Walkup's Walkabout

The Success Myth Visited

2011-09-29T16:29:00.000-07:00

One of the most ubiquitous myths circulating through the Christian community is the success doctrine. Many of the most popular Christian speakers are perpetuating it and we are quickly approaching a point of no return regarding it. What seems so credible, that God wants every Christian rich or successful or free of life-long encumbrances is in fact not just a shaky proposition, it is antithetical to the normal Christian experience.

What makes this doctrine most disturbing however is that it promotes what scripture seems to scream “avoid!” If it is true that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God, then why would so many believers make such a concerted effort to make a go of being that rich man? Is it possible that success is not a goal at all for us; that it is in fact our most dreaded outcome? Consider the arguably three most successful men in scripture: Solomon, David and Noah. All three of them fell apart at the end. Noah, who literally had the entire world to rule as his own is known at the pinnacle of his success as a drunk who despised his indolent son. Is that what we want? Solomon became at best a polytheist and at worst a debauched agnostic once he attained his world-wide renown as the most brilliant man in the world and wealthiest of his time. Could that be our goal? David, the greatest of all Israel’s kings and mighty conqueror of nations at his zenith could not control his lust long enough to prevent the ruin of not just one but two families. Is that the success we seek?

Is the success gospel a gospel at all if it pushes us away from godliness and true dependence on God? The successful people mentioned in the New Testament are either despised for their arrogance and pride or revered for what they gave away. Zacchaeus, Barnabas and the women who supported Jesus’ ministry were all wealthy but are honored for their release of their riches rather than for their attainment of them. The Rich Young ruler was not lauded for his success; he was pitied for his unwillingness to be rid of what he had. King Herod was despised for priding himself in the acclaim he won and in fact suffered miserably in the end because of it. Success is not an end and often not even a means within the economy of heaven. If God keeps us from it, we are blessed; if He gives it to us, we are only as good as our willingness to part with it for Christ’s sake. Nothing ruins as terribly as wealth; nothing purifies as completely as poverty. Above all though is the love of God and the hunger after righteousness for then you will be filled. Even wine has its limits. Once you are drunk, where do you go from there? It is the same with success.

Elite?

2011-08-20T16:04:00.000-07:00

Recently quarterback Eli Manning of the New York Giants declared himself an “elite” quarterback in the NFL. Whether you agree with his self-assessment or not or even care, it brought me to this question. What makes an elite Christian? How do you know if you are one or not? Would it be worth the effort to be one if you thought you could? Does performance matter in the Kingdom of God?

We know for example that the Disciples cared about such things for how else can you explain the jostling for position when James and John’s mother asked Jesus if her sons could sit on Jesus’ right and left when he came into the Kingdom. Jesus did not completely distance Himself from such an effort when He told them that whoever would be first in the Kingdom must first be last. Rewards are certainly said to be handed out at the end based on performance. We are told to go after treasures in heaven which cannot be corrupted by moth or rust.

So what makes an “elite” Christian? The most obvious answers would include: skillful and determined gospel sharing, sacrificial generosity, fervency in prayer, warm and neighborly disposition, faithful and loyal service to the church and a hunger for deep extensive and Bible study. Or course, nothing on this list should be denigrated but it is not the formula the Lord offers for elite Christianity. Micah 6: 8 gives three benchmarks for radical loyalty to God. Here goes… Act justly. Love mercy. Walk humbly with your God.

If we take just the middle directive,” love mercy”, we are entering elite territory. What is real mercy except mercy toward those who disrespect you…mercy toward those who treat you badly…mercy toward those who are incompetent, lazy or slow-witted? Who hasn’t lashed out at her husband for poor decision-making, bitterly castigated (at least in the dark recesses of the mind) a co-worker for making one’s job more difficult, taken umbrage at a driver who recklessly endangers everyone on the road, been disgusted with a store manager who stupidly won’t consider a logical request. Mercy is not for the timid. Mercy, when full-blown is marked by allowances for bad behavior, the decided disregard of a callous snub, the generous and almost happy granting of pardon to those who hurt us terribly. Merciful people see the best in others even in the worst of circumstances, forgive before being asked and assume that if given the same circumstances and background one would act even more barbarically than the terrible person making one’s life miserable.

Mercy stubbornly, doggedly, tenaciously sees more in others than they may see in themselves. It is the assent to the great generosity of Christ Himself to endow every creature in our path with the bedrock substance of God amply distributed throughout his or her entire being. No one can look at another person with the full realization that that person is made in the image of God and utterly reject that one and still hope to have any semblance of God’s love coursing through the veins. It is mercy that refuses to give the best of oneself to the worst of another and not count it joy to be included in God’s circle of friends.

The Atheist Question

2011-07-21T15:33:00.000-07:00

There is a crucial question that must be asked, even by those who do not consider themselves great thinkers. It is more pertinent than any other philisophical debate...perhaps even the mother of all discussion points. Fundamental to every activity and priority we make much of is this one question. Before we can even debate who God is, what He is like and whether or not He exists, we have another, more basic question. Which is eternal, God or matter/energy? The further we descend into the tiniest parts, the closer we come to this one question. Everything flows from something. Regardless of how big or small it may be, the parts are from something always. There is not an instance of somethingness emerging from nothingness...there is always a building block of some sort. The point is, something must have always existed...whether it be God or matter/energy. Existance does not spring from nonexistance. So there you have it. Either God created matter or matter formed God and one must have always been...or else neither could be. The pagan Greeks started with matter, the polytheistic Egyptians did too, Buddhism waffles on the question. Christianity says God is the start of all and He alone is eternal. If God is the eternal, then everything of life revolves around Him and His life. If matter is eternal, then nothing matters for all that is has the spin of randomness to it that cannot be stopped. Love, hate, creativity and friendship are just concotions of a chemical soup that has no purpose. But if God is eternal, then love and hate and right and wrong and care and concern all mean something and have purpose. You ask the question. Not which came first but rather which has always been. Matter/Energy or God. One must start with a capital letter!

Prayer Failures

2011-07-19T17:41:00.000-07:00

How do you assess the value of a ministry? Is there an instrument calibrating success, a plus minus chart that can accurately determine the worth of a Christian effort? How do we know if we should keep doing some work or give up on it? Is there a way of knowing we should persevere in an effort or "cut bait". Rarely am I as often facing the moment of decision of giving up or not on it with prayer as any other Christian activity I attempt. I have read every book I can find on prayer, attempted nearly every prayer strategy I have come accross, groaned through prayer, agonized through prayer, wept through prayer and fought tenaciously to concentrate while praying but have developed into nothing more than a rank amateur at it. Prayer may not be my biggest failure in ministry but it certainly is my most frustrated endeavor. In many ways, the more I pray, the worse I get. And yet I haven't quit and don't believe I should. I have never really understood why God does not periodically wrap me in a cloud of ecstasy as I pray, doesn't impress me with some jaw dropping revelation, doesn't mark my prayers every once in a while with miraculous "Godsends". I must lead the most boring humdrum prayer life extant and yet I keep going at it. I am not quite sure why I expect so much more in prayer than I get. I have certainly heard the testimonies and read the accounts of wondrously enraptured praying but I also recognize that I will never hit a baseball in a major league game, run a marathon, stand on the moon or sing solos in packed stadiums and most likely will never be caught up into the seventh heaven as I pray. I may be exhibiting a complete lack of faith here but my experience has shown me this mostly. My praying is not very good...not ever. I pray, not so that I will get but so that my Savior will get...get my time, get my devoted effort, get my best try, get me. I can make little of my gains in prayer but I have done it...and done it again...and done it again. That I believe counts for something! If counting even matters when speaking of the one who has thrown up so many stars in the heavens we have no way of know how many are actually out there. To just think that the one who placed the proton at the center of the atom insists I pray despite my meager, inadequate strivings is enough to push me after it again and let the "results" be what they are without my standard of determining what it may be.

Graduation

2011-06-21T11:06:00.000-07:00

Jenny,

I have thought a lot about your question regarding the value of a graduation and although I know it is long past being relevant, I have my view of it. Certainly a few pretend (mostly school administrators) that a graduation is a ceremony of a class, it really is a celebration of an every one person graduation. No one comes to see a graduating class; everyone is there because of one person…or two one persons…or even three. We come because we are thrilled to have one person in our life…one person who is in a crowd of a bunch of other one persons. You do not graduate so much as make my life better. Sure you get a diploma because you passed a bunch of classes and maybe you are better than nearly everyone else at studying but the real truth is that each graduate is to someone watching, the best person crossing the stage. A graduation ceremony is a snapshot of love; a still of how it is to be excessively glad you have a brilliant ray of light streaking across your horizon. No one comes to watch a graduation, we all come to see a graduate and we cheer, not because you passed a silly little geometry exam; we cheer because you have made our life better and that is a real reason to scream and blow air horns and take pictures and sit on metal benches with the sun bearing down on us. A graduation ceremony certainly is an artifact of days when kids grew up illiterate because they were too poor, too isolated, too busy. We still remember that it is a glorious thing to learn and have dreams and try at building a life. We also remember that it is most wonderful to stand and be seen, be loved and wanted. That is why we came to your graduation Jenny. That is why we watch you with interest. You are someone worth loving and being proud to know. Keep graduating and you never become a better person…the first spark of life God put in you made you as good as you will ever need to be…at least for those of us who want to watch you graduate!

Where are the honest atheists?

2011-05-13T13:52:00.000-07:00

Just some random thoughts on atheism--

If atheism is true, then how did life spontaneously generate? There is absolutely no evidence that this ever happens. There is though plenty of evidence that life spontaneously degenerates...

Can it be proven God does not exist? If so, then forget about it all...but if not, why live as if it is impossible?

If we are just random molecules bouncing around without purpose or meaning...then why do atheists take themselves and others so seriously? Random is as random does...

If atheists really knew what they were talking about, wouldn't they have figured out in a sensible and logical way, why, without any God behind them, the Apostles died willingly for a resurrection they all witnessed (or didn't)?

How many rocks have atheists found bridging the gap between life and lifelessness? Where are they?

Where did love originate in a godless universe...or hate for that matter?

How does an atheist deal with the near universal acceptance of a god as an evolutionary process?

If atheists were all so smart, wouldn't they be better people? And this is not a slam...it is just a real observation from actual experience...

"Saintified"

2011-05-10T15:33:00.000-07:00

Philippians 1: 1 Continued

Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, To all the saints in Christ Jesus at Philippi, together with the overseers and deacons: NIV

One of the most frequently used terms for the born again believer found in scripture is the term “saint”. Forty-five times the term “saint” is found in the NT compared to 27 times the term “believers” is used and three times we find the term “Christian”. The Greek word translated saint is a very picturesque name for Christ’s children. It means separated out ones, sacred ones, ones devoted to God. It does not carry with it the commonly held view that it describes super Christians who have either been martyred or lived lives far above the common crowd of believers. Hagios, translated saint describes the reorientation that occurs in the one who has been born again. The saint has been called out by God; she belongs to God and is God’s own possession, set apart for God’s plans and purposes. There are two qualities of the saint as found in the definition of the term. First, it reminds us that the saint is one who has been separated out from the unbelieving world. She is boundaried: walled off by her commitment to Christ and God’s call upon her life. As Peter puts it, she is a stranger or refugee in a world not her home. The saint cannot fit in, not comfortably for the Holy Spirit of God dwells in her and is permanently conforming her values and interests to that of God’s. She will not remain comfortable with the sinful, unbelieving actions of the world nor with sinful unbelieving actions of herself. To borrow a phrase from common vernacular, she will not be able to live with herself if her lifestyle is not conforming to the changes God has brought to her heart.

The second quality of the saint is that she has been separated unto the Lord. It is no accident that the Saints are called “saints in Christ Jesus”. The word translated saint comes from the same root word as the term translated holy. The Sabbath is called “holy” because it is not ours it belongs to God. The tithe is called holy-10% of each person’s income is not his own, it belongs to God. The temple of the Old Testament was called holy because it was a structure built to honor God alone. The city of Jerusalem was called holy because it was to be a city on a hill whose people were the Lord’s. The ground where Moses stood as he heard the voice of God was declared holy by God because it was His place of intervention with man. The saint is one who is holy because he belongs to Christ. He is a saint not because his righteousness gives him special status but he is a saint because he is the possession of God. That the saint is in Christ defines him. As a bird is in the air, we are in Christ. As a fish is in the sea, we are in Christ. As the stars are in the sky, we are in Christ. For the saint, Christ is her place of existence, her source of life. She cannot be separated from Christ and continue on in any way. It is at best disastrous, at worst deadly for the saint not to abide in Christ. Jesus said, “I am the vine, you are the branches. If a man abides in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit, apart from me you can do nothing.”

And The Time Is...

2011-04-27T17:46:00.000-07:00

How much worth can you assign to ten minutes of prayer? What is the cost/profit margin for five minutes of prayer? Is there a down side to two minutes of prayer? What if you were to pray for a minute? Could you see a risk in praying a minute? At what point do you cross into the debit side of the ledger when you begin praying? At the dinner table, thirty seconds of praying becomes an eternity and cause for under the breath cursing. Forty-five seconds may be a stretch as you lie in bed moments before falling asleep. Fifty seconds of praying could make you an extremist for church gatherings. Are a nod and a wink at God enough to make good on your commitment to follow Him?

Every one of us has a pain threshold at which we have prayed too long and with too much passion. Few of us would consider ourselves “Prayer warriors” and yet few Christians think they aren’t doing a pretty good job following Jesus. Most of the Psalms are prayers that were set to music. In them we find the most profound human misery and heights of theocentric joy. What if we took a week and prayed a Psalm each morning and evening, using them as a starting point for adding our own concerns? Would it hurt too much to stay in the arms of Jesus a bit longer this one week? Could we bear to give God an additional minute each day and stretch out our joy and peace? Do we have time for a miracle this week?

Questions

2011-04-25T19:48:00.000-07:00

A pauper once asked a blind man what he wanted most and he answered, "I want to be poor. What do you want most?" The pauper replied, "I want to see." Which of the two came closest to the Kingdom? If the blind man could see, would he be as happy as the pauper who lost his eyes? Who hears better, the deaf or the lonely? What makes the wicked sinner a better man than the bitter saint? Can you walk with the righteous if you are on the wrong path? Are the days ahead more like what what we leave behind or what is at this moment?

A woman sat beside a well waiting for a drink while another milked her cow and filled her cup. Who made the right choice? Two farmers sowed seed but only one harvested. Who lived the better life? A dollar falls at your feet. Should you take it? Is it better to build sand castles or fortresses? Can you see if you don't know what you are trying to find?

If the pull of the Spirit tugs at your heart, would you know it? If lion lies down with the lamb, who would you lie beside? Is grace the end of the matter for you or would you wait for something more?

"The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit."

Unity In The Church

2011-02-21T17:10:00.000-08:00

Philippians1: 1

Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, To all the saints in Christ Jesus at Philippi, together with the overseers and deacons: NIV

As Paul wrote to the church, he spoke of them collectively with the inclusive term “all”. In fact, 8 times in the letter, Paul speaks to the church in phrases like “all of you” and “all the saints”. No other book of Paul uses the term “all” to describe the church even half as often. Paul is making a subtle call in this letter for unity in the Philippian church. Every member he is saying is bound together under Christ. Both the members who are splintering the church with their wrangling as well as the affirming and warmhearted ones are included in the greeting. All are one in Christ and part of the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Ephesians 4:4, 5 makes this clear when Paul wrote that in Christ, we have “one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.” We may have differing views of election (“or the election”), opposing views of which color carpet should be in the sanctuary, different ethnic backgrounds and speak a variety of languages but we are one in Christ. The Holy Spirit infuses each Saint with eternal life and brings all into the family of God. Therefore, as part of one family Paul can call for two arguing Christians in the Philippian church to “agree” with each other in the Lord. Fellow saints he says must do everything possible to help bring them together. The question is “Why?” I think there are several reasons for this call for unity. First, the gospel of God’s grace is not effectively shared if division splits the church. When the focus of attention is on who wins or who loses in church conflicts, almost no one has the time or energy to share their faith with unbelievers. Second, division in the church eventually leaks out to the unbelieving community, bringing disrepute to the great grace of God. Third, division in the church keeps the church from being a sanctuary of peace for wounded and broken Christians who need the love only the church possesses. Fourth, division in the church makes closeness to God tenuous and His wisdom difficult to attain. How can we say we love God if we hate our brother? Jesus said that if anyone has anything against us, we are to go to the brother and try to reconcile with him before we bring our gift to the altar. Sixth, division in the church prevents the effective blending and merging of the gifts of the Spirit. Paul compares the church to a body. One is the eye, another a hand. If the hand is not associating with the eye or angered by the eye, the hand misses out on all that the eye can provide for its benefit and comfort. Division in the church is often disastrous, both for the community surrounding the church, which desperately needs Jesus, and for the church itself, which can’t afford the loss of God’s presence or the disruption of the gifts of the Spirit.

Servanthood revisited

2011-02-18T15:26:00.000-08:00

Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, To all the saints in Christ Jesus at Philippi, together with the overseers and deacons: Philippians 1: 1 NIV

Let us be specific about what it means to be slave of Christ. It means that when He says to put your future in His hands, you cling to Him for help. It means that when you are in class and a classmate tells you she doesn’t believe in God, you tell her how Jesus changed your life. It means that at work, you don’t take anything from the company that doesn’t belong to you. It means that you refuse to hold grudges against anyone. It means that you tell the truth and do not gossip or tear down the reputation of another. It means that you read the scriptures and pray just as Jesus does. It means that you give one tenth of your income back to God through the local church. It means that you ask God daily, no, moment-by-moment to guide you. It means that your life belongs to Jesus and you will not be ashamed to tell anyone that you love Him. It has been said that the highest honor any of us can attain is to be called, not a leader in the church, not a success story on Wall Street or at Harvard, not the founder of a great movement; the greatest honor we can ever attain is to be called the slave of Jesus. One day, as Jesus recounts for us how we have lived our lives, our hearts will pound with joy, our legs will tremble and our hands will shake if at the conclusion He says, well done my precious slave. I told the account in a youth Bible study recently of how Abraham slave of God, was commanded to sacrifice his son of the promise on the altar. Only when God stopped his hand from striking his son with the knife by calling out to him, did Abraham cease the downward drive of his hand. Forever, Abraham is known as a man who walked by faith, who refused to allow his personal feelings get in the way of obedience to the God who loved him and gave His own life for him. And I too, you too, if we walk as a true slave of Christ, can forever be known as one Who Jesus, the Savior of our life calls a man or woman with whom He is well pleased.

The Slave of Christ

2011-01-06T17:37:00.000-08:00

Chapter 1 Continued

1: 1
Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, To all the saints in Christ Jesus at Philippi, together with the overseers and deacons: NIV

The slave of Christ is not a mere religious follower of a great teacher. He accepts the call to die if need be to please his master. Paul put it this way, “For me to live is Christ, to die is gain”. Solomon, as he reflected on a lifetime lived for material gain, prestige and serving the master of self could only mutter, "Meaningless! Meaningless!… Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless." (Ecclesiastes 1:2 NIV) Eventually, the life lived as anything but a slave to Christ becomes meaningless. Every accomplishment becomes a wash, all toys gathered are left behind and what remains is to face the God of the universe and give an account for your life.

Now here is the great honor hidden in the title, “the slave of Christ.” Moses, Joshua and David were all called the slaves of God. In an incredible prophecy describing the coming Messiah, in Isaiah 42: 1, the name give to Christ is “my slave”. The prophets Amos, Jeremiah, Ezra and Daniel were all called slaves of God. In 2nd Peter the apostle calls himself a slave of Jesus. James the brother of Jesus said he was a slave of Jesus. When we too become a slave of Christ, we enter into the great pavilion of heaven where every man and woman of faith was willing to live and even die serving Jesus.

Philippians 1: 1 Continued

2010-12-15T19:48:00.000-08:00

Chapter 1

1: 1
Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, To all the saints in Christ Jesus at Philippi, together with the overseers and deacons: NIV

Now we turn to the title Paul gives himself and Timothy. He declares that they are “servants of Christ Jesus”. The term translated “servant” is doulos, that literally means slave. The slave was the lowest rung on the social ladder in the 1st century world. The slave belonged to another. She had no rights. She could not go wherever she wished. She could not marry whomever she wanted. Her rights were determined by the values and wishes of her master. The slave was the property of her owner. Of all that Paul could say of himself, first and foremost he wanted the church to know that he and Timothy were slaves of Christ Jesus. He was the preeminent missionary of all time, the great writer of the scriptures, personally called by God to preach the gospel. Thousands had become Christians as a result of Paul’s courageous work. Yet, he makes no mention of any of his credentials except one. He was a slave of Christ.

Paul in Galatians 1: 10 describes what it means to be a servant of Christ: Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ. (NIV) For Paul, to be a servant of Christ means that your concern is to bring joy to the face of Christ, craving the approval of Jesus. No matter what neighbors may say, relatives may argue, self-interests may encourage; it is the will and desire of Jesus that drives the plans and actions of the servant of Christ. The servant of Christ has one allegiance, and that is to Jesus, one purpose, and that is to please Jesus, one direction and that is the way of Jesus.

Some Thoughts With Christmas In The Wings

2010-12-11T13:40:00.000-08:00

A shower of leaves fall as the cold wind snapping through the autumn air splatters about my office window. A rust brown squirrel bounds along the fence and jumps up into the redwood tree staring across at me. Christmas music bears in on me as I ponder the next move I will make in my head first plunge into trusting Jesus for everything. I don’t really need any presents and my lifelong plan to be a successful something has dimmed even while I finish a book on why I need to be successful and why it is so crucial I gain favor in the quest for God’s consuming blessing. Why is it so small, this urge to make it and make big? Why do I miss the old days of wanting and needing and craving and pleading and missing and searching? The good old days were ones of pursuit and action. Today I pray and wait. I trust God and it seems unnatural, sluggish, wasteful. Have I lost my mind…or my soul? What I am most comfortable embracing…frustration, worry and busyness are bywords for the pursuit of everything I wanted and hoped would be mine. My heart could not contain my provocation at making good on my promise, my potential. This is ebbing though as I bear in on Christ and He bears in on me. I cannot stand the thought of wasting time sitting and praying when my mind is such an avalanche of activity and turmoil…but it is a day and it is time to wait…as success ebbs away. I wonder what Mary thought as she succumbed to a God she barely knew and to a plan she never would have chosen, giving way to a failure she could not stop. The virgin with a husband in waiting let loose her reputation and her portion with the secure and made God her home. Elizabeth called her blessed. I would too!

