Tag: God

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Twelve Days of Advent – #12 Journeys in Time

“There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven.”

Ecclesiastes 3:1

It’s here! Christmas Eve. Presents are wrapped, delicious food awaits us, family and friends are close. We look forward to this evening and tomorrow morning all year. For some, the journey to Christmas morning is simply from our bedrooms to our living rooms. Others travel many miles to join in the celebration. In fact, AAA recently estimated that this year over 112 million Americans will travel in some form this Christmas.

One of our biggest concerns when we take a trip, especially during the holidays, is whether we’ll get to our destination on time. Crowded airports, busy highways, overbooked hotels … when will we get there? Our travel plans sometimes seem more pressing than our travel destinations.

A different journey

There is another journey we should remember today as another Advent ends. A journey made by our Creator spanning the infinite stretches of time and space, from thought to Word to flesh to Salvation. It is the reason we celebrate this day, the Eve “O Come” became “Emmanuel.”

The Jesus so often stylized in paintings and song seems at odds with the Jesus of history. He was not born to princely riches, surrounded by the comforts of an Eternal throne. His arrival was greeted with a brief night of fanfare and praise but then life took hold.

The Jesus of history was born to humble parents, a day laborer and young girl barely into her teens. They lived not in one of the great commerce centers of Judea amidst the religious elite, but a dusty town nearly 100 miles from Jerusalem. Many in his day would never travel beyond the borders of their own villages. And it’s likely few people worried much about timetables and schedules.

Jesus’ life commenced with a journey, a continuation of the journey his Father began so many eons before. His life would end with a journey, a journey that would take him from death to transcendence. A journey that happened precisely on time.

During his earthly life, Jesus took many journeys: to Egypt as a baby, throughout Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, and Israel. Every trip he made, every place he visited, Scripture records the travels not of an inveterate site-seer looking to check boxes for the ancient wonders of the world he visited, but rather, someone with a single purpose: to encounter us, engage with us, teach and minister to us, bring us the Good News of the coming of his Father’s Kingdom.

A visitor to all

A lot is written about Jesus’ focus on the downtrodden and the outcast, the forgotten members of society. And indeed, he did speak to the humble and the meek and poor, both in purse and in spirit. Yet, the remarkable thing about Jesus’ journeys was how he did not discriminate between rich and poor, famous or obscure. He visited with anyone.

An encounter with a rich young ruler mentioned Mark 10:17-27 is one example. The passage begins “As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up to him and knelt before him, and ask him ‘Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?”

Notice the passage begins with Jesus embarking on yet another journey! Jesus seeks those who seek him – in this case, a man of wealth and means. Rather than dismissing the young man simply because of his wealth, Jesus engages him. That encounter didn’t end as the rich young ruler hoped, but Jesus still met him where he was.

Mary Annointing Jesus’ Feet, Peter Paul Rubens, 1618

Another encounter from John 12:1-8, describes Jesus allowing Mary to anoint his feet with an expensive and fragrant ointment that would sell for $20,000 today. In this story, Jesus has just come to Bethany in preparation for his final Passover in Jerusalem. Mary obviously has the means to possess such an expensive perfume and so was clearly not destitute. Yet again, Jesus did not criticize or shun her.

Jesus made an inconceivable journey for all of us. He came for the poor and rich, the unknown and the famous. He was no stranger to poverty and hardship, yet he was comfortable with the powerful and wealthy.

Jesus embodied his Father’s desire to reconcile all of mankind, regardless of circumstances. He realized that even those with means face struggles. Temptation doesn’t discriminate. He made his journey to you and me because we all hurt, we’re all broken, we all have fear and doubt.

The real point

The point of Christmas is to awaken us to the infinite capacity of God to reach inside our lives and heal us, to offer us the love and forgiveness only a Father can provide. To remind us of the journey He took to reach us.

Scholars estimate Jesus traveled over 21,000 miles during his life – nearly the distance around the earth’s equator. Yet that very last mile he walked, the mile from Pilate’s palace the hilltop on Golgotha, was undoubtedly his hardest. A mile few of us would willingly walk. And he arrived right on time.

Tonight as we prepare to celebrate the blessings of Christmas, let’s not worry too much about our own timetables or schedules. Rather, remember instead the long journey God made to reach us. And remember the journey He asks of us to reach those around us.

Peace.
Colossians 1:17

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Twelve Days of Advent – #11 Not a Silent Night

“And suddenly there appeared with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men.’”

Luke 2:13

As a worship leader I get to play a lot of music throughout the year. No time is more enjoyable for me than Advent and Christmas. The songs, the vocals, the arrangements, they all bring the season alive for me.

One of my favorite Christmas Season songs for worship is Andrew Peterson’s “Labor of love” (If you’ve never heard it, find a version here). The song is a unique reinterpretation of the traditional “Silent Night.” Rather than a quiet, peaceful version of Jesus’ birth, the lyrics depict a grittier, harsher world welcoming the Son of Man.

When we look at miniature nativity scenes, do we see something like this?

A radiant Mary, loving Joseph, gentle shepherds leaning on their staffs, perhaps a few wise men looking on with knowing smiles, glorious Angels heralding the miracle, a peaceful donkey and a couple of sheep … all focused on a beaming baby Jesus. A perfectly calm picture of tranquility, sanitized and airbrushed for our consumption.

Yet I imagine the real nativity scene was quite different.

A different kind of night

To begin with, what must it have been like for Joseph to take a nearly full-term Mary the 80+ hilly and winding miles on foot or riding a donkey from Nazareth to Bethlehem in response to the census decree from Caesar described in Luke 2? The tiny village of Bethlehem, by that time a sleepy town of about 300 people, would have swelled in size because of the census, on that night packed and noisy. The crowds were likely disgruntled at the inconvenience of the Roman census, pushing and shoving each other on the narrow streets.

On the road from Nazareth to Bethlehem today. Credit: www.nortonwheeler.com

Or consider the “shepherds in the fields” in verse 8. Imagine being these men, used to watching over their flocks all night, fighting off predators and poachers. They’re in no way timid or meek. Yet nothing has prepared them for the sight of an other-worldly being appearing from the skies and announcing the news of Jesus’ birth. Scripture tells us they were “terrified.”

Fear can be a powerful motivator. It causes us to be mistrustful and hurtful to each other. It closes our minds to those with whom we disagree. It causes us to lash out at those we see as different. We like our worlds to remain unchanging and predictable.

These shepherds had their worlds completely disrupted. Yet the Angel calms them, tells them not to be afraid and is joined a “multitude of the heavenly hosts” joining in praise.

Hardly a quiet night on the hillside.

Back at the stable and the manger, things are hardly more subdued. Unable to find accommodations Joseph was forced to bargain for a corner in a barn, probably suffering disdainful looks from other, more fortunate people who had warm fires and comfortable beds or pallets.

Mary has given birth – likely without a midwife or the comforting hands of her mother – surrounded by the raucous livestock of both Bethlehem’s residents and the visitors also there to complete the census. The scene is chaotic, noisy, dirty, and crowded.

Hardly the picture of a silent night.

Noisy, messy lives

Many of us can relate to this more realistic picture of Jesus’ birth. Like that night, our lives are gritty and crowded rather than airbrushed and pristine. Our days and nights are noisy, messy, often filled with angry voices and disdainful looks. We’re bombarded every day with messages of angst, anxiety, uncertainty.

Hope gives way to fear. Fear leads us to dread the future, uncertain of how we’ll get from day to day. We pray for grace and help while a nagging voice whispers deep inside us “what if He doesn’t answer?” Like the people of Israel during that long pause before Christ’s birth, we question how long we must wait for deliverance.

And so, we retreat inside ourselves, guarded and protective of our hearts, unwilling to engage the world in open and welcoming ways. Rejecting the needs of others, we focus on our own needs.

Credit: Billy Hunt

Hardly the makings of perfect lives.

In the midst of the chaos surrounding her, how did Mary respond? Scripture tells us she “treasured all these things, pondering them in her heart.” Mary’s answer to the pandemonium and disorder surrounding her was to praise God for His providence, thankful for the blessing He had bestowed. She prayed and opened this most vulnerable moment of her life to everyone around her, sharing freely the precious gift God and given to mankind.

Forgetful souls

Sometimes, even during Advent and Christmas, it’s easy for us to suffer from what 9th century Irish theologian John Scotus Eriugena called “forgetfulness of soul.” We forget to love, forget to give, forget to extend our hand to others. We sing carols, go to parties, buy tons of gifts but do not, as Mary did, “treasure things in our hearts.”

Today, this Eve of Arrival, let us remember that beyond the celebrations and decorations, the true meaning of Emmanuel, “God With Us” is as close as the next person we see. We were made in God’s image, created to emulate Him and love each other openly, abundantly, and without fear even in the midst of chaos.

God has never been silent, if we have ears to hear. He has never been invisible, if we have eyes to see. He invites us to encounter Him when we protect the weak, lift up the downtrodden, seek peace in the midst of enmity.

The angel proclaimed to the shepherds: “Do not be afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of great joy which will be for all the people.” As you celebrate this Christmas Eve, this closing of Advent, proclaim the Good News: Arrival is Nigh.

Peace.
Colossians 1:17

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Twelve Days of Advent – #10 Prepare

“If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also.”

John 14:3

How do you get ready for Christmas? A beautiful tree with ribbons and ornaments? Mantle decorations and table treatments? One too many trips to the mall or site visits to Amazon? In my case, guilty as charged.

We typically begin our Christmas planning right after October and start the set-up Thanksgiving week. Yes, we’re those people. We love Christmas and surrounding ourselves with physical reminders of the season.

We’re not alone. During the Christmas Season, everywhere you look there are signs of preparation: wreaths, store decorations, snowmen, plastic Santas and reindeer on the neighbors’ lawns … everyone has their own way of preparing for Christmas celebrations. Anticipation fills the air.

God prepares

God also prepares. In fact, since the beginning He’s been preparing. His preparation also includes decorations and ornaments, although of a different sort. At times, His preparations have taken an entire people into captivity and exile. At other times, He calls new leaders onto mountain tops or into deserts. He has prepared by dressing elaborate temples with gold and fine linen, as well as lowly barn stalls with straw and rough hewn wood.

And God’s preparations have required much longer than a few hours over the weekend to set up. Countless people and many centuries were needed to unfold His perfect plan that mankind’s Savior would be born at a specific place and time, to a specific woman He anointed, in a specific town according to His prophetic instruction, to fulfill a specific mission at a perfectly appointed date.

This event was foretold, rehearsed for centuries, and planned by God at the origination of creation. And it is the very reason we celebrate Advent.

As early as Genesis 3:15, following the fall of Man in the aftermath of Eve’s temptation, God revealed the beginnings of His plan warning the serpent “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed.” These earliest foreshadowings of God’s prophesied the eventual conquest of the serpent by God’s chosen offspring. The offspring descended from a fallen woman and eventually born to a Virgin. A perfect preparation for a perfect answer to our frailties and imperfections.

“The Fall and Expulsion from Garden of Eden” by Michelangelo, 1509

The journey from Eden to Calvary was long, just as our own plans are often long. Of course, God’s plans infinitely overshadow our own. Still, we are asked to prepare. Every Christmas we remember Son of Man’s coming with decorations and carols and cards and presents. We prepare for his return in the season of Advent by remembering the past while anticipating the future.

The most important preparation

Yet the most important preparation we can make every Advent Season – indeed, every day of the year – is to prepare our hearts and the hearts of those around us for what is to come. As Believers, we’re ordained to be God’s beacons in the here and now, offering a glimpse of eternity to those who will receive. Regardless of life’s distractions, no matter what we see or hear every day whispering to turn away from God, our charge is to prepare for the future.

God had the expanse of time to prepare us for the birth of His son. We aren’t given that luxury. Instead, our role is to share the miracle of Christmas every day to anyone and everyone we encounter. To those who have never experienced the joy of God’s love. To those who feel abandoned in the world. To those who have lost all hope.

We prepare for Christmas every year because God has prepared the way before us. As we remember this Advent Season, let us never forget the least of our brothers and sisters. Preparing our hearts means preparing theirs.

Today, tomorrow, or even right now – find someone you don’t know and wish them a Merry Christmas. Or tell a friend you love them, remembering with gratefulness what God’s love means to us all.

Peace.
Colossians 1:17

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Twelve Days of Advent – #8 Death and Taxes

“But He turned and said to Peter, ‘Get behind Me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me; for you are not setting your mind on God’s interests, but man’s.’”

Matthew 16:23

A movie I’ve always loved for its intelligent writing and nuanced acting is “Meet Joe Black,” the story of wealthy news and media mogul William Parrish (Anthony Hopkins) who on the eve of his 65th birthday is visited by Death in the form of a man named Joe Black (Brad Pitt).

In a key scene foreshadowing the end of the film, Joe is in a conference room talking with the movie’s antagonist, “Drew.” Joe challenges Drew about the inevitability of a major financial transaction to which Drew responds “We all know this deal is as certain as death and taxes.” Pausing, Joe comments “Death and taxes? What an odd pairing.”

Death and taxes. Unless you’ve been on a remote island the last few years you’ve no doubt heard the annual hysteria around debates over tax reform – who has too much, who has too little, winners, losers, etc.

I won’t debate the merits or flaws of tax policy here (you can check out social media or cable news any day of the week to get an overdose of that). Rather, I want to focus on the flawed idea of believing anything – taxes, justice, politics, governments, etc. – is “certain” other than death.

Nowhere to hide

The whims and policies of man are transient and will change with the times, while the nature of God is eternal. As Jesus responded when asked about the morality of paying Caesar’s poll tax in Matthew 22, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.”  What belongs to God will always be returned to Him.

There is simply nowhere to hide from physical death. We may fill our days with endless workouts, pad our diets with supplements and nutrition, slather our faces with creams and ointments, push retirement out another ten years but the truth is that each and every one of us has one appointment – an appointment with the end of our earthly days – we can’t cancel or reschedule.

Jesus also had an appointment. One scheduled from the beginning of time, foretold over generations of prophets, foreshadowed in the long wait between Malachi and Matthew. His appointment was certain. It was unchangeable. His appoint was with death.

Divine appointments

When Jesus finally revealed this divine appointment to his disciples, explaining he will suffer betrayal, trial and execution, be entombed for a time, and finally raised up on the third day, Peter would have no part of it.

He denied the inevitability of God’s plan.

He expects Jesus, the Messiah, the Anointed Christ, the Lion of Judah to raise a victorious hand against the oppression of Rome. Messiahs conquer, they do not succumb. And in an ironic twist, Peter foretells his own betrayal of Jesus following the arrest in Jerusalem by denying the very mission Jesus had announced.

“St. Peter’s Denial” by Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, 1660

Jesus responds in the only way Peter will understand – implying Satan had possessed him and to go away. Peter simply had not comprehended the true oppression Jesus came to defeat … the certain oppression of sin and death. The great “waiting” of the Jewish people would be fulfilled in Jesus laying down his sinless life to atone for the flawed and sinful lives of all mankind. This was the appointment only Jesus could keep.

Turning the page

In rebuking Peter, Jesus tells us a much deeper truth. The problems of the world are infinitely greater than our politics, or our personal desires, even our own deaths. What we believe is the end of the story (death) is actually the turning of a page.

Jesus conquers the horrors of death so that we will never experience those horrors even as we face our own demise . We no longer need to hide, fearing and forestalling the inevitable. We no longer need fear the ravages of disease, the pain of broken relationships, the soul-crushing weight of financial ruin.

Rather, Jesus writes an entirely new chapter for us, telling us to embrace the death he suffered in our own lives, every day. To follow his example means willingly taking up our own crosses and running toward the death he calls us to experience: death to pride, death to apathy, death to unfaithfulness, death to hate, death to lying, death to hypocrisy, death to denial.

Jesus teaches Peter and his disciples that the only way to avoid our inevitable appointment with death is to embrace that very death while we live. Luke 9:24 recounts his words: “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it.”

The price of life

Advent, this time of waiting and expectation, is also a season of understanding. We learn through enduring anticipation that God never meant His call to be convenient or inexpensive. Often, He leads us to suffer for His work. He challenges the strength of our faith. Being a Believer can be costly, lonely, disappointing.

Yet the clear message of Christianity is simply this: die to the selfish, vain, fleeting promises of the world and receive the assurance of eternity. Die to the whispered seductions and lies of the enemy and experience the radiant joy of unearned grace. Die to death and receive life.

The ultimate Good News is that Jesus has already paid the price for our lives. His death and resurrection were the tax we owed, the payment we should have made. The price for our lives is now … free.

Joe Black teaches William Parrish there is no fear or sorrow in death if we learn to live a life of service and sacrificial love. While we all suffer the same fallibilities of being human, our final breath is not a tragic failure of frailty but a transcendent triumph over death.

Peace.
Colossians 1:17

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Twelve Days of Advent – #7 Stormy Weather

“Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”

James 1:2-4

A while back, I was at dinner with a few guy friends. Predictably, we talked about typical guy things. Because we’re all of a “certain age,” our “guy things” talk was relatively tame. Relatively.

Credit: www.wisebread.com

However … one member of our party broke an unspoken “guy” rule in my crowd: don’t complain about the weather. Not the real weather, of course. Rather, the weather of our relationships, the weather of lives. The weather we can’t control but we can certainly anticipate. “Don’t blame the weather for getting wet when you forgot to bring an umbrella,” one of my, um, “older” guy friends fondly says.

Life is tough

Look, life is tough. We live in a world where the deck appears to be stacked against most of us. In Christian terms we call this a “fallen world,” a world where a very real and present enemy works to stain every part of our lives with fear and doubt and uncertainty.

Glass breaks. We get old (yeah, I know that’s hard to hear). Marriages fall apart. Loved ones get addicted to Opiates. Parents forget our names. Sexual harassment becomes an accepted norm. Alcohol and drugs are so common our children need rehab at 14 years old. A gun becomes a more persuasive argument than reason.

Credit: New York Times

In 1944 Ella Fitzgerald and the Inkspots released a single called “Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall.” They borrowed the title from the poem “Rainy Day” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Both Ella and Longfellow spoke truth. But I prefer the original truth from Ecclesiastes 3 “For everything this is a season.”

Storm clouds are always on the horizon. Life pushes back. This is especially hard to accept during seasons of anticipation. Seasons like Advent when God may seem silent and unreachable. Seasons where we are asked to wait and trust.

The war inside us

The stormy weather of our lives should not be surprising, especially for those of us actively attempting to reject the temptations of the material world, the seductions of a physical life. It’s not easy to resist.

Paul tells us of the “Conflict of Two Natures” in Romans 7, a war being waged inside each of us. He reflects that in Galatians 5:17, writing “For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh.”

Credit: www.kingdomrice.wordpress.com

The temptations of the world, particularly in seasons of waiting, are like tornadoes in Kansas. We anticipate the storm clouds, we feel the wind, we eventually see the funnel hit the ground yet sometimes we don’t seek shelter.

While we live in a fallen world and bad things happen to us, we always have control over how we respond – whether we bring an umbrella or head underground or simply give in.

Yet in every instance of adversity or waiting, we have a choice. We can choose to look backward or we can move forward. Notice we can’t actually go backward, only look there. And we really can’t stay where we are as life moves on around us. Look back or move forward.

Storms strengthen us

James tells us in the verse I began with that the testing of our faith builds perseverance. Surviving storms makes us stronger to future storms. Meeting and defeating temptation and doubt tempers us, transforms us, like hardening steel with fire.

We see this transformation in our choices. We can feel joy or bitterness. We can forgive or hold onto anger. We can trust or be suspicious of everyone. We can be filled with faith or plagued with fear. We can love or we can hate. We can offer mercy or seek revenge.

We can fill our hearts with hope. Or we can sink into despair.

Stormy weather and hard seasons are not meant to weaken us, but rather to strengthen us. They offer us opportunities to reinforce our trust and faith in God by hearing His voice and rejoicing in His salvation. Especially when the clouds are darkest…

Peace.
Colossians 1:17

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Twelve Days of Advent – #5 What Breaks Your Heart?

“I have listened and heard, they have spoken what is not right; no man repented of his wickedness, saying, ‘What have I done?’ Everyone turned to his course, like a horse charging into the battle.” Jeremiah 8:6

What breaks your heart?

I’m not talking about a badly-ending relationship, or even the loss of a loved one to illness or tragedy although these certainly cause us to grieve. Nor do I mean family betrayals like Fredo in “Godfather II” – we saw how that ended for both Fredo and eventually for Michael!

The broken heart I’m referring to here is different. It’s that mourning of the soul, that gut-wrenching sorrow we feel at our very core when we’re connected to what breaks God’s heart.

Credit: www.chickensmoothie.com

The Bible offers many descriptions of how Holy heart is broken. Broken by those who are lost and refuse to come home. Broken because of those who are persecuted and have no one to share their distress. Broken from the cries of the poor who have no means of support. And broken by our disobedience.

Broken by rebellion

600 years before the birth of Christ, the Jewish people had once again become increasingly rebellious and obstinate. For generations, they had grown lax in following God’s commandments, eventually seduced by the attraction of Baal and other idols and squandering the promise and hope of the Torah.

Eventually, God removes His protection and Babylon conquers Judah, deposing their king Jehoiakim and sending much of the population into exile. By 587 BC, Judah was no longer a nation and the memories of greatness achieved by David and Solomon faded. It broke the hearts of a nation.

The prophet Jeremiah, seeing the wretched conditions of his fellow Jews, had just such a broken, aching heart. He saw the misery of his brothers and sisters, the children of Abraham, the Covenant People. And he knew what God had called him to do, the hard message he had to deliver to these same people: repent from their sins and return to God. Their rejection of his message the eventual exile of Judah ultimately led to his death by the very hands of those he tried to save.

What breaks your heart?

Many of us today simply don’t equate broken hearts with sin. The very word itself, “sin,” seems antiquated, unenlightened, uneducated to the modern ear. And when God asks us as he asked Jeremiah “Why have these people turned away? Why are they always turning away?” (Jeremiah 8:5) we simply … turn away.

What breaks your heart?

The answer to that question isn’t always obvious. So, perhaps we might start with a different question. What breaks God’s heart?

What breaks God’s heart?

There are many things we might find in scripture to answer this. In my own journey, a few come to mind. This is especially true for those who claim to know God’s heart yet still falter.

  • When we don’t turn from our shortcomings. Just like the people in Jeremiah’s day, God’s people today – you and me and those around us – have turned away from God, often refusing to hear Him. Jeremiah’s people, like us, should have known better. They knew, we know, when the path we’re on is wrong. Yet we continue down that path, oblivious to where it leads.

We may confess, we may have a moment of contrite remorse, but when the pain passes, we ignore Jesus’ admonition in John 8:11 to “Go and sin no more.”

  • When we don’t live God’s Word. Like the Scribes and Pharisees of Jesus’ day, many professing Christians today talk the talk but don’t walk the walk. We have our Bibles, we may go to Bible studies, we may debate and argue Scripture – but do we live it? Do we spend time the poor? Do we take in orphans? Do we look after widows? If we the only Bible those around us ever see, what does that Bible look like? And yes, I’m writing these words to me.
Credit: www.modernsurvivalblog.com
  • When we don’t realize how short the time is. Jeremiah commented “Harvest has passed, summer has ended, but we have not been saved.” (Jeremiah 8:20). A farmer who misses harvest time will starve. He knows how short the time is.

There’s a similar urgency in our lives. According to a recent study there are 2.1 billion        people in the world who don’t know Christ. Every year, 16-20 million die ever without hearing the Gospel.  This is our harvest, yours and mine. And the harvest season is upon us, this season of Advent, this season of preparation.

  • When we self-destruct. In my mid 20’s, one of my closest high school friends spiraled out of control, eventually taking his own life. Many of us at the time asked ourselves what we might have done to change our friend’s course, to ease his burden. There was likely nothing we could have done, but the key pain was that we did nothing at all.

God holds this mirror up to us constantly, reminding us that we are surrounded by    self-destruction. Where are we in taking the hands of others to help them through their struggles? The addicts, the prisoners, the lost.  How often does our heart break for those we see right in front of us?

  • When we refuse to let God heal us. Jeremiah cries out in 8:22 “Is there no balm in Gilead?” In Jeremiah’s time Gilead was a place of hope, famous for balm from a local tree resin that cured illness. Jeremiah was equating God’s voice and commandments to a healing cure for our broken lives, a salve for spiritual illness. Yet, the people refused.

How many people have you known who refuse treatment for their own sicknesses?  Perhaps a friend whose marriage is in tatters but won’t seek counseling. Or a work  colleague who is unable to perform but too prideful to has for help. Or an acquaintance who is spiritually lost but will not follow God?

Prepare by acting

Advent is about many things including waiting, expectation, hope. And it’s also about recognizing how God has given us this season of preparation to discover where our hearts are not with His, where we’ve hardened ourselves to what breaks God’s heart. When we see people from every walk of life ignoring the warning signs, ignoring how time is running short, refusing to turn back from the wrong paths of their decisions, refusing help … our hearts should also break.

This Advent Season, take a look around. See your neighbors, your loved ones, your adversaries, yourself. Where can you bring hope and preparation and expectation to the broken hearts of others? Where can you bring healing to your own broken heart?

Peace.
Colossians 1:17

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Twelve Days of Advent – #4 Hope

“When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he had already been a long time in that condition, He said to him, ‘Do you wish to get well?’” John 5:6

James Cameron is an accomplished inventor, engineer, philanthropist, and deep-sea explorer. He’s also directed a couple of movies you may have seen – do The Terminator, Titanic, or Avatar ring any bells? Cameron is famous for many things, but one of his traits I find most inspiring from a secular business perspective is his drive and focus. He once famously said “Hope is not a strategy. Luck is not a factor. Fear is not an option.”

As a business guy, I embrace this statement completely. As a Christian, I take issue with its initial sentence. “Hope,” as it turns out, is a key pillar of faith.

Reflecting on the vanity of life and how short his days were in the face of his personal weaknesses, David writes in Psalm 39: “And now, Lord, for what do I wait? My hope is in You.” Confronting his own frailty, David turns to the only source of strength he knows will not fail him – hope in God.

Hope, as it turns out, is a common trait in our faith. Paul refers to “hope” at least five times in his letter to the Romans. Hope is all over the book of Psalms. Hope punctuates Jesus’ ministry at every turn. Hope saved Job from despair.

Hope helps us change the way we view the world, offering us light in the midst of darkness. Lack of hope has the exact opposite effect.

Hope works

A friend I’ve recently met is struggling in his marriage. When we talk about where the difficulties lie, the common theme is that he has given up hope of any resolution, resigned to endless struggle. His life is filled with depression and despair.

Another acquaintance of mine was just told his wife’s breast cancer thought to be in remission has re-emerged, metastasized in her liver and spine. His reaction? Absolute hope and faith in God’s power to heal her once again.

Credit: http://www.2911church.com/

Two scenarios, two different responses. The common thread? Given choices in life, we can respond with fear and gloom, or with hope and faith. In either instance, how we respond can shape how God works in our lives.

Now, before anyone labels me a Christian Scientist or Jehovah’s Witness, let me assure you – I believe in science, in medicine, and in the skill of physicians. When a medication or procedure can relieve or cure an ailment, I whole-heartedly support it. That said, it’s established that a patient’s mental condition impacts their response to treatment.

What do you want?

Translation? Hope works.

We read a beautiful story in John 5 about the power of hope. After spending time in Galilee where he met the woman Samaritan by the well and healing a nobleman’s son, Jesus travels to Jerusalem, encountering a man who had laid beside the waters of the Bethesda Pools for 38 years, crippled.

This man came to the waters every day waiting for his chance to be cured, only to watch others take his place. At some point, he simply lost hope, telling himself this was his life, this was all it would ever be.

Can you relate to this? Has there been a time in your life when you simply lost hope? Maybe a dream you had, a relationship you cherished, a job you needed … gone or beyond reach. When we lose our hope, we lose our belief in ourselves. We stop caring.

“Christ Healing the Sick at Bethesda” by Carl Heinrich Bloch, 1883

When Jesus encountered the man by the pool, he saw something different than the man saw in himself he saw a human being who had given up hope, given up on his dream of walking.

Rather than judge him, Jesus asked: “Do you wish to get well?” A simple, straight-forward question. Like many others Jesus asked throughout his earthly ministry such as “What are you looking for?” in John 1:38, or “Why are you looking for me?” in Luke 2:49, or “What do you want me to do for you?” in Mark 10:36.

Jesus is not so much interested in the man’s affliction as he is the man’s state of mind. Did this man truly want to cured or was he comfortable in his hopelessness? Jesus realizes if he cures the man’s mind, his body will follow. And that is precisely what happened.

Anyone can lose hope

Believers – even the most devout – can lose hope. Perhaps we’re surrounded by others who themselves are hopeless, draining us with their own lack of belief. Maybe having hope in the face of adversity is simply too hard, too much work. Or sometimes, finding hope can simply be too painful, leaving us exposed to heartbreak and disappointment.

Paul reminds us in Romans 12:12 to “rejoice in hope, persevere in tribulation, stay devoted to prayer.” When we lose hope, when we stop caring and stop praying, we create our own self-fulfilling prophecies.

Hope may not be much of a strategy for James Cameron. But during this Advent Season, I see hope shining like a beacon through the darkness and fog of a hopeless world. Hope shows us how God doesn’t just offer the promise of an afterlife in eternity, but can and will meet our needs right here, right now, in this moment, forgiving us of our shortcomings and changing our lives forever.

Peace.
Colossians 1:17

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Guilty!

“He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” – John 8:7

It didn’t look good. In fact, it was scandalous. Caught in the very act of adultery, a woman was dragged through the Temple Court into public view to be mocked and judged by pious, cold-faced accusers. She was guilty and their law demanded a single punishment: stoning until she was dead.

It seems barbaric. But even more barbaric was the fact that she was apparently a willing participant to an act which, while sinful, was shared with her willing lover. Yet only she was hauled in front of her self-righteous would-be executioners – her clandestine lover was nowhere to be found.

Standing between the woman and certain death: a lone rabbi squatting silently in front of her, writing curious noodles in the sand.

Two Voices

Scripture clearly identifies two different voices here, two voices that also speak to us through today’s always-on news headlines – the voice of those who condemn and the voice of Christ. The voice of condemners will criticize, destroy, mock, and humiliate to gain achieve their agenda. They use any means available to exploit the weaknesses and failures of their adversaries.

In this passage, John exposes the true nature of their motives. While adultery was indeed a sin, they unconcerned with moral purity. Rather, they used this woman as a pawn in their larger plan to trap Jesus in a situation forcing him to choose between God’s message of forgiveness and obeying the Old Testament laws handed down from Moses.

“Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery,” Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn, 1644

The real scandal was not the woman’s sin – we all sin. The real scandal was the cynical hypocrisy from those who would destroy the lives of real people to achieve their ultimate aim: to stop a rabbi calling out their charade and challenging their authority while silently drawing in the sand.

One Truth

This encounter from John 8 reveals a truth of the human condition: we all face moments where competing voices scream for our attention. The world blames us. It doesn’t care about us or our flaws except if those flaws can be exploited. We are simply tools to be used and discarded as needed to advance someone’s personal gain.

Pointing out failure seems to be the Reality TV series of modern society. Yet like the Pharisees and Sadducees of Jesus’ time, contemporary accusers are uniformly guilty of spotlighting failures others while ignoring their own.

Make no mistake. The woman in this passage was guilty, caught while committing adultery. Black and white. The Law of Moses demanded exacting punishment. Yet the Law also provide forgiveness for those who turned away from their sinful ways.

Credit: Times Higher Education

At the same time, the woman’s failure does not obscure the depravity of her accusers, using her failure to advance their own ends.

Jesus does not ignore the woman’s sin. He does not condone her actions. He doesn’t excuse her behavior because she had a difficult childhood, or an abusive husband, or because she suffered under the oppression of “toxic patriarchy.”

Nor does Jesus does pander to the victimization so dominant in our culture where no one takes responsibility for their sin. He doesn’t care who the man was with whom she was committing adultery, so the punishment would be fair. He doesn’t call what the woman did a personal choice that is just different than what He would prefer.

