eternal hope. "Do not fear, only believe." Loss makes us afraid. Loss makes us aware that death lurks in the shadows and nothing we hold in this world can bear the passage with us. Loss makes us afraid not only of its coming, but of its repeated return. So Jesus says, "Do not fear." Why? Why, "do not fear?" Because he is permanent, unchanging, eternal. He won't get lost and he won't lose those who trust and believe in him. In Jesus loss no longer threatens, for what is gained through faith cannot be lost. So he says to fear-filled us, "Do not fear, only believe."

I think it is reasonable to ask, "Believe what?" It is a question to which Jesus responds, "You believe in God, believe also in me." Believe in Jesus' love. Believe in his good intent. Believe in his plan. Believe in his power. Believe in him and let your hope be in him. Believe not merely in what Jesus can do, as you might believe a trip to Walmart will stock the pantry shelves, but believe in him, the Savior, the Son of God, very God in human flesh full of grace and truth and fully committed both to revealing God the Father to us and drawing us through that revelation into the Father who loves us and sent his Son to die for us.

"Do not fear, only believe," and keep walking in faith. Jesus spoke the words to a man who had just received the most life jarring news a father can receive. I see that scene in my mind. To my heart's eyes Jesus lays his hand upon the man's shoulder and looks deep into the eyes now brimming with tears. The pressure of his hand urges the man homeward. The look from his eyes steadies the man's heart.

They arrive at the ruler's house where Jesus finds a crowd of people and great commotion, people "weeping and wailing loudly." You just have to love the audacity of Jesus that is born out of his relationship with the Father. "Why are you making a commotion and weeping? The child is not dead but sleeping." Stop a minute and consider what Jesus has just done. Jesus enters a room and describes the reality not as perceived and experienced by the gathered crowd, but from the wise, thoughtful and loving perspective of heaven. These people know death. They've seen it, experienced it, suffered from it, and survived it, but no one's come back from it. They know death. Jesus knows life.

The people laughed at him when he said the girl was sleeping, but they weren't laughing when that little girl emerged from her room sound and well a little while later sound and well. How wise we would be if we would just let Jesus describe our realities from his perspective rather than assuming that whatever we perceive is final. We see death. He sees rest. We see hopelessness. He sees opportunity. We see defeat. He sees victory. We see things as we think they are. He sees things as they really are. We perceive through limited experience. He understands through infinite wisdom. We see things that are not as though they cannot be. He sees things that are not as though they are. Why then do we laugh when Jesus challenges our perception of our life experience? Why do we put forth no faith when he offers great grace? Why do we assume we must "bury our dead" when he appoints us to life?

Do you think you cannot have hope? Why? Do you think that conditions and situations cannot change? Why? Have you discerned Jesus' perception? Do you know the Father's mind? Do not say, "Well, this is how things always are," because Jesus may very well respond, "Do not fear, only believe."

Today there are several situations in my life under which I have written the caption, "I don't know." I don't know what to do. I don't understand the real nature of some circumstances. I don't know how to respond, or if the responses I imagine are appropriate or not. I race around in my mind trying to conceive every contingency and I arrive time and again at the starting point under the banner, "I don't know." Jesus, I need you to describe the reality of my situation for me, because I am not confident that I see clearly. Please help me know. Please help me fear not and believe.Take ahold of my distress, and brokenness, and fear, and concern, and ignorance, and selfishness, and let Your resurrection power flow into them.

Jesus offers resurrection power which flows from God through him. He took the little girl by the hand and spoke the sovereignty of God into her life. "Little girl, I say to you, arise." I expect he had to speak definitively to her or else every little girl that ever died would have come forth at the power and authority of his word! In fact, had he simply said, "Arise!" (which he will one day) every person that ever lived would have answered the call!

In this instance, though Jesus calls one little girl back to life, he demonstrates the power and the love that brings forth hope and life and dreams that have died in me and in you but still have the potential to to serve his purposes and bring him glory. The girl's parents, and the disciples who were there, were "immediately overcome with amazement." When was the last time you were amazed with Jesus? I want to be amazed with him. I do not want to be one of those pragmatic people who dismiss him as someone who should not be bothered with my deepest hurt or greatest need. I don't want to reject him as unable to understand my current heart experience. I want to be amazed because my heart and life are open to him and he proves himself amazing. I want to be amazed with Jesus every day, not because he constantly has to prove me wrong, but because he proves himself so loving and willing to one whose life is a constant battle to "fear not and believe"

What Makes You Pray?

2011-02-09T10:53:00.000-06:00

The fiery furnace and the lion's den were yesterday's news when Daniel found a precious answer to a heart wrenching question. The question was one many of us have asked at one point or another, perhaps in a moment of weakness or hopelessness or discouragement or despair. It is the question of slaves who know no kindness; exiles who know no future; champions who know no end. "How long, O LORD, how long?"

Reading through the books he had with him, Daniel found within the writings of the prophet Jeremiah the number of years that "must pass before the end of the desolations of Jerusalem, namely seventy years." God set a limit to the exile! God set parameters on punishment! God circumscribed the circumstances! The events that propelled Daniel and the people of Israel from their native home to once again dwell as aliens and strangers in a foreign land had quantifiable limits set by the hand and heart of the Almighty Himself!

Daniel 9:3 records Daniel's response to this revelation, "Then I turned my face to the Lord God, seeking him by prayer and pleas for mercy with fasting and sackcloth and ashes. I prayed to the Lord my God . . . ." It was not the situation of his times but the revelation of his God that drove Daniel to prayer. Daniel prayed because he understood from his reading of God's word that God is merciful, that the judgment the Lord declared for Israel was not permanent, nor without compassion. It was necessary and it was bounded, limited by God, and thus revealed God's merciful inclination toward his beloved people. Daniel interceded for himself and his people not because of the desperate nature of their circumstances but because of the gracious nature of their God!

Daniel turned to God's word. What he found in God's word led him to turn to God. He did not begin to pray on the basis of the situation at hand. He turned to God's word as a response to the situation. He turned to God in response to the word.

The point here is this: how often do we pray and intercede for ourselves, our church, our community, our country, or our world based on our perception of the need rather than our perception of the One who meets our need? Do we seek mercy because we perceive we need mercy, or do we seek mercy because we perceive God is merciful? Do we seek peace because we are restless and anxious or do we seek peace because God is omniscient and omnipotent? Do we pray because of who we are and what we need, or because of who God is and what he desires? Is God both the source of our prayer and it's answer as well?

Your situation and circumstance is not irrelevant to God, but He is more relevant to you than your situation. Let the environment and events of your life lead you to find God in his word, then let the revelation you find of him lead you to pray.

What's Your Context?

2011-01-31T13:55:00.000-06:00

We've been focusing on Jesus' seven letters to the church in Asia Minor in this sermon series. I've found it interesting how the Spirit has led me to approach each letter and each sermon differently. I had originally thought I would apply the same structural considerations to each letter and use the structure to make it easier to understand the point of each letter, and the point of all the letters together. But that is not how it has worked out.

Yesterday, for example, we looked at Revelation 3:1-6, the letter to the church at Sardis. I had already entitled the message, "The Church That REVIVES From Sleep." Yet, in the message itself, I did little to describe either the condition of the church at Sardis or its application to the church of our day. I found myself simply assuming the application and building the sermon around a response to Christ's letter by a sleeping church willing to be roused by the warning of a loving Savior. Sleeping people, after all, don't need to know they're asleep. They need an alarm to wake them up.

I sat down at the coffee shop a little while ago to read over the next letter, the letter to the church at Philadelphia. It wasn't peaceful and quiet there this morning, and I did wind up in a very providential and beneficial discussion with another community leader, but before my attention turned elsewhere the Spirit raised a question with me. In each of the letters Jesus reveals something personal about his nature as God that both gives him the right to demand something of the church to whom he is writing and to provide a basis for an appropriate response from them. The One who "walks among the seven golden lampstands" tells the church at Ephesus to return to their first love or face having their lampstand permanently removed. This same One is the One "who died and came to life" and encourages the Christians at Thyatira to remain faithful even though their faithfulness may cost them their lives.

Each letter begins with a revelation of Jesus and that revelation provides the context for what Jesus asks of the church. The churches response to their individual environments and to Christ himself is set in the context of who Jesus is himself. They are to determine their values and responses in this world based not on their personal preferences or experiences, but upon the Person of Jesus Christ, his experiences and his sovereign preferences.

So that led me to ask, "What other contextual clues do we use to determine our values and responses when Christ is not our context?" I believe it is a fair and necessary question because Jesus is writing to churches who in one form or another have either abandoned him as their context for life or are in danger of doing so. And I believe that churches today, and Christians today, face either the same spiritual ailment or the same danger.

So, what other contextual clues do we use to determine our values and responses in life when Christ is not our context for living? I thought of five and would be very interested in knowing what others you can think of. My five are:

cultural "norms" - these are values and responses broadly acceptable to the society in which we live and function;
peer pressure - these are values and responses made specifically in reference to the people whom we feel most responsible to please;
selfish inclinations - these are the values and responses that we are most likely to resort to for self-preservation and self-advancement;
personal experiences / history - we naturally allow the results of previous choices to influence future choices, sometimes to our detriment;
church traditions - these are values and responses that might seem more positive and beneficial than the previous list, but can nonetheless stifle an authentic, personal response to the word of God.

Jesus makes it clear that He alone is to be the context for developing and evaluating our values and life responses. He reveals himself to be the only adequate Source and Model for the life God rightly requires of faithful people. So, in the Spirit of these seven letters I find myself wondering, what other sources do we engage for determining spiritual values and life responses? And why would we entrust our lives and eternal destinies to anything less adequate than the Son of God himself? And what do people today need to do to establish our hearts in Him?

What do you think?

Of Midnight Rain and "Soil"ed Hearts

2010-09-07T14:39:00.000-05:00

The rain awakened me just a bit past midnight this morning. I think it was the rain. It could have been my wife as she finally crept into the bedroom using her little keychain LCD flashlight. Or it could have been the Holy Spirit using the prevailing conditions to make a point. I woke up thinking of one particular friend and the current state of his spiritual circumstances. I checked the clock, prayed a bit, closed my eyes, put in the ear plugs since the wind had loosened one of the vinyl panels at the top of the wall outside our bedroom (and it beats a funky but irritating rhythm in a storm.) I opened my eyes, turned over, closed my eyes, prayed a little more, listened to the rain, sang the refrain of "Revelation Song" in perfect pitch in my mind, listened to the rain some more, started thinking about that song that says, "Listen to the sound of the falling rain / telling me what a fool I've been," and then decided it was time to get up.

I made my way through the dark house and used a flashlight through the dining room doors to make sure the vinyl siding on the bedroom was not more damaged than it sounded, then descended the stairs to the office in the basement. The sleeve on my bathrobe caught on the steeple of the stained glass church on the little stand by the book shelves, but I was moving slow enough that catastrophe was avoided. I spent an hour or two at my desk studying the passage I've selected as for Sunday's sermon. I thought I might be ready to sleep after that so I settled into the overstuffed, green recliner. I closed my eyes. I started thinking about my friend and listening to the rain. That song came back, the falling rain one. I made the effort to pray for my friend, both because he needs me to pray for him and because I didn't want that song sloshing around in my brain all day.

I still couldn't sleep so I returned to the desk, picked up pen and put it to paper. Something was circumnavigating the cerebral hemispheres and I hoped by writing to identify it, connect with it, and resolve it so I could get some sleep. The first sentence I wrote was, "People don't want to make commitments, they just want to feel better." What I wrote next clarifies the sadness of that sentence.

"Once the crisis is past, people today rarely seem to follow through on the plans, strategies, or commitments that guided them through the critical moments. A desperate man claims he wants God in his life, but once the threat is passed begins to fill his life with other relationships and other activities that slowly displace God from his life once again. A troubled couple seeks counseling and gathers a few helpful tips from their first session but does not return nor follow through on the call to commit to a local fellowship for the health of their marriage and family and for their spiritual well-being.

"These are consumers looking for the immediate effects of spiritual Tylenol but unwilling to become true disciples of Jesus, those who leave all to follow him. Many, it seems, are called, but few are chosen.

"Jesus taught his disciples with a parable that describes this spiritual phenomenon. He spoke of a sower, a farmer, who went out to sow his seed. As the man cast the seed it fell on several types of soil. The seed fell on the hard packed soil of the well-trodden path where it never had a chance to germinate before the birds swooped in and scarfed it up. The quality and potential of the seed never stood a chance against the reluctance of the soil and the thieving avian hunger.

"Other seed fell on rocky ground. The seed, good and full of life as it was, rooted and sprang up, but the soil was shallow. It held neither water nor nutrient and when the sun rose to its midday height and began to beat down on the tender shoot, the inadequate root system failed and the young plant withered.

"Some seed fell on ground that was already very productive . . . producing weeds! Non-productive species extricated all the water and nutrients and crowded the space stealing more than their share of sunlight. The seed sprang up in this soil. It even grew, but it could not flourish, mature, reproduce because it was soon choked out by the competition. The seedling remained weak and puny, barely alive.

"At last some seed fell upon well prepared, fertile soil. The soil received the seed, nurtured the seed, sustained the seed, and assisted the seed to grow, flourish, mature and eventually, together, they offered a harvest as much as one hundred times multiplied.

"Each of these soils, Jesus taught, describes the spiritual condition of a human heart in relation to God's gospel, the Good News about Jesus Christ. Some hearts are hard and even though the seed is good it cannot penetrate the resistance before outside influences steal away any impact the gospel might have had.

"Some hearts are shallow. They receive the word gladly. They recognize it has value for them and desire its benefit, but they lack the commitment, the surrender, the deep and abiding love for God and his word that yields a full spiritual harvest from the gospel. They are self-centered, self-absorbed, self-satisfied people who cannot last when the joy fades and the hard work of endurance commences.

"Some hearts seem fertile, but they are full of worldly concern. Culturally derived philosophies and worldviews choke out the counter-cultural message of God's love in Jesus Christ. Other things, other activities, other relationships quickly move in to move the gospel out. There are bills to pay, people to see, things to do. Prayer and personal worship fail first. Bible study gets abandoned, attendance at worship set aside. Soon there is nothing left but a fruitless stalk encumbered by the surpassing growth of useless things.

"Some hearts, though, are fertile. Some receive the gospel and fall in love. They take up their cross. They make the commitment. They follow Jesus as both their first and foremost priority. Their love for him fosters his love in them for others and the gospel is multiplied in many more lives."

The most pressing question of midnight rain and soiled hearts is this: which is my heart? God demonstrates his love for me in this, while I was still a sinner, Christ died for me. Do I reject this good news? Do I received but do little to cultivate it? Do I receive it, but then leave my heart open to other things that will one day crowd this glory out of my life? Or do I love this good news, receive it, live with it, grow it, commit my life to its joys, bring forth its full potential in my life?

I, you, we are one of these. Each of us. It is the same good seed that comes to us all. God, please, prepare us to be good soil. Amen.

Treasures of a Single Word

2010-08-20T09:09:00.001-05:00

The plan for fishing today got rained out, so I made a cup of Bohemian chocolate coffee and sat down by the picture window to read. I’ve been giving some attention to First Corinthians lately, so I picked up my Bible from the coffee table and turned to page 1266. The problem with reading the Bible, for me, is that often I don’t get past a word or two. It’s not that I’ve gotten so old I fall asleep or so jaded I get bored. I get caught up in the possibilities of words.

Today, for instance, I actually got to verse eight of the first chapter. I have to confess I barely made it past verse four, where Paul thanks God for the Corinthian Christians not because of how wonderful or obedient or faithful or generous they were, or for anything about them at all. Paul thanks God for these Christians because God has given them his grace in Christ Jesus. Paul always starts and ends with God and sees in God the reason to give God thanks for anything of worth or value in the Christian experience. For Paul, the life of faith and all its benefits and manifestations in Christians is about God and who he is and what he does in Christ. That a human being gets to experience the outworking of God’s will is a testimony to God’s greatest, not their’s.

I could have spent a few more hours just giving thought to the preeminence of Jesus Christ in the life of a Christian and the will of God, but decided to press on. Then I got to verse eight. And I stopped. In fact, I stopped in the New International Version of 1 Corinthians 1:8 at the third word: “keep.” The entire verse reads, “He [God] will keep you strong to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.” God will keep you strong. God who gives us grace in Christ Jesus— the grace that saves us, the grace that reconciles us to himself, the grace that forgives our sins and justifies us before God, the grace that transforms our hearts and lives—the God who gives that grace “keeps” the ones he graced strong until the end.

He “keeps” us. What does that mean, that he “keeps” us? It’s so easy to simply accept the fact and move on, but I had to stop and think, to toss around the question in my heart for a while. What does it mean from God’s perspective that he “keeps” us?

First, God keeps us by an act of his choice. He chooses us. Whether you believe that God elects people to faith and makes his choice before they choose him or after they choose him is not the issue here. The issue is that God chooses to save you and me from our sins and the death sentence those sins impose upon the soul. He keeps us strong and blameless in preparation for Jesus’ return by choosing us. Jesus said, “You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you.” God chooses, and his “keeping” begins in his choosing.

But there has to be more than just his choosing. There is a sliver tone Chevy truck with the Z71 off road package sitting in the lot at Grand Marais Motors. It’s not the four door one. It’s the two door extended cab parked next to it, under the sign in the left hand corner of the lot as you face the front door of the dealership. That’s the truck I’ve chosen. The red one is nice, and newer, and has fewer miles. The four door four by four is more powerful and practically oozes testosterone. But, as we were driving by the other day, I said to my wife, “See that one. That’s the one I choose.”

She just rolled her eyes because she knows there’s no way we can afford to replace the truck we lost in an accident several years ago. She knows that my choice of that truck, or any truck, is meaningless because there is no transaction forthcoming that will make the truck mine.

God, when he chose us, extended his choice by an act of will. He paid the price to complete the transaction to make us his. God sent Jesus to die on the cross as the perfectly adequate sacrifice to pay the penalty for human sin. The death of Christ is infinitely as effective for forgiveness as sin is infinitely deadly and deserving punishment. God keeps us not only by choosing us, but by acting to make us his.

But that is not enough to describe how God keeps us. I’ve chosen my replacement truck. It is conceivable that someday God could provide a way for me to own the truck of my choosing. But choosing it and owning it without working to allow it to meet its full potential would be meaningless for me. I need to get in it and drive it and work it and maintain it in prime working condition.

God keeps us by choosing us. God keeps us by making us his own. God keeps us by filling us with his Spirit who empowers our potential to fully experience his joy and fulfill his will. God gets in us and maintains us by his Spirit present within us. He strengthens us by his might. He directs us by his will. He guides us by his wisdom. He enables us by his power. He transforms us by his mercy. He keeps us by his will.

God does all this and we are the happy recipients of his keeping. And the result of his keeping is a blameless life in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God chooses us, makes us his own, maintains us. He keeps us strong and blameless so that we can enjoy the eternal glory of Jesus Christ at his coming.

Now you know how I get hijacked by words. You know why I can spend a week reading 1 Corinthians and not have gotten past the third word of the eighth verse of the first chapter. May you discover the infinite depth of God’s word for you today!

God and the GPS

2010-07-08T15:07:00.000-05:00

When Linda and I want to have a really crazy vacation, we take a road trip without maps. We drive to the nearest intersection and decide then, at that moment, which direction we're going to take. Then we drive to the next intersection, and decide then, at that moment, what direction we're going to take. At every stop we make the decision for the next step, never really knowing where we're going, where we'll wind up, but finding adventure in the uncertainty of our decision making process.

This last vacation to Alabama to visit Linda's parents was a road trip, but it wasn't crazy. We didn't use maps this time, but I did use a GPS. We call our GPS, "Kia." That's short for "know it all." Kia identifies our starting position, then, when I type in our destination, she calculates the route. "In 1.1 miles," she says, "keep left, then turn right." "Continue 197 miles," she says. "Turn right," she says. And when I fail to turn right? "Recalculating! Go .4 miles then turn left and make an immediate U-turn."

Kia is very nice about her job, but she's also very demanding. You see, she works on the assumption that I don't know where I'm going. Her programming assumes that she knows the big picture in regards to the available routes to get to the desired destination, and that I would not be using her if I already knew where I was going. So, I tell her I want to drive from Arab, AL to Lino Lakes, MN. At one point along the way, we turn off a perfectly reasonable interstate onto a two lane county road. The interstate is going the direction I think I want to go. Still, she demands the turn, so we make the exit.

It is a quiet little, beautifully shaded road in Missouri that follows along a river and has the most delightful little rises along the way that give that roller coaster effect when you speed up over them. It is not a very long drive, just a few miles, but it shaves nearly fifteen miles off the trip because it is more direct than the interstate would have been.

That experience happened a lot as I trusted Kia with the course of our journey. We took roads I would never have taken only to discover that there was less traffic, less aggravation, and less overall miles. She knew where we had come from, knew where we were going, and had the big picture of our journey in mind. She did not always make the choices I would have made. She never asked my opinion of her choices. She simply offered what she knew to be best and directed me to turn around and adjust my direction when I failed to follow her advice.

If this is not a great picture of what it means to trust Jesus Christ by faith then I don't know what is! If you want to spend eternity with God then you've got to trust your life to him and to the directions he provides. You have to trust his knowledge of the big picture. You have to trust that he knows the most direct, beneficial route from where you are to where he is, and you have to trust his leading along the way. Sometimes, he will lead you to make choices and follow him in ways you might not otherwise have chosen, but God has an advantage that "Kia" doesn't have. God actually knows it all AND is personally committed to doing what is best for you. "Kia" serves you, but God loves you! Those two facts, his knowledge and his love, make him
immeasurably, perfectly trustworthy for your life journey. God's ultimate trustworthiness makes him the perfect GPS ("Godly Positioning System") for your soul.

That's the Good News.