My Take On Philippians

2010-12-07T16:08:00.000-08:00

I will begin posting from my commentary on Philippians. Years ago I memorized the book and then began writing on it. I hope this is a beneficial set of postings...

Chapter 1

1: 1

Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, To all the saints in Christ Jesus at Philippi, together with the overseers and deacons: NIV

Paul starts the letter in a unique way, at least for him. He refers to both himself and Timothy as servants of Christ Jesus. Usually he speaks of himself as an apostle or in Philemon, “a prisoner of Christ”. Anyone else he includes in his greeting, he refers to separately as a “brother” with the exception of his two letters to the Thessalonians. It would seem that there are two reasons for the alteration in his normal pattern of greeting. First, with the Philippian church, he did not have to assert his apostolic authority. The church was well aware of his standing with God and they greatly respected him. He along with Silas, Timothy and Luke was the founder of the church; his courage and faith were well attested. The Christians in Philippi did not have strong Jewish roots that could have confounded their opinion of Paul. His teachings weren’t in dispute. He was clearly the leader of this dynamic church.

Second, Paul wished to give equal status to Timothy. Timothy was not the co-author of the letter just Paul wrote Philippians. Continually through Philippians, the writer says “I” not “we” in speaking to the church. Paul in including Timothy in the greeting wanted to express symbolically the unity in the body of Christ. Yes some are apostles, others evangelists, pastors, teachers; others have the gift of giving or hospitality but all are one in Christ. Members of the body may disagree but there is no room for division in the church. Christ alone is the head-not Paul, not Timothy, not the overseers or deacons. We must all seek the voice of Christ and follow Him together. He is our Word---not personal opinions or preferences.

My Tribute

2010-12-01T15:13:00.000-08:00

A Friend died
   Years have passed
      The days of time linger
           Stands taken
              Hands shaken
                  Demands forsaken

a .
   or --
      a ( )
         no ?

but rather !

Gardens shake
    Hearts quake
         Desires break

But still the Three Winds stake
      a claim
          none can make
               and fewer take

Life holds
   the Tomb folds

Love lives within the Bold

"Not that I have already reached the goal or am already fully mature, but I make every effort to take hold of it because I have been taken hold of by Christ Jesus". Philippians 3:12

Like or Love, Look or See, Be or Was

2010-10-07T18:23:00.000-07:00

I am not quite sure when I realized I wasn’t good enough for something and no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t do it but that realization keeps popping up again and again now. I can’t run anymore. I can’t read small letters. I can’t dunk. I can’t make people like me. I can’t sing. Try and make me a good singer. You can’t do it. We can train all you want and you can’t make me a runner. I am never going to dunk again despite your best efforts. You can though like me. Despite my temper, despite my difficulty expressing myself, despite my negativity and despite my opinions that rile you, you can like me.

I struggle with my insecurities, struggle with my inner demons, struggle with my ugly attitude and sinful habits but one thing I never struggle with…being someone God made. Regardless of how badly I botch my opportunities and wreck my relationships, you can still like me and I can still like you. It is funny, this matter of being made in God’s image. Even the worst of us has something of Jesus about him and only the devil doesn’t like that. I was thinking today about how much I wanted to be in the mountains, around wildflowers and babbling brooks and trembling aspens with a squirrel or two chattering about me and a stellar jay calling to me in the distance. Instead I was around people…people who gossip, people who snap, people who pay no attention to what I have to say, people who don’t think much of my best effort.

Name one person who isn’t broken over something, who isn’t locked up about something, who isn’t afraid to cry about something. Your list would be pretty short. How can you not like being with someone just like you…someone who wants to be loved, someone who wants to be encouraged, someone who wants to have another shot at getting things right? It is pretty cool to watch a hummingbird flutter among the jasmine, emerald green flashing in the mid-morning sunlight but it isn’t the best. The best is holding hands with someone in the image of God, laughing with someone in the image of God, crying with someone in the image of God, listening with all you’ve got to someone in the image of God. Funny but I have never lost sleep over a rainbow trout and never dreamt about lazy raindrops but I have been caught by the whirlwind of distorted love and fractured likes. My kids can make me furious and my wife steamed but when it comes to love, a glacier can’t hold a candle to them. The image of God gets distorted, badly distorted at times, but it is the best we see here about us. If I held the sparkle of my son’s fear in my hand as tightly as God holds mine, I would be a happier and more contented man. Like even for a moment the meanest of us and you have found a keyhole peeping into the most holy place.

Spacemen and Zombies

2010-10-01T12:37:00.000-07:00

Our four-year old son drew a picture for me yesterday. It had four circles in a vertical row on one side and next to them were two much bigger circles in a vertical row beside them. The two circles on the right had smiley faces on them and the four circles on the left were blank. For all those Freudians, here is my son’s explanation of his drawing. The four circles on the left were him and his siblings. The two on the right were me and my wife. We were smiling because we had just punished his older brothers and the children had nothing for faces because they were sad.

What do you do when you hear that? I was stunned for a moment. I glanced across the page and there he had drawn four hearts with the initials of him and his siblings in them and below two bigger hearts labeled “mom” and “dad”. So on this spontaneously sketched page was illustrated the terrible tension in every home…happiness and trouble, discipline and pleasure, separation and joining.

How can you smile when failing grades are brought home or towels are casually tossed about the room or rapid fire insults are swirling around the dinner table? Who grins contentedly when one child smashes another’s sword or milk is left dripping off the table for mom or dad to clean? It is an impossible task being a parent and yet somehow we do it. Sometimes I come home from work and immediately start hunting for the bomb shelter. My kids have one. Most people call it the bathroom.

Recently the four-year old hit one of his younger friends at church and we took away his dessert and made him have water for dinner. Brutal I know…but it had to be done. If our children were interviewed by reporters for the National Enquirer, imagine how the stories would read. “Parent traps son in torture chamber! Sends him to his room.” “Father humiliates son! Takes away his Xbox for the week.” “Mother berates daughter about grades! Makes her do her homework!” Parents can’t win. Kids probably feel the same way. I know I did. I still do.

Families are the crucibles in which all joy is squashed and all contentment is obliterated and yet we still get married at staggering rates and we continue to have children. Why? It is nice to have someone to pray with as you drop off for the night and no one can hold you like your husband or your wife. The other day Ben and I were holding hands as we walked together after dinner. He was wearing his space man costume and I pointed up at a planet and told him I thought it was Mars. He agreed and asked me a deep philosophical question. “Do astronauts really pee in their spacesuits? “ Perhaps it’s not so bad being a parent…

“Seek the Lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near.” Isaiah 55: 6

The Power of Pain

2010-09-20T12:27:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine told me recently that he was talking with a researcher who was studying the effect of chronic back pain on the sufferers and discovered that over thirty percent of the patients dropped out of the longitudinal study prematurely do to death. They committed suicide. Ongoing pain shrivels your perspective. It gobbles up the cranial space devoted to thinking about sports teams, finances, dirty dishes and celebrity sightings. The housing market fades when a lower back spasms or a kidney stone passes. God and death have few rivals in the contemplative shadows where pain is roaring. The other day I saw a friend in terrible pain and she could barely acknowledge my casual greeting, let alone make much of it. I had broken into her pain and she could not make room for me.

My back is throwing a fit today and it forces me to listen. I can’t cry out to God for help…I just wait for Him. I have cried out before and found it was wasted effort. Listening for Him though does something, means something. Waiting for Him does even more. You learn a lot from those who suffer terribly. Job is one of the great teachers. He cried and cried and cried to God and battled his way with his friends until he had nothing left to him psychologically but death and God…and it was God who broke through. In the end it was the silence and the waiting that mattered to him most and made sense in pain. Trying to get at the cause of the pain, trying to scapegoat the pain, trying to slap away the pain and disregard its vigor only exacerbated the horror of pain’s continuance. God did break through and pain made Job ready to meet Him. Pain, of all the windows into heaven seems to open widest.

The saints who speak most clearly and profoundly of God are the ones who suffered most. Think of it. Jeremiah, Job, Paul, Jesus. My friend Duke. Pain makes love more than a seasoning, it makes it the meal. The most loving people I know suffer. They look you in the eye and care about you. They watch you to see that you are being honest about your hardship. They listen. They have time for you. I cannot judge with this but I know what I have seen. Love and kindness seem to be genetically linked to suffering. Friends come and go but it is the ones who have suffered who make the most of my own life and who celebrate with me when I have a little victory to share. The best counselors suffer. The best lovers too.

Zeros and the Great Beyond

2010-09-07T17:39:00.000-07:00

I was once asked by one of my children what would happen if everyone in the world jumped at the same time? Would it crack the earth apart? Would it send our planet spinning off course? Certainly not. We are far too little, even all of us combined to pitch our earth one way or another. The insignificance of man in the swirl of the cosmos is a common philosophic thread running through the neo-ecocentric academic community. Man is less than a zero in the bigger scheme of things…if the bigger scheme of things means mother universe and Grandpa Darwin. It is funny that mankind either gets blamed for scorching the earth and wrecking the established order of eco-equilibrium or he is a shadow slipping about in the random bliss of the circle of life. He is not good though whatever may be said of him and his influence in the universe is either revolting or negligible for the philosopher duped into a Godless myopia.

Christianity is so different from the current philosophic view of man. Elijah was big enough to start a regional famine and then end it, Moses big enough to split a sea apart and Joshua big enough to stop the spin of the earth. Paul raised the dead. Adam infected the universe with sin and death. We may not be super nova large but people have been dramatically impacting universal outcomes since the beginning of time.

We are no small things when we pray. The entire universe is within our grasp both today and tomorrow. We can rework cultural systems, rebuild social structures and reboot generational links. Lions and Zebras and miniature plankton cannot change the course of history…at least not intentionally. We are, as people, artists of change. God hears us pray. He makes changes in what is happening in response to us. We are magnificent when it comes to altering the universe. We stop crimes. We put together marriages. We cure diseases. We halt floods. We heal wounds. God is with us and because of our prayers, He changes the way the universe is going.

Belief is not a theological proposition. It is a way of life. If you do not believe, you do not pray constantly for God to guide you, help you, rescue others, change the universe. God is with us and so we pray and God answers our prayers and makes it different. You became a Christian when you first believed God. So, why did you stop? Because God is bigger than the universe, there is not a bit of it we cannot reach and alter through Him. The only way you become a zero is if somehow you lost God and somehow He lost you. The philosophers may have lost God…but you haven’t. So pray. Change the world.

2010-09-04T15:50:00.001-07:00

God Think

2010-08-31T12:38:00.000-07:00

We have come to the end of the line or maybe the line has come to the end of us. Is the stuff of our lives that intoxicating that we think of Jesus just when the God tether ball wraps back around on us again? What great responsibilities do we have and what momentous activities engage our minds that thoughts of Jesus slip away from us so easily? We are what we talk about and we don’t talk very naturally about God. It is discombobulating for us to speak of Him in a normal, non-church conversation, our tongues clumsily trip over His name because he is not on our minds much.

The end is drawing near and all of us will either become completely wrapped up in God forever or we will boil in the stew of atheism—in either case, Jesus will be at the center of it and we don’t think much of Him. We may like Him, may even want to please Him but honestly we don’t think much of Him. We have perhaps grown weary of God being here…right here. God in a box is much more comfortable—God in Taiwan or hiding within the rainforest is even better. God with me, watching me, listening to me, monitoring my every move is disconcerting so I try not to think of Him. Like a shadow I can’t avoid until nightfall, God there is much too unsettling to bear. So I don’t bear…I think of something else.

Here is an idea. Take this day and think of Jesus again and again and do not quit on it. Say something about Jesus in a normal conversation. It may feel like belching at a formal dinner or wearing cut-offs to an opera but try it. God is there. He is within your mouth…buried in your brain and He loves you. Say it. Say Jesus in a regular chat with a friend. Make something of Him in your conversation even if it makes your nose twitch and your tongue pinch up against your teeth. Who knows? Maybe the most important part of all of life will improve your friend’s day and make him come alive. Maybe your God talk will clear your head and fill you with an unspeakable joy. Doesn't Jesus love you? Don't you love Him?

Your mind is made for God thoughts because He is there. He is there in your head and the only way your thoughts come clean and alive is when you think of Jesus. Every other thought is a dingy, musty relic of a dying age—the age of Cain over Abel. Listen. God is there. He is there and He is crazy about you. Think about Him and regain your day. Regain your mind.

Gratitude

2010-08-27T11:10:00.000-07:00

I have started each day writing down a line of blessings. It has just been a three day discipline but already it feels like stretching out a bad back or flossing infected gums. I am not very good at it and it shows. My first day I could only write down two blessings; the second day I really improved and came up with three. One was pretty pitiful. I wrote that I was thankful that my car was repaired. Of course the repairs cost me one hundred dollars more than I expected and in the end, the mechanic listed two major problems my car has that because of its age and mileage are too expensive to fix. So, my repair gratitude was grudgingly added to make me sound thankful…or pretend I was thankful.

It cannot be simply a natural tendency to pessimism that makes gratitude such a strain. I just do not have the inherent talent to be thankful when I have a headache, the living room is full of clothes and toys and half the congregation is gone on Sunday. My gratitude list is far too short for someone living with Jesus and much too shallow for all I have been given. When I was in graduate school, my supervisor was providing an in-service on parent training. She talked about how difficult it is sometimes to compliment your children. She told of one parent, determined to say something good about her child blurting out, “I really like how your nose sits right in the middle of your face.” My prayers often have that same feel. “Thank you Lord for the air I breathe.” “Thank you Lord for the flu only lasting three days.” Thank you Lord that my car broke just forty-five minutes from the nearest mechanic.”

It is a stretch to be thankful but it is a stretch to cook dinner sometimes, a stretch to get up before dawn and a stretch to smile when your back aches but we do all these things anyway. The other day I was asked by one of the teens in our youth group whose idea it was to organize a hike up mission peak. Because I wasn’t sure if he was glad he went or angry he had to go, I hesitated before I answered. He did get to stand at the end on top of the world looking down on a billion city lights, look up at trillions of stars and breathe the fresh air of a cool breeze floating over the peak. I think I like life better when I think a bit more about the twinkling city lights than the sweat dripping off my brow. That alone may make gratitude worth the effort. I read recently of a beautiful young professional golfer who committed suicide. I do not know why she took her life but perhaps she missed the sparkling stars one too many times as she climbed the peak she was given. The Apostle Paul warned that in the last days there “will be terrible times…” He also said in the same letter, “I thank God…” The two can co-exist in one heart at the same time. Gratitude may be the most viable and definitive mode of expression limiting the progression of bitterness, pride and despair all in one fell swoop. Just one thankful comment can turn around a gloomy day…a cheap remedy that no elixir can match.

Sourpuss Faith

2010-08-20T12:22:00.000-07:00

It seems like faith is mostly grim-faced determination. You gut out faith. Faith means you're not happy about something, you are tired of the same old struggles, grumpy about your difficulties. What if faith were happy, cheerful, more like eating Oreos and milk just before bed rather than carrot juice and a bowl of broccoli. It is funny in a tense and disconcerting way that Jesus' first public manifestation of faith was during a party. Laughter, feasting and pleasure filled the air as He made His faith mark. A collection of servants and friends scooped up 180 gallons of water in faith, blinked and had wine. If our faith was more like this, we would certainly be less tensed and angry. Faith and laughter seem to be Jesus' way of making faith a lifestyle. The other day I did something pretty immature. I prayed for my favorite baseball team, the Oakland A's to win. I know it is silly for a 53 year-old man with four kids to stoop to such theological lows but I wanted more laughter in my faith. Like salt on my chicken and sugar in my apple pie, it was tasty praying for the A's to win. They were behind and so I prayed for them. Imagine the goofy little smile that crept over my heart when I later logged on the Internet and found they won. Goofy faith is better than none at all. Better to have prayed for something silly and ridiculous than to keep faith balled up inside and have just grim faced determination and a stern solemnity that never walks on water.

What?

2010-08-12T17:46:00.000-07:00

Last night I had a Christian song playing as Benjamin and I got ready to read a book together in bed when I switched the ipod to a smooth Miles Davis tune. Abruptly he jumped up and ordered, "I want to hear music about Jesus. Switch it back." Of course, being the good Christian man I was and the affable father, I responded, "No!" And that was that. We went back to the preschool book about stars and dad remained dad and son remained son. As I lie in bed, staring up to the ceiling while Ben snored softly nearby, I pondered my fatherhood, my priesthood and my life in the hood.

How much Christianity is too much? Why do I so often feel this great urge to take a break from 'religion"? What strange urges well up within me that make me cringe when told what to do, when to do it and how it must be done? Why do I hate it when my dentist tells me to floss and my doctor tells me I need to get a prostate exam and my son tells me I need to switch back to a song about Jesus. Am I that hardheaded that even the simple things that are right make me want to bail and the worst little corners of my head feel like home?

The other day I went back to reading through the Bible. I had given up this yearly tradition of mine in 2010 so I could work on memorizing the book of James. Both good and worthy of Christian discipline but one brought pride in accomplishment and the other had become a "task" demanded. It was as simple as that. I did not want to do what I should do...didn't want to be "told". I battle against the "do its" of life like a little Rocky Balboa fighting off Apollo Creed. Sometimes I feel like I am defending my very soul when I run through a yellow light rather than cautiously stopping and giving up on my rush to beat out a few seconds of drive time. Turn back to the Christian song and give up on Miles? What? Lordship is nothing if it is not submission to a "do it" you despise in the broken corners of your sin cringled brain. Oh, to love the "God of all grace". Lordship beyond "what?"

2010-08-05T19:57:00.000-07:00

Running on Empty

2010-08-05T17:46:00.000-07:00

For the second time in seven months my laptop has been stolen out of my car. The thief stole the quarters out of my ashtray, the cokes and waterbottles out of my cooler and my son's basketball. He even took the quarters out of my son's wallet lying on the floorboard. For five minutes, the laptop sat in my car in the church parking lot. It was 8:30 in the morning on a Sunday and absolutely no one was around...or so I thought. Why does Satan have to put so much thought into getting my laptops...not sure what his gripe is with me. This is the second laptop I have had stolen at our church. Another laptop was taken from my car while I was leading a Bible study...of course my car was stolen along with it. So why does Satan care so much about my laptops? Has he targetted them as a major force of power against his kingdom? Is he that interested in getting my sermons from me or those cell group Bible studies? Did he decide I was such a powerful warrior with the Dell laptop in hand that he had to break me free of my RAM and my Disc drive? Three thieves...three laptops...one master stategist fighting for his kingdom. I know it all sounds a bit melodramatic but are we really fighting against thieves and bad neighborhoods or powers and principlities in high places? I recently preached on Satan and his power in this world and so I shouldn't be surprised when he or his compatriots knock on my door but I am never really prepared for his blows. They are always so sudden, so maddeningly abrupt. You can never really prepare for them because they fit so perfectly into the commonalities of daily life and yet they are tazers that hit from your blindside...and they do hurt. Today a friend asked me to pray for her as she tried to make her jogging comeback. It felt good to return to reality. This is not our home and never will be. We live with the three realities crashing together. God is here, satan is here and my laptop just disappeared. It is a world of hide and seek...but it isn't a child's game.

The End of the Beginning

2009-11-02T21:40:00.000-08:00

Today I was reading the history of the Baptist church where I was raised, baptized and ordained to preach. No pastor in its fifty years of existence served there as long as I have served Warm Springs Church and in almost forty years, no one has served as pastor at Warm Springs Church as long as I have served. Between two churches and ninety years of existence, I am the longest tenured pastor. Out of the thirty pastors who have served between the two churches, not one lasted more than eleven years. I have plodded farther than them all…

If term limits were enacted in either congregation, I would be long gone. My dog did not live as long as I have served Warm Springs Church, Haley’s Comet may have passed twice since I started, police officers retire quicker than my years of service, roads don’t last as long as I have, cell phones, blogs and chatting on line with babes all came after I began and Starbucks Coffee was nicknamed two bucks at my start.

Recently I have dramatically altered my approach to preaching after all these years and if the truth be known, I have probably reinvented my preaching three or four times since I came to Warm Springs Church. Perhaps I am the only one who has caught on to how revolutionary those changes have been…just like I might be the only one who has noticed the monumental shifts in gel applications I have made since I first began to retro 1957. But it doesn’t matter. I have changed and can see the difference.

Preaching is a lot like cutting hair. You snip and snap and buzz and blow and snip and snip again and regardless of how artistically you clip, you still are only as good as those who look at the new doo and like it or don’t. No one asks how many snips it took to get your hair cut, how tight the razor setting, how many cross parts you had attacked by the scissors. It is either a good haircut or a bad one and that is it. A sermon is either good or bad and there it goes.

That is why so many pastors are both exhilarated by the drama of preaching and repulsed by the adrenalin drop it elicits. Spend all week looking for the perfect story, the most crucial points, the stirring inspirational comments that produce the grand “ah hah” and it all comes down fizz of whether or not Mary Jones looked at her watch as you preached. Something happens between Monday and Sunday that is dreadfully corrupting. You want to matter. Because you want to matter, you suspend Mary Jones from your ceiling as you prepare and let the pit of your stomach rotate at the turn of her smile.

It shouldn’t matter what Mary Jones thinks of your sermon…but then it shouldn’t matter what you think of Billy Bob’s new haircut. Yet try as we will to turn it all over to God and His perfect grace, we still tumble off the side of the steps and land in the muck of thumbs up or thumbs down. Give me ten pastors who preach with only an audience of One in mind and I will give you 9.8 who have already resigned. You cannot exist without thinking about what others think of you and you cannot continue without switching out your gel application every so often.

I am certain that if I add a few more years to this specific ministry, I will become a bit more comfortable with the tension within my sideways glances between the two mirrors…as I shift between the expression on Jesus’ face and that on the collective who enters into my preaching. Perhaps I will even glance over at Jesus a bit more as I go along. However I resolve this bumbling stumble toward the finish line, I will doggedly pursue a determination. Each Sunday will be an energized attempt to make good on my promise to give it my best to honor my calling. However, regardless of how much gel I use or don’t, I am still dependent on the one who cut my hair to make it right.

We See What We Want to See!