Jesus calls out her actions for what they were – sin.

Three Lessons

However, rather than playing “gotcha” with a woman who had clearly transgressed God’s seventh commandment, Jesus transforms the encounter into a teaching moment demonstrating the unfathomable power of mercy, grace, and forgiveness while also shaming the men confronting the woman of their hypocritical accusations.

Jesus does this in three ways:

  • He shows us that our first response to sin should always be admitting to God our brokenness. As Paul writes in Romans 3:23: “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
  • Second, he emphasizes the destructive power of sin – for those who commit it, those who observe it in others, and those who are victimized by it. Shame, shattered lives, destroyed reputations … these are all part of what Paul refers to in Romans 6:23 as “the wages of sin.”
  • Finally, he demonstrates the transformative power of compassion rather than condemnation. The sole entity in all of creation with the true power and authority to condemn the world declared he would not condemn her, but rather forgave her with the admonition to “go and sin no more.”

“If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us,” John wrote in 1 John 1:8. Yet if we, as the woman in Temple courtyard did, confess our own shortcomings rather than condemn the failings of others, God offers forgiveness, pardon, and eternal life.

We live in an age of cutting-edge judgment filled with hypocrites masquerading as social justice warriors. It surrounds us – on our televisions and smart phones, in our institutions of education and governance, in our churches. Everywhere we turn, the long lines of accusers await their chance to judge and condemn us.

Accept the Grace of Christ, turn away from the hypocrites who condemn you, and “go and sin no more.”

Peace.
Colossians 1:17

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After the Storm

“Where is your faith?” he asked his disciples. – Luke 8:25

With dawn approaching on Friday September 14, millions watched as cable and television reporters stood in rain gear, bracing themselves against gale-force winds and breathlessly reporting on the landfall of Hurricane Florence. In the aftermath, the stories were all too familiar: multiple fatalities, hundreds of thousands without power, families stranded in their homes.

Hurricanes are vicious, unrelenting, and terrifying. The wreckage they leave in their wake is indiscriminate. They can destroy lives.

And sometimes, they can restore hope and faith.

Luke 8 tells of an episode when during a terrible storm. Jesus had just directed his disciples to set out in a boat across the lake near Galilee where he had been preaching for several days. As they made their way across to the country of the Gerasenes, Jesus fell asleep, likely exhausted from his efforts.

Without warning, a “fierce gale of wind” overtook them, filling the boat with water and potentially sinking them. These were hardened sea-goers, accustomed to rain and wind while fishing or traveling. This “squall” (as one translation calls it) should have been nothing to them unless it was extraordinary and truly terrifying.

“Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee, Ludolph Bakhuizen, c. 1695”

Moreover, the journey from Galilee to the Gerasenes is not a leisurely trip across a small lake. The Sea of Galilee, separating the two, is Israel’s largest freshwater lake, some 13 miles long 8 miles wide. A ship sunk in the middle of this lake would mean certain death to the passengers.

The disciples felt doomed.

Waking Jesus from his sleep, they exclaimed the boat was sinking and they were fearful for their lives. Unfazed, Jesus stood up and rebuked the storm, immediately calming the winds and the raging water. Luke writes that the disciples were “amazed” and cried out “who is this man?”

This story combines everything I love about Jesus and his faith in God. Not only does he remain calm in the very midst of chaos knowing God has a plan to turn all things to his purpose, but reading past the verse 25, Jesus takes no time resting, repairing, or recounting the storm incident. Instead he immediately gets out of the boat and faces down a man with demons, casting them out into a herd of swine who themselves drown in the very same lake his disciples had feared they would die just a few hours earlier.

The lessons we can draw from this are profound and meaningful in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence.

God’s Intentions are Bigger Than Our Storms

God’s plans are bigger than any storm we face. While we fear the unknowns and potential tragedy of loss, God is busy calming the waters ahead of us.

Why? Because there is always another “side of the lake” to reach. God’s intention was for Jesus to encounter the demon-possessed man amidst the people of the Gerasenes, and getting through a storm was part of that plan.

Our personal storms may not be hurricanes. Instead, they may be the unexpected death of loved one. Or we may lose a job and not know how we will pay our bills. Or we may be betrayed by a friend or a spouse.

Our storm may happen when life has seemed to turn against us so much, we don’t know where to turn or what to do. We may even hear the Great Deceiver whispering in our ear, “It’s no use, it will never work. You may as well give up.”

Yet to those who trust in God, the waves and the rain, the despair and the pain – they have no power. His intention is greater than our desperation.

God Interprets Storms Differently

In Luke’s account, Jesus is sleeping through what his disciples believed was a deadly event. Clearly, Jesus was not concerned – he was sleeping soundly as the boat rolled.

How do we typically react in bad times? Do we sleep soundly? I know I don’t! I have sleepless nights, anxious that God needs my help in sorting out my world. I want to take action, jumping into the middle of things.

The disciples saw their storm as a horrifying event that needed to be stopped. In truth, there was absolutely nothing they could do to change the situation. They were powerless, and this feeling of powerlessness impacted their faith.

Credit: The American Conservative

God, however, was not powerless, and did not consider this storm a calamitous event – He saw it as a way to strengthen the disciples’ faith in His sovereignty.

This has ever been so. The prophet Isaiah wrote in Isaiah 55:8-9 “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways, says the Lord. For as heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.”

Even in the darkest of times, when trouble and hardship crash down on us, God asks us to trust in His Word, claiming His promise for us. We see a storm, God sees an opportunity to bring us closer to Him.

God’s Instruction Surpasses Our Assumptions

We often place enormous faith in our ingenuity and creations. We build houses to withstand the strength of hurricanes – until they don’t. We invent earthquake-resistant buildings which collapse when the Richter Scale is a tick too high. We trust in ourselves when God is patiently waiting for us to place our trust in Him.

“Where is your faith?” Jesus asked his disciples as the storm raged. I imagine it was in many things: the construction of the boat, their own seamanship and experience, perhaps in the strength of the sails to weather the winds.

One place their faith clearly wasn’t – with Jesus and God. In the midst of the storms in our lives, where is our faith? In people? In money? In short term pleasures? None of these can truly save us, and often they can’t show us how to get through the hardships facing us.

Yet God reminds us that He has the power to get us through, to bring us to the other side of the storm. His guiding hand is there, calming the winds and if we listen we can hear His instruction to trust and place our faith in Him.

The aftermath of Hurricane Florence is still unfolding. There will likely be additional fatalities and extreme hardship. God remains here, in our midst, reassuring us His plans are greater than ours, His wisdom infinitely more complete than our imagination.

By placing our faith and trust in Him, we can see the through the darkness and know the truth in Paul’s words from Romans 8:28 when he wrote “God works all things together for the good of those who love Him.”

Peace.
Colossians 1:17

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Fear: The Great Liar

“The Lord is for me; I will not fear; What can man do to me?” – Psalm 118:6

We seem to live in a world of fear. Fear of tomorrow, fear of the unknown, fear of each other, fear of what might change us. We fear things in the dark, we fear strangers and people with different skin color or sexual orientation or religious beliefs. We fear our own mortality.

It’s all a lie.

Fear surrounds us

I recently spent time in Luke’s Gospel and was reminded of this passage: “There will be signs in sun and moon and stars, and on the earth dismay among nations, in perplexity at the roaring of the sea and the waves, men fainting from fear and the expectation of the things which are coming upon the world; for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.” Luke 21:25-26

While the focus of this post is not end-times prophecy, doesn’t it often feel like we live in a period very similar to what Jesus described? Fear surrounds us, gripping our hearts and paralyzing our emotions.From personal relationships to political backstabbing, the world lives in fear of virtually everything.

Many of us seem consumed by a sense of dread.

Why should fear be so deeply ingrained in us? If as professing Christians we believe in salvation why are we afraid of harm or death? Why can we not find the calm of David in Psalm 23, walking “in the valley of the shadow of death” yet fearing no evil?

As children, we’re taught to fear the first time we hear the word “NO!” When we mature, fear plants deep roots and grows, for many becoming a dark shadow controlling their lives. The writer of Hebrews tells us Jesus became flesh and endured death on the cross that he “might free those who through fear … were subject to slavery all their lives.” Hebrews 2:15

Physical fear, the fear of pain or death, is natural. When it doesn’t control us, fear can protect us from harm and danger, helping us make prudent decisions and avoid miscalculated risks. Yet when uncontrolled, fear can replace our trust in God, substituting belief in a personality ability to deliver ourselves from adversity through actions. We often begin to believe in our own invulnerability.

2,600 years ago, a young prophet named Daniel was thrown into in a lions’ den by Darius the Mede (known in scripture as “Darius the King”)  for disobeying an edict not to pray to YAHWEY.  Undeterred, Daniel defied the edict and continued to pray, showing no fear.

“Daniel in the Lions’ Den,” Sir Peter Paul Rubens, c. 1614/1616

I don’t know where some look to find fearlessness, but I’m positive where Daniel found his. Trusting in God, Daniel faced down wild animals that would have devoured him, knowing the outcome would be God’s will.

Be anxious for nothing

Paul writes in his letter to the Philippians “Be anxious for nothing” (Philippians 4:6). David tells us in Psalm 55:22 “Cast your burden upon the Lord and He will sustain you; He will never allow the righteous to be shaken.”

God provides deliverance from fear. He tells us not to let worry and anxiety grip us. In Jesus’ own words, “who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life?” (Matthew 6:27).

Does this mean we will never suffer tragedy or hardship? No. Does it mean we won’t be a victim in a tragedy or some unforeseen catastrophic illness? No. But it does mean that as Believers our salvation is secure and God will guide us on the path He has set for us. Equally important, we know the destination awaiting us.

This was the fearlessness driving the Apostles, virtually all of whom were persecuted and executed for their beliefs. The same fearlessness comforted Stephen as he was stoned to death for speaking the truth of Jesus. It fueled William Tyndale, a key reformer who was strangled and burned at the stake in 1536.

Fearlessness empowered Dietrich Bonhoeffer to stand against Hitler’s treatment of Jews, resulting in his 1945 hanging. It burned in the hearts of seven Egyptian Christians murdered in January 2010 as they left their church in Nag Hammadi, Egypt.

Each of these and thousands of other similar instances around the world speak to the power of defeating fear. And they share another common bond: enduring love. In his first epistle, John writes “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear,” 1 John 4:18.

Love drives out fear

Ultimately, fear is self-focused. When we’re afraid, we’re almost always focused on something about ourselves – what we might lose, what might be taken away from us, pain or hardship we might endure. Fear drives us to distrust those we love, look skeptically at our neighbors and colleagues, hate those around us who have more than we do.

On the other hand, love is always about someone else, and perfect love is solely about God. When we allow the perfect love of God to penetrate our hearts, there’s simply no room for self-centeredness or conceit. And where there is no self-focus, there is no fear.

There will always be loss and pain and even death for as long as we draw breath. But the promise of the Gospel is that God’s salvation through the sacrifice of Christ strengthens our spirits and souls and bodies, giving us triumph over our weaknesses and victory in the face of adversity.

Faith in God’s love emboldens Believers. As Paul wrote to Timothy concerning the nature of suffering and faith: “God has not given us a spirit of timidity, but of power and love and discipline.” (2 Timothy 1:7)

Perfect love derives from the acceptance of Christ as our soul source of comfort and salvation. God’s perfect love for us, believed by us, replaces fear with love. And where loves lives, the lies of hate and fear can never take hold.

Peace.
Colossians 1:17

 

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Door Checking

“I do not condemn you, either. Go. From now on sin no more.” John 8:11

I read a disturbing blog post a couple of days ago from a popular and (among certain circles) well-known blogger, a self-professed “20-year Ministry veteran trying to… live out the red letters of Jesus.”

The post begins with a boastful “I’m going to hell.” After a lot of judgmental-sounding opinion condemning fellow Christians, he concludes with “Hell seems like a much more beautiful place.”

Consider that: “I’m going to hell, and that seems like a much more beautiful place than Heaven.” This from a man many consider a “pastor.”

I was unprepared for this.

And then I recalled Genesis 3:1 “Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, ‘Indeed, has God said, You shall not eat from any tree of the garden?’” Three verses later the serpent says “you will not certainly die.”

“Fall and Expulsion from the Garden of Eden,” Michelangelo, 1510

Thus began the massive lie. The same lie being retold by popular bloggers claiming Christian credentials based on 20 years of ministry veteran-ship.

Which reminds me of a music video released 33 years left. In March of 1985 an all-star group if musicians got together to record a song called “We Are The World.” The song became an instant classic. The relevance for this post was the sign producer Quincy Jones famously posted on the studio door : “Check your Egos at the door.”

How does an intentionally-provocative blog post from an equally intentionally-provocative societal commentator using “Ministry” as a credentials shield relate to a 33 year-old song about unity?

Without diving into the commonalities of “everyone is ok, no matter what they choose to do” found in both philosophies, I want to focus instead on the idea of “living out the red letters of Jesus” vs. “Check Your Egos at the door.

Follow me here. The “red letters” of Jesus were all about ego. They were all about personal desire and gratification. They were all about pushing down what we believe in order to embrace what God tells us is true. Even when it hurts.

And they were all about “checking” something at the entryway to the Kingdom.

Regardless of whether we call that ego, or desire, or “enlightened Progressive opinion,” Jesus was clear: what we must check at the door of the Kingdom is our sin. We may enter the Kingdom broken by sin, but we cannot bring the love and practice of that sin with us.

Credit: Rolling Stone

What does this mean?

It means that as true Christians reborn in Faith through the blood and sacrifice of God reconciling Himself to us at Calvary, those red letters of Jesus actually mean something. They mean what Jesus intended, not what our modern relativistic interpretations wish them to be.

And the most important red letters are those punctuating two encounters where Jesus heals or forgives: “Go, and sin no more.”

These words were most famously spoken to the adulterous woman following the encounter described in John 8:11: “I do not condemn you, either. Go. From now on sin no more.”

Notice the lesson here for Christians: we are not to condemn others for their sins, even as we forgive them.  Yet they are also to give up those sins.

Check your sins at the door.

Contrast this with the Ministry Veteran Blogger’s implied conclusion: “If Heaven means I can’t be whatever I define myself to be, do whatever I feel is right for me, I’ll take Hell.”

I’m not checking anything at the door, and if you ask me to you’re just a close-minded (insert favorite insult here).

Credit: www.johnmartinborg.com/spiritual-art

God’s forgiveness is freely-given, but it is not without cost.

Forgiveness requires a changed heart and a changed life. Ask any betrayed spouse who stays in a marriage what this means.

Forgiveness does not free us to repeat our past mistakes. It frees us from the condemnation of those mistakes.

Forgiveness only comes when we ask for it. Returning to past sins, or falling into new ones, requires returning to our knees and asking God once more to wash away our transgressions.

Forgiveness requires obedience and subservience to God’s Word. The writer of Hebrews 2:1 states: “Therefore we must give the more earnest heed to the things we have heard, lest we drift away.” Believing we can rewrite God’s law to suit our lifestyles in the name of “inclusiveness” is a direct act of disobedience.

In today’s increasingly secularized world, Christians are too-often confused about the role God’s law and living a life of Christian love as defined by Jesus. We’re told the Jesus of modern worship invited everyone to the table, with no expectations or requirements. That God loves and forgives us in our sin rather than in spite of it. We seem to buy the massive lie that God does not mean what He has written on our hearts.

I don’t know what is truly in the heart of the blogger I mentioned at the beginning of this post. I do know this: his love for his own ego and self-defined version of Christian life is infinitely too big to check at any door, even the door of the Kingdom.

Peace.
Colossians 1:17

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Who, Me?

“[God] said, Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering upon one of the mountains I will tell you about.” Genesis 22:2

We hate chores. They remind us of unpleasant things we have to do, like eating all the overcooked spinach on our plates when we were kids. Or finally tackling that little garage project we’ve been promising our spouses we’d get to for two summers. Or (my favorite) scheduling that colonoscopy the doctor’s been nagging about.

Chores. They “pretty much suck,” as one of my daughters used to say.

Yet chores also serve a meaningful purpose. Chores remind us that things don’t “get done” without somebody actually “doing them.” Chores also remind us that what has to “get done” is sometimes not our choice, but someone else’s.

When God Calls

God continually asks us to “do something.” Sometimes, it may be an easy thing, like “Hey, why don’t you check out the big building down the street with my logo out front? I hear there are some pretty cool people there!”  [/irreverent mode]

Other times, not so much. Like the passage above from Genesis. Anyone who ever attended Sunday School knows the story of Abraham and his son Isaac. Abraham, in a moment of supreme testing, is instructed by God to do something unthinkable: sacrifice his own son. And not just any son – this was Isaac, the son Abraham and his wife Sarah had prayed for God to provide them for decades. Now, God is telling Abraham to kill his own son.

Some people struggle with this story. “How could a God so insistent on love,” they ask, “demand something so cold-blooded and harsh?”

Others, particularly scholars practicing allegorical interpretation, reduce every story in the Bible to mere fable. For these folks, Abraham’s challenge was nothing more than a story designed to teach the original audience of Genesis something very important about God. Human sacrifice was common and prevalent in Abraham’s day. This story, in their eyes, was created to show that the God of Israel was unlike other Gods. The God of Israel had no interest in the sacrifice of humans.

Hard Choices

Regardless of one’s theological view, no fancy semantic doubletalk can make God look like the “Good Guy.” In this passage it’s quite clear God asks Abraham to murder his innocent son, an obedient you man who had grown strong in his father’s faith. Isaac probably never asked Abraham “who, me?”

God could have asked Abraham to go into the desert and find his other son, Ishmael, the boy he fathered with Hagar the maidservant of his wife Sarah and whom he had sent away when Isaac was very young. Instead, God singled out the beloved son, the son in whom Abraham had placed his hopes.

The people of Abraham’s time would clearly understand the moral dilemma, perhaps in ways impossible for the modern mind grasp. In those days, the death of an only son would be unimaginably treacherous for the family.

“Sacrifice of Isaac,” Caravaggio, 1603

Abraham was old (scripture tells us he was 100 when Isaac was born) and the likelihood of his fathering a son remote. With Isaac’s death, there would be no heir to Abraham’s estate. With no heir, God’s promise to bring a great nation out of Abraham in the land to which God had led him would be jeopardized.

This was serious on many levels.

Why would God lead Abraham out of Haran and into an alien land, have him endure trials at the hand of Pharaoh, survive the devastation of Sodom and Gomorrah, and finally grant him a son he must then sacrifice? And in the sacrifice, forego his own legacy and future?

On the surface the request seems incomprehensible. Abraham, however, was ready and willing to answer God’s call, regardless of the task. He did not ask “why,” he asked “how?” “How can I please you, God? How can I follow your bidding? What shall I do?”

At the last minute, of course, God stays Abraham’s hand, convinced of Abraham’s complete, unquestioning faith in God’s wisdom and sovereignty. It was this very readiness to give up everything precious to him and obey the will of God that ultimately spared Isaac’s life.

Sacrifices of the Heart

God had no interest in the sacrifice of Isaac (maybe the scholars have that part right). God has no interest in anything material we offer Him. Instead, God was interested in Abraham’s heart. What God really wanted Abraham to sacrifice was his personal will. God wanted Abraham to fully trust in His divine presence and providence. It’s the same request He makes of us.

There’s another story in scripture, found in the New Testament, where a similar request is made by Jesus of a rich young ruler. This time, the request is to abandon everything the young man holds dear – his money, his possessions, his “things” – sell it all, give the money he receives to the poor and follow Jesus. Where Abraham passed his test, the rich young ruler sadly failed his.

Every day God asks each of us to do something just as hard as what he asked of Abraham or the rich young ruler.

Every day He asks us to give money to others when we often don’t think we even have enough for ourselves.

Credit: “Self Sacrifice” by josephacheng on DeviantArt

Every day He challenges us to change our attitudes, to see beyond our prejudices.

Every day He taps someone on the shoulder – maybe you, maybe me, to go minister to a bunch of strangers.

Every day He asks us to lay down our lives for a friend in need.

Every day he nudges us to let go of the fears we cling to and embrace a future brighter than anything we can imagine.

God calls us out of our comfort zones to follow His will. A friend once told me that every time I get comfortable, I’ve probably quit doing what God wants me to do. I didn’t understand what he meant at the time, but I’m beginning to understand now.

Abraham reminds us that God sometimes asks hard things … things that may even seem impossible. More importantly, God asks us to simply trust that we’ll get through those hard things because through Him all things are possible. It’s like this paraphrase of something I read the other day – “loving and trusting God is like floating … so amazingly simple, but if you fight it, nearly impossible.”

What is God Asking You?

Tomorrow morning, as you busy yourself preparing for the day, pause a moment and think about this question: “What has God asked me to do that’s hard?”

The answer is different for each us. For some, it may be to focus on a pressing family matter we keep ignoring. For others, it may be to lay down a troubling struggle with addiction. Still others may find they are too concerned with the world and not enough on God.

Or perhaps it will be something even harder. I have no idea. I do know when God asks us to do hard things we must decide if we’re willing to sacrifice the “everything” we cling to, like Abraham, just to follow God.

Viewed this way, God’s will no longer seems so much like a chore. It’s a pathway to Salvation.

Peace.
Colossians 1:17

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Love, It’s That Simple

“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” John 13:34-35

Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.

A moment ago, the world was ordered. Plans were in place. Victory was at hand. Three years of constant travel to endless towns, encountering people at every turn craving the promise of hope they had waited generations to hear was about to pay off. Adoring crowds had hailed their entrance into the city with an extravagant parade.

The Kingdom … had finally … arrived.

Earlier, the group of brothers had assembled in an upper room away from throngs crowding the city streets below, watching with odd curiosity as their leader stripped off his outer garments, grabbed a nearby basin of water and a towel, and proceeded moving from man to man, gently washing their feet in an astonishing display of humility and service. “Women and slaves do this,” they whispered to one another, “not the Messiah!”

“The Last Supper,” Leonardo da Vinci, 1498

During the ceremonial meal, celebrated each Passover in remembrance of God’s Deliverance of His people from bondage, the man for whom these men had left behind everything and followed shocked them into momentary silence.

“Betrayal?” “Leaving us?” “What about the Kingdom?”

This simply couldn’t be. It was just … wrong.

An Act of Love

Every Christian knows this story from the Last Supper. My high school friend and extraordinary Christian artist, songwriter, and teacher Michael Card penned an amazing song memorializing the moment (“The Basin and the Towel”). The Supreme Savior of the World assumes the lowliest of positions to demonstrate the power of a servant’s heart to his disciples.

Today is known around the Christian world as “Maundy Thursday.” The term comes from the Latin word mandatum in John 13:34 meaning “command.” Jesus instructed his disciples in a new commandment following this episode to “Love one another.” Foot washing, while an ancient custom of hospitality in the Middle East, was redefined by Jesus as an amazing act of service and love.

But it was not the ultimate act of service. That would come later in the evening, foretold during the Passover meal by Jesus. He revealed to his disciples how he would demonstrate an infinitely more meaningful act of love and sacrifice in willingly walking into the hands of the Jewish and Roman authorities to suffer their sham trial, conviction, and execution in atonement for sins of the world.

The last meal Jesus shared with his disciples is described in all four canonical Gospels (Matthew 26:17-30, Mark 14:12-26, Luke 22:7-39 and John 13:1-17:26). In addition to the foot washing episode uniquely depicted in John, the key events in the meal included preparing the apostles for Jesus’ imminent departure, predictions about Judas betraying Jesus, and the foretelling of the upcoming denial of Jesus by Peter. As the evening unfolds, the scales eventually drop from the eyes of the apostles as Jesus calmly, lovingly explains the meaning of all they had seen and heard the prior three years.

He Didn’t Run

He wasn’t running. He wasn’t fighting back. He wasn’t raising an army to storm the Roman garrison housed at the Fortress of Antonia overlooking the Temple. He wasn’t ushering in a sweeping movement of retaliation, or vengeance, or eye-for-eye justice.

Instead, Jesus offered his incredulous apostles an entirely different message. Away from the thousands that followed him wherever he went, Jesus looked into the eyes of his twelve closest friends and brothers and taught them a new meaning of Messiahship: love.

Jesus was blameless. His ministry was built on non-violence, healing, raising the dead, and freeing those held hostage to sin. He brought hope to the hopeless and life to those dying in darkness.

But on this evening, he told his followers the shattering truth: no one would thank him. No one would celebrate his acts of mercy and kindness. In less than 300 minutes, he would be arrested. Within 21 hours he would be dead.

Wrong. Just, wrong!

The smoldering ember Jesus planted in the hearts of his apostles that night in a tiny room a few feet above the streets of Jerusalem was resisted by every man sharing the meal with him. Yet within a few weeks it would erupt in a blazing wildfire that would spread the to the length and breadth of the known world.

The Ultimate Weapon

Because ultimately, Jesus demonstrated how goodness, kindness, and compassion could overpower the oppression and authority of the world more than any weapon or army. He revealed the most overwhelming and radical insurgency movement the world had ever known: a kingdom built on love, not vengeance.

In today’s world filled with sensationalized violence, hatred raised to an art form by endless media and wall-to-wall news coverage, celebrity-inspired self-aggrandizement pouring out of Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, this simple story of love wouldn’t “go viral.” It wouldn’t last an entire news cycle, shouted down by voices more interested in self-promotion and personal agendas than lasting, profound changes of the human heart.

Muslim protestors, credit Walid Shoebat

But ultimately, Jesus’ story of love transcends all of those things. Because this simple story of love is not about one man but is about all of us. It’s the story of what happens when a world gone mad does everything it can to extinguish hope through violence, and hatred, and fear, and yet is overcome by the triumph of sacrificial love. In the words of Reverend Dr. Emily C. Heath, “It’s a story of love that was rejected and buried, and yet was still too strong to stay in the ground.”

What If?

What if the world knew us as Christians not by the Bible we carry, the cross hanging from our neck or the church we attend? What if Christianity was not defined by size of our amphitheaters or the production value of our music-filled services? What if our faith wasn’t identified by what we say we believe about Jesus, or how self-righteously we portray ourselves in blog posts?

What if, instead, we were known as Christians by our love?  What if we could show the world what Jesus showed his disciples that night, a world where we are united in spirit, walking beside each other, working together to build Kingdom-filled communities founded in love rather than dividing lines?

Tonight, as you reflect on what a simple act of feet washing memorializes, as we pause to join in the solemnity of a Passover dinner shared by a condemned Savior and his weary followers 2,000 years ago, take a moment to remember. Take a moment to remember not just what this night or even the coming weekend of Easter means, but what it means to be a Christian in the world of the Fourth Day, the day after the Resurrection, the day when light emerged from darkness.

Remember what it means to be a truly Christ-centered Believer. Remember Christ’s commandment from John 13 – to love each other as he loved us.

Love, it’s really that simple.

Peace.
Colossians 1:17

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Untamed

“They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.” (Luke 12:53)

“Trust me – you’ll know when I’m mad!”

Ever hear anyone say that? We sometimes completely misread another person, assuming because they seem soft-spoken they’re easily manipulated or weak. Kind of like Captain McCluskey and Sollozzo thought Michael Corleone was just some “young punk.” We know how that turned out…

“It’s not personal, it’s strictly business…”

Every Lenten season, I’m bewildered by modern revisionist Christians (including pastors and pseudo-pastors like former minister turned political commentator John Pavlovitz) attempting to recast the Jesus and God of scripture into something more easily digested by today’s “delicate” or “enlightened” spiritual palettes with “woke” politically correct awareness.

As though an authentic Jesus, the acknowledged son of the Living God, Lion of Judah, Alpha and Omega, the very Word that spoke creation into being has mellowed with time, reconsidering the commandments he embodied.

A Different Jesus

Unlike the milk toast, lukewarm, tolerant-of-any-and-all-behaviors-as-long-as-you-mean-well Jesus popularized by scriptural-lite churches seeking ever-larger audiences and appeasing and increasingly secularized world, the real Jesus was convicted, fully “sold out” for the essential message of God to love Him and turn from all forms of sin.

Even in his quiet moments, Jesus was clear. Every encounter he had with a fallen soul ended with some form of instruction to repent. When challenged, he never retreated to meek and shy platitudes but rather reiterated the central role God and God’s Law must play in our lives. He lived out the words of Joshua when as a dying patriarch he told all of Israel “As for me and my house, I will follow the Lord.” (Joshua 24:15)

If read with a discerning eye, Jesus’ words often plainly cut through the lackadaisical or deceitful attitudes of his listeners. Sometimes, bordering on the fiery and harsh.

Gentle Jesus, meek and mild. Cecco del Caravaggio’s “Christ expulses the money changers out of the temple,” 1610

In Luke 12:49-53, Jesus is recorded having a lengthy discussion with both his disciples and a “crowd of many thousands.” Near the end of this episode he offers these words: “I have come to bring fire on earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division.” Earlier, he described the faithless and unwise manager being “cut to pieces” by his master, and those not doing their master’s will being “beaten with many blows.”

Not exactly the weak-kneed pacifist popular with the Richard Rohr crowd. In fact, neither Jesus nor God are ever described in Scripture as being “meek and mild,” tamed like house pets for our amusement.

Fear of God is a Real Thing

Instead, from Genesis to Revelation what you find is a God who is to be loved, but also respected in fear, worship, and yes, sometimes dread:

  • Leviticus 19:14 – “You shall fear your God, I am the Lord.”
  • Psalm 19:9 – “The fear of the Lord is pure”
  • Psalm 111:10 – “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”
  • Proverbs 1:7 – “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.”
  • Proverbs 14:27 – “The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life, turning a man from the snares of death.”
  • 1 Peter 2:17 – “Show proper respect to everyone: Love the brotherhood of believers, fear God, honor the king.
  • Romans 3:18 – In Paul’s indictment of fallen mankind separated from God by sin he says, “there is no fear of God before their eyes.”

And what of the reactions Jesus’ own disciples had to his amazing works? In Mark 4 after Jesus spent the day teaching crowds beside a lake, he and his disciples cross the lake to find a bit of calm and piece. As they crossed, a terrible storm arose, threatening to capsize their boats and drown the men.

Roused from a sound sleep in the front of the boat, Jesus rebukes and calms the storm, scolding his disciples for having so little faith. Terrified, they asked each other, “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!”

Hardly timid.

Biblical Truth

Somewhere along the way, we lost sight of Biblical truth. Encouraged by trendy terms such as “tolerance” and “inclusion” – which in and of themselves are worthy ideals and in the proper context wholly scriptural – we’ve somehow transformed God into a deity that looks very much like us, a kind and grandfatherly soul who tolerates our every transgression and gives us all the things we ask for.

This new God accepts our modern secularized morality, agreeing with our redacted and reinterpreted scripture to fit the whims and desires of the moment. This God has no standard we must meet, as long as we consider ourselves “good people.” This God is a God taken for granted.

Pastor Steven “God Broke the Law for Sin” Furtick and Pastor Rick “Works First, Faith Second” Warren

The true God – the God of Abraham, Moses, David, Jesus, Paul, you and me – that God is not to be taken lightly. That God allows us the follies of our own will but holds us accountable. That God “has authority to throw you into hell,” as Jesus warned in Luke 12:5.

Yet underlying this awesome and omniscient power over our lives is a God of love, a God filled with kindness, a God faithful in all He promises for those who fear and love Him. He desires our hearts but will ultimately destroy those who harden their hearts and minds to His will.

God Won’t be Tamed

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Simply put, there’s no way to “tame” or “tone down” God. We can’t redefine Him to fit our modern tastes any more than we can change the law of gravity to soften our fall if we accidentally step off a 20 story building. We can’t negotiate with His eternal and perfect nature. And we can’t avoid the consequences when we try to do these things.

Yet God is also gracious, loving, overflowing with kindness and mercy, willing to forgive us and welcome us home when we remember that in the end everything is about Him, and never about us.

Peace.
Colossians 1:17

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The Freeing Power of Forgiveness

“He who is forgiven little, loves little.” – Luke 7:47

Forgiveness seems in short supply today. Ironically, our need to be forgiven has grown to epic proportions. Scandals unfold every day, the foibles and flaws and shortcomings of those around us unmasked and revealed for public ridicule and scorn.