The Last Newspaper Column for This Year: Fog

2010-05-25T15:49:00.000-05:00

Cook County Star THE GOOD NEWS for 5-29-2010

Who knew there were so many different kinds of fog? Fog can form in a number of ways, depending on how the cooling that caused the condensation occurred. There is radiation fog caused by the cooling of land after sunset. The cool ground produces condensation in the nearby air by heat conduction. There can be ground fog which is “fog that obscures less than 60% of the sky and does not extend to the base of any overhead clouds.”

Advection fog seems to fit the North Shore fog of May. This fog occurs when moist (warmer) air passes over a cool surface (Lake Superior) causing the moisture in the air to condense around particulates in the air. Other types of fog include evaporation fog, precipitation fog, upslope fog (or hill fog), valley fog, freezing fog, frozen fog, and of course, artificial fog. We should not neglect to mention Garua fog, which occurs along the coast of Chile and Peru, hail fog, and the very rare pogonip, which can occur at temperatures below -40 degrees F.

Fog is produced by condensation of water molecules around airborne dirt or salt particles. The resulting tiny droplets remains airborne and can create a wall that significantly reduces visibility. So here’s a question: If I can see through a glass of water, why can’t I see through a wall of water droplets? Why isn’t fog transparent?

I think refraction must be part of the answer. Light traveling through a drop of water can be “bent” in much the same way that light passing through a glass lense can be “bent” to reveal the color spectrum we see reflected on the wall when we hold up a prism to the sunlight. Now take a bazillion little prisms of water, each bending the sunlight and the end result is opaque fog. That means a wall of water you can’t see through.

By now you must be asking yourselves, “McIntire, where are you going with all this?” A couple days ago as I was driving through the fog near the mine at Silver Bay I suddenly realized that I knew the mine was there, covering ground on both sides of the road. I knew the towers were there putting out steam. I knew the yard was there full of taconite pellets. I knew the mechanical building was uphill. But I couldn’t see what was there. The fog didn’t define the mine structures or in any way reflect the truth of the reality sitting just yards to the side of the road upon which I was driving. The fog simply refracted the light and hid the truth; it didn’t change the truth.

There’s another kind of fog that rises in the world. It is a fog that clouds the mind and heart. It is a fog that refracts the Light of truth and blinds the observer to reality. The fog does not define reality, it merely covers or distorts it. Sin is such a fog in the human experience. Arrogance and pride are truth hiding, truth denying fogs. Error and lies form a fog that can prevent the casual observer from regarding the truth. Selfishness, ignorance, and indifference can coalesce in the human heart to produce a thick spiritual fog that results in spiritual darkness and spiritual blindness.

Every human being lives in a spiritual fog until God in his mercy lifts the veil and reveals himself to them. For some that revelation comes through God’s word, the Bible. For others it may come through an encounter with God as he reveals himself in the natural world. But that fog will not clear entirely until there is an encounter with Jesus Christ, the Son of God himself, who is the full and perfect revelation of God to us foggy hearted human beings.

I know what it is like to be lost in a spiritual fog and bear the burden of guilt and of shame, addicted to false joys and earthbound pleasures. I also know what it means to meet the Savior and set aside the guilt and shame forever, and find eternal joy in a life full of meaning and purpose, being, by God’s grace, what he created me to be.

And “a man with an experience is never at the mercy of a man with an argument.”

That’s the Good News.

What Happens When the Trappings of Love are Lost?

2010-05-19T13:16:00.001-05:00

Cook County News Herald THE GOOD NEWS for 5/21/2010

Le Ponts des Arts. The name sort of rolls from the tongue. It shouts, "Paris! Paris!," in quiet tones that whisper of love and romance and starlit moments when lovers caress one another with longing eyes and unspoken words.

At least, it used to. The Ponts des Arts is a seven arch iron bridge that spans the river Seine in the heart of Paris, France. The original bridge, the first metal bridge in Paris, was constructed between 1802 and 1804. It links the Institut de France with the central court of the Louvre. For years however, it was the scene of far more personal, and perhaps more beautiful connections.

Until last Wednesday, the Ponts des Arts was a favorite place for lovers to proclaim their lasting devotion to one another. Couples would come and stroll the famous pedestrian bridge and bring along a padlock and keys. That's right, a padlock. Some were very handsome locks. Others, not so much. Some were inscribed with names and dates and proclamations. Others bore decorations and symbols. Still others, small and silver or brass, glowed in their simplicity.

These love-struck couples would stroll by the iron mesh of the guardrails and fasten their padlocks to the rails, then toss their keys into the river to symbolize their eternal love. Yeah. I know. That's really sweet. Very romantic. So French. So Paris.

But apparently, not everyone in Paris thinks so. Sometime before morning last Wednesday, they all disappeared. All the locks are gone. All the trappings of undying love have vanished. Poof! Gone. According to the town hall in Paris, in an effort to preserve the 19th century bridge, pragmatism displaced romance.

What happens when the trappings of love disappear? What happens when the warm fuzzy fades, when the moonlit glow gives way to the full reality of the daytime sun? What happens when the whispers of love give way to the cries of infants, the demands of careers, the wail of alarm clocks, and the general cacophony of life? Does love die when a relationship no longer bears the original decorations?

Love never dies, but is has been known to succumb to less noble choices. More than it is anything else, love is a choice. The padlocks represented choices. The keys represented choices. The inscriptions represented choices. The choice of love is the choice to put the interest of another ahead of one's own interests, no matter what. The padlocks and keys, the trappings of love, expressed love, but they were not love. Their disappearance is sad, but it does not signal the end of love for those who maintain their commitments. You can lose the decorations and still maintain the choice. The trappings of love can vanish but love remains. How can this be? Because love is a choice.

God chooses to love us. He chooses to seek our best interest no matter what. He chooses to forgive and restore us even when it costs him the life of his dearly beloved Son. Jesus chooses to die for us. He chooses to lay down his life on our behalf. And what is that choice, the choice of our benefit at even the most precious price? Love!

The padlocks are gone, but the love is not. Sometimes we think blessings are love, and when the blessing turns to sorrow, we think love has left. It has not. Sometime we think joy and peace and ease and wealth and luxury are love, and when we are in turmoil and sad and troubled and barely getting by, we think we are abandoned by love. We are not. Sometimes we think that when our life experience is good and pleasant God loves us, but when life is painful and uncomfortable God hates us (or has lost interest in us altogether.) Not true.

God made a choice. It is a choice he continues to make, to love, to seek the very best interest of those he created. He continues to apply the justifying blood of his Son to the soul of all who believe in him. That is the "no matter what" love that you can experience through faith in Jesus Christ.

That's the Good News.

Pure Religion

2010-05-11T15:02:00.002-05:00

Cook County News-Herald THE GOOD NEWS for 5/15/2010

People have opinions, in case you hadn’t noticed. I read an article this week about current Supreme Court justice nominee Elena Kagan. The AP article by Tom Breen noted that if Kagan is confirmed there will be no Protestants on the Court and that would mean “none of the justices would be rooted in the Protestant Reformation traditions that shaped the country from its earliest stages.”

While that has intriguing implications which Breen’s article explored, what I found more intriguing were the blunt comments that followed the article on the Yahoo! page. Most of the remarks were fired like flaming arrows at “religion.” One amateur commentator defined religion as one of the world’s great problems. He cited his reasons for his opinion: “genocide, child molestation, 911, stoning of women, etc.” These atrocities comprise “religion” to that person. Those atrocities define “religion” for a lot people.

And frankly, if those acts of indecency, immorality, and injustice were in fact a full and adequate description of “religion,” I’d be hard pressed to have much faith in religion either. Fortunately (or “providentially”), though sin and human moral failure do cloud both the expressions and experiences of “religion” they do not encompass the real, true religion which God by His own testimony affirms and accepts.

Did you know God has an opinion about “religion”? Did you know that He actually sets out in writing what tenets of “religion” He finds acceptable and pleasing to Him? The New Testament letter of James provides a stark, bold faced definition of “religion”: Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world (James 1:27, ESV).

Religion, according to God, should accurately reflect two essential characteristics of God Himself: active compassion towards the culturally, physically, socially, economically vulnerable in their need, and persistent, personal, practical godliness. True religion is not one or the other, according to the Bible, but both together. Perhaps the general public’s view of religion has been twisted because those who practice “religion” have been tilted toward one or the other to the exclusion of one or the other.

Some have understood “religion” strictly in terms of one’s personal relationship with God without concern for compassionate interaction in the lives of those around them. Others have understood “religion” solely on the basis of social intervention without considering any personal relationship with or accountability to God. Both situations are inadequate expressions of true religion, from this New Testament standpoint.

When a man came to Jesus and asked him what was the greatest commandment, a question not unlike “what’s your opinion of the best religion,” Jesus answered, “The greatest commandment is this: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, your mind, your soul, and your strength.” But he did not stop his answer there. He continued, without being asked, “And the second is like to it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” True religion, pure and undefiled before God, the Father, loves God and loves others. There is not one or the other. There is both or there is not true religion. Jesus would not let us get away with thinking otherwise.

True religion, then, excludes genocide. It leaves no room for molesting children or destroying buildings and lives with airplanes, or ignoring the poor, or ignoring the condition of one’s own heart. True religion, though still subject to being rejected by the selfish or uninformed, lives to love. Just like Jesus. There is love for God and there is love for people, and that love is neither theoretical or hidden, but active, open, public and powerful.

I suspect there is a great deal of opinion about “religion” based not on truth but on failure, the failure of some, even many, to live a “true religion.” It is never wise, however poor the prevailing example might be, to “throw out the baby with the bath water.” Don’t settle for the regurgitated disgust of some disheartened complaint. Come and see for yourself. Come and see the love God offers in Jesus Christ.

Jesus exemplifies true religion and offers to live the life of love in and through those who put their faith in him.

That’s the Good News.

The New Bible

2010-05-05T11:49:00.000-05:00

I meet every Wednesday with one of the local Lutheran pastors. We talk theology, Bible, ministry, you know . . . pastoral stuff. Today he mentioned the new Bible I have on my desk. Several months ago I opened the ESV I've been using and Revelation fell out. Took the entire Concordance with it. The glue that held that section to the binding simply surrendered its mission. Now, whenever I take my Bible into the pulpit I have to leave out some of the God's word, and you know what the Bible says about those who add to or take away from what is written!

So, I've been looking for a new Bible. I want the same version, but since I make notes in my Bible, I like the wide margin format. I stopped by the Crossway Publisher's table at a recent conference I attended and asked the representative if there was another Crossway wide margin Bible that was sewn and not glued. He asked why I had asked that particular question and I told him about my prodigal pages. He then asked me how long I'd had the Bible and I told him. Then he said, "It doesn't matter. It should have held up much, much longer. You don't need to buy another Bible. We need to replace it. Let me have your contact information and I'll find a new Bible for you."

Well, you can imagine how pleased that made me. I handed over one of my cards and was equally pleased when a new, wide margin, genuine leather ESV Bible arrived at my office. It's a beautiful Bible with 1.25" margins to write in. There is just one tiny problem. Crossway has apparently changed the format between what they called a wide margin Bible when I first bought mine and what they are offering as a wide margin format today. The new font is half the size of the old format. Now, not only do I get to take the full counsel of God into the pulpit, I literally have to take my glasses with me and put them on in public to read the print.

<> I got exactly what I asked for, but not what I wanted.

Anybody else have an experience where someone provided exactly what you asked for, but it wasn't what you wanted? I think the idea will make a great sermon, but I'm interested in what that phrase suggests to you. Leave me a comment and let me know: How have you had this experience, "I got exactly what I asked for, but not what I wanted"?

The Cave and the Sun (or Us and the Son)

2010-05-04T16:03:00.000-05:00

Cook County News Herald THE GOOD NEWS for 5/8/2010

Once upon a time, not so long ago as you might be inclined to think at an opening like this, a Cave lived under the ground, as caves have the habit of doing. The Cave had lived its entire life in darkness. One day (not the Cave knew whether it was day or night. You see the Cave was hampered by the fact that its nature is darkness), one day the Cave heard a voice calling to it, “Come up into the light; come and see the sunshine.” The Cave retorted, “I don’t know what you mean; there isn’t anything but darkness.”

Again and again the Cave responded the same way, “I don’t know what you mean; there isn’t anything but darkness.” The Cave had only known darkness for all of its life. Every Cave he knew of in all the world knew only darkness. Based on the Cave’s personal experience and general observation to date, the world was all Cave and darkness. It made no sense to the Cave that someone should call him to sunshine, since he could not, based on his observations and experience, imagine such a thing. Surely there could not exist something that could not be fully embraced by observation and experience.

Still the voice persisted, “Come up into the light; come and see the sunshine. It is beautiful up here. The light reveals all the darkness hides. Come and see. Come and see. Come and see for yourself. Come and see the sunshine.” Finally the Cave ventured forth and was surprised to see light everywhere. In the light the Cave saw revealed what the world really looked like. He saw what had been hidden to him. His observations and experience were expanded to encompass all that was real, and wonderful, and marvelous, all that he had missed in the narrow confines of the darkness that filled his observations and experience.

Filled with wonder at the truth revealed by the light, the Cave looked up at the Sun and asked, “Won’t you come with me now and see the darkness?” The Sun was puzzled and asked, “What is darkness?” The Cave replied, “Come and see.” One day the Sun accepted the invitation. As it entered the Cave the Sun said, “Now show me your darkness!” But there was no darkness.

An eyewitness to Jesus, a friend who knew him well and whose testimony withstands the passing of time, shares this with us about God’s Son: “In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it . . . . The true light, which enlightens every man, was coming into the world” (John 1:4-5, 9). We human beings live in darkness. We survey our experiences and the experiences of others and conclude that all is darkness, vanity, emptiness. Sometimes, in the narrow confines of darkness, we even insist that darkness is all there is, all that can be, all that ever will be. Occasionally, we even attempt to persuade one another to find what joy we can in our darkness since we have no inkling that there may be anything but the darkness we know so well: the disappointment, the anger, the failure, the discouragement that colors our observations and experiences. We will even, from time to time, proclaim the light non-existent. But our rantings in the darkness do not affect the Truth, the true Light that enlightens every man, of whom John wrote.

God, in love, sent his Son, Jesus, into the world with an invitation, “Come and see. Come and see the Light. Come observe and experience God for yourself.” God reveals himself, he pours the Light upon himself for all to see in his word, the Bible, and in his Son, Jesus Christ. Come and see for yourself. Are you not sure if there is truly any Light? God says, “Come now, let us reason together” (Isaiah 1:18, ESV). This is an invitation from God himself to engage God through the Bible and find the Light for yourself.

God’s intent in making himself known in the Bible is so that you can know him for yourself, and not merely know what someone else says about him. He knows you and wants you to know him. He wants to shed some light on your life, light that will bring the realities of your life and his love into focus. Come and see. You can come and see for yourself.

That’s the Good News.

Newspaper Columns

2010-04-28T08:14:00.000-05:00

It looks like May will be my month to write once again for our local newspaper. I have missed writing the Good News column far more than I thought I would, so I'm really glad it's my turn. I'll put the text of the column here since some of your won't be reading the Cook County News-Herald anytime soon.

Here's the column for May 1:

Wow! It seems like forever since we've had a chance to just sit down and talk like this. How have you been? I'm sure so much has happened in your life since we met last. I know I've been busy.

Winter wasn't too bad this year. Yeah, not too much snow, and I don't remember that we had so many days of below zero temperatures either. I suppose winter weather in northeast Minnesota is a little like what I've heard about having a baby: that the pain is intense during delivery but soon forgotten in the aftermath of new life. Not having had that experience personally, I can only assume there is some truth there.

Have you heard any good jokes lately? Carson Haring sent me one the other day and Bobbie B emails me some from time to time. Oh, I'd love to share them with you, but that would be like a long time county resident revealing their most successful fishing hole or blueberry patch. You just have to get out there and find your own. I know you understand.

What can I tell you, then? Well . . . let me see. Christmas came and went. The local Salvation Army Service Unit got involved in assisting some friends and neighbors and I helped with that. Cornerstone invited the local community to Easter dinner. Had 110 people come and eat with us. Really nice folks, too. I met some I had not met before. Linda and I went to a conference in Louisville, Kentucky after Easter. It was called "Together for the Gospel." Seven thousand pastors. You should have heard them sing!

What did I like best? Being in the south was good. Okay, it was great. Redbud and dogwood blooming. Sunshine. Eighty degrees with a light breeze. Sweet tea. (Why tea is seasonal on the North Shore I believe I will never understand.) Oh, you meant about the conference. That's easy. Eight excellent messages on the validity and necessity of an uncorrupted gospel in our day from wise and brilliant men through whom God spoke.

The gospel? Surely you know what the gospel is; the good news about Jesus. Never heard of it, you say. Well here it is in a nutshell. God created human beings to enjoy God's glory and love in a face to face relationship that would be their deepest joy forever, but those human beings declined God's offer. They disobeyed God. They sinned. Their sin separated them from God with nary a hope of ever getting back into His good graces. They couldn't help themselves. They were sunk, and all their children after them were sinners and separated from God, subject to the penalty of death, and without hope in the world.

Even though God was perfectly just and righteous in condemning their sin, God loved human beings. He loves you and he loves me, and he does not want us to suffer the penalty of eternal separation from him. He wants us folks to know his love, his goodness, his mercy and his glory, so he did the most amazing thing. God came into the world himself. He took on flesh. God became a man, the man Jesus Christ. Jesus lived the life we all should have lived but couldn't. Jesus was innocent, sinless and because he was God, he was eternally innocent and sinless. Because he was God he could offer his innocent and sinless life in exchange for all of us. He
could take the penalty of death for every sinner that ever did or ever will live, including the penalty for your sins and mine. And that is just what he did. Jesus died on the cross giving his life in death in exchange for us.

Now, when we believe in Jesus and trust our lives to him in faith, God forgives our sin on account of Jesus. He changes our heart and our inclination toward sin, and he gives us eternal life with Jesus. Through faith in Jesus, God reinstates the relationship we declined by our sin. We no longer have to be afraid of what God thinks of us, because now we know that He loves us. He sent Jesus to die in our place. No greater love has any man than this, that he lays down his life for his friend. Jesus laid down his life for us as a clear expression of God's love for us.

Yes! God loves you. Yes. Even though you did that. Yes, even though you think that way sometimes. Yep, even then. Yes. Listen, there is no sin, no guilt, no shame you can mention, nothing you can confess in the past or the present that God doesn't already know about and has already decided about. He loves you. Jesus died for you before you did any of those things. He loved you before you ever gave him a reason. He loves you now. He loves you always.

That's the Good News.

Behind Deceit

2010-04-07T21:30:00.003-05:00

My Bible software is incredibly legalistic. I had no idea. I started using the software's "Read the Bible Through in a Year" function. I figured, new software, new year, I don't mind starting over, so sure, I'll give it a try. It sets out each day's reading next to a selection box. Below the day's reading are the next two days' readings, also with selection boxes. When you've read the listed passages you check the selection box and the next day's reading moves to the head of the list. It's all good.

Until you miss a day. Yes, sometimes I miss a day. Sometimes I have to read other things. Sometimes the telephone rings, like it did today and I had to get involved in someone else's life for a while. It happens. But not for my Bible software. If you miss a day, when next you open the software, there's a picture of the cover of your default Bible version with a big red banner across the front that reads, "BEHIND." I don't know whether it's a statement of condition or a personal accusation, but I can tell you, I don't like it, not one bit. Imagine getting bullied into reading your Bible regularly by a computer Bible software program. I think if it were so smart it would just read it for me. It's supposed to be helpful and save me time, right?

Well, of course, just to show them, I stopped getting "BEHIND." In fact, I read forward four days. So there! The reading is in Genesis. I've read it many, many times, but this time I'm using the Inductive Bible Study (www.precept.org) highlights that are included in the software. I'm reading slower, making observations along the way, and gleaning a great deal of really amazing truth. For instance, Abraham deceived both Pharaoh and Abimelech. Sarah deceived Hagar. Jacob deceived Isaac . . . and Esau . . . and Laban (who deceived Jacob). . . and Laban again . . . and Esau again. Simeon and Levi deceived Shechem over Dinah. Joseph's brother's deceived Jacob. Potiphar's wife deceived her husband and her household over Joseph. Joseph temporarily deceives his brothers. And of course, the entire book starts with the Serpent deceiving Eve and Cain deceiving Abel. If you didn't know better you would think that every human being after Adam was a son of a deceiver.

But that's the point, isn't it? Generation after generation, situation after situation, circumstance upon circumstance, selfishness and deceit reign in the human heart. Even the most faithful have their moments of faithlessness when, rather than trusting God implicitly to keep His promise, they attempt to gain or protect God's blessing through their own efforts, which often amounts to deceit. I read the stories of the lives and I come away asking, "Is no one faithful?"

Throughout this entire first book of Moses, there is one who is always faithful, who makes a promise and keeps it, who never sacrifices his integrity for expediency: God (Elohim), the LORD (Yahweh), God Almighty (El-shaddai). "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring," He said. "He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heal," He said.

"I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing," He promised Abram. "I will bless those who bless you and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." Through every scene of deceit in the book of Genesis, God, though not always mentioned, consistently works in the lives of deceitful men to accomplish His promise. Not once is He stymied. Not once does His plan fail. Even though we are faithless, He remains faithful.

It doesn't take some legalistic, hard nosed Bible software to see what's happening here. God's plan for the world, God's plan for your country, God's plan for your church, God's plan for your family, God's plan for you moves forward without obstacle as He uses even the deceitful and faithless to accomplish His goals. So why rely on ourselves? Why trust in deceit when God will have His way? Wouldn't it simply be easier to trust God and wait for Him to keep His promise, since that's what He's going to do anyway?

By the way, I really love my Bible software. I've been using it since 1991. Check out the new version at www.logos.com.

The Next Guy In Line

2010-03-08T11:48:00.000-06:00

They tried Jesus. Then they led him away to be crucified. They led him away. They led him away.

Strange that it should say they led him away, when typically the prisoner headed the procession, guarded on each side by soldiers and followed by those seeking "justice" in the prisoners death. He led them to Calvary even as they led him to death. Here's this death procession with Jesus in the lead, but who is the next guy in line?

