Prayer Living

What makes prayer such a crucial exercise for the Christian?  Is it the impact we have on others when we get what we ask?  Is it the ephemeral presence of God we feel as we pray?  Is it the duty done to Christ and the work accomplished in pleasing Him?  Is there something about prayer that gives it a special place in the Christian's daily doings?

Prayer is the hub of everything Christian.  It is the center from which all things of God spring.  Take the start of every action you do that is Christian.  It begins with the movement of God toward you just as the body only acts with the spark of innervation coming from the nervous system.  You cannot do a single thing of God without it being generated first in His own mind.  Once this happens you enter into prayer even if it is subconsciously.  Prayer is the interaction between God and us in whatever form it takes, whether it is us talking to Him or Him breaking through to us or our sometimes discouraging, sometimes awakening effort to listen for Him.  That is what makes Bible reading such a profound experience.  When we read the Bible, we enter into a form of prayer rarely deemed prayer but indeed the very essence of it.  The more we interact with God as we read the Bible the deeper we enter into prayer.  The Bible was never intended to be a history book or even a theological manual.  It is first and foremost the entryway into God.  Treat Bible reading as an exercise or task to get done and you lose the best part of it.  Recognize it as it is, time spent living in Christ and you gain the mind of God dwelling in you.

When praying through the scripture, give yourself a shot at really drawing near God.  Expect the Holy Spirit to make something of your time there with Him.  Talk to Him as you go through it.  Bring your requests to God as you go through the verses and make your time with Him in the scriptures a fellowship rather than a spiritual exercise.  The Psalms obviously are meant to be spoken out to God but the rest of the Bible also is a dialogue between the two of you so make the most of it and gain from your prayer within the Bible all the strength and guidance and recovery from the wounds of your day intended when God first called you into the Scriptures at the beginning.  Pray the Bible; don't just "read" it.

Thomas Kinkade My Eulogy

Thomas Kinkade

My Eulogy

For thousands of years certain people have been bigger than life.  Perhaps unfairly, they are beloved more than they deserved and critiqued more harshly than was warranted.  The Christian community has been as guilty of this as any collection of people and this has been particularly true of our own.  And yet a strange twist on this has taken place recently that has troubled me.  Thomas Kinkade makes this point clear almost perfectly.

Beloved by many in the Christian community for his bold proclamation of his faith through his paintings, Kinkade was derided by critics in the art community for his style and technique.  His passing brought out the best and the worst in his life and made his legacy an object of public scrutiny.  Yet was it deserved?   Should this be the way we react to those who “make a name for themselves”?

Recently a number of public figures have made strong statements of their faith in Christ and their popularity among Christians has provoked a backlash that has stunned many of us.  Jeremy Lin, Tim Tebow, George W. Bush and Thomas Kinkade among others have become heroes of sorts because their success has catapulted them into the public arena where their proclaimed love of Christ has reached a broad audience.  Because that clear public loyalty to Jesus has infuriated many, they have become polarizing figures beyond the scope of their professional success.

The success certainly has fueled their exposure in the press but it has also guaranteed them undo scrutiny.  The technique, talent, skill and worth of these popular Christian artists, athletes and leaders have all been excoriated by those who just don’t like them.  Of course  they all have flaws and certainly they don’t always get it right in their private lives but must they receive such caustic contempt?

Thomas Kinkade’s brother has been quoted as saying that the extreme criticism Kinkade received in the art community hurt him badly and that does not seem implausible.  It is painful to be derided publicly or even privately by one’s peers.  Was it warranted though?  Did Kinkade have to be Dali or Picasso to deserve the popularity of his works?  Did he have to hate the Gospel or be a serial adulterer to gain favor in the art world?  Regardless of one’s take on his creativity or skill set, Thomas Kinkade did something with his art that I will forever be thankful. He made the love of Jesus Christ a topic of discussion among those who considered his works.  That can of course be said of Jeremy Lin, George W. Bush and Tim Tebow.  Each in his own way made his professional status a forum for proclaiming devotion to Jesus.

When you reach the status of viral popularity, you become a target for those who think little of your abilities and less of your acclaim.  That must be accepted but it does not need to characterize the response of the Christian community.  Cannibalism is common within every grouping.  Democrats are guilty of it as well as Republicans. Evolutionists and Creationists have engaged in it.  So too have liberals, communists and conservatives.  If one of us steps out of line, we are just as prone to turn on our own as we are to attack those outside our group.  Which brings me to my own, the Christian world. 

The Christian community must make it anathema to practice cannibalism at any level.  When finally someone of us reaches the privileged place of a Thomas Kinkade, we must do our best to protect him or her.  I am embarrassed to admit my failure to pray even once for Kinkade, to send him a single note encouraging his faith, to attend to the spiritual battle surrounding his work.  We must do our best to ignore the foibles and style points these public figures generate and simply give our best to fight spiritually for their lives. They need our help and Satan will do his best to attack the chinks in their armor.  One prayer can save Kinkade from a bar fight, rescue Tebow from sexual immorality, protect Bush from ignoring crucial advice.  We don’t need our public spokesmen but they need us.  They need our joy in their testimonies, our support for their efforts to honor Christ and our prayers for their protection and help.  The gospel does not depend on these public figures but because they are ours, they depend on us.  The body of Christ must be the safest and most supportive home another believer has and we cannot shatter this by ignoring, critiquing or disabling the ministry of others trying to be brave Christians in a disparaging and slashing unbelieving world.

I salute the Christ who called out Thomas Kinkade for more than just a shallow, muted faith.  I applaud the Father who enabled Thomas Kinkade to have a forum for honoring Jesus with his work.  I bless the Holy Spirit who gave voice to Thomas Kinkade’s longing to make of God’s grace an object of praise and wonder.  May the memory of Thomas Kinkade and the lingering evidence of his witness in his art bring us a renewed commitment to stand together in the faith and be a living laboratory of true spiritual union and love.

Undisturbed or Undetermined

Have we got anything to look forward to today?  Are we satisfied with the way things are going to such a degree that it would be perturbing if God said “do this” or “do that” all of a sudden?  Could we bounce out of our plans or are we too settled for God to blow them apart and not come unglued ourselves?  What would we give to have things go smoothly right now?  Is there something we can’t see torn asunder?  Have we a freedom of the Spirit that leaves us empty of self-will and determination?  God is not interested in us becoming the best we can be or making our days uncomplicated and settled.  He is righting the ship that has been broken completely by the storms of sin we have leveled against it.  We are undone and don’t realize it because we are too far invested in ourselves and how we want things to go.  God’s will for us is to kill off our will so that we can be one with Him and free of the tangled weeds of sin choking our life.  He must break up our day and shatter our plans for us to give in to Him and let Him become our all in all.  The sacredness of the day is not found in what we accomplish or set out to accomplish but rather in our complete trust in Christ to make of it as He will.  That does not mean passively sitting back in a mess of meaningless activities but rather drawing near to the Holy Spirit in each and every part of the day.   It is not Christian to realize your dreams.  It is Christian to die to the will to sin and become so in love with Jesus that nothing He makes of our moment is cursed and everything we want is undisturbed by a love of the world.  Find a moment to love Christ without conditions.  Let this day be His.

The Success Myth Visited

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?

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

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

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

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?

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"

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...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.