2009-10-27T21:46:00.000-07:00

I am more often than not a glass is half empty guy who refuses to quit. Just the other day I read once again Einstein’s famous determination that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but thinking the results will change. The writer was using the quote to denigrate pastors who try the same tired strategies of church growth but with each mounting failure refuse to acknowledge the zaniness of their methods. Of course this was a successful and popular pastor who was passing along his success story to the rest of us who were clearly “insane”.

The use of the quote to burst my glass is half full bubble was infuriating not so much because the author might be so wrong in his assessment of me and my vocational myopia but rather because of his use of a deist’s philosophical musings to prod me to follow him along in his “God kissed” autobahn to success. I find it disturbing to put it mildly the assumption that every “successful” ministry is right and every “unsuccessful” one inherently flawed.

The trend for the Christian community to migrate toward large churches notwithstanding, is it reasonable to assume that every blooming branch bears good fruit? Is it just as fair to determine that every dried branch is a dead one? Take two extreme examples as a point of contemplation. Was Solomon a good fruit branch? If so, what makes us so certain he was? We could quickly point to his magnificent proverbs, his monumental expansion of Israel’s prominence upon the world stage, his brilliant observations and his gigantic building projects and justifiably call him a good branch….and yet…

The second example is Jeremiah who failed miserably at every turn. He never married, never parented successfully a single child, could not turn more than a few miserable souls around, was a pitiful orator, never put two positive words together in any sentence, had the most contentious relationship with God one could imagine and perhaps did not have a single day in his life that was even partly happy. Year after year he made the same predictable, pedantic prophetic mutterings and may have won a convert with his methods…maybe one. Insanity…

Is prayer insane if you never clearly hear God speak to you? Is faith insane if you miss out on life’s big bonuses? Is love insane if you are turned away? Is integrity insane if you are never believed? Is life insane if you die in the end? Is the glass half full if you haven’t yet gotten your drought from it? Is the world insane if success is the measure of every branch’s worth? I may wish I could be Solomon but honestly I would rather shoot hoops with Jeremiah. Is that insane?

Hitch-hiking Through My Brain

2009-10-18T18:52:00.000-07:00

Twenty five years married and it is just a moment in a flash...Looking at the wedding book and pondering how antiquated even my glasses were, let alone the hair and body type and it seems like some couple from another planet made its way into our album. Taking a walk through my past sermons, old CDs and 70s voting habits and I seriously wonder if my brain blew up somewhere along the way. It is amazing to think that I was so mediocre in so many parts of my life...I may still be but at least I work more at mediocrity. I care about what I think, how I decide and what I do even for moments. The books I read must possess me and the movies I watch must have heart and hope...I cannot tolerate any more the empty entertainment I casually embraced and whether good or bad, I mark time much more. Can marriage mean more than this...to learn to love and stop the fool's gold panning that accompanies whispy relationships? Twenty-seven and I knew but now I ponder as I watch my family slip into know realizing that soon enough they will watch and listen once again. Get it right is the mantra of my moments now but even if I fail I will be thankful for the twenty-five years Mary Jo has given me to develop love and experiment with love and restart love again and again. I wonder what my hairstyle today will look like to my grandchildren tomorrow...Once again I will be a nerd I am sure but only nerds celebrate twenty-five years of marriage. Generally, only nerds have grandchildren and only nerds make a dent in the love deprivation facing our know satiated world. A new life? No, but a contained one, built upon the patience of Christ and the assurance of God to build what seems so mediocre into a real life only fellow nerds can celebrate and love.

I Quit...or Did I?

2009-10-04T17:47:00.000-07:00

I am not sure why it is so tough to give up some things: cokes, nail biting, fear of failure, poisonous comments, critical self-righteous thoughts, phony posturing, confidence in JaMarcus Russell, coffee that costs too much, wistful reminiscing of what never came to pass, McDoubles, sweat pants... Yesterday I thought about how easy it is to say "stop" and how ridiculously hard it is to do it. Even the ugliest of habits cling to me like duct tape. I was thoroughly depressed by the attendance at our church despite the fact that I knew I had worked my hardest all week, did the best I could to prepare and used long stretches of time to pray for the sermon, made sacrifices that cost me and my family for the benefit of the church and enthusiastically entered Sunday with high hopes. And yet the afternoon froze into an amalgamation of doubts, frustrations and streams of bitter consciousness. I wondered why I still get upset by how things spin in life, why this habit of being impacted by circumstances weekly floors me. I recently read that in reverse order the following are what Americans say they cannot live without: 5. Haircuts/coloring 4. Discount stores for purchasing accessories 3. Cable/Satellite TV 2. Cell Phones 1. Internet So here I am on the Internet wondering aloud why I do not give up on those things that pain me most. Colossians 3: 7 inspires me that there are habits I have killed and for that I am grateful...You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived This week I will give up satellite TV...next week I will quit coloring my hair...Then I will stop texting friends on my cell phone...but after that...some habits are just hard to kill. Maybe nail biting will go...but I doubt it. Last night I looked out at the moon, full and lovely in its festive march across the sky and thanked God for a habit that hasn't yet quit...a light that shines in the darkness!

What Can Happen?

2009-09-29T21:28:00.000-07:00

As the clouds roll in today and the heat wave dissipates, I am struck by how quickly our circumstances can shift. One day we are hot and frustrated and the next day a cool breeze siphons off our despair. What can happen within five seconds?
• An earthquake can level your home
• A stroke can leave you paralyzed
• A tractor trailer can swerve into your lane and flip over your car
• A scream can send you running for cover
• A bullet can sever your carotid artery
• A kiss can take your breath away
• A note can give you fresh hope
• A chance meeting can bring employment
• Eyes meet and you find your prince charming
• An inspired thought gives you purpose
• A prayer…
Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops. (James 5:17-18 NIV)

While I Was Sleeping

2009-09-24T18:44:00.000-07:00

The other night I was sleeping soundly and in the middle of a stirring dream when I was suddenly startled by a voice at three in the morning. My eyes popped open but I cannot say I was fully awake. The voice was resounding and quickening, as stark as a thick black line drawn across a pure white paper. All that was said was, “What is strong enough to pull a great weight and too weak to stand on its own?” Nothing more was said and no answer given in an audible way. Now this was a strange and maybe even juvenile riddle except for one rather provocative part of the moment. The solution came to me immediately and I knew I was right…A String.

Now what was the point of this odd “word” and did it mean something for me? Again I knew exactly what I was to glean from the riddle almost as instantly as it was given. “YOU are strong but YOU cannot stand on your own. “ God’s call to me was the demand that I pray and pray with MUCH greater fervency, for though I may do much, I cannot stand on my own. Admittedly this may sound a bit, or even quite odd when you read this but it was as certain a word from God as I can confess hearing and although it did come as I was sleeping, the voice was distinctly “audible” and unmistakable.

At What Cost?

2008-10-30T10:01:00.000-07:00

My brother is a hero. His friend friend and partner Ian Leong is a hero. And so is Paul Starzyk, who lost his life a hero. All three are police officers in Martinez and while eating breakfast together they received a dispatch that there was an emergency situation at a hair salon. Felix Sandoval, estranged from his wife and locked in a bitter divorce dispute, filled with rage went after his wife, who owned the salon. With his hand, Sandoval smashed the plate glass window and forced his way into the locked salon demanding the patrons and workers there tell him where his wife was. Sandoval's own teenage daughter was working at the salon and begged him not to go after her mother. Unbeknownst to Sandoval, his wife had locked herself in a closet at the salon, trying desperately to hide from him.

Spying his wife's cousin who had tried to convince Sandoval's wife to leave him because of his erratic and violent behavior slipping out the back door with a customer, Sandoval went out the back after her. His daughter tried desperately to stop him but Sandoval would not be held back. Spotting the cousin in an apartment above where she had forced her way in to hide, Sandoval raced up the stairs with his gun, broke into the apartment and found his wife's cousin there. Inside the apartment was a mother and her three children. The kids were hiding in a bedroom and their mom along with the other two women faced the crazed Sandoval as he stormed into the apartment. Sandoval shot and killed his wife's cousin and then realized the police were coming up the stairs.

Sgt Paul Starzyk was the first up the stairs. Wearing a bullet proof vest, he came down the hallway toward the apartment with his partner Ian Leong coming from behind. Sandoval, hiding behind the apartment door, shot his arm out and fired down upon Sgt. Starzyk, hitting him in the neck and severing his carotid artery. Although dying from the wound, Starzyk fired back and shot Sandoval several times before he collapsed to the ground. Officer Leong courageously stood in front of the dying Starzyk and protecting him with his own body, shot into the door and the walls and at Sandoval himself, pinning him back so that he could not shoot at his friend anymore. This hallway of horror was where Leong remained, throwing down his own life in order to hopefully save not only his friend lying on the ground but also those held hostage in the apartment. My brother by now was up the stairs with his police dog and his dog shot out after Sandoval and attacked him. Seeing him move, and still perhaps a terrible risk, my brother also fired upon Sandoval and the killer was dead.

What makes courage so amazingly subtle and shockingly lovely is that courage is not forced and cannot be imitated. It springs out of a character honed to give away, even to the point that it costs your life. I hear stories of the common bravery of the men who stormed the beaches of Normandy and without cover, lost their lives without much thought at what was happening to them because they loved more than they wanted and it is too big a thought to adequately ponder. My brother and his friends are the fabric that makes a people noble and terribly lovely. Their courage was not exemplary, it was mundane...mundane in the sense that they did not ratchet it up, they simply did what was instilled in them. Protect, lay down your life, do not flinch.

Christian faith is not lovely because of what good is in believers. Christian faith is lovely because it is instilled by Jesus who knowing the brutality and horror of the Cross pursued it and would not flinch at it's crushing blood lust. Jesus died, knowing He was giving up on a future that He could hold to if He wished but longing more for a future He could give away. Jesus died as the ultimate Courage, killing off the deadly brutality of sin by staying hung on the Cross until His heart was busted open and His life ripped from Him.

And then He conquered.

I can never be thankful enough for Jesus dying for my sins and my meager statements of gratitude will not ever be much because I cannot comprehend in the least the immensity of what Christ has done for me. Eternity awaits us all and because of Jesus, faith in Christ holds a certain promise of joy forever with God. The Grace of God is not measured, it is too sweeping to mark. We live within Promise but not a promise far off, rather it is close, close enough to spot. The blood on the ground at the foot of the Cross holds the Promise too big for us to grasp, we can only faith it.

Glenn, Ian and Paul have blood on their hands, their own blood and it marks courage that cannot be measured. Courage like theirs is too big to pin down, it is the stuff of heaven and bigger than the human heart.

Across The Hedge Concluded

2008-10-29T17:02:00.000-07:00

There were four indications that the Christians in Corinth were living anti-God lives. They were suffering from bouts of boiling anger. They were losing their temper and getting upset. They were quarreling with one another and wrangling over points of contention. They were doing what any Non-Christian might be able to do but nothing that revealed a legitimate dependence on God power. There was nothing unique about their actions that pointed to the supernatural handiwork of Jesus. In addition to all of this, these Christians were not able to recognize God’s hand in what was happening around them; they were attributing everything to some human explanation. In other words, there was not much about these Christians that looked, or sounded anything different than the Non-Christians surrounding them. Does this have a familiar ring to it?

I am not certain when a church crosses the line, goes across the hedge and has the look and smell of flesh but I think ours is there. What have we done lately that is supernatural, that only God could have made happen? What is there in us that indicates the Spirit of God is dominating our personalities and driving our actions? Do we have the fruit of the Spirit? Is there a craving for Jesus that is more fundamental than just doing what is right? Is Christian stuff one more chore of ours or are we filled with joy when we read the Bible, pray or do acts of service? What is there about me and you that could be pointed to as a sign that the Holy Spirit is dominating how we live and act?

If I said there was a way to get past flesh driven and man generated living and be truly driven by the Spirit of God and anointed by Him, would you bite? Would you be interested in having a Spiritual personality rather than a fleshly one? There are six basic steps to developing a Holy Spirit driven character. Each is as important as the other and not one can be lightly passed over. The first step to developing a Spirit personality is clear repentance. There are sins I have that need to be admitted and renounced. I must tell God I was wrong for my angry outbursts, wrong for my critical comments, wrong for my lustful thoughts, wrong for my refusal to forgive. No one lives Spiritual unless he takes a long hard look at his sins, particularly the ones others would dismiss as inconsequential and admits to them and renounces them to God as filthy and unacceptable.

I must decide to give up any sinful attitude or behavior I know I am doing. I must tell God I have been unable to give this up so far and need Him to crucify that part of me that wants to keep doing that sin. I must openly and publically make a profession of Jesus Christ as my Savior and my Lord. I cannot be filled with the Spirit of God if I am not a blatantly public Christian. I must surrender my will to that of the Holy Spirit and do whatever God says. A Christian once told me that God clearly told him that he was to be a missionary to China but never went. I cannot make these sorts of decisions if the Holy Spirit is to fill me and make me loving, kind and full of the joy of God. No Spirit filled Christian stays oppositional to God and His will for him. I must want to be filled with the Holy Spirit as much as a thirsty man in the desert craves water. "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him." By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. (John 7:37-39 NIV)

Not many Christians honestly want to be full of the Holy Spirit, anointed by Him. It is far too easy to just accept a rather superficial and incoherent form of Christian living. But honestly it is irrational to taste Jesus and then not want Him ruling over you and filling you with all of the joy and love and peace He has to offer. This is only possible by turning ourselves over to the Holy Spirit of God and giving complete control of our lives to Him. A hedge separates you from all of the blessings of God…a hedge of desire. How badly do you want the Holy Spirit filling up your life? How much do you crave His dominance over you? What are you willing to do for the fruit of the Spirit to actually be the nature of

Across The Hedge Part 1

2008-10-25T13:16:00.000-07:00

1 Corinthians 3: 1-7 GJW
And I brothers, I was not able to speak to you as spiritual ones but as in the flesh, as to babies in Christ. 2 Milk, I gave you to drink, not solid food because you couldn’t handle it and even now you aren’t able to handle it. 3. For still you are fleshly ones for whereas there is in you boiling jealousy and contentiousness; are you not ruled by fleshly desires and walk just like men? 4. For when a certain one of you might say, “I myself am of Paul” but another, “I am with Apollos”, are you not just like men? 5. For what is Apollos? What is Paul? They are servants through whom you believed and only as each one of you were given by the Lord. 6 I myself planted, Apollos watered but the Lord was making the growth happen. 7 Consequently, neither the one planting nor the one watering is of any consequence but only the one causing the growth, God.

In our local paper the other day was a front page story about a set of neighbors who live in a peaceful little cul-de-sac, neighbors who have been friends for years. Their property is separated by a hedge one of them planted long ago as a decorative upgrade. They have watched each other’s kids reach adulthood, gone to one another’s parties and looked after one another’s homes during vacations. One of the neighbors recently put up a yard sign calling for a “no” vote on proposition 8. His neighbors in turn put next to the hedge in their yard a sign calling for a “yes” vote on proposition 8. Last week while his neighbors were gone, the one with the “no” sign went over and cut down the part of the hedge on his neighbor’s side and forced them to move their “yes” sign from where it had been placed against the hedge.

Now what could engender such rage and frustration that a friendship lasting two decades could be ruined by dueling lawn signs? The Apostle Paul would say it is just people being people. He uses a term that that is often found in his letters to describe the part of us that just won’t do what God wants, the flesh. Some refer to the flesh as our “sin nature”, others call it our “anti-Christ personality”. We all have it. The flesh is what pushes us away from God’s character and avoids anything that smacks of real holiness. Now it is not just Non-Christians who can be ruled by their anti-God personality, Christian people also are left leaning here. Paul calls us babies when we let our flesh take the lead in how we act and live.

Paul said that many of the Christians in Corinth were acting like babies because they were forming alliances and choosing sides. Some were for Apollos, others for Paul. The points of contention were irrelevant. It did not matter why they were disagreeing, the fact that they were clearly marked them as babies. Paul uses two terms to describe the approach these Christians had to their faith. The first is “sarksinoi” and simply means that they were flesh people; in other words, the tendency to think and live outside God was part of their character. But Paul takes his diagnosis a bit further by insisting that the Christians in Corinth were “Sarksika”; they were dominated by their flesh instincts. The anti-God personality was the operating system making these Christians who they were.
This created quite a problem for Paul as he tried to lead them. He was unable to speak to them through the Spirit of God. Now how does this sort of communication work? A person dominated by the Holy Spirit can talk of anything the Spirit directs and it is made clear to the person both in how they think but how they begin to act by means of the Holy Spirit. Coercion, guilt tripping and begging are not needed to bring about the needed change. The Spirit gets the message across and coordinates the new direction. Without the Spirit of God, there is almost no Godliness, little Christian love and peacefulness and not much interest in pursuing hard after Jesus. The fruit of the Spirit described in Galatians 5: love, joy peace patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control are anything but actualized…important maybe and desired but not rooted and grounded in the person.

A Political Politic

2008-10-21T16:01:00.000-07:00

I have in the past few weeks become accutely aware of my need for the Holy Spirit to overwhelm me and dominate my interests and desires. It isn't that I just realized my personal poverty here, it is that I was brought face to face with my longing for God to saturate me with His Presence as I went through an unexpectedly provacative book, The Work And Presence Of The Holy Spirit. What startled me was just how casually I was treating the work of the Holy Spirit in me and how little real effort I was making to let Him rule over my psyche. I have recently entered fully into the political dialogue and I do not apologize for my views nor think I am off base in how strongly I feel but I must admit the election will not alter the most crucial issue. Without Christ aligning my life, I have little to say of any value. The fruit of the Spirit is not just an alternative lifestyle, it marks the one who does know God and lives in Him. The pursuit of the filling by the Holy Spirit is dominating my will and I pray that you and I will not wilt in our craving to be overcome and driven by Him. Pray and give up your will to Christ. Pray and refuse to submit any longer to anti-Jesus desires. Pray and state unequivocally your desire to let the Holy Spirit rule over you. It is a new day!

Transformation

2008-10-13T19:06:00.000-07:00

As some of you know we lost our kitten Saturday. I have called this little creature Beelzebub for good reason. She greets me many mornings by clawing her way up my leg if I am lucky and across my back if not. One time she lost her balance on my bare back and dug in with all her might. I did not curse...a miracle of no small proportion. Beelzebub slipped out our door Saturday morning and escaped our many attempts to recapture her. I had to take Rachel out of town so we couldn't keep trying to coral her but the rest of the family was home. Unfortunately they couldn't find her and so she was gone.

Several times during our 2 1/2 hours of driving Rachel wanted me to call home and find out if Beelzebub had been found. I couldn't reach anyone and so my little girl's stress levels continued to rise. Meanwhile, both of us prayed fervently for that little troublemaker's return. We finally got back home at 9 that night and the first thing Rachel wanted to know was if anyone had found her cat. No. Off Rachel went with a flashlight trying to find her kitten but despite all of us searching, no sign of her. We left food out on the porch to try to entice Beelzebub back and went to bed.

The next morning was Sunday and without any signs of a kitten, we all went to church. All of us were praying for the return of that little kitten and with high hopes we returned home early in the afternoon to find...no cat. Rachel hunted all around and the rest of us got lunch ready. Because we had a broken pipe and our friend Robert was coming over to work on it, I ordered Noah into the back to pick up his half a billion Megablocks scattered all over the area where Robert would be working. With much grumbling he went back and started the reconstruction of his life. But guess what he heard as he worked. A cat meowing. Searching for the sound, Noah found the kitten under a building at the school behind our house. The space was way too small to crawl through to reach that little kitten child and so Rachel and Noah spent thirty minutes trying to bribe her out with cat food. Finally, out she crept, ravenous after her twenty-four hour adventure into the dark side. With a swift swoop, Rachel grabbed the kitten and wrapped her in her arms.

Snowball had been won back. I do not know who prayed more for that kitten, Mary Jo who tries her best to avoid her, me who has claw marks all over my body to testify to Snowball's affection or Rachel, who went to bed the night before with tears in her eyes afraid she had lost Snowball forever.

I am not sure what to make of all this except I do know that prayer is more than just a religious exercise. It is the lifeblood of our adventures. And our misadventures. How does a Beelzebub become a Snowball? I guess through prayer!

And how bold and free we then become in his presence, freely asking according to his will, sure that he's listening. And if we're confident that he's listening, we know that what we've asked for is as good as ours. 1 John 5: 14-15

News From The Good Old Days

2008-10-10T16:21:00.000-07:00

From the newsletter of the radio station KFAX, I got this interesting list of facts about the good old days...
100 Years ago...

One home in seven had a bathtub

One home in 13 had a telephone

Infant mortality was 140 per 1,000 babies, compared to 6.3 per 1,000 today

Life expectancy was 47 years (uh-oh!)

6% of adults had high school diplomas

Colleges graduated 1.5% of the students they do today

The average workweek was 52 hours

Only 8,000 automobiles were registered in the entire country

One thing does remain the same though...

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. Hebrews 13:8

Election

2008-10-10T15:42:00.000-07:00

I am not convinced this election is over...We face perhaps the biggest internal crisis in over 50 years as a nation and the Christian community needs to make its presence felt. It is time we pray three times or more a day for the state of our country. Regardless of the side of the fence you sit politically, dramatic changes are in store for us and it is only the person locked in on the mind of Christ who will fathom what is happening and how to respond. Nothing good can come of all of this if we are passive as the body of Christ and just act according to our will. The accusations that are about to flurry around this political contest must be met with Spiritual resistance. Hammer away these next three weeks at determined prayer and make your life count for this nation and for the Kingdom of God.

How Do You Know?

2008-10-08T18:21:00.000-07:00

With the election looming before us, the undecided vote is becoming smaller and smaller and yet the question, "How do you know" is legitimate. How do you know how you should vote? We rely heavily upon our intuitive sense, our opinion of things and the tilt of opinion around us but how do you know which candidate should be elected and does your opinion mean you are right in your assumptions? As I was reading through the text of 1 Corinthians 2, Paul makes a comparision between two sources of understanding...the psyche which means far more than just our psycholgical make-up but rather describes the way of life of this natural world, and the spirit, which is the working of the Holy Spirit. If there was ever a time when we need to be reliant not upon our natural senses but upon the Holy Spirit and His insight into God's mind, it is now. These are grave times at multiple levels and if there is hope for insight into how to move through this, it is revelation that God's people possess as they pursue the insight of God. We do not need to think as everyone else thinks. Only the Holy Spirit opens the door to a creativity that escapes the narrow boundaries of this world and its dying values. We have through our life in Christ, the mind of God.