I don't mean the other two criminals that were led out to be crucified with him. I mean who walked immediately behind him; who followed in his footsteps; who kept pace with his tortured journey to the cross? Was it one of the disciples who had pledged their lives to him? Was it one of the women who had followed him, oftentimes funding the Rabbi's travels? Was it a family member? A brother? His mother? A colleague? A friend?

No. The next guy in line was a complete stranger who happened to be coming into the city from the country as Jesus was leaving the city for the cross. The next guy in line, who fell in step with Jesus, was the guy pulled from the crowd to carry the cross. His name was Simon. He was from Cyrene. He had two sons. He was the next guy in line.

As the next guy in line he had to witness first hand the inglorious treatment Jesus received. He had to stifle any sense of justice or compassion that might have welled up from within the image of God that remained in him. He had one job, one task, one purpose: carry the cross. He could not intervene, all he could do was keep step and carry. All he could do was follow as closely as possible so that Jesus could carry out what He had come to do. All he could do was hang on to the cross and walk the walk with Jesus.

We don't know what happened to Simon after he carried the cross for Jesus. We do know that men with the same names as his sons are mentioned in some of Paul's letters. We can speculate that the experience of being the next guy in line made an impact on Simon that he passed along to his sons. All we really know is that Simon carried the cross when no one else would.

What a legacy! What a testimony! What a privilege to be the next guy in line! Christian, where are you in the line that follows Jesus today? I know where I want to be . . . the next guy in line having only one purpose to follow Jesus and carry the cross.

Pastor's Conference

2010-02-01T11:47:00.000-06:00

The Desiring God Conference for Pastors begins this evening and continues until Wednesday afternoon. I've attended this conference off and on for fifteen years. I'm in Minneapolis now getting ready for this year's conference:The Pastor, the People, and the Pursuit of Joy: The Apostolic Aim of Pastoral Ministry.

Thousands of pastors will be here. They'll sing together, pray together, worship together, learn together, and get charged up together. They will also drink coffee together, laugh together, cry together, and buy books together.

May I ask you to do something for me, in relation to this conference, please? Would you pray for us? Would you pray for the ever present Christ to pour out His Spirit on His servants? Would you pray that "times of refreshing" would come upon these men for God's glory and their joy? The author of Hebrews reminds us in chapter 13 verse 17 that a spiritually vital pastor is good for all of us. Would you ask God to revitalize each and every one of us at the DG conference? And then, would you go a step further, please? Would you take twice as much time and pray for YOUR pastor? Would you ask God to meet with him (or her) in a powerful, soul drenching, spirit cleansing, wound healing, energy filling way? Would you plead with God to be more merciful and present in your pastor's life than even you think he deserves? Would you do that today? Please?

God answers the faith-filled and faithful prayers of his people. I can hardly wait to see what God does in answer to your prayers today!

Not Easy, But Simple

2010-01-28T09:07:00.000-06:00

Some Thursday mornings are better than others. Those are the mornings when the day planner page is blank until afternoon, when the torrent of activity remains silent, when for a few hours I can sit quietly with the Word and listen. I love mornings like this.

I've started reading through the book of Acts this week. As I read I underline and make notes about thoughts and ideas I want to spend more time with. I've noted so far how often people are amazed at the boldness and power and testimony of the apostles and the new Christians. I've marked that twice in the opening chapters the followers of Jesus are characterized as having "everything in common," a reference to their gracious, selfless generosity.

I've also noted the uncompromising assertions in this book, assertions made boldly and without apology: "Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit."

"Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus."

"And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved."

In a pluralistic society such as ours that worships tolerance and diversity, these words must fall hard on the heart. We have no access to God, to heaven, to blessing, to redemption except through Jesus Christ and then only through personal repentance and faith in Him. One path. No other. No climbing over the back fence. No entry disguised as someone else. Only by acknowledging our personal culpability and turning away from it to Jesus can we make peace with God and enjoy forever what he has for us.

Really takes a stab at our self-sufficiency, doesn't it? Knocks the props out from under self determination. The whole idea changes the nature of the universe from an individual perspective, since now the universe revolves around Jesus and not our individual self-interest.

Why does the Bible have to be so straightforward and narrow? I can think of at least one reason. Jesus said, "You will know the truth and the truth will set you free." God's design for us is freedom. God intends for any willing human being to experience freedom from guilt, shame, depravity, and despair (among other things.) God wants us free to know peace and joy, love and holiness, rest and fulfillment. But only when we set down the chains that bind us can we be truly free. And only when we allow God to unbind us will those chains be taken away. The chains are spiritual and they can only be removed by one who is Spirit. And though he makes arrangement for their removal, God will not take away the chains we have come to love and live with until our heart rejects those chains for the falsehood they really are.

So God says to us, "Repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus." It is the same as saying, "Accept the provision I have made for the removal of your chains and be free." God in Christ destroys the power of the chains to keep our spirit in bondage. Through faith in Christ we accept the invitation to freedom. Through repentance we step out of those chains into freedom. There is no other way, and I am glad because it greatly reduces the need to sort through the religions and philosophies of man to find something that works.

One way to freedom. Simple. Not easy, but simple.

"If I've Told You Once . . ."

2010-01-21T13:37:00.002-06:00

Did your momma ever say to you, with a loud voice and a raised eyebrow, "What did I tell you?" Usually I heard that line at a moment when I was doing something I really, really enjoyed but obviously was not supposed to be enjoying. I also, usually, knew exactly which lecture to which she was referring and exactly what behavior she was expecting. Funny how the standard answer was, "I don't know? About what?" Unlike my wife, my mother never said, "You know about what and if you don't know I'm not going to tell you." No, mom would always make sure I knew exactly why the forthcoming act of discipline was entirely justified. "If I've told you once, I've told you a hundred times . . . (I've heard that since the recession the phase is now "a thousand times.")

There are some things that need to be stated repeatedly in order for us to finally align our thinking and behavior with what we are being told for our good. Jesus, and the rest of the Bible for that matter, repeatedly instruct us to listen, pay attention, take heed, do whatever it is we're being told. It reminds me of a story about an old preacher and the most influential sermon series he ever preached.

The old preacher stood up one day at the pulpit to begin his sermon. The worship choir had prepared the people well. The offering had been taken and once again the people had expressed their thanksgiving for God's provision by giving generously and graciously. The Albrights were smiling, and the Lincolns were happy, and the Mayhughs had that look of simple contentment that made them so likeable. Each family was in its place. Exactly where they always sat. Close enough to be considered friendly but far enough apart throughout the sanctuary to maintain their unique self-identity.

The pastor stood for a moment, hands to the side of the old rubbed wood desk from which he had delivered God's word so many times through the years. He looked out over the congregation, smiled, and said, “Love one another.” Then, without hesitating, he turned and took the several steps back to his chair on the platform and sat down. The organ began the postlude. The people, perplexed, stood, gathered their things and made their way to the foyer, dismissed without another word.

The next week the old man again sat with a calm smile on his face through the other parts of the worship service until it came time for the message. On this day he rose from his chair, laid his Bible open on the pulpit, drew a deep breath, fixed his gaze on one section of the congregation, and said, “Love one another!” Then, again, he sat down and the service was dismissed. Needless to say there was a furor of questions and comments among the congregation, who obviously expected a great deal more sermon for the money they were paying their pastor.

The third Sunday came and again, just as he had the two Sunday’s before, the elderly pastor stood to preach, and with great passion and emotion he instructed his people, “Love one another.”

That was almost more than the deacons could handle. People were asking if the man had finally lost his marbles. Phone lines were clogged with calls, and the rumor mill, oh my, the assumptions and conclusions it produced were legendary. Then came the fourth Sunday and the same message. The Ladies’ Circle wondered if it weren’t time to for a new pastor. The Men’s Coffee Break thought they ought to call in the bishop. The Sunday school teachers union meeting couldn’t help but discuss the negative impact such pastoral conduct might have on the impressionable children. And the outreach committee, they just sat down by the riverside and wept.

The fifth Sunday arrived bright and shining and clear. Word had gotten around about the tizzy going on at the church and lots of folks were there, even people who had never attended the church before. Rumor had it there was going to be a “holy confrontation of speaking the truth in love” if that preacher didn’t do a better job that morning. It was sure to be a service worth attending.

The hymn singing wasn’t quite as loud as usual, and it seemed like no one really wanted to give much time to the prayer requests. Sister Edna increased the tempo of the offertory so much the ushers near about had to run down the aisle to keep up. Everyone wanted to get to the sermon. Through it all, the pastor retained his seat on the platform, mostly with his eyes closed and a calm, peaceful smile on his face.

The last notes of the offertory ended bluntly as Sister Edna hopped off the organ bench and took her seat in the family row where her family had sat in that church for three generations. Edna liked their row because they sat just far enough away from old man Wilson that they wouldn't hear him snort as he fell asleep midway through the message each week.

The old pastor stood. He walked slowly to the pulpit. He set his hands in front of him and bowed his head. The congregation held its breathe. They could not hear the words of his prayer, but those in the closest rows (which were now filled in anticipation of the "confrontation") could see the impassioned look on his face as his lips moved in silent supplication. The old man raised his eyes from his prayer, scanned the capacity crowd and said, “Love one another.” He paused and drew his breath.

"Love one another." He did not raise his voice. He did not flail his arms. he did not pound his fist upon the desk. He simply paused and then he said it again.

"Love one another." He paused once more. You could tell he was done but this time he did not return to his seat. His eyes remained upon the people sitting before him. He paused and he waited.

The people were stunned. He'd done it again. It was too much for one man in the third row. He stood so fast to his feet it made the people around him feel faint. “Pastor,” he shouted loud enough for the entire church to hear. “This is unacceptable!” The “amens” started in the next row back. “For five weeks we’ve come faithfully to church now.” A few more supportive interjections sounded from the back. “We come expecting to hear something profound and inspiring and helpful and practical.” The congregation was fully committed to this brother’s words by this point, some standing and clapping their hands in support. “We pay you and we come here for you to tell us how to live out our lives of faith and how to please God and how to be good Christians and this is all you have to say week after week, ‘Love one another?’”

Silence.

He said it. Perhaps it was the tenor of his voice, or the passion of his plea, or the fact that he was standing three rows back and not in the pulpit, but suddenly everyone in the house knew the man had said more than needed to be said. No. No. They knew he had said exactly what needed to be said. They knew he had put in their language of their hearts what the pastor had been preaching all along. The realization spread like an electric hum through the congregation as each one finally got the message. The man standing in the third row, his face flush from the emotion of his speech, suddenly felt quite uncomfortable standing there all alone, facing the pastor, whose smile of confidence never wavered. He withered and sank into his own pew.

“Thank you, my dear brother. I knew the Spirit would use someone and you would all get the message. Now that you’ve gotten it, go and do it. And when you have done it, I’ll quit preachin’ it. Love one another.”

Why does God keep saying the same thing over and over in his word? Because he’s giving us the opportunity to “get it” and once we’ve got it, to do it, and when we’ve finally done it, then he’ll be able to stop preachin’ it.

The Odd Providence of an Earthquake

2010-01-13T16:29:00.004-06:00

This coming Sunday, Lord willing, I'll be preaching one of the last passages from the book of Hebrews that we are going to consider in our fourteen month exposition of the book. I have from time to time, as I've prepared sermons throughout this book, reviewed John Piper's sermons on the same book. Yesterday I sat down to study in the late afternoon and decided to look on John's website (www.desiringgod.org) and read his sermon on the same passage I'm going to be preaching. I realized very quickly that the context in which John wrote his sermon had nothing current to do with my situation. He wrote in 1997 just a few days after the earthquake in the San Francisco Bay area that collapsed a bridge. The earthquake and the devastation it caused provided the backdrop for his message the following Sunday but it had little relevance for where I thought we might be headed in Grand Marais, MN in January 2010. So I finished browsing the sermon then set it aside and moved on to other things.

Then, this morning, I woke up to the news of the earthquake in Haiti. I've been in Haiti. Did a six week ministry there in 1984. Had dinner at a restaurant in Petionville. Took pictures of the Presidential Palace. Watched people washing their clothes in the sewage ditch that runs through the center of the city. Visited a hospital. Listened to children reciting their lessons in a school. I've spent today visiting the various internet news outlets trying to get a better look into the very first non-US site God ever allowed me to minister in His name.

A few minutes ago I made the mental connection between Piper's sermon and it's 1997 context and the fact that I'm preaching the same passage and there, in the background, is a devastating, children killing, life-shattering, mortality enhancing earthquake. The passage is Hebrews 12:18-29. The verse of greatest relevance is verse 28: "Therefore, let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, (29) for our God is a consuming fire."

I'm not ready yet to preach these verses, but I thought you might benefit from reading John Piper's sermon on Hebrews 12:28 written in the aftermath of an earthquake. Here's the link: http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/sermons/byscripture/26/695_A_Kingdom_That_Cannot_Be_Shaken. I think you can either read it or watch John preach this message. I believe it us more than well worth the time.

Blogging

2010-01-11T11:09:00.004-06:00

I keep reading articles about how to survive in the blogosphere. Authors with a gazillion followers share lists of how to gain a gazillion followers yourself and maybe even make a little money on the side through advertising.

Some of the suggestions have been helpful, like: decide what the point of your blog is and who it will be directed to. I like that one. The point will be whatever point I want to make and I'll direct it to whomever wants to listen. (Which, by the way, I recognize is NOT the point of the aforementioned suggestion.)

I haven't seen this suggestion yet, "Don't blog until you have something to say." I think that would be a good one. I seem to relate to that idea intuitively. I thought blogging would be something I would do weekly. Instead I do it weakly. Sometimes, I don't have anything to say. Sometimes, I have lots and lots to say, but it's not for other people to hear. Sometimes I have things to say that you don't want to hear (trust me on this.)

So here I am today. I just read Joel's blog where he mentioned (or at least implied) that he had not blogged since last April. I love Joel. When he writes, he has something to say. He wrote about how bugs, dragonflies in particular, hatching dragonflies specifically, remind him that all life in this world is dependent on death for life, but how Jesus broke the cycle and now life is dependent on Life once again for life. (My translation.) I just love this.

So here I am today. What do I have to say? Just this: God knows you. He knows where you are in life. He knows what your strengths are and he knows what your weaknesses are. He knows your sins, your guilt, your secret shame that no one else knows. He knows your hopes, your dreams, your ideals. He knows what makes you tick and what gives you fits. God knows your mind, your heart, your habits, and your hangups. God knows your past, yep, every single detail. He remembers stuff you've long ago forgotten. He knows your present. He knows you in the now, and he knows you in the later.

Name something you think God doesn't know about you. Go ahead, name something. Yessir, he knows. Come on, name something, anything you think is a mystery to God. Nothing's a mystery to the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End. That's what those names for God are all about. He knows it all.

That knowledge, by the way, does not just make God real smart. It makes him really, really dangerous! How do you know what he might do with the knowledge he has? How do you know how he will respond to what he knows about you as he deals with you? Scary thought, huh!

God says, "I have loved you with an everlasting love." He loves us above and beyond, and bigger, and better, and wider, and longer, and taller, and higher than all he knows about us. God does not limit himself to what he knows about us in his dealings with us, he relies upon what he knows about himself, that he is love and he loves us with himself in spite of our selfs.

Yes, God will deal with us according to who we are. If we remain sinners bent on rebellion and self-indulgence, then, in love, he will deal with us accordingly. But if, by faith, we accept his evaluation of us, and leave our sin, our wickedness, our spiritual weakness and doubt at the cross where Jesus died for us, then he will deal with us, in love, as beloved children.

When I think about what God knows about me, I, like you, have cause to fear, but I am not afraid. I know that I am loved despite what God knows about me. I know that he chooses to love me first and foremost and forever. I know that if you will let him, he will love you the same way.

And I think like Joel does. The incomparable love of God in Christ Jesus is something worth blogging about.

Christmas

2009-12-24T10:00:00.001-06:00

As I sit here in my basement office listening to the wind howl off the lake and drive the snow faster than a Canadian on Highway 61, I'm making notes for the Christmas Eve service. Whether or not we will actually have the Christmas Eve service remains to be seen. The parking lot will have to be plowed. People will have to be able to see to drive, and have some measure of confidence they can get home if they come in to town. It may be a greater service to them to simply cancel the service tonight and urge them to remain safely in their warm homes surrounded by their loving families.

I wonder if God ever thought about canceling Christmas due to unfavorable conditions. There was no room in the inn. It's a long way on foot from Nazareth to Bethlehem. Animal habitat smells. And that trip from heaven down the birth canal, all that blood and commotion! Who's up for that? And of course, the ultimate destination, the great cause for Christmas was a crucifixion. They would all show up to see him die, but so few would be there to see him born.

In my mind I may wonder, but in my heart I know. I know God never once thought of canceling Christmas. The people he loves so much needed a Savior. We, you and me, were trapped in our sins and subject to death and without Christmas, we would be forever lost to him. So he made the journey of a life and lifetime. He was wrapped in swaddling clothes so that we would not remain bound in our sin. He was laid in a manger so the wrath of God would not be laid on us. He was born into poverty so that we would appreciate the riches of his grace. He became nothing to give us everything.

I don't know yet if we'll cancel the Christmas Eve service here in Grand Marais or not. I don't know whether you'll be able to get to a service where you are, but I offer you this. The Child who came to die lives and he still enters gladly into the worst personal conditions of heart and soul to bring peace, joy, and new life forever. Blizzard or no blizzard, if you want God in your life, it can always be Christmas if you will believe in him.

Ask him into your life, into your situation today, whatever that situation is, and discover what Christmas is truly all about.

Christmas Spirit

2009-12-05T10:35:00.004-06:00

A light snow fell like sifted flour and covered the landscape, the roads, the parking lots. It was 18 degrees, cold enough to make what snow there was more crunchy than slick. Shoppers were everywhere.

We avoided Black Friday, but could not avoid the trip to Duluth. The 14th Annual Christmas Open House still needed more cookies, dips, and crackers. There were gifts we could not find in our little town. There was the simple need for a change of scenery. So off we went.

Stores and houses and light posts are decorated. Christmas music fills the air, as it does in a lot of places this time of year. I almost started to get into the "Christmas Spirit" until the young woman in the gray Saturn charged down the aisle in the parking lot, horn blaring at a car already three quarters backed out of a spot. She barely missed clipping a pedestrian as she sped to get around the moving vehicle before it could block her path any further.

I seem to recall Coach Carswell drilling the idea into us during Driver's Ed in the tenth grade that if you come upon a car backing out of parking spot, you wait for them to complete their action before proceeding. In other words, you stop and they go. Then you go. You don't lay on the horn and try to get around them putting the lives of drivers and pedestrians at risk.

Minnesotans seem to have learned to drive with different rules of etiquette. If the car ahead of them is making a left hand turn, they pass on the right, crossing the solid white line. They don't slow down. They don't stop. And God help the pedestrian walking on the shoulder at the same time, or the car ahead making a left turn into their path! I've seen cars passing on the right cut off other vehicles that patiently waited for the left turning driver.

All this led me to wonder about the "Christmas Spirit." Where does that inclination to be gracious, patient, kind, thoughtful, sensitive, caring, self-effacing come from? (Certainly not the Minnesota DMV!) The newly fallen snow, the cheerful decorations, the omnipresent music did not seem to create the fabled warmth of the season one might have expected among shoppers and staffers. Lines were long. Patience was short. Frowns were abundant. Smiles rare. Where was the "Christmas Spirit?"

Maybe it is simply too early for its appearance. Maybe there weren't enough children bundled up to their eyelids visiting Santa on the rotunda. Maybe the reason is internal and not external, so the "stuff of Christmas" is getting less effective at producing the "spirit of Christmas?"

I pushed my cart down the aisles at Walmart and thought about it. None of the externals that mark Christmas were present that night. No "price rollbacks." No "limited offer DVDs." No holiday portraits at one low price. No shopping carts, lifetime warranties, or chocolate santas. No gift receipts or express lanes (10 items only, please.)

So, what was there that night? What created the awe, the splendor, the power, the mystery, and the glory that caused Mary to "ponder these things in her heart," and the shepherds to return "glorifying and praising God?" What created the impact the world longs for and so often misses? What created the "spirit" retailers and license bureaus fail so miserably to recreate?

Three things, I think, from Luke 2:10-11. And the angel said to them. 'Fear not, for behold I bring you good news of a great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.'"

First, the Christmas spirit arises in the human heart from a divine pronouncement. "The angel said to them." I love this, don't you? God could easily remain distant and quiet, withholding his thoughts and leaving us in the dark about his intents and purposes. He could leave us guessing and getting it wrong and still hold us accountable. Instead, he tells us. He shares his mind, his thoughts, his heart with us, revealing himself, even if we can only grasp a glimpse of the immensity who is God. God's pronouncements are an expression of mercy, for through them we are invited to join him, heart to heart, in the work and wonder of his being God. And that is the Christmas spirit.

Second, the Christmas spirit arises in the human spirit from the divine promise. Six hundred years before, the prophet Isaiah prophesied, spoke God's promise, and said, "For to us a child is born, to us a son is given . . . and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace." That night the angel said, "Unto you is born . . . a Savior, who is Christ the Lord." The child of promise arrived. God made good on what he told his people to expect. God proved that faith is not futile! Hope received what the heart yearned for!

Listen, if God kept this most important promise to his people, you can expect him, through faith, to keep ALL his promises, including the ones he makes in his word to YOU! Expectation of grace, and mercy, and love, and wisdom, and guidance, and justice with good reason (because God keeps his promises); that's the Christmas spirit.

Finally, the Christmas spirit arises in the human experience from the divine presence. "Unto you." That's what the angel said. "Unto you." Into your experience. Into the realm of your existence. Into the measure of your need. For your salvation. For your joy. For your hope. "Unto you a child is." Ponder it. Marvel at it. God himself comes to you, into your life to be fully present for his glory and your joy as you keep your faith in him. God does not make cameo appearances. He dwells! "Unto you a child is." Christ present in your life for glory and joy. That's the Christmas spirit.