Ridicule and scorn are standard tools of the trade in modern secular society. We mock those who stumble, deride those who make mistakes. And this isn’t limited to the public arena – it creeps into our private lives and relationships as well. We are “wronged” and we cling to our indignation like a life preserver.

Do any of these sound familiar?

  • Why should I forgive him? He hasn’t even really apologized. 
     
  • I can’t forgive her because she hurt me too much.
     
  • What he did was so vile no one can ever forgive him.
     
  • That monster doesn’t deserve forgiveness.
     
  • I don’t care why she did it, it was wrong and I can’t forgive her.

Even #metoo, #timesup and endless other hashtag slogans.

Anger is Understandable

Sometimes, holding onto anger and bitterness is comforting, perhaps even understandable: the rapist of one’s child, the murderer of a loved one, a twisted young man who picks up a weapon and slaughters innocents for no fathomable reason, a trust financial advisor who fraudulently steals billions from unknowing investors, a betraying spouse.

These and countless other examples sear into our souls like white hot coals, ripping at our hearts and forever changing us. Yes, we feel justified in holding someone accountable, someone to blame.

Yet blaming others and holding them hostage to our contempt is like enslaving ourselves in emotional bondage. We poison our lives with anger or hatred. The bile of unforgiveness seeps through us, coloring our thoughts, strangling out our capacity to love.

A Different Approach

There was an encounter in the New Testament, told only the book of Luke. It’s a curious story found in Luke 7 and tells of an encounter between Jesus and a Pharisee named Simon.

The chapter begins with the encounter of Jesus and a Centurion in Capernaum, where Jesus saves the Centurion’s servant. This in and of itself would be startling to Jesus’ contemporaries – it would be hard for Jewish authorities in Jerusalem to forgive Jesus for giving aid and comfort to their Roman overlords.

This is followed by the story of Jesus raising a widow’s son from the dead in the town of Nain, an encounter that spread his name across Judea. Jesus’ spreading fame eventually reached John the Baptist, who sends his disciples back to Jesus asking if he is, in fact, the expected Messiah.

Jesus replies with a masterful answer to the crowds and Pharisees around him, cutting to the very heart of understanding and forgiveness: “For John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine, and you say, ‘He has a demon.’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’” (Luke 7:33-34)

The next encounter happens in the house of one of the Pharisees in the crowd, a man named Simon. He invites Jesus to dinner, presumably to show his influential friends this novel Nazarene prophet creating so much excitement across the country. Notably, Simon does not extend Jesus the customary courtesy of offering of foot washing, a clear sign that he neither respected nor honored Jesus.

While at dinner, an unnamed woman, a “sinner” like those mentioned in his response to the question asked by John’s disciples, approaches Jesus cradling a small jar of expensive perfume. As dinner guests gasp and mutter about who she was, the woman begins sobbing at Jesus’ feet, bathing them in her tears, drying them with her hair and pouring her perfume over them.

Christ at Simon the Pharisee, Peter Paul Rubens, 1620

Shocked, Simon thinks to himself how clueless Jesus must be not to know “what kind of woman” she was. Jesus’ reply was stunning and point on. He tells the story of two debtors, one great, one small, who each had their debts forgiven. Simon, being challenged on who was the more grateful, said the one whose debt was larger.

After telling Simon that this woman – whose sins were great – had shown him hospitality and attention far beyond Simon’s, Jesus then concluded with this comment: “whoever has been forgiven little loves little.”

**BOOM**

This one statement lays out all we need to know about forgiveness. We will love God (and each other) to the same degree we recognize our own failings and God’s undeserved forgiveness of us – and our forgiveness of others, even when we believe they do not deserve it.

As a Pharisee, Simon had likely been deeply schooled in the Law, memorizing extensive portions of Scripture, practicing rigorous self-discipline, diligently tithing, publicly displaying his “service” to God, and generally having a reputation as a godly man. And yet his actions did not reflect love for God.

The woman, however, who had nothing to offer except shameful sin, was described as a model for true worship. Why? Simply because she knew how desperately she needed God’s forgiveness Jesus offered in his gospel, and she believed that he would grant it.

That is what God asks of us. That is the grace-filled faith that saves.

Slave trader-turned-pastor, John Newton said it this way “I am a great sinner, and Christ is a great Saviour.” We can learn from this.

When we fail to forgive, we fail to love. When we fail to love, we fail to serve God.

Society’s current open season on anyone who makes a mistake is completely antithetical to God’s instruction to His people and leads us directly into Jesus’ warning from his Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 7:2 “For in the way you judge, you will be judged; and by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you.”

The next time someone offends you, pause and take a breath. You could be on the receiving end yourself someday, or even today. And the freedom offered in letting go of blame is as powerful as truth itself.

Peace.
Colossians 1:17

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Safe Places and Other Modern Myths

“You will not be afraid of the terror by night, or of the arrow that flies by day; of the pestilence that stalks in darkness, or of the destruction that lays waste at noon.” Psalm 91:5-6

The news hit midmorning on, of all days, the start of Advent and Valentine’s Day: “Active shooter in Florida school.” Every day since, cable news and social media have been wall to wall with saturation coverage, shrill screams of “enough is enough,” student walkouts, and lockstep cries for yet more manmade faux solutions to manmade real problems.

Yet every proposed “fix” seems, in the grand scheme of things, hollow and sadly lacking any real core curative ingredient. Appeals for “safe places” in a world of unsafe reality.

How did we get here? Why do our daily lives seem and feel so much less secure than 10, 20, or 30 years ago? Are there really any safe places anymore?

In times of hardship or tragedy there is a natural desire to seek instant answers, immediate solutions ensuring we can step safely outside our door. We build houses with safe rooms. We pass laws to eliminate every perceivable type of danger. We legislate, regulate, and adjudicate every conceivable facet of life to make ourselves “safer.”

No Safe Places

The truth is no place on earth is safe enough to protect us from the inescapable certainties of life. No amount of money can shield us from the ravages of aging, disease, and death. No one we know, no where we go can ultimately protect us this truth: human life has a 100% mortality rate.

To be sure, we try.

We seek safety in more government oversight from our elected officials. Perhaps we seek safety in our churches and pastors. We seek safety online and on social media, with like-minded people saying like-minded things. Some even seek safety in barricading themselves behind walls and storing entire arsenals for protection.

Is there really safety in numbers?

In each of these, a common thread emerges: we seek safety in ourselves, in human devices. And almost always, we are disappointed and even heartbroken.

Jeremiah spoke of the dangers we face in placing our trust in each other (or even, as seems to be wildly en vogue the last few days, our children) rather than in God:

“Cursed is the man who trusts in mankind and makes flesh his strength, and whose heart turns away from the Lord. For he will be like a bush in the desert and … live in stony wastes in the wilderness, a land of salt without inhabitant.” (Jeremiah 17:5-6)

There is no safe place in surrender to fear. There is no safe place in blaming politicians or organizations for doing exactly what their constituents allow them to do, abdicating the responsibility of citizenship for creature comforts and diversions. There is no safe place in trusting our own so-called wisdom.

Yes, Evil is Real

Here is truth: evil is real. Since the first lie planted in the hearts of man turned us away from God’s perfection in the garden, we – mankind – have chosen to do evil things. It’s hardwired into our collective psyche.

Paul writes in Romans 5:12 “just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned— for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given.” Insert “evil” for “sin” and the picture gets clearer.

Credit: NBC News

Which brings us back to the events in Florida last week. A nineteen-year old broken soul, barely an adult, chose to live out the evil infesting his heart. He meticulously planned the slaughter, executing his deed with cold precision. He succeeded in shattering the illusions of safe places for those who simply expected another school day. 

No Easy Answers

Should we ask how? Dare we ask why? Of course.

Yet before we look for easy answers from the hearts of broken men and women grasping at something, anything, to prove they are not impotent in the face of evil, perhaps we should look at other things.

No doubt we can question the relatively frictionless accessibility to firearms guaranteed by our Constitution, and whether the time has come to reconsider its intended wisdom.

Or we can study the impact of a disconnected culture addicted to devices in the palms of its hands or at the other end of violent video game consoles.

Perhaps we should look at homes with single parents or no parents at all where boundaries and expectations and love for our children are absent.

Maybe we should explore the impact of ubiquitous psychotropic drugs and untreated mental illness all in the name of nonjudgmental tolerance.

Or even dig into the rise of bullying and the coarseness of society where social media allows anyone to say anything at any time with no consequence.

We should look at all these things and more.  And once we’ve analyzed and scrutinized and examined how man has turned creation into what we read in the headlines every day, we should remember that the influence all these things is not the same as the root cause for human suffering.

Wishes Don’t Work

Evil cannot be wished away, it cannot be legislated into extinction. Like water, it will seep through the cracks of even the most civilized and orderly society. Believing in manmade safe places is, simply, an illusion, a myth perpetrated by an enemy wishing delighted as we shake our fists at the sky saying “Enough! We are in control!”

Simply put, there is only one truly safe place: the will of the living God. As surely evil hides and walks amongst us, this is also goodness in our midst – vastly more than the media or our news feeds will ever tell us.

God has a design for each of us, and while we may not understand, He has a plan for any evil we create or endure. “God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose,” Paul tells us in Romans 8:28.

God’s Purpose Can Never Be Defeated

No one – regardless of how deranged or evil – can succeed in blocking God’s purposes. Yet, when we remove the light of God’s Truth and replace it with the world’s standards, we are left to wander blind on our own paths of disobedience.

And sadly, sometimes that disobedience hurts even the innocents, the bystanders. Such is the consequence for a world in denial searching for safety where none exists.

There are no adequate words of comfort we can ever give to the parent of a child lost so senselessly, just as there is no easy consolation to someone suffering from a terminal disease or a spouse suffering betrayal.

Brothers and sisters, safety is found in the shelter of God’s love. “I the Lord do no not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed,” God speaks through His prophet in Malachi 3:6.

Take comfort in knowing His love never diminishes, His Light is always right there with us.

Peace.
Colossians 1:17

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Of Pride and Prima Donnas

“Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your anxiety upon Him, because he cares for you.” 1 Peter 5:5-7

There was a time when I loved skiing. When we moved to Boulder in 1999, I was a big skier – a BIG skier. My first year there I managed 43 days on the slopes. Of course, the work thing interfered from time to time, but not much. I got really good, and was very impressed with myself and my skills.

I later relocated to Austin and tried keeping up my love for skiing, organizing semi-annual trips the first couple of years, until life finally intruded. Eventually, I just packed away the heavy weather gear, the boots, the helmets, the gloves, the slinky little underwear, you know the drill.

Then I organized a team “business meeting” in Crested Butte. No, really – a real meeting. In fact, the management at the Lodge was impressed with our ability to meet 9 hours a day for two days with the lifts 50 yards outside!

I couldn’t stay the weekend with the rest of my team, so I got there early to squeeze in a half-day of slope time before the meetings started.

Nothin’ But Pride

A funny thing happens when you haven’t skied in a couple of years. Apparently there’s this brain–body disconnect where the brain believes one thing and the body believes another. To my brain, six years away from skiing was really nothing, just a blink of the eye. I remembered – with pride, course – my glory days. My brain told me I was “Powder Dude” and “Steeps Dude” and “Air Dude.” Of course, my body had already moved out of state and was focused on more important things like lounging in front of a TV with a nice adult beverage.

Needless to say, I got reminded who was boss. After half a day of skiing, nothing too strenuous, of course, I tried one last run, just to prove I still had it. You can guess what happened next. A caught edge, a wonderful somersault, and *splat* “Air Dude” becomes “Crash Dude” with a separated shoulder.

“Dude, I kept my skis on!”

To be sure, the nurse and the doctors and the nice ski patrol guy were all very understanding. They didn’t care much about my pride, though. I, on the other hand, was very concerned. I mean, I’m a skier for 18 years! This doesn’t happen to me!

That’s the topic of this message: Pride. What it is, why it lies at the root of nearly all our shortcomings, how it separates us from God, how it separates us from each other.

The word “Pride” is mentioned nearly 80 times in the NIV version of the Bible. Related topics like “proud” and “prideful” and “boastful” increase that count significantly. Scriptural commentary on Pride is rarely positive.

In the passage quoted at the beginning of this message, Peter is writing to the Elders and leaders in the expanding region of the early Church across Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia (collectively known today as the country of Turkey), attempting to encourage new followers who were under severe persecution and wavering in their faith. The younger followers were at odds with their elders, allowing pride to fuel disagreements and arguments about who should lead.


Peter is pointing out a subtle but crucial point. Pride (or its corollary the lack of humility) is at the heart of all sin. It leads us from God instead of running to Him. Arrogance, disobedience, rebellion, mistreatment of others – all are rooted in a lack of humility.

Humility is Hard

Humility isn’t a popular topic in today. It’s not touted on The View or Ellen, it’s rarely mentioned in speeches, it certainly hasn’t found it’s way into the endless blathering from would-be social critics attacking this politician or that celebrity, you don’t find seminars dedicated to finding humility. Take a look at this link on self-help books – not a single topic on humility.

Why is this?

Perhaps because true humility can only exist when God is present. Humility is like a shadow we cast when God’s light shines on us. When we turn from God, the shadow of humility is replaced by a darker, more insidious shadow – the shadow of Pride.

Pride leads us to believe we can define ourselves apart from our “created” nature. Ironically, as we cling tightly to the fantasy of self-importance and self-sufficiency, we begin feeling anxious about anything threatening that illusion. This anxiety fuels the motives leading us into lives of mistakes and shortcomings as we try to avoid the reality that we’re not really in control of our lives.

One area of Christian life where Pride is most dangerous is … faith. Peter saw this among his followers, as the younger men allowed pride to cloud their sense of community.

We’ve all known folks like that – proud Christians who are good people yet who stand on self-made alters of self-righteousness. Their faith is not so much about God as it is about them.

The Self-Exalted Are Humbled

This is wonderfully illustrated in the 18th chapter of Luke. Jesus is teaching when his attention turns to “some who were confident in their righteousness and looked down on everybody else.” In response, Jesus tells the story of a Pharisee and Tax Collector going to the temple to pray. The Pharisee, filled with a sense of his own self-righteousness, thanks God he isn’t like the other men – adulterers, evildoers, even tax collectors. Meanwhile, the tax collector stands in the back of the temple, afraid to raise his eyes to God and begs mercy for his sins. Jesus clinches the story with this line: “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Luke 18:14).

Pharisee and the Publican, James Tissot, 1894

Those who exalt themselves will be humbled by God. That’s a powerful message. And we’re just one broken promise, one misstep away from devastation. Getting to the root of Pride lying buried in each of our hearts is hard. Yet as I’ve reflected on how Pride often controls my relationships with God and those around me, I’ve found three ways to attack my own lack of humility. Let me warn you, these aren’t easy to do consistently, and they must be done together. And while they may seem simplistic, they work. This week, I encourage each of you to consciously try them:

1) Be grateful to anyone and everyone. Treat even the things people are expected to do as great gifts. Be grateful for your meals, grateful for the change you get back at the drive through, the smile at the ticket counter, rain, life itself. Thank everyone.

2) Beg forgiveness of God for the sin of Pride. Go before Him in prayer every day or every few hours and implore His mercy. The more this offends you, the more Pride you have.

3) Ask God for a spirit of Humility and Gratitude. Read Philippians 2:3-11 and imitate it. Understand that without God’s Grace, we’ll never cast away our illusions. Ask God to break your pride and vanity using whatever it takes: illness, loss of friends, loss of family, public humiliation. This is unbelievably difficult to request, and every fiber of our being fights it. We protest it is not fair, or “God doesn’t work that way.”

As Jesus reminded us, what good is gaining the world and losing our soul? In the end, all but true love for God is lost, so count all else but God as loss now.

Peace.
Colossians 1:17

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Twelve Days of Advent – #12 Journeys in Time

“There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven.” (Ecclesiastes 3:1)

It’s here! Christmas Day. Presents, delicious food, family and friends. We look forward to this day all year. For some, the journey is simply from our bedrooms to our living rooms. Others travel many miles to join in the celebration. In fact, AAA recently estimated that this year over 100 million Americans would travel in some form this Christmas.

One of our biggest concerns when we take a trip, especially during the holidays, is whether we’ll get to our destination on time. Crowded airports, busy highways, overbooked hotels … when will we get there? Our travel plans sometimes seem more pressing than our travel destinations.

A Different Journey

There is another journey we should remember today as another Advent ends. A journey made by our Creator spanning the infinite stretches of time and space, from thought to Word to flesh to Salvation. It is the reason we celebrate this day, the day “O Come” became “Emmanuel.”

The Jesus so often stylized in paintings and song seems at odds with the Jesus of history. He was not born to princely riches, surrounded by the comforts of an Eternal throne. His arrival was greeted with a brief night of fanfare and praise but then life took hold.

The Jesus of history was born to humble parents, a day laborer and young girl barely into her teens. They lived not in one of the great commerce centers of Judea amidst the religious elite, but a dusty town nearly 100 miles from Jerusalem. Many in his day would never travel beyond the borders of their own villages. And it’s likely few people worried much about timetables and schedules.

Jesus’ life commenced with a journey, a continuation of the journey his Father began so many eons before. His life would end with a journey, a journey that would take him from death to transcendence. A journey that happened precisely on time.

During his earthly life, Jesus took many journeys: to Egypt as a baby, throughout Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, and Israel. Every trip he made, every place he visited, Scripture records the travels not of an inveterate site-seer looking to check boxes for the ancient wonders of the world he visited, but rather, someone with a single purpose: to encounter us, engage with us, teach and minister to us, bring us the Good News of the coming of his Father’s Kingdom.

A Visitor to All

A lot is written about Jesus’ focus on the downtrodden and the outcast. The forgotten members of society. And indeed, he did speak to the humble and the meek and poor, both in purse and in spirit. Yet, the remarkable thing about Jesus’ journeys was how he did not discriminate between rich and poor, famous or obscure. He visited with anyone.

An encounter with a rich young ruler mentioned Mark 10:17-27 is one example. The passage begins “As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up to him and knelt before him, and ask him ‘Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?”

Notice the passage begins with Jesus embarking on yet another journey! Jesus seeks those who seek him – in this case, a man of wealth and means. Rather than dismissing the young man simply because of his wealth, Jesus engages him. That encounter didn’t end as the rich young ruler hoped, but Jesus still met him where he was.

Mary Annointing Jesus’ Feet, Peter Paul Rubens, 1618

Another encounter from John 12:1-8, describes Jesus allowing Mary to anoint his feet with an expensive and fragrant ointment that would sell for $20,000 today. In this story, Jesus has just come to Bethany in preparation for his final Passover in Jerusalem. Mary obviously has the means to possess such an expensive perfume and so was clearly not destitute. Yet again, Jesus did not criticize or shun her.

Jesus made an inconceivable journey for all of us. He came for the poor and rich, the unknown and the famous. He was no stranger to poverty and hardship, yet he was comfortable with the powerful and wealthy.

Jesus embodied his Father’s desire to reconcile all of mankind, regardless of circumstances. He realized that even those with means face struggles. Temptation doesn’t discriminate. He made his journey to you and me because we all hurt, we’re all broken, we all have fear and doubt.

The Real Point

The point of Christmas is to awaken us to the infinite capacity of God to reach inside our lives and heal us, to offer us the love and forgiveness only a Father can provide. To remind us of the journey He took to reach us.

Scholars estimate Jesus traveled over 21,000 miles during his life – nearly the distance around the earth’s equator. Yet that very last mile he walked, the mile from Pilate’s palace the hilltop on Golgotha, was undoubtedly his hardest. A mile few of us would willingly walk. And he arrived right on time.

Today as we celebrate the blessings of Christmas, let’s not worry too much about our own timetables or schedules. Rather, remember instead the long journey God made to reach us. And remember the journey He asks of us to reach those around us.

Peace.
Colossians 1:17

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Twelve Days of Advent – #11 Not A Silent Night

“And suddenly there appeared with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men.’” (Luke 2:13)

As a worship leader I get to play a lot of music throughout the year. No time is more enjoyable for me than Advent and Christmas. The songs, the vocals, the arrangements, they all bring the season alive for me.

One of my favorite Christmas Season songs for worship is Andrew Peterson’s “Labor of love” (If you’ve never heard it, find a version here). The song is a unique reinterpretation of the traditional “Silent Night.” Rather than a quiet, peaceful version of Jesus’ birth, the lyrics depict a grittier, harsher world welcoming the Son of Man.

When we look at miniature nativity scenes, do we see something like this?

A radiant Mary, loving Joseph, gentle shepherds leaning on their staffs, perhaps a few wise men looking on with knowing smiles, glorious Angels heralding the miracle, a peaceful donkey and a couple of sheep … all focused on a beaming baby Jesus. A perfectly calm picture of tranquility, sanitized and airbrushed for our consumption.

Yet I imagine the real nativity scene was quite different.

A Different Night

To begin with, what must it have been like for Joseph to take a nearly full-term Mary the 80+ hilly and winding miles on foot or riding a donkey from Nazareth to Bethlehem in response to the census decree from Caesar described in Luke 2? The tiny village of Bethlehem, by that time a sleepy town of about 300 people, would have swelled in size because of the census, on that night packed and noisy. The crowds were likely disgruntled at the inconvenience of the Roman census, pushing and shoving each other on the narrow streets.

On the road from Nazareth to Bethlehem today. Credit: www.nortonwheeler.com

Or consider the “shepherds in the fields” in verse 8. Imagine being these men, used to watching over their flocks all night, fighting off predators and poachers. They’re in no way timid or meek. Yet nothing has prepared them for the sight of an other-worldly being appearing from the skies and announcing the news of Jesus’ birth. Scripture tells us they were “terrified.”

Fear can be a powerful motivator. It causes us to be mistrustful and hurtful to each other. It closes our minds to those with whom we disagree. It causes us to lash out at those we see as different. We like our worlds to remain unchanging and predictable.

These shepherds had their worlds completely disrupted. Yet the Angel calms them, tells them not to be afraid and is joined a “multitude of the heavenly hosts” joining in praise.

Hardly a quiet night on the hillside.

Back at the stable and the manger, things are hardly more subdued. Unable to find accommodations Joseph was forced to bargain for a corner in a barn, probably suffering disdainful looks from other, more fortunate people who had warm fires and comfortable beds or pallets.

Mary has given birth – likely without a midwife or the comforting hands of her mother – surrounded by the raucous livestock of both Bethlehem’s residents and the visitors also there to complete the census. The scene is chaotic, noisy, dirty, and crowded.

Hardly the picture of a silent night.

Noisy Lives

Many of us can relate to this more realistic picture of Jesus’ birth. Like that night, our lives are gritty and crowded rather than airbrushed and pristine. Our days and nights are noisy, messy, often filled with angry voices and disdainful looks. We’re bombarded every day with messages of angst, anxiety, uncertainty.

Hope gives way to fear. Fear leads us to dread the future, uncertain of how we’ll get from day to day. We pray for grace and help while a nagging voice whispers deep inside us “what if He doesn’t answer?” Like the people of Israel during that long pause before Christ’s birth, we question how long we must wait for deliverance.

And so, we retreat inside ourselves, guarded and protective of our hearts, unwilling to engage the world in open and welcoming ways. Rejecting the needs of others, we focus on our own needs.

Credit: Billy Hunt

Hardly the makings of perfect lives.

In the midst of the chaos surrounding her, how did Mary respond? Scripture tells us she “treasured all these things, pondering them in her heart.” Mary’s answer to the pandemonium and disorder surrounding her was to praise God for His providence, thankful for the blessing He had bestowed. She prayed and opened this most vulnerable moment of her life to everyone around her, sharing freely the precious gift God and given to mankind.

Forgetful Souls

Sometimes, even during Advent and Christmas, it’s easy for us to suffer from what 9th century Irish theologian John Scotus Eriugena called “forgetfulness of soul.” We forget to love, forget to give, forget to extend our hand to others. We sing carols, go to parties, buy tons of gifts but do not, as Mary did, “treasure things in our hearts.”

Today, this Eve of Arrival, let us remember that beyond the celebrations and decorations, the true meaning of Emmanuel, “God With Us” is as close as the next person we see. We were made in God’s image, created to emulate Him and love each other openly, abundantly, and without fear even in the midst of chaos.

God has never been silent, if we have ears to hear. He has never been invisible, if we have eyes to see. He invites us to encounter Him when we protect the weak, lift up the downtrodden, seek peace in the midst of enmity.

The angel proclaimed to the shepherds: “Do not be afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of great joy which will be for all the people.” As you celebrate this Christmas Eve, this closing of Advent, proclaim the Good News: Arrival is Nigh.

Peace.
Colossians 1:17

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Twelve Days of Advent – #10 Prepare

“If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also.” (John 14:3)

How do you get ready for Christmas? A beautiful tree with ribbons and ornaments? Mantle decorations and table treatments? One too many trips to the mall or site visits to Amazon? In my case, guilty as charged.

We typically begin our Christmas planning right after October and start the set-up Thanksgiving week. Yes, we’re those people. We love Christmas and surrounding ourselves with physical reminders of the season.

We’re not alone. During the Christmas Season, everywhere we look there are signs of preparation: wreaths, store decorations, snowmen, plastic Santas and reindeer on the neighbors’ lawns … everyone has their own way of preparing for Christmas celebrations. Anticipation fills the air.

God Prepares

God also prepares. In fact, since the beginning He’s been preparing. His preparation also includes decorations and ornaments, although of a different sort. At times, His preparations have taken an entire people into captivity and exile. At other times, He leads new leaders onto mountain tops or into deserts. He has prepared by dressing elaborate temples with gold and fine linen, as well as lowly barn stalls with straw and rough hewn wood.

And God’s preparations have required much longer than a few hours over the weekend to set up. Countless people and many centuries were needed to unfold His perfect plan that mankind’s Savior would be born at a specific place and time, to a specific woman He anointed, in a specific town according to His prophetic instruction, to fulfill a specific mission at a perfectly appointed date.

This event was foretold, rehearsed for centuries, and planned by God at the origination of creation. And it is the very reason we celebrate Advent.

As early as Genesis 3:15, following the fall of Man in the aftermath of Eve’s temptation, God revealed the beginnings of His plan warning the serpent “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed.” These earliest foreshadowings of God’s prophesied the eventual conquest of the serpent by God’s chosen offspring. The offspring descended from a fallen woman and eventually born to a Virgin. A perfect preparation for a perfect answer to our frailties and imperfections.

“The Fall and Expulsion from Garden of Eden” by Michelangelo, 1509

The journey from Eden to Calvary was long, just as our own plans are often long. Of course, God’s plans infinitely overshadow our own. Still, we are asked to prepare. Every Christmas we remember Son of Man’s coming with decorations and carols and cards and presents. We prepare for his return in the season of Advent by remembering the past while anticipating the future.

The Most Important Preparation

Yet the most important preparation we can make every Advent Season – indeed, every day of the year – is to prepare our hearts and the hearts of those around us for what is to come. As Believers, we’re ordained to be God’s beacons in the here and now, offering a glimpse of eternity to those who will receive. Regardless of life’s distractions, no matter what we see or hear every day whispering to turn away from God, our charge is to prepare for the future.

God had the expanse of time to prepare us for the birth of His son. We aren’t given that luxury. Instead, our role is to share the miracle of Christmas every day to anyone and everyone we encounter. To those who have never experienced the joy of God’s love. To those who feel abandoned in the world. To those who have lost all hope.

We prepare for Christmas every year because God has prepared the way before us. As we remember this Advent Season, let us never forget the least of our brothers and sisters. Preparing our hearts means preparing theirs.

Today, tomorrow find someone you don’t know and wish them a Merry Christmas. Or tell a friend you love them, remembering with gratefulness what God’s love means to us all.

Peace.
Colossians 1:17

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Twelve Days of Advent – #7 Stormy Weather

“Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”—James 1:2-4

I was recently at dinner with a few guy friends. Predictably, we talked about typical guy things. Because we’re all of a “certain age,” our “guy things” talk was relatively tame. Relatively.

Credit: www.wisebread.com

However … one member of our party broke an unspoken “guy” rule in my crowd: don’t complain about the weather. Not the real weather, of course. Rather, the weather of our relationships, the weather of lives. The weather we can’t control but we can certainly anticipate. “Don’t blame the weather for getting wet when you forgot to bring an umbrella,” one of my, um, “older” guy friends fondly says.

Life is tough.

Look, life is tough. We live in a world where the deck appears to be stacked against most of us. In Christian terms we call this a “fallen world,” a world where a very real and present enemy works to stain every part of our lives with fear and doubt and uncertainty.

Glass breaks. We get old (yeah, I know that’s hard to hear). Marriages fall apart. Loved ones get addicted to Opiates. Parents forget our names. Sexual harassment becomes an accepted norm. Alcohol and drugs are so common our children need rehab at 14 years old. A gun becomes a more persuasive argument than reason.

Credit: New York Times

In 1944 Ella Fitzgerald and the Inkspots released a single called “Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall.” They borrowed the title from the poem “Rainy Day” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Both Ella and Longfellow spoke truth. But I prefer the original truth from Ecclesiastes 3 “For everything this is a season.”

Storm clouds are always on the horizon. Life pushes back. This is especially hard to accept during seasons of anticipation. Seasons like Advent when God may seem silent and unreachable. Seasons where we are asked to wait and trust.

The War Inside Us

The stormy weather of our lives should not be surprising, especially for those of us actively attempting to reject the temptations of the material world, the seductions of a physical life. It’s not easy to resist.

Paul tells us of the “Conflict of Two Natures” in Romans 7, a war being waged inside each of us. He reflects that in Galatians 5:17, writing “For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh.”

Credit: www.kingdomrice.wordpress.com

The temptations of the world, particularly in seasons of waiting, are like tornadoes in Kansas. We anticipate the storm clouds, we feel the wind, we eventually see the funnel hit the ground yet sometimes we don’t seek shelter.

While we live in a fallen world and bad things happen to us, we always have control over how we respond – whether we bring an umbrella or head underground or simply give in.

Yet in every instance of adversity or waiting, we have a choice. We can choose to look backward or we can move forward. Notice we can’t actually go backward, only look there. And we really can’t stay where we are as life moves on around us. So, we can look back or move forward.

Storms Strengthen Us

James tells us in the verse I began with that the testing of our faith builds perseverance. Surviving storms makes us stronger to future storms. Meeting and defeating temptation and doubt tempers us, transforms us, like hardening steel with fire.

We see this transformation in our choices. We can feel joy or bitterness. We can forgive or hold onto anger. We can trust or be suspicious of everyone. We can be filled with faith or plagued with fear. We can love or we can hate. We can offer mercy or seek revenge.

We can fill our hearts with hope. Or we can sink into despair.

Stormy weather and hard seasons are not meant to weaken us, but rather to strengthen us. They offer us opportunities to reinforce our trust and faith in God by hearing His voice and rejoicing in His salvation. Especially when the clouds are darkest…

Peace.
Colossians 1:17

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Twelve Days of Advent – #6 The Most Impossible Mission

“I am a representative from him, and that One sent me forth.”—John 7:29.

My sister Shari is an amazing woman, and a fellow Believer after whom I’ve modeled much of my adult Christian walk. I’ve never actually told her this so the news will come as some surprise. Every year she takes one or more of my nieces and nephews on missionary trips to Central America to make a difference in the lives of people most of us will never meet. She touches the hearts of everyone around her.

In ways she may never appreciate, Shari missioned Christ to me …and it worked.

The Work of Missionaries

What do you think of when you hear the word “missionary?” Perhaps you see a scrubbed face Jehovah’s Witness or Mormon acolyte ringing your doorbell asking if you have found God. Maybe you think of a group of college students taking the annual trip to Nicaragua to paint houses and serve meals. Or even that couple from your church who suddenly announced they were packing up and moving to China last year.

“Hi – we’re missionaries here to save you!”

Regardless, the role of missionary is firmly established in the modern church to serve preaching the gospel “in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations” (Matthew 24:14). Most who are called to the missionary life, while facing adversity, are rewarded with successful missions. Lives are changed, hearts are touched, souls are saved. What they do works.

