Loyalty and Its Cost

Is it wrong to want others to like us, to value us and respect us?  Should it not be a noble goal to have people speak highly of us at our funeral, for them to have fond memories of our life and testify of what a good and generous person we were?  So do we leave the path of rightness if it matters to us what sort of reputation we have developed and we care about the popularity we acquire?  Jesus insisted that if we follow Him there will be those who hate us and reject us because of Him.  Does that possibility frighten us?  Are we disturbed by how the Gospel in us is received?  When Christ works His way through our personality, it is not a trifling matter.  It is revolutionary; as upsetting as the day the colonies declared independence from England; as chaotic as when the realization strikes us that our children really are adults and no longer ours to keep in place.  The supernatural effect of the Cross is that the Lord Jesus Christ becomes Lord over one dealing after another and it will crack the care-free web of interacting we have built.  God’s peace does not please everyone.  Hope does not make everyone happy.  Holiness is frightful to many…so is kindness, generosity and mercy.  The world is not ready for a Christian man or woman who fully intends to let God live through the complete personality.  It will jar plenty; stun and mystify enough of the crowd to send some shivers down our spine.  You will not be prepared for being hated because Christ lives through you.  It will seem to you that God should have worked that out in advance; that if you are reworked by the Holy Spirit, He will make the path clear of boulders and thorn bushes for you.  But He won’t.  Just as the seedling needs the pushback of the soil to make it prosper and grow strong, you need the opposition of friends and family to develop spiritual backbone.  You are to be strong and mighty in God and it must be steady she goes for you as you gain some of the circle of isolation Christ faced.  Let Christ be the center of all you are becoming and soon enough you will be able to love those who hate you and let your critics have their say without being perturbed.  In the darkness of strained and ruined relationships, the light of Christ will shine brightly enough to guide your way through to the other side of the dismay you feel.  Just don’t let your attempts at realizing yourself be the instigator for your conflicts.  You are not, and forever will not be your own.  It is you and the love of Christ in all you do now.  Let Him have His way in your visceral response to broken humanity…in particular the part of that humanity living next door to you…or in your house.

Keep yourselves in God's love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life.   Jude 21 NIV

No Fault Divorce

Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?"

Mark 10:2 NIV

When a relationship of yours is broken, how do you know it is your fault?  For some they are never at fault.  Surely you don’t fit into this category of people but most have trouble accepting blame when they are squarely in the midst of an argument.  It is too satisfying to keep at it, to keep pounding away at fault, keep hammering the point.  The ability to shut-up in the middle of a fight is a God-send, but only if it results in a change of direction.  Given our tendency to lay blame, it is almost a pipe dream to hope that we could see our fault in a matter when we are steamed.  Adam and Eve proved that at the heart of sin is a propensity to lay blame, to find fault without rather than within.  One of the clear signals that we have erred and perhaps erred badly is a righteous anger that we have been wronged.  Consider the admonitions we find in scripture regarding fractured relationships.  "Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.  (Matthew 5:23-24 NIV)  "But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. (Luke 6:27-28 NIV) "Do not judge, or you too will be judged.”  (Matthew 7:1-2 NIV)  "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye. (Matthew 7:3-5 NIV) But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. (Matthew 5:39-40 NIV)

The weight of scripture is stacked against you if you are making your case in a broken relationship.  Whatever argument you may have wedged into your fight, whether spoken or unspoken is nearly always wrong or at least irrelevant.  There is almost no room for squaring things off; at least if you are pretty certain it is the other person’s corner that is misaligned.  Our bent heart rarely gets it right when we begin to assess blame.  Sin warps our view of nearly every accusation we have; we are much more likely to get it wrong when we are incensed than have grasped the right thread of a matter.  Nothing violates our life with God more than playing the judge in our disagreements; acting as the accuser in our fractured relationships.  Fault may be shown but most likely it will only be our own that we find uncovered in the rubble.  Better to forgive, ignore or let go than fight on and try to take it to the mat.  Adam knew it was his wife’s fault but right or wrong in his assumption, he was given bitter toil for life for his part…one must wonder what God would have done instead if he had simply said he was wrong and left the matter at that…leaving Eve out of it.  We know our God’s mercy.  Why trifle with his patience by keeping our fights alive when we can simply end them with forgiveness and a resolve to give up the cloak demanded of us?  Blessed still are the peacemakers for they will be called the sons of God.  Isn’t it better to be happy than cling to a warped form of rightness?

Friend

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

The Facts Of Life

Weddings remind us of priorities...that it really does matter we love, hold hands, blow bubbles in the wind and laugh. Sometimes I miss the details because the big picture fails me. Get the sermon finished, hold the cell group, write, talk to people. But sitting at the reception next to friends and laughing and talking about silly things like "Lost" and wedding cermonies gone bad, I was brought back to living. It is not having converstations so that I can "build community" or "grow the church", it is having conversations because that is good, friends are good and cracking up is good. Love isn't the easiest thing we do and enough of the time doing something about it is a chore. But when we laugh and breathe deeply together..and drink vanilia milkshakes out of the same germy straw, the rough edges of being smooth out a bit...rough edges like the big picture...like making our kids right, our wife or husband right, making our friends right, our cell group right, our church right, ourselves right. Thanks Will and Erin for another chance at life. It was fun.

But may the righteous be glad and rejoice before God; may they be happy and joyful.
Psalm 68:3 NIV

Core Values--Courage

Ps 91:5 NIV
You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day,


There is a divine purpose every person possesses that makes the coward courageous and it is this. God makes our most feared moments have eternal value. Jesus died we all know for one reason. His death rescued us from the brutality of death brought by the sins we each have cursed God by committing. Nothing we do matters a whit if Jesus does not that moment rescue us from Hell. Everything dies with us and nothing lives that we do, think or say. But if we put our faith in Christ for our everything eternal, then something new emerges. A purpose for everything we fear to do. One example and then we decide what to do with this. Last week I thought about asking the manager of Wal-mart if she would let me sell my book at her store. I dreaded the conversation. My self-esteem was pretty shot, my conviction that anyone would buy the book was pretty low and I was not at all certain I had a good reason that could convince her that she should put it on her shelf. The book after all is a religious book, it is not bound yet so it looks worse than plain and I have no publisher to back what I am doing. But one thing was certain. I had to bring my book to her. So, as I was driving down to the store, one thought kept coming to me. What if this one store manager actually read the book and it convinced her to follow Jesus fully? Would then my conversation with her matter? That is the point. What if the things that frighten us are in fact crucial to God’s plan and key to getting done what must not be stopped! Courage is not bucking up my emotions and doing what I dread doing. It is having a purpose that screams past this life and doing what the Enemy makes seem the worst of outcomes. I die to self and live for Christ. That is courage.