The Tears of the Oppressed

Lost in the Foundation

2011-04-11T09:51:00.000-05:00

The foundation is not the building

The Hebrew writer chastises us a bit with his closing statement in chapter five: We have much to say about this, but it is hard to make it clear to you because you no longer try to understand. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.

Then he begins chapter six with a continuation of the thought: Therefore let us move beyond the elementary teachings about Christ and be taken forward to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death, and of faith in God, instruction about cleansing rites, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. And God permitting, we will do so.

There are those elementary things about Christ Jesus that we learn and hold dear, but they are not things we need to have repeated and repeated over and over again. Do we need to hear that we should not lie? When did you learn that lesson? Were you five, six, seven? To spend sermon after sermon telling the assembly that they should not lie would be foolish, yet we offer similar teachings over and over again. And because of this, we are those who have to be fed with milk instead of strong meat.

"Leave them!" The Hebrew writer tells us. "Leave them! Move beyond the foundational things." Those kindergarten things are wonderful truths that bring us into Christ, but if we never get beyond them we will not be able to stand when the Katrinas, earthquakes and tsunamis come.

With every passage of scripture read we should be better able to see what it is that is lying beneath the truth we just read. Throughout scripture there is so much more given to us than what is actually written, but we have to be able to see it. As the various writers write they are expecting us to have a deeper understanding than what we see in the few words they give us, and so we should. But we will only be able to see if we have been looking. For instance, Romans 4:1ff has much to say about sin, grace and imputation of those sins. But without the background much of the meaning is lost on us. So not only do we miss much of the obvious things, we can't help but miss the less clear.

Again, much of what we read must be meditated upon or we will never gain much truth from our readings. Meditations are much like our memories of some event we have actually been through. While we are going through the event certain things flood our minds, but later, when we reflect on the event, we see and remember things we hadn't noticed at the time, even though our mind took those things in. The reliving makes the event bigger and clearer and fuller, because we recognize that there was more to it than what was most prominent in our minds eye.

So it is with meditation. We get the general picture, but the more we meditate and mull it over in our mind the more other places, passages, ideas and wonders come into our thoughts filling in much of what was lacking in our first understanding of a read passage. If we fail to look deeper through meditation, rereading, questioning and the like, then we are doomed to be lost in the foundation and we will never really grow much beyond that.

Why Lori Part Two

2010-12-22T09:48:00.002-06:00

My son, Neil, played football for Harding Academy in Searcy, Arkansas and one of his coaches was Jon Newby. Jon was and is a good man and is admired by those he helped coach, as well as many others. Jon's wife, Lori, recently died of cancer leaving children and husband broken hearted, hurting and lonely for her. Prayers were offered by the hundreds and even thousands almost all asking for release from the terrible grip of the cancer. People were asking for God's healing, but it was not to be and Lori passed away. Many were left shaking their heads and wondering, some quietly in their own minds; others out loud...Why? "Good God in heaven," they were asking, "why?"

To answer "Why Lori?" is not an easy thing to do. Nor is it easy to answer when it's your husband, wife, child or other loved one. What did they do that was different from everyone else so that they might be singled out? We look, examine, search, and rack our brains trying to understand and when all is said and done...no answer. We can't get a handle on what they might have done that caused such a thing to happen because their is nothing to get a handle on. Lori was not worse than any others. No. She was a lovely woman, caring and serving. And I'm sure your loved one(s) were too. The answer(s) are not really to be found in the individuals actions, so we have to look elsewhere.

Unfortunately, we are people of the earth. We have a difficult time keeping our eyes on heaven and the face of God. We look at things linearly rather than eternally. Not that we don't believe in God, but He's out there somewhere far away and we are here on earth where life is. I heard someone say, "We hear about pie in the sky in the sweet by and by, but we want it here on the ground while we're still around." We think "earthly". Yet when great suffering comes and death may soon follow we begin calling on God more and more and thoughts of eternity come easier, but when the moment has passed - perhaps with the passing of our loved one - faith ebbs and we are back on earth once again. To understand better we need to ask ourselves several questions, perhaps, but the greatest is "Why did God create us?"

Whatever the answer, Jim McGuiggan made the point, and I agree, "God has chosen not to be God without us..." We know this is true because here we are, created by the loving hands of God. And God chose to express His love in us. Because He is love and love must seek to express itself, He chose to express Himself in us. We were created to be loved ones of God. Ephesians chapter one tells us that we were predestined for adoption as His children. God wanted us in His family. This is why we were created. To be with God. To live with God. To be showered with the love of God. Jesus told us, "My Father's house has many rooms: if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me, that where I am you may be also." For people of Faith, it is clear that we are meant to be with God. Where ever heaven is and where ever we will spend eternity, God means to be there with us. So my conclusion is...God created us to be with Him. We were not meant to spend eternity here on earth without God.