Although Scripture doesn’t include the word “missionary” in that form, there are numerous stories of those “being sent” (the Latin word is “mitto”) to do God’s work. Moses, Jeremiah, Nathan, Zechariah, Samuel, Isaiah, Ezekiel, the Minor Prophets, the Apostles, Paul – all were sent out by God for various purposes. And their efforts, across history, successfully unfolded the life-changing message of salvation and redemption we know as Christianity.

One True Missionary

And then someone different was sent by God, a missionary whose purpose stood above all others, whose coming had been foretold and awaited, yet whose mission should by any measure have been considered impossible. An impossible mission given to Jesus of Nazareth.

One of the most well-known scriptures in the Bible, especially appropriate for Advent Season, is John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”

Credit: www.msafropolitan.com

Think of his mission: born to save all who believe in him from eternal death. Born to redeem all of mankind. Born to pay the ultimate price for our transgressions. I mean really, what could go wrong with that?

Since that moment in the Garden when man stepped away from God’s perfection by virtue of his right to freely choose, God has tried to invite us home. Jesus, as God’s “Word” prior to his human birth, spoke on his father’s behalf through the centuries, breathing life and inspiration into prophets, martyrs, faithful men and women.

And man’s response remains obstinate. Like the scribes and Pharisees of Matthew 23:23, we too often neglect “the weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness.”

Yet still Jesus prevailed. For uncounted years while man wanders in wildernesses of his own making, Jesus has persisted in his mission. Through a willing spirit, enduring patience, and an unconditional love of creation, Jesus personifies the perfect character of God. He reflects the forgiveness, grace and salvation of a waiting Creator.

Miracle of Free Will

Advent is a season of waiting, a season of humility. A time for each of us to reflect on the unfathomable humility of Jesus, who “emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men.” (Philippians 2:7)

Jesus achieves the fullness of his impossible mission by using the very thing man used in rebellion to God’s purpose: free will. Through his sacrifice and intercession, Jesus asks us to freely choose his invitation. No coercion, no forced conversions. Simply believe, repent, receive, and return home.

My sister taught me the humility of being a Christ follower. Jesus teaches us all that no missions are impossible when God sends us.

Peace.
Colossians 1:17

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Twelve Days of Advent – #5 What Breaks Your Heart?

“I have listened and heard, they have spoken what is not right; no man repented of his wickedness, saying, ‘What have I done?’ Everyone turned to his course, like a horse charging into the battle.” Jeremiah 8:6 

What breaks your heart?

I’m not talking about a badly-ending relationship, or even the loss of a loved one to illness or tragedy although these certainly cause us to grieve. Nor do I mean family betrayals like Fredo in “Godfather II” – we saw how that ended for both Fredo and eventually for Michael!

The broken heart I’m referring to here is different. It’s that mourning of the soul, that gut-wrenching sorrow we feel at our very core when we’re connected to what breaks God’s heart.

Credit: www.chickensmoothie.com

The Bible offers many descriptions of how Holy heart is broken. Broken by those who are lost and refuse to come home. Broken because of those who are persecuted and have no one to share their distress. Broken from the cries of the poor who have no means of support. And broken by our disobedience.

Broken by Rebellion

600 years before the birth of Christ, the Jewish people had once again become increasingly rebellious and obstinate. For generations, they had grown lax in following God’s commandments, eventually seduced by the attraction of Baal and other idols and squandering the promise and hope of the Torah.

Eventually, God removes His protection and Babylon conquers Judah, deposing their king Jehoiakim and sending much of the population into exile. By 587 BC, Judah was no longer a nation and the memories of greatness achieved by David and Solomon faded. It broke the hearts of a nation.

The prophet Jeremiah, seeing the wretched conditions of his fellow Jews, had just such a broken, aching heart. He saw the misery of his brothers and sisters, the children of Abraham, the Covenant People. And he knew what God had called him to do, the hard message he had to deliver to these same people: repent from their sins and return to God. Their rejection of his message the eventual exile of Judah ultimately led to his death by the very hands of those he tried to save.

What breaks your heart?

Many of us today simply don’t equate broken hearts with sin. The very word itself, “sin,” seems antiquated, unenlightened, uneducated to the modern ear. And when God asks us as he asked Jeremiah “Why have these people turned away? Why are they always turning away?” (Jeremiah 8:5) we simply … turn away.

What breaks your heart?

The answer to that question isn’t always obvious. So, perhaps we might start with a different question. What breaks God’s heart?

There are many things we might find in scripture to answer this. In my own journey, a few come to mind. This is especially true for those who claim to know God’s heart yet still falter.

  • When we don’t turn from our shortcomings. Just like the people in Jeremiah’s day, God’s people today – you and me and those around us – have turned away from God, often refusing to hear Him. Jeremiah’s people, like us, should have known better. They knew, we know, when the path we’re on is wrong. Yet we continue down that path, oblivious to where it leads.

We may confess, we may have a moment of contrite remorse, but when the pain passes, we ignore Jesus’ admonition in John 8:11 to “Go and sin no more.”

  • When we don’t live God’s Word. Like the Scribes and Pharisees of Jesus’ day, many professing Christians today talk the talk but don’t walk the walk. We have our Bibles, we may go to Bible studies, we may debate and argue Scripture – but do we live it? Do we spend time the poor? Do we take in orphans? Do we look after widows? If we the only Bible those around us ever see, what does that Bible look like? And yes, I’m writing these words to me.

Credit: www.modernsurvivalblog.com

  • When we don’t realize how short the time is. Jeremiah commented “Harvest has passed, summer has ended, but we have not been saved.” (Jeremiah 8:20). A farmer who misses harvest time will starve. He knows how short the time is.

There’s a similar urgency in our lives. According to a recent study there are 2.1 billion people in the world who don’t know Christ. Based on annualized death rates, 16-20 million die every year without hearing the Gospel.  This is our harvest, yours and mine. And the harvest season is upon us, this season of Advent, this season of preparation.

  • When we self-destruct. In my late 20’s, one of my closest high school friends spiraled out of control, eventually taking his own life. Many of us at the time asked ourselves what we might have done to change our friend’s course, to ease his burden. There was likely nothing we could have done, but the key pain was that we did nothing at all.

God holds this mirror up to us constantly, reminding us that we are surrounded by self-destruction. Where are we in taking the hands of others to help them through their struggles? The addicts, the prisoners, the lost.  How often does our heart break for those we see right in front of us?

  • When we refuse to let God heal us. Jeremiah cries out in 8:22 “Is there no balm in Gilead?” In Jeremiah’s time Gilead was a place of hope, famous for balm from a local tree resin that cured illness. Jeremiah was equating God’s voice and commandments to a healing cure for our broken lives, a salve for spiritual illness. Yet, the people refused.

How many people have you known who refuse treatment for their own sicknesses? Perhaps a friend whose marriage is in tatters but won’t seek counseling. Or a work colleague who is unable to perform but too prideful to has for help. Or an acquaintance who is spiritually lost but will not follow God?

Prepare by Acting

Advent is about many things including waiting, expectation, hope. And it’s also about recognizing how God has given us this season of preparation to discover where our hearts are not with His, where we’ve hardened ourselves to what breaks God’s heart. When we see people from every walk of life ignoring the warning signs, ignoring how time is running short, refusing to turn back from the wrong paths of their decisions, refusing help … our hearts should also break.

This Advent Season, take a look around. See your neighbors, your loved ones, your adversaries, yourself. Where can you bring hope and preparation and expectation to the broken hearts of others? Where can you bring healing to your own broken heart?

Peace.
Colossians 1:17

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Twelve Days of Advent – #4 Hope

“When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he had already been a long time in that condition, He said to him, ‘Do you wish to get well?’” John 5:6 

James Cameron is an accomplished inventor, engineer, philanthropist, and deep-sea explorer. He’s also directed a couple of movies you may have seen – do The Terminator, Titanic, or Avatar ring any bells? Cameron is famous for many things, but one of his traits I find most inspiring from a secular business perspective is his drive and focus. He once famously said “Hope is not a strategy. Luck is not a factor. Fear is not an option.”

Credit: Peter Woolston

As a business guy, I embrace this statement completely. As a Christian, I take issue with its initial sentence. “Hope,” as it turns out, is a key pillar of faith.

Reflecting on the vanity of life and how short his days were in the face of his personal weaknesses, David writes in Psalm 39: “And now, Lord, for what do I wait? My hope is in You.” Confronting his own frailty, David turns to the only source of strength he knows will not fail him – hope in God.

Hope, as it turns out, is a common trait in our faith. Paul refers to “hope” at least five times in his letter to the Romans. Hope is all over the book of Psalms. Hope punctuates Jesus’ ministry at every turn. Hope saved Job from despair.

Hope helps us change the way we view the world, offering us light in the midst of darkness. Lack of hope has the exact opposite effect.

Hope Works

A friend I’ve recently met is struggling in his marriage. When we talk about where the difficulties lie, the common theme is that he has given up hope of any resolution, resigned to endless struggle. His life is filled with depression and despair.

Another acquaintance of mine was just told his wife’s breast cancer thought to be in remission has re-emerged, metastasized in her liver and spine. His reaction? Absolute hope and faith in God’s power to heal her once again.

Credit: http://www.2911church.com/

Two scenarios, two different responses. The common thread? Given choices in life, we can respond with fear and gloom, or with hope and faith. In either instance, how we respond can shape how God works in our lives.

Now, before anyone labels me a Christian Scientist or Jehovah’s Witness, let me assure you – I believe in science, in medicine, and in the skill of physicians. When a medication or procedure can relieve or cure an ailment, I whole-heartedly support it. That said, it’s established that a patient’s mental condition impacts their response to treatment.

Translation? Hope works.

What Do You Want?

We read a beautiful story in John 5 about the power of hope. After spending time in Galilee where he met the woman Samaritan by the well and healing a nobleman’s son, Jesus travels to Jerusalem, encountering a man who had laid beside the waters of the Bethesda Pools for 38 years, crippled.

This man came to the waters every day waiting for his chance to be cured, only to watch others take his place. At some point, he simply lost hope, telling himself this was his life, this was all it would ever be.

Can you relate to this? Has there been a time in your life when you simply lost hope? Maybe a dream you had, a relationship you cherished, a job you needed … gone or beyond reach. When we lose our hope, we lose our belief in ourselves. We stop caring.

“Christ Healing the Sick at Bethesda” by Carl Heinrich Bloch, 1883

When Jesus encountered the man by the pool, he saw something different than the man saw in himself he saw a human being who had given up hope, given up on his dream of walking.

Rather than judge him, Jesus asked: “Do you wish to get well?” A simple, straight-forward question. Like many others Jesus asked throughout his earthly ministry such as “What are you looking for?” in John 1:38, or “Why are you looking for me?” in Luke 2:49, or “What do you want me to do for you?” in Mark 10:36.

Jesus is not so much interested in the man’s affliction as he is the man’s state of mind. Did this man truly want to cured or was he comfortable in his hopelessness? Jesus realizes if he cures the man’s mind, his body will follow. And that is precisely what happened.

Anyone Can Lose Hope

Believers – even the most devout – can lose hope. Perhaps we’re surrounded by others who themselves are hopeless, draining us with their own lack of belief. Maybe having hope in the face of adversity is simply too hard, too much work. Or sometimes, finding hope can simply be too painful, leaving us exposed to heartbreak and disappointment.

Paul reminds us in Romans 12:12 to “rejoice in hope, persevere in tribulation, stay devoted to prayer.” When we lose hope, when we stop caring and stop praying, we create our own self-fulfilling prophecies.

Hope may not be much of a strategy for James Cameron. But during this Advent Season, I see hope shining like a beacon through the darkness and fog of a hopeless world. Hope shows us how God doesn’t just offer the promise of an afterlife in eternity, but can and will meet our needs right here, right now, in this moment, forgiving us of our shortcomings and changing our lives forever.

Peace.
Colossians 1:17

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Twelve Days of Advent – #3 Why?

“The righteous person may have many troubles, but the Lord delivers him from them all.” Psalm 34:19

Pain. Loss. They’re difficult.

In the past 14 months I’ve lost my beloved mother, my amazing father-in-law, four high school and college classmates and two friends from church. Eight losses in such a short span of time. And if my social media feeds are any indication, multiple other friends and acquaintances are suffering from any number of afflictions.

In many ways, this Advent Season feels very much like a Season of Suffering.

It’s in times of suffering and loss that many of us get closer to God. Or, sadly, farther away. Things happen. Sometimes unexpected. Sometimes expected but dreaded. Sometimes pointless and preventable. Sometimes unspeakably tragic.

As Believers, how do we cope with such losses? Our immediate and understandable reaction is “Why, God? Why did you let this happen?” Often, we echo the words of the prophet Habakkuk who wrote 600 years before Jesus’s birth:

“How long, O Lord, will I call for help,
And You will not hear?
I cry out to You, ‘Violence!’
Yet You do not save.” (Habakkuk 1:2)

It’s natural to want explanations, to seek answers. If we can understand God’s Will and His purpose, we can accept His plan. When we don’t have those answers, we often remain trapped in a cycle of “if only” and “I/he/she/they should have.”  Without an explanation, our lives can splinter into 10,000 fragmented pieces impossible to put back together.

Answers give us closure, and closure allows us to move on.

Unthinkable Trust

It often seems God asks the impossible of us. To simply trust Him when we have no way of understanding how or why. To turn our lives over to Him in complete obedience, submit to His sovereignty when nothing is certain. To accept His purpose even when we can make no sense of what He wants.

Unthinkable trust. Unreasonable faith. Unfathomable belief.

This isn’t what many of us expected when we accepted the baptismal call. God never mentioned trust in Him might require surviving illness, death, shattered marriages, lost jobs, ruined finances. With every tragedy, our faith is tested, raising the familiar questions of those around us who don’t share our beliefs. “How can a loving God let this happen? Why do you believe in fairy tales? Why don’t you realize the truth that we’re alone in this world?”

Freedom Through Trust

Trust us difficult. Trust requires unnatural reactions to what the world throws at us. We want to question, to revisit, to blame. With every passing moment, our efforts to understand make us more anxious, more angry, more hurt. The very thing we try to help us through the pain makes that pain more real.

Yet with every moment God is whispering to us that His will is in motion, His purposes are at work. If we simply trust. Eventually, through acceptance and trust and submission and belief something amazing and transformational happens – we begin to heal.

The Sacrifice of Isaac by Caravaggio, 1603

It’s a mystery, a paradox. The same process we fight against is the very process that frees us. Jesus tells us in John 8:32 “and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” That truth, the only real Truth, is that when we trust in God and His infinite wisdom – as hard as that might be – we find peace and purpose.

God is the Answer to Our “Why?”

As strange as it seems, suffering invites us to see God in ways we’ve never imagined. Just as Job learned to trust in God more deeply and completely after his trials and tests, we learn how possible it is to trust God with our own lives through grief and suffering.

When we place our trust in God, even in the face of things and events we may never understand, a beautiful transformation takes place. Although we may not have a concrete answer, we’ll find peace that God truly does cause “all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” (Romans 8:28)

There are always “whys” to our suffering, no matter how difficult that suffering might be. While we may never fully understand the reasons for our grief, during this Advent Season we can take comfort in one ultimate truth. When we surrender our “whys” to God, He will always answer with the perfect answer: Himself.

Peace.
Colossians 1:17

 

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Twelve Days of Advent – #1 The Waiting …

“For from days of old they have not heard or perceived by ear, nor has the eye seen a God besides You, who acts in behalf of the one who waits for Him.”  Isaiah 64:4

I’ve always loved music – any kind of music (well, I draw the line at Polka, but that’s a different post). Earlier this year, Tom Petty, a musical hero of my 20’s, passed away. In 1981, he released a song called “The Waiting.”

There’s a line in the song that says “You take it on faith, you take it to the heart, the waiting is the hardest part.” Many of us can identify with that sentiment, especially when we’re younger – I know I did. Waiting is, well, hard.

Stretching the analogy a bit farther, “the waiting is the hardest part” also describes much of what the season leading up to Christmas – and, ultimately, the season all Believers have been in since Christ’s ascension nearly 2,000 years ago – feels like.

“Pssst … Santa, you up there?”

As kids, we “wait” for Santa and his magical sleigh. As adults, we “wait” for gift-giving and Holiday parties. For Christians, Advent is a season of expectation, a time of preparation. Advent reminds us to wait and prepare for the inevitable return of Christ just as he came during that first Christmas season so long ago.

Yet, I’m also reminded this time of year of a different kind of waiting; a waiting more immediate, more real, and perhaps more painful for many – both during Christmas and throughout the year.

Prayers of Waiting

This kind of waiting relates directly to prayers and the cries of our hearts. Prayers for intercession, prayers for healing, prayers for miracles we so desperately need. Prayers that the divorce our spouse just asked for doesn’t happen. Prayers that the doctor’s diagnosis of cancer isn’t real. Prayers that “what is” might become “what if?”

The same prayers of anticipation the nation of Israel cried out during the 400 years between the prophetic writings of Malachi and the miraculous events in Bethlehem. Prayers of waiting …

Credit: www.iprayer.com

Sometimes God answers prayers immediately. We feel the imminence and power of His hand in our lives and reach out to tell everyone about the amazing goodness of His love.

But other times – perhaps too often for many of us – prayers seem to be answered with deafening silence, miracles hovering forever just over the horizon. As time passes and God doesn’t appear genie-like in response to our plea-filled conjuring, our faith can falter.

Why does this happen? If God truly is the God of Salvation, a Savior who actually saves, why do we often feel so alone, so empty, so … forsaken?  Where is this God of Jacob and Abraham who sent His son to take our place on a Roman cross of humiliation?

Two Occasions

On two occasions leading up to and in the midst of his Crucifixion Jesus himself speaks for those of us facing times of despair. The first occurred in the Garden of Gethsemane when Jesus prayed with such earnestness his sweat became like “great drops of blood, falling down the ground” (Luke 22:44). In this seminal moment of temptation, he asks God to take away the sacrificial cup, to spare him the trial and suffering to come.

We don’t read if God answers, because Jesus answers for Him, saying “yet not my will, but Yours be done.” Jesus knew God saw his heart, and knew his deepest desire was to follow God’s will.

“The Importance of Prayer,” Sebastiano Ricci c. 1701

How many times have we been able to ask and answer our own questions of God in confidence? Too often, our prayers seem like one-way streets, shouting to God to repair our lives yet stopping short of asking what God wants from us.

The second instance occurred on the cross. As described in Matthew 27:46, “About the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, ‘Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?’ that is, ‘My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?’” Imagine the anguish of one who has been with God from before the beginning of time suddenly left alone, his prayers unanswered, his cries met with absolute silence. Yet still Jesus trusted.

Mother Teresa, writing in a letter to spiritual confident Rev. Michael van der Peet about the separation she experienced from Jesus, said “the silence and the emptiness is so great, that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear, the tongue moves (in prayer) but does not speak … I want you to pray for me–that I let Him have (a) free hand.”

Hear the reflection of Jesus’ approach to God in her words. In the face of unanswered prayers, she acknowledges His sovereignty in all things.

As we grow in our relationship with God, more deeply understanding His purposes for us, our attitudes change. We come to realize how much God loves us and already knows the desires of hearts. Even when we’ve been waiting. Even when we think He isn’t listening.

The true meaning of Advent is this: Pray and Trust. Ask God for a need, show our faith in His Will, Trust in His provenance, and wait with expectancy and hope.

“My God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus,” Paul wrote in Philippians 4:19. His miracles are still here – Emmanuel still means “God is with us.”

During this Advent season, don’t fall victim to the belief hope is gone. Don’t build walls around your heart so you can’t feel God’s touch. Don’t deafen your ears to His call.

Trust in God’s promises. Lift Him up in praise and worship daily. Thank Him for the blessings and protections He provides and will yet provide.

Tom Petty passed away as all humans do.  God’s Word and His promises will never die.

Peace.
Colossians 1:17

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Inconvenient Truth Is Uncomfortable

I wasn’t going to write this. Actually, I tried not to. Several times. But enough is enough. There’s an imposter in our midst, a wolf in sheep’s clothing. A shill wrapped in the cloak of ecumenical authenticity. Someone like Simon the Sorcerer mentioned in Acts 8.
Who is this pretender? John Pavolitz, blogger extraordinaire and author of “Stuff That Needs To Be Said” and the invitational-sounding “A Bigger Table.”
Self-acclaimed “pastor” John Pavlovitz gets a free ride from thousands who read his cleverly appealing posts, sharing them on Facebook and Twitter to demonstrate some vague notion of progressive compassion. Inconveniently for the Truth, his followers rarely actually question his commentary. Because … politics.
Pavlovitz first gained notoriety after being fired from his church (for, well, not exactly specified reasons) and then posting a commentary on how parents should face the possibility of having gay children. The post went viral. Later, he published a “day-after” diatribe following the 2016 Presidential election immediately making him a darling of the Left who breathlessly proclaimed “at last! A Christian we can agree with!”
In the months since, Pavolitz has found another church to pastor and become something of a Johnny-One-Note, his posts dripping insults, ridicule, hatred (he seems to particularly love the word “hate”), and general disdain for anyone who actually reads and believes Scripture as they written. One of his favorite topics (more on this in a moment): the current President of the United States.
Perhaps at one point in his life Pavolvitz actually believed in the Word of God. Maybe he felt called to proclaim the full Gospel of repentance and salvation. In more recent times, John has traded whatever pedigree he may once have had as a true pastor and minister of the Gospel for the worldly applause of internet fame, cable news celebrity, and book sales.
Pavlovitz passes off his unique brand of Christian-bashing as “enlightened,” hiding blatantly partisan commentary behind the twin shields of faux religiosity and modern social justice bumper stickers. A recent post even attempts to strike an awkwardly fake self-deprecating tone with ham-fisted satire. Rather than humorous, it comes off as, well, desperately seeking.
I generally ignore writers like Pavlovitz and the mirth-filled followers they attract. Everyone is entitled to their opinions and their beliefs, regardless of how they may stray from reality or common decency. But out of sheer morbid curiosity I visited his site recently and saw the post entitled “Trump’s America Would be a Living Hell for Jesus.”
Let the richness of Pavlovitz’s arrogance hover there for a moment. He has apparently tapped into a direct line with the Jesus of the same Bible he rarely, if ever quotes! He’s seemingly found the secret thread into the mind of the Savior of Creation and discovered that this mind would be as focused on hating an elected civil servant of a 21st Century nation state as Pavolvitz himself appears to be.
This type of mindless claptrap could easily be shrugged off, relegating it to the endless chatter of modern online wind-shouting it has become. However, this post crossed a line for me. Mostly because those slavishly following his every pressing of the “send” key might actually believe his baseless assertions.
So, for the record, here are three of his comments from that post, each followed by a dose of reality.
First, he tries aligning the Jesus of the Bible with three popular victim identities in current culture: “A dark-skinned, itinerant, refugee Jesus wouldn’t be allowed in Donald Trump’s America.”
In truth, we have no idea what color Jesus’ skin might have been. Any suggestion would be speculation (yes, even idealized portraits of Jesus as a fair-skinned blue-eyed Caucasian). He was Jewish, born in 1st Century Palestine. Perhaps he looked like current Egyptians. Perhaps he resembled other Northern Africans or Palestinians. Or maybe he was as fair-skinned as Golda Meir, David Ben-Gurion, Moshe Sharett, Yitzak Shamir, or Shimon Peres (all Jews and all Prime Ministers of Israel). Throwing the “dark-skinned” reference is pure pandering and offers nothing at all in the way of informing us on the identity of Jesus.
“Itineracy” seems to be a badge of impoverished honor for Pavolvitz in attempting to prove his point. As though Jesus’ synagogue and teaching missions were somehow the same as modern day itinerant workers moving from farm to farm harvesting crops for domineering overlords.
In actuality, many synagogues in 1st Century Galilee (the home of the most religious and well-educated Jews in the world at the time of Jesus), were not large enough to support a full-time rabbi and so traveling, teaching, “itinerant” rabbis were common. These rabbis typically supported themselves with a trade (such as, say, carpentry), and while they were prohibited by the Talmud from charging fees for services, they were free to accept gifts. If John would like a brief lesson on this topic, I recommend this.
And as for refugee? Tugs at the heart strings, doesn’t it? Sadly, it’s simply false scriptural interpretation.
The only time Jesus even closely fit this description was as an infant when his parents fled to Egypt to avoid religious extermination because Herod believed Jesus threatened his right to the throne of David. Once they returned to Israel after the death of Herod, Jesus was a known member of the Jewish community, his family openly traveling to Jerusalem every year to worship.
It would be enlightening for Pavlovitz to cite examples of any refugees being turned away from the United States (even under proposed changes to current immigration law) when faced with the certain threat of death of their children because of religious affiliation. Take your time, John. We’ll grab some popcorn.
Next is this gem: “He’d be denied healthcare, detained at the airport, separated from his family, trolled relentlessly on Twitter by his followers, accosted by torch-bearing marchers, vilified by pulpit-pounding preachers, and branded a terrorist by the President himself in incendiary fake videos and fear-baiting Tweets.”
Where to start. Jesus never asked for a single shekel of government support, including healthcare. His “family” was mankind, as he himself declared in Mark 3:32-34. He was, in fact, “trolled relentlessly” by the Twitter equivalent of the day – the Scribes and Pharisees. He was ultimately branded a terrorist by the Temple itself and rather than parodied in fake videos was arrested, brutalized, and executed.
Then this: “A subversive, homeless rabbi who lived with the street people and publicly condemned and challenged every move by the political power-holders perverting religion to line their pockets.”
Subversive? Yes, to the Pharisaical and Saduceean regimes that had corrupted the true faith of the Covenant – not of Rome. Jesus had no commentary whatsoever about the governments of men other than his single response regarding paying Imperial taxes to Caesar. Perhaps Jesus was the original author of our highly-cherished “separation of Church and State” doctrine.
Here’s the truth, the “stuff that really needs to be said.” Whatever happened in John Pavolvitz’s past to create the caricature of the blogger we read today, his current claim to a progressive interpretation of God’s Word is, bluntly, misguided at best. He neither accurately interprets nor discerningly communicates the scripture he falsely proclaims. He’s simply a clever online wordsmith tapping into a despondent secular audience behind the label of “20-year ministry veteran.”
John’s followers “like” and “share” his posts because they, just as he, are focused on imputing Jesus’ message onto secular institutions and culture rather than what Jesus actually says. For John, the Word of God and the truth of the Kingdom is not sufficient – the mind of man is ascendant. John’s interpretation of social justice, tolerance, and morality are inventions of modern secular society. Perhaps compassionate for cable news, but untethered to God’s word. The Kingdom of God stands apart from governments of men.
A final comment John, if you’re reading this. Please know I have no personal animus toward you. Being in the business of digital marketing technology, I enjoy a good online success story. And no doubt you probably believe your mission is to speak to the “woke” folks among us. So you do you, brother.
That said, your definition of Jesus’ message is, in my view, self-serving and has little to do with the real faith of authentic Christianity and grace-filled salvation. I guess I just have this involuntary reflex against what I see as hypocrisy and blatant consumerism.
Believe what you may, but while I do respect the office of the Presidency and support many of the policies of its current incumbent, I’m not stupid, uneducated, bigoted, “ist-is,” phobic in any way, or uninformed. I don’t stand on soap boxes touting my personal moral virtue to sell books but I’ll match my private efforts to “live out the red-letters of Jesus” with you anywhere, anytime.
You can find me at www.miafede.com or @rdgreen on Twitter.
Oh, and I counted ten links to your website in this post. Do I get a referral bonus? I already bought your book so we’re set there (oh wait – that’s eleven).
Peace.
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Trust Has Consequences

Jesus said to them, ‘They need not go away; you give them something to eat.’ They replied, ‘We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.’ And he said, ‘Bring them here to me.’ Matthew 14:16-18

A friend recently asked if I played Scrabble. Now admittedly it’s been years since the game even crossed my mind, so I headed to the game closet and found a dusty boxed set. Spreading out a fistful of random letters from the box I was surprised to see the first five were “U-R-T-S-T.” Rearranged, they spelled “Trust.” And it occurred to me that there was a message in that. A message that had been pounding away at me for a while. A message about trust.

Born trusting

Ever noticed the look in a five year old’s eyes, wide as blue saucers and filled with laughter when you tell them something – anything – that captures their imagination? Hope and belief shine so bright from their faces it lights up the room. The light of trust.

Trust is born into us, as strong and real as our five senses. As children we ooze trust from every pore, holding onto it with blank-stared wonder, like the deer I see every day in Austin crossing the road with fearless (sometimes mindless) conviction that my two-ton vehicle will not transform them into early morning road kill.

This kind of trust is beautiful in its simplicity, inspiring in its breadth. Our parents worry constantly, fearing we’ll trust everyone, including the wrong people, until we eventually wind up as little pictures on milk cartons.

Yet somewhere along the way, jammed between crushed middle school hearts and broken promises from grown-ups who never quite understood that soccer games – even when we lose – are just as important as conference calls; sometime before the fairy tale wedding but after Santa’s last visit, trust is often replaced by something else.

“What is this trust thing you speak of?”

My erudite friends back East (the ones who’ve made art forms out of weekend brunch and the methodical dissection of the Sunday Times) would call this replacement of trust “discernment” or “sophistication.” Not for them the naiveté of innocence and faith in stuff or people unknown or unseen. Rather, they view all things through the jaundiced eye of cynical skepticism, confident in their abilities to see through the motives and fabrications of the world around them.

“Why, really,” they say between sips of mimosas and bites of fresh pastries, “no one ever takes anything at face value anymore.”

On the other hand, my seasoned pals in Tejas (for ya’ll Northern types that’s local slang for “God’s Own Backyard”) might put it another way: “Wise up, bro – everybody’s got an angle.” Then they’d tell me to work on my bluffing skills ‘cause they “just feel awful” taking my money at Wednesday night poker.

Chronic suspicion syndrome

Most of us eventually lose our innate ability to trust, replaced by a very grown-up attitude: chronic suspicion syndrome. CSS usually creeps into our lives silently, unseen, in devious ways. We begin questioning this or that and eventually find ourselves suspicious of everything and everyone around us – their motives, their actions, their words. We sometimes even lose our trust in God. Unchecked, the lack of trust can rage out of control, destroying relationships and lives.

Funny thing is, while we lose the ability to trust others, we’re offended and hurt when those around us don’t place their trust in our every word. We want their belief, we crave their trust. That has certainly been true in my case. I even thought about inventing a magic elixir once to give me that special “trustworthiness” scent. Just spray on a squirt or two of every morning and everyone I meet will trust me.

“I’ve found it! The magic elixir to make everyone trust me!”

Turns out somebody beat me to it! A laboratory in New York claims to have bottled “trust” in a special formula called Liquid Trust. Yes, it sounds a bit over the top, but there really us a product called Liquid Trust. It contains nothing more exotic than a natural and odorless hormone called oxcytocin that plays a large role in childbirth, breast-feeding, and romantic love. Oh, it also throws in the pheromones Androstenone and Androsterone for good measure.

The trust deficit

Magic potions aside, we often seem trapped in a “trust deficit” keeping us looking over our shoulders and double-checking our locks. Why is trust so rare? Why do we want so desperately for people to trust us while we can’t seem to trust them? Why does it seem in the dialogue between trust and suspicion, suspicion usually seems to win?

Trust is one of the crucial questions facing humans, believers and non-believers alike. Think about something as common place as today’s politics. The mistrust between Democrats and Republicans has led to a toxic environment in which every word is scrutinized by the opposing side for ulterior motives. Or a broken relationship where an honest mistake by one person leads their partner to question every action they take.

We see the impact of eroding trust it in the rise of violent crime, civil litigation, breakdown of family structures (neighborhoods, churches, unions, clubs, charities), lack of shared values with neighbors, etc. It surrounds and penetrates us.

Yet there is an antidote, a remedy as close as the nearest bookshelf or nightstand. Scripture offers a compelling lens through which to view the human condition, and how trust in ourselves rather than God’s ability to provide almost inevitably leads to disillusionment and emptiness.