Vision

2008-10-07T09:56:00.001-07:00

Last Sunday our worship service attendance was forty. But...this past week as I was praying I was unprepared for the vision that came to me. I suddenly saw our church sanctuary full and overflowing. At first I thought I had fallen asleep and was dreaming but I immediately got up and walked into our sanctuary. The vision stayed with me as I looked out across the empty seats. The sanctuary was full and people were everywhere. Then just as suddenly it all was gone and I was left with the shocking and even a bit spooky sense that God had spoken to me in a completely new way. I am not given to visions or for that matter prophetic dreams so this was overwhelming and disconcerting. I wasn't sure what to do with what I experienced; whether I should believe it was from God or not. I went back to pray and was given a great peace about it all.

Lord, you establish peace for us; all that we have accomplished you have done for us. Isaiah 26: 12

I Get It Concluded

2008-10-05T17:23:00.000-07:00

1 Corinthians 1: 18-25 GJW
18 For the word of the Cross to the ones being destroyed is foolishness but to the ones continually being saved, to you, it is the power of God. 19 For it has been written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise ones and the intelligence of the intelligent, I will push out of the way.” 20 Where is the wise one, where is the learned one, where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For in as much as in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God took pleasure through the foolishness of the proclamation to save the ones believing. 22 And in as much as the Jews demand a sign and the Gentiles seek wisdom, 23 we on the other hand, we proclaim Christ having been crucified…to the Jews it is a stumbling block, to the Gentiles moronic. 24 But to the called ones, both Jews and Gentiles, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the stupidity of God is wiser than (the wisdom) of man and the weakness of God is stronger than (the strength) of men.

The wisdom the world does not possess and cannot acquire is the “word of the Cross”. The “word of the Cross”, is most bluntly, moronic to the world. Foolishness as it is commonly translated. It is not that the world misunderstands what we have to say about the Cross because it misinterprets the facts. Rather like the Gorilla trying to comprehend the stock market, the world has no shot at figuring out the Cross. Paul calls it the power of God but only to the ones “continually being saved.” For the others, those in a constant state of destruction, it is idiocy.

There are two ways the word of the Cross is power of God for those continually saved. First, it makes stupid every argument held against it. Verse 20 uses a term that describes a transformation; the change from being intelligent to being ridiculously foolish or more literally, moronic. Suppose we were to mix common baking soda and vinegar. The resulting chemical reaction would produce carbon dioxide gas and water. When you place the word of the Cross on the wisdom of the world, and combine the two with faith, the wisdom of the world becomes stupid. It no longer makes sense. I once thought when I was a child that I could as I grew stronger fly on my own power. Of course it hasn’t worked out but the logic of my argument as a four year old made sense then. But now, through the transformation of mental maturity, I realize it was a child’s dream, we are not made to fly that way. I once thought, before the word of the Cross, that there wasn’t enough evidence for God. Now, by the transformation brought on me by the Cross, I cannot imagine life at all without God. The logic is not in my clearer thinking, it is in the supernatural work the Cross does within me. I “see” what I did not see before Jesus made my thinking clear about Him.

As an insider to my mind, I think I came to the conclusion that Jesus Christ is Lord and Master of my life but the truth is I didn’t. The work happened supernaturally. It came by the word of the Cross. Nothing about Jesus and the life He brings makes sense outside this change. We bust our heads against a wall trying to convince people it is logical to belong to Jesus. It cannot be made logical because it is impossible to grasp. The word of the Cross alone has the power not only to persuade but also to make sense of eternal life. The opposite also is true. What seems so logical, the life without Jesus is morphed by the word of the Cross into utter stupidity. The time away from Christ becomes by that Cross a mess of foolishness and vanity. We are not convinced to follow Jesus, we are made by the Cross into followers of Him.

The second way the word of the Cross is the power of God for the ones being saved is that it is what continuously makes you saved. We aren’t saved by something we think or do but rather by the word of the Cross itself. The change has nothing to do with carefully crafted arguments or intelligent considerations. Eternal life comes by the word of the Cross and it alone has the power to make you, as Paul puts it, “continually saved”. No one is “argued into the Kingdom of God and no one convinced of it through logic. There is by the word of the Cross a literal transformation that makes me into something I can never in my own power or through any other power morph out of being. I cannot become a non child of God once I am one because it is not me that does it: it is by the word of the Cross.

Verse 21 is fascinating. It tells us that through the “foolishness of the proclamation” a miracle occurs. The nonsensical, “moronic”, idiotic if you will proclamation brings about the faith transformation. Just saying the “Christ having been crucified” opens wide a door that is completely closed, a door to an eternal life transformation. It is a bit mysterious this process because believing is not given as a means of attaining eternal life, it is the characteristic of the ones having it. It is like saying that all Walkups have big noses. I am not a Walkup because I have a big nose but there is not a Walkup running around without a big nose. Believing or faithing is what every single Christian does. It is the foolishness of the proclamation of Christ having been crucified that takes the soul into continual salvation. It is the power of the change. Believing is what you look like when the Christ crucified proclamation works in you.

Now I understand that the call of the Gospel is to “believe”. We believe though not because we get it or we think it through. We do not turn into Christians on belief. Belief is the response of the soul to the penetration of the message of Christ crucified. The power of it works in me and then I believe. This, the Bible says is grace…a gift. Romans 10:17 is a strange and near shocking twist on popular theology. It states that, “faith comes from hearing the message”. Literally, it reads that faith comes out of the hearing. We do not hear the message because of our faith. The message of Christ crucified delivers the faith into us. It is the power generating faith.

The message itself is a stumbling block to some (the Jews) and moronic to others (the Gentiles). But that doesn’t keep the proclamation of the Gospel from tearing into people and making their old unbelief completely illogical to them. Because the message of Christ crucified is sufficient in itself to make changed lives, we do not have to be skilled messengers. It does not need help from good, satisfying logic. It simply needs to be announced and then it bores in on the one being saved. Here is a scientific chemistry experiment for the church. Go before the Lord and ask Him to point out to you one you can proclaim the Gospel. Take a deep breath and then do it. Pray for God get the words out. Christ died on the Cross to give you eternal life. He rose from the dead and He is the one and only savior of your soul. The pray and step back. The proclamation is not held back by the wisdom of the unbelieving. It is corralled by the silence of the Church. One voice is all the Gospel needs. Why not make it yours.

Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ. Romans 10:17 NIV

2008-10-03T15:12:00.000-07:00

What's It All About Introduction

2008-10-03T14:42:00.000-07:00

Corinthians 1: 26-31 GJW
26 Now look at your calling brothers. From a fleshly perspective not many of you were wise ones, not many powerful ones, not many well-born ones. 27 But God chose the stupid ones of the world so that he might shame continually the wise ones and God chose the weak ones of the world so that he might continually shame the strong ones. 28 And God chose the commonplace ones of the world and the contemptible ones and the ones who don’t seem to exist in order that he might make useless the ones who are 29 so that each living being will not boast before God. 30 But out of Him you yourselves are in Christ Jesus who became our wisdom from God as well as the righteousness and holiness and deliverance. 31 This is so that just as it has been written, “The one boasting, he must boast in the Lord.”

One of the most difficult parts of Biblical interpretation and teaching is the stretch required to get past one’s preconceived ideas about what the Bible says and what one thinks the Bible ought to say. We are programmed at nearly every level to think of choice as the pre-eminent right of every human being. We choose all day, choose what we will eat, choose who we will email, choose our TV shows, choose to exercise or not, choose what clothes we will wear and when to take our shower. We love the right to choose our representatives in government and although there are many who “choose” not to vote, we could never imagine giving up that right by choice. We even choose our religion and choose how we will practice that religion. We are choosy and choosers. No one tells us what to do!

The passage we are looking at today makes a mess of our theology. It is, as we can see, big on choice. Our passage speaks of choosing but not once are we the one making the choice. It talks about a calling but it is not us calling, it describes a comparative analysis but not by us and not in a way that makes sense. It simply does not fit at all the paradigm we have of choice and decision-making. It is not a “Christian” passage if what we mean by Christian is what we think Christian ought to be.

I have tried to render a literal translation so that the major themes Paul had as he wrote the Corinthian church would stand out for those of us used to reading the Scriptures without an eye for the important details. The first one that pops up is found in verse 26. Paul tells us that we must pause a moment and examine closely our calling. Stare at it. Ponder it deeply. Take time to think about it and how it came to you. Don’t just slough off casually the inception of your Christian life. It is crucial to consider if you are going to know much about God and yourself.

Calling is a funny word in a sense. It implies someone else doing this. The word invitation comes to mind. The calling Paul describes is not to some sort of specialized ministry, it is the calling to salvation. That is clear because he is writing the entire church, not a specific group of leaders. In fact, if we can take the liberty of saying it, the letter is written to us and not all of “us” have a specialized ministry but all of us have a calling to eternal life. Paul is telling us that we need to look at the part of our salvation he labels a calling…the invitation. We are Christian because God issued an invitation. My daughter went to her friend’s party because she was invited…my daughter did not invite herself to it. The starting point of this discussion is that each of us who are Christian received an invitation from God and that is how we got to where we are. Jesus underscores this in John 15: 16. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit-fruit that will last. (NIV)
To Be Continued...

A Needed Change

2008-10-01T13:02:00.000-07:00

I am excited about my new journey of faith! My sister-in-law Kitty recommended a book that she and her family are using and it has already had a fabulous effect upon me. Today as I was praying through the material, God's presence struck me and I was a bit overwhelmed by what He did with me. There is so much I want to see change in my personality and it simply is not possible without a transformation by the Holy Spirit. Last night I was amazed by the work of the Spirit in our cell group as we talked about the Bible passage, sang and prayed. I cannot say the work had anything to do with my entering this new phase but it did happen at the same time. I even had the opportunity to share the Gospel and pray with a woman who approached me when she spotted my Bible at the table. Her son is in jail and her health has suffered some difficult disease. I felt she came to me because of the inroads the Holy Spirit was making within me at the very moment she approached. The book Kitty recommended is A Call To Die by David Nasser. It is a forty day journey into being crucified with Christ. It invites everyone to spend an hour a day going through the material and taking intensive personal inventories. There also is a call to a fast of some sort whether a fast from food or from the various media types. My fast is from sports reporting and broadcasting. I know it sounds like a rather trivial fast but it has concentrated my gaze on Jesus already. One thing that struck me is how easy it is to assume that what I need is a change in circumstances when what I really need is more Jesus and greater affection for the Holy Spirit living within.

What's Right?

2008-09-30T11:36:00.000-07:00

It is so easy to get caught up in what is wrong and yet we have in scripture a completely different view of things. It is what is right that must captivate us. Christ crucified is the pivot point of all life and with Him in us there is not a thing wrong with our lives, our situation nor our circumstances. He is after all our righteousness, our holiness and our wisdom. Reliance upon Christ to organize our circumstances and make our life situation best for us is the point of all this faith in Christ. We are prone to take it both ways...faith in Christ and personal introspection on what to do to fix everything. The worry about nothing command of Jesus is not religious blinders, it is the way to enter into complete reliance upon Jesus that all things really are working together for our good. I am as bad as anyone at fixing my eyes on my lacks or upon my attention to working it all out but Christ is not just my hope for eternity. Eternity is now and He is my hope for now...Reliance upon Him and satisfaction with what He brings me is faith too but more than faith. It is Christianity.

2008-09-26T11:18:00.000-07:00

Good Things

2008-09-26T11:06:00.000-07:00

Yesterday as I was reading my Bible I stumbled upon this verse from Philemon 6. I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith, so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ. If a full understanding means that you completely get it and that you are experiencing it, then the big hindrance to a deep and intimate relationship with Jesus is this matter or sharing our faith. We never really talk about it but it is the elephant in the room. The problem with churches corporately and Christians individually is not luke warm faith so much as a rejection of the faith. Faith is piercing, penetrating, energizing and it is expressed through the transmission of it. Talk about Jesus with someone not yet Christian and you have a leg to stand on when it comes to living in Christ. If 1 Corinthians 1 teaches us anything, it is that God doesn't need us to be good at talking about the Gospel but we must share it if we are His. The Gospel itself tears down the arguments against it and brings apart the doubt built in its path. Pick out one person this week and actually talk the Gospel with him or her. The good things of Christ are ready to be had if you are willing to have them.

The Great Disconnect

2008-09-24T18:12:00.001-07:00

Why is there such a disconnect between our recognition that we are to explain the Gospel to people regularly and our not doing it? I do not think I know more than two people who last week explained the Gospel to someone. This part of Christian devotion has become so disregarded that it feels like a giant miracle if anyone gives a verbal witness ever. My kids were shocked the other day when I was talking to a couple I met at the track and told them about their need to put their faith in Christ for their salvation. It seemed to them a wonder that I could work the Gospel into my conversation with someone I did not even know. I had to ponder the possibility that perhaps they had not seen me do this enough...It should have been commonplace for them in being around me to have watched such conversations but it wasn't. So what do we do about this? I think we must begin to pray fervently that God would drive us into Gospel sharing...not for our own good but because it is the people we see and know and meet that are going to hell. Real people with real families, real aspirations and real emptiness...at least when it comes to eternity. The other day a friend from church was shocked by the death of her co-worker at the age of 47. It is not tomorrow that awaits the Gospel, it is today...and not from someone else but it must come out of me.

I Get It Conclusion

2008-09-24T18:01:00.000-07:00

The wisdom the world does not possess and cannot acquire is the “word of the Cross”. The “word of the Cross”, is most bluntly, moronic to the world. Foolishness as it is commonly translated. It is not that the world misunderstands what we have to say about the Cross because it misinterprets the facts. Rather like the Gorilla trying to comprehend the stock market, the world has no shot at figuring out the Cross. Paul calls it the power of God but only to the ones “continually being saved.” For the others, those in a constant state of destruction, it is idiocy.

There are two ways the word of the Cross is power of God for those continually saved. First, it makes stupid every argument held against it. Verse 20 uses a term that describes a transformation; the change from being intelligent to being ridiculously foolish or more literally, moronic. Suppose we were to mix common baking soda and vinegar. The resulting chemical reaction would produce carbon dioxide gas and water. When you place the word of the Cross on the wisdom of the world, and combine the two with faith, the wisdom of the world becomes stupid. It no longer makes sense. I once thought when I was a child that I could as I grew stronger fly on my own power. Of course it hasn’t worked out but the logic of my argument as a four year old made sense then. But now, through the transformation of mental maturity, I realize it was a child’s dream, we are not made to fly that way. I once thought, before the word of the Cross, that there wasn’t enough evidence for God. Now, by the transformation brought on me by the Cross, I cannot imagine life at all without God. The logic is not in my clearer thinking, it is in the supernatural work the Cross does within me. I “see” what I did not see before Jesus made my thinking clear about Him.

As an insider to my mind, I think I came to the conclusion that Jesus Christ is Lord and Master of my life but the truth is I didn’t. The work happened supernaturally. It came by the word of the Cross. Nothing about Jesus and the life He brings makes sense outside this change. We bust our heads against a wall trying to convince people it is logical to belong to Jesus. It cannot be made logical because it is impossible to grasp. The word of the Cross alone has the power not only to persuade but also to make sense of eternal life. The opposite also is true. What seems so logical, the life without Jesus is morphed by the word of the Cross into utter stupidity. The time away from Christ becomes by that Cross a mess of foolishness and vanity. We are not convinced to follow Jesus, we are made by the Cross into followers of Him.

The second way the word of the Cross is the power of God for the ones being saved is that it is what continuously makes you saved. We aren’t saved by something we think or do but rather by the word of the Cross itself. The change has nothing to do with carefully crafted arguments or intelligent considerations. Eternal life comes by the word of the Cross and it alone has the power to make you, as Paul puts it, “continually saved”. No one is “argued into the Kingdom of God and no one convinced of it through logic. There is by the word of the Cross a literal transformation that makes me into something I can never in my own power or through any other power morph out of being. I cannot become a non child of God once I am one because it is not me that does it: it is by the word of the Cross.

Verse 21 is fascinating. It tells us that through the “foolishness of the proclamation” a miracle occurs. The nonsensical, “moronic”, idiotic if you will proclamation brings about the faith transformation. Just saying the “Christ having been crucified” opens wide a door that is completely closed, a door to an eternal life transformation. It is a bit mysterious this process because believing is not given as a means of attaining eternal life, it is the characteristic of the ones having it. It is like saying that all Walkups have big noses. I am not a Walkup because I have a big nose but there is not a Walkup running around without a big nose. Believing or faithing is what every single Christian does. It is the foolishness of the proclamation of Christ having been crucified that takes the soul into continual salvation. It is the power of the change. Believing is what you look like when the Christ crucified proclamation works in you.

Now I understand that the call of the Gospel is to “believe”. We believe though not because we get it or we think it through. We do not turn into Christians on belief. Belief is the response of the soul to the penetration of the message of Christ crucified. The power of it works in me and then I believe. This, the Bible says is grace…a gift. Romans 10:17 is a strange and near shocking twist on popular theology. It states that, “faith comes from hearing the message”. Literally, it reads that faith comes out of the hearing. We do not hear the message because of our faith. The message of Christ crucified delivers the faith into us. It is the power generating faith.

The message itself is a stumbling block to some (the Jews) and moronic to others (the Gentiles). But that doesn’t keep the proclamation of the Gospel from tearing into people and making their old unbelief completely illogical to them. Because the message of Christ crucified is sufficient in itself to make changed lives, we do not have to be skilled messengers. It does not need help from good, satisfying logic. It simply needs to be announced and then it bores in on the one being saved. Here is a scientific chemistry experiment for the church. Go before the Lord and ask Him to point out to you one you can proclaim the Gospel. Take a deep breath and then do it. Pray for God get the words out. Christ died on the Cross to give you eternal life. He rose from the dead and He is the one and only savior of your soul. The pray and step back. The proclamation is not held back by the wisdom of the unbelieving. It is corralled by the silence of the Church. One voice is all the Gospel needs. Why not make it yours.

Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ. Romans 10:17 NIV

I Get It! Introduction

2008-09-22T11:14:00.001-07:00

“I Get It”

1 Corinthians 1: 18-25 GJW
18 For the word of the Cross to the ones being destroyed is foolishness but to the ones continually being saved, to you, it is the power of God. 19 For it has been written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise ones and the intelligence of the intelligent, I will push out of the way.” 20 Where is the wise one, where is the learned one, where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For in as much as in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God took pleasure through the foolishness of the proclamation to save the ones believing. 22 And in as much as the Jews demand a sign and the Gentiles seek wisdom, 23 we on the other hand, we proclaim Christ having been crucified…to the Jews it is a stumbling block, to the Gentiles moronic. 24 But to the called ones, both Jews and Gentiles, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the stupidity of God is wiser than (the wisdom) of man and the weakness of God is stronger than (the strength) of men.

The “ah hah!” experience is famous in psychology as the moment when suddenly you get it; when your eyes open to what you never understood before, when your brain synapses all at once fire into inspiration mode. We’ve all had something like this happen to us; maybe not as world changing as the Wright Brothers suddenly knowing what was wrong with their airplane design or Thomas Edison realizing what he needed to do to correct his first light bulb but our ah-hahs are pretty important to us. You remember where you put your brush. Ah-hah! You think of your friend’s daughter’s name. Ah-hah! Inspiration comes for fixing your car’s carburetor. Ah-hah!

Recently I have been bemused by the “ah-ha” so many in the political world seem to be having about Jesus. The slogan that has sprung up recently as an “ah-hah” of sorts is that Jesus was a community organizer. Listening to a conservative talk-show, I was floored by the ah-hahs bandied around regarding Christ. A caller, decrying the slogan of Jesus being a community organizer told the host that Jesus was most certainly not a community organizer; he was a “teacher”. Now, as soon as the caller made his point, the host immediately corrected him. “Oh no” he expounded, “Jesus was not a teacher, he was truth”. That is what the Bible tells us about him and what Christians believe. So that was it. Three ah-hahs! Jesus was a community organizer, Jesus was a teacher, Jesus was truth. Honestly, I cannot find fault with any of the ones who thought they could define Jesus as they did. They each based their impressions on what they thought they had figured out and normally that is good enough. The trouble with Jesus is that your ah-hah will never be adequate…for that matter an ‘ah-hah can be your most fatal mistake when it comes to Him. Jesus is not an explanation, a definition nor even a biography. But to know Him is an impossible task if you rely just upon your common sense.

There are two types of understanding. The first is a natural wisdom, a common sense intelligence that everyone possesses to some degree or another. It takes things in and then makes decisions based on experiences, impressions and influencers. The ah-hah for natural wisdom is the result of mental synthesis, putting it all together and then the brain remaking what is there into an understanding. We operate out of this in practically every area of life. We discipline our kids based on it, choose careers based on it, form friendships and develop opinions through natural wisdom. For most people, that is all they know. We may see Gorillas using sign language to ask for water but you will never hear of one writing a book about family relations or discussing the grief process because it is not possible for them. Natural wisdom is all the wisdom the world has and so it cannot be charged with ignorance for being unable to go beyond it. Paul insists there is a wisdom that rises above natural wisdom just as distinctively as the wisdom of man soars above the understanding of a gorilla.
To Be Continued

Talking Points Conclusion

2008-09-19T17:40:00.000-07:00

We are so accustomed to splits and divisions and spin-offs that we have a most difficult time taking this passage at face value. We seem to have an inherent need to find out what was wrong with the factions. What were they doing that caused the split(s)? Where had they drifted from right doctrine? Now we know from church history that there were plenty of theological rifts that nearly tore the church asunder. From the Palagians to the Gnostics, there were a slew of cultic teachings infiltrating the church. Paul himself fought against the Judaizers and their effort to destroy the work of Grace. But this furious reprimand of Paul had nothing to do with setting straight bad doctrine. It was an attack against the church way of life. Paul had absolutely nothing bad or good to say about whatever arguments and counter arguments were being cast about for the various factions. He just despised the splits.

Now there is a fascinating choice of phrasing Paul uses that explains the splits. He notes that each one separately is making his or her own decision about which group to join. The emphasis is on individuality, it is on personal choice, it is on independent thinking. Not that everyone was in some group or another but every person sectioned off in a group made the decision on his own. He did it. Now we have no idea what the criterion was for making these choices. It could have been quite logical and well thought. In fact probably every move into any of the groups was easily justified and explained. No lame explanations for these folk. They split off for a myriad of good reasons. This is the power behind the Me-Church. It makes perfect sense and always fits my needs.