The Christmas spirit in us arises from God actively expressing his love and character in us daily through the Son born to us, died for us, and raised for us. You know what that means, don't you? It is not the trappings of the season that initiate or motivate the Christmas spirit within us, but the reality of the Son, who is always with us. That means any day can be Christmas, and every day can be filled with the Christmas spirit!

Who Prays for the "Worst of These"?

2009-11-17T10:38:00.004-06:00

I got up at 3:45 this morning to watch the Leonid Meteor Shower. By all reports I'd read it was supposed to be awesome this year. And I'm sure it was . . . somewhere.

The sky was black and clear. The stars stood out magnificently. I've seen it darker and clearer and more breathtaking, but this was good and I was sure it would be a fine morning for viewing the meteors. I guess I should tell you now that after laying there for forty-five minutes at the proposed "perfect time" I saw exactly one (1) meteor whose flameout lasted about half a second. I must have been looking at the wrong sky. Maybe they meant that other sky over there.

At any rate, the Leonid meteor shower turned out to be a meteor drip for me. But the morning was not wasted. Far from it. As I lay there on my back staring at the stars a thought began to take shape in my mind. "There are so many of them," I thought. So many beyond counting. We see a few, but not even a countable number compared to how many there are. It was captivating, but it was the thought that God threw in next that actually caused my heart to skip a beat and me to catch my breath and hold it for a moment.

"As the stars, so are those whose lives, and bodies, and minds, and hearts are enslaved by pornography." I wasn't expecting that. At all. Suddenly my mind began a slow tumble back to the day we discovered the two grocery bags of magazines my stepfather kept in the attic, the Playboys we lifted from the rack at the corner drugstore across the street from Hardees where Lumpkin Rd. diverts from Cusseta Rd., to a bachelor party the year I left for college. I shook my head not wanting and not willing to return to the places I left behind when I came to the cross.

But God was unrelenting. "I want you here. I want you to recall faces you have forgotten, faces you will never know, faces about which you never cared. Dale, they are like the stars in the heavens. You have seen a few, but there are millions more. Millions more women and girls, boys and men trapped, enslaved, selling what they think they have to get what they think they want and coming away used, empty, and too often dead. And Dale, I want you to answer this question: who prays for these?"

Producers, publishers, printers, photographers, models, actors, owners, distributors, buyers, viewers: victims, everyone of them, of an unspeakable evil more repugnant to genteel folk than AIDS victims in our day. We pray for the persecuted, the sick, the "lost," the imprisoned, the unfortunate, the nation, the president, the school, the church, the potluck, the pastor, the people, and the parking lot, but who prays for these?

Who begs God to send into the filthiest of industries One who will bring hope, deliverance, and true, lifesaving love. We preach, and rightly so, against the dangers of pornography. We rave against the addiction. We filter the Internet. But who prays for the people? Who intercedes on their behalf, these ones who turn a glorious gift into a freak show for perverted minds and hearts? Who prays for them to find someone who genuinely cares for their souls? Who prays to be someone who genuinely cares for their souls?

I finally exhaled as the shower of divine concern subsided. I cried. And I prayed. And I cried some more as I tried to get my mind around how many people in our world (out of perhaps 9 billion people) might be caught in this wicked trap. How many children sold out by desperate parents who can't feed the rest any other way? How many fatherless boys seeking affirmation? How many girls just looking for love? How many women, frightened or fighting for some shred of self, selling themselves one photo set, one film, one view at a time? How many men loving and hating, lusting and loathing, not able to be free and whole? They are more than we can count. And we consider them, all of them, the "worst of these." We recoil at even the thought of what they do, what they have become.

Who will pray for them? Who will pray for the "worst of these," that by the mercy of God someone, somewhere, full of grace and truth, will intersect their lives and offer them Christ? Offer them hope? Offer them a way out and a way home?

I will. I've decided that every time I have to take an impure thought captive to Christ, every time Satan launches a stray image into my mind, every time my eyes are assaulted by unclean things, I will pray for those caught in the spider web of pornography. I will fight back on their behalf. I will not let them die alone, forgotten, unloved. Not everyone can do this. Not everyone should do this. Even the best intentions can be exploited by the evil one. But until God says otherwise, I'm going to pray that a very specific group of people hear a life changing testimony about the grace of God in Christ Jesus every time I think of them.

There are more of them than I can count or even imagine. But God is great. He loves them. He has asked, "Who will pray for these?" He must have a plan for them. I will pray. Perhaps you will too?

A "Well duh!" Moment

2009-11-12T18:32:00.003-06:00

I sat down in my favorite booth at the local cafe this morning to order my favorite breakfast and read my favorite prophet. You c'aint git no grits this far north (they think grits is the stuff left over on the road after they sand all winter), so I order biscuits and gravy, two eggs over easy on top, and pass the Tabasco. It's close as I can get to home without ordering fried chicken.

Anyway, I sat down in the booth, ordered decaf and breakfast, and started reading Jeremiah. I've said it before, and I'm saying it again, Jeremiah is the bomb! God sends him out to preach and tells him, right up front, "Ain't gonna be easy, but don't you get discouraged, 'cause if you get dismayed by them, I'll dismay you before them." C'mon, you gotta love a job description that starts out, "They will fight against you but they shall not prevail against you."

So what was Jeremiah expecting? Chapter twelve records his complaint to God. "Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do all who are treacherous thrive?" What kind of question is that, don'tcha know? What did he think God meant? Did he think God was kidding when he said, "They will fight against you."

Maybe Jeremiah thought, "Gee, I'm a prophet of God. Surely everyone who loves God will love the messages I bring and the whole nation will treat me like a hero." They treated him like dirt. They threw him down a well and left him there. They ignored what he said. It was just like God told him. There would be occasions when he would be tempted to despair.

God answers Jeremiah's complaint in the latter half of chapter twelve. Essentially he says to Jeremiah, "If you think you have it bad, imagine how I feel! This is my house. These are my beloved. Many shepherds have destroyed my vineyard; they have made my pleasant portion a desolate place." God continues by promising to "pluck Judah" from among the nations that seek to destroy her. He promises to do them good after accounting for the bad they have done to him.

In case you were looking for a definition of grace, that's a good one.

Anyway, I'm reading through all this and smiling at the lessons God supplies faithful Jeremiah, when I get to chapter 13 verse 12. God gives Jeremiah a message to give to the people. It is a serious statement of the obvious. Jeremiah is to tell the people, "Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, 'Every jar shall be filled with wine.'" It's one doozy of a "well duh!" moment. The people respond, "Do we not know indeed know that every jar will be filled with wine?"

"Of course wine jars will be filled with wine, Jeremiah. What do you think wine jars are for? And don't you think we're smart enough to know wine jars will be filled with wine? What kind of message is this." I can just hear them, can't you. Sometimes, we get that response, don't we? We try to tell people about life, and God, and grace, and we get that response, "C'mon we already know all this. What's the big deal?"

Here's the big deal: God used a statement of the obvious as an introduction for a not so obvious announcement. Verse thirteen says, "Then you will say to them, 'Thus says the LORD: Behold, I will fill with drunkenness all the inhabitants of this land . . . and I will dash them one against another . . . I will not pity or spare or have compassion, that I should not destroy them.'"

Everybody stop and bow your head. God used the obvious to convey a less obvious message. The people were the wine jars and they were to be filled, not for storage but for destruction. Now, there's a time to make the same point about God's justice upon his people (and all people) in regard to sin, but what struck me this morning, was that, as the people responded to Jeremiah, they were stuck in earth-based, time-trapped, self-focused thinking. They did not expect Jeremiah to be providing a spiritual message and so they did not discern the spiritual message written on the face of the obvious. God was telling them more than they recognized.

Thank God Jeremiah kept talking. I've come to realize that God's warnings are occasions for grace. They are invitations to repent and find forgiveness and repair to the mercy and compassion of God before that mercy and compassion become unattainable.

Look for the message God is writing in the world around you. Look for the warning, or the grace, or the mercy that comes in a shooting, or a football game, or a sunset, or a sermon. It is likely there is more to them than the obvious, more than "well duh" can account for.

A Pastor's Down Time Prayer

2009-11-04T14:43:00.004-06:00

It has been more than a month since my last post. I thought I might have more to say. Actually, I do have more to say, but so much of what I have to say I need to say to God before I say it to anyone else. I need a divine editor these days, not only of my words, but of my heart.

So much troubles me. So much seems wrong, out of sorts with God and His word. So many willing to cut theological corners, short sheet the word of God in their lives, even ignore the clear injunctions of Scripture to their lives: thoughts, words, actions, and attitudes included. I have been cursed and dismissed and complimented and affirmed all at the same time. I look at Jesus and I think, "Look out! Crucifixion ahead."

O Lord, make me like you. There are other aspirations that float through my mind and spirit, but please, make that one the priority. Tomorrow I may feel differently, but right this moment, while I'm still in my right mind, accept this plea. Make me like you.

You did not lash out. You did not scorn. You did not despair. For the joy set before you, you endured the cross. I feel the cross today, but the joy? Not so much. So make me like you. Please.

I need to be faithful. I need to be gracious, truthful, and filled with unconditional love and forgiveness because the god of this world has blinded their eyes and "they do not know what they are doing." Please, please. Make me like you.

Let me bare my back to the scourging of gossip and misunderstanding, not because those who give it are right, but because you who took it are right. let me open my heart to the heartless and rebellious, not because they deserve my love, but because I do not deserve your love. Please, make me like you.

"I once was blind." In some ways I still am, so please, Lord, don't just give me sight, but fulfill what the author to the Hebrews said when he exclaimed, "We see Jesus!" Make me like you, able to see what you see in my heart, in the hearts of others, in the Father's heart most of all.

I am full of "I" when I should be full of You, full of Spirit, full of faith. Please, Jesus, make me like you.

What's that, Lord? Before the words leave my lips you are answering? What did I think these difficulties and distresses were all about? You sent them ahead in answer to the prayer you knew I would pray when you sent them?

Oh.

Okay.

No, seriously. It's okay. I just sort of forgot as I got wrapped up in my own little--very little--world. I'm better now. You know the plans you have for me, plans of good and not of evil, to give me hope and a future. These are your unthwartable plans. Good plans. Hopeful plans. Plans that, as the future becomes today and passes into tomorrow, will make me like you.

Thank you.

I love you.

Four Ways to Help in Crisis

2009-09-30T13:19:00.002-05:00

Autumn blew into Cook County on Monday with an unprecedented fury. Winds from the north, virtually unheard of in our little chunk of earth, gusted from land out over Lake Superior at upwards of sixty miles per hour. Trees uprooted or broken off by the wind took out power lines and transformers. Others toppled on buildings and cars. It's a big mess, and three days later many are without power and water.

Unexpected events like this, though not as severe as a hurricane or other natural disaster, still effect people's sense of normalcy and security and create a level of stress and trauma that can have the same debilitating effect as a low grade temperature does on a body after several days. Energy, enthusiasm, and endurance can all suffer.

Here are a few ways you can help your friends, family, and neighbors cope with the inconvenience and stress of unexpected traumatic events.

First, take a minute and gain some perspective for yourself. We often point out the needs of others as being more intense or acute than our own (or someone else's) need. Please. Don't do this. Not yet. I realize that there are people in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama who are still trying to recover from Hurricane Katrina. I realize that their difficulty is very likely greater than mine, their inconvenience more severe than mine, but that does not diminish the emotional effect of my crisis on me. So, helper, take a moment and prepare yourself to understand my crisis in my context. Don't attempt to dismiss my sense of need because you think someone else has a greater need than I. Get some perspective. If you're going to help me, help me.

Second, let's talk about what happened. Let me tell you my story. Tell me your story. Let me tell you how it feel to be a new homeowner and suddenly lose nine trees, three of which were important in screening my house from highway noise. Let me tell you how it feels to have someone else come and cut up my trees with their chainsaw because they didn't think I was competent enough to use it without hurting myself. Let me tell you about not having the ability to shower or even use the bathroom in my own home while I wait for someone who gets to go home to a hot meal and hot shower every night to come and fix my lines. tell me about your trees, your experience, your outlook, and in the telling of these shared stories we'll identify together the things that are important, the things that are silly, and the things that will help us get both the land and the spirit back to normal.

Third, help as you can, but don't make offers or promises you can't keep. If you'd like to help but can't, say so. If you offer to help but are not able to assist me when I tell you what I need, just say so. Please don't tell me you'll see what you can do, and then do nothing. That simply adds disillusionment to my frustration. You might also want to consider offering what you actually can do. If you're allergic to pine sap and can't help me clean up broken branches, but you can bring me a drink of cold water from the store three miles away (since I'm still without power) then by all means, offer what you can, what you will. I'll understand the heart behind the offer and will be encouraged by your thoughtfulness!

Finally, be patient, especially if I lose mine. We all know the proverb, "This too shall pass." We just forget sometimes, in our instant soup world, how slowly some things pass. If I tell the same story again, be patient. Eventually the event will find its rightful place in my life and I'll move on to other stories. If I cuss the same broken tree over and over, be patient. Soon enough new sprouts will grow from the stump and I'll be complaining about more leaves to rake than ever before. If I stand for a moment, overwhelmed at the result of power beyond my control, be patient. Shortly I will realize the normalcy of that position and find my contentment again. So just be patient. It could be the biggest help of all.

Isaiah and Me

2009-09-28T09:45:00.005-05:00

You have to love God's sense of irony. At least, I am coming to appreciate it more and more these days.

I'm thinking this morning of a particular prophet in the Old Testament, a man named Isaiah. Early in his career he saw God.

For real.

No lie.

Isaiah saw God. He writes, "I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of his robe filled the temple." Now you have to understand, this is very, very unusual. You see, there was only man in all of Israel who might have had the opportunity to see God exalted on his throne in the temple. That would be the high priest who would enter the Most Holy Place, the "throne room" of God in the temple, once a year with a sacrifice for the sins of the people. No one else could enter this room. And even the high priest could only enter once a year and under strictly prescribed conditions.

Isaiah was not the high priest. The vision God gives Isaiah is a special invitation to an extraordinary appointment with the King of kings. While the way to God was closed to others, God opened it for Isaiah for a special purpose. God had a mission for this man.

And that's the irony. God called Isaiah into his Presence. God removed Isaiah's guilt and atoned for his sin, not requiring Isaiah to do these things for himself but graciously doing them for him. Then God poses the opportunity for Isaiah to take up as his own the Lord's purpose in the world. Isaiah writes, "I heard the voice of the Lord saying, 'Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?'"

Isaiah is ready. Isaiah is willing. Isaiah cries out, "Here am I. Send me." Can't you just imagine it? Isaiah is seeing God in a way few others ever had. He hears the voices of angels crying out "Glory!" and the voice of God calling out, "Who?" His soul has been relieved of the burden of guilt, and God himself has atoned for his sins. Can't you imagine the majesty, and glory, and freedom, and excitement, and eagerness of the moment? Can't you imagine the enthusiasm that must have swelled in Isaiah's heart to go and do whatever God asked of him? Can't you imagine how he might have thought what a wonderful life it would be to declare the perfections of this God, high and lifted up, Whose glory fills the temple? Can't you imagine how he might have projected that thousands would be overtaken by the glory of the vision God was giving him? Can't you imagine how that would have spurred his eagerness to put himself at God's disposal? Can't you just imagine?

Then God says, "Go, and say to this people: 'Keep on hearing, but do not understand; keep on seeing, but do not perceive.' Make the heart of this people dull, and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes; lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed" (Isaiah 6:9-10). God sent Isaiah on a mission where apparent failure equalled success. That's irony. Intentional, divine, glorious irony.

Isaiah would preach and give his life to draw people to God and to his word, and their response would be to pull farther and farther away from God until such time as God judged his people and sent them into exile. Listen, there's no hint of a megachurch in Isaiah's mission statement, just the sad realization that the hearts of his audience were becoming so jaded in sin and selfishness that to them even the good news would be bad news.

The apostle Paul, writing what was probably his last letter to Timothy before being executed by the Roman government, describes a coming day of trouble and difficulty. "In the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying it power" (2 Timothy 3:1-5). How sad that, according to this last phrase, at least some of the people whom Paul describes will call themselves and be identified as Christians. They will have a form of godliness but it will be without any real spiritual, life changing power. They will be people of religion but have no relationship with the One they suppose to worship. Empty shells. Whitewashed tombs. Pharisees of a different color.

What are an Isaiah and a Timothy supposed to do? What is a Christian who loves the Lord and loves his word to do under these conditions where what men love most is themselves and not God and not his word? What are we to do when all our preaching and teaching and loving and living seems to have the opposite effect than what we projected? What are we to do when otherwise religious people look us in the eye and declare, "I don't care what the Bible says, I want things my way?"

Do what Isaiah did. Confronted with the challenge of sharing God's word with a society and a "church" that would not listen and heed the word of God, Isaiah preached and taught and lived and loved anyway. He did not ask for a different assignment. He did not ask for a change of venue, circumstance, or outcome. Isaiah simply asked, "How long?"

There was no question of whether or not he would agree to be sent by God, having already offered to go. He affirmed his faith-filled intent and asked only that God give him a time frame, a means for understanding God's intent for the days of his life. He did not argue with God, nor express disappointment, nor rail against the people, nor call down fire on the heads of his enemies. He simply asked, "Lord, is this a temporary or permanent assignment? When will I know I've done what you asked?"

If you face a sense of futility in your life today, if attempts to share the word of God with others seem miserably ineffective, if your best efforts at living for Jesus seem only to push people away rather than draw them near to Him, then consider Isaiah. His joy, his hope, his strength was not in a pleasant outcome, but in the fact that God himself had called him, cleansed him, and sent him. It was not the men, the ministry, or the moment that mattered, but the Master.

Take strength in the undeniable fact that God has fully revealed himself in Jesus Christ, and if you have seen Jesus, you have seen the Father in his glory. Take comfort in the certain knowledge that through faith in Jesus God has taken away your guilt and in Christ atoned for your sin. Take heart in the reality of the Holy Spirit living in and through you and his power to sustain your faith. Be bold in the now, as was Isaiah of old, because the message is True, the One who sent you fills the temple with his glory, and He sets both the time and the outcome.

Dwight Dear Commits to the Journey

2009-09-27T17:55:00.002-05:00

It wasn't so very long ago dwight approached me in the grocery store and said, "Pastor, I want to have God in my life. Can you help me?" Today, Dwight was baptized, testifying to God's work in his life and his commitment to walk with the Lord. Thank you Jesus!

I Will Lift Up My Eyes

2009-09-22T14:14:00.002-05:00

Jesus faced an emotionally charged, spiritually potent, and physically impossible task. He stood before the grave of his good friend Lazarus. In the eyes of some he had come too late. Had he been there just a few days earlier he might have prevented this death. They had seen him heal, had witnessed the outpouring of compassion and power that rooted disease from its stronghold and set troubled bodies free. He could face down disease and win, but death, who could win over death?

Jesus loved Lazarus. He wept on his way to the tomb. Everyone saw it in his eyes, in the tears coursing down his face. He did not hide his emotions. He let them be just what God had created them to be, mini-revelators laying bare the depths of his heart.

The crowd was marked by diversity. The sisters were there, the real mourners, the ones whose hearts were broken by a loss they could not prevent. The mourners were there, the ones who spilled empty tears, paid to weep and wail but not to feel. The skeptics were there, posting their notes of disbelief on the hearts of any nearby listener. The stone was there, unreasoning, unmoving, a guard and an obstacle all at once.

And Lazarus was there. Dead. Four days decomposed. Smelly but not smelling.

We face occasions like this. Occasions of pain, difficulty, impossibility. Occasions that break the heart and try the soul. Occasions when dreams die, careers give up the ghost, hope fades. Occasions when we stand before an unmoving and unmovable obstacle and thinks to ourselves, "What do I do now?" Jesus came to the tomb. It was a cave. A stone lay against it. A dead guy, his friend, was sealed away inside.

"Take away the stone," he said.

"But Lord, he stinketh," they said.

"Don't miss the glory of God," he said. Don't let the seeming impossibility and unpleasantness of the moment prevent you from seeing the glory of God at work. You see, Lazarus might be dead, but God ain't dead. Not then. Not now.

So they took away the stone.

Then, oh then, Jesus lifted up his eyes. And he said, "I thank you Father that you have heard me." He hadn't said anything yet. He knew that God knew the outcry of his heart. That was the nature of Christ's relationship with the Father: utter confidence that God the Father would know without error or need for explanation the desire of the Son's heart.

E.M. Bounds wrote in his classic little book The Reality of Prayer, "As it was with Christ, so ought we to be so perfect in faith, so skilled in praying, that we could lift our eyes to Heaven and say with Him, with deepest humility, and with commanding confidence, 'Father, I thank thee that thou has heard me.'"

What do you do when your heart is broken and the task at hand bears all the marks of the impossible? Do you lift up your eyes to heaven? Do you speak forth confidence in wisdom, insight, and power of God? Do you plead for life or surrender to death? Do you share with Christ an utter confidence that your Heavenly Father has already heard what only your heart has uttered?

"I knew that you always hear me," he said to his Father. Then he spoke to his friend, "Lazarus, come forth." Right confidence led to right action. I will lift up my eyes in faith. Will you?

A Second Time (Hebrews 9:27-28)

2009-09-20T07:07:00.001-05:00

A Second Time
Hebrews 9:27-28

I want to introduce you this morning to a simple but profound comparison that should change the way we live, the way we think, and the way we love while we walk in this world. Throughout this book of Hebrews it has been the Holy Spirit’s purpose to encourage and motivate God’s people to fall so deeply in love with Jesus Christ that we are removed farther and farther from the possibilities of spiritual drifting, practical indifference, nominal faith, and utter ruin that can easily beset of the unconcerned.

The Spirit has pointed out to us the superiority of Jesus over such spiritually exalted beings as angels and over such spiritually exalted persons as Moses and Joshua. Jesus provides a more effective sacrifice than the Old Testament Law, a more powerful ministry than the Old Testament priest, a more personal covenant than the Old Testament covenant. Not only does Jesus transform the nature of our relationship with God, through his sacrifice, our nature itself is changed as we trust in Christ. Our guilt is removed, our shame is healed, our conscience is cleansed and we are adopted, through faith in Jesus Christ, as God’s own sons and daughters.