The episode from the passage in Matthew at the beginning of this message is a clear illustration of how God calls us to trust in His abundance rather than our own ability to provide. Interestingly, the story of 5,000 being fed from five fish and two loaves is one of the few episodes from Jesus’ ministry outside the crucifixion and resurrection to be recounted in all four Gospels. Matthew’s version opens with Jesus hearing of the beheading of John the Baptist. Jesus’ response is not surprising: he withdraws. Not only is he grieving over the death of his cousin, but he is sorrowful that John’s death is a precursor to his own.

The local people who have begun following Jesus with fanatical devotion pursue him to what Matthew describes as a “deserted place” implying no nearby inns or places to rest and eat – after all, the nearest McDonald’s drive through is still 20 centuries away. When evening comes, the crowds need to eat. Jesus’ initial response is to tell his disciples to give the people food, prompting the disciples to remind him they have only five fishes and two loaves and suggest instead sending the crowd away. Jesus ignores this seemingly logical suggestion and calls for the fishes and loaves to be brought forth. After blessing them, he gives the food to the disciples who in turn distribute it to the crowd, eventually gathering twelve baskets of leftovers.

Credit: https://www.pinterest.com/swallowdale

What happened here? What is God telling us about trust? A couple of things. First, God is saying anything is possible if we believe in His will. Jesus faced a seemingly impossible challenge and yet never thought of scarcity. Instead, he trusted in God and believed in abundance. God is saying “don’t tell Me what you lack, tell Me what you are moved to do.” If we take our needs to God He will provide.

Second, we’re being compelled to take action. Deuteronomy 9:23-24 implores us to “Trust and obey” God in all things. Not “trust when you feel like it and obey when you can” or “trust or obey” or “trust, then perhaps obey” – it’s trust and obey. In the episode from Matthew, the disciples neither trusted nor obeyed when Jesus said “you feed them.” Instead, Jesus had to make obvious for them what God asks from each of us.

Restoring trust

The natural question then, is “how?” In a world immersed in distrust, how can we let go of our suspicious nature and trust in the ultimate authority and power of God’s will? Here are three suggestions that work for me:

  1. Turn to trustworthy sources. For believers, there is no greater source of truth than Scripture. The Book of Psalms (specifically Psalms 11, 16, 23, 62, 121) are great sources for strength. Other passages I’ve found compelling are Jeremiah 17:7, Isaiah 26:3 and 1 Peter 5:7.
  2. Give up on the illusion of Control. One of the hardest lessons I’ve ever learned is there is a God, and I’m not Him. I’m not in control. I have never been in control. I never will be in control. Not of everything, not of anything.
  3. Put trust at the very heart of faith. As a Believer, my perspective on the world is one of radical trust, a willingness to trust God and, therefore, an ability to trust others. As a body of Believers we must personify this trust. Our evangelism to a postmodern culture must proclaim a God who can be trusted to take care of us, to take hold of us, to heal us, to save us, and a community that can itself be trusted.

A word of caution. Living a life built on trust has consequences. You actually have to believe in others, and accept that they believe in you. And be prepared when they do. Be prepared when their belief in you sometimes exceeds your belief in yourself. Be prepared when God believes in us even when we’ve lost all hope in Him.

There’s a $1 dollar bill pinned to a board next to my desk as I write this. On the back are the words “In God We Trust.” Four simple words. Can we really live by them?

Peace.
Colossians 1:17

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Fearless

“The Lord is for me; I will not fear; What can man do to me?” – Psalm 118:6

The first draft of this post was written during the devastating aftermath of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. At the time, I was reflecting on how helpless we often feel over things we can’t control, like natural disasters and illness. My theme was power and powerlessness. Recent events have changed my focus.

Instead, I want to shift to a different emotion: fear.

We live in a world of fear. Fear of tomorrow, fear of the unknown, fear of each other, fear of what might change us. We fear things in the dark, we fear strangers and people with different skin color or sexual orientation or religious beliefs. We fear our own mortality.

Credit: Reuters

The late hours of October 1 were erupted with the sound of gunfire as shots rained down on a large crowd of concert goers at the Route 91 Harvest music festival in Las Vegas. As of this writing (one week later), 58 men and women are dead – as well as the shooter whose name I won’t sensationalize by repeating here – and over 500 wounded. A stunned world cried out in dumbfounded shock, expressing an urgent plea to do something, to bring sense to the madness. And underlying that urge is an ancient, primal instinct: fear that we can never be safe.

Fear surrounds us

I recently revisited Luke’s Gospel and was reminded of this passage: “There will be signs in sun and moon and stars, and on the earth dismay among nations, in perplexity at the roaring of the sea and the waves, men fainting from fear and the expectation of the things which are coming upon the world; for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.” Luke 21:25-26

While the focus of this post is not end-times prophecy, doesn’t it often feel like we live in a period very similar to what Jesus described? Fear surrounds us, gripping our hearts and paralyzing our emotions. Many of us seem consumed by a sense of dread.

Why should fear be so deeply ingrained in us? If as professing Christians we believe in salvation why are we afraid of harm or death? Why can we not find the calm of David in Psalm 23, walking “in the valley of the shadow of death” yet fearing no evil?

As children, we’re taught to fear the first time we hear the word “NO!” When we mature, fear plants deep roots and grows, for many becoming a dark shadow controlling their lives. The writer of Hebrews tells us Jesus became flesh and endured death on the cross that he “might free those who through fear … were subject to slavery all their lives.” Hebrews 2:15

Physical fear, the fear of pain or death, is natural. When it doesn’t control us, fear can protect us from harm and danger, helping us make prudent decisions and avoid miscalculated risks. Yet when uncontrolled, fear can replace our trust in God, substituting belief in a personality ability to deliver ourselves from adversity through actions. We often begin to believe in our own invulnerability.

In the news coverage following the events in Las Vegas, I was struck by the image of a lone concert goer standing in the midst of the carnage facing the lone gunman while everyone around him crouched in fear. Granted, he had been enjoying adult beverages and his unique demonstration of fearlessness is not one I might recommend, but his defiance represented bravery to many. It reminded me of another story.

2,600 years ago, a young prophet named Daniel was thrown into in a lions’ den by Darius the Mede (known in scripture as “Darius the King”)  for disobeying an edict not to pray to YAHWEY.  Undeterred, Daniel defied the edict and continued to pray, showing no fear.

“Daniel in the Lions’ Den,” Sir Peter Paul Rubens, c. 1614/1616

I don’t know where the defiant concert goer in Las Vegas found his fearlessness, but I’m positive where Daniel found his. Trusting in God, Daniel faced down wild animals that would have devoured him, knowing the outcome would be God’s will.

Be anxious for nothing

Paul writes in his letter to the Philippians “Be anxious for nothing” (Philippians 4:6). David tells us in Psalm 55:22 “Cast your burden upon the Lord and He will sustain you; He will never allow the righteous to be shaken.”

God provides deliverance from fear. He tells us not to let worry and anxiety grip us. In Jesus’ own words, “who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life?” (Matthew 6:27).

Does this mean we will never suffer tragedy or hardship? No. Does it mean we won’t be a victim in a tragedy like the one that took so many lives in Las Vegas, or Nice, or London, or New York? No. But it does mean that as Believers our salvation is secure and God will guide us on the path He has set for us. Equally important, we know the destination awaiting us.

This was the fearlessness that drove the Apostles, virtually all of which were persecuted and executed for their beliefs. The same fearlessness comforted Stephen as he was stoned to death for speaking the truth of Jesus. It fueled William Tyndale, a key reformer who was strangled and burned at the stake in 1536.

Fearlessness empowered Dietrich Bonhoeffer to stand against Hitler’s treatment of Jews, resulting in his 1945 hanging. It burned in the hearts of seven Egyptian Christians murdered in January 2010 as they left their church in Nag Hammadi, Egypt.

And unwavering fearlessness based on trust in God surrounded the nine victims at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina murdered as they stood to pray in June 2015.

Credit: NY Daily News

Each of these and thousands of other similar instances around the world speak to the power of defeating fear. And they share another common bond: enduring love. In his first epistle, John writes “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear,” 1 John 4:18.

Love drives out fear

Ultimately, fear is self-focused. When we’re afraid, we’re almost always focused on something about ourselves – what we might lose, what might be taken away from us, pain or hardship we might endure. Fear drives us to distrust those we love, look skeptically at our neighbors and colleagues, hate those around us who have more than we do.

On the other hand, love is always about someone else, and perfect love is solely about God. When we allow the perfect love of God to penetrate our hearts, there’s simply no room for self-centeredness or conceit. And where there is no self-focus, there is no fear.

There will always be loss and pain and even death for as long as we draw breath. But the promise of the Gospel is that God’s salvation through the sacrifice of Christ strengthens our spirits and souls and bodies, giving us triumph over our weaknesses and victory in the face of adversity.

Faith in God’s love emboldens Believers. As Paul wrote to Timothy concerning the nature of suffering and faith: “God has not given us a spirit of timidity, but of power and love and discipline.” (2 Timothy 1:7)

Perfect love derives from the acceptance of Christ as our soul source of comfort and salvation. God’s perfect love for us, believed by us, replaces fear with love. And where loves lives, hate and fear can never take hold.

Peace.
Colossians 1:17

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Unseen

“Because you have seen Me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed.” – John 20:29

Think of something you believe but have never seen. It’s actually more common than you might imagine, even for the post-modern scientific mind. Gravity, for instance. I’ve never seen it but believe it’s there which is why I refrain from stepping off ten story buildings. Or oxygen. We don’t actually see oxygen but we certainly know when it’s absent.

There are many things we’ve never actually seen but know are there – radio waves, dark matter, ultraviolet light, the imaginary number constant i (just trust me on this one – if you don’t believe in unseen things try being an air traffic controller without using numbers that can’t seem to exist), our minds and emotions, the entire universe. Hey – I even believe in honest politicians, though I’ve heard they’re rare as winged unicorns.

“Vote for me – I’m magical!”

It’s easy to believe what we see or experience directly, and just as easy to disbelieve something we haven’t. “I saw it with my own eyes,” we say. Yet when we hear an incredible story from someone else we, too, can find ourselves skeptical.

On the day of Jesus’ resurrection, scripture describes a similar exchange. By this time (Sunday morning), Jesus had been dead and buried two full days and nights. The burial, accomplished quickly to honor the Jewish rules of sundown, had not allowed for fully preparing Jesus’ body after being taken down from the cross.

At dawn following the Sabbath, Mary Magdalene and at least two other women approached the sealed tomb to ask the covering stone be rolled away so they could administer the remaining treatment of Jesus’ body for the traditional year of rest prior to final burial of his bones in a stone ossuary. They were shocked to find the sealing stone already removed and the tomb empty of Jesus’ body.

Dumbstruck, Mary and the others encountered a very much alive Jesus who instructed them to go tell the apostles he had risen and “is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see Him, just as He told you” (Mark 16:7).

Running breathlessly to share the news with the apostles who were still “mourning and weeping” (Mark 16:10), Mary’s story was met with rebuke and disbelief, “appearing to them as nonsense.” Returning to the tomb to see the evidence first-hand Peter “went away wondering to himself what had happened” (Luke 24:11-12).

The scripture passage I opened with happens a few days later. Jesus has already appeared to the apostles and they have believed – all except Thomas who famously states he would not believe “unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the place of the nails, and put my hand into His side.” (John 20:25).

Appearing to Thomas in the midst of the apostles, Jesus challenged him to “reach here with your finger, and see my hands.” Thomas never completes the test, instead exclaiming for the first time by anyone in the New Testament that Jesus is “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28)

Thomas finally saw and believed. Jesus acknowledged his belief but went further to say those who believed yet have not seen are blessed.

The Incredulity of Saint Thomas, Caravaggio 1692

I’ve always been struck that God didn’t simply whisk Jesus away and leave the tomb sealed. We read in John 20:19 that Jesus appeared to his disciples while they were locked away behind closed doors and in other instances he was able to materialize in the midst of followers who were either unaware of his presence or didn’t recognize him.  The point of the rolled away stone was not to allow Jesus to leave the tomb, but to provide yet another visible proof of his resurrection.

The rolled away stone and Jesus appearing to the eleven remaining apostles (and many others) following his resurrection were foretold and necessary parts of God’s plan. They became foundational truths, proving beyond doubt the reality of the resurrection – seen and confirmed by multiple eyewitnesses, many of whom Luke describes as ”foolish men and slow of heart to believe” during the encounter with Jesus on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:25).

Jesus insisted these first witnesses – ordinary, unremarkable men and women with no special status or religious standing outside of their relationship with him – verify he was alive, a complete and undeniable human being, not a bodiless apparition with no substance.

Believing without seeing

The encounter with Thomas was crucial because it demonstrated the essential element of God’s central aim: trusting in His Will through faith. The apostles had lived in faith-by-sight throughout Jesus’ ministry. They saw the miracles first hand; they saw him calm the storms, walk on the waters, debate the Pharisees into silence. They saw him raise Lazarus. They saw him heal the lame and bring sight to the blind. Peter, James and John even saw his transfiguration alongside Moses and Elijah. One would think seeing these and countless other things with their own eyes would have solidified their faith beyond doubt.

Credit: Joshua Harris, 2010

Yet even at the height of his ministry Jesus reminded the twelve how small their faith continued to be. Following the feeding of the four thousand as told in Mark, Jesus listens as his disciples worry they have nothing to eat and asks incredulously “Do you not yet see or understand? Do you have a hardened heart? Having eyes, do you not see? And having ears, do you not hear?” (Mark 8:17-18).

In another encounter with the Pharisees and scribes Jesus is asked for more signs of his fulfilling the messianic prophecies. Rejecting their disbelief, he responded “An evil and adulterous generation craves for a sign; and yet no sign will be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet” (Matthew 12:39).

To some, seeing will never be believing

Jesus is indicating that for many (including those of us today), seeing is never believing. There will never be enough signs, enough evidence, enough “proof” to satisfy the unwilling mind. God tells us to look beyond what we see to find truth, as even our eyes can deceive us.

In the human generations since Jesus’ ascension (100, 60, 50, pick your math), one message is clear – God stepped into humanity for a brief moment through Jesus so that we might see and believe, and then stepped out of humanity again so that we might then know and believe. Paul describes this by saying “He is the image of the invisible God.” (Colossians 1:15)

As Christians, we know this today because we’ve received an incontrovertible truth passed down through the centuries essentially unchanged since originally told by eye-witnesses who themselves first doubted. While we sometimes ask God to show us “signs,” we ultimately realize God’s work is most often revealed through the signs of our actions through faith.

Our faith is not blind

Much has been said about the “folly” of believing in an unseen God. Like the apostles cowering behind locked doors when Mary rushed in to tell them of the incredible news of Jesus’ resurrection, modern culture doubts and questions. We’re suspicious a Just God could exist in a world of pain we ourselves have created. Yet connection through prayer can show us the way.

Jesus reminds us in John 1:18 “no one has seen God.” As Believers, we trust in a God we’ve never seen. We trust in a resurrected Christ we’ve only read and heard about. We trust in a Holy Spirit we sense but can’t identify. We embrace a death and resurrection we can’t prove but understand are necessary for our salvation. We do this most directly through prayer, when we are most intimate with God.

The writer of Hebrews comments “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen,” Hebrews 11:1.

Yet our faith is not blind, but is instead based on evidence – the evidence of God’s Word and how that Word works in our lives. The Word is Truth, it is sure, it is unassailable. And it is connected through prayer. And when we trust in that Word – regardless of what we have or have not seen – the world loses its hold on us and fear is replaced with the confidence of eternal triumph.

“All things are possible to him who believes,” Jesus tells the father of the demon-possessed boy in Mark 9:23. This is the essence of faith – trusting in the infallibility of God’s Word as handed down to us generation after generation. We need exercise only the simplest degree of faith to call down the power of God in our lives.

Do you have the faith to believe our unseen God can transform your life?

Peace.
Colossians 1:17

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Still Here…

“For this reason you also must be ready; for the Son of Man is coming at an hour when you do not think He will.” – Matthew 24:4

I opened my eyes this morning and … the world was still here. Now granted, I wasn’t expecting the rapture but there’s been so much hype around September 23, 2017 and the Revelation 12 Sign, the mysterious Planet X, earthquakes in Mexico City and Los Angeles and Japan, the endless Category 5 Hurricanepocolypse of 2017, Donald Trump addressing the United Nations, North Korea and their nuclear ambitions , Super Mosquitos spreading Super Malaria … it’s felt like we were in the middle of a Matthew 24 end times prophecy from Jesus.

Not quite the end

Of course, this is clearly not the end as so much of Jesus’ end of days depiction has not yet materialized and I’m apparently still able to write this. For instance, even though persecutions of Christians have increased around the world, they haven’t yet risen to the apocalyptic proportions of the Left Behind series. And while we’re on that subject, I didn’t see Drudge Report flashing the sudden disappearance of millions of people overnight.

Nor have we seen the Abomination of Desolation standing in the holy place. And with all respects to Rick Warren’s PEACE Plan, the gospel has surely NOT been “preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations.”

“Aren’t we there yet, God?” (credit: nowtheendbegins.com)

Now that we’ve established the world hasn’t ended and our best efforts to guess at Christ’s return have once again been thwarted, let’s have a word of honesty. Go ahead, lean in on this one.

The central, yet least understood foundation of Christian faith is the return of Jesus Christ to establish his kingdom. “Then they will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory,” (Mark 13:26), (Luke 21:27). Yet, “(Of) that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone.” (Mark 13:32).

Almost since the day following Jesus’ ascension, many have tried to second guess the Mark 13 passage.  In 500 A.D. Hippolytus of Rome, Sextus Julius Africanus, and Irenaeus predicted Jesus would return based on the dimensions of Noah’s Ark.  German monk and mathematician Michael Stifel  published a work stating categorically that Christ would return at 8:00 am on October 19, 1533 (presumably local time).  In 1844 American Baptist preacher William Miller proclaimed Jesus would return on October 22. His slightly missed guess came to be known as The Great Disappointment. And then there was Harold Camping’s famous prediction the world would come to a fiery end on October 21, 2011. Other near misses can be found here.

“No, really – set your sundial. 8:00 am for sure.”

Yet still, Jesus told us what to look for. We will have signs, we’ll actually see Jesus return, but no one knows when. Folks are going out to dinner, getting married, watching TV, working their jobs, arguing about politics, posting their uber-filtered pics on social media – in other words, everything will be absolutely normal, until the moment it isn’t. Sounds like a perfect recipe for prophetic sensationalism.

Scripture tells us to prepare

Fortunately for Believers, scripture also tells us to prepare. “You must also be ready,” Jesus said in Matthew 24:44. “The day of the Lord will come just like a thief in the night,” Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians 5:2. “But the day of the Lord will come like a thief,”  declares Peter (2 Peter 3:10). The message is clear – we should stand ready for the Christ’s return every day of our lives.

Sadly, the vast majority of people in the world – even many Christians – live their lives as though Jesus never promised to return. If you and I were honest, we might admit to our own negligent view of the future.

“The Agony in the Garden,” Andrea Mantegna 1458

In the moment of his most significant trial, Jesus took three disciples with him to the Garden of Gethsemane (Peter, John and James). Asking them to stay vigilant, Jesus stepped away to pray. Returning, Jesus found them sleeping and said “So, you men could not keep watch with me for one hour? Keep watching and praying that you may not enter into temptation,” (Matthew 26:40-41).

This happened three times and on the third instance Jesus chided “Are you still sleeping and resting? Behold, the hour is at hand,” (Matthew 26:45).

Lulled into complacency

Idle speculation, dramatized rumors, false predictions, endless distractions – these and a thousand other diversions lull us into complacency. The decades pass, Jesus still hasn’t shown up and we get busy with other things. We sleep while God extends His hand. We ignore the signs around us, unable to “analyze this present time,” as Jesus told the crowds in Luke 12:56. We search endlessly for signs of what God has already revealed.

The Greek Christian Bishop Origen Adamantius wrote in 212 A.D. “In a certain sense, the end of the world has already come for the person to whom the world is crucified.” In other words, for those of us who are dead to worldly things, the day of the Lord has already arrived – we are just awaiting Christ’s return.

And yet, his return is not quite here. The charge is not to awake from our slumber, but to stay awake with watchful endurance. Jesus calls us to be ready, or in a different sense, always be becoming ready. We find certainty based on the dependability of God’s character, not the accuracy of our predictions. We prepare for Jesus’ return not to figure out a puzzle, but rather to trust in a promise from God.

God wants us to be vigilant for Jesus’ return not because we know the specific date, but because we trust His promise. We see our future and are comforted because “not one word of all the good words which the Lord your God spoke concerning you has failed” (Joshua 23:14). We live our lives as though Jesus has already returned.

Three ways to live

What would this look like? How would we act if we lived as though Christ had already returned and we were walking in light of truth? There are hundreds of possible answers in scripture but here are three:

  • Live the Word. God is not just a spiritual concept locked away in an ancient book of writings to be studied while ignoring the very people we are called to serve- God is real and active in our midst today, as we should be. After healing the cripple in Bethesda on the Sabbath, Jesus was challenged by Jewish leadership for doing works on the Sabbath. He answered “My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working” (John 5:17). He goes further, admonishing the Pharisees and Sanhedrin that their substitute of studying the law rather than living God’s word out in the world condemns them: “You do not have His word abiding in you, for you do not believe Him whom He sent. You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me;  and you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life.” (John 5:38-39) Jesus is telling us that studying the Word is only the first step – we must go further in actually live the Word out in communion with those around us.
  • Convert, don’t condemn. Every corner of our lives today seems filled with condemnation of something or someone. In the Beatitudes, Jesus teaches “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 5:40-45). When we convert those who hate us to a life of love, we demonstrate the foundational Kingdom principle of forgiveness rather than the earthly principle of retribution.
  • Love God, love each other. When challenged by a lawyer on how to inherit eternal life, Jesus responded in terms the lawyer would understand: “What is written in the Law? How does it read to you?” And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” And He said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this and you will live.” (Luke 10:25-28)

Knowing where God is taking us, knowing what comes after the end of this world, truly understanding that there is a lasting and eternal life awaiting us, we can be at peace and live in confidence. And even if we may not know the day and hour, God tells us to stay vigilant. 

Are you still sleeping? Behold the hour is at hand …

Peace.
Colossians 1:17

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Living in Pits

“Which one of you will have a son or an ox fall into a well, and will not immediately pull him out on a Sabbath day?” – Luke 14:5

Ok, I admit it – I loved Christopher Nolan’s “Dark Knight” Trilogy (aka “Batman”). Everything about the series was amazing. Yeah, Heath Ledger stole the show as the Joker in the second installment, but each film had its moments.

One of my favorite scenes from the trilogy was the intense build up to Bruce Wayne climbing out of the pit in “The Dark Knight Rises.” For those who’ve not seen it, click here – but come back!

The most interesting thing about this scene isn’t Wayne’s final emergence, but rather how he got there. Up to the moment of his escape, he believed he could be freed by relying on man’s inventions – the safety of a rope, the practiced skill of his own hand. It was not until he let go of his own contrivances that he could escape the prison of his own shortcomings.

How often are we like Bruce Wayne in that pit, relying on our own efforts, our own “good works” to free us from the pits and wells into which we inevitably fall?

We need saving every day

In the passage from Luke I began with, Jesus is explaining curing a man of dropsy on the Sabbath, a high sin in the eyes of the Pharisees. Jesus’ message was clear: saving a lost soul is never wrong even on the Sabbath.

Yet as I read this passage my sense is that Jesus’ point was not so much about his actions, but instead about our needs.  That is, man needs saving every day, including the Sabbath. And God, in His righteousness, saves us every day, including the Sabbath.

“Good God, man! Don’t you know it’s the Sabbath?”

Jesus often used the Sabbath to point out our dependence on God’s hand. Notice how he cast the unclean spirit out in Capernaum on a Sabbath (Mark 1:21-18). Or healing a crippled man at Bethesda (John 5:1-18). Or healing the woman in the synagogue (Luke 13:10-17).

The common thread in all of Jesus’ encounters – both on the Sabbath and other days – is how inadequate our role is in our own healing. Can our works or personal efforts save us? Do we really need God to work out our salvation? Where is faith?

Paul addresses this question beautifully in Ephesians 2, specifically verses 8 and 9: “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

We simply can’t pull ourselves from the “miry clay” of existence (Psalm 40:2). We need God to provide us His hand, His grace.

Works without faith are empty

There’s a long-standing debate (particularly between Catholicism and Reformative Protestantism) regarding the roles played by works vs. faith in salvation. For some, the question is in the interpretation of Paul’s writings from passages such as Romans 3:28 and Romans 4:5. These folks will split hairs over works of good vs. works of law. That’s the subject of a different post.

Others will point to the epistle of James where he writes in 2:26 “For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.”

Which is it? Do our works earn our salvation or are we saved simply by faith in Jesus Christ as the one true way to God the Father, repenting of our past?

“The Sacrifice of Isaac,” Rembrandt van Rijn, 1635

This confusion is around context. In both instances, James and Paul use the Genesis 22 story of Abraham being asked by God to sacrifice his son Isaac to illustrate their meaning. Yet even as some might argue James and Paul disagree, they in fact support each other.

In the case of James, he isn’t claiming we have the ability to work out our own salvation but is instead distinguishing between legitimate and illegitimate faith. Both are in a sense “faith,” but “perfected” faith goes beyond easy social media labels such as “#lovetrumpshate” and “#sharingiscaring” – instead, it extends into a way of life. Works without faith are empty.

James teaches that authentic faith is demonstrated by our actions, not that our actions win our salvation. Abraham’s righteous deeds (James 2:21-22) earned him nothing. However, his obedience to God proved his faith was genuine, “And Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.”

Right faith leads to right actions

Right faith leads to right actions. Paul contends that without trusting in God, Abraham could never have offered his son on the altar. He uses Abraham’s story to show that people are justified on the basis of real faith rather than their own efforts; James shows that Abraham’s faith was proven to be real because it worked itself out in his actions. Two halves of the same whole.

We each occasionally finds ourselves at the bottom of a soul-pit. All too often, we fall there through our own actions and decisions. Failed marriages, addictions, abusive relationships, depression, anger we can never seem to let go of, hatred of another because of their skin color or language or yes, even their definitions of love.

While it’s true that we can stop doing what dropped us into this pit or that well, an unrepentant heart relying on its own efforts is simply blind to the next hole into which it stumbles.

Without God’s extended hand to lift us from these self-made pits of the soul, we inevitably fall back into them, never truly escaping. Salvation doesn’t come from temporary acts of kindness trying to soothe our guilty consciences or show our Goliath-sized compassion, but by turning over our lives to a God willing to accept repentance, trusting in His will.

Bruce Wayne’s man-made ropes could never set him free. Nor can ours. Only faith – the right kind of faith – opens the narrow door to God’s forgiveness and our ultimate freedom.

What rope are you clinging to?

Peace.
Colossians 1:17

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Living to Die

“I know your deeds, that you have a name that you are alive, but you are dead. Wake up, and strengthen the things that remain, which were about to die; for I have not found your deeds completed in the sight of My God.” – Revelation 3:1-2

A year ago today my mother died. Her passing was peaceful, surrounded by the family she loved. Tears were shed, hands were held, prayers were shared. After fighting an extremely rare and debilitating disease, mom slipped away in the early hours of the morning on September 10, 2016.

To be clear, her doctor had not originally declared she was terminal. At the time, the prognosis seemed to suggest potential recovery. But the physician eventually saw the signs.

Mom was diagnosed with anca vasculitis at age 75, a rare, vicious, relentless disease. She died five months before her 80th birthday.

The origins of my mother’s illness were years in the making, buried in her body, slowly working their way into her immune system until they appeared as irreversible symptoms.  By the time she was diagnosed, there was not much anyone could do … she had been slowly dying for years and no one knew.

Something feels missing

Credit: Credo Magazine

Many churches today suffer from a similar malaise – literally dying slow, gradual deaths.

In some cases, like my mother neither they nor their congregations seem to realize how sick they are. All appears well on the surface – plenty of bright shining faces in the pews, a vibrant children’s ministry, bouncy sermons from popular preachers with catchy series names. Yet deep beneath the surface something just feels … missing, hollow.

In all too many other churches, the diagnosis is plain but not acted on in meaningful ways. Membership has been declining for years, former longtime members have moved to newer, fresher churches, the average age of the members is closer to retirement than from having that first child.

For these churches, “change” is not in their vocabulary as they continue serving the call God placed on the hearts of their predecessors 20, 30, 50 or more years before. “This is who we are,” they say, comfortable in discernment they feel is exceedingly true.

Why does this happen? Why do some churches march solemnly down the road to extinction? Why aren’t they bold in the face of a changing world?

“I’ll take the first option…”

The challenges facing today’s church leadership teams are more complex than any time in modern history. While I volunteer as a worship leader at my church, I’m not on staff nor have I ever been.  My career experience is in the secular world, but I’ve used that background to observe a number of churches over the years and spoken at length with their leaders either privately or at leadership forums. Here are a few thoughts on why churches fail to turn from the pathway leading to shutting their doors.

Leadership doesn’t recognize the problem

Recent statistics indicate church membership across the U.S. has dropped 15% over the last 10 years, with nearly 85% of U.S. churches either declining or have plateaued. In my own denomination alone, total membership is down nearly 20% in five years. Some individual churches have experienced declines in attendance by over 80%. 

Do churches actually impact their communities?

I would be curious where the gospel witness is for these churches within their communities when nearly half of people asked say today’s church has no positive impact. How many new believers do they bring to Christ (other than child baptisms)? How are they actually impacting the lives of the unchurched or reaching the six in ten young people walking away from the church altogether?

To some of these churches, there is no problem, just a resigned recognition that things aren’t like they used to be. Others have faced the changing tastes of their congregations by watering down their teachings, making themselves less offensive. But always keeping the offering coffers filled.

Paul, in writing to the Galatians, warned against such attitudes of denial when he said “I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel; which is really not another; only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ” (Galatians 1:6-7).

Leadership admits there’s a problem, but it’s not their fault

These folks blame the community. People should be walking through the door, but they’re simply not. The culture is changing, and they shouldn’t have to adjust to the new ethnic make-up of their cities. “We’ll just shepherd our current members,” they say. Or, it’s the fault of the previous four pastors who just never quite fit in.

“Really, you can’t blame us. We’ve always done church this way!”

Facing our problems is crucial if we hope to overcome them. When David was called by God to confront Goliath he didn’t blame Saul’s army. Instead, scripture tells us “Then it happened when the Philistine rose and came and drew near to meet David, that David ran quickly toward the battle line to meet the Philistine” (1 Samuel 17:48).

Only when we’re willing to grapple with our challenges can we hope to stem the hemorrhaging of congregants.

Searching for “Superman” pastors

They prayerfully offer that if the Search Committee will just find that perfect Senior Pastor, everything will turn around. After all, the Superman Pastor works for us, right? He (or she) will make it happen. Yet for one reason or another, pastor after pastor leaves after a 2-3 year stint. Rinse and repeat, nothing changes. 

“Here I am to save the day…”

This approach to church leadership directly contradicts scripture, in that it denies the role each of us plays in a healthy church. In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul instructs “And He gave some as apostles, and some as  prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:11-13).

We all play a role in a living church

We are meant to unify as co-leaders in our churches, not place the burden on a single figure. Why? To go make and disciples of the world (Matthew 28:19).

Why can’t we just go back?

“Remember when Pastor Steve was here? Things were perfect then.” It’s a common refrain. Turn the clock back 10 years, or maybe 20. That’s when the church felt alive. Can’t we just go back to doing church like we did then?

This attitude reminds me of the exacting discipleship Jesus demanded – not looking back, not reminiscing, not thinking of the past. When asked by a would-be follower if he could go back and bury his dead father Jesus replied: “Allow the dead to bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim everywhere the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:60).

Churches like this are everywhere, and growing in number. Too often congregations turn inward when faced with change, fearful of what that change might bring. Culture responds. Is your church among them?