The Me-Church is theologically built upon the premise that God is secondary to my values and concerns. Regardless of your talking points, every shism is a butchering of Jesus. Every split over a doctrine, every party faction vote that cuts apart the church is the severing apart of Christ. Now we can with quite lucid logic argue that there are divisions that can be justified. What if a pastor is teaching false doctrine, a business decision of the church is unethical or even not Christian, a rampant plague of immorality is running through the membership. Aren’t any of these problems a good reason for splitting off?

Just this week I was speaking with someone who was one of thirty pastors of a mega church that split apart. Half the staff were let go because of the financial difficulties the church faced as a result. He himself started a church when he was one of the pastors let go. Now I do not know what caused the split and I am certain that those on both sides of it felt justified in their actions. There very well could have been horrible and despicable goings on that infuriated members but for Paul, it still became a matter of cutting up Christ and sending His body parts across the land.

Paul feels so strongly about this that he even makes what seems an almost silly declaration that he was glad he hadn’t baptized hardly any of them. Now it is not that Paul thought little of baptisms, he just had no interest in anyone using him as their figurehead for a new split. It is silly of course to waste much time decrying the multitude of churches out there. And it is almost ridiculous to think than many, if any will retrace their steps and rejoin with churches they originally made a break. But we can begin to think seriously about what we can do to keep this plague of Me-Church from making headway among us.
Now I realize that conventional thought is that churches are comprised of ideologues that do not think much on their own and walk in lock step to some promoted value or cause. In other words, there is not much room for individuality within a church culture. Even believers in the church seem to fearfully guard against being trapped by some heaping tide of conformity. Christians too cheer for the boy who bucks the ethos of his church and attends dance parties and applaud the young girl who quits her constricting church choir and in opposition to the church leaders sings at jazz clubs. The ideal believer is one who isn’t afraid to walk away from his church if he doesn’t like how a vote goes or isn’t pleased with the style of worship. At least that is what it seems. Yet Paul, in his assessment of splits within the church could not accept any form of groupism, justified or otherwise, let alone a traipsing here and there between congregations.

The last verse in our section is not so much a formula for creating unity in the church but rather a reaffirmation of what must be our talking point. For Christ did not send me to baptize but to evangelize without wise words in order that the Cross of Christ might not be emptied. It is not about formulating alliances and building allies in your causes, the main part of our life together is doing nothing as a group that would empty the cross. I know that the NIV translates this as “empty the cross of its power”, but power is not mentioned by Paul. Paul just keeps sharing the Gospel because he does not want in any way to empty the Cross. The risk of this is not in baptizing though; it is in making do with the “wisdom of a word”. The “wisdom of the word” and living by it is the way the Cross is emptied, and that Paul will not tolerate.

All sorts of things can seem right and logically they may make a great deal of sense but the church is not built on what makes sense to me. There are all sorts of wise words that can be justified and a myriad of actions that are perfectly acceptable but the church is not that. It is the cross of Christ crucifying self and making us His. I live within a bent and wavering Christian community not because it fits but because Christ is fitting me within it. Churches make bad decisions, sing poorly, preach poorly, act inappropriately and generally make fools of themselves endlessly. But the church is the center within which the Cross of Christ makes its home and does its most revolutionary work.

Have you ever wondered why God doesn’t just make us like turtles…drop us down into a hole somewhere and let us hatch alone and then fend for ourselves? God places us in specific families, gives us certain parents and then makes us stay there. We follow this same pattern generation after generation and somehow although at times people breakdown and families bust apart, this is the way it goes again and again. The Church is the believer’s family and for better or worse, where He places you is the spot of your most crucial growth and significant work. It doesn’t make sense to me that God would expect the church to be together and stick together because that seems too stiff a restriction on my freedom. But if the church is not to be Paul-Church or Apollos-Church or Cephas Church or even Christ-Church (now doesn’t that seem odd), then it certainly is a curse upon us if it is Me-Church. Empty your will, empty your opinions, empty your comforts, empty your wallets even but do not empty the Cross. If we divide, it may seem logical, and if we split from one another, it might make sense, but we have grossly miscalculated if we think that by doing so it is not that critical. You cannot empty the cross and hope to make a better life. Unless of course you only want to be a Turtle…

Courage

2008-09-17T11:01:00.000-07:00

Boy was I caught off guard. I have been walking for an hour and a half every day the past 4 weeks around Lake Elizabeth and have by going at the same time every day met some very nice people. I have a new friend who as we pass we comment on the latest sports news. A couple of nights ago, for the first time since I broke my leg and tore my achilles tendon ran (can we really call it that?) a half mile. It was exhilerating and yet I had a rough time of it with my legs. Today I decided to jog a bit on my trip around the lake and this friend along with all my other friends there was shocked to see me "picking up the pace". When he met up with me the second time as we both made it around the lake in opposite directions he chided me for not running. So, to preserve my sense of manhood, (like that is some big deal) I stopped and explained how come I couldn't run anymore. I showed him the scar on my leg where I had the rod placed in it and the scar from my achilles tendon surgery. Puffed with my bloated sense of courageous perseverence, I explained that it was tough for me to run very far so I had to stop because of the achiness. My new friend then told me why he couldn't run. While serving in Viet Nam, he had to come home and an aluminum rod was placed through his spine to save his back. He rolled up his socks and showed me where shrapnel scarred his leg. The truth is, some wounds really are war wounds and some courage is bigger than other bits of courage. "...with humility comes wisdom." Proverbs 11:2 b

Talking Points Part One

2008-09-16T09:23:00.000-07:00

1 Corinthians 1: 10-17 GJW
But I urge you brothers through the name of our Lord Jesus Christ that all of you might speak in one accord and there not be any schisms within you all but that you might continue being united one in your thoughts and opinions. For it was made known to me through Cloe’s people concerning you that wrangling arguments are going on in your midst. I am saying this because separately, each one says, “I myself am of Paul”, “but I with Apollos”, “but I with Cephas”, “but I with Christ”. Has Christ been divided, Paul wasn’t crucified for you nor into the name of Paul were you baptized? I give thanks that not one of you I baptized except Crispus and Gauius so that certain ones of you might not say that into my name you were baptized. Oh, but I also baptized the house of Stephen. As to the rest I don’t know another one I baptized. For Christ did not send me to baptize but to evangelize without wise words in order that the Cross of Christ might not be emptied.

A talking point is a focus of discussion, a set of items that you or your team are determined to make central to conversations you enter. We have Republican talking points such as the lack of experience Senator Obama has in governing and we have Democratic talking points such as the connection between President Bush and Senator McCain. Talking points are used to keep critics from addressing the weak parts of your argument and to accentuate your strengths. Talking points are an agreed upon approach to addressing issues that may be controversial.

Apparently the Corinthian church had its own Democrats and Republicans, Libertarians and Socialists. They were the: Paul, Apollos, Cephas and the Christ parties. Now commentators have developed a multitude of creative platforms these four different groups may have adopted. Barclay contended that the Paul Party was comprised of Gentile believers who lived lawlessly. The Apollos Party was a group of intellectuals who were turning Christianity into a philosophy like Buddhism rather than a living faith. Cephas Party was the Jewish Christians who promoted the Law and made little of grace. The Christ Party was a collection of Christians who thought they were the only true church. Now the only difficulty I have with this quite fascinating and logical explanation is that nowhere in the text do we find a hint of this. In fact, Paul’s complaint with the factions has nothing to do with doctrine, teaching or practice. To try to assess what was wrong with each group completely misses the point.

Paul did not critique the Apollos Group for being sophists, never attacks the Cephas Group for pushing circumcision and certainly doesn’t tongue lash the Paul group for being too lax on practice. He does later make much of the immorality in the church and blasts them for suing each other but there is not a hint of quadrangular setting straight the doctrines of the parties. His attack is entirely based upon their splitting from one another. He uses the almost grotesque image of Jesus torn into pieces as rhetorical proof of their lunacy. Several hundred years before, in the early days before the nation of Israel became a monarchy, an Israelite and his concubine were threatened by the perverted Benjaminites of Gibeah. When the man sent out his concubine to the crowd in response to their threats, she was raped through the night and eventually died as a result. Furious with what they had done, the man cut up his dead concubine into twelve parts and sent the body parts of his slave girl out on donkeys throughout Israel to raise up the righteous wrath of his countrymen. Needless to say, it worked. Paul knew of the story and its horror all too well for he was a Benjaminite and the occurrence was a dark blight on his ancestral background. The terrible image of Christ cut up like that and sent out was intended to disgust and shock the church.

We are so accustomed to splits and divisions and spin-offs that we have a most difficult time taking this passage at face value. We seem to have an inherent need to find out what was wrong with the factions. What were they doing that caused the split(s)? Where had they drifted from right doctrine? Now we know from church history that there were plenty of theological rifts that nearly tore the church asunder. From the Palagians to the Gnostics, there were a slew of cultic teachings infiltrating the church. Paul himself fought against the Judaizers and their effort to destroy the work of Grace. But this furious reprimand of Paul had nothing to do with setting straight bad doctrine. It was an attack against the church way of life. Paul had absolutely nothing bad or good to say about whatever arguments and counter arguments were being cast about for the various factions. He just despised the splits.
To Be Continued

Say What?

2008-09-12T16:36:00.000-07:00

Recently there was an ad making fun of John McCain and his lack of computer skills. Of course there is more to the story than that and an important lesson. It seems imperative that before we mock someone or make judgments, we should have all the facts. Regardless of political bent or even religious persuasion...

Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Matthew 7: 1,2 NIV

Click here for ...the rest of the story

Risky Business Concluded

2008-09-12T12:15:00.000-07:00

Verse five continues the thought. At that moment when grace came our way, we were in every single part of our lives enriched in Christ. The wealth of Christ came to us out of two sources: every word and every insight brought by Him. In other words, when the Gospel came to us and by the revelation it carried in our hearts, we gained the wealth of the grace of God. Just as an inheritance is gained in its fullness and not piecemeal when the will is read, so with the acceptance of the Gospel we gain it all at once: eternal life, transformation and citizenship into the Kingdom of God.

Verse six answers the question, “How is this so?” We already have been enriched by grace because the witness of Christ was established at that same time in us. Now there are two ways to interpret the witness. It could be what others (the Bible, the Holy Spirit, those who shared the Gospel with us) provided us as witness or it could be the witness of Christ Himself in declaring us His. The Greek word translated “establish” means “to render constant and unwavering” or “to ratify”. It is the picture of a judge declaring an adoption finalized or the Supreme Court determining a law constitutional. The witness of Christ that the grace of God is ours is irrevocably decided and declared. Now it is my contention, that the witness, for this reason is not the one given by a friend but rather the witness of Jesus that when we received the grace of God through faith, we were established by Him as His. No verbal testimony can decide our place in the Kingdom but Jesus’ word can and does. It is the witness of Jesus Christ that decides our fate and upon the receiving of God’s grace, the witness is fixed.

As a result of the witness having been irrevocably established in us, we are made a promise in verse seven. Or, to be more precise, a fact is stated. We will not, in any single way come up short with regard to anything promised to God’s people when Jesus Christ is revealed at the end time. Paul uses a double negative to make his point conclusive. There is not one benefit of being God’s child we will miss when Christ returns. “Oh, but how can this be”, is a legitimate question. What if you fail in some important something you should have done? What if you don’t live up to all of your obligations as a Christian? Isn’t there some debit charge we will accrue at the end of time? How can you have all I have when Christ returns if you weren’t as good as me at living up to your responsibilities? Now logically, as we evaluate what ought to be upon Christ’s return, there should be some tallying done and spiritual accountability. A divine ledger ought to reflect a comparative analysis between us.

Of course that is what makes sense to us but it is not reflected in the Apostle Paul’s assessment of Grace. Not one gift of God will be missing from our stocking when Christ returns. The naughty or nice accounting of Santa Claus is just not there for God’s people. In Christ, we will not lack a single gift of God when He returns. The gifts are settled by the established witness of Christ that we are His own.

If verse seven lifted the lid of Pandora’s Box, verse eight blows it from its hinges. Verse eight makes a complete wreck of any semblance of end times retribution for the Church. It really is quite astonishing what verse eight states. Listen again to the Apostle Paul. “Which also he shall establish you unto the end, unblameable ones on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ…” Unblameable is perhaps not a real word but it best explains the Greek term Paul uses. It means irreproachable, not charged, not on trial. Born-again Christians will not be charged at all at the end. Not a single claim will be made against us and the reason will be because God will make this certain. It is, as Paul puts it, “established, unwavering, never in doubt”. It is not our innocence that will be established, it is us as blameless that is established. This is not an overlooking of guilt, a closing the eyes and passing on what is obvious to all. God will, to the very end, make sure we are completely blameless with no one to charge us with a single fault. This is an astounding claim.

Verse nine concludes the section with the reason why we should believe we will be kept blameless until the end. God is faithful. God, through whom you were called into the fellowship of his son Jesus Christ, is faithful. You may not be able to count on your husband or your children, your boss or the economy but…you can trust God. What He has done is called us into a select group, the fellowship of His son Jesus Christ. We are not in the end Democrats or Republicans, Asians or South Americans, rich or poor, male or female or any other sort of classification the world tries to make us settle. We are only one sort of person; within the fellowship of Jesus Christ or not. If we are, no matter how badly we condemn ourselves, how horrifically we are ridiculed or rejected by others, we will be, in the end, blameless. And why will this be so? Because we are in the fellowship of Jesus Christ and it was God who called us into it.

Many in the Christian community are not ready to hear this. They feel much more comfortable trying to work out all their faults on their own and have a tough time thinking God will not somehow make us accountable for the many bad things we do as Christians. I cannot say it is fair that God will make us blameless on the last day and I admit it seems like some Christians I know should have to pay a price for their greed, immorality, bad temper and affection for primetime TV shows but I am as you are, left with the very clear pronouncement Paul makes here. In the end, we will, in Christ be let off scot free without a single charge brought against us. It is dangerous for God to do this. What is to keep some Christian man from professing Christ and then murdering his family and still be let into heaven? My own son asked me this very question about grace. If the cross teaches us anything, it is this. God is not afraid of our sins. And…the blood of Christ is sufficient to make clean the worst of us sinners.

The Pandora’s Box is opened. Grace has escaped.

What Do You Think?

2008-09-10T18:18:00.000-07:00

Beautiful Baby In The Womb...It could have been You!

If you think the campaign has reached bizaro levels, read the story below from Jonathon Martin's blog...

South Carolina Democratic chairwoman Carol Fowler sharply attacked Sarah Palin today, saying John McCain had chosen a running mate "whose primary qualification seems to be that she hasn’t had an abortion.”

Palin is an opponent of abortion rights and gave birth to her fifth child, Trig, earlier this year after finding out during her pregnancy that the baby had Down syndrome.

Fowler told my colleague Alex Burns in an interview that the selection of an opponent of abortion rights would not boost McCain among many women.

“Among Democratic women and even among independent women, I don’t think it helped him,” she said.

Told of McCain's boost in the new ABC/Washington Post among white women following the Palin pick, Fowler said: "Just anecdotally, I believe that those white women are Republican women anyway."

UPDATE -- Carol Fowler releases a statement of apology: "I personally admire and respect the difficult choices that women make everyday, and I apologize to anyone who finds my comment offensive. I clumsily was making a point about people in South Carolina who may vote based on a single issue. Whether it’s the environment, the economy, the war or a woman’s right to choose, there are people who will cast their vote based on a single issue. That was the only point I was attempting to make."

I did not make this up! If you do not believe me, click here!
I have a great friend who vehemently argues that abortions should be legal and easy to obtain. She contends forcefully that if abortions are outlawed, then we will have an epidemic of dying women brutally attempting self-administered abortions.

Of course the emotional persuasiveness of this contention is most difficult to battle. No one wants what she describes happening ever.

But here is the basic point Christians argue regarding abortion. The baby in the womb is never a part of the woman's body. It is a separate, living entity 46 chromosomed into life. It may not survive outside the womb at six weeks but neither do many victim of car accidents or shootings survive without the help of medical staff yet we don't argue for just discarding those lives simply because they are inconvenient. They are at the mercy of the medical staff but no one contends that somehow the hospital personel "own" the victim because it is within their power to keep alive.

Two, the life in the womb or outside the womb is God's and no one else's. Jeremiah the prophet wished he had been cut off from the living while in the womb because of how hard his life was but at no point did he ever fail to acknowledge his life was not his own. In his mother's womb he was known by God and David the King tells us that God lovingly puts together our parts in the womb. As we know and still acknowledge, all life comes from God and He begins it despite the cloning efforts of scientists. We fight for life not because we want mothers dying of self-induced abortions but because the millions killed in abortion clinics are God's and the death of these babies is wretched beyond measure. We live, not because a mother chose to keep us alive but rather because a Savior wanted us to come about.

Ps 139:13-16
For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.
14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,
16 your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me
were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
(from New International Version)

Risky Business Introduction

2008-09-10T16:42:00.000-07:00

1 Corinthians 1:4-9 GJW
I continually give thanks to my God always concerning you upon the grace of God which was given to you in Christ Jesus because, in everything, you were enriched in him in every word and in every insight due to the fact the witness of Christ was established in you. Consequently you aren’t at all being made to come short in any anticipated gift with reference to the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ which also he shall establish you unto the end unblameable ones on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God, through whom you were called into the fellowship of his son Jesus Christ, is faithful.

The story of Pandora’s Box is a silly little myth the Greeks thrust upon the western world. If not for Pandora and her craven curiosity the story goes, we would not have all the wearisome troubles we face. Plagues and diseases, holocausts and terrors all flew out into the world the instant Pandora took off the lid. Of course even the Greeks knew the tale was just a teaching vehicle used to warn against flippancy, against the casual disregard for the actions we take. We must think before we act is the moral; that even the most breezy wisp of a thought can reap a world of harm. Ten car pile-ups and lost political campaigns can both be initiated by a solitary decision that at the time seemed meaningless and trivial. It of course goes the other way too. Pandora’s Box could have the small pox inoculation, the chance meeting that turns a plumber into a world-class author, a happy discovery at a pawn shop of a Monet. We can wonder what might have been King David’s legacy if he hadn’t wandered out on the roof the fateful night he stumbled upon the lovely Bathsheba bathing but we can just as easily ponder the way history could have shifted if Moses had taken his sheep east rather than west and missed the burning bush. Both were a sort of Pandora’s Box.

There are findings in scripture that are a Pandora’s Box. As you gaze upon them, the consequences of opening these discoveries are monumental in ways we may not know at all. The realization that God is a Trinity is a Pandora’s Box. The finding that God is eternal and everything that is sprang not out of random evolutionary processes but rather from God’s specific word is a Pandora’s Box. Our passage today is a sizable and in ways baffling Pandora’s Box for by opening it, we can unleash an entirely undesirable fury. And yet, if the Gospel is good news, then you just might have something else altogether. The problem with the Bible is that despite what you may wish it say, it says what it does and we are left with the many consequences that spring from it.

Some could argue that the six verses found above are simply a minor introductory statement for the much more important body of instructions that follow in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians but if you look closely enough at it, you find within this little passage an extraordinary assertion. Now we can take one of two courses. We can heed the warning of Pandora and keep this risky portion of scripture closed or we can follow the example of Abraham Lincoln or Governor Palin and run for office anyway despite its risks or in our case, open the passage.

Paul marks out a quite straight path toward a revolutionary teaching. It all begins with verse four. Of course the verse may not sound like much. It is innocent enough. Paul gives thanks continually because of the grace given the church in Christ Jesus. This grace Paul notes is given all at once. It is completed in a moment. The verb translated “given” describes something finished, already accomplished. Of course grace is in Paul’s writings the total work of God in us. It is the death of Christ for our sins, the calling of God to receive our salvation found in Jesus, the transforming work of God in making us a new creation; or as Jesus puts it, “born again” and it is the eternal life we possess through faith. That says Paul is what has happened for us. We shall not receive grace at some later date; grace has already come our way and its work with us is finished and for that, Paul gives ongoing thanks.
To Be Continued

Evangelical voters

2008-09-09T18:38:00.000-07:00

Pollster George Barna and the Barna Group recently came out with his findings on how Americans view Evangelical Voters. His discoveries are quite interesting!

What Do Americans Think of Evangelical Voters?

In general, evangelical voters are perceived with a mix of skepticism and respect. Americans are not always sure what to make of evangelicals, but they believe the voting bloc has significant influence. Barna examined eight perceptions of evangelical voters. Four of the statements represented the most widely-held views:

that evangelicals will have a significant influence effect on the election outcome (59% of American adults said this was either "very" or "somewhat accurate" regarding evangelical voters);
that evangelicals will cause the political conversation to be more conservative (59%);
that they will be spend too much time complaining and not enough time solving problems (56%);
and that they will be misunderstood and unfairly described by news media (56%).
Surprisingly, given the attention that moral issues have received in connection with evangelicals, only half of Americans (52%) felt that evangelical voters would focus primarily on homosexuality and abortion.

Roughly half said that evangelicals will minimize social justice issues (47%) and another 47% felt they believe that evangelicals will vote overwhelmingly Republican. Roughly two out of every five Americans (44%) believed evangelicals will not approach the election with an open mind.

To read the rest of the article, click on the link below!
Click Here

The Prayer Of The Anointed Concluded

2008-09-06T18:34:00.000-07:00

What was the undergirding force making the fearful bold and the broken strong? It was, we must acknowledge, faith in God. The story ended happily. The Ammonites and Moabites in a bizarre twist of circumstance unraveled and started butchering the Edomites and when that wasn’t enough to quench their collective fury, they destroyed each other. Without lifting a hand against her enemies Israel was saved. How would things have turned if the people had doubted the prophet’s call to trust? If Israel never came out in battle formation and hid behind its town walls instead, what might have happened? Would the Edomites and Moabites and Ammonites still have ruthlessly attacked one another had the armies of Judah stayed home or would they have remained a united force and destroyed God’s people? We don’t really know, do we? Therein is the befuddlement of faith. How far do you go with faith’s stretch? Does faith just make you feel better or is it the most dramatic change agent available to God’s people? Is it the crossover into the supernatural or just a psychological quick fix to stress?