Besides all this, Jesus ever lives to make intercession for us, permanently residing in the presence of the Father, offering himself as God’s reason to bestow grace and mercy and forgiveness and love upon weak and willful human beings. The ministry of Jesus that God loves and that God loves through is not merely a thing of the past, but a present reality through which each of us receives the fullest measure of God’s grace right now.

James reminds us in his New Testament letter that “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” (James 1:17) Every good and perfect gift comes from God and it comes through Jesus Christ by virtue of his superior sacrifice and ministry over the sacrifices and ministries under the Old Covenant. This is the fulfilment of Isaiah 43:19, “Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” God has made a way for us, in Jesus, to walk in this world with focus, victory, and hope, and I want to show you the way in these verses in Hebrews 9:27-28.

The comparison included in these verses is quite simple but incredibly profound. It is a comparison between you and Jesus, between Jesus Christ and all other human beings. The comparison is made with the words “just as” in verse 27 and the word “so” in verse 28. “Just as it is appointed to man” “so Christ.” There is the basis for the comparison. But let’s look at the three degrees of comparison in these verses and ask how so simple a comparison should so utterly change our lives. We’ll follow the form the Holy Spirit uses here in Hebrews: first we’ll talk about us, then we’ll talk about Jesus.

In setting up the comparison, the Spirit first describes the universal conditions under which every human being lives from the moment they are born. First, every human being dies. It is appointed for man to die.

Romans 5:12 reminds us, “ Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.” A chapter later in the same letter the apostle Paul reiterates this truth when he writes, “The wages of sin is death.” These verses tell us that death is included in the life process because of sin. God applies death in response to sin. When Adam and Eve sinned in the garden, human death entered the world and God appointed the curse of death for all their descendants, for every one of their ancestors. Every human being has a God-set appointment with death.

God told Adam and Eve, when he showed them the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the garden and told them not to eat of it that if they did so, they would die. Well, guess what. God wasn’t kidding. He did not misrepresent his intentions. He desired and required their obedience and he held to the consequences when they disobeyed. They ate and they died, spiritually and physically, and God appoints the same consequences of sin to all their offspring, including you and including me. Our appointment with death comes not merely by natural process as evolutionary reasoning would have us believe, but by divine appointment. I like what one pastor said, “God plans our birthday and our death day.” This is what God means in Psalm 139:16 when he has the Psalmist write, “In your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there were none of them.”

Our first day and our last day are all determined by God. Our appointment with death is appointed by God. Now listen, there is hope here. Our lives are in God’s hands. There is no room for despair here. No room for discouragement. It is not illness or accident that determines our death. It is not some Satanic or demonic influence that determines the shortness of our days. Fate does not arbitrarily cut the threads that end our life. There is no meaningless ending just because some natural process runs its course. God, the great God himself, Creator of heaven and earth, upholder of the universe and Savior of the world determines our appointment with death and sees that we keep it in his timing, the time he has set for us.

Do you see this? Without having to be concerned about the capricious nature of death, we can trust God all the more for our life! Henry Martyn, a long ago missionary to Persia said, “If [Christ] has work for me to do, I cannot die.” he was right to say this. It is not man or Satan or fate that determines our day to die. It is Christ himself.

But let us take note here that not only is it appointed unto every man to die, it is appointed unto every man to die ONCE. Anyone dreaming of reincarnation and thinking they can come back and try again needs to surrender that dream. It ain’t going to happen. Death happens once and only once. Death doesn’t happen “once in a lifetime” or “once in a while.” Death happens once, period. No next time around. No second chances. The entire point of including this word “once” is to highlight and emphasize the finality of death.

You have once chance to get it right, one opportunity to get right with God. The Scripture tells us, “Today is the day of salvation. Now is the appointed time.” Most of us avoid thinking about death. We don’t care for it. It doesn’t make us happy. But we have to think about it because we have an unavoidable appointment for which we must make preparation. Death is huge. Death deserves some serious consideration. It’s time to stop daydreaming in the now and take some action for forever.
There is an added weight to the need to consider the future. It is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment. Death is not the end of our existence. We are not merely organic masses that simply “go out of consciousness and decompose int eh ground.” We have a future beyond death. Beyond death we face God.

Consider Paul’s words to Timothy. He has just admonished his younger protégé to “keep himself pure” and then he writes, “The sins of some men are conspicuous, going before them to judgment, but the sins of others appear later.” He means that some people confess their sins and repent of them and take care of their guilt before they appear before God and in that manner establish their hearts pure in faith. Others however, hide their sins, and when they appear before God, their hands are full and God’s judgment is just. Hebrews 10:27-31 describes the judgment that people face, “For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has spurned the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge his people.” It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”

Wake up and see what lies ahead. See what God in all his mercy reveals to us. Take account of what really matters in this world.

Now, what about Jesus? What is his part in this comparison that should change the way we live, think, and love in this world? Verse 28 takes up this question. So Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.

Please be encouraged by what the Holy Spirit sets before us in his word. Just as men die, so Jesus died. Just as men come to judgment, so Jesus will come to the judgment. But there is an infinite difference here that ought to make our hearts sing out in praise and thanksgiving.

Compare Jesus' experience with our experience and we will discover that though he has similar experiences, they do not parallel our experiences, they transform our experience!
First, Jesus died: “having been offered”. This is good news! We know from the previous verses in this chapter that Someone had to die in order for God's "last will and testament," his covenant with us to be put into effect. Jesus died and all the good that God intends for his heirs to inherit is now available to them.

Verse 28 also tells us that Jesus died once to bear the sins of many. This is also good news. Jesus death to bear the sins of many means that for those who put their trust in him, their death is no longer punitive. He took our sins and suffered the death our sins deserve. Through faith in Jesus we can send our sins on ahead for judgment in him, so that when we arrive at judgment through the doorway of death, we can enter without fear for our sins will already have been judged in Christ on the cross. Christ has transformed death from an occasion of dread to an occasion of joy! This is how we can get right with God in spite of being sinners. Christ took our punishment in his death on the cross.

Verse 28 also tells us that Jesus appears a second time, not to deal with sin, but to rescue sinners who by faith have trusted him for their salvation, not to be judged but to save those who are eagerly waiting. He has dealt with sin once and for all. There is nothing left for him to do in regard to sin. We need to confess our sin to God and trust him to forgive us through Christ, but there is nothing left for Jesus to do to make forgiveness available. He is done dealing with sin. His work cannot be improved upon.

But there is more here. We had to face death, and so Jesus faced death and bore the punishment of death for us. But we also have to face judgment, so Christ comes a second time for us, this time not to deal with sin but to save us from judgment. He will appear a second time not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.” This is not salvation in addition to the cross but the application of the salvation gained through the cross. This is the fulfilment of God’s word in Romans 5:9-10. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.

Finally we need to ask to whom does this rescue from the wrath of God come? According to verse 28 Jesus bore the sins of “many.” Those “many” are further identified as “those who are eagerly waiting for him.” Those who are eagerly waiting are those who putting their faith in Jesus deeply long for his return, for their rescue from this world and their establishment in his kingdom forever.

This is how “those who are eagerly waiting for him” are described elsewhere in the New Testament:

Romans 8:23 And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

1 Corinthians 1:7 so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ,

Galatians 5:5 For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness.

Philippians 3:20 But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ,

These people have faith that is eager for Christ to come, earnest in their desire for him and for his return. These are people who trust Christ in such a way that makes them eager for him to come. Many people who profess Christ today are not eager for his return. They love the world and the things of this world and they are reluctant to release their grip on the temporal pleasures this world extends. Many who profess Christ are quite happy with the delay in his return and rarely if ever pray, “Even so, Lord, come quickly.”

Eagerness for Christ’s return is an indication, a sign that we love him and believe in him authentically. Can there be any real love for someone whose presence we do not desire? There is a “phony faith,” a false faith that wants to escape hell but has no desire for Jesus. That kind of faith does not save. That kind of “fire insurance faith” that desires deliverance but not the Deliverer is not the faith of those who are saved, those who are “eagerly waiting for him.”

Paul wrote, in 2 Timothy 4:8, “Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing.” Do you wait eagerly for Jesus to come? Do you love his appearing?

I urge you this morning, as one who share with you an appointment with death, turn to Jesus. Trust him. Trust God to forgive your sins on his behalf. Turn to him as your eagerly awaited Savior.

Come, All You Worn Out, Weary Laborers

2009-09-15T12:56:00.002-05:00

Who knows for certain where dreams come from or why they have the content they have? I sure don't (even though I suspect pan fried tilapia coated with flour and Emeril's Original Essence at 9:00 PM could have something to do with it.) Last night I had the stupidest dream. I don't remember it, I just remember how dumb it was, silly, nonsensical.

I've been having a lot of dreams like that lately. I wake up early, between 4 and 5 o'clock not really remembering the details, just a lingering impression that these dreams made less sense than a prime time comedy sitcom. They have had two good side effects though. They're waking me up early and each time I've awakened from one in the last week or so (so far), I've awakened with a specific Scripture in mind that I have not been thinking about previously.

This morning's verses were Matthew 11:28-30. Come unto me all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly of heart, andyou will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

Some mornings I've gotten up and spent a couple hours pondering the verses. This morning I stayed in bed and laid there thinking. I have stopped wondering, "Why this verse?" and have started focusing on the content of these words themselves.

It is interesting to me that Jesus' words here are both an invitation and a command. So often we interpret invitations as having a built in rejection button, kind of like the end user license agreements on software packages: if you don't agree simply click "decline" and you have no further obligation. Jesus' words don't seem to carry an "if." Come! he says. Yes, you are welcome to get off your duff and get moving. You're weary. You're burdened. Make a bit more effort and do something about it. Come.

But how? That's the question I always ask. When Jesus is speaking to the people who surrounded him, they could make arrangements, pack their bags and take a walk with him. He was right there for them to see and touch and follow. How do I come to him now, when he's in heaven, invisible, not physically here? I'm weary. It's hard to keep the faith sometimes. But how do I come to Jesus now?

It's probably the preacher in me, but I think there are three ways plus one we come to Jesus. I think three happen simultaneously and one rightly follows the others, but I also think we can talk about them separately.

First, we come to Jesus by faith. Hebrews 11:6 says, "And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him."

I saw a PowerPoint presentation the other night that included slides of people praying at a Shinto shrine in Japan. The presenter said that those who are there praying have no idea if there is anyone out there hearing,and they have little expectation to receive anything in relation to their prayer. Praying is merely ritual that must be followed. No faith is involved. How different is our relationship with Almighty God who sent His Son to die on the cross for us, so that by faith in him we may be certain that our prayers are heard and will be answered. We approach God in faith, certain of what we do not see, certain that he exists, that his "eyes are upon the righteous and his ear is inclined to their prayer."

We come to God in faith. We also come to God in humility, leaving false pride at the door. God "rewards those who earnestly seek him." I find it hard to understand Christians who think that acknowledging God's goodness and his promises to them is sin. These are Christians who proudly decline to ask God for his blessing because to ask anything for themselves is "prideful." Brethren, to refuse to open our hearts and lives to all God has to offer his children is to present ourselves as knowing better than God, being more humble than God, more righteous than God. Is our refusal to accept what God so graciously offers not a greater expression of pride than opening our hands and hearts and receiving with thanksgiving what is so lovingly offered? This preference for "my duty to obey" over God's delight in giving to us is surely not less than sin.

God rewards those who "earnestly seek him" with himself. He gives his Spirit to us. The Spirit of God invests in God's people the full measure of God's life and grace and goodness and compassion. The power that enabled Jesus' sinless life, the authoritative teaching, the miracles, the devotion, the obedience, these all come through the Holy Spirit who is himself given by God to those who earnestly seek God as an act of faith. Come to Jesus by faith, find Jesus by faith.

As we come to Jesus by faith we will also be coming to him in obedience. Come is a command. So are "take up" and "learn." To take his yoke is to join him in relationship and mission. To learn of him is to invest our time and energy in discovery of his person. I remember my first real date with my wife. We went on a harbor cruise in Norfolk, VA. I asked question after question trying to discover whatever I could about her (including what I would need to know to get a second date!) In our conversation, I asked questions and I waited for answers. I probed her answers with more questions. I couldn't get enough of her and the insights she was giving into her heart.

Learning Jesus is not so drastically different. We learn him through the word, through prayer, and through service. The Bible gives us the concepts about Jesus. Prayer provides the personal conviction that what we have learned is true. Service / ministry demonstrates our consecration to the One we have learned the truth about, the One who is True.

Faith and obedience should create expectation, the third way we come to Jesus. he described his "yoke" as easy and his "burden" as light. We should expect that our experience will conform to his revelation. We come to Jesus expecting him to make it easy to know him, easy to love him, easy to relate to him. If we come some other way, without this expectation, or with a different expectation, then we are approaching on our terms rather than his and are not really "coming" to him at all.

That's three ways we come to Jesus. The "plus one" is praise. Jesus opens this invitation to come to him with a prayer of praise to God. I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and have revealed them to little children. Praise God for opening the way for us to "come to Jesus" and find rest, and for making it so simple, a child can do it.

Alright, all you worn out, weary laborers. Come to Jesus in faith, in obedience, in expectation and with praise. Simple. Come.

2009-09-09T15:35:00.002-05:00

Labor Day seemed as good a day as any to begin the landscaping around the new building. We've been talking about it, planning for it, envisioning what it would all look like. Finally we had a day when we could concentrate on working the plan and digging the holes.

First we gathered tools. Then we gathered the shrubs and got them onto the truck , moved, and unloaded at the church. Then we went back and loaded mulch, which we also unloaded at the church. Then we went and picked up, by hand, several hundred pounds of rock for the border. I decided not to unload that until we were ready to use it. Then it was time to take the machine and dig the holes.

The first hole was not so bad. We planted a Russian Olive in memory of Linnie Quarles. The second hole posed no problem. We planted another Russian Olive. The third hole went smoothly as well. In went a Pagoda Dogwood. (That's going to be a beautiful tree.) Then came "the fourth hole."

The tines of the scoop bit into the packed dirt of the gravel parking lot. We had already anchored the backhoe by dropping the bucket and the stabilizer legs. The scoop began it's short journey from starting position to full. It moved four inches out of the expected twenty-four and stopped. The hydraulically powered, mini-mammoth, stopped in mid-scoop. We were digging in Cook County. We found a rock.

What a rock it must have been. The teeth on the end of the bucket hooked on and brought the entire backhoe six inches closer to the hole. The rock didn't budge. Tried again. Once again the backhoe, heavier and anchored, moved but the rock didn't. I envisioned a boulder the size of Massachusetts, or that perhaps we'd tied into bedrock and were pulling against the entire North American continent.

We took a different approach and after some artsy maneuvering managed to get the scoop under the rock and lift it free. It was about fourteen inches long, four inches tall, and six inches wide. (Think four Subway sandwiches stacked two abreast and two high.) It probably weighed ten pounds. The backhoe is twenty feet long, eight feet tall, and weighs a ton. But the rock moved the backhoe before the backhoe could move the rock.

A well entrenched sin, a long standing destructive habit, a deeply rooted lie, these things aren't removed easily from the heart. Like a small stone in a densely packed parking lot, they take extreme force to remove. What force moves these "rocks" lodged in the heart? God's loving grace applied through the death of his Son, Jesus.

Take the lie that many of us buy into: "You're no good. There's no way God could love you." It worms its way deep into the heart, affecting spiritual, emotional, psychological, and even intellectual development. We learn to live in the context of this lie. We build our lives, in one way or another, as an attempt to negate its effect. Words don't dislodge it. Self-effort doesn't remove it, but instead draw us only closer to the abyss of despair. We need more.

So God sent Jesus to die on the cross to show us undeniably that he loves us, to dislodge the lie from our hearts. God's love, demonstrated, proven, in the death of his Son, gets under the lie and provides the spiritual force necessary to remove the lie. His love is the force. Your faith is the machine that applies the force.

Finders Keepers

2009-08-25T16:37:00.001-05:00

John Schnatter found his car. No, he didn’t forget where he parked at the mall. No, someone didn’t take off with his car while he was stopped at a downtown stoplight. No, John sold his gold and black 1971 Chevrolet Camaro Z28 in 1983 to help save his father’s business. He also used part of the money to open a business himself, a restaurant chain now known as “Papa John’s.”

Here’s the deal. Schnatter apparently did what he had to do in 1983, but he missed his car. He spent years looking for it. He created a website specifically for the purpose of assisting in the search. He made promotional appearances to talk about his lost car. He offered a $250,000 reward to whoever found his beloved car. (Schnatter had a replica installed in the company headquarters in Louisville, Kentucky, but apparently, it just wasn’t as good as the real thing.)

I don’t know about you, but if I was a car with feelings, I’d feel pretty special and very loved to know that someone missed me that much and loved me that much to go to all the trouble and expense to find me and bring me home! Well, guess what, you don’t have to be a car with feelings to experience that kind of love.

Jesus told a parable (a short story that uses a familiar object to convey a spiritual truth) that makes exactly that point. “What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance” (Luke 15:4-7, ESV).

This is a parable about God’s love for you, about his efforts to find you and bring you home, about his great joy when someone leaves their old, sinful life behind and returns to God. Imagine, God looks for us. He searches for us. Finding us when we are lost is of primary concern to him. Such love does he have for us that he went as far as sending his Son, Jesus, to die on the cross for us. (That’s worth inestimably way, way more than $250,000!) And when he finds us, God rejoices! It makes him happy! Our return makes him happy! (So much for the gloom and doom old guy with a big stick ready to beat the rebellion out of us.) He even draws all the rest of heaven into the party. All this over one sinner, one person like you and me, who reaches out to God and says, “Love me. Help me.”

When John Schnatter found his 1971 Camaro, he was one happy camper. He was so happy that Papa John’s restaurants all over the country planned to offer all Camaro owners a free pizza at stores on Wednesday. Listen, if John Schnatter can be that happy over a lost car, imagine how happy God is when he finds his lost children. That’s one serious happy!

The "Living" God

2009-08-06T10:38:00.002-05:00

Four times in the book of Hebrews the inspired author refers to God as "the living God." I realized that while I was reading through Hebrews again, looking for recurrent words. Apparently it was a description the author knew his readers would recognize, understand, and appreciate.

I didn't. I sat there looking at the phrase and realizing I'd never really given it any thought. What does it mean, that God is the "living" God? Intuitively I assume it means he offers some advantages over a "dead" god. But that goes without saying, doesn't it? So then, why say it? And why say it four times in one letter?

I got out my trusty ESV concordance and picked out every occasion when God is referred to as "the living God." Some of the accounts are redundant, the same record in two or more places. But there were four Old Testament uses that stood out as singularly helpful.

The phrase first appears in Deuteronomy 5:26. This is the retelling of the Mount Sinai meeting between YHWH and his people. The mountain rumbles with thunder and smoke. The people are terrified at the voice of God and very, very aware of the death sentence incurred should any of them touch the mountain while God is present. In their reasonable panic they approach Moses with their desire that he risk his life for them and be their spokesman. Verse twenty-six captures their awe and their fear: For who is there of all flesh, that has heard the voice of the living God speaking out of the midst of the fire as we have, and has still lived?

The comparison is life and death and who is subject to death and who is not. They live in fear for their lives before a God who has no fear of death. The living God is the God who causes death but does not die himself.

I like that. I like it that God is subject neither to death nor fear of death. I like it because I'll never, ever turn to God with my fears, or hopes, or sins, or praise and hear, "I'm sorry, sir. God died two weeks ago. We held a lovely memorial service for him, but he is no longer available. Is there someone else that can help you? An angel? A saint?" The living God is eternal, unchanging, constant, and consistent. He will always be there when I turn to him (and he will always be watching when I don't turn to him.)

I love the next time the phrase "living God" is used in the Bible as well. It's in Joshua 3:10, And Joshua said, "Here is how you shall know that the living God is among you and that he will without fail drive out from before you the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Hivites, the Perizzites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, and the Jebusites."

Replace all the "ites" in the passage with the things in your life that keep you from fully enjoying the immensity of God's blessing. Sin. Bad attitudes. Disappointment. Disobedience. Weak faith. These are the things that not only exist as obstacles to true joy, but actively oppose real joy in our lives. And here in this verse God makes it clear that he is more than merely adequate to uproot and eliminate opposition to joy in our lives. He "will without fail drive out." I take that to imply that God, the living God, is not subject to failing health or diminished strength. He, the living God, will always at all times retain the capacity and the ability to accomplish his good pleasure in your life! There will never be a moment when he is incapacitated, winded, exhausted, or otherwise unable to work the work that makes us holy.

Third, this living God who is not subject to death or failing health, is not subject to social expulsion either. Remember David and Goliath? Remember the nine foot tall guy who terrorized the armies of Israel and mocked their God? David asked, "Who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living God?" It's not just that Goliath challenged Israel. Goliath challenged God and all God's ability to deliver victory to his own glory and his people's joy.

And you know how God responded. One kid, one sling, one stone, and one dead giant! Goliath attempted to convince God's people that God was irrelevant, absent, foolish, powerless, disengaged, unimportant, a force not to be reckoned with by the enlightened in the culture of the moment. We hear echoes of his mockery even now, but let us also hear the all-powerful voice of the living God who will not be expelled from among his people by the uninformed and faithless ranting of cultural giants. The living God will not be silenced just because some fool says in his heart there is no God. The living God does not slip away into oblivion just because some finite earthling says so. He lives, and he will demonstrate his life on behalf of his people!

Finally, the living God is not subject to deprivation. Psalm 42:2 says, My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? Imagine a man dying of thirst being handed an empty flask. Imagine crawling through the burning sands of a desert to an oasis with trees but no spring, no water. Now imagine the same oasis with cold, clear water bubbling savingly to the surface. God, the living God, is not an empty well or a dry pitcher. He is streams in the desert, the fountain of living water.