Sadly, too many churches are dying – some slowly, others more rapidly. While God can intervene when a faithful congregation cries out, the church must turn its face to Him, walking away from prior preferences, desires, and even treasured traditions. In other words, repent (or “turn away”). As Peter is quoted in Acts 8:22-23 “Therefore repent … and pray the Lord that, if possible, the intention of your heart may be forgiven you. For I see that you are in the gall of bitterness and in the bondage of iniquity.”

Churches cannot program, cajole, or buy their way back to life. As humans, neither can we. Instead, we must face our challenges head on, adapting when we can, accepting God’s direction when we can’t.

Peace.
Colossians 1:17

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Comfortable Church, Comfortable Christians

“These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world.” – John 16:33

I recently reconnected with a high school friend whom I hadn’t seen in years. He missed our last two reunions but we’re connected on social media and after reading several of my recent posts on Miafede he reached out for an opinion, one I candidly felt a bit unqualified to answer. Still, he asked so I wasn’t shy in responding.

My friend and his wife were struggling to find a church where they could both “fit in” and feel “comfortable.” He mentioned how “boring and stodgy” some churches were, or how “loud and edgy” others seemed. They tried the Unitarian route but that felt a bit too “new age.” He also shared how his wife had grown increasingly sensitive to the questions of politically correct tolerance and how “uncomfortable” she was in any church she felt was too judgmental.

A few months ago, they visited another church on the recommendation of a friend. It was perfect! Great music, beautiful campus setting, a super cool, not-quite-sure-how-old-he-is Senior Pastor who wore hip v-neck t-shirts, had a great haircut, and shied away from any touchy subjects like same-sex marriage, abortion and deep scriptural introspection.

“Who, me? Naw, this is just my normal hairdo…”

Instead, this Senior Pastor masterfully interwove the Bible, the Quran, Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Zoroastrianism (don’t you love how the Zoroasters combine cosmogonic dualism and eschatological monotheism like the metaphysical bosses they are?), this-ism and that-ism (quoting the inimitable John Lennon) to create a beautiful tapestry of feel-good theology where every sermon somehow led to the inevitable conclusion that our old-fashioned Biblical notions of God are just too small and limited. And above it all, this church was just so … comfortable. My friend gave me his new church’s website and was curious what I thought.

Scripture doesn’t teach a comfortable Gospel

Honestly, I was surprised. I’d seen many comments from this Senior Pastor in recent months, outspoken and provocative opinions on what “real” Christians should be in this inclusive, post-modern age. His theology, while novel, was hardly scriptural. It felt like more of a “build my audience” social media strategy. But that’s just the industry I’m in coming out.

Repentance? What’s that? Change our behavior? Why would God want us to change? Narrow gates? Don’t you know all roads lead to Heaven? Treating others as we want to be treated? Yesterday’s news. Isn’t love for each other just as they are the only thing that matters? After all, enlightened 21st Century spiritual beings have rid themselves of judgmental attitudes and treat others as they want to be treated, not as we wanted to be treated. Apparently, this last bit is a real thing known as the Platinum Rule (click the link and look it up).

Comfortable church. I somehow missed that phrase the last time I searched scripture. But then, my Bibles – I have several – aren’t redacted with all conceivably-offensive passages removed or softened.

So yummy!

A growing trend in recent years has been for churches to design “worship experiences” and “conversations” to attract “Christians” and “Seekers” who reject traditional Christianity yet profess their spirituality. And yes, I overused air quotes for a reason. An increasing number of self-labeled post-modern Christians want a comfortable church, conforming to their personal beliefs about life. Just not the church Jesus built on the rock of Peter’s faith (Matthew 16:17-18).

Religious comfort for many is often about social classification – wealth, education, race, politics, gender, social justice, and race. We prefer to worship with people who look like us, share our views, demonstrate our values. We want to be comfortable in our moments of worship. Is this what Scripture actually teaches us?

True Believers surrender their slavery to the world 

Let’s start with Jesus’ own words: “If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate … even his own life, he cannot be My disciple. Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple. So then, none of you can be My disciple who does not give up all his own possessions.” (Luke 14:26-27, 33)

Ouch. If I’m playing word association, those aren’t my first thoughts when someone says “Christian comfort.” Many contemporary preachers teach “peace and prosperity” theology or “revisionist” understandings of the Bible. “God is Love,” they exhort us, He doesn’t want His followers to suffer or be uncomfortable. God loves us just the way we are. One popular self-described “20-year ministry veteran” blogger went so far as to publish an article entitled 10 Things This Christian Doesn’t Believe About the Bible. Basically, the writer could simply have left out the first two and the seventh words in that title.

When tempted by Satan’s promise of a comfortable life, Jesus responded with: “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God” (Luke 4:4). Predicting his role as God in the flesh he proclaimed that “just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matthew 12:40). When asked about the path to the Kingdom he replied “Strive to enter through the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able” (Luke 13:24).

Jesus promised many things, but a “comfortable faith” wasn’t on the list. The Gospel Jesus preached and lived was anything but comfortable. Even with the adulating crowds of his first two years and the thunderous reception he received entering Jerusalem during his final week, Jesus’ ministry was under constant attack and ridicule by the authorities and doubters. Ultimately, his reward wasn’t a mega seaside villa in Caesarea. He didn’t graduate from the synagogue to a lucrative career headlining 1st Century Talmudic  conferences delivering lofty how-to lectures on living your best life now.

Rather, Jesus’ ministry taught the sober, uncomfortable truth that God’s way is different from ours. To follow Jesus likely meant persecution (John 15:20) and hatred from the world (John 15:18-19). There would be no inviting homes and get-away vacations (Matthew 8:18-22). Life would be buffeted by trial and storms (Luke 8:22-25). Ultimately, following Jesus might end in betrayal and death (Mark 13:12-13), just as Jesus’ own earthly life ended.

True followers of Christ don’t focus on comfortable sermons and vague spirituality. They don’t throw out inconvenient scriptural truth. They don’t shop for pastors or preachers who “tickle their ears,” hoarding “teachers in accordance to their own desires” (2 Timothy 4:3). True Believers surrender their slavery to the world and are simply in the world.

A True Church doesn’t conform to comfort or personal desires. It doesn’t sample and poll to determine the next sermon series. A True Church teaches that we have been “crucified with Christ” and no longer live our lives but experience Christ who lives within us as we “live by faith in the Son of God” (Galatians 2:20). A True Church is made up of people living by the teachings of the Word, not by repackaged, watered-down socially-acceptable facsimiles.

“Seriously, can’t I just hear some great music and a rockin’ sermon?” (Photo courtesy Daily Mail)

Pastor John MacArthur puts it this way: “Only if the church hides its message and ceases to be what God designed can it make an unbeliever comfortable.”

I told my friend I was happy he and his wife had found a church. I also cautioned him to heed what the Bible actually says. To study and read for himself. To write down what he hears in a sermon and test it against scripture. Not simply trust the words of a well-spoken Senior Pastor promising an interpretive Gospel that doesn’t exist.

There is a True Church here on earth. That Church has one role: to call Believers and prepare them for eternal life. The True Church is doing God’s genuine work, inviting His chosen to repentance and the Kingdom. With or without the skinny jeans, fitted v-neck T’s, revised theology for a modern ear, or pithy blogs.

Peace.
Colossians 1:17

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Where is God?

“We went through fire and through water, yet You brought us out into a place of abundance.”- Psalm 66:12

The videos, livestreams, social media posts, and photos pouring out of Texas and specifically Houston in the wake of unprecedented modern-day flooding from Hurricane Harvey continues evoking sorrow, compassion, sacrifice, and introspection. Many find it difficult to imagine the impact of 9 trillion tons of water falling on a relatively small area of geography in a short period of time, and the havoc it wrecks on the lives of those in its path.

Rescue boats fill a flooded street at flood victims are evacuated as floodwaters from Tropical Storm Harvey rise Monday, Aug. 28, 2017, in Houston. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

Disasters like Harvey create crises. And they also create questions. “How could this have happened?” “Why didn’t people evacuate?” “Why weren’t we better prepared?” These and hundreds of additional questions will be asked in the coming months as politics and emotion creep into secular government oversight. The usual dance will play out, blame will be assessed, and Caesar’s due will be rendered.

A more interesting question from many is “How could a loving God allow this to happen? How should we respond as Christians?” 

How Should Christians Respond?

Scripture often provides us comfort in times of crisis. One excerpt I’ve returned to during moments of uncertainty is Psalm 66. Written as a song of praise, this Psalm illustrates the man’s dependence on the omnipotence and omniscience of God during trouble times. Throughout Psalm 66, the psalmist offers counsel on how those who “fear God” should respond to crises.

Reflecting on the aftermath of Harvey, here are a few thoughts on how a specific passage from scripture can guide our response as Believers.

First – Acknowledge God’s Sovereignty: “Come and see the works of God” (Psalm 66:5)

Disasters, like unexpected illnesses, the loss of a child, or tragic accidents, naturally raise questions about the nature of God. Recall the experience of Job, tested for months on end by God. He was tempted to question yet never surrendered his belief in God’s sovereign power.

Gerard Seghers: The Patient Job (1650)

Sadly, many of us face disaster with a skeptic’s response, ignoring the greater Truth that God, in Job’s words, “destroys both the guiltless and the wicked” (Job 9:22).  For instance, atheists assume life is random and meaningless, nothing more than selfish genes multiplying and reproducing. Natural disasters are, well, just nature. Sad but meaningless.

The philosopher might argue God cannot be all good and all powerful.  He would deny that God “does not turn away our prayers” (Psalm 66:20) and is not susceptible to the temptations of evil (James 1:13).

Not all grief is a consequence of sin

Modern legalists, like the Pharisees of Jesus’ day would say all human misery is a consequence of our sin. While moral failures can and often do lead to suffering, not all grief is a consequence of sin. Natural disasters can strike the just and the unjust alike, mush as Jesus said God “causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good” (Matthew 5:45).

Liberalists provide answers falling into a handful of flawed categories. Some blame God, assigning evil intent to God. Others, like Christian Scientists, claim the physical world is merely an illusion and argue God is not at work at all in the world. Still others, like Open Theists, belittle God’s power and omniscience by claiming He could never envision a future and so cannot know the effects of natural disasters.  This belief is directly contradicted by Paul in Ephesians 1:3-4 where he tells us “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who … chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him.”

On the other hand, Christians trust God’s infinite the wisdom and sovereignty without assigning Him blame. “I cried out to Him with my mouth” the psalmist writes in Psalm 66:17.

During times of tragedy or natural disaster, Believers must access God’s very throne for guidance: “Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16).

The writer of Psalm 66 cried to God, his words a plea of urgent desperation. Faithfully, God listened: “But certainly God has heard; He has given heed to the voice of my prayer” (Psalm 66:19).

Who should we pray for?

Who should we pray for? Social media popularizes generic slogans such as “Pray for (fill in the blank).” Believers are called to pray more deeply and specifically. Pray for those personally suffering, who have lost lives or livelihoods. Pray for those fearful they have nowhere to turn. Pray for those questioning why God would let this happen. Pray for those risking their own lives to save the imperiled. Pray for those who give of their time and resources to help. 

Second – Trust God: “Who keeps us in life” – Psalm 66:9

Crisis tempts us to doubt. Believers find faith in God’s guiding hand even in the midst of trials. Consider what scripture tells us: “Every good thing is from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.” (James 1:17). God’s hand doesn’t waver.

God also comforts us through our disbelief. “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me” Jesus tells us in John 14:1. Our faith allows us to survive the trials of uncertainty, even in times of uncertainty.

And God’s love never leaves us, as Paul writes in Romans 8:38-39: “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God.”

Asking “why God?” in times of tragedy leads us down a path of endless questioning. God sometimes intervenes in natural disasters, and sometimes He doesn’t. Some are healed while others are not. This one is spared while that one is not. We don’t know God’s ways, as He tells us through the words of the prophet Isaiah: “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways” (Isaiah 55:8). 

Ultimately, God’s sovereignty does not mean causality. While God certainly can choose to cause an earthquake or send a flood to accomplish His greater purpose, it is folly to assume God is the “architect” of tragic or evil actions. He rules over all things to conformity them to His will. As Paul writes: “God causes all things to work together for good … to those who are called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28).

Simply put, our best and most faithful response to hurricanes, disasters, or tragedies is to lift our prayers in trust of God’s wisdom even as we lift our hands to love and help each other.

Peace.
Colossians 1:17

 

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Fantasies of Obedience

 “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.”- Romans 1:22

Take 10 seconds and answer this question: what was your most lasting fantasy from childhood – the one you held onto longest (perhaps secretly still do) or the one that most vividly sparked your imagination?

True confession – here’s mine for the first time anywhere: when I was twelve I fantasized about joining the Jackson 5 as their bass player and 6th vocalist. The year was 1970, and the J5 had just released “I’ll Be there” in August. By September, I knew my life plan – I’d somehow be discovered by Berry Gordy and whisked away to the magical land of afros and bellbottoms.

Looking back, there were so many things wrong with this fantasy I don’t know when to start! To begin with, the only song I could play on bass at that time was a bad version of In a Gadda da Vida, but that’s another story.

We all have fantasies, things we wistfully cling to. As we grow up, most of us put away our fantasies (or so we tell ourselves), replacing them with grown-up concerns of daily life: landing that “real” job, getting married, picking up a mortgage, having a kid or two … you know – the whole “responsibility” thing.

Faith is no longer something we live, but rather something we squeeze in on Sunday mornings

For many of us, letting go of childhood fantasies gradually transitions into also replacing other so-called “fantasies” in our lives. We give up believing in Santa and Easter Bunny, and soon enough lose the belief in a sovereign God who guides our lives. We lose our fear of monsters in the closet only to find we no longer fear an Enemy looking to deceive us from a path to righteous living. Faith is no longer something we live, but rather something we squeeze in on Sunday mornings between pancakes and football (or Saturday nights for the sleep-in crowd).

And sometimes we not only give up fantasies, we replace them with new, “improved,” more comfortable and convenient fantasies: “someone else will provide for my needs;” “I’m not to blame for my own poor life choices;” “I’m the maker of my own salvation;” and one of my favorites – “I’ll be fine if I just play by Man’s rules.”

I call this last one a “Fantasy of Obedience” and it finds its roots at the very beginning of Man’s history … the Garden. Not satisfied with the perfect order created by God, Man listened to the whispers of the Enemy, believing obedience to his own flawed human will was superior to obeying God’s perfect design.

Comfortable theology is designed to obey our desires

How often do we fall victim to this?  “I don’t want to offend anyone so I’ll just agree,” one person says. “Well, the experts say the writers of the Bible didn’t know today’s science so …” says another. “Everyone says society has evolved and the Bible needs to catch up,” still others argue. And “I don’t need fairy tales to live a good life,” say those who reject the Word altogether.

Go ahead … take a bite!

Convenient and comfortable theology designed to obey our desires – theology eerily reminiscent of Paul’s warning in 2 Timothy 4:3: “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires.”

Paul was not the only voice cautioning against Man’s obedience to Man. Peter wrote in his 2nd Epistle: “There will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who brought them.”  John wrote in his first letter: “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.” Jeremiah warned that false teachers filled their followers with false hopes, leading them “into futility.”  Ezekiel proclaimed in his prophesy that God’s hand “will be against the prophets who see false visions and utter lying divinations.”

And Jesus himself warned his followers of the same in Matthew 24 when he taught about false teachers during the last days: “For false Christs and false prophets will arise and will show great signs and wonders, so as to mislead, if possible, even the elect.”

Sound familiar? Visit the Religion section of any bookstore and you’ll find book after book from “Christian” authors justifying any and every interpretation of desire-based belief.

Humans are hard-wired to obey … and rebel

Humans are hard-wired to obey … and rebel. We obey when it’s comfortable or convenient and rebel when it’s not. The Pharisees and Herodians tried to trap Jesus in this very question as reported in Mark 12: “Teacher, we know that You are truthful and defer to no one; for You are not partial to any, but teach the way of God in truth. Is it lawful to pay a poll-tax to Caesar, or not?”  Jesus, avoiding the trap replies: “’Whose likeness and inscription is this’ And they said to Him, ‘Caesar’s.’ And Jesus said to them, ‘Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.’ And they were amazed at Him”.

Joachim Wtewael – The Tribute Money (1616)

We increasingly seem to render our obedience to man-made rules but fail to render our obedience to God. Man’s rules, filtered through polls and focus groups and public opinion and social media, are designed to manage our obedience rather than guide our righteousness – just enough to keep us paying our taxes and enabling those in power to maintain their positions, but not enough to offend our personal desires.

We render to Man’s rules because “out there” in the world we desire an earthly reward – the best looking, the most gifted athletes, the richest business icons, the most talented performers … if we just obey the rules society sets up we can become one of these privileged few. The world becomes our prize.

Ultimately these are little more than misguided fantasies. We gain adulation through obeying the world but lose something immeasurably more valuable – our souls.  We become like those described by Paul in  Romans 1, our hearts darkened, exchanging truths for lies, obedient to our own desires and “Professing to be wise, (becoming) fools.”

My childhood fantasies of singing “ABC” with the Jackson 5 may have been amusing. Our fantasies of defying Righteous Truth are, in the end, sadly ruinous.

Peace.
Colossians 1:17

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Bandwagons, Idols, and Charlottesville

“For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.  Professing to be wise, they became fools,  and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man .” (Romans 1:21-23).

During the mid-1800’s, circus impresario Phineas T. Barnum (yes, that P.T. Barnum) attracted the public to his legendary circuses with elaborate parades through town, complete with riotous noise and garish “bandwagons.” The showmanship worked, attracted countless thousands to pony up $0.50 or $1.00 in exchange for huge spectacles of tigers, elephants, horses, and trapeze artists.

“Jump on board! The band’s great!!”

Never ones to miss a sure thing, late 19th century politicians picked up on this way to attract crowds and began using bandwagons during their campaigns. In fact, Teddy Roosevelt created the modern usage of “jumping on the bandwagon” in a letter from 1899 where he wrote: “When I once became sure of one majority they tumbled over each other to get aboard the band wagon.”

Not much has changed.

Idols and bandwagons distract us from what matters

Yet, bandwagons are not recent inventions. They’ve been around as long as man has drawn breath and we know them by another name: idols. Simply put, idols (like bandwagons) are devices used by others to focus our attention away from what should matter, and onto what they want us believe.

God knew exactly why idols were to be avoided. After bringing Israel out of the bondage of slavery in Egypt, He realized mankind’s flawed nature and our tendency to believe in our own infinitely limited ability at self-salvation.

Hear God’s own words on this subject: “You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. You shall not worship them or serve them.” (Exodus 20:4-5)

Left to their own inclinations, a fallen people would soon forget it was God and not Man who overcame Pharaoh’s enslavement and instead build inert and powerless monuments into which their focus and worship were channeled. And one man’s idol would likely become another man’s heresy. Eventually, dissension would lead to chaos and violence as the people fought over which idol was more powerful, forgetting God altogether.

One man’s idol is another man’s heresy

Does this have the ring of familiarity? When the recent events in Charlottesville unfolded live in real time, my very first thought was of the Second Commandment. My next thought was of its embodiment in Jesus’ words from Matthew 22: “And He said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the great and foremost commandment.”

Without devolving into yet one more blogpost about who was right or wrong, and fully acknowledging the insidious behavior and words of those who would uphold so-called White Supremacy, I believe the tragedy that marked Charlottesville was both avoidable and predictable.

Nicolas Poussin, “The Adoration of the Golden Calf,” 1634

Here, in summary, is what happened: On August 12, extreme white supremacist groups of the political Right flocked to Charlottesville for the fourth time in as many months, protesting the decision to remove the statue of Confederate General Robert E Lee from one of the city’s parks. This time their protest attracted a counter-protest group including members of Antifa, an equally extreme faction of the political Left. The ensuing clash resulting in injury and death, and has virtually paralyzed a nation in debate and 24 hours news coverage.

Those are the essential facts. But what can we say about what was really the underlying truth of Charlottesville? Simply put, the clash of idols. Those on one side put their faith and trust in symbols and flags and monuments (idols), inflaming those on the other side who saw these idols as representing evil, racism and hatred.

The only power idols have is what we give them

I will leave to others the debate over which of these perspectives was and is more incendiary. For me, as a believing Christian seeking guidance in the Word, I can say this: I place no status or emotional investment in symbols or idols of any kind. As a citizen of the United States, I honor our flag, but if forced to choose I would proclaim the Word. Symbols are meaningless unless we imbue them with power. Both the defenders of the statue in Charlottesville and those supporting its removal suffer from the same lie: that these idols have any power whatsoever. The only power they have is what we give them.

The greater tragedies of Charlottesville, Berkley, Ferguson, Baltimore, Dallas, Paris, Nice, Boston, Barcelona, Berlin … is that the world has descended into an endless battle over idols.

  • “My (little) god is bigger than your (little) god.”
  • “My prophet is more powerful than your prophet.”
  • “My wealth makes me more righteous than your poverty.”
  • “My skin color makes me more entitled than your skin color.”
  • “My tolerance makes me more noble than you.”
  • “My flag is more important than your flag.”

These and 10,000 other idols consume our attention daily. As evangelist D.L. Moody declared, “You don’t have to go (far)to find false gods.  Whatever you love more than God is your idol.” These substitutes become modern-day bandwagons we jump on for a sense of belonging and meaning. They distract us from focusing on God’s charge: to love Him with every fiber of our being and to love each other as we love ourselves.

“Quick, kick it one more time to make sure it’s dead!”

American Pastor A.W. Tozer once wrote: “An idol of the mind is as offensive to God as an idol of the hand.”  Idolatry begins with an ever-diluted understanding of God.  We devalue His worthiness, ignore His holiness, reject His love, water down His truth, or dismiss or even ridicule His sovereignty (see this clip of Bill Maher in prime form).  We begin erecting idols in our minds and with our hands as our focus drifts from living in God’s Word, placing that focus in other thoughts and things.  Pastor John Piper refers to this as “the first dark exchange” in his commentaries on the first chapter of Romans.

God points us down the right road in times of strife like those we currently face. He speaks through the words of David in Psalm 46: “Cease striving and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”

The path to peace lies not in slogans or flags or statues or bumper stickers or hashtags or cable news talking heads or memes. We cannot follow a painted bandwagon to Utopia. When we place our trust in idols we remove our trust in God. And God’s parade is the only parade that matters.

Peace.
Colossians 1:17

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little faith – Big God

Let’s talk about faith. During my first year of college, I had the unshakeable faith I could daydream through an entire semester of differential equations, do a four-hour cram for the final and still breeze through the course (thinking, of course, that all 18-year old college freshmen with absolutely no interest in math but with great calculus test scores should naturally consider taking differential equations – as an elective). FAITH FAIL. A Summer School course erased both the failing grade and my misplaced faith. And cured me of any long-suppressed fantasies of a career in Quantum Physics.

We all have faith in something: faith that when we turn a light switch on in a darkened room we can see (assuming we’ve paid the light bill); faith that when we’re running late for that important meeting, our car will start; faith that politicians we vote for will actually do what they promise (ok – even I laughed out loud at that one).  The point is this – everyone has faith, it’s just a matter of where we place that faith.

Christian faith is no different. And it’s often complicated by its nagging companion: doubt.

Wait – is it even possible for a real Christian to be filled with faith and filled with doubt at the same time? What about that whole “omniscient and omnipotent” thing with God? According to Scripture, absolutely. In fact, it’s the hallmark of faith’s power. Let’s explore this.

Faith is not the absence of fear or anxiousness

First, faith is not the absence of fear or anxiousness. Rather, it’s the certainty that God will deliver on His promises, even, as David writes, we may be walking through “the Valley of the Shadow of Death.” Jesus himself knew anxiousness, as evidenced during his final prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane with these words: “Abba, Father, everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.” (Mark 14:36)

We can have faith that God wants us to do something and still be terrified. The courage of true faith isn’t found in not fearing our calling. Rather, it is found in placing our trust in God   and plunging into our calling in spite of our fear.

Faith doesn’t have to be Super Human to be super powerful

“I am in-VINCE-able!”

Second, faith doesn’t need to be Super Human to be powerful. We start with the faith we have: it may be miniscule, even microscopic, but that’s where we start.

Jesus demonstrates this in an encounter from story Mark 9 where a man from a nearby crowd brought his demon-possessed son to his disciples who were unable to heal the boy. The man, in a telling moment of little faith says to Jesus “If you can do anything, take pity on us and help us.”

Testing the man, Jesus exclaims, “Everything is possible for one who believes.” Notice how Jesus doesn’t say “certain” things or “some” things – he proclaims everything can be achieved through belief.

In a clarifying moment, the father exclaims: “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!” The spirt is gone and the boy healed. Everything is possible for one who believes.

Jesus’ disciples lacked the belief they could heal the boy, the father doubted Jesus could heal the boy. It was after Jesus encouraged to father to show a little belief, a little faith that the miracle happens.

Even weak faith is enough

How much faith is enough? When is faith too small for God to work in our lives? Scripture offers an answer. In Matthew’s account of this same encounter, the disciples ask Jesus why they were unable to heal the boy. Jesus’ response gives us an answer as relevant today as it was 2,000 years ago: “Because you have so little faith … If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”

“Wait … this thing gets HOW big??”

To my skeptic friends – yes, Jesus is speaking metaphorically, using a figure of speech (he’s allowed, and believe it or not first century Judeans actually spoke in colloquialisms just like we do today). And he’s not telling us we need mountain-sized strength to move mustard seeds.

The truth is even the smallest amount of faith reaches God. He asks us to start with the faith we have, trust in His promise, and He will do the rest in accordance with His will. Recall the story of Peter leaping onto the water to meet Jesus in Matthew 14. At first, his faith appears strong enough to have him cross the water to Jesus – until he is confronted by strong winds and in his fear begins to sink. Jesus reaches out his hand (meeting Peter where he is) and caught him (God doing His part with our limited faith), saying “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” The account in Luke 8:25 puts a finer point to it: “Where is your faith?” (emphasis mine)

Peter’s faith was small, but not so small as to be ignored by God. It wasn’t until he realized he couldn’t cross the water alone – much as the father of the possessed boy realized he couldn’t heal his son alone – that Peter’s faith was placed in God and his miracle delivered.

In the today’s world with seemingly infinite data and information on any subject at our fingertips, it’s hard to place faith in things we can’t touch, or see with our own eyes, or hold in our hands. To be one of those who Jesus referred to in John 20:29 as “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” This may be especially true when we pray for something God doesn’t grant. Our faith dwindles, even to the size of a mustard seed.

Yet when we let go of ourselves and take God’s hand we find something amazing: God’s greatest works often happen in our most obedient moments. Our faith by itself has no power at all. Our “words of power” are meaningless. Without complete trust in God, our prayers are merely recitations.

I believed in my own ability to ace a semester of math in four hours – FAIL. The grieving father believed in the ability of physicians and men to heal his son – FAIL. Peter had faith in his own power to step out on the water – FAIL.

God’s formula for faith working in our lives is simple: Pray, Trust, Believe. Even if that faith is small. Even if that faith is weak. Even if that faith is tested by adversity. Faith is the simply empty hand that receives God’s power.

The smallest faith will be answered if we put it in the right place. Where is yours?

Peace.
Colossians 1:17

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Hypocrite!

“You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.” – Matthew 7:5

Did you ever wear masks as kid? Playing make believe or on Halloween? This may be an alien concept to post-Modern, Uber-hip Homo Contemporaneous humanoids too concerned with the “social message” sent by their children donning masks which may have some hint of misogyny, inadvertent cultural appropriation, veiled gender identification intolerance, embedded racism, or pigmentation privilege. Clearly, their social antennae are more acutely attuned than those of us who simply like a good laugh.

Society seems to place a premium on being socially and politically correct in public

The “enlightened” enjoy a more refined sense of socially acceptable public visage than true matters of the heart. They know what their friends/followers/fans need to make sense of their own personality oddities and cater to those gaps or shortcomings daily.

Society seems to place a premium on being socially and politically correct in public. Say the right things, and the people will approve. Don’t question someone’s private behavior, mind you – what matters is what they say and do in front of an audience or a camera.  The “mask” they wear matters more than the face they bare in private.

Courtesy: Exceptional Sales Performance

I was reminded of this recently when considering Jesus’ final public sermon. Parts of this sermon can be found in Mark and Luke, but to get the full impact we must turn to Matthew 23.

First, a bit of context. The time is Tuesday or Wednesday during the final week of Jesus’ earthly ministry. A couple of days earlier, Jesus entered Jerusalem hailed as the prophesied Jewish Messiah by thousands who had made their way to the city for Passover.

Map courtesy CL Francisco

For three years Jesus had taken his message across the Judean landscape, tirelessly healing and teaching and preaching in synagogues from Bethsaida, Banias and Caesaria Philippi, to Bethany, Jericho and Jerusalem.  By day he taught and at night would find rest with friends and acquaintances. (As a side note, I found one interesting commentary that during his ministry alone Jesus walked over 4,000 miles.)

So now Jesus is in Jerusalem for his last fateful visit. As a prelude to his final public message his first act was to enter the Temple courts where he would teach and share the next three days. He immediately noticed several things: the money changers who converted non-Jewish coins into temple-acceptable tribute-paying shekels (and always at a premium to turn a profit); the dove and pigeon sellers who sold “acceptable sacrifices” at exorbitant prices; the sellers of cattle and sheep who offered these animals as Temple sacrifices, again at crushingly inflated rates.

Infuriated, Jesus overturns the merchants’ tables, temporarily interrupting the revenue flow of the Temple priesthood. Most scholars believe this was the final straw that set the Jewish authorities on a course to organize his arrest. Follow the money. An interesting debate has existing since the New Testament accounts first appeared on whether Jesus did this at the end of his ministry (as told in Matthew, Mark, and Luke), at the beginning of his ministry (as told in John), or both at the beginning and end. An well-reasoned explanation can be found here.

Next, Jesus begins addressing the gathering crowds in either the Court of the Gentiles or perhaps more likely the Court of Israel. An astonishing series of lessons follows, beginning with a direct challenge by the Temple rulers to his theological authority and continuing as he tells three parables (the Two Sons, the Tenants, and the Wedding Banquet), refutes Pharisees trying trap him on over a question of Roman Imperial Loyalty vs. Loyalty to God (paying taxes), defeats an attempt by the Sadducees to ensnare his understanding of scripture in a question of marriage after resurrection (of course, the Sadducees didn’t actually believe in the Resurrection), answered the question of which is the greatest commandment and then to the delight of the crowds stunned the Pharisees into embarrassed silence by proclaiming the Messiah was greater than David.

It’s likely these teachings and public rebukes of Jewish authority took place over a couple of days.  Yet while Jesus was probably drained and physically/mentally exhausted at the end of every day, the words, the challenges, the debates, all served to set the stage for what came next.

Jesus dismantles the moral authority of the Jewish order

On that Tuesday or Wednesday before he left the Temple for a final time to return to Bethany to rest and prepare for Thursday’s climatic arrest, Jesus turned his attention away from the Pharisees and focused again on the crowd. Yet his words were aimed like a heat-seeking blistering spear directly at the heart of the malignancy he knew the Priesthood had become.

Jesus’ open comments were devastatingly effective: “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat. So you must be careful to do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach.” (Emphasis mine).

*BOOM* In three sentences and 38 words (well, in the English translation at least), Jesus utterly dismantles the entire moral authority of the formal Jewish order declaring the whole priesthood corrupt and false. And he’s just getting started.

“Everything they do is done for people to see,” he says. Does this sound oddly familiar to what we see today in both the Church and secular worlds? “They love the place of honor at the banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues.”

Jesus then proclaims seven “woes” on the Pharisees and teachers – accusing them of shutting the doors of the Kingdom against the people, of turning their so-called “saved” into children of Hell, of being blind guides, of tithing from abundance but ignoring the matters of justice and mercy, of caring more for appearances than for substance, of murdering prophets, and finally foretelling with ominous prophetic vision that God Himself had left the Temple would not return to their presence until they accepted Jesus as the anointed Messiah.