Imagine needing to travel three thousand miles in three days or lose the dream career opportunity of a lifetime back in 1850 and stumbling upon a BMW roadster with the keys left in the ignition and a gas tank big enough to carry you across the United States. What would you have done? Certainly you would have hoped in the car, turned the key and made your way as fast as you could across the prairie. But what if you didn’t think the car could move, didn’t believe it could take you anywhere at all and walked away from it and given up on your dream career? Would you have been a fool in 1850? Perhaps not… Yet you certainly would be thought one now! Faith operates always with the future in mind; it never really stands in the present. Faith is the ultimate enigma, the unsearchable premise. Place the BMW in Middle Ages Germany and it is faith, put it on the Autobahn and it is science.

But, you may argue, the BMW in Middle Ages Germany is just as much science as it is if it is sitting in one of our showrooms today but that is because we misunderstand the nature of faith. Faith is not confidence in a non-entity that we dream about; faith is confidence in the very real God who keeps your heart pounding and your mind working. Turn the key even back in the Middle Ages and the BMW starts. Turn the key of faith today and you become Jehoshaphat. Your life starts. It is impossible to guess at what we miss when we don’t trust God moment by moment and pray in faith. Certainly the people of Nazareth didn’t know what their lack of faith in Jesus meant to them…but now we do. The same holds true today. A lack of faith seems so very inconsequential right now…or at least we are not sure what harm it may cause us. The truth is that because faith always lives within the future and we cannot see into the future, we make our most fatal mistakes within the realm of faith. At the time it doesn’t seem to matter if we have faith or not. But for the people of Nazareth and even earlier for the citizens of Judah, it did…and it does for us too!

There are three signs that our faith is growing too low to change our circumstances and causes us to miss the same things the people of Nazareth missed, God’s miraculous interventions. The first is fear. If we have become fearful, we are low in faith. When the disciples panicked over the horrific storm they found themselves swept into on the Sea of Galilee, Jesus ridiculed their response. "You of little faith, why are you so afraid?" Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the waves, and it was completely calm. (Matthew 8:26 NIV) It isn’t that the storm wasn’t real or that people don’t die in storms like that. Jesus gave no hint that the disciples were behaving insanely. Bills are real, bankruptcy is real, rapists are real, broken pipes and broken arms are real. Christian faith doesn’t deny reality. What Christian faith does though is look to God for complete help. Like water and oil, faith and fear cannot mingle, they may co-exist in the same heart but one always works to push out the other. Open up faith and fear slips off, nurture fear and your faith bubbles away.

A second sign that faith is low is a concentrated gaze on stuff. Part of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount was dedicated to the problem of God’s people spending too much time and effort collecting goods, clothing, food and drink. Little faith and a preoccupation with what we eat and wear and what we have go hand-in-hand. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? (Matthew 6:30-31 NIV) The fuzzy line that defines just enough and too much money and property collected and considered is the line between unbelief and faith. A new may be just what God wants me to purchase for myself. Yet the amount of thought I put in my wardrobe may be the chief hindrance to having enough faith in God to do much for the Kingdom through prayer. Spend too much time debating the benefits of one computer over another and your hope in God could diminish and your faith weaken. Do not take the time to pursue God’s guidance in what to buy or not buy and you may have a great sound system but nothing to help you with your cancer or your new boss.

A third sign that my faith is weak is when I complain. On another occasion the disciples were boating with Jesus and Christ wanted to teach them about how bad it was to follow the same approach to God as did the Pharisees. This was a crucial lesson for the disciples to grasp and Jesus wanted their full attention. However, the disciples were bitterly obsessed with the fact no one had brought bread along for the trip. Stomachs growling and fatigue setting in on them, the bread crisis kept them from listening to God. Jesus’ rebuke of them was sharp. Aware of their discussion, Jesus asked, "You of little faith, why are you talking among yourselves about having no bread? (Matthew 16:8 NIV) Bread is not the issue when we complain about something nor is a messy house, a touchy supervisor or a whining child. When we complain, our lack of faith is being proven. “You of little faint”, Jesus remonstrated, not, “wow, we are having a horrible day. Who forgot the bread?”

All faith begins with this one decisive moment. Without real hope available anywhere else, I cry out, “God help me.” Whether I need to buy a tie for a wedding, get my car running, take a sick aunt to the hospital or decide how I will spend eternity once I die, the plea, “Jesus, please help me” is the one and only way to enter into the supernatural of Christ. I can wag my finger at a store clerk who won’t let me return a Christmas present, beg for a bank employee to give me more time to pay off my debt, work for hours on a new resume but nothing enters me into God’s world if I do not in faith turn to Him for help.

At the very edge of Easter was perhaps the purest picture of the sort of faith we must embrace if we are to know the power of God mingled with our earthy moments. Having watched Jesus’ blood splatter down before her and then in agony groan out His last breath, Mary Magdalene did what even the disciples were not willing to risk, go to the grave of Jesus and honor His memory. How could she go down to His tomb Easter Sunday when so many others could not who loved Jesus just as dearly? What strength gave her power to risk the wrath of the guards stationed at the tomb? How was she able to manage the journey there when no one else would? We must call it…faith. Take what seems to be empty hope, mix it with the unwashed promise of God to always be with you and help you in your times of need and you have faith…It was faith that gave Mary Magdalene, when everyone else was gone, the first sight of the risen Savior.

The Prayer Of The Anointed Continued

2008-09-05T10:08:00.000-07:00

Of all places where Jesus would have been expected to split the sky with power, it would have been there in Nazareth. But despite all of His established friendships, the obvious poverty and the many needs of everyone there, Nazareth did not get much out of Jesus. The reason for this, lack of faith, is disconcerting. One can’t help but wonder what the lack of faith prevented. Were there sick people in the village that had to keep suffering because of the lack of faith everyone else had? Was there blindness and deafness and leprosy and seizures that remained due to the lack of faith? What might have happened to that little village if Jesus had just found a few more Nazarites with faith? We don’t know because they were not there.

A second story comes from the Old Testament and reveals just how valuable it is to steadfastly maintain faith in God. Tiny Judah was being invaded by the combined armies of Moab and Ammon. Their armies were a colossal juggernaut and the people of Judah were justifiably petrified. But rather than suing for peace or forming a strategy for defending the homeland, the entire populace, men, women and children went to the Temple grounds in Jerusalem and waited as their king Jehoshaphat prayed before the Lord. “… we have no power to face this vast army that is attacking us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are upon you." (2 Chronicles 20:12 NIV) Then they paused. Without a flash of lightening or a clap of thunder to stir their faith, they were jolted out of their silence by the relative unknown Jahaziel and his shocking prophecy. He said: "Listen, King Jehoshaphat and all who live in Judah and Jerusalem! This is what the LORD says to you: 'Do not be afraid or discouraged because of this vast army. For the battle is not yours, but God's. Tomorrow march down against them. They will be climbing up by the Pass of Ziz, and you will find them at the end of the gorge in the Desert of Jeruel. You will not have to fight this battle. Take up your positions; stand firm and see the deliverance the LORD will give you, O Judah and Jerusalem. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged. Go out to face them tomorrow, and the LORD will be with you.'" (2 Chronicles 20:15-17 NIV) The scripture tells us that the Spirit of God came upon him but honestly how did the people know God really had? How could they be certain the Lord inspired His prophecy?

Now we have come to one of the most important questions facing the Christian religion. How do we know the things we read in scripture are true, particularly the matters that are tough to believe? How can we be certain the God of the Bible made the heavens and the earth and all life came from Him? How can we be sure there is life after death and maybe even more importantly, how do we know Christ rose from the dead Easter Sunday? How can we really know? The truth is the people of Judah didn’t really know the prophecy of Jahaziel was true any more than you know Easter morning happened. They stumbled out of the Temple courtyard with just faith to guide them. No great earthquake to arouse their confidence, no shout from heaven to reassure them. What they had was simple trust in God. Many wonder whether faith is enough to build a life, enough to build a home, enough to build an entire moral network for what you do and don’t do. Something though stirred up those embers of certainty in the hearts of the people of Judah because when the prophecy was proclaimed the entire sum of people bowed in worship. The next day they did a most extraordinary thing. All of the fighting men went out into the desert armed with pitch pipes and choir books. The battle that they had so dreaded just hours before became a crescendo of worship and adoration of God. Nothing had happened yet. The combined armies of Moab and Ammon and even Edom were still out there massed against them and thoroughly armed. But for Judah, the fear was gone and as they marched out against their terrible enemy, they sang praise songs.

To Be Continued

Posted By Request...Part 1

2008-09-04T17:23:00.000-07:00

The Prayer Of The Anointed
According To Your Faith

Matthew 9:29 NIV
Then he touched their eyes and said, "According to your faith will it be done to you";

When was the last time someone said to you, “according to your faith”? You go to a job interview and you are told that your salary will be according to you faith. You take an exam and your professor announces that your score will be based according to your faith. The power company sends you a notice and it reminds you that your payments are now determined according to your faith. Could you run a red light and tell the judge that you did so according to your faith? What would she say to that? Would you be taken seriously by a bank if you told them you wanted a loan and that they should give it to you solely according to your faith? No one judges us according to our faith in any legitimate parts of our lives and yet the truth is the significant parts of the Universe must answer to the faith we possess.

When the disciples failed to cast out a demon from a poor child suffering from seizures, Jesus told them it was because they lacked faith. Then the disciples came to Jesus in private and asked, "Why couldn't we drive it out?" He replied, "Because you have so little faith. I tell you the truth, 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." (Matthew 17:19-20 NIV) Jesus responded almost exactly the same way when his disciples asked Him how He was able to make a fig tree wither with just a verbal curse. Jesus replied, "I tell you the truth, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, 'Go, throw yourself into the sea,' and it will be done. If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer." (Matthew 21:21-22 NIV)

We trivialize the importance of faith because we don’t understand the ramifications of little faith. Two stories from the Bible illustrate its importance. The first comes from the New Testament. Jesus had made his way back to his home town of Nazareth, returning to the synagogue where several months before he infuriated the town leaders with His indication He was the Messiah. This time, his teaching wasn’t quite as inflammatory but many wondered where He got His insights. He was after all just the son of a carpenter and they all knew his mom and siblings. Jesus’ family members apparently weren’t all that great because nothing about his family history seemed to impress them. Despite it being his old neighborhood and all of his childhood friends were there, Jesus we are told did very few miracles while with them. Why? Matthew tells us that it was because of their “lack of faith.”

What Was I Thinking?

2008-09-03T17:58:00.000-07:00

Could it be that…

We might run out of the world’s supply of mud after this election?

Vladimir Putin thought that by invading Georgia, he might make it a ‘blue” state?

The DNC owns the movie rights to “Gustav, The Mother of All Storms”?

Katie Couric will force Sarah Palin to admit, “I Am Barack Obama’s Father”

Evangelical moose hunters are an endangered species?

MSNBC is organizing a P Diddy Combs telethon to help him with the high cost of jet fuel?

God is wondering about Michael Moore?

You are only old if you are 72 but at 68 you still are in your prime?

Madonna was originally slated to play the part of Napoleon Dynamite but MTV decided no one would believe anybody could be so vacuous? (Of course Madonna thought it a compliment)

The debates will solve our national fuel crisis if T. Boone Pickens is right?

Starting At First Corinthians Conclusion

2008-09-02T17:20:00.000-07:00

There is a fascinating sidebar to this section that the Apostle Paul himself alludes to and that is this fellow Sosthenes. All we know about him other than the bare bones description we find here is what is told in Acts 18:17. Paul had been in Corinth working among the Jewish leaders and actually led many of them to Christ including Crispus, the synagogue ruler. A synagogue could be formed in a community if a collection of ten Jewish men could be gathered to help in its founding. One of the men, often the leading financial supporter of the work and most respected of the group was made ruler. His responsibilities included directing the structure of the services, judging disputes within the Jewish community and serving as the representative of the synagogue in the neighborhood. Apparently Crispus was removed from his office after he and his family became Christian because not long after, Sosthenes was called the synagogue ruler.

Furious with his efforts at evangelism, a collection of Jews, brought charges against Paul to Gallio, the Roman proconsul over Achaia, the territory where Corinth was the capital city. Gallio saw nothing wrong in Paul’s work and through the charges as well as the ones presenting the charges out of his court. In response, the Jews turned on their own Sosthenes, the Synagogue ruler and beat him up just outside the courthouse. This Sosthenes is most likely the “brother” Paul references.

We have no information explaining why the crowd made Sosthenes the scapegoat for their humiliation. Perhaps in some way he spoke up for Paul in his work. Maybe they did not like the tepid support he gave their cause. The lack of an explanation in scripture is quite helpful for us because it forces us to consider only what we are told. Sosthenes was a ruler of the Jews and he became a brother to Paul and the rest of the church. Nothing in his resume would make him much of a candidate for Christian faith. Wealthy, secure in his religion, a proven leader, Sosthenes was the anti-candidate for dependence on Jesus. Yet, Christianity is not a testament to marketing skills or powerful arguing, it is the pull of God on a person’s heart and the conversion of his will by the Holy Spirit.

The great question, do we become a Christian because God chooses us or do we become Christian because we choose Him is pretty well explained here in our passage. No one enters the Kingdom unless God calls him to faith and everyone who becomes Christian calls upon the name of the Lord. It isn’t prevarication to say this…it is simply stating the facts. I think what we see in John 1 is the model for every single conversion if you recognize that the physical presence of Jesus is not necessary for salvation. The account begins with John the Baptist pointing out Jesus to two of his disciples and stating, “Behold the Lamb of God.” He could only have said this with the prodding of the Holy Spirit. So it all starts with someone, pointing out Jesus. The Gospel always comes from somewhere but the voice behind it is the Holy Spirit. Hearing this, the two disciples, Andrew and another one come after Jesus. No questions, no insights, no agenda! Jesus turns to them and asks, “What are you looking for” or better yet, “what are you seeking?” It is God Himself who forces them to consider their most pressing need. Not knowing how to answer but realizing the primary is located within Jesus, they ask Him, “Where are you staying?” The final part of this faith journey is Jesus’ invitation, “Come and see” and so they go.

Salvation is as simple and as complex as that. It is the decisive moment when, whether it is God pulling me or me longing for Him that I take off after Jesus. Come and see is the confident assertion that if you just spend time with Him, Jesus will win you over. I recently read that the author Anne Rice has become a born again Christian. An atheist famous for her best-selling novels rooted in the occult, she was the last person you would expect to start pursuing after Jesus. But in 1996 following years of wrestling with questions about God and the Bible, she just stopped and admitted she loved Jesus. Anne Rice says she didn’t turn to him because of an accident or a loss or any of the typical explanations non Christians have for conversion, she just realized she wanted to follow Christ. Come and see was Jesus’ invitation to Anne Rice and she did.

An Open Letter To My Daughter

2008-08-31T16:48:00.000-07:00

The other night you asked your mom how we know that God exists. You wondered if maybe someone made up all the stories. How can you at six ask such questions? You are growing up much too quickly!

Probably the most fascinating story of them all is the one about the peasant family that gave birth to a baby boy in a dusty cave. Yet we are told this was the birth of God...at least as a human. What do you make of this one? It seems like it could have been made up but there are some details about the story we can be certain happened. This Jesus was born. How could that have been made up? There were shepherds and Magi and priests and plenty of others who saw the baby. He was born in a stable and that couldn't have been concocted out of air because there was an inn keeper who knew about it. The birth registry of the Romans would have documented his birth and anyone wanting to prove he never was could easily have looked that up. Of course the question about Joseph being the father is a bit of an oddity in the story but there is no reason to make that part of the account up. It would look too bad for the family of God to have the child not have the father who should have been his father his. How do you explain that to normal religious people anyway that you want to be your friends except that it is what happened. Make up the story that God was the baby's real father and you become a nutcase in a small town with enough gossip already in it to fill a stable. Either Joseph was the father (which obviously was not the case) or someone else was (which would have been the most reasonable conclusion except they never say it--because to their complete humiliation there wasn't another father). The story is a bizarre myth (which nothing about it except the virgin birth sounds like one)or it is what it is. God born the only way He could be born. To a mother normal like you and me but with God as His real Father.

The angels in the sky seem a bit weird too and that is understandable that you think it sounds like something from The Lion King. But again, it was real, filthy, dirt poor shepherds who saw it all and the story was never refuted...and could easily have been proven because the shepherds were there. No one questions a car wreck if seven people saw it. The fact that we haven't had many angel sightings lately doesn't prove they haven't occurred any more than a lack of George Washington sightings make the George Washington legend unbelievable too.

Now I realize that I haven't proven God exists but the other stories about Jesus are just as reasonable. The death of Jesus was witnessed by Romans, Jews, friends and enemies and no one refuted His death when the stories started circulating.

Oh, but the big story, the one of Jesus climbing out of His tomb after he died is certainly up for disbelief. But can we really question it just because we don't have dead grandfathers popping out of their coffins or dead aunts slipping back to us after they have been cremated. Just because I haven't seen such a thing can't always disprove it's something true. Again, I did not follow the Apollo rocket up to the moon and although it hadn't happened before, I am not one to doubt that shocking turn of events didn't happen. I believe the hundreds of NASA workers who tracked the thing and followed its progress through the skies. More than five hundred people saw Jesus alive after He died and they couldn't have all been a bunch of quackers with duck brains. There believability packed the Temple grounds of Jerusalem with normal souls like me and you who were too convinced to shy away from the most hated and purged "myth" to come along. No one made a movement of killing off Aphrodite lovers or Isis lovers. Those myths were just silly little tales. But the one of Jesus coming back to life was right there for all to see and prove right or wrong. And more than that, the myth cost you everything you had if you held to it too tightly...including little girls like you. You had to be certain you were right. Your world depended upon it.

The stories of God are a strange collection it is true my child but strange doesn't mean false. How do you explain a rag-tag band of one million slaves marching away from the greatest and most imposing army of its time if not by means of the sea splitting apart and the first borns of the slave owning nation all dying at once. The legend was too big for myth-hood. It was the most easily of all little stories to refute but the entire nation of Israel held to it not because it made them something special (psychotically special is what I really mean)but because every last grandfather of them and grandmother too (who are certainly more believable)said it happened. To top it off, the Egyptians all knew it happened and never made mincemeat (I know you have never heard of mincemeat--it is an ancient myth of still more ancient peoples than your own)of the crazy reports...because it happened just like Michael Jackson happened.

Myths that are really myths are just foolish but the myths that are true are only too good to believe. But then, I could say the same of you. Too good to be true!

Starting At First Corinthians Continued

2008-08-30T16:33:00.000-07:00

The church is identified as “the purified ones” in Christ Jesus. The Greek word I translate, “purified ones:” is the famous “hagiazo”, the noun form being the term we know as “saints” Paul is noting that the church is all those who have been made saints, or to put it more precisely, purified and separated out from the rest of the world. This is not a work of the church, nor something any individuals within the church accomplish. It is an action outside the church, a doing that is incomprehensible in a purely natural sense. We look at physical, emotional and even spiritual qualities and try to mark the church by what we see but according to Paul, it has nothing to do with what we perceive. The Church is comprised of all those who are supernaturally purified in Christ Jesus.

The picture is of a container, being Christ Himself and those who are purified have been dropped in Him. Mysteriously, mystically, each one placed in Christ is made purified and set apart as God’s own…the collection of whom is the “Church”. The very meaning of the word church hints at this process. Ekklesia or church means “called out ones”. It is the assembly of the transformed; those who have been pulled out of their circumstances and placed within Jesus Christ in whom everything changes. Paul probably felt this sense of being taken out and dropped in more than anyone he knew. Enemy of Christians and persecutor of the Church, by the supernatural sky hook of the Holy Spirit, Paul was torn out of his old life and dropped without warning into a completely different world of Christian faith. Flying overseas has a bit of that same feel to it. One hour you are in a familiar airport within your own country, twelve hours later you are in Seoul Korea and no one talks like you and no one looks like you and everyone bows and likes kimchi. Paul was catapulted into a new world by Jesus and he could honestly say, “it wasn’t my fault”. The only difference between Paul’s transformation and the example given is that not only was Paul put into a new world, he was made into a new person, it is as if he was suddenly Korean without looking any different, and that is what makes the church the church.

Our identity as a church is not based on what we have done: it is completely determined by where we are placed. We are, as Paul puts it, “in Christ Jesus”. Now the question could easily be raised, “what part do we play in all of this”. Intuitively it feels like we are not just robotically programmed into following Jesus. The end of verse two explains the connection between God’s call to us and our interest in following Him. It literally reads, “with all the ones calling upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ in all the places of them and us.” A true Christian is marked by this lovely quality. She is continually calling upon Jesus everywhere she goes. We cannot let the expression “name of our Lord Jesus Christ” confuse us in this. The name is simply the person, the cry to the Lord Himself. The Christian community is a dependent collection of misfits who are only really at home in the bond they have to Jesus. Take out the stuff of Christian activity…whether it be the prayer meetings or evangelistic events or the Bible classes and the core of Christian life is this dependence on Jesus that finds no other outlet but Him.
To Be Continued...

Dr. James Dobson's Thoughts

2008-08-29T17:02:00.001-07:00

Dr. Dobson, the founder of Focus On The Family and a leader in Evangelical Circles provided the following thoughts on the McCain/Palin ticket. I promise I won't spend a lot of time writing on the election but Dr. Dobson is someone whose thoughts I value greatly...