Do your own concordance search for the "living God" and you'll find a few more references that deepen the understanding and appreciation for God as the living God. Idols are "dead" gods unable to move or feed themselves or help those who serve them. Not so the "living God." Other gods fall to the machinations of evil men. Not so the "living God." Other people die without hope. Not so the people of the "living God."

We need to be reminded that God is more than we think he is. We need to be reminded that there are depths of his person and his revelation we have not yet plumbed. We need to open our minds and our hearts so that he can teach us about himself and his Son. The more we know of him the more we shall be like him. The more we are like him, the more we will fit into his kingdom, both now and forever.

Simple . . . but not easy

2009-08-05T11:02:00.003-05:00

Cook County News-Herald THE GOOD NEWS for 7-08-2009

Jesus defined "Christianity." He said to his disciples, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me" (Luke 9:23,ESV). While "Christianity" today often seems encumbered with various mutually exclusive interpretations, unaccommodating traditions, and diametrically opposed propositions, Jesus kept it pretty simple. "Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me."

Simple . . . but not easy. Essential . . . but not convenient. Radical . . . but not impossible. Each phrase Jesus used challenges basic human assumptions about who we are and what we are entitled to. Especially here in our culture of leisure and abundance where every want and whim is within reach of a Visa card and a low monthly payment, the idea of self-denial seems alien and unnecessary. Why deny when I can so easily have? Perhaps at this point in the current economic downturn we have begun to understand the wisdom of Jesus' words.

Self-denial, however, points past possessions. Self-denial points to self-surrender, to giving up our will, our future, our sense of value and purpose for Someone else and Something higher. So Jesus says, "Take up your cross and follow me." One surrenders one's life on a cross. One surrenders one's authority to lead when one follows. Specifically a Christian gives up their life and their right to self-determination to Jesus. Jesus defined "Christianity" as self-denial, self-sacrifice, and self-surrender.

Simple . . . but not easy. Essential . . . but not convenient. Radical . . . but not impossible. That's why he implied that not everyone would want to be "Christian." Jesus opens this sentence with a conditional "if." "If anyone would come after me," implies a choice that not everyone will make, not everyone will want. Jesus understands what he invites people to do. He understands how extensive a "self renovation" he proposes. He understands the major re-outfitting necessary for self-centered human beings to dwell at peace with God in God's kingdom. And he does not hide the truth with self-serving platitudes.

If you want to gain what Jesus gained, the favor and glory of God; if you want to live as Jesus lived, in mercy, compassion, love, faith, and spiritual power; if you want to make a difference in this world and in the lives of people on an eternal level, as Jesus did; if you would come after him, then deny yourself, take up your cross daily, and follow Jesus.

Simple . . . but not easy. Essential . . . but not convenient. Radical . . . but not impossible.

That's the Good News.

Cook County News-Herald Good News Column

2009-07-30T16:08:00.004-05:00

I wasn't on the schedule for this week, but the editor called and asked if I would please fill in. I had been thinking about last Sunday's message from Luke 18. In the passage from verses 34-45 I see clear substantiation for people from Cornerstone Community Church participating in our local summer parade specifically to present a critical mass of people (a crowd) that might attract the attention of the (spiritually) blind causing them to inquire as to it's meaning and provide us the opportunity to point them to Jesus.

That's the background for these thoughts from the same passage.

A few days before Jesus entered Jerusalem for the last time; a few days before he stood before the Roman governor and an angry mob for daring to challenge the status quo; a few days before he was condemned and beaten and crucified for loving God and people selflessly and sacrificially, Jesus walked into the river town of Jericho and changed a man's life forever.

The man sat near the gate of the city on the road that rises from the banks of the Jordan River past the date palm plantations and dusty ruins of cast off lives from long ago. The caravans plodded up this road headed from east to west, from the ends of the earth, through Jericho to Jerusalem and beyond. Tax payers and tax collectors traveled the road, merchants and murderers, peasants and kings. People came and people went, day after long, hot, wearisome day, but still the old blind man sat begging by the gate, inwardly grateful for the iron and copper coins, a shekel here, a denarius there, a mite in between.

He sat by the road near the gate shrouded in darkness and yesterday's memories . . . memories of when he could see. Memories of color coordinated sound and sight. The faces of his children, his wife, now gone, all of them, leaving him alone in this unwanted reverie. Fuschia and golden colors of flowers held aloft by green against the clear blue skies. Memories, faded, less certain, remnants left to plague him in his old age.

His ears, his hearing more acute in the years since the accident stole his vision, his ears picked up the noise of the crowd long before the rumble of their feet reached his hands through the stony ground. This was no caravan. There was no tinkle of bridle bells. No cracking of whips. No shouts of children pleading for tidbits from weary travelers. This was something different. Something very, very different.

He felt the words rising from his heart before he wrapped his tongue around them. "Hey, what's going on? What's happening? Why such a crowd? What does this mean?"

At first they ignored him. Nothing new there, he thought. Multitudes ignore the plight of the needy among them, much to their shame. Did he have any control over an exploding pot that spewed it's boiling innards in his eyes? Was it his fault? Did they really have to blame him for his predicament? Couldn't they have a little mercy? Couldn't they realize their lives were only a moment from disaster themselves?

He caught himself just before the wave of bitterness and self-pity swept him away. "I said, What does all this mean?'" he shouted. The crowd had gotten his attention. He got the crowd's attention. "Jesus of Nazareth is passing by," they said.

Jesus? Of Nazareth? The teacher? The feeder? THE HEALER?! "Jesus, Son of David, have
mercy on me!" The cry erupted from his soul and passed unhindered from his lips. He had heard of Jesus, heard of the compassion, heard of the miracles. The crowd returned to it's boorish attempt to silence and ignore him, to return him to the cast aside status of yesterday, but it was not yesterday. It was today, and today
Jesus was passing by.

He called all the louder, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me."

Jesus heard him, stopped the parade of onlookers and well-wishers, ambitious politicians and eager saints that accompanied him. He commanded the old blind man be brought him to him.

Then Jesus spoke to the man. "What do you want me to do for you?" Jesus asked.

Can you imagine? What would you answer to such a man? Would you dare let fly with your deepest hope? Or would you choose some lesser thing, unable, unwilling to believe your heart's desire might be as dear to God as it is to you?

"Lord, let me recover my sight."

Jesus said, "Recover your sight; your faith has made you whole."

And immediately he recovered his sight and followed him, glorifying God. And all the people,when they saw it, gave praise to God (Luke 18:43).

The blind man who could not see with his eyes and the people who could not see with their hearts were both healed by the compassion and love of the Son of God, who was himself on his way to give his life for them all. This is how God responds to the cry of faith.

That's the Good News.

Misty Memories Worth Remembering

2009-07-24T01:21:00.005-05:00

Cook County Star THE GOOD NEWS for 7/25/2009

The mist outside my window this afternoon reminds me of the morning we arrived at the Andersonville Civil War Memorial in Andersonville, Georgia. It had rained that Saturday morning as we drove the miles from south Columbus to Andersonville. The inequity between ground temperatures and air temperatures caused a mist to coalesce across field that had once been prison home to tens of thousands of Yankee soldiers. The fog shrouded the granite memorials in gray and draped a film of water around their solid shoulders that dripped like sweat from the ledges and corners of each monument.

As we walked, fingers lingering across the names of states and soldiers carved in the marble facades, the mist moved with us. Like ghostly memories looking over our shoulders it swirled around us, chilled us, reminded us. The morning was not silent, though silent might have been better. Mockingbirds, I seem to recall, stealing someone else's song, accompanied the awe that came from being reminded how horrible one brother can treat another.

The mist began to lift as we neared the slight depression in the center of the camp. The muddy spot that supplied the only water to the camp still squished underneath grass that then would never have dreamed of growing under the pounding of so many weary heels. We were only children, teenagers, but within only a year or two of some of the younger men once imprisoned in this hell on earth.

I can barely see the spruce across Cedar Grove Lane today, just as I could barely see the water oaks and sycamores that lined the edge of a historic prison yard I visited one July day so many years ago.

The mist reminds me.

The oldest living British soldier who survived World War I, to the Brits, "The Great War," died at age 113 this last week. He died with a message on his lips for everyone who would listen. "Remember." Don't forget. Don't forget those who died. Don't forget what they fought for, why they died. Remember.

Remember those who died for you. Remember why they died. Remember those who died to bring you freedom. Remember also the One who died to make you free. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister" (Colossians 1:19-23, ESV).

Jesus fought the war to make us free from guilt, slavery to fear, hopelessness. He gave his life on the cross to give us new life in faith. Remember.

That's the Good News.

Hope

2009-07-14T16:00:00.002-05:00

Cook County News-Herald THE GOOD NEWS for 7/18/2009

Yes, Deb, news of a drowning at Temperance River is bound to get one’s attention, whether you’ve lived here one year or fifteen years. I was sitting at my desk in the basement when Linda called down on the intercom. While she was on the phone with her dad the Call Waiting ID showed that someone from one of the local government offices had been trying to reach us.

Saturday night. Holiday weekend. Trying to reach us. My first guess was the hospital. Second was the law enforcement center. My second guess was correct. There had been another fatality at Temperance River and they needed a chaplain. Would I be willing to go?

Hurrying upstairs I called Linda from her computer, changed clothes, got in the van and we headed down the shore driving behind people who were in far less hurry to get home than we were to get to the park. This was the fourth time in six years we’d taken a similar call, but this time we had instructions to a part of the park we had not been in before. It was dark. Again.

We pulled into the driveway from the highway and slowly passed by little groups of people standing together, looking toward the river, the lake, the red and blue flashing lights, the boats, the dark. We found the campsite and a very nice, but very heartbroken woman sitting at a fire under the compassionate and watchful eye of a ranger, clutching her dog to her chest. We introduced ourselves as we always do, mentioned why we were there, asked how we could help.

I sat on the bench of the picnic table on one side of her. Linda sat in a chair on the other. The woman began to cry. Linda held her hand. I prayed. The dog whimpered. The cat in the tent called for attention. The ranger excused himself to run an errand. The woman cried. Linda held her hand. I prayed.

We talked about her husband. About the years they had come to Temperance. It was their favorite spot. He had had a bad feeling about coming this year. They should have listened, she said. He wasn’t supposed to leave me, she said. We were supposed to grow old together. What will I do now?

This was not a time for hard facts. This night was made for hope. Hope that comes from faith, from the realization that though God may not serve up easy answers to heart wrenching questions in the moment we ask them, he comes and is fully, compassionately, powerfully present in our grief. He comes just as his word says he will. “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God” (2 Corinthians 1:3-4, NIV).

God knows how to grieve. God lost his precious, treasured Son to death on a cross. God knows the pain of death. He also knows the depth of hope. God sent hope to Temperance River on the fourth of July. Hope in the face of a ranger who made himself available while she waited. Hope in the hot cocoa from concerned friends she’d met just that day a few campsites away. Hope in the straighforwardness of a deputy who did his duty with both professionalism and compassion. Hope in the scream of a helicopter engine hovering over the river preparing for the next day’s search. Hope in the night desk clerk at a local inn who was gracious beyond measure and kind beyond words. Hope in the actions of doctors and nurses who stepped in with answers and assistance when the time came for their services. Hope when a strange community gathered around to prove the words I had prayed earlier: “Lord, please let her know you will not leave her alone.”

God’s love for us is the same “yesterday, today, and forever.” He’s available to us in the best of times and the worst of times. His love knows no limit, his mercy no bound. There is no circumstance he does not understand, no situation he cannot turn around, no nightmare in which he cannot produce hope.

That’s the good news.

Mindful of Me

2009-07-14T09:35:00.003-05:00

In the time of Herod, king of Judea, God sent the angel Gabriel to make two announcements. One announcement was made to an old, childless man as he served the Lord in the temple. The other announcement was made to a young, childless virgin as she served the Lord in the village.

The announcement to the old man had regard to a son who would be born to him, a miraculous son, since he and his wife were advanced in age. The announcement to the young virgin also regarded a Son, a miraculous Son, since she was unmarried and never knew a man.

The old man's son would be the servant of God, preparing the way for the coming of God to earth. The young virgin's Son would be the Son of God, preparing the way for the coming of men to heaven.

The old man replied with disbelief and was struck with silence. The young virgin responded with faith and was given a song. He got a son who died at the hand of unbelievers. She got a Son who died on behalf of unbelievers.

Mary's song, a prophecy of praise, contains this incredible line: [God] has been mindful of the humble state of his servant. Walk carefully with these words for a moment. God, the Almighty, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent Creator of untold worlds and situations, the Decider of countless destinies and the Sovereign of innumerable circumstances, the Upholder of universes and the Sustainer of heartbeats beyond reckoning, has been mindful of the humble state of his servant.

"God the Most" pays attention to the life condition of "Me the Least." (Yes, I know a misplaced comma would wreak havoc with the meaning of this sentence, that's why there are no commas.) Mary was the least. Mary was unimportant, unnoticed, unknown. Mary was noteworthy for nothing more, nor anything less, than God's attention. It was his plan, his purpose, his mindfulness of her condition and his action in her condition that added blessing to her life.

And so it is with us, with me and you. Peter reminds us, in quoting from the Old Testament, that "the eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, and his ear is inclined to their prayer." For four hundred years there were no prophecies, no word from the Lord, until the old man and the young virgin. Yet she understands. God had not abandoned his plan. He had not deserted his promise. He had not canceled his blessing. All along he had been mindful and now had acted.

Do you wonder at the silence of the heavens? Do you question whether God is distant, aloof, gone altogether? He is not. He is mindful of the humble state of his servant. His eye is upon you. His ear is inclined to you. And when the time is right, he will stretch forth his hand and act mightily on behalf of his servant.

It is not always easy to remain content while we wait the move of the Spirit, so let your contentment be in this, "God is mindful of the humble state of his servant." God knows your state of affairs. God knows you. God loves you. God will fulfill his plan for you.

Conversion (Part II)

2009-07-01T13:24:00.001-05:00

Cook County News-Herald THE GOOD NEWS for July 11, 2009

We write these columns to persuade people to convert. You knew that, right? We write of different worldviews, different values, of God and of his Son, Jesus, each from our own perspective, but each with either an implied or explicitly stated invitation to change your thinking and your life, to accept God’s offer of mercy, forgiveness, and new life. Each of us knows the burden we carry to call you to identify and engage in a relationship with your Creator. Admittedly, we conceptualize the nature and course of that relationship differently, but I believe the invitation shares a qualitative commonality: come and know God for yourself.

The invitation to come and know God for yourself anticipates “conversion,” movement from a life without God to a life lived in relationship with God. Today I want to offer one illustration of what a “converted life” looks like.

Little is known of Dirk Willems, but what is known is extraordinary. I don’t know when he was born or how many brothers or sisters he had. I don’t know with certainty his father’s name and found no reference at all to his mother. I know from his arrest record and the script of his court appearance that he was more than twenty years old. I know that Dirk was Dutch and was a Protestant Christian during the time of harsh Spanish rule under the Catholic Duke of Alva in the Netherlands. I know that Dirk believed that when a person was converted to faith in Jesus Christ they ought to be baptized as an expression of their own personal belief, even if they had been baptized as infants in some other church. And I know that Dirk lived what he believed.

Dirk was arrested and imprisoned in 1569. The arrest came because Dirk’s religious convictions countered those in position of power and authority. One night Dirk escaped from his palace prison. Using a knotted rope he climbed down the wall and dropped onto the ice of the castle moat. The ice was not thick and Dirk’s position was precarious. But his time on prison food had left him thin if not nimble and he crossed the icy moat to the far side, away from his captors.

One of his captors, a prison guard, caught sight of Dirk as he made his escape. The man pursued him over the ice. The guard was not so lean as Dirk and the ice gave way beneath him. The guard, in desperate peril, cried for help, but those on the castle side would not risk their lives for their friend.

Dirk, however, was cut of different cloth, converted cloth, if you will. The man’s pleas reached Dirk’s heart as he paused to catch his breath. Realizing the guard would die unless someone came to his rescue, Dirk returned over the treacherous ice and pulled the man to safety. Dirk did not just believe the words, he lived the words of Jesus who said, “Love your enemies and do good to those who persecute you.”

The guard, once again in possession of his life, wanted to let Dirk go, but the magistrate called across the moat reminding the guard of his oath and his duty, and perhaps even of what would await him should he not apprehend Dirk once again. History shows that the magistrate’s words held great sway over the man’s thinking. He arrested Dirk Willems on the spot and returned him immediately to a more secure cell. Days later, on May 16, 1659, Dirk Willems, the rescuer of his enemy, was burned alive in the Dutch village of Asperen by those who would not rescue one of their own.

This is the character of life to which those who answer the call to conversion commit themselves. In this they are like Jesus who first gave himself to rescue his enemies, and whose enemies put him to death, that “whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life.”

Dirk answered the call to be like Jesus. And he was. This is every Christian’s calling, to be like Jesus.

Next time, a bit more about citizenship in the kingdom of God.

Conversion (Part I)

2009-07-01T12:22:00.001-05:00

The billboard stood unceremoniously among the Jersey's and meadow grass in a Wisconsin cow
pasture boldly proclaiming its message. On the left was a 15 foot line graph, in red and in rapid
decline, captioned: Investments, Stocks, and Bonds. To the right, a 15 foot high portrait of
Wisconsin serenity, a lakeshore emblazoned with the words, "Wisconsin Real Estate." In
between, in giant white on black letters in case passers-by missed the visual message,
"CONVERT BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE."

Everyone is talking about conversion these days. Convert paper investments into real property
before it's too late. Convert your old television to digital HDTV before it's too late. Convert
increasingly worthless paper money into gold before it's too late. Convert to non-fossil fuels
before it's too late. Convert to healthy eating habits, exercise, and our new cholesterol drug
before it's too late. I even got a notice from both a magazine and an antivirus software company
suggesting I convert my subscriptions to automatic, multi-year credit card payments before it's
too late.

The call to effective conversion is nothing new, though. When Jesus first appeared on the scene
by Israel's Sea of Galilee after his baptism by John in the Jordan River and his forty day fast in
the desert, he came "proclaiming the gospel of God and saying, The time is fulfilled, and the
kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel'" (Mark 1:14-15). Translation:
"CONVERT BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE."

The Greek word for "repent," metanoia, means more than just believing something different than
you've believed before. It means more than kicking yourself for being such a scoundrel all these
years. It means more than taking an inventory of failure and laying in a lifetime supply of guilt
and shame. These kinds of reactions to Christ's invitation may have some limited function, like
internalizing a new worldview that recognizes right and wrong and makes appropriate use of
guilt to produce movement toward forgiveness, but the word means more than just a spiritual
makeover that has us looking pretty and waiting for heaven to arrive.

Repentance means "change." Change in the way we feel about ourselves, yes. And yes, change in
the way we relate to God. And yes, change in our final destination. But it also means a radical
change in the way we live in this world all the days we walk on the face of the planet. The call to
repentance, the call to conversion, is a call, an incredible invitation, to become a fully naturalized
citizen in the kingdom of God, which, though we wait for its final fulfilment, is nonetheless
present.

The kingdom of God is like a woman eight months pregnant. Does she have a baby? Every time
the little darling kicks her in the ribs or takes a seat on her bladder she knows she has a baby, but
in a few weeks time, after much pain and effort, everything will change and she will hold her
baby in her arms, and she will have the baby she already had.

The rule of God in the hearts, lives, and destinies of people and planet has already arrived,
though it is still coming. Jesus' arrival in the manger, his life, his death on the cross ushered in
the kingdom of God and now the invitation goes out: There is an option for your life. There is an
option of hope, and strength, and faith, and purity, and wholeness, and living within the purpose
for which you were created. There is an end to rebellion and being used by the powers that be
like a pawn on some cosmic battlefield. The option is the kingdom of God and the call is to
convert before its too late.

That's the good news for today. Next time I'll let the story of Dirk Willems illustrate a post-
conversion life and what it means to accept the invitation to enter God's kingdom. God bless
you.

The Good News for Father's Day

2009-06-16T14:00:00.002-05:00

This is the column I've written for the Cook County News-Herald for Father's Day 2009. As I researched this column I came across four excellent sermons from John Piper that proved very helpful. If you have not already done so, let me encourage you to check out www.desiringgod.org. Specifically, read or listen to the sermon, "Raising Children Who Hope in the Triumph of God," from which I gleaned several key ideas for this column.

Cook County News-Herald THE GOOD NEWS for 6/20/09

Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Ephesians 6:4

There are two verses in the New Testament expressly directed to fathers in regard to their role in parenting. Ephesians 6:4 is one. Colossians 3:21 is the other. Let me make three observations about Ephesians 6:4 for dads this Father’s Day.

First, dads, these words are directed to you. You have a specific role in raising your children beyond simply being half responsible for their existence. God addresses fathers with instructions about their parenting role because he expects fathers to be actively engaged in parenting. Fathers get to provide a family, provide for the family, and provide within the family.

Psalm 127:3-5 says, “Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them!” Children are a blessing and it is a blessed privilege to have them. And dad, it is a blessed responsibility to raise them, so God points out for you in Ephesians 6:4 one strategy you could use and one strategy you should use.

The two strategies are separated by the little word “but,” indicating that one strategy is superior to the other and is to be chosen over the other. We should do what we should do and not do what we could do. Fathers could “provoke your children to anger,” but they should “bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.”

When God instructs fathers to not provoke their children to anger, he does not mean that a father should never cross a child’s will. Elsewhere God reminds us how earthly fathers reflect God’s own love for us when they discipline and correct us: “We have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live. For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness” (Hebrews 12:9-10). Neither does God intend for father to never deny a child’s desires. What God means is, dad, don’t cross your child’s will or deny their desires without making that action intentionally part of a greater vision of God’s love and plan for your child and his purposes in the world.

That’s where the “should strategy” comes in. Fathers should nurture and nourish their children in such a way that their children will recognize and come to understand the true nature of God and his love for them, as well as God’s plan for the world and their place in it. "Anger comes from a feeling that a parent’s instruction is petty, trivial, self-serving—that it is not part of something truly great, something really important." And there is nothing greater or more important than knowing, loving, and serving God.