“Really, that Jesus was such nice boy…”

So much for Charles Wesley’s “Gentle Jesus, Meek and Mild.”

The point is this. For three years Jesus preached and taught a message of salvation, a message of redemption through repentance and acceptance of Jesus as fulfillment of prophecy.  In encounter after encounter Jesus healed, forgave sins, and invited the lost home to God’s loving Grace. Yet in his final public appearance he laid out the brutal truth that hierarchy inevitably leads to brazen hypocrisy, false teaching and death.

Where do we see this today? The halls of Congress? Media moguls and their sycophant followers? The lofty modern cathedrals of megachurch celebrity pastors with their mansions and private jets and overflowing bank accounts? The holier-than-thou congregationalists demanding their self-assigned pews but never speaking a single word to the homeless and broken?

Brothers and sisters, hypocrisy lies at the very center of societal decay. Jesus saw that in the Temple and in the heart of man. 2,000 years later very little has changed.  To purge sin from our lives we can start with the masks we each wear every day – you and me.

Love God. Love your neighbor as yourself, regardless of who they might be.  Sin no more. Ask for mercy. Simple words of Truth, powerful words of Life.

Peace.
Colossians 1:17

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Dying for a Lie

“They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator–who is forever praised.” – Romans 1:25

Lying has been much on my mind recently. No, not me lying (I outgrew the novelty a long time ago and besides, it’s so time consuming keeping up – maybe there’s an App for that?).  Rather, lying in general.

Shhh … I know what I’m doing.

Lying can take many forms – from simple, “no one will know’” lies like padding an expense report or shaving six strokes from a golf score, to somewhat more serious lies such as cheating on taxes or one’s spouse (in either case they always eventually find out), to the most popular lies du jour involving political intrigue, to that most pernicious, consuming lie … lying to ourselves about who we really are.

In every case, lies are like cancer cells, colonizing in the hidden crevices of our souls and if unchecked metastasizing into raging, out-of-control black holes eating us alive from the inside, fed only by more lies in a never-ending ravenous cycle.

Lies are seductive, drawing us into worlds we wish could be so we don’t have to face the world that is. And the most insidious lies are self-affirming. We believe something is true, therefore we accept anything we hear or see or even experience supporting that belief.

Of course, social media only feeds this cycle. The disparity between one’s online profile and what actual exists behind that locked front door is often so great even we don’t recognize the person we pretend to be.

Which brings us to this passage in 2 Peter 1:16: “For we did not follow cleverly devised stories when we told about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.”

Let that sink in – no clever stories (i.e. “lies”) but rather the truth, to which they were direct witnesses. No face-saving or life-saving comments whitewashing the reality of their world. Instead, an unfiltered, unafraid proclamation of what they knew to be real: a man had lived, was arrested and crucified by Judean Prefect Pontius Pilate, had died on a cross, was buried, and then he had risen.

There is no ambiguity or parsing of words here, no focus group testing to spare offending the community. Pure, unvarnished truth. And to a person they did this in direct defiance of the most severe penalty the Roman Empire could impose – death by crucifixion on the charge of sedition.

We live in a society where profession of faith is, by comparison, relatively painless. Certainly there are dangerous places in the world today to be Christian, oppressive regimes smothering the free expression of faith. According to OpenDoorsUSA.org, every day 11 Christians are put to death for their faith, 7 churches are destroyed, and 24 acts of violence are committed against Christian believers. Still, across the vast majority of the planet, humans can and do espouse their belief freely.

Why would they die for a lie?

How much easier might it have been for that handful of followers who witnessed the crucifixion and Resurrection to stay silent when imprisoned by the Sanhedrin, or when arrested and paraded before their Roman overlords? How much less painful would their lives have been had they returned to their boats and nets, their tax collecting, their lives as physicians or wives?

At the center lies an obvious question: if the narrative we know today through the four canonical Gospels had not really happened, if Jesus had not really died, or having died had not appeared to them from the tomb as a Resurrected Savior, what could possibly have motivated them to dedicate and sacrifice the remainder of their own lives in futility? Why would they suffer or die for a lie?

Consider an alternative narrative. A charismatic itinerate rabbi with no recognized pedigree emerges from the backwater villages of Galilee, whips the locals into a frenzy through a combination of clever stories and cheap slight-of-hand trickery, runs afoul of the ruling class in Jerusalem, is arrested and convicted by the Jewish leaders who because they have no sanctioned death penalty make a deal with the local Roman strongman to change their charge of blasphemy into the imperial crime of Sedition and is unceremoniously nailed to a cross where he dies – end of story.

The entombment in a fresh grave site owned by a respected Jewish leader? The mysterious rolling back of the stone and disappearance of the body? The 40 days of appearances to the faithful following the fictitious resurrection, and the eventual ascension? None of these ever happened, fabricated out of whole cloth decades after the last eyewitnesses had themselves been executed or martyred.

This is what many skeptics would have us believe – that the resurrected Jesus story was nothing but a myth, a lie passed from generation to generation, growing with each retelling.

Let’s go back to the question – why would these men and women willingly suffer persecution for a lie? There was no upside for them. No cushy pensions, no villas in Capernaum, no lecture circuit fame with their 1st century equivalents to TED Talks such as “7 Things I Learned Walking on Water.” No, the only outcome for them was rejection, persecution, death.

To be sure there are those who tirelessly argue no basis exists for assuming the Apostles actually were martyred, much less executed for their beliefs as followers of a risen Messiah.  “Mass hysteria,” some argue. “Saving face,” others claim. “Grandstanding!” still another insists. For anyone interested in seeing how far the deniers will go, I recommend a blog called Cross Examined. Fair warning – this blog isn’t forgiving to Followers who believe traditional tenets.

The flaw with these and other arguments is in large part connected to a logical fallacy known as Presentism, where someone introduces present-day ideas and perspectives into past events. The followers of Jesus were first and foremost devout, practicing Jews. They were not counter-culturalists seeking a reformation of Judaism in the same way Martin Luther sparked the Christian Reformation in 1517. These were common men and women, practical and grounded, fearful of God.

The story did not tell itself

Yet following Jesus’ execution these same men and women upended their lives to share the Gospel story, first throughout Judea and Samaria in direct contravention of the Jewish Ruling Class edict “not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus,” then into the immediate Gentile world of Asia, Africa and the wider Middle East where they were often shunned and persecuted, and ultimately into the very heart of the Roman Empire where Peter and Paul would both (by tradition) die.

Deniers miss two key points here. First, the story did not tell itself. The sharing of Jesus’ story did not suddenly appear following the First Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. but instead was being passed from Believer to Believer within days of the Resurrection. The later written versions sprang directly from the verbal passage.

Second, the very same power structure that executed Jesus was still in place following his purported resurrection. The persecutions of followers began almost immediately and by the reign of Nero as Emperor in AD 54, being a “Christian” was so dangerous one might well end up as lion food in the Coliseum or dipped in candle wax and serve as a true Roman Candle.

While few “sane” people might subject themselves to this in the 21st Century, the followers of Jesus in the immediate years after his death and resurrection were absolutely convinced of a different Truth. They were eyewitnesses to God’s direct intervention in the course of history and as devout men and women of faith could not reject their mission, regardless of the cost.

The simple fact is not a single Follower in the first decades following the crucifixion was ever documented as confessing – freely or by persecution or torture – the Gospel story of the resurrection was a fake, a deliberate lie. And even in those cases where someone broke under torture, recanted their beliefs and converted to other religions, no Christian has been documented as believing the resurrection was a lie.

In his book “Knowing the Truth About the Resurrection” William Lane Craig writes: “The fact that the disciples were able to proclaim the resurrection in Jerusalem in the face of their enemies a few weeks after the crucifixion shows that what they proclaimed was true, for they could never have proclaimed the resurrection (and been believed) under such circumstances had it not occurred.”

The first followers of Jesus did not die for a lie.  Not because their reported persecutions were not real, but because their story was. Rather than escaping pain by telling a known falsehood, they embraced the consequences by sharing the original inconvenient truth to naysayers of the day: He Is Risen!

Peace.
Colossians 1:17

 

 

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Tempus Sugit?

Key West: July 4th week, 1990: fireworks over the water, deep sea fishing for Mahi-Mahi (tourist note: it was not an exactly inspired idea to boat out over choppy pre-dawn open ocean the day-after-the-night-before which may have included one or two extra shots of a smooth libation from what was then a relatively new player in the tequila market called Patron Spirits Company), touring through the charms of Hemingway’s adopted home town.

What I remember most about that Summer week (well, apart from spending time with an incredible woman who would become my wife) was … how time sort of stood still. I later learned there was a popular technique in bars and restaurants of Key West during those days to intentionally slow down service, purportedly enhancing the experience of “laid back cool” made famous by another Key West transplant, Jimmy Buffet.

Apparently the notion here was to encourage visitors to throw away their Daytimers (for the nostalgic folks, this was obviously during a day and age before the rise of the ubiquitous mobile device that these days so often substitutes for a social life), pack their watches in a suitcase (again, these were the days of long ago when watches simply told us what time of day and what day of the month we happened to be stumbling through) adopt an island state of mind and r-e-l-a-x. Oh, and whilst relaxing spend a lot of money. Such is the nature of commerce in the Conch Republic.

Witticisms aside, there was something incredibly freeing about the experience. After the first 24 hours of withdrawal it became serene, almost meditative to sit down in a restaurant or bar, wait at least 20 minutes for the server (casually standing in the corner with two other servers, biding their time and letting you settle in), and learn the art of unhurried conversation all over again.

Learn the art of unhurried conversation all over again.

I remembered this recently when considering how busy our lives have become. Calendars, schedules, meetings, “quick” coffees, calls, to-do lists, kids’ activities, date nights with partners or spouses, drinks with friends … so much to do, so little time.

I get it.

My own online calendar looks like a patchwork quilt on any given day. I even know folks who write their time with God in on their agendas: Wake up 5 am, Catch up on News 5:15 am, Workout 5:30 – 6:15 am, Bible Reading and God 6:30 – 6:45 am, Breakfast 6:45 am. Pencil God right in there between Pilates and Scrambled Eggs.

 

Personally, I blame Robert Hooke and Christiaan Huygens. Who? It turns out in 1657 these two guys argued over which one invented a little device called a balance spring which, when attached to the balance wheel in mechanical timepieces, caused the balance wheel to oscillate with a predictable frequency when the timepiece was running, thus allowing for a consistent “tick” in the spring. Voilà, the accurate pocket watch was born.

From there it’s a straight shot to 21st Century time management gurus who have us managing our days down to the 5 minute increments so popular with über-efficient productivity experts.

What does all of this have to do with God? More than you might imagine. As time awareness became more culturally ingrained, it found its way into organized church service structure and eventually into our time spent with private study of the Word.

We make time for God, but it has to be convenient: for most Protestant denominations, that means just about an hour, usually scheduled between 9:00 am and 11:00 am. Not too long to interfere with Sunday brunch (or, God

Yo, bra – is that song in the Hymnal?

forbid, game time – especially if you’re a Cowboys fan in Texas) but long enough to get in a few favorite hymns, a sermon that doesn’t put us to sleep, and some social time. Or if you’re more concerned with having serious Sunday morning pillow time, there’s always the Saturday evening service, just before heading to dinner. In and out, like the California burger chain.

In some cases, we take things even further to accommodate busy, scheduled, clock-driven lives. Our fellow worshipers in Catholicism have refined service scheduling to a high art. For instance, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, one of my favorite churches in the country, has (count ‘em) eight services each and every Sunday! Surely busy New Yorkers can squeeze in God time during one for those!

Yes, I’m being a bit tongue-in-cheek. But here’s the point. How many times did Jesus advertise his sermon times, making them convenient for the time conscious? I don’t recall seeing anything like this in scripture “This Sunday: The Beatitudes at 9, 11, 1 and a special evening service at 5:30. We’ll have plenty fish and bread, so BYOB.” 

Credit: Radio Free Babylon

Rather, scripture tells us Jesus simply created gatherings with no regard to time: “Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down.” (Matthew 5:1) Or he would spontaneously teach a lifetime’s worth of sermons in a single lesson on prayer: “One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.’” (Luke 11:1) Or, he would simply climb into a boat on the water and begin preaching: “Once again Jesus began teaching by the lakeshore. A very large crowd soon gathered around him, so he got into a boat. Then he sat in the boat while all the people remained on the shore. He taught them by telling many stories in the form of parables.” (Mark 4:1-2)

God isn’t impressed with our productivity, nor our busy lives.

Jesus didn’t carve out time for God. There was no “sandwiching” in his ministry; God simply was – 24/7/365.

God isn’t impressed with our productivity, nor our busy lives. He doesn’t care how many meetings we cram into a day, how many people pass through our sanctuary doors on any given Sunday, how many books we sell as well-known authors, or how large our bank accounts grow. Instead, His only interest is our willing hearts offered to Him in authentic worship, and to each other in love and friendship. There is nothing more important than this.

Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Church puts it this way: “If you’re too busy for God, you’re too busy … because you’re putting everything else in front of the number one commandment — love God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength.”

I began this post with a twist on the well-known Latin phrase “Tempus Fugit,” which loosely translated means “time flies.” I chose to rename it “Tempus Sugit,” or “Time Sucks.” Because time, and our preoccupation with it, doesn’t just fly, it can suck the life out of us, and our worship of God. It takes precedence over keeping our eyes on Jesus and instead keeps them on our calendars and to-do lists.

“Penciling God in” when it’s convenient, when our minds wander in His direction, when our calendars are open, when we’re concerned or out of control, when there are no looming deadlines, in those moments when life brings us crashing to our knees or we’ve just we score a huge success – none of these approaches help us cross the gulf to Grace.

I’m certainly not saying we don’t live in a different age that those who first heeded God’s call, nor that organizing our lives to ensure we attend church or spend time in the Word.  But no amount of scheduling or calendar management or momentary life intercession can ever truly bring us closer to God – in worship or at home. Only a willing heart and a broken watch.

Peace.
Colossians 1:17

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Lost

“If anyone, regardless of reputation or credentials, preaches something other than what you received originally, let him be cursed.” – Galatians 1:9

So, yeah – I’m a “guy” (apologies to the sensitive crowd who might consider that term unseemly in this age of identification correctness).

Let me explain.

  • I love football (the American kind – especially the Dallas Cowboys; don’t hate).
  • I consider well-made (vs. well-done, aka “burnt” in Texas vernacular) burgers a “Capital F” Food Group.

    Downlow Burger from Love & Salt (Los Angeles)
    Photo credit: la.eater.com
  • For me, a meaningful conversation with another “guy” can go like this: “Hey dude – what’s up?” “Not much, bro, you doin’ ok?” “Yeah, man, I’m great – wanna beer?”
  • It’s not a crime to wear the same gym clothes twice (ok, maybe more) without washing them.
  • And I have a genetic predisposition against asking directions.

See, it also turns out I have a love of all things technology. With fingertip access to what was once military-grade GPS systems on that little black appendage semi-permanently attached to the end of my arm, I feel no need to get help from passing pedestrians or especially my ever-faithful-passenger-seat companion (aka my wife) on where I took that last wrong turn. But then, I seem to take wrong turns … a lot. Another story for another post.

It is, however, a great segue to this post. Because it seems to me most of us make wrongs turns … a lot. And this is nowhere truer than in that messy family we call the Church.

It might be easy to support this statement by citing works from writers like Palmer Theological Seminary Professor Ron Sider in his book The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience where he details how evangelical Christians are just sort of like the rest of society: same divorce rate, same indifference to the poor, nearly the same rate of unmarried cohabitation, etc.

If Christians are just as flawed as everyone else, what makes the Church so special?

So if Christians are just as flawed as everyone else, what makes the Church so special? This seems to be a favorite theme these days of en vogue “New Christian” bloggers, pointing to the flawed nature of humanity as Exhibit 1 in their argument that sin is our common bond and thus should be our commonly accepted bondage, freeing us from judgment of any kind.

Yet such easy arguments miss a vastly larger issue: over the last several decades the Church itself has lost its way. Consider what many churches look like today: vast amphitheaters catering to a “here I am, entertain me” mindset craving worship services more akin to rock concerts; in-house coffee shops with central casting baristas complete with just the right combination of tats and piercings; senior pastors delivering sermons tailor made for TED Talk cult status; painless sermons about the great things God has in store for us; empty rhetoric more concerned with talking about change than actually being change.

In many ways, the modern church has fallen victim to “cult-of-movement” worship. Where in the past the Church adapted to a culture and then worked to change it for the better, it seems that today’s church too often adapts to culture in order to be accepted by it as-is. Individualism and consumerism have replaced community and Kingdom. More “me” and less “He.”

Photo credit: theodysseyonline.com

This kind of worship promises fulfillment and purpose found in devout spiritual practice without awkward things like doctrine, teaching, commandments, sacrifice, obedience, or discipline. Jesus is preached more like a hip celeb with 2.2 billion Twitter followers than the Word in the Beginning. Personal relationships are promised with God, comforting and loving, just not sacrificial ones.

Today’s church too often adapts to culture in order to be accepted by it as-is

Credit: Gallup

For many, this type of “worship experience” fulfills their needs. Show up on Sunday (or Saturday night for the contemporary types), get a familiarly caffeinated dose of community, sing a few anthem songs, hear a killer sermon (a poll released by Gallup from April of this year indicated that 75% of worshippers say the sermon is their primary reason for attending church). All done till next week.

Don’t think I’m ridiculing these church-goers – this is where they are and God meets them right there, and their needs. It’s just that elevating the individual experience comes at the expense of God’s desire for real community (Ephesians 4:16). And opens the door for an errant Gospel.

For millions more, these attempts by the church to be more culturally relevant – through activities and missions nearly indistinguishable from secular social activism, to outspoken celebrity pastors taking positions more appropriate in a political campaign rally, to scripture-light series resembling Tony Robbins seminars – ring empty and hollow.

Credit: Business Insider

Which may help explain why less than 36% of the U.S. population now attends church yet when asked nearly 60% claim to be spiritual and to even pray regularly. Something seems missing from much of organized Christianity today for a vast number of believers.

There are, perhaps, a number of reasons for this drifting away from an Acts 2 or Galatians 1 vision of how Church and Community were designed to heed the Gospel. The need for cultural relevance might be a major contributor. As social activists grow louder in their demands for sloganeered “Social Justice,” accepting any and all points of view as equal, the appeal of a church doctrine which appears judgmental gets lost in the noise, relegated to the trash heap of “yesterday’s” religion. “All good paths lead to God and the Church just needs to get over itself,” claim the prophets of New Faith.

And as churches attempt to self-correct, adopting missions and messages deemed more “tolerant” irrespective of true Biblical inspiration, traditional conservative worshipers who feel these churches are straying from the Word may leave in search of something else – or even abandon church altogether; often transforming their faith from a light for the whole world into a lamp hidden under their nightstands (Matthew 5:14-15).

No easy answers exist for those who, to paraphrase Indian philosopher Bara Dada, “like Christ but reject Christians” (as represented by the Church). Perhaps the perceived hypocrisy of some modern Christians is too strong to overcome. Or perhaps folks have simply become inoculated from the real message of the Gospel, as Pastor Doug Ponder recently suggested in this post.

Regardless, if the Church is to emulate Jesus’ example of ministering to the lost, it must first find its way back. That means returning to the real meaning of Salvation, to the Truth that modern cries for Social Justice based on good intentions and actions often ignore the fundamental role of Faith in Christ alone.

Salvation, freely offered, comes at a cost

We can’t simply “feel” our way to God, nor purchase our way into Grace through good deeds or euphemisms. Nor do we earn Salvation by accepting God’s will; rather, we accept Salvation by following the commands and direction given to us by God.

Salvation, freely offered, does come at a cost, requiring that we turn away from actions and behaviors that may seem acceptable to the world but from which God hides face (Isaiah 59:2). This was the heart of Paul’s message to the Galatians in verse 1:10 “Am I trying to win the approval of human beings or of God?”

Scripture and Biblical instruction are not tired relics from an irrelevant past. They are, as Jesus tells us in John 15, what we must do to receive the gift God offers through the price of the Cross. And when we follow God’s will rather than what the world expects, we may be hated and rejected, criticized and ridiculed and accused, for we offer no safe harbor for sin.

Yes, to some this path seems rigid, even scary. No wonder there’s such temptation to dilute the Gospel message, to soften scripture’s message into one more palatable to modern tastes where no one is told what is right or wrong.

And it’s no mystery churches have lost their way trying to respond. Fortunately there’s a GPS (and even a few Apps) for that. It’s called the Bible. And within its pages are all the directions we will ever need to follow God’s call home.

Peace.
Colossians 1:17

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Beakers and Bibles – God vs. Science

Electric pickles, homemade snow and slime – just the stuff boyhood dreams were made of (at least my boyhood with the chemistry set mom gave me for my 9th birthday). I loved experimentation and discovery, the reduction of things to smaller things, getting to the “heart of heart,” as a one of my junior high science teachers once said.

For our next experiment, let’s create the known universe from these five ingredients!

Eventually (as with all things in my life) this experimentation and discovery journey led me back to God, the original source of all truth. I wish there had been a book like Tina Houser’s “Beakers, Bubbles & the Bible” back then! Nothing like experiments with magnets and paper clips to explain God’s love for us.

Which brings me to a recent post I made reflecting on a few thoughts around Good Friday. As usual, I ran the full social media spectrum spread including FB, Twitter, email, and other sources.

Apparently it got some traction, probably because I mentioned Brussels Sprouts in the title! Someone (not a follower of mine) saw it on Twitter and re-tweeted to their timeline.  At some point, someone else makes a comment (including my Twitter name) ridiculing the post asking “Why the hell is there religious s%$t on my timeline?”  Not to be outdone, someone else replied “They’ll probably follow up with a Bible verse,” followed by a third comment saying “They can’t help themselves, for them it’s faith over facts.”

Faith over facts…. Now, I’d normally ignore silly comments like these but hey, it was Good Friday.  So I messaged all three individuals saying I’d be delighted to discuss facts and faith with them anytime.  As is typical with what social media folk refer to as internet trolls, only one actually got back to me with a tired attempt at a pithy comment about not needing fairy tales but still gave me his email address with a comment something to the effect of “bring it on!”

This was my reply (if this gets a little eye-rollingly dense because I was attempting to speak to a guy professing an understanding of science, feel free to skip to the end):

“You know, @SokhavySheik” (not his real Twitter handle), “I was raised by an ardent atheist father and have had to defend my views on faith since I was in elementary school. I get the whole ‘I’m too smart to believe in mythology’ stuff, I really do. Heck, I did a stint during college in comparative world religions and even went through my staunch Deist phase.  Perhaps you did, too.

There must be an answer…

“So let’s try this a different way, a way which might appeal to your need for facts versus Faith. I have no conflicts in believing the Universe came into existence some time around 13.8 billions years ago (we don’t really know, of course), and at just around the 10−43 seconds  mark (that’s about one quintillionith of a second) into this new Creation quantum mechanics engages, generating dynamic cosmic inflation which in turn creates quark-gluon plasma, eventually (over the next 299 seconds) leading to the supremacy of matter over anti-matter, and then sometime around the first 300 seconds forms helium, lithium, and heavy hydrogen (deuterium and Helium 3) from nascent protons and neutrons by a process called nucleosynthesis.  From there, nature sort of starts the chain reaction of laws balancing laws and matter reacting to matter and *boom* here we are debating the nature of reality (told you I was once a Deist).

“Center ball can do it all …”

“Yet I also have no conflict believing a creative life force (aka “God,” aka “El-Shaddai,” aka “Jehovah,” aka “Yahweh”) purposefully willed all of this into being and has been personally interacting with Creation over those same last 13.8 billion years. To believe that, I ascribe extra-natural causation. To wit: ‘In the beginning …’ and so forth.  This approach doesn’t negate scientific law but rather allows for intent and design. If you’re a billiards guy, think of it as the pool cue striking the cue ball with just the right angle, velocity and trajectory to set the table in motion.

“You, on the other hand, believe in a science maintaining that for eternity there was nothing except, perhaps, an infinite expanse of quarks and leptons swimming in helium-4, helium-3 and deuterium which somehow spontaneously coalesced into what we refer to as this same Big Bang, combusting into everything we know today including that keyboard you spend so much time with.  Your scientific basis for this (if you didn’t already know) is founded mostly on Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, an essentially unsolved equation requiring the introduction of quantum potential (a sciency-like term basically saying ‘we don’t know but we think it could be this or that’) and a probabilistic explanation for the nature of reality.  Your equations rely on unquestioning belief in String Theory (by definition unprovable and for which to-date there remain no predictions that can validate its truth) and hypothetical Planck-length particles. See all the conditionals here? Hoo-boy.

“Setting aside little questions like ‘where did the quarks, leptons, helium-4, helium-3, and deuterium come from?’ I’m struggling with your equation that ties it all together. Did your guys ever solve that inch-long ‘Theory of Everything’ equation Einstein couldn’t figure out?

“Better yet, let’s try something a little simpler, something your chemistry-set religion can surely solve.  I believe God is the sole author of all Creation, existing uniquely outside the constraints of our 4-dimensional minds (and I’m including time here just to keep things interesting), yet capable of reaching into Creation at will. You believe in the intention-less superiority of science.

“So here’s my challenge: show me how your science can spontaneously grow a single strand of human hair using only the basic elements of 18 amino acids, lipids, sterols, fatty oils, sphingosine, triglycerides (yeah, that stuff your doctor probably told you was too high), squalene, melanin (you pick from eumelanin or phaeomelanin), some water (I won’t ask you to create Hydrogen or Oxygen – that’ll be a gimme between the two of us) and a few trace mineral elements.  You know, kind of an ‘Iron Chef’ competition for Creation.

Ultimately, science resolves into the same “unknowns” as Faith

“And no, I’m not talking about duplicating Angela Christiano’s 2013 experiment of taking cells from the scalps of prematurely balding men and grafting them on the backs of mice to mimic hair growth. I’m talking the real deal – take some beakers of raw materials, work your sciency magic and grow me a strand of hair.  Then we can talk about faith vs. facts.”

Yes, I know I threw a lot at @SokhavySheik. But as I mentioned, it was Good Friday, so there’s that. And the response to date? Crickets. Because ultimately, science simply resolves into the same “unknowns” as Faith. I just choose to believe there is a benevolent, loving, intentional God at the center of Creation rather than random noble gases and theoretical particles.

Here’s the thing. Believers need never fall into the faulty-logic trap of arguing God over Science. Our God is big enough to provide us brains to hypothesize any Universe we care to imagine. Or, in the words of Baylor University Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and proponent of intelligent design Robert J. Marks: “Saying the Bible is not a book about science is like saying a cookbook is not a book about chemistry.” They’re sort of the same things (at least certain parts, such as the entire first chapter of Genesis). And that God is patient enough to allow our ponderings and debate and arguments and science-ing until we find ourselves intellectually exhausted and right back where this story starts: “In the beginning…”

The events of Good Friday (and of the entire Biblical Story) are about an entirely different metaphysical currency: the currency of Redemption. There is simply no science, no hypothetical phantom bits, no equation, no String Theory, no Quantum Effect, no Multiplex Universe that will ever explain the circumstances and aftermath of Calvary, nor fully describe the simplicity and infinite complexity of John 3:16.

I kept my chemistry set a long time, along with the super cool physician-grade microscope by dad bought me when he still had hopes I’d grow up to be a doctor (sorry, Dad).  I never forgot the lessons of wonder these instruments of man taught me. And the love for accepting the unknown universe around me, allowing room in my tiny brain for the greater recognition that God was, is, and will be all things.

Try sliming that, @SokhavySheik!

Peace.
Colossians 1:17

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Brussels Sprouts, Minding Medicine, and Good Friday: Four Reflections

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.” – Matthew 16:21-25

Growing up there were two things I absolutely detested: Brussels Sprouts and a certain type of medicine for a certain type of embarrassing infection for which the treatment was – from my 6-year old perspective – worse than the symptoms! Fortunately, my mother was a saint and taught me to eventually savor the Sprouts and mind the medicine. Gotta love moms.

For some Christians, Good Friday is a bit like that. Or, as another pastor once put it, asking followers to embrace Good Friday is little bit like asking them embrace torture – or nails on a chalkboard!

Truth is, Good Friday is perhaps the most curiously circumspect day in Christendom’s Liturgical Year (fancy term meaning “calendar”). It doesn’t have an entire season of shopping, “bracket” holidays, and mangers with wise men surrounding it like Christmas; it doesn’t have the Joy and Celebration of its big brother Easter just two days later; nor does it have the sacrificial appeal of Lent, where we get to give up something for 40 days (but nothing too hard, of course).

To be sure, nowhere in Scripture are we instructed to build sacraments around the Friday before Easter. Early Christians remembered it as a day of sorrow, penance, and fasting, which is represented in the modern German tradition of Karfreitag (“Sorrowful Friday”). But Jesus never said as he was being led off to trial “Remember this day whenever you gather.”

Still, from my perspective Good Friday is a profound day of revelation, of contemplation, and while dreadful in how it ends, portentous in what it foretells.

This Good Friday, here are four things that come to mind when I reflect on this day and what it represents.

1.  Good Friday is the narrow gateway to Easter Sunday.

For most of us, Good Friday is about the crucifixion of Jesus – pure and simple: black-draped crosses, somber faces of mourning, even Good Friday services with sound effects recreating the hammering of nails into the wrists and feet of Eternal God incarnate.

As followers, we are called not to the tomb, but to the Cross.

Yet it strikes me that we often focus too much on the end of the scene rather than the backstory, the full narrative.

As followers, we are called not to the tomb, but to the Cross. Remember, Mary is asked by the messengers at the empty tomb: “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he is risen!”

We rush to the tomb, to Easter morning, to the Resurrection without fully embracing that without Good Friday there is no Easter Sunday. The pathway to redemption runs straight through the one-way road of what happens on that fateful Friday.

Consider how much of the story of God and man occurs on that single day. The second-guessing of God’s sovereignty and kingdom plans, the interplay of temptation vs. submission, the secularized mocking of Jesus as the Living Word, the rejection of salvation in favor of personal gain … the list is virtually endless.

Simply put, the entire Biblical story is replayed in the hours before the main event (the Crucifixion), and the most compelling and redeeming aspect of Good Friday is how faithful Jesus stayed to his calling, even in the hours of praying in Gethsemane, even as he was paraded before the Sanhedrin for a sham trial, even as Herod goaded him to provide a single miracle for entertainment value, even as Pilate debated him on the nature of Truth, even as he hung on the Cross.

The story of Easter is the story of perseverance and trust. There can be no Easter Sunday without Good Friday and overcoming the spiritual warfare of that pivotal moment. Without the Cross, and the devotion to walking through the narrow gateway leading there, there is no resurrection. Good Friday is our only path to Easter Sunday.

 2. The Cross is still a problem.

How must Jesus’ arrest and execution have been seen through the eyes of his followers? In less than 12 hours, his entire 42 months of ministry, perhaps even the whole of Messianic prophecy appeared to collapse, to be proven false. Where was the Kingdom? Where was the triumphal Messiah? The power he used to help others completely failed him during these dire hours. He was, it seemed, outwitted, outplayed. How could that happen?

Yet both Jesus’ followers and his accusers completely missed the real message of his life, as Jesus himself told Andrew and Philip in John 12:24: “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it abides alone, but if it dies, it produces many.” In deed as well as word, Jesus lived out the very parables he taught.

Even today, some Christians have a problem with the Cross. To have meaning, the Cross must show us miracles and power. It must demonstrate right now the ability of God to take away our pain and suffering. It must reveal wisdom and truth.

Ultimately, God first offers us the Cross through Jesus, the road of surrender, then salvation. In writing to the Corinthians, Paul calls this “the power of and the wisdom of God.” (I Corinthians 1:24). It is the power and wisdom of Jesus in surrendering his will to God that leads him directly to the Cross.

Many Christians today prefer not to think about suffering. In fact, entire ministries are built on the concept of God as a force of comfort, with no sacrifice or suffering required. According to this view, the Cross was not actually necessary, just a prop used to wake up the knuckleheads too dim-witted to see the God in all of us.