Earlier this year Dr. Jim Dobson, President of Focus on the Family made news when he announced on “The Dennis Prager Show” that he “cannot and will not vote for Senator John McCain.” Today, on The Dennis Prager Show, the conservative leader changed course and announced his enthusiastic support on the heels of the announcement by Senator McCain of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate.
Dennis Prager: I have a guest here who’s extremely significant in American life, whether you call it American political, certainly American religious life, one of the best known Christians in America— Dr. James Dobson who is president and founder of Focus on the Family…. The last time you were on was a very serious conversation about your feeling at the time that you just couldn’t vote for John McCain, and where do you stand now?
Dr. James Dobson: Well, Dennis, I shared with a colleague just a few minutes ago exactly what you said about the period of time when Ronald Reagan had broken onto the scene and I was in Washington D.C. the day he was inaugurated. That was one of the most exciting days of my life, because everything that we had hoped for and been working for had come to pass. I feel very much that way today. Maybe that’s an overstatement. Maybe time won’t validate it, but this is a very exciting and encouraging day for conservatives and pro-family activists. I am just very, very pleased.
Prager: In light of that, may I infer that when you enter the voting booth—and I am putting you on the spot. I fully acknowledge, and you’re certainly free to say it’s a secret ballot you don’t want to say, but you’re too public to really get away with that, so what’s the story right now?
Dobson: Well, you know I did a radio program about a month ago with Dr. Albert Mohler, and we talked about what was at stake in this election and our concerns about the policies that Barack Obama would implement. The more I hear the more I learn, the more concerned I am, and so on that program Dr. Mohler and I talked about the fact that John McCain is not the perfect candidate. He’s certainly would not be my choice and, for over a year, I did not feel that I could vote for him. But I said in that radio program that “I can’t say it now”—which was then, because I didn’t know who his vice presidential choice would be, and he if would come up with Lieberman or Tom Ridge or somebody like that, we’d be back in a hole again. But I said for the first time “I might, I might.” And some people call that a flip-flop. If they do, so be it. Campaigns are long. You get information. You find out what the choices are. So I’ve been moving in John McCain’s direction. I don’t know if anybody cares, but for me…
Prager: Plenty, plenty of people care and that’s why I am having you on. I care, many people care and you have a lot of followers. You have earned the right to that respect. So are you prepared to say, “Folks, look, given this pick and all I have learned about what would happen with a Democratic victory we have no choice, but to enthusiastically work for the McCain-Palin ticket?”
Dobson: You know, I have only endorsed one presidential candidate in my life and that was George Bush in the second term after I had watched him for four years. I did not do that in his first term. So I’m very reluctant to do that. You marry a politician you can be a widow pretty quickly.
Prager: That’s right.
Dobson: But I can tell you that if I had to go into the studio, I mean the voting booth today, I would pull that lever.
Dobson: And that’s a long way’s from where I told you a year ago.
Prager: No kidding. No kidding. I am honored that you used this show to make that statement.
Dobson: You know, Dennis, the things that concern me about John McCain are still there. I made those comments not just based on emotions, but based on his record and some of the things that took place—embryonic stem cell research, and other things, the campaign finance, and other things. Those are still there. So, there’s still concerns. But I tell you, when I look at the choices that are ahead and what the implications are for this country, and now especially with this selection, with just an outstanding V.P. candidate as a running mate, I tell you what I am relieved and very excited.
Prager: Well, if you’re very excited given your previous reservations then I have to believe, and certainly based on the handful of calls I’ve been able to take the first hour before my “Happiness Hour,” I took the calls and people were so excited, palpably excited. Jim Dobson, and I got to tell you… if your base is energized then that is the biggest nightmare that the left has.
Dobson: I was just with about 300, maybe 400 people in a large auditorium, and they put Sarah Palin’s speech on the screen and we sat there and watched. I’m telling you it was electric. These were conservatives, you know. They were mostly Christian, but not all of them were. I mean to tell you, it set that crowd on fire. If that’s any indication, I think we are going to see some things.
Prager: We sure are. Well, you made my day. I just want you to know that.

Starting At 1 Corinthians

2008-08-29T09:21:00.000-07:00

1 Corinthians 1:1-3 NIV
Paul, called apostle of Christ Jesus, through the will of God and Sosthones the brother To the church of God, to the one being in Corinth, to the purified ones in Christ Jesus, to the ones called holy with all the ones calling upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ in all the places of them and us. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Corinth despite what is popularly asserted was a rather normal Roman Hellenistic city. It had been a thriving cosmopolitan complex until its destruction in 146 B.C. But in 46 B.C. it was restored under the leadership of Julius Caesar and made a Roman colony. Like other colonies, it was settled by Roman veterans who established its allegiance to Roman principles, values and customs. As a port city and a strategic commercial thoroughfare, it quickly rose in prominence and became a wealthy center of commerce and culture. People from all over the world settled there and it was a strategic location for a church to be founded. As the Gospel spread through the city, it naturally was taken abroad by new converts who were engaged in international commerce. Many think of Corinth as a center of immense corruption but in Paul’s time it probably was not much different from any other Roman city. It was however a place where there were throngs of poor and a concentrated minority of the immensely rich. No form of corruption was kept from the wealthy and that is where its reputation for perversion rested.

Most scholars contend that the book of 1 Corinthians was written by Paul from Ephesus in Asia Minor somewhere between 55 and 57 AD. His introduction at first glance would sound a bit self-promoting, a bit like someone referring to himself in the first person plural or calling himself “Mr. President”. Yet with his words, “Paul, called apostle of Christ Jesus” is establishing his identity as nothing more than one sent out by Jesus. He is not a shop keeper, not a baseball player, not a father or husband or rock and roll singer. He is a “sent out” (the meaning of apostle) because Jesus has sent him out. Identity is quite simple. It is what God designs us to be. The most fragile and disconcerting part of life is the step away from this one part. I have a point and it is completely tied to God.

Paul wasn’t an apostle because he always had a fascination with that sort of thing. He certainly never listed it as a young student on any vocational interest surveys. This apostleship was thrust upon him…not like a dog owner puts a vest on her little poochie but as a part of a complete transformation of identity. Paul was not an apostle as such, not even an apostle of Jesus Christ. He was a “called” Apostle of Christ Jesus and that completely altered the way his core operated. He could not drop his work in Ephesus because Paul was a called apostle. He could not stop loving the crazy Corinthians because he was a called apostle. As long as you are an apostle you can do whatever you feel like doing, even if you are an apostle of Christ Jesus Himself because it is just a work you do. A called apostle though cannot. He is transformed into this identity…much as a parakeet who is miraculously transformed into a seal no longer avoids swimming and stops wanting to fly. A called apostle has a new view of all he does and why he does it. He is who he is because he is first and finally called.

To Be Continued

Vote, Vote, VoteI

2008-08-27T15:31:00.000-07:00

I'm quite certain I know who will win this election and pretty sure I know who would make the better president. But I don't care to think too much about it nor study a great deal the claims and counter claims, charges and counter charges, promises and counter promises. Not one president we have ever had has measured a stick to a forest the work of Christ. Jesus brought the Roman empire to its knees by his blood and by the blood of the mass of martyrs who lived for Him. No political system has had the impact on the world Christian faith has had. No economic policy, no global warming endeavor, no tax break will launch a world-wide change of heart. But a few who walk with Jesus cannot be stopped in their efforts to turn their parts of the world around. Politics is a powerful diversion but diversion none the less from the one thing. The Bereans may not have had Newsweek to keep them up to speed but they had the scriptures and of all people...they were nobler than the rest.

"...for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the scriptures every day..."Acts 17: 11b

Does it Matter What We Believe?

2008-08-25T19:45:00.000-07:00

A recent report by the Barna group indicated that there is a significant difference in the way Evangelical Christians act and the rest of Americans. They discovered that 74% of Evangelical Christians do not use profanity, 88% don't view pornography, 95% don't gossip, 97% are not engaging in inappropriate sex and 99% do not lie or engage in drunkenness. On the other hand 60% of atheists and agnostics use profanity, 50% view pornography, 34% gossip and 33% are engaged in drunkenness. Those from other faiths are twice as likely as evangelical Christians to use profanity, view pornagraphy and lie. If you are interested in the full article from the Barna Group, click on the link given below. It really does matter what you believe!

John 17:20-23
I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message,that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.
John 17: 20-23

Friend

2008-08-24T16:58:00.000-07:00

Isn't it amazing God calls us His friend? There are few things I have found in life as wonderful as the friends who make their lives my home! As I get ready to leave the office, I wonder if I have put down the hoe enough times...I certainly am good at picking it up!

When a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don't stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven't hoed,
And shout from where I am, What is it?
No, not as there is a time to talk.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
Blade-end up and five feet tall,
And plod: I go up to the stone wall
For a friendly visit. Robert Frost

Dear friend, I pray that you may enjoy good health and that all may go well with you, even as your soul is getting along well. 3 John 2

2008-08-23T13:29:00.000-07:00

I Am Sorry

2008-08-22T11:18:00.000-07:00

Most recognize the words, "I am sorry" as the mark of John the Baptist's ministry. "Repent" But what is mostly forgotten is that "I am sorry" was at the core of Jesus' own preaching. In fact many of His sermons were just "Repent for the Kingdom of God is before you." I realize that many do not acknowledge, "I am sorry" as a legitimate theological step to living for Jesus but it is the most mystical and revelatory of them all. For without the "I am sorry", there is no acknowledgement of personal sin, no realization that I am genuinely wrong. I can never be in God's presence without an assurance of "I am sorry" pressed within me. What more can be said of Isaiah's confession, "Woe is me for I am a man of unclean lips..." if not it is a full-blown "I am sorry." The other day I was reminded again of just how twisted Satan can make our personal theology. I heard an "I am sorry" but there was a caveat attached. "I am sorry you were so..." followed by an "I am sorry they didn't act..." connected to the most unmistakable "You sorry..." The name God is wonderful unless Satan slips next to it a verb of denouncement. We are most Christian when we have an "I am sorry" flowing off our lips but if we connect it to someone else, we fall as far from Jesus as is possible in this life. "I am sorry" is the beginning of all praise and the true start to real fellowship. We cannot live within God if we do not have a few "I am sorry"s spontaneously jumping out of our hearts. We just have to leave everyone else out of our "I am sorry" if we want to get it right.

2008-08-22T10:08:00.000-07:00

Uz Too! Concluded

2008-08-22T09:50:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately the writer keeps going. He should know better. Others were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated-the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground. (Hebrews 11:35-38 NIV) The bad theology gets worse. The conclusion of the passage states that all of these…the ones who opened the mouths of lions as well as those who were lion food were commended for their faith.

What can be said about Paul’s litany of disasters described in 2 Corinthians 11? If God thought it so crucial we have a great life, why did he let Paul get flogged five times, shipwrecked three times and three times be beaten with rods. Not only that he had to constantly justify himself to the churches he started, always needing to prove his apostleship! Sure Job ended up with more cattle and sheep than he had before his disasters but that does not take away the fact that he was tormented…with God’s acceptance. If prosperity rules, then why do the majority of believers world-wide have such a tough time of it? My friend in Russia pastors a church of less than ten; makes do with just enough income to keep him and his wife from starving and is constantly working out new ways to share the gospel with little success. Does God think less of him than my friend in Southern California who is on staff at a mega church that brims with excitement? The truth is that God is not all that enamored with success and feels no compulsion whatsoever to make every one of His best friends successful or even “above average”.

Third, fairness is not a part of the Christian equation. Every parent with more than one child has heard the complaint, “it’s not fair” at least a thousand times. Believers who think God acts “fairly” must find Job almost incomprehensible. God is not “fair” and never pretends to be. Prayers based on trying to get God to play fair are missing the main part of prayer. God is working all things together for our good but He is not making things fair. It certainly isn’t fair that a little gymnast who strained her entire life to reach the Olympics falls off the balance beam and loses her chance at a medal. It isn’t fair to her parents who sacrificed their life savings to get her the coaching she needed to do well. It isn’t fair for the teacher who worked long hours without pay to help this little girl become a star. It wasn’t fair that Job’s children died. It wasn’t fair Jeremiah was put in prison for preaching what God told him.

The sawed in half prophets and the conquerors of Palestine listed in Hebrews 1 are woven together with a single strand. Faith! Faith is what ties the loose ends of our lives together…the “fair” parts and the “unfair”. The climax of Job is not the restoration of Job’s prosperity, it is the faith his friends exhibited when they sacrificed the bulls and rams upon God’s word..not upon any promise everything would work out. As Job in faith prayed for the three, everything came together for all of them. We enter heaven through faith, we move mountains by faith, the dead are raised through faith and we make sense of our lives through faith. As long as Job tried to get things fair, he was a mess, a chaotic wreck. When however he accepted in faith God’s giant greatness overriding his circumstances, Job came together, his life came together and his religion came together.

Faith, when it is born, is conceived in the unfair. The misinterpretation of Jesus’ comment on the eye of a needle has confused many about the Kingdom of God. Jesus, if He was saying anything, it was that it is impossible for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Now if He was merely stating that we can’t get into heaven through what we have, then He would not have stopped with the rich. He would have told us that the poor also can’t get in and the middle class can’t get in. What Jesus specifically stated was that it was not possible for the rich to enter the kingdom. Why? It is because prosperity is the enemy of faith. In richness, I have no use for faith. Riches are tangible, viewable, countable, holdable. Faith is none of that. Faith is trust in God who is not seen, belief in God who cannot be pushed, hope in God who is not fair. As long as life was squared off and safe and understandable, Job could only have the weakest and most barely sufficient part of faith. When Job was made certain through his suffering that nothing in life was ever to be fair, then to follow God, He had to take it in faith.

When God makes us poor whether it be one way or another, it is to strip us of our hope at fairness and push us to trust Him. Salvation does not come to us because it is fair. It comes because God is kind. I asked my kids if they would rather have me be fair or have me love them. The Cross is God giving us the final word. He is not fair. But He is good. While we were still SINNERS, Christ died for us. You can only take this in faith…just as you take your broken leg in faith, your dropped savings in faith and your lost career in faith, and even your good health. God may not be fair. He never tries to get you to accept that. But He does love you. Jesus spent a lifetime helping us see that.

Terrorism At Lake Elizabeth

2008-08-21T10:25:00.000-07:00

I have this nasty habit of walking clockwise around Lake Elizabeth. Almost everyone else walks counter-clockwise and it puts me in the most frightening position of having to actually look at people as they go past me. The scary part of this is that many stoically refuse to notice me. Perhaps it is my low levels of self-esteem that drive this sick compulsion I have to say hi to people as they walk by. I have actually had to look straight at people and with my loud preacher voice nearly yell out, "good morning" before they would notice me. Some smile and greet me warmly while others cut their eyes at me in a slicing flash of acknowledgement and in cracking tones, do their best to beat out of themselves a good morning to their own chagrin. When I was in Moscow, I tried to do the same thing, smiling broadly at the elderly "Babushkas" and firing out a hearty "kagdula" to them as we met on the street. Most just looked away in disgust but every once in a while I would receive a cheery smile...perhaps out of pity for my poor Russian. The other day I passed along to one of my fellow walkers an invitation to our church. Now he won't even look at me when I give him my "good morning".

What makes us so difficult to reach even with friendly intentions? Why is there so much sourness in our world? I wonder if Jesus was ever shocked by how mean spirited so many were who gawked at Him as He preached the Kingdom of God. Jesus was the Jerusalem terrorist who brought horror to those who just wanted to keep to themselves. The shocking part of Jesus was that He forced God upon the world. For the first time ever, an entire nation had to look at God and gaze upon His smile. How horrible it must have felt for so many to actually have to watch Christ heal the blind, raise the dead and make the lame walk! Some people...all too many, do their best to avoid the freindly gaze of Jesus because I guess they just don't want to smile.

There certainly is too much grumpiness out there, too much cynicism and too much bitter angst over what is going wrong. But there is one thing right we must never miss. The smile of Jesus can warm the coldest heart and even tired babushkas walking around Lake Elizabeth need a hint of it.

Uz Too! Part 2

2008-08-19T18:26:00.001-07:00

When Job settles into the horror of his situation, he does what all of us try to do given rough circumstances. He tried to make some sense of it. The question is out there for him. “What is happening?” But like so many of us, Job doesn’t really think he will ever get a chance to ask it. I know for many the turning point in Job is God’s response to him out of the whirlwind. But I don’t think it is. The fulcrum of Job is his call for a “hearing” with God. Even if I summoned him and he responded, I do not believe he would give me a hearing. (Job 9:16 NIV) He doesn’t think it will happen but that is what he wants. Not success, not power, not health; all those things he has lost interest in as priorities. What Job wants is answers. “What are you doing God?” “What is happening?”

What is happening of course is that Satan was trying to shake Job free of his devotion to YHWH. But that does not explain God’s part in this. Was God watching with eager anticipation to see if Job would give up his faith in the same sort of way we watch the Olympics to see who wins or was God doing something else with Job that was not quite so small as Him showing off Job’s resilience as one might show off the skills of a prized racehorse? It certainly sounds ridiculous and certainly is ridiculous to think God at any point is waiting with eager anticipation to see how things turn in any part of the Universe and it is just as absurd to think God is vain and must show off His stuff to make Himself feel good.

If it is true that every person would like a hearing with God and is wondering often enough, “What is going on”, then it seems that Job as the ultimate transcript of human despair and God longing should give us something to help us know what we should do with our feelings toward God. Of course the book ends with very little to say about why God let Job suffer so much and it gives us little to hope that any of us should ever expect an explanation in this lifetime for what we go through. Job’s friends thought it was the “what goes around comes around” karma God they had but if there is anything that clearly comes out of the book it is that God does not operate that way in any sense. Karma does not govern any part of the universe and Job’s friends, for positing it as the reason for Job’s suffering were fiercely rebuked by God and made to offer animal sacrifices and beg for Job’s prayers to avoid an undisclosed punishment for their “folly”.

There are three clear conclusions we can make from Job that help us understand God’s dealings with us. First, as mentioned above, life is not a wrap around. What comes around goes around is a ludicrous view of life. If that were the case, then we all would be burned up in a ball of fire by now for our sins stink to heaven. God does not treat us as we deserve. I understand that the Proverbs point out the value of right living and that God does punish sin but as we see in Job, there is not and has never been a one to one correspondence of action by us and reaction by God. Bad people prosper and good people fail and good people prosper and bad people fail and that is the way it is. God never apologizes for this to Job, Job’s friends or anyone else. Karma, instant or otherwise is a myth.

Second, God is not overly concerned about our prosperity. Prosperity has never been the ideal Christian life although we seem to be enamored with it. Just a casual reading of Hebrews 11 makes that quite clear. Oh we love the teaching of verses 32-35. And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. Women received back their dead, raised to life again. Now that sounds like good theology doesn’t it? Joel Osteen must love this passage.

To Be Continued...

A Different Preaching Direction

2008-08-18T19:47:00.000-07:00

For the next several months I will be taking a break from my normal preaching schedule and preaching through the book of 1 Corinthians out of the Greek text. It clearly is a great book to teach and loaded with important information for anyone wanting to have a passionate faith.

Uz Too! Part 1

2008-08-18T17:08:00.000-07:00

Then the LORD said to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil." "Does Job fear God for nothing?" Satan replied. "Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land. But stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face." Job 1:8-11 NIV

The biggest question in religion has nothing to do with the existence of God. Children wonder if He is myth but not adults. There is too much evidence for a creator to give serious thought to tired arguments for a God free universe. Evolution proves nothing of the atheist contention that life spontaneously generates or even more importantly that matter exists without an atom builder. God is accepted everywhere as being present…to contend otherwise is to beat your head against a thorn prickled stone wall. What we do ask a thousand times a day in ten thousand different languages is what ancient Job also asked. “What is happening?’

Everyone loves to hear the success story but even Michael Phelps has crashed into the swimming pool wall, lost his keys and said something completely ludicrous when he was nervous. Yet the daily pound of difficulties is not what makes Job’s question so universal. If the troubles were expected, we would simply roll with them like the gold fish that looks up at the top of the bowl and sighs, “Fish food again!” But that is not how it is! Human beings expect something different, something better…especially of a God they know is there.

The difficulty the introduction to Job presents is that it would be easy, if that was all of Job you really took with you is the horrifically but understandable mistaken belief that somehow Satan got in to the mix and like he did with Eve, made a mess of God’s ideals. There really are only two ways to think of God if you aren’t careful, God is really good but sometimes blunders and lets Satan talk Him into making life blow up on us or God is not really good and needs us to help Him develop a warmer and kinder personality. Like the wife who tries to help her husband realize he needs to spend more time with his kids, we pray with the same sort of corrective motives.

The other day I was praying for God to help me fix my broken door. After much frustrated effort, it still would not stay closed and I angrily wondered why God hadn’t made it right. The entire pagan system of human sacrifice and pantheon of gods was an attempt to make God work, or at least find one who would sympathize with your plight. Islam is built on the same principle…Allah is harsh and unbending; better make sure you meet his demands or he will take away your lunch…paradise. Witchcraft and astrology both make much of wielding power over supernatural forces so that you can get a fair shake in life. Karma turns life into a giant equation that forces fairness into everything. Each false religion is a human attempt to get at the paradox everyone intuitively recognizes. God is and life at times seems senseless.

Continued Tomorrow

Congratulations!

2008-08-18T16:28:00.001-07:00

Congratulations to the Lebers and the finalization of the adoption of their three kids! What a great answer to prayer and show of God's power in putting this family together!!!

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. James 1:27

Finding Nemo

2008-08-17T14:05:00.000-07:00

Yesterday Nemo committed suicide. He jumped right out of the fish bowl and landed on the floor under my desk. With no one to rescue him or give mouth to gill resuscitation, he died. Needless to say I was stunned by this senseless waste of life. He had everything he needed to make him happy. A bowl to swim in endless circles, fish food...three tablets every day. A bowl to swim in endless circles...fish food, three tablets every day. Did I mention he always had that fish bowl where he could swim in circles? He even had the opportunity to look at me for hours at a time while I worked. My son said he thinks Nemo killed himself because he had to listen to me practice my sermons. I am sure he was just kidding! I think Nemo thought he was a bird and was convinced he could fly. Maybe I am in denial and refuse to deal with the inner turmoil Nemo suffered. Needless to say, it is a bit depressing staring at my empty fishbowl knowing that I didn't do enough to make my Nemo happy. Perhaps I should have taken him on walks or turned his fishbowl light on and off more during the day to give him something else to think about. I am just glad he didn't die from global warming...that would have been really bad! I need to find something to do with myself to take my mind off finding Nemo...on the floor. Perhaps I'll go fishing...

A Gentle Mystery

2008-08-16T10:10:00.000-07:00

At our cell group last night we discussed the mystery of John the Baptist and his relationship to Jesus. The Baptist makes a bit of an odd comment in John 1: 31 He comments as he points out to several of his disciples Jesus strolling nearby, "I myself did not know him, but the reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed to Israel." So what did he mean by this? Is he saying that he did not know Jesus before he started baptizing? The question spins on the meaning of "know". Of course we may sound like we are parsing out the definition of "is" but there is a quite important spiritual lesson to learn from this. The two most important Greek terms translated "know" in John are ginosko and oida. Ginosko and oida are nearly identical in their meaning but ginosko has more the sense of personal knowledge, the knowledge of intimacy. Oida has the sense of understanding, of "getting it". John was not saying that he had no idea who Jesus was. He was indicating what is quie important to recognize. He could not know Jesus, he could not get it about Him even if he watched Jesus every day unless the Spirit revealed to him who Jesus is. His own brothers apparently did not really know Jesus as indicated in John 7 because even then after so many miracles they did not believe in Him. You can be very close to God and the things of God and never know Him unless the Holy Spirit makes Him clear to you. That is why it is so painful for us to "grieve" the Holy Spirit. We cannot know Jeus without Him. Pray, "open my eyes Lord." There is so much to see that most of the world is missing. The biggest and maybe the only part to see is waiting for you. What do you know?