How can a father do what he should and not just what he could do? First, dad has to have a relationship with God that is more important to him than anything else. No kid is going to believe a dad who says the child should love God while dad’s primary love is money, or work, or fishing, or women, or something else. Children grow to love what their father loves, and if their father does not love God it is less likely that children will continue to learn and love God while they are in the home and even less likely once they leave home.

Let your life be God-saturated, dad, and your children will be God saturated as well. Pray for your kids and pray with your kids. Read the Bible yourself and read the Bible to your children. Be a living example of faith to your kids. Be happy, disciplined, humble. Worship together with your children. Be holy, and let God’s love fill your heart, your life, your outlook, and your parenting, and your kids very likely will follow suit. And even if they don’t you will have represented well your heavenly Father to them.

That’s the good news.

Memorial Service

2009-06-13T17:49:00.002-05:00

We've been on vacation and I've got several ideas I want to process with you over the next few weeks, but for the moment I want to post a memorial service meditation I offered recently. I'm putting it up because it's basic. Sometimes I feel an urgent need to analyze and reach out to every individual in some uniquely meaningful way, when in fact, it is not any skill of rhetoric that changes peoples' lives, it is the gospel that is the power of God unto salvation (according to Paul in Romans 1).

The gospel is what people need. It's what I need every day to maintain faith, purity, wholeness, right thinking, right living, right being. Here's the gospel to you and to me as it came at the memorial service of a person I didn't really know to an audience I didn't really know:

Funeral services and memorial services like this share one thing in common regardless of where or when they are held: no one really wants to be here.

We gather for memorial services and for remembrances, but we would rather be gathered somewhere else with our loved one healthy and whole and living life along with us. We would much rather avoid death altogether, but the reality is, we cannot.

The reality of life is that each of us will be touched, wounded, by the death of others that we love, and one day, inevitably, others will be touched by our death. Most days we can get along quite well not thinking about such things. But some days, like today, death stands toe to toe with us looks us square in the eye and says to us, “Deal with me.”

The Bible says, “It is given unto every man once to die, and after that the judgment.” While we often use memorial services like this to remind us of the best things about the person we have loved, in the background, behind the remembering and the songs, behind the preaching and the prayers this question lurks: “What does all this mean for me?”

God created us for two things: to love him and to be loved by him. All too often, however, we live out our lives in love with ourselves rarely giving God more than a second thought. That failure on our part to enjoy a loving relationship with the God who created us is called sin, and sin is the reason judgment follows death in the Bible verse I just mentioned.

But here is good news. God loves us. God loves me and God loves you, and He has given us every reason to have great hope in the face of death and judgment. The Bible tells us that God so loved the world he gave his only Son, Jesus Christ, for us so that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. The Bible informs us that “while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” And God’s word reminds us that “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

These are words about preparing for death and having an answer when death stares us in the face. When we put our faith in Jesus, God forgives our sins and reestablishes that relationship of love we were created for. By doing that, God takes away any fear of death and judgment that may have plagued us in the past and replaces it with joy for today and hope for the future.

God’s answer to death’s challenge is Jesus who died on the cross for our sins and was raised from the dead opening the door to eternal life for all who believe in him.

How do we take advantage of this great gift from God, who reminds us in the darkest hours of our grief of his great love for us? Here again God points the way in his word. The Bible gives these simple instructions, “Repent and turn to God, so that your sins my be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord.”

As you spend time this afternoon remembering your loved one, telling the stories that will bring her face to mind, that will ignite your love for her all over again, please remember that God loves you with all his heart and has made a way for you to face your own death without fear and with great hope. Put your faith in Jesus.

Red to Black (or White)

2009-05-19T18:14:00.002-05:00

Okay, I confess. I keep the household checkbook on Quicken and I got behind. Way behind. Alright, a little more than a month behind making entries and three weeks behind in getting the statement balanced. I have the software setup to continue tracking certain expenditures that are made on a regular basis. Because of my neglect, when I opened Quicken to balance the checkbook last night, there was a lot of red.

Red is the color of deficiency. Red means minus. Red signals trouble. And there was a lot of red. Bills that I paid put hadn't entered into the software were all glaringly red. Balances I hadn't kept current, red. There was more red than the gospels in a KJV Bible.

I'm leaving for vacation soon, and I really needed to know what financial shape we were in. That meant tackling the red. The savings account was easy. So was the auto loan. The checking account was a whole other story. It took hours for me to get everything posted, accounted for, sorted out and balanced. Along the way I had to deal with expense categories where, since I hadn't kept them up to date, I had overspent. I had to transfer money and play with numbers, and some of what I had to do in order to get out of the red and into the right meant making some tough decisions about goals and spending habits for the next few months.

I finished the work of turning our accounts from red to black and sat back to give thanks for people who do these kinds of things for a living, and for software programmers who make it easy for the rest of us. As I sat there scanning the revised statements and reports a verse from the Old Testament came to mind. They are the words from Isaiah 1:18, "Come now, let us reason together, says the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool."

In order to get my accounting software from red to black, I had to own up to my own negligence. I had to take into account the current condition of my records. And I had to take action, sacrificial action in some cases, to right the effects of my wrongs. You see the connection, don't you? Our sins are blaringly obvious to God, standing out against his holiness, his perfection, his glory like fresh blood on a whitewashed wall. There is no missing our sinfulness, which is ours both by nature and by choice. God knows it. We know it. Our sins are as scarlet, and they remain our sins because we have neglected to respond to God's work in Christ. "Later I'll ask for forgiveness," we think. Or, "It's just a little sin; no sense in paying much attention to it." But to God, they are scarlet, crimson, red.

We need to own up to our own spiritual negligence. We need to look our current spiritual condition right in the face and ask, "Am I trusting Christ as my Savior and living in faith and obedience?" If the record ain't right, it ain't gonna fix itself. Sin left unconfessed and unrepented of just multiplies like red ink in the ledger. The action God allows us to take, the action that cooperates with his work in Christ, is repentance: turning away from our sin and turning to Christ in faith.

It doesn't matter whether you are new to the faith or old in the faith, repentance clears the record, rights the wrong, and gets the red out. God's responds to faithful repentance with forgiveness and newness of life. He turns the red white. He makes the heart right.

I'm glad I finally got the checkbook balanced. It took a fair amount of work to turn the red to black. But I am even more grateful for the work God does through his Son to turn the crimson stain of sin on my soul to the whiteness of Christ's righteousness, a work available to everyone who believes.

Prepare for Rest

2009-05-17T06:42:00.002-05:00

It's no wonder I need a vacation. I'm exhausted just getting ready for it!

Get tune up and oil change for van.
Find trip maps.
Make reservations.
Write three newspaper columns.
Coordinate pulpit supply and worship leaders.
Format bulletins.
Outline Annual Report.
Arrange housing for pulpit supply.
Balance checkbook.
Pay bills in advance.
Start outlines for funeral and two weddings (due two days after you get back).
Update email addresses.
Arrange pet care.
Layout Evangel newsletter for production.
Prepare worship outline for first Sunday back.
Prepare annual meeting agenda.
Schedule new members class to start on return.
Complete marriage counseling outline for clients to study while you're gone.
Get Bible memorization chart ready to work on while we're traveling.
Contact "house watcher" with instructions.
Turn off well pump.
Finish computer transfer at church.
Send ministerium meeting announcement.
Prepare discipleship reading for new believer.

We're leaving in just five days and I still have to preach three times, pack, clean the car, give Bill his keys, brush my teeth, breathe, and pray for world peace. All this just to go rest!

Here's a question, if we have our long "to do lists" for vacations, what preparations are we making for our eternal rest? Hebrews 4:11 says, "Let us strive therefore to enter that rest so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience." The entire chapter points to a "rest" from God that remains available to everyone who hears the good news and adds faith to it. Those who believe in and trust God enter his rest, and are encouraged to "strive" to do so.

God's rest may mean any or all of four things. I call them four graces. God's rest may mean the future grace of heaven. In order to gain heaven after death, we absolutely must have faith in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins and for a renewed, right relationship with God. If God's rest means "heaven" then we must strive to know the gospel of Jesus and to follow it with all our hearts.

God's rest may refer to the second coming of Jesus, returning grace. On the day he ascended, angels informed his watching disciples that Jesus would also return. He will return to gather his people to himself and to establish his kingdom. That means, if we are to be part of that eternal kingdom, our hearts must be prepared. Jesus said, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." Is your heart humble, grieved over sin, hungering and thirsting for righteousness, merciful, pure, peaceful, and steadfast? These are the preparations God makes in those who believe to prepare them for the return of his Son.

God's rest may also include present grace, the ongoing effects of God's promises realized in the everyday life experiences of his people. God promises and accomplishes great things in the lives of his people (see Jeremiah 33:3), but here's the rub: no relationship with God, no blessing from God. Make the effort faith requires, trust God, believe him and believe in him. This is the labor that gains God's rest.

Finally, God's rest includes forever grace. In referring to God's rest the author of Hebrews writes, "There remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God." Just a few verses prior the author identifies this Sabbath rest as God's own rest on the seventh day. On that day, God's creative work completed, he began the ongoing joy of relating as God to all that he created. Each of the previous days of creation is bookended by an evening and a morning, but not the seventh day. It goes on forever. The idea is that we enter God's rest when we surrender our lives to him as Lord and God and live in that sublime relationship eternally.

Listen, I have a few things to do to get ready for vacation, but we all have a few things to do to get ready for grace. Let us therefore strive to enter that rest so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. Believe God. Trust God. Obey God. Enter God's rest.

Snow, Snow, Go Away, Come Again Another May

2009-05-16T14:23:00.004-05:00

Jeanie Wilson was waiting tables on the far side of the Blue Water Cafe, but I could here her indictment all the way across the room and above the din of the noontime burger eaters. "It's the winter that never quits." Today is May 16th. It's cold. Sunny. And snowing. This last flurry looked like the "Dipping Dots" ice cream you can get at Valley Fair, but had way less appeal.

At the moment, I can look out my office window and actually see Fern's midnight blue Blazer parked a few feet away. A minute ago that car was but a shadow, a shade veiled by a curtain of snow. Will it never end?

Just this morning, as I drove in along the lakeshore and headed inland up the new Gunflint Trail I noticed a brighter shade of green in the crowns of the aspen and birch on the ridge above town. It looked like spring. It felt like spring. Now it looks like a view through a quilt before they put the front and the back on. Fuzzy, cotton fiber fill.

I wonder if this is just a little like the Israelites might have felt, wandering through the same wearisome desert vistas day after day with relentless meals of manna their only expectation. Is this a bit of what they might have endured, this longing for something more, this discontent with the monotony of what they had, the shortsightedness and thanklessness for their lives given the sameness of their daily experience?

I'm tired of winter. I'm sick of winter. I want azaleas and daffodils and gardenias and those big red and white flowering shrubs with the waxy green leaves whose name I can't remember. I want warm, sunny days. I want night delays and long, lazy days. I want fishing without automatic refrigeration! I want warm, did I say warm? I want ten million shades of green, and another ten million shades of blue, highlighted with yellows, and the occasional red and orange. Oh, and now I remember: camelias. I want camelias and tulips and wisteria and forsythia. I am just so sick of snow, and cold, and white, and gray.

But . . . snow, even in May, and cold, and white, and gray . . . are they not ordained by the Creator's hand for good? Has not the sovereign God of the universe, who does no wrong and delights to do good for his people, has he not by is own hand designed this day especially for me? His word says, "This is the day the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it."

This was Israel's failure, the failure to find and know the goodness and joy of God in the sameness of each ensuing day. They complained about the manna and rebelled at God's provision. They wanted what they wanted and they drooled for the scant greens that littered their enslavement. They pined away their blessing.

With whatever it holds, the period of time we call today embraces at least two praiseworthy qualities: the creativeness of God and the opportunity to yield to him. The author of Hebrews writes, "But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called 'today,' that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin." A few sentences later in chapter four he notes, "He appointed a certain day, 'Today' . . . ." Today, God is at work in the world and in his people to exalt Christ, to display the glory of his perfections, to do good to his people, to uphold the world in his hands and he upholds his word in our lives. Today, God gives an opportunity for us to respond with faith, surrender, obedience, and joy.

Honestly, I still want camelias and gardenias, but I'm not going to get them here in northeast Minnesota, winter or summer. What I will get, what you can get, any day, every day is the good grace of God extended in mercy through Jesus Christ. And I'll take that any day. In fact, as long as it is "Today," I'll take it every day, even if it comes with snow.

Getting to the Right Family CC News-Herald 5/16/09

2009-05-12T15:34:00.001-05:00

The shock Kay and DeeAnn must have felt can hardly be imagined. The two 56 year old women did not know each other, even though their mothers were neighbors and they were born on the same day in the same hospital. Recently, the two met for the first time to resolve a mystery and put away rumors once and for all.

When the two women were newborns in 1953, nurses accidentally switched them and returned them to the wrong mothers. They grew up, got married, had kids and grandkids, each thinking they belonged to the family they were in. Until the DNA tests came back.

According to one report, Kay cried. “My life wasn’t my life,” she said. DeeAnn said the DNA report only confirmed what she knew the minute she laid eyes on Kay. “She looked just like my sister’s twin.”

Can’t imagine growing up thinking you belong to one family only to find out you belong to another? Get ready for a shock. A great many people who comfort themselves thinking they are God’s children just because they were born on this planet are in for a big surprise!

Some men came to Jesus once to challenge his claim to be the Son of God. They asserted their heritage as the children of Abraham. They exalted their ethnic heritage as being superior to anyone else’s, even the one claimed by Jesus Himself. They went so far as to question the legitimacy of Jesus’ parentage, thinking that their relationship with God was better certified by their unbroken lineage.

Jesus responded by revealing their spiritual DNA report. “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me.” And then he said, “You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires” (John 8:42, 44).

Ouch! God’s children love God’s Son, Jesus. God’s children love God and desire to honor him and fulfill his desires. The devil’s children hate God’s Son and choose to fulfill, not God’s will and desires, but the desire of the devil who hates and opposes God.

Hmm. Kind of gives the question, “Who’s your daddy?” a whole new twist, doesn’t it.

We are all the children of the devil until by faith in Christ we are adopted into God’s family. The Bible says, “You were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air (the devil), the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience (the devil’s children)–among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature the children of wrath, like the rest of mankind” (Ephesians 2:1-3). It’s a bleak picture of our entire family.

But there’s good news: “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us . . . made us alive together with Christ.” It says in another place, “In love, he predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ.” When we put our faith in Jesus and trust him for the forgiveness of our sins, God severs the bond between us and our old family and adopts us as his children, forever. Faith in Christ writes us a pedigree in grace.

That’s the good news.

Is anything too hard for God?

2009-05-06T08:46:00.003-05:00

I love Jeremiah's prophecies. Jeremiah was a man born to turbulent times. He was a man called to testing and trial. He was a minister of grace to a graceless people. He was a servant of God when others preferred to serve themselves.

Jeremiah was familiar with rejection, injustice, long nights, and short joys. He knew what it means to sing good news in sour notes. He knew how to run with the horses, even when his heart was hamstrung.

Jeremiah prophesied the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile of God's people. God filled the lips of the prophet with words of gloom and doom. God filled his eyes with darkness and judgment. The nations that troubled Judah would cause the ground to shake in their advance, then quake in their own boots at the equalizing hand of God.

God filled Jeremiah's words with power, purpose, purity, and Presence. The people rejected God's words, refused God's resolution. They repented not. Yet Jeremiah's heart remained bound to his people to the end. Even in their final disobedience, he went with them to Egypt, knowing they would be slaughtered there, to proclaim the only Truth that could have saved them. Having his ministry by the mercy of God, he did not lose hope.

There is incredible revelation in the book of Jeremiah, as there is in all God's word. Consider this word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: "Behold, I am the LORD, the God of all flesh. Is anything too hard for me?"

See that word "behold." That's the Holy Spirit's way of saying "PAY ATTENTION!" It means that what follows is important and worth concentrating upon. "Behold," God says. Take a look. Get a grasp on what I'm telling you. Make the effort. Set aside the distractions, anything that would keep you from understanding and receiving what God says. We need this word today. We are surrounded by stimuli that lack the value of "behold! thus saith the Lord." We are bombarded by demands that lead us to exhausted bodies, fragmentary thinking, disrupted lives, and broken heart. More and more these "vain imaginations" (as one biblical author calls them) get the attention the Lord deserves from us, and we are the weaker and worse off for it. Surely this is a day in which God's people need to "behold."

What are we invited to see? Who stands ready to fill our vision and captivate our imagination? The LORD. The "I AM." The self-existent, glorious Almighty God of heaven and earth. He is, by his own word, the God of all flesh. Interesting that God should reveal himself so at this juncture in Jeremiah's life. The people of Jerusalem are under siege and soon to be handed over to the Babylonians. In their worldview, this is not merely the military exploits of one people against another, this is a battle in the heavenlies between the God of Israel and the god of Babylon. Winning this battle is more than a measure of human military prowess. It speaks to the very nature and person of the divine, whether a god is able to save his people or not.

And God says through Jeremiah, "I am the God of all flesh." God brings disaster on his own people. God claims that their current distress is not because of some foreign god, because there is no other god. He alone is God of all people everywhere. He alone is responsible for the judgment of his people at the hands of the Chaldeans. And if he can bring the means of his justice from a far land, can he not also restore his people after his judgment upon them is complete?

Is anything too hard for God? When he has tried us, can he not also restore us? When he has wieghed us down according to the measure of our sin, can he not also lift us up according to the measure of his grace? When God stops us short in our rebellion, can he not also make us long in obedience and faithfulness? These are rhetorical questions that God answers with a resounding "yes!"

Here are the words of Jeremiah the prophet, the words of the Lord that came to him from God: "Behold, I am giving this city into the hand of the Chaldeans . . . for the children of Isreal and the children of Judah have done nothing but evil in my sight from their youth . . . they have turned to me their back and not their face . . . they have not listened to receive instruction . . . Now therefore, thus says the Lord . . . behold, I will gather them from all the countries to which I drove them . . . I will bring them back to this place . . . I will make them dwell in safety . . . I will be their God . . . I will give them one heart and one way . . . I will make with them an everlasting covenant . . . I will put the fear of me in their hearts . . . I will rejoice in doing them good" (Jeremiah 32:26-41).

The sovereign God of all flesh can put us down or raise us up. He can humble us in judgment or restore us in joy. "The arm of the Lord is not shortened that it cannot save." There is nothing too hard for God.

How to Release a Burden to God

2009-04-29T10:02:00.003-05:00

Many years ago, in the months before we were married, my wife suffered through a particularly difficult season of the soul. At one point fear and anxiety were very nearly incapacitating for her, and we struggled to find the way out of the darkness, or even a way to hold on until the darkness passed.

While praying for her one day, the Lord led me to this verse: "Cast all your cares on him, for he cares for you." It was a moment for hope and I latched on to it, but I began to pray asking the Lord how a hurting soul "casts" their cares. The Lord gave me an idea.

Later that evening, when we were together at her apartment, I took my yet-to-be wife into her kitchen and stood her in the middle of the room facing her cabinets. I explained to her the verse the Lord had opened for me that morning, and as I expected she said, "Okay, but how do I do that?"

I went over to her silverware drawer and pulled it open. On the outside I placed a label I had made earlier, a label that read, "THE LORD." Then I asked her to write out her fears and the thoughts that were attacking her on small pieces of paper. When she was ready, I said, she should take each paper with her fears and toss them into the drawer, then shut the drawer and walk away. Then, I left her there in the kitchen to decide for herself what fears she would cast "into THE LORD," and when, and if she would commit to shutting the drawer.

It took time for Linda to decide to release her fears, but eventually she did. She wrote out the things that were plaguing her and stealing her joy. She threw them in the drawer and shut it, and every time they came back to mind, came back to hurt, she reminded herself they were "in THE LORD," and the only way they could come back into her life would be for her to physically take them from the drawer, retrieve them from "THE LORD." Neither the drawer nor the Lord would offer them back to her on their own.

Linda's journey out of the dark night of the soul began that evening in the kitchen. She continues to have a box where she throws in the natural what she has committed to God in the spiritual.

Here are six simple steps to releasing a spiritual burden to God, to casting our cares on him. Though I've laid them out as steps, the interval between them can be very brief, and in fact, they can happen almost at once. Or, they may each take time. Either way, these seem to have a presence whenever we unburden our hearts on Christ.

1. Identify the nature of the burden. Is this a burden for good, for guilt, or for growth? Is God allowing some difficult situation in order to demonstate to you and through you the excellence of His glory and the depth of his love? Is the burden a result of personal sin? Is the burden the result of someone else's shortcomings?

2. Embrace God's plan for that burden. If the burden is from God for your good, then accept it as such. If the burden is from guilt, then know that God is prepared to forgive. If the burden is for your growth, then you will have to prepare yourself for change and development.

I think often of the words of Hebrews 12:2 ". . . looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of God." Knowing God's plan for the burden he bore to the cross, Jesus embraced future joy while enduring a present cross.

3. Affirm Christ's relationship to your burden. Is he sharing the burden for good? Has he already borne your burden of guilt? Is he lovingly interceding for your maturity?

4. Prayerfully put Christ in charge of your burden. Literally, "Jesus, I can't carry this. Would you please carry this for me? As much as I know how, I'm putting this in your hands."

5. Live in freedom from the burden. Yes, you will know the burden exists. You may even feel the effects of the burden, but if you have given that burden to the Lord, then get on with your life. Take to heart the promise, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me," and get on it with it. This is not denial, this is faith. If Christ has the burden, then you are free from the weight.

6. Avoid reclaiming the burden. Jesus will not give you back the burden you have given him unless you ask for it. Leave it with him. As often as you are confronted with the burden, remind yourself of the truth that you have cast it upon him and that both the processes and the outcomes related to the burden are in his hands and you will wait for his competent resolution to the events that once weighed you down. Proverbs 26:11 might be a helpful verse for those of us who are tempted to retake the burdens we have laid upon Christ: Like a dog that returns to his vomit is a fool who repeats his folly.