Once we get a grasp on this we begin looking at life and death differently. Where ever God is there is great blessing, peace, no pain; no suffering; no death! Commercials about and sales of Ibuprofen ought to demonstrate our desire for at least two of the above. We want a pain-free, peaceful life. What are we willing to give to have such a thing? And God? God wants to be our Father and have us live with Him. True, He leaves the choice of being with Him up to us, but this is still His desire. (1 Timothy 2:3-4).

Conception starts the process of traveling to God in our individual lives. We're born, grow, age and mature; Then we begin to ebb, we decline and finally we die. There are times, as we have all experienced, when some of those steps are taken out of different people's lives. Some babies are born with defects or ailments that curtail the system and death comes early. When this happens, of course, questions arise. Yet when we remember the purpose for being here to begin with the question(s) don't rush into our head so quickly as they otherwise might. We recognize that they are completing their journey to God a bit earlier than they might have.

Of course, when it's a young mom with a loving family we still find it difficult to understand why God would allow such a thing. Yet faith also rises and trust grows that God knows what He is doing and it will all work out for the good.

David committed adultery with Bathsheba and killed her husband when Bathsheba was found to be with child. When the child was born and became ill, David prayed and fasted, asking for healing. It wasn't given and the child died. When that happened, David got up, bathed and asked for food. His court asked him what this meant. He told them the simple truth that God had chosen not to give the healing and the child could not come back to David. Yet. Yet, David was assured that he could go to the child. He would see him again because He was with God. And, in David's case, faith won the victory and overcame the world.

Merry Christmas to Some

2010-12-15T09:48:00.003-06:00

Twas the night before Christmas and the Village was quiet;
Not a gift would be given, no money to buy it.
No stockings, no chimney, no cookies were shared,
No Santa was coming, because nobody cared.

No mail was delivered, no Christmas cards read;
The child with Malaria soon would be dead.
No clinic around and no medicine either
And so the child died because he had neither.

So when Christmas came 'round, it was just one more day
Poverty and hunger made it that way.
So think as your child opens the sweet gift from you,
Poverty's child could have eaten if only you knew.

And remember as Santa roars out of view,
He didn't go to them, but he went to you...

Not a single child in the villages of northern Ghana ever thinks about Christmas because Santa had never visited them, not once, not ever.

Christmas, Thanksgiving and all those wonderful family and friends holidays mean nothing to children who barely get enough to eat each day. Over half of the village children never have the opportunity to go to school. They are busy each day working in the family's farm or going to the market place to sell something to try to help make enough money to by a little food so their family eats each day.

And me? I eat - too much. I drive my pick-up and visit my friends. I buy gifts for my family and others, but I also receive. I've been blessed above the vast majority of people in this world and I am just not thankful enough. What is wrong with me? Why don't I care? Why can't I share some of my blessings with those who have nothing? It can't be ignorance because I know better and now, so do you.

Help a child in Ghana West Africa. Give a small $10.00 or $20.00 gift to Ghana West Africa Missions through Paypal.

Who Should We Vote For

2010-10-22T09:03:00.000-05:00

Ah American Christians, we are people of little faith. We trust in our money; trust in our jobs; trust in our medical care; trust in our wisdom and intellect and we trust that if we pull the right lever between now and November 2nd that we will be safe once again. We'll have the right people on the Supreme Court, the best people in congress and the brightest ideas in the world. And all along we forget that it's God who is in charge. Read Romans 12 once or twice today. Take a look at Daniel 4 and note especially verses 17 and 25. Remember back to Katrina and understand that if God wanted to He could bring a Katrina (Psalm 107:25; Psalm 148:8) to the whole USA and everything would be as it was in Southern Louisiana. The world was created by and for God. God is in charge. He will have the last word. Trust Him! Do not trust in the government.