Time Out

2008-08-15T18:25:00.000-07:00

Perhaps the most famous time-out in history was the one Job received. Everything going well and without warning he was stopped in his tracks. What makes Job so shocking is not the horrors Job faced but rather the seeming unfairness of it all. Many have suffered just as worse or more than Job but no one has been so "unfairly" treated. The turning point in Job is Job 9: 16 Even if I summoned him and he responded, I do not believe he would give me a hearing.

Have you ever wanted a hearing with God?

The Perfect Image

2008-08-14T10:17:00.000-07:00

Is there a more perfect metaphor for Cell Group ministry and the total Christian life than Jason Lezak's come from behind victory over Alain Bernard, the world record holder in the 100 freestyle? Few sports are more painful than swimming sprints and almost no one ever comes from behind to win...that is why it is so magnificent when it happens. I know of very few cell group leaders who do not feel continually like they are behind Alain Bernard with no shot at victory. We pound away and yet the gold is always just too far beyond our reach. That is why I love so much the Apostle Paul's bellow from the heavenly stands. "So let's not allow ourselves to get fatigued doing good. At the right time we will harvest a good crop if we don't give up, or quit." Or, as Michael Phelps screamed, "Go!" My friend, the pool is all yours. It's your time to make a run at it!

Not A Hero Concluded

2008-08-13T10:10:00.000-07:00

Noah on the other hand is known for three qualities. He was “adeek”—righteous, just. Second, he was “tomime” He was complete, whole, sound, integrated. In other words, inside and out, Noah did what was right. Third, Noah “walked with God”. It is the exact same expression used to describe Enoch…also in Seth’s line who did not die but just disappeared from the world at for the time was a very young age (a mere 365 years old). Literally it reads that he walked himself fervently with God. The gist of it is that Noah pushed an intimacy with God, worked at it, made it important.

Noah’s credibility on the world scene was negligible. He had none of the acclaim of the Nephilim, was culturally irrelevant and for a hundred years looked like a fool. Noah was the antihero, the Napoleon Dynamite of his age. Our time is one of jostling for power, posing for mirrors, clamoring for attention and Noah was the antithesis of this. In an era when no one had ever seen rain, let alone believed in its existence, Noah clung to a faith in God that was nonsensical yet he built his life not on thoughts of world-wide floods but on a craving for God. A good reputation did nothing for him. A hundred years building an ark takes out of you the pangs for acceptance and acclaim. Give one man enough time pursuing God and he is at peace with the most astounding of circumstances.

I am not sure what I would have thought of Noah if I knew him back in his day. I probably would have considered him just plain odd. But I know what I think of him now. He is all I want to be. Skip over to the ark for just a moment. It too was nothing to look at. It was just a giant box. No beautiful engineering lines, no slick cabins or lovely dance floor. It was just a big wooden box 547 feet long, 91 feet wide and 47 feet high with planked off compartments inside to separate out the creatures. Noah’s sole task in life, above all else was to get himself and his family in the ark. Regardless of what else may go well or badly for him; that was it. Hide yourself in the ark. We sometimes complicate life far too much with our goals and plans and responsibilities when it is the one thing that must happen.

If we can take a small liberty with scripture and make a comparison that seems apt, it is that Christ is our ark. If we do nothing but hide in Jesus, regardless of how everything else may turn, we have lived. But if we do not hide ourselves in Him, it does not matter what we do with ourselves, it is all in vain. What else did the Apostle Paul mean when he reminds us that because of our faith in Jesus Christ, we are dead to everything that was before? For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. (Colossians 3:3-4 NIV) An interesting detail of the ark is that you could not be partway in it and live. You were either all the way in or completely out. There was no hanging on to the side for long.

We are completely hidden within Christ and saved or we are outside Him and totally lost. Every part of us is that way, every act of ours is that way and every thought of ours is that way. Hidden in Christ and saved or outside Him and perished. Imagine Noah, as so many are with God, straddling the opening and just happy to be around the ark. Many believers have the same form of faith. Just enough of Jesus to be near Him; just enough devotion to keep Him in view and no more they insist. How much of the ark did Noah need to preserve his family? How much Christ will preserve yours?

Last week my blog tracking stopped. In other words, I could not see how many were reading my blog and for all I knew no one was looking at it. All I was left with was a desire to write in God and a hope He wanted to be with me as I did it. The assumption that the value of my life is based on what someone else, anyone else thinks of me is absurd. Leo Tolstoy once famously wrote, “Attack me, I do this myself, but attack me rather than the path I follow and which I point out to anyone who asks me where I think it lies. If I know the way home and am walking along it drunkenly, is it any less the right way because I am staggering from side to side!” There is one thing you need to do each day and every hour that is more important than anything else you attempt. Figure out a way to hide yourself in Jesus. We surely may look like stumblebums at times and how we do it may make us the anti-hero, but we have no other way to live.

Exist

2008-08-12T17:30:00.000-07:00

I am unabashedly beside myself with joy that we have a Savior who loves so much and pours out life. I think it is beyond comprehension that God cares a whit about us and takes even the least interest in what we are. The entire concern over whether or not God exists is such a fragmented and juvenile mental tottering that sometimes it bewilders me that anyone doubts God's existence. So much proof of Him has come my way over the years that atheism could never ever confound me. But I do at times wonder why He does what He does with me and what on earth His plans can be that are so important that I must be bent over by His "furious" wind. As I look upon the dreams God has for Calista and His miraculous bringing of her parents together, it astounds me how everything is put in place by God and His perfect will. None of us would be here if it were not for His miracle of bringing two people together in union...two people who never could have thought of each other if God had not inched them into one another's arms. Marriage will survive just as babies and baby making survive because God loves all three!

Not A Hero Part Two

2008-08-12T10:12:00.000-07:00

Return to the two lines. The line of Cain is identified by two markers. One is the mention of vocations. Three in his lineage are remembered for their careers. Adah a son of Lamech was the father of all who live in tents and herd livestock. Jubal is the founder of harp and flute playing and Zillah, a third son of Lamech was skilled at forging iron and bronze tools. The second famous link to Cain’s lineage is murder. Both Cain and his descendent Lamech are registered man-killers. Now contrast that to Seth’s line which like Cain’s is described in a linear fashion…only one son per generation in the line is mentioned, the one through whom the family tree is established Cain’s stretches to Lamech, the murderer; Seth’s to Noah. In Seth’s tree two in the line are known for “walking with God’. No murderers mentioned in Seth’s lineage. No “walkers with God” are registered in Cain’s line. The distinction between the two is pretty clear. One line seems to be the sons of man, Adam as it is put literally—Adam the sinner. The other line is the sons of God—walkers with God.

The early history of mankind was marred it would seem by the blurring of the lines. Walkers with God (those of the spiritual lineage of Seth) left off their devotion to Yhwh and began to intermarry with the murderers (the spiritual lineage of Cain). Now we can be reasonably certain that there were far more in the world population than just those who fit into the family lines of Lamech and Noah. But it would seem apparent that there were two camps among all the peoples of the world—those who looked to God and those who didn’t. As generations developed over time, the followers of Seth became intrigued and infatuated by the beautiful women who were followers of Cain. It was a bit like what happened much later when many Israelite men were seduced by the Moabite women and led astray into sin. Sethians married Cainites and mankind was thrown into moral depravity.

Our age of relativism has fooled us into thinking that blurred lines are a good thing. The mixing of cultures, the combining of ethnicities are amalgamated into the acceptance of religion hazing. What is fascinating to consider is that every ethnic group was located in these two first people—Adam and Eve. No one with any shade of skin or shape of nose or size of lip or thickness of eyelid can be placed outside this one perimeter. We all are from Adam and Eve. Therefore mixed marriage is the essence of humanity as first formed. What is not accepted is the mixing of faith. The marriage of Sethians to Cainites did not result in a missionary race of God-seekers who won over the Cain line. Instead what resulted was a Cainite world with just a few Sethian survivors clinging to the last scraps of faith. By the time Noah came along, the entire world had been converted all right. But not to God.

Recently I received an email from a friend who told me that as long as she remained married to her husband, her devotion to God plummeted. His faithless lifestyle made her less and less like Christ. God in Malachi 2 insists that the whole purpose of marriage is to raise up Godly children. The lesson of Genesis 6 is that when the sons of God marry the daughters of Adam, those children do not make it. The occasional Noah may result but that is an aberration, not a normal outcome.

Not only were there two lines of people at this time, one expanding and the other diminishing, there were two ways of seeing them. The heroes of old were called Nephilim. They were, as the Hebrew puts it, “the strong ones, forever men of a name”. Known everywhere for their power, the Nephilim were universally admired. Just recently, the basketball Kobe Bryant was given a thunderous ovation by the 90,000 attending the opening ceremonies of the Olympics in Beijing. Why? Because he has basketball power. Our Nephilim are movie stars, political candidates, CEOs, and world class athletes. The Nephilim, we are told, came out of the union of sons of God with daughters of Adam and despite the flood survived to continue shaping the culture of the world.
To be completed Tomorrow.....

Not A Hero Part One

2008-08-11T16:32:00.001-07:00

When men began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. Then the LORD said, "My Spirit will not contend with man forever, for he is mortal; his days will be a hundred and twenty years." The Nephilim were on the earth in those days--and also afterward--when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown. The LORD saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. So the LORD said, "I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth--men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air--for I am grieved that I have made them." But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD.

This is the account of Noah.

Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God.
Genesis 6:1-9 NIV

One of the more interesting controversies that some might well argue has no bearing whatsoever on the interpretation and understanding of scripture has to do with the sons of God marrying the daughters of man. Who were these sons of God? Why was it so bad they married the daughters of Eve? Many argue that the sons of God were angels who developed an attraction for beautiful women. The children that resulted from these bizarre unions were the Nephilim. Of course there is no support for this anywhere in scripture and intuitively this whole possibility seems noxious. But regardless of our personal feelings about the possibility, Jesus Himself seems to dispel this myth. When asked the famous trick question about the resurrection, “If a woman was married to seven different husbands, whose would she be in heaven”, Jesus’ answer was curt. “There would not be any marriage in heaven”, He told the inquirer. We will be just like the angels who also don’t marry and are not given in marriage. (See Matthew 22: 30; Mark 12:25)

So, if the angels aren’t “equipped” for marriage, then who were the mysterious “sons of God”? If you follow the genealogies in Genesis 4 and 5 an interesting pattern appears. There are it seems, only two strands of mankind. The line of Cain and the line of Seth! Now we know that Adam and Eve certainly had daughters and sons other than Cain, Abel or Seth because Genesis 5 tells us that. Why were not those other boys mentioned in the genealogy and their family lines described?
Continued Tomorrow...

Handyman

2008-08-08T13:31:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I used my day off to "fix things". First the continuously running toilet...then the broken wall switch...the garbage disposal...the electric lawnmower. What for most is such an easy mechanical task is for me the climbing of Mt. Everest. Every little handyman job I tackle has the making of a very long and disastrous day. I can never take lightly a fix-it job whether it be the changing of the ballast in the fluorescent light fixture or the replacement of a faucet. Each has its own dragon to conquer. First I worked on the toilet...prayed fervently. It stopped leaking. On to the wall switch. After two trips to Home Depot and some kindergarten level instructions from a store employee along with much more prayer...the light worked. On to the garbage disposal. Prayed with greater fervency than I can describe. Put it in...and it leaked. Discovered where the leak was, resealed the pipe...and it worked. Moved on to the front lawn and after more prayer and contemplation of what it would be like to use a push mower (the lawn looks afterword like the haircut you got from your dad)the mower started...and worked the entire time. Not sure I understand anything much about how "things" work but I do know about Jesus dependency. I thought afterword how it would have been if after praying none of the tasks went well. That has happened...and will happen again it would seem. My reading during my time alone with God came from Galatians 3 Does the God who lavishly provides you with his own presence, his Holy Spirit, working things in your lives you could never do for yourselves, does he do these things because of your strenuous moral striving or because you trust him to do them in you? Don't these things happen among you just as they happened with Abraham? He believed God, and that act of belief was turned into a life that was right with God. The Christian life is more about faith than it is about getting anything done...But it is nice when something does get done. Both the faithful and unfaithful succeed and fail but only the faithful gain anything in the end...a life right with God.

Just to think about

2008-08-06T16:07:00.000-07:00

Whale Sightings

2008-08-06T15:56:00.000-07:00

Took two days over the weekend and ate...and ate...no exercise, no water but I did eat. Gained 3 pounds

Yesterday
Walked an hour and prayed, beat the ground up for three laps around the track, drank 6 cups of water, had a double cheeseburger and Pibb, ate a pretty small dinner
Beelzebub (she now has been given her sixth different name since we got her...now Rachel calls her snowball) mauled my leg trying to reach my waist and then kept chasing the needle of the dial on the scale...took 6 tries before I got a reading I liked.
Lost 2 pounds
Bottom line: Even

Why Noah, Why Not Noah

2008-08-06T11:19:00.000-07:00

What is it that went so wrong so quickly with Creation that God made the call to wipe out everything? There are two ways to look at the Flood account. Why did God destroy the world...animals and people? Why did God save a remnant? It is quite easy to just take the righteousness of Noah argument to explain completely God's decision to save His family but there seems to be something running much deeper in the psyche of Yhwh that makes the Noah family and (the Noah creatures?) saveworthy. If success is measured in all the variables I mentioned below, then we are hardpressed to define Noah in a success assessment. He wasn't at all cool like the Nephilim. But there is something more there that cannot be separated from the saving decision of God to hold on to Noah. Yes he was good and right but he wouldn't always be so and the generations that followed made a mess of what they were given. Most of Noah's descendants were nothing to make one proud. But Noah was grabbed and held by God and that is a fascinating consideration. Why? Some might say "why not" but only because they have not considered the pain God suffered over what came out of His Creation...Here is the key verse in all of this discussion. But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. Genesis 6: 8 NIV Why? What makes God want us when we have so little to offer Him? That I think is the key question that when answered unlocks the mystery of Job and his sufferings. If we get at the answer to why God kept Noah and his family, we can reconcile the troubles we face with the mercy of the Cross and the love God professes for us. Why Noah?

Success?

2008-08-05T20:30:00.000-07:00

What does make you successful? The Christian cliches are easy to pull out and mumble mindlessly to those you think need to hear them and yet most of them have felt pretty shallow to me. "Give God your best." "Be faithful!" "Pray and read your Bible." What if you do all that and it still feels like an unsuccessful life? The Christian community certainly doesn't in reality assess life this way. Christian success is built on popularity, likability and doing better than others around you. Blogs are successful based not on how well they are written or designed but rather on how many actually go to them again and again. Even in the Christian community this is the case. Churches, ministries and artistic endeavors are all rated based on the very real success quotients of the world stretching all about us. How many like them, attend them or financially support them is the measure of achievement. We act like the Church doesn't see it this way yet it is so. But then what about the vast multitude who never taste success, never have their blogs read, never preach to crowds, never cut a CD, never gain more than a handful of compliments for their life work. Where do their lives rank? Eleanor Rigby and Father McKenzie are the John Lennon caricatures of Christian success or unsuccess lived out. But are they caricatures or the way we really do play out the Church tune? This week I am examining Noah and his wasted life. It has brought me to my knees in humble recognition of how far I have drifted from a right way of looking inward. What is a success paradigm I can live with and embrace with joy? Father McKenzie is not that far from my doorstep and I must know what to do about him. I already know what John Lennon thinks...

2008-08-05T10:53:00.000-07:00

Don't Forget...

"Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it. Matthew 7:13-14

A Tale Of Two Minkahs Concluded

2008-08-05T10:19:00.000-07:00

Continued From Yesterday's Blog

The internal response of Cain to God’s reaction to his minkah is most telling. Remember we are peering in on the infancy of mankind when sin has not worked its way through every fabric of life yet, when bloodthirsty men and adulterous women were not making sin seem such a small and commonplace thing. The psychology of man was still simple too. Horrible experiences had not yet marred his way of thinking and interacting so we see in this microcosm of being a very telling thing about how life really is. The way Cain responds to God’s feelings about his sacrifice honestly feels rather childish. Why did he become so furious just because YHWH thought much of Abel’s minkah but was not happy with Cain’s? The reaction of Cain isn’t the result of immaturity; it is the way things look when sin hasn’t saturated your life and you are careless in your devotion to God.

One of the most important strategies of science is to eliminate every single variable from an experiment so that all you have left is a clear result. You want to test for how beneficial drinking lots of water is on health, you compare two groups of people with similar physical characteristics and give them the same diet and same exercise regimen and have them live in the same sort of environment and you might be able to find out how helpful it is to drink lots of water…or not helpful. In our account is the same sort of study. What you have here is the elimination of every other source of discouragement, every other difficulty, every other problem with friends and family and you are left with just the pure outcome of giving a bit to God and no more. We are so accustomed to lackadaisical, lukewarm, tepid faith that we are desensitized to its real effect. We see in Genesis four that it makes us miserable human beings. It is easy to just slough off this example as merely reflective of Cain’s socio-pathic personality. He had bad genes. Did he though? So far all we have about mankind in the early parts of Genesis is the wormy, pathogenic work of sin on the human race. In Genesis four is sin played out in offerings to the Lord. God clearly wanted us to know by showing us Cain’s response how a degenerate view of sacrifice could erode the human personality.

Jesus warns against lukewarm faith in Revelation. He continually chided the disciples about their own commitment to Him. One of the more painful rebukes of Christ was His refusal to go out and meet with His mother and brothers when they demanded He see them. He completely disavowed Himself of them when He asked the rhetorical question, “"Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?" Pointing to his disciples, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother." Matthew 12:48-50 NIV What does it mean when Jesus says He spits out of His mouth lukewarm believers? Could it be that it looks more like we see in Cain than we care to consider?

Honestly, we are nothing more than what we find within. If lukewarm faith, lukewarm sacrifices, lukewarm morals tear up the world inside us, make our inner self polluted like we find in Cain, then wouldn’t it make sense to begin acting like Abel? What three things could we do today that would pull us out of this Cain world? Maybe we could make a commitment to read our Bible each day. That could be a firstfruits sacrifice. Maybe we could get up ten minutes earlier each day just so we could pray fervently. Maybe we could tithe…give ten percent of our income to this church each week. Maybe we could join a cell group and do it to please God and stop being only interest in your own preferences. Maybe you could donate some free time to clean up some of the projects needed to spruce up this property. Maybe you could go out of your way to invite at least two people to our church this week.

Abel was a normal person like you and me. But then so was Cain. We live like one or the other. Does it matter which one we look most like? It really is a matter of your minkah.

2008-08-04T15:20:00.000-07:00

A Tale Of Two Minkahs Continued

2008-08-04T15:16:00.000-07:00

First let us consider why God didn’t approve of Cain and his minkah. Abel’s minkah is described as the first born of his flock. The first born in other parts of scripture is called the Lord’s. The first offspring of every womb among the Israelites belongs to me, whether man or animal (Exodus 13:2 NIV) It is the sign of God’s provision and provided hope for His ongoing care. The firstborn was what the rancher depended on to reassure him that his ewe or cow would keep his flock going. Even if no others were born by the mother, at least the one was there. To give that lamb or calf away was a show of faith that God would eventually replace the firstborn. Firstfruits followed the same principle. The first of the harvest was the most precious. It was what you could count on to feed your family. It was there. Who could say what might happen with the later part of the harvest? Plagues might wipe it out or locusts might shred it. The weather could turn hot and whither the crops. To give away your firstfruits was giving away your security. Yet it was the firstfruits God wanted. Bring the best of the firstfruits of your soil to the house of the LORD your God. Ex 34:26 It took faith to bring the firstfruits to God and only a believer could muscle up the gumption to do it. "We also assume responsibility for bringing to the house of the LORD each year the firstfruits of our crops and of every fruit tree. Nehemiah 10:35 NIV

Not only did Abel bring the firstborn, he also presented the fat of His firstborn. The Fat was the choicest part, the richest of it. When Pharaoh promised Joseph that his family would be able to enjoy the best part of the land of Egypt, he referred to it as the “fat of the land”, the exact same Hebrew word used to describe what Abel brought God. (See Genesis 45: 18) Again, the same word is used to describe the finest olive oil and finest wine of the harvest that God would give Aaron and his descendants. It was the “fat” or the olive oil and the “fat” of the wine his family would get. Now we don’t think so much of fat anymore because of our concern with calories and cholesterol and clogged arteries but the “fat” was the best, the finest you had. The offering of Abel was the most glorious he could offer; it was the fat.

Now turn back to Cain and his minkah. He gave some fruit he had. It was not the fat of the fruit. It was not the firstfruits. It was just something he had lying around his house. Ponder this. The ground had not been stained very deeply by sin yet and the world still was a relative paradise and it must not have been too difficult to find some sort of wheat or grape or apple to offer up to God. The implication is that Cain’s offering required nothing much of faith, nothing much of deliberation, (trying hard to choose the very best he had), nothing much of pleasure in the giving. His minkah was the plainness of obligatory religion. There are times when my children do their chores with all the enthusiasm of a corpse. There is no sense of rightness to it, no sense of pleasure in doing your best, no sense of giving a gift back to those who love you most in the world. It is pure drudgery and when the work is yanked out of them, it feels like a fingernail dragged across a chalk board rather than any sort of minkah. And yes, I am that same way. My minkahs can be just as thoughtlessly offered, just as carelessly given, just as free of affection as seemingly possible for one who is lifeless dust without Jesus.

We now must return to the original question. What separated Cain from Abel? Certainly is was the quality of their minkahs. One minkah was full of faith and extravagant pleasure in giving to a beloved God. The other minkah was an afterthought, a hand me down, a toss away gift. Several years ago a rather wealthy woman gave my family a used pot as a gift. It hadn’t even been washed. Now from someone who was impoverished, it would have been a most lovely thing to receive but from someone well off, it had the feel of flippancy.

A Tale Of Two Minkahs Concludes Tomorrow

2008-08-03T14:18:00.000-07:00