Three great burdens await our shoulders. God responds to each with promised grace. Let him carry you.

Three Great Burdens

2009-04-29T08:32:00.003-05:00

Three great burdens await our shoulders. One is the burden sent by God. It is His calling. It is our cross. This is the burden born in the events and circumstances of life through which God purifies our hearts and conforms us to Christ. It is the burden of gold. It is for his glory. It is for our good.

A second burden we pile on ourselves. It is the burden of guilt from sin; by it we call Him to the cross. This is the burden born in our brokenness, nurtured in our selfishness, expanded by our choices, and rewarded by our pride. It is the burden too heavy to heavy to bear that we are loathe to put down. It is the burden of scarlet. It is for his death. It is for our grief.

The third weight is the burden of shame heaped on us by the unmet expectations of dissatisfied others. By this burden we are called to the cross ourselves. None is equal to the task required of this great load. It cannot be borne. It crushes the spirit and breaks the heart. It is the burden of despair. It is for his shoulders. It is for our growth.

Three great burdens await our shoulders. Each cries out to be carried. But what broad back may bear such weight? When they are three they are too heavy for the soul. When they are one and the same, it is impossible. But they must be borne.

Hear this word: "Cast your cares on him, for he cares for you." And now this word: "Come unto me all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest." And this word: "Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows." And this word: "Underneath are the everlasting arms."

The burden of affliction God gives for his glory and our good we take up with Christ, and though he will not undermine the Father's purposes by taking the burden from us, he will carry it with us taking the heaviest measure for himself. He will enable us to testify, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."

The burden of guilt he has already borne. He carried it to the cross. God made us alive through Christ and has forgiven us all our sins and has "canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross."

The burden of shame, so readily built by fragile egos at the hands of others, he also takes away. No man need be enslaved to another man's disappointment. "Who are you," the apostle asked, "to judge someone else's servant? To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand."

Cast your cares on him for he cares for you. The burdens of good, and guilt, and growth relinquish to Christ. Three great burdens await your shoulders. Give them to Jesus.

Sunday Morning Worship

2009-04-19T07:11:00.002-05:00

Five o'clock Sunday morning. I've been waiting for the alarm to go off. Finally, I hear the whir of the CD as it begins to spin and I reach over to shut off the alarm just before Cat Stevens reminds me morning has broken.

I don't need the light to find the bathrobe in the closet in the bathroom, nor lights to descend the fourteen steps to the basement, nor even lights to navigate through the small library, past the overstuffed hunter green recliner we bought at a garage sale last year for twenty dollars. I do need the light above my desk. It chases the last vestiges of sleep from my eyes as I open my computer and prayerfully reduce all my study notes to a single three or four page outline.

But first, check the email. What has happened in the world overnight that might require some adjustment of focus this morning? Check the RSS feed from MSNBC. Check the inbox for local events. Hmm. There's one from the pianist. 4:10 AM. This can't be good. The boys, all of whom were sick this week, are not better, one is worse off than before. She's been up with him all night. There's no way she can be in church today. God bless her. Can I see if the guitarists can shoulder most of the musical responsibilities?

One will be gone. The other probably can as long as he's not suffering from springtime allergies. I won't know that for another three hours. The organist anticipated the pianist providing the service music. There won't be a prelude or an offertory.

But there will be worship and there will be Word, and he will be in the midst of us, Mighty and True. True worship depends not on the music of man-made instruments, but on the melodies of individual hearts in tune with Christ, and, when in corporate worship, in tune with one another. It is Jesus for whom and from whom worship comes, not from musicians. It is He and not they who guarantee a genuine and powerful worship service.

And so, today, I had a plan. Today, that plan will be set aside. We will worship not according to plan, but according to Christ. And I expect it will be awesome.

The Main Business

2009-04-18T09:43:00.002-05:00

So here's this guy Moses wandering in the desert, leading his sheep from one tumbleweed to another along paths worn hard by years of hooves and heat. This is not unfamiliar territory. The man is eighty years old. Shepherding has been his life for forty years, ever since he tried to play hero and got a life lesson in humility.

Forty years he and his sheep have climbed this mountain. Forty years they sought out the muted greens against the wilted browns and beiges of the desert. They know every boulder, every meager spot of shade, every drop of water. There is nothing new under the sun and they know about life under the sun. Nothing new, until today.

There, just over there, on the ledge, a bush, dessicated by wind, devoid of life, burns. Nothing new. Happens all the time. An intense ray of sun reflected by a broken piece of quartz. Careless spark from a travelers fire. Burning bush? Not new. Keep walking. Tend the sheep. Mind your business. Until today.

Today, this bush is different. This is new. The fire does not consume the bush. This bush, this burning but not burning up bush calls for an investigation, a closer look, a detailed analysis. This bush calls for more than just a casual glance from a seasoned shepherd engrossed in the ordinary routine of living.

Moses turned aside. He made an adjustment to his direction. He refocused his attention. He altered his priorities. He assumed a different position relative to his preconceptions. And for it, his life would never be the same.

"When the LORD saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, 'Moses, Moses!'" (Exodus 3:4, ESV). When Moses gave his attention to God, God gave his attention to Moses.

How often have we longed for an exchange like this, for God to speak, to reveal himself as He is, to change our lives? How often have we longed for the Almighty to show up with power and purpose, with meaning and mission? We have pined for him, longed for him, thirsted for him, and done without day after day, soon relegating such personal interaction to the pages of ancient history. The wise man of Proverbs diagnoses our condition: "Hope deferred makes the heart sick."

Heart sick? There's a cure.

Missing God? Wishing for greater intimacy? Wanting more than you have of Spirit and grace? Take your cue from Moses. "Turn aside." The author of Hebrews says it like this, "Therefore, holy brothers, you who share in a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession" (Hebrews 3:1, ESV). The word "consider" here is the same word Stephen uses to describe Moses' "turning aside" as he recounts the event in Acts 7:31. When Moses "considered" the burning bush, he was then in an environment prepared to hear the voice of God.

Could it be that the reason we do not hear from God is that we take so little time to "consider Jesus?" Is it not true that work and meetings and hockey and relationships and children and deadlines and PTA and movies and bathroom makeovers and sick dogs and gas prices and recessions and worry and plans and possibilities and problems and . . . well, you get the picture. Could it be that tending too many sheep in the ordinary robs us of the opportunity to encounter God in the extraordinary? Could it be that business in the natural drains our energy for experiences in the supernatural?

Turn aside. Consider Jesus. Adjust your direction. Reorder your priorities. Reform your preconceptions. Indulge your curiosity. Give license to your interest. Focus your attention upon Jesus, and find that his attention has been focused on you all along. He has been waiting in the burning bush to call your name.

He is not absent, merely unseen and unheard through the fog and din of everday business. We make living our main business rather than Life our main business, and we pay for it in silence, distance, and disappointment. But all that can change when we reassert our hearts to consider Jesus.

Now, someone will ask, "How can I do this?" The answer to that question will be unique to each of us, but here are a couple ideas. First, either use the time you have or make more time just to consider Jesus. If you can't carve fifteen minutes out the twenty four hours in a day, then you'll have to locate the vacant time slots in your day and use them. Look for the untapped time in your day. You have more of it than you realize. Use time when you're driving alone, or using Facebook, or the kids are napping, or you're in the bathroom. Use the time you have to consider Jesus.

Use the places that surround you as temples for worship. Sitting on the deck in the sun. Waiting for the dryer at the laundromat. Sitting alone in the breakroom. Walking on the beach. Riding to the 31st floor in an elevator. Make use of the spaces that surround you.

Carry the word with you. We know Jesus through two means: the word of God and the Spirit of God. Keep a verse card in your shirt pocket or purse. Better yet, keep a small New Testament in your jacket or purse, or in the car, someplace in the places that surround you so you can take advantage of the time you have.

I expect that Moses spent more than fifteen minutes with God, and our word "consider" implies an greater investment of time and effort than fifteen minutes might provide, but fifteen minutes is an arbitrary starting point. The heart issue here is that we treat "consider Jesus" as more than merely acknowledging his existence, but in the practical activity of investigating his person as a normal, natural part of our relationship with him.

"Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life" (Proverbs 13:12, ESV). You want to hear from God, then "turn aside" and make hearing him the main business.

When I Know More Than I Want to Know

2009-04-16T08:00:00.003-05:00

One of the privileges of pastoral ministry (at least it must seem like a privilege to others) is the innate opportunity to know more about more people than one ought or wants to know. I can't count the number of times someone has sidled up to me after a morning service or in the post office or standing in the parking lot or eating in a restaurant and offered the prelude of the privileged: "Pastor, I see you've encouraged such and so, and they were in church on Sunday. Did you know . . .?" The well meaning conspirator then proceeds to rehearse some well known community secret about such and so to their apparently completely out of touch pastor.

Guess what? We all have stories. We all have stories we could tell. We all have stories we pray will never be told. Such is life in a fallen and broken world. There simply are no perfect stories in an imperfect world. Well, I take that back. There is one perfect story in an imperfect world, but that's another story.

The stories of our lives are never completely public, nor are they ever completely private. This presents a real challenge for storytellers. It means, no matter what a storyteller thinks they know, they never know the whole story.

Here's an example from John 8. "Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him, and he sat down and taught them. The scribes and Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery, and placing her in their midst they said to him, 'Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. Now in the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. What do you say?'"

Let's get our hearts around what's happening here. Jesus is teaching the people. He's got a crowd of intent learners at his feet which is growing bigger than the crowd at the feet of the Pharisees, so there's some jealousy, some sin, at the root of this incident in the heart of the storytellers. Their motive for telling this woman's life story is neither pure nor compassionate. They are using her to satisfy their own needs for self-indulgence and self-exaltation. That makes the woman NOT the only adulterer in the story.

Next, they caught this woman in the act. There is no way these guys were scouring the highways and biways looking for someone engaging in an illicit relationship. This woman had a reputation. She had a story. They knew where to find her. They knew when to find her. One almost wonders if they had not found her themselves from time to time and had even set her up to "catch her in the act." This woman is NOT the only scoundrel harboring an untold story.

And don't miss this. If the woman was an adulterer, and everyone knew it, and no one had followed through on the Law prior to this moment, then all of her accusers are equally lawbreakers with a story written in disobedience.

The point is that there is always more to the story than a storyteller can , or sometimes will, tell. I wonder about this woman. I wonder what life events led her to feel safe in the arms of dangerous men. I wonder what loneliness and pain, what brokenness, what woundedness leads to such risk, to such sin, to such abandonment of soul. I wonder what is the story that is not told.

And I wonder about God. What has been God's story? He leaves the woman uncaught and unpunished until this moment. Why? What story is he content to write patiently in her life while she flits about in sin and disobedience? I believe it must be the story of soveriegn glory and redemptive grace.

Consider Jesus. Study his response to the story the Pharisees have imposed on him. I believe he knew this woman's story as well as he knew the story of the Samaritan woman with five husbands and a live in boyfriend. Consider Jesus and his words to this woman, her story so unceremoniously made public. "Has no one condemned you? . . . Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more" (John 8:10-11, ESV).

Jesus communicates two truths: "I know your story," and "Having met me, it's time for a new story." Jesus does not excuse her lifestyle, her previous story. He accounts for it as sin, and as sin worthy of condemnation and judgment. He identifies her story for what it is, a lifelong account of unholy choices and soul-destructing practice. He does not gloss over the full story. Instead, he sums her story up with forgiveness. "Neither do I condemn you." He could, but he does not. That is the sovereign choice of the gracious and merciful God who knows every syllable of our story.

Then, having forgiven her, he sets the structure for her new story. It is a story without the burden of the past: "sin no more." It is a story of life lived fully in the present, "go, and sin no more." It is a story of hope and new direction and eternal life and future glory: "neither do I condemn you."

Storytellers, this is what I have learned. Jesus knows the full story of each life, but I do not. I do not even know the full story of God's work in my own life let alone yours or someone else's. But Jesus, who knows the stories of men and women, offers forgiveness and a new story from the moment we meet him. And that is where I want to be, what I want to be, one who accounts the past story as forgiven and tomorrow's story written in the blood of Christ.

I don't want to know, dear storyteller where a person has been, I want to know where Jesus will take them. I don't really want to know from you what story they have written in their sin, since their story will not be essentially different than mine or yours. I want to know what story Jesus will write when they meet him. And I want that, the new story Jesus will write, to be more important to you than telling your pastor what you think he needs to know about someone else's half-finished, partly known story, still to be written story.

Lessons in the Sun

2009-04-15T16:17:00.003-05:00

I took an early morning walk along Minnesota's North Shore of Lake Superior this morning. I took the road east, toward the rising sun and the promise of a new day. The air was cool, probably in the low 30s, and there was skim ice on the runoff in the roadside ditches. My hands got cold, making me very thankful I'd grabbed my one sweatshirt with pockets.

Whitetail deer were everywhere this morning. I counted twelve live ones crossing the highway ahead of me within the first mile. There were also a couple that had not made the crossing as successfully. Sad reality where the highway meets the boreal forest.

The sun moved above the horizon out on the Lake while I was still behind the barrier of black spruce that line the south side of the highway. Once I cleared the trees the road ahead disappeared in the fierce orange glow of the newborn sphere. I moved closer to the gravel away from the solid white line that separates the shoulder from the westbound land of US Highway 61. As many times as I've walked this route, I still want to be careful on those mornings when I have to walk staring at my feet because the brilliance of the morning sun makes it too hard to look up for long.

Two ideas worked themselves into my consciousness as I kept cadence with the Cathedral Quartet singing classic convention favorites like "Mansion Over the Hilltop" and "Supper Time." One train went south, the other north. One was negative, the other positive. For a moment I was stuck in neutral in the middle until my brain took in the value of them both.

Speaking from the negative, the sun functioned to my eyes this morning as a great blinding influence preventing me from seeing clearly the beauty and the danger that might have otherwise enhanced my journey. The bright light forced me to cover my eyes in order to cross the highway for my return trip and not wind up like one of the hapless deer upon which the ravens and eagles feed. The sun was more a hindrance than a help, and yet it loomed so large and so bright, that it was only with difficulty and with effort that I could see through its effect and discern the prevailing conditions that would bring me safely home.

So many influences play this same role in our lives. God offers joy, peace, guidance, confidence, reconciliation, transformation, but the things of this world loom large in our personal vision and make it difficult to discern the good God has for us, the good that will lead us safely home. We have to make a concerted effort to see past the bright lights of power, wealth, control, anger, jealousy, selfishness, greed, lust, and a host of other offerings that blind us from the truth.

This is the call we get from the inspired author of Hebrews when he writes, "Therefore, holy brothers, you who share in the heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession" (Hebrews 3:1, ESV). The word "consider" ("fix your thoughts on" in the NIV) means to scrutinize something in order to apprehend its purpose or meaning. It is a word for focus, for concentration, for comprehension that pierces the fog and finds clarity and certainty. It is a call to a vital, intentional, active faith that is neither casual nor haphazard, but deliberate and productive.

This is faith that thrives on God's word. This is faith that grows in prayer and meditation. This is faith that worships and serves, and discovers for itself (and for those who possess it) the fullness of God's glory in Christ through the working of the Holy Spirit.

This was one train of thought. It took the sun as a negative influence. The other train of thought took the opposite approach: the sun as a positive influence in my morning revelry. You see, there are still piles of snow along the roadway, black and dirty from an overlong season of salt and sand and road grime not yet washed away by the rains of spring. There are the lingering evidences of unfortunate meetings between modern automobiles and woodland creatures. There are decaying trees, broken from a devastating ice storm weeks ago. There are accumulations of winter trash awaiting a storm tide to sweep the beaches clean. There is much that is ugly, unbecoming. There is woundedness and betrayal. The sun hid it all.

With the newly risen sun in my eyes, no matter where I looked I could only see the sun. It was easy to see, easy to focus upon, easy to follow. All I had to do was look where the sun was and all the decrepit remains of a fallen world vanished in the brightness of the glow. My face was warmed and my heart charmed by this dear friend I had missed through all the long nights of winter. I felt as though I could look up and sing. And I would have had I not been so out of breath.

Here too is the message of Hebrews: "Consider Jesus." Focus on the Son. Let all else pale in comparison to the worthiness and value of Jesus Christ the exalted Son of God enthroned in the heavens and superior to angels. Our sorrows pass away into shadows, our difficulties to shades when we fix our eyes on Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith. The hymnist put it like this, "Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in his wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim, in the light of his glory and grace."

Either interpretation leads us to Jesus, and that is as it should be. The heavens declare the glory of God. The sun declares the Son! May we see him as he wishes to be seen.

2009-04-07T15:16:00.001-05:00

After three excruciating hours on the cross, Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Someone ran to fetch a sponge soaked in sour wine, primitive pain relief, but before they returned he cried out one last time, and then he died. It was over. Finished. Done.

Later in the day, toward evening, a highly regarded ruler among the people took courage and went to the Roman governor who had ordered Jesus’ crucifixion and asked that he be allowed to bury Jesus. Pilate made certain their was no life left in the body. He called for the centurion overseeing the execution who affirmed Jesus’ death. Pilate granted the corpse to Joseph who took Jesus down from the cross, wrapped the body in a linen shroud, and laid him in a newly hewn rock cave, a tomb in which no one else had been buried. Then he rolled a boulder against the entrance of the tomb.

And then . . . then there was silence. Grief. Disappointment. Disbelief. Death. There was only that dark wonder, that speech inhibiting cloud, that mind numbing confusion . . . and silence. No authoritative voice of instruction. No power-filled command of healing. No gentle touch of forgiveness. Just . . . silence.

You’ve been there, haven’t you? Your world filled with hope and wonder and joy and suddenly there is only silence. God seems absent, inattentive, inactive. Dead. Between Friday and Sunday, there is only a silent Saturday. Between the cross and the sunrise there is only a voiceless tomb. Between life and life, only death.

Many people live in “silent Saturday.” They live day after day wondering whatever happened to God. Whatever happened to truth and justice and promise. They long for some evidence of his mercy, some fulfilment of his plan, but they hear only silence, they see only a cross, and a tomb, and a rock.

Little do they realize that beyond the silence, God is at work. The apostle Peter includes these thoughts in his first letter to Christians at that time scattered throughout the world: “For Jesus also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison . . .” (1 Peter 3:18-19).

Peter refers to that silent Saturday, to that day while the body of Jesus lay wrapped in linen, bound in lifeless dark. God was working during the silence. While his body lay in the tomb, Jesus proclaimed his victory on the cross to those who had died, but in life had looked for his coming, who had loved God and trusted his promises. Then, Jesus ascended taking with him the men and women of faith, from the place of the dead to the place prepared for them, and for all those who put their faith in him (see Ephesians 4:8-10.)

The point in this: Silence is not always what seems. Sometimes it is the coiling of the spring just before the trigger is released, the gathering of the tide before the tidal wave, the inhale just before the fireworks streaking skyward explode in glory.

Take heart. Friday is past. Saturday is silent. But, to quote one preacher, “Sunday’s coming!”

What is fitting for God to do?

2009-03-27T17:25:00.003-05:00

Hebrews 2:10 asserts that "it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering." There is something in the wording here that causes me to stop and think.

Once I was walking through Peachtree Mall in my old hometown. I was passing by one of the large department stores, you know the kind where the cosmetic and perfume counters line the entrance like a gauntlet, when suddenly I found myself in the middle of the mall staring at the most amazingly beautiful woman I thought at the time I had ever seen. Generally, I don't stare. I don't stare at anybody or anything. Mom diligently taught us not to stare and we learned our lessons well. But there I was standing outside that store looking inside, utterly and unashamedly captivated by this person in a white lab coat standing beside a counter and inviting passersby to be drenched in some scent they could probably never afford.

Now, what caused my sudden loss of manners was not so much that this woman was very pleasant to gaze upon, but that there was something unnervingly familiar about her. I knew her, but I could not come up with a single reason why I should. Whoever she was, she was different, or out of place, something. Then, she called me by name.

I read the words, "it was fitting for God" and I feel much the same the way I did standing in the middle of the mall staring at my very best high school friend who had looked utterly different and utterly out of place, but utterly familiar at the same time. After all, what isn't fitting for God?

Moses reminds us, recounting under inspiration the dialogue between Abraham and God before the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, that the Judge of all the earth shall do right. Every thing God does conforms to his perfect, holy character. So, of course, if God does it, it's "fitting."

This idea of "fitting," though, should be considered in light of what this inspired author describes as fitting, namely, the perfecting of the Savior through suffering. We now have to account for two things that it is fitting for God to do as he brings many sons to glory. It is fitting for God to perfect his Son, Jesus, and it is fitting for God to do so through Jesus' personal suffering.

How does one, even God, perfect that which is perfect? Do we not understand from all of Scripture, that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God, shares all of God's attributes, including perfection? Yes he is and yes he does. The perfection that is is fitting for God to work is the perfection of the man Jesus in the role as Savior. Jesus must, in order for his role as Savior to be complete (thus the word "perfect"), share completely in the human experience, which is best characterized by suffering.

Jesus suffers because all human beings suffer. Jesus suffers because it is the nature of existence in a fallen and corrupt world, marred and imperfect, that those who live here will suffer. Therefore, it is fitting for God to "perfect" or complete Jesus' human experience with suffering. It is fitting for God to certainly and without any doubt prepare his Son to be an adequate Savior and it is fitting for God to perfect his Son through suffering, because in that suffering he joins the rest of us in our experience and condition.

Jesus does not require moral perfection and it would not be fitting for God to do this, since there is no blemish on Christ's conscience, no stain from sin. But it is fitting that God should do all that must be done to ransom his beloved people from death and destruction by perfecting the founder of their salvation through suffering.

And if it is fitting for God to perfect his only Son through suffering, would it not also be fitting for God to work within those "many sons" he brings to glory to perfect them in their faith experience through suffering? Should we not expect God to use suffering in our lives to complete the work he began as in faith we take our identity in his Son?

Dont' short change suffering. It is fitting that God should pave the road to glory with it.