The real meaning of the Cross is that our own power or reason or abilities are never enough to earn our way to salvation. Jesus relinquished his will, and so, too, must we.

3. Good Friday is the beginning, not the end.

It’s been said that all change happens in an instant – only our agonizing over the decision takes time. This is no truer than the events taking place on Good Friday and culminating at the Cross.

From the moment of man’s fall in the first garden, our history unfolded as a long, slow, tortuous dialogue with our own consciences, with each other, and with God over how we should respond. We warred, we railed against God’s plea to turn from iniquity, we excused and rationalized our brokenness.

On Good Friday, God stepped into His creation and offered the “instant” change we could not find in ourselves. The Cross is that change. God allows us to put His sovereignty over our lives on trial. He allows us to mock Him. He allows us to beat and debase Him. And yes, He even allows us to hang Him from the Cross of our own imperfections.

Yet, through all of this He remains faithful, inviting us to join Him at the very Cross we created, the very Cross to which He was nailed that we might be free. He compels us to see the broken and bloodied body of His Son. And to see our own broken and bloodied lives hanging with him.

Good Friday is the moment of that change. It is the Beginning of a Redeemed Life. This is the meaning of Jesus’ death, and of the rending of the Temple veil described in Matthew 27:51, Mark 15:38, and Luke 23:44. God is no longer separated from Man, the price of our falling away has been paid.

In our rush to celebrate the empty tomb of Easter, we cannot overlook our own complicity in the agony and cost of the Cross. Good Friday is the beginning of the change within each of us. 

4. Faith always prevails, even when we doubt.

Finally, there is a moment – a crucial moment – at the Cross; a moment unlike any other in Scripture. Throughout his ministry, Jesus had been tempted and tested. Obstacles and roadblocks had been thrown in his path. In Gethsemane he asked God if there was another way. Yet through all of that his faith never wavered.

Then came these four words: “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” meaning “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” – the one and only time in the New Testament where Jesus does not refer to God as his father. Yes, he was quoting Psalm 22:1, perhaps reminding those gathered at his feet of the foretelling of this very moment. But deeper than that, it was the one moment in his entire earthly existence where he truly become just like us – separated from God, alone in the sea of a sinful world, filled with the desolation of being unconscious of His Father’s presence.

And yet, a few mere breaths and heartbeats later the isolation passes and just as the Psalm 22 ends with hope and praise, Jesus utters these words “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” Even in death, Jesus shows us how faith triumphs. What his disciples failed to grasp time and again about his ultimate destiny, Jesus finally demonstrated – literally – in the flesh. And all through faith.

Jesus knew what lay before him. The comfort of a promised resurrection did not calm the fear of a painful, humiliating death. Yet in his death as in his life, Jesus models for us what faith and trust in God’s plan really means.

On this Good Friday, pause and consider what God is asking you to surrender so that His love might heal you. Perhaps you’ll find your own way to “savor the Sprouts and mind the medicine!”

Peace.
Colossians 1:17

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Men and the Messy Business of Relationship

“I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go.” – Genesis 28:15

“Boys” (*dad-shudder*). As the undeserving father of two beautiful, vibrant daughters I can say with confidence that for fathers the “B” word may well be the second scariest plural noun in the English language. Beginning sometime around the second month of fifth grade and continuing non-stop until an unbearably long, tear-filled walk down an inevitably too-short aisle when “boys” becomes “husband,” we dads struggle continuously with the Barbarians at the Gate we once worked so hard ourselves to be.

Which brings me to what may arguably be the scariest word in the English language for dads everywhere (and men in general). The “R” word – Relationship. Yes, it’s true. Even the strongest men, backyard bruisers who can grill for 20 with perfect temperature control while swilling a cooler full of iced Heineken and reciting every line from Braveheart and Gladiator, even these guys can become wobbly puddles of man-goo at the thought of the R word.

We guys dread R things. Like meeting “the boyfriend” – the one with the bad hair and the entirely too shifty eyes (you’ve met him – you may have been him). We draw blanks when our spouses or partners want to sit down over a glass of wine and have the “R” conversation. And when do guys ever talk about our “relationship” with Bob or Jim or Pete?

“I don’t care if I’m Toby Maguire – no shoulder rubs!”

Most guys simply don’t “do” relationship (the verb, not the noun). We have our poker night buddies, the guys we hang out with during each Season  (Sports, not Fashion or the latest binge-watching series), the dudes we see at the gym, the significant others we tolerate at parties, heck – we’re even on first names with our hairstylists (we used to call them barbers). We “know” guys, we just don’t always have “relationships” with them.

Relationships are messy businesses. They’re hard. Done right, they require advanced socialization skills like listening, considering, actual discourse. They take empathy and understanding. They take, well, they take love. Another word that sends shivers down many of our steely spines. It’s just so much easier to assume than to act.

Relationships don’t “complete” us, they refine us.

Yet relationships are the essence of human interaction. With apologies to Jerry Maguire, relationships don’t “complete” us, they refine us. Relationships allow us safe refuge to cycle out the psychological toxins pumped into our psyches by 21st century living. We get to wrestle with someone else’s view of who we are, try it on for size, checking out the view in a virtual 3-side mirror of love and trust and respect, only to realize the sleeves are too long or too short, or the color just doesn’t suit us, or there aren’t enough pockets. Relationships give us the freedom to grow or not. They can bring us together, or drive us apart.

Turns out God has more than a few things to say on this subject. In fact, one might argue that God is entirely about relationship. Relationship with Him. Relationship with each other. Relationship with our own fractured selves.

The passage from Genesis I opened with was not accidental. From the very beginning of His narrative defining the human experience, God set the tone: “I am with you. I will watch over you wherever you go.” Unqualified. Unbound. Unending.

Imagine for a moment if our relationships with each other were this pure, this transparent. Imagine if we honestly said to one another “I’m right here, right beside you. I’ll be here when you need me.”  Not in some touchy-feely Facebook way, and not just with those closest to us.  But with everyone we meet, every living, breathing soul with whom we share this experience of life.

God is very direct on the subject of relationship. Throughout man’s unfolding story of awareness in God and His plan of Salvation, one theme has reverberated again and again. We are the vessels of grace bestowed by God. It’s our interaction with and relationship to one another that breathes life into the promise of the Kingdom. “The kingdom is among you,” Jesus tells us.

Men – and women – can learn endless lessons from how Jesus demonstrated the art and practice of relationships. We can all follow his example, even those of us who struggle with the enormity and, yes, messiness of the religion that has evolved over the centuries in his name. And it’s really quite simple if we get our heads and self-focus out of the way. Try the following exercise with me sometime in the next week.

1) Think of three people you know, three people you care for, but whom you’ve not connected with in a while. Perhaps they are close friends, perhaps they are people you just met.

2) Write down their names and something meaningful about them. Study that a moment, feel it. Imagine seeing the world from their eyes and from their lives, rather than your perception of it.

3) Reach out. Email, phone, handwritten note, maybe even get in the car and pay a decidedly pre-21st century actual visit. Tell them you were thinking of them. Tell them you care. Invite them into your life.

4) Encourage them to do the same, paying it forward to three of their friends and acquaintances.

God tells us He will always be with us, watching over us wherever we go. He does that for all of us, freely. How much less it is for us to do the same for each other.

Peace.
Colossians 1:17

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Five Things You Think You Know (But Really Don’t) – #5 BAD THINGS

“For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” – 1 Corinthians 13:9, 12

12:39 AM, July 20, 2012. The first calls come into 911 dispatch in Aurora, Colorado. 90 seconds later, police arrive on the scene at theater 9 at the Century 16 Cinemark multiplex located at 14300 E. Alameda Avenue in the Town Center at Aurora shopping mall. What they find is nothing short of horrific.

Eighty-two casualties were reported on the scene, including twelve fatalities ranging from a 6 year-old girl to a 51 year-old father. Seventy people were hit by bullets while four people had eye damage from tear gas and eight were injured trying to flee the theatre.

“If God really existed, this would never happen.”

The public outcry was immediate and unanimous.  “How could this happen?” some asked. “Why didn’t someone see this coming?” others questioned. And then there was the ever-present chorus from the non-Believer choir: “If God really existed, things like this would never be allowed to happen.”

All of these reactions are normal.  Inoperable disease, mass murder, unwanted divorce after 30 years of marriage, an inexplicable automobile accident in the middle of the night, an airplane crashing into a mountainside during a snowstorm … so many innocent, good people senselessly hurt, lives destroyed.

How could a loving God allow such pain and sorrow to exist? Perhaps there’s no God at all, or maybe stuff just happens, even to Believers. “Why, God? Why me? Why us?”

This is the heart of our fifth and final installment of things we think are in the Bible but really aren’t:

#5 BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE

On the surface, it actually makes sense.  “Good” people are tested by God and “bad” things happen to them for lessons to be learned.  There must be a reason.

Addressing this subject, Rick Warren writes: “This ‘why’ question is human nature, and we all ask it. We have this misconception that if we understand the reason behind our pain, then it will make the pain easier.” As rational beings living in the Post-Enlightenment Age, we can explain anything if we just understand it.

Yet, this very same “why” question isn’t new; it goes back millennia.

It was asked by Job and by David in Psalms; Jesus cried it out from the cross; Giovanni Boccaccio wrestled with the question during the Renaissance; and it was especially relevant during the last century, with global conflicts including two World Wars, the massacre of Jews and others at the hands of the Nazi regime, genocides in the Soviet Union and China, seemingly endless famines in Africa, the Khmer Rouge killing fields, the scourge of AIDS, the travesty in Rwanda and ethnic cleansing of the Kosovo War.

And this century didn’t start much better. First came 9/11 and now the Syrian slaughters, and on and on. Why do all of these horrific things happen if there’s a loving and powerful God? Why do bad things happen to good people?

The straight answer is this: except in cases of His direct intervention (for instance, the Creation Event, or the Flood Event, or the protection offered to Moses in fleeing Pharaoh, or especially the birth, ministry, execution and resurrection of Christ), God does not directly cause or prevent either the “good” or “bad” things that happen to humans, natural or manmade.  Let’s explore this with three quick observations.

First, God is not the creator of evil and suffering.  While God exists eternally as Father, Son and Holy Spirit entwined in a perfect relationship of love, humans were created with free will to either experience or reject that love.  Love requires a choice.

We ask: “But doesn’t God know before hand? Can’t He stop it?” The question, while real, misses the larger point: even in situations where we may be the innocent victim of someone else’s madness or a savage disease, the reality of free choice must run its course, otherwise we humans are little more than mindless automatons.

Second, evil and suffering, while tragic,  are used by God for His greater purpose in drawing humans to His presence.  As Paul writes in Romans 8:28: “We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”  Notice Paul doesn’t say how God creates good from bad circumstances, or when any of us will personally see how it plays out. Nor does God promise this to everyone. He makes the covenant that our suffering can be turned to good if we commit to following Him.

Finally, we each decide if suffering makes us bitter or strengthens our faith. In times of deep crisis, especially after we’ve prayed as deeply and most convicted as we can, it’s natural to feel disappointment, anger, or even disbelief when those prayers are not answered. The death of a child to  cancer, a heart attack in the middle of the night, a business failure leading to bankruptcy … senseless pain.  Why, God, why?

On May 3, 1980, 13-year-old Cari Lightner, was killed by a drunken hit-and-run driver in Fair Oaks, California. Her mother, Candace Lightner, could understandably have fallen into endless despair and grief, bitter at the world. Instead, she quit her job four days after the accident and founded Mothers Against Drunk Drivers (MADD). She turned tragedy to good by taking action. “In all things God works for the good of those who love him.”

Jesus said in John 16:33: “I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace. You will have suffering in this world. But be courageous! I have conquered the world.”

God doesn’t want us to need an explanation; He wants us to need His strength, to need a Savior, to need comfort and support.  He wants us to trust His will completely.  He asks that we surrender everything to Him – even our grief.

Tragedy will strike; suffering will come; we will struggle and wrestle with pain. But if we run into God’s grace, we’ll discover peace in our hearts for today, strength for tomorrow, and the staggering assurance of eternal life.

Peace.
Colossians 1:17

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Five Things You Think You Know (But Really Don’t) – #4 LOVE

“He answered, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” – Luke 10:27

I tried to be a good kid. Like, really hard.  But that never seemed to keep me out of trouble!  Take, for instance, that time in first grade when I dunked Peggy “Perky” Perkins’ french braid pigtails in finger paint.  Or the Summer between fourth and fifth grade when I carved my alter-ego initials into a neighbor’s concrete carport.  Or when I nearly got suspended from high school because it never dawned on me that “Fire Lanes” really were meant for Fire Trucks and not my shiny blue ’74 Audi 100 LS. Coincidentally (as some of my high school pals remember), I ended up parking that car in a deep ditch a few weeks later. I’m not sure my dad ever quite got over that…

C’mon – this baby just screams “park me anywhere!”

Of course, in each case (and so many more it’s rather embarrassing to mention them), I was ultimately confronted by the disappointment and sometimes stern faces of my parents.  Yet as hard as it was at the time, I always knew in my heart they loved me – unconditionally.  Yes, they expected genuine apologies and often required me to make amends, but they were always there to pick me up and dust me off. Good as new.

How often do we imagine God in this way? How often do we feel:

#4 GOD’S LOVE IS UNCONDITIONAL

Many folks think God is like this – always there to love us and forgive us no matter what we do.  His love is completely “condition-less,” given freely with no strings.  Yet they base this view on a misunderstanding of the nature of God’s love for us.

Interestingly, the term “unconditional love” appears exactly nowhere in Scripture.  No early church thinker or writer used the term.  In fact no author of Christian works of any kind used “unconditional love” before the 20th century. The term was actually coined by renowned atheist Erich Fromm in 1934.  Post-modern faith celebrities such as Richard Rohr or Wilkie and Noreen Au take this concept further, integrating psychology, new-age spirituality and “science-y” talk to present God’s love as holistic spirituality, costless and without strings.

The popularity of this notion is understandable.  Humans embrace love from a secular, or “human” perspective.  Our love as children of our parents (and our love as parents for our children), our love for spouses or partners, out love for brothers and sisters – all of these examples and others are based on a “no-boundaries” mindset and  stem from a deep need for what psychologists call “unconditionals” – basic human needs essential to a person’s well-being.  We love and accept those closest to us unconditionally, just the way they are.

It’s natural to believe God mirrors this, loving us and accepting us exactly as we are. The problem is we then follow that with the idea that if God loves and accepts people unconditionally, we should also love and accept ourselves unconditionally.  “I’m fine just like I am,” we say, “I don’t need to change anything!”

Of course, humanistic love is unconditional right up until … someone lies, or cheats, or hurts, or betrays so deeply we break off all association, never re-opening our hearts to them.  This is one reason divorce rates in this country remain surprisingly high.  And here lies the key distinction.

Equating humanistic, “unconditional” love and acceptance (until it’s not) with God’’s immeasurable, incomprehensible, and unwarranted love is a fundamental misreading of scripture. Humanistic love is typically responsive – that is, someone loves us, and we love them in return.  On the other hand, God’s love is a love that initiates, a love that always IS.  God’s door is always open, because there’s simply no door.  Yet even as the door is open, God doesn’t drag us through … we have to walk in.

Many point to the Parable of the Prodigal, arguing the father in the story, representing God, unconditionally welcomes his wayward son home. And yes, he does bring out the robes and rings, kills the fatted calf and throws a huge party celebrating his son’s return.  The same son who had essentially said “give me my share now, you’re dead to me, dad.”

But notice what the father didn’t do. He didn’t throw a party for the son in absentia.  He didn’t break out the robes and bling celebrating his son while the kid was still traipsing off in far lands with prostitutes and drunkards. He didn’t celebrate his son being “alive again” until he came home.

We must change our hearts to receive the fullness of God’s love.

The difference is that while the father’s door is always open, the celebration only happens when the son returns, not while he’s straying.  If the son never comes home, he remains – in the words of the father – “dead.” He must change to receive the fullness of the father’s love. By extension, we must change our hearts to receive the fullness of God’s love.

Pastor Miles McPherson prays with Greg Hendricks

Miles McPherson, former defensive back for the San Diego Chargers turned senior pastor of The Rock Church, puts it this way: “Having God’s unconditional love does not mean you have God’s unconditional acceptance.” God loves us unconditionally, but he will not receive us unconditionally.

Jesus tells us in John 14:6 “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” This, then is the change we must make.  Accept that Christ is the single path to God. Reject the traps hidden in living “of this world.”  Turn away from the common notion that mankind’s morality has somehow evolved over the last 2,000 years and what mattered then is irrelevant now.

God is ready and willing to welcome us home.  His arms are strong enough to pick us up, dust us off, and drape us with robes of grace.  And just like our parents, He’s there to put us back together when we break and come back home. Good as new.

Peace.
Colossians 1:17

 

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Five Things You Think You Know (But Really Don’t) – #3 TRIALS

“For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself.” – 2 Corinthians 1:8

An acquaintance of mine is a former Navy Seal – yeah, one of those guys. Actually, my friend (we’ll call him “Keysi” for this post, after the Keysi Fighting Method, made famous by the Chris Nolan “Batman” films) is one of the most unassuming and laid back guys I know. Of course, I’ve also never been the object of his ire so there’s that.

We were talking a while back – Keysi’s reluctant to ever discuss anything related to his active duty experiences but occasionally shares a story or two about his days in training to be a Frogman – and I asked him to tell me what got him through BUD/S  training (short for Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL).

“HooYah, HooYah, HooYah, HEY! Today’s gonna be another easy day!”

Given that BUD/S generates an extraordinary 80%+ dropout rate over the six-month program and he survived it, I assumed his response would be something like “mental stamina” or “toughing it out.”

He paused a moment and then said “You know, they tried hard to break us – every minute of every day. Hell Week was one of the most grueling experiences of my life, what with the steel pier, the demo pit, the 24-hour training with no sleep, the log pole runs, the endless insults and harassment from the instructors. Did I think about dropping? Yeah, I did. More than once, although it ain’t really macho for an operator to admit it. In the end, I learned one thing: I could never get through it on my own.  It was just too much. But I had my crew, my class, and my God all on my side.”

I thought about Keysi’s comment when putting this post together, especially the last part, about having God on his side.  That leads me to this installment of things we think we know about the Bible but really don’t:

#3 GOD WON’T GIVE ME MORE THAN I CAN HANDLE

This belief is among the most commonly held misconceptions many have of what Scripture tells about how God works in our lives.  The notion is that God will never place burdens on our shoulders too great for us to endure.  Just “tough it out,” the thought goes.  “God knows how much I can take and won’t give me more than He knows I can handle.”

Actually this belief is almost 180 degrees opposite from what the Bible actually teaches us.  Yet as with most commonly misunderstood notions, it seems to be based in truth, in this case, on a passage from 1 Corinthians 10:13 which says:  “No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.”

For me, the most meaningful part of this is passage is found, as it was with Keysi’s comment, at the end.  The burden or the temptation and our ability to overcome it isn’t really the point.  Rather, it’s the “way of escape” God offers that reveals the awesome power of His grace.

The truth is we’re never promised a life that won’t bury us under its weight.  In fact, life itself can be more than any of us can handle. And the Bible specifically tells us this as Paul writes in the 2 Corinthians passage I quoted at the start of the this post. In this passage Paul confesses to being burdened beyond his strength. To be tested this way is a clear indication that we can experience more suffering than we’re able to handle.

The “way out” Paul mentions in the 1 Corinthians passage is found in the realization that by surrendering to God what is too great for us to bear we give to Him the weight of that burden and allow His strength to hold us up.  “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness,” Paul writes of God in 2 Corinthians 12:9.

God sometimes allows us to fall into humanly impossible situations.  Like Keysi’s instructors, He brings us to the end of our own strength so we will trust in His ability to do the impossible.  This is the essence of faith.

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest,” Jesus tells us in Matthew 11:28. When our trials are more than we think we can bear, that is exactly when God’s grace is most impactful.

This week, give up something seemingly impossible to God.  You’ll find Him where He’s always been – right by your side. HooYah!

Peace.
Colossians 1:17

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Now. No, Really – Now!

The time has come. The kingdom of God is near.” Mark 1:15

I’ll admit it, I kind of like Twitter – I kind of like it a lot. In fact, I kind of like the entire notion of all things digital, real-time, and social: Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest,  Skype, even *old school alert* SMS  (aka “texting” for my online-challenged pals), phones.   Apparently, given the entry of “Tweetstorm” into the modern lexicon, I’m not alone.  Just listen to cable news any morning for breathless reporting of that latest 140 character missives from at least one very well-known social media aficionado.

Many of my friends, especially those people a little *ahem* older than me, don’t “get” the Social Media concept. “Seems like a waste of time,” says one. “Just another form of stupefied TV watching,” opines another. Or this one: “Twitter’s a glorified altar of narcissism from which voyeurs and provocateurs alike can shout ‘here I am! Look at me right this second!’”  They clearly haven’t figured out I’m in that business.

To be sure, a casual romp through the Twitter Public Timeline can produce a mind-numbing litany of apparently meaningless chatter, a kind of digital “white noise” punctuated by voices emptying any and every immediate thought into the virtual stream of consciousness that is the online world.

Yet Social Media concepts like Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, Tumblr and others offer another face to those who look just a little deeper. For the emerging class of the online fluent, these and other sites are opening new doors on communication in the 21st Century, and redefining our very understanding of relationships.

The immediacy of these tools, their “now-ness,” creates a real and altogether novel form of intimacy lost from our past, when we used to gather in market places every day for one-to-many interactions. Unlike email or its gray-haired daddy snail mail, Social Media provides an opportunity to instantly connect with like minds anywhere, all the time.

In a sense, Social Media is like a pervasive, omnipresent force into which all of us can tap at any time and connect – like, say, electricity.

Which brings me to a sermon I recently heard based on the passage above from Mark. In his remarks, the pastor compared the Kingdom of God to electricity – something tangible, right here, right now, available for all Christians to “plug in” to.

I’ve thought a lot about that message. It seems intuitively “right” to me. Indeed Jesus’ entire message and ministry has always seemed to have an immediacy about them, a sense of doing more than just “believing” in an invisible God.

The Kingdom of God is already here, surrounding us, within us, in our midst. Like electricity, it flows through us, available to everyone.

At the core of the Gospel, at the very center of the message preached by Jesus, is a simple yet simultaneously confounding concept. The Kingdom of God – that unfathomable promise of Salvation and Grace bestowed on creation by a loving and benevolent creator – is not simply some distant, beyond-the-stars destination we’ll get to one day with our First Class Ticket on the Salvation Express purchased by the blood of a martyred prophet. The Kingdom of God is also already here, at this moment, actually present in the “now” of our lives. Surrounding us, within us, in our midst. Like electricity, it flows through us, available to everyone.

Quite different from the notion that we should repent out of our sins in exchange for a free upgraded suite at The Hotel Paradise after checking in with St. Peter down by Pearly Gates Junction (try finding that on Yelp).

Time and again Jesus demonstrated that his Kingdom ideas were verb-ish, rather than noun-ish. Over and over he describes the Kingdom of God in terms of doing something right now rather than a destination to pursue: a farmer sowing seeds (Matthew 13:3-8); a man planting a mustard seed (Luke 13:19); yeast worked into dough (Luke 13:21); a man separating weeds from wheat in his fields (Matthew 13:24-30); a fisherman pulling in a net overloaded with catch (Matthew 13:47-50); casting out demons by the Spirit of God (Matthew 12:28); sending his disciples to preach the Kingdom of God (Luke 9:2); healing the sick so that the Kingdom of God has arrived (Luke 10:9). To Jesus, the Kingdom of God seems to be something we live here and now. There is an urgent immediacy to his teachings.

Viewed through this lens, how different might our response be to God’s Kingdom invitation? Think about this a moment. Really pause (you online addicts, I know how hard that can be) and consider. What would your life look like if you lived in the Kingdom now, not at some future time after you leave this existence? What would be different? How would you interact with your family and your friends and even those who are not so much your friends? What if we were already citizens of the Kingdom?

Something jumps out me in reading the New Testament, something that screams out in every act and deed Jesus performed, and seen throughout the Acts of the Apostles. God’s plan is to work through the body of His Church – you and me. His plan is for us to do unto each other every day.

How many of us learned in Sunday school that we should believe in God and not commit sin because that’s how we get into Heaven when we die? “Sin management,” some folks might call it. What if we take a different view? What if we believe in God because we already live in the Kingdom and Kingdom citizens have a responsibility to connect with each other and those in need right now – not after we all die? In other words, what if we focused on the outcomes of our relationships with God and each other rather than the rules and regulations of religion?

Try something new this week. Instead of waiting for Sunday to “do church,” find an opportunity to “do church” on your morning train, or at the grocery, or at your kids’ football game on Friday night. Talk to someone. Ask how they are doing – and listen when they answer. Share your own story with them if they invite you. Live as though you are already in God’s Kingdom. Plug into the electricity of God’s love and feel how connected you are to everyone, all the time.

And in the meantime, make time to meet some new friends. They’re all around you in the Kingdom.

Peace (via @rdgreen on Twitter, or maybe @rgaustin on Facebook).
Colossians 1:17

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Dead Christians Walking

Jesus said to him, “Let dead people bury their own dead. You go and tell others about God’s kingdom.” – Luke 9:60

“Wait … I’m not ready!”  How often have you heard (or said) that when a deadline looms suddenly? Buy more time, ask for an extension, make up a great excuse (like we all did at least once in high school) – anything to get out of doing the one thing we should do right now.

Some of us (myself included) tend to be world-class procrastinators.  Others are simply afraid.  Still others of us feel ill-equipped.  Whatever the reason, we often find reasons why can’t face something head on.

I was reminded of this while reading through the verse from Luke at the beginning of this message.  In the story (whether the Luke 9 version or the Matthew 8 version), Jesus is speaking with his disciples about the cost of following him.  One disciple speaks up and asks if he can go bury his dead father before joining the journey.  Jesus responds with the well-known phrase “Let the dead bury their dead.”

Many people find this passage a little harsh, even disturbing.  The guy’s father had just died!  What could Jesus have been thinking?

The answer lies in Jesus’ perspective on the question.  In fact, Scripture indicates that much of what we view as compassion would be considered by Jesus as little more than misplaced caring for the “walking dead.”

For context, we need to remember where this passage occurs.  In Matthew Jesus had completed a series of healings (a man with a skin disease, a Roman commander’s servant, Peter’s mother-in-law, many people suffering from various demons), demonstrating yet again the proactive nature of his ministry.  When a teacher of the law suggested he would follow Jesus anywhere, Jesus replied “Foxes have holes. Birds of the air have nests. But the Son of Man has no place to lay his head” meaning his ministry had no time to rest and that following him came at a cost. It was then the question of burying the father was put to him.

Luke places the story at the end of chapter 9, which is filled with accounts of Jesus’ ministry in action: the sending of the twelve, the feeding of the five thousand, the explanation to Peter of the meaning losing oneself to God’s larger plan, the mountain top epiphany, healing the boy with the evil spirit, the explanation of how the least important person is actually the most important person, forgiveness of the Samaritans for rejecting him.  Then Jesus exchanges comments with followers about the cost of following him and again the question of burying the father was put to him.

In both versions, Jesus draws a stark contrast between what it means to really follow the path God has laid before us and the easier, less painful path we often choose for ourselves.  This second path is what Jesus refers to when he tells his follower to “let the dead bury their own dead.”  Jesus doesn’t literally mean to let rotting corpses bury rotting corpses.  Rather, he’s addressing the tendency so many of us have to allow other things to come between us and God.  In this sense, Jesus was recognizing that the follower was more considered with matters of the flesh than matters of the heart and the spirit.  The follower was, in effect, a “dead man walking.”

In truth, we’re all dead men walking, condemned ultimately to die. Time eventually runs its course and there is nothing we can do to reverse it.  Regardless of how much success we achieve or fame we receive, no matter who our families are or how widely we travel the world, even with all the money of a Bill Gates or the charity of a Warren Buffett, nothing can create a barrier between us and death.  This was also true for Jesus.

Rev. Marek P. Zabriskie, Rector of St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania, put it this way:

“On the day he died, Jesus was escorted from a Roman prison and marched to Golgotha – a trash heap outskirts on the Jerusalem. Roman guards walked to his right and to his left. Soldiers walked before him and behind him in a cross-like procession.  He was a dead man walking. He was alive and breathing, but he was living under a death sentence. His fate was sealed. Time had run out. His death was imminent.”

Jesus knew he must walk the walk each one of us walks every day – the walk of condemnation to death – in order to provide us the greatest gift of all, the gift of eternal life.  God lifted Jesus from that death sentence and returned him to us as a way of announcing that we, too, can receive this amazing gift.  Yet importantly (and to Jesus’ point when speaking to his follower), this gift is not free, and is not our birthright.

Throughout the Gospels, Jesus repeatedly demonstrates that true faith, the faith that leads us to the Kingdom, is “verbish” rather than “adjectival.”  Jesus continually pushes his followers and, by extension, you and me to understand that the Kingdom already is.  We are invited, to enter, but that invitation must be actively acknowledged, accepted and received.  We must act here and now rather than delay for some future time.

This is the real lesson Jesus was teaching his follower when telling him to let the dead bury the dead.  Spiritual deadness, the way of this world, leads to true death.  Jesus was saying “tend to the living, the needs and the relationships of those who need your attention, those who need to hear the Word of God.”

Jesus teaches us that our lives are meant to be lived in active service to each other, rather than dwelling on the past.  The present is all we can affect moment-to-moment, and if we look backward, regretting the mistakes or losses of yesterday, we lose sight of what God has laid out for us today.

This week, try two things.  First, reflect on something in your life that has you looking backward.  Perhaps the loss of a loved one, perhaps a mistake resulting in a change in your life plan, or maybe simply a general feeling of failure and regret.  Hold that thought in your mind.  Focus on it.  Then write it down on a piece of paper, find a match, a burn it, letting the flames melt the pain and regret from your heart as they consume the paper.

Then, find someone in need of your attention, reach out to them, and let them know you love them.  Focus on now rather than yesterday or tomorrow.  Be the love for them you seek for yourself.

Peace.
Colossians 1:17

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The Grace of Silence

 

“But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me.” Psalm 131:2

I was having drinks with a friend recently, a self-proclaimed “agnostic.” As an aside, my definition of agnosticism is someone who lacks the intellectual curiosity to learn what Faith entails yet also lacks the (fill in your descriptive term of choice) to outright deny the the existence of a Creator. And yes, I said this person was a friend and yes, we were having a drink.

Actually, I don’t determine friendships based on someone’s political, religious, social, or financial viewpoints even if they differ from mine. Many of my friends hold beliefs diametrically opposed to mine. In fact, I can easily befriend anyone as long as we can share a laugh, a vigorous debate, and a handshake (or hug if they have no personal space issues) over a meal or drink. Well, except Philadelphia Eagles fans and anyone who still has a pair of JNCOs lurking in the back of their closet (you folks know who you are). Sorry, but a guy’s gotta have his standards.

Back to the story. My friend had read a recent post of mine that contained a bit of a faith overtone. He chortled and said “wait – you don’t really believe God actually speaks directly to you or anyone else, do you?” I thought a moment and remembered advice I’d been given a long time ago. I told my friend “The way I see it, life is a school. There are many teachers and God comes to different people in different ways.”

He laughed off my answer and we changed the topic to football. Because, you know, Super Bowl LI.  (Editor’s note: can we TALK about that come back?”)

The truth is, God doesn’t have to speak to us through state-of-the-art sound systems, or even through disembodied booming voices from the heavens. The book of Job tells us “For God speaks in one way, and in two, though man does not perceive it.” (Job 33:14).

Rather, I believe God speaks to us in the silence of our hearts. In her book In the Heart of the World, Mother Teresa considers this subject. “In the silence of the heart God speaks,” she writes. “If you face God in prayer and silence, God will speak to you. Then you will know that you are nothing. It is only when you realize your nothingness, your emptiness, that God can fill you with Himself. Souls of prayer are souls of great silence.”

Perhaps all of us need a bit more silence in our lives these days…

Peace.
Colossians 1:17