Why Lori Part One

2010-10-20T09:40:00.001-05:00

As humans we struggle with the question of suffering and we hurt desperately when a loved one is in pain or suffers from some terrible malady. The question of "why" raises its head and we long for answers from the God we believe is powerful enough to stop all this madness. God can heal; Why doesn't He? God can eliminate hunger; Why doesn't He? God can stop someone from molesting a child; why doesn't He? And we begin to think either God doesn't really care or He is impotent and weaker than we have been led to believe. If we accept the latter then we have to believe that God isn't God at all. If the former then He can't be the God we read of in the Bible. Whatever we think, ultimately every painful, awful thing can be laid at the feet of the God who has the power to stop them all. It doesn't matter if we reject that idea, because deep down in our hearts we know it's true. God is either all-powerful or He's NOT God. I choose to believe He's God. So the question of "why" must be answered.

In the beginning there was a garden wherein there was a tree called the tree of life. I choose to believe this is true. If one continued to eat from the tree of life he or she would continue to live - I'm assuming, in good health and without aging. After man sinned, GOD took away man's access to the tree of life and man began to die physically. Note Genesis 3:22. In addition to this God also cursed the earth for man and placed heavy burdens on mankind that included pain, suffering and struggles.

One of the questions we need to ask about suffering is: "Did God plan for there to be suffering before He created the earth or was it an afterthought?"
Genesis chapter 3 expressly tells us that God was going to send someone; we later learn that it was Jesus the Christ and that He was/is/always will be God. It is certainly implied that the one God would send would suffer at the hands of Satan. The bruised heel and crushed head implies this. While it is true, this is stated after man sinned – and there is no record of how long they had been in the garden before this took place, so we don’t know if it was ten minutes or ten years or a thousand – it is certain that this was planned before the creation - Ephesians 1:3-14, just as an example. In these verses the NIV uses such phrases as, “the mystery of His will,” and “He purposed in Christ,” and “works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will.” The Christ Himself presupposes the sin of man. God knew we were going to sin so the suffering of Jesus was planned in eternity prior to the creation of man. It was an essential part of God’s plan for there to be suffering on the earth in order that His Son might suffer. Jesus could not have been the only one to ever suffer on earth, suffering was for all mankind and it was for the express purpose of brining man back to God.

Again, we read in Acts 2 that the suffering of Jesus was surely the plan of God. Not only was it His plan, but He made it happen. So to say that it was not the plan of God (and that the Bible nowhere teaches it) for Him to willingly hurt anyone is just wrong, even if we only apply the plan to Jesus. But it seems clear to me that God always planned to use suffering/pain willingly so that man would be wooed back to Him. His anger and the results of it are not to be divorced from God’s love for mankind. It is His love that causes Him to be angry with us at times and the anger calls for pain and suffering.
Amos 4:6ff shows us that God willingly used pain and suffering for the express purpose of bringing His people back to Him. Through Amos, He tells us this is so over and over again.

Just for overkill, you cannot read the Judges and not see that God used the sufferings other nations brought on the Israelites for the express purpose of bringing them back to Him. Also, the sufferings cannot be just punitive because there were many innocents who were suffering along with the guilty. The crying woman’s baby (Though it's not found in the Judges but Kings; 2 Kings 6) was one of the innocent ones who suffered for the sins of his people. The baby was not being punished, but there was purpose in his suffering. It was to tell those around him that he would not be suffering, would not be boiled and eaten by his own mother, had it not been for the sins of the people.

All suffering is demonstrating that sin is a horrific thing and that God will not just let us go our own way and be swallowed up by sin, but He will use the suffering to win us back. This is the purpose of ALL suffering. It doesn’t matter if the suffering is by chance, such as an automobile accident or suffering expressly given by God, such as Nadab and Abihu. The suffering is meant to bring people back to God; to cause people to be in a right relationship with God. It is not necessarily for the one suffering, such as the baby or even Nadab and Abihu, but it is for this purpose. Otherwise suffering, pain and even death have no purpose. They are just arbitrary things put on us by an arbitrary God and this being so we would be forced to scream out with the Preacher, “Meaningless, meaningless all is meaningless.”

Finally, note Colossians 1:24, the sufferings of Christ are not over, but He continues His sufferings through and in the Church and the purpose of the church is to take the message to the world. More on this in Part 2.

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

2010-09-07T09:23:00.000-05:00

Sunday I gave some devotional thoughts before we shared the communion supper. As I looked out at the assembly, a large crowd nearly filling our 1,000 seat auditorium, I thought to myself that it was our family who were about to have dinner with each other and the Lord. And that's a good thing. Our family. Us. The dinner was for us and the assembly for us as well. Sunday morning services are not really for the outsider; Our assemblies are not for outreach, but for inreach and upreach. We are there to give each other courage and strength. We speak to ourselves in psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. We spend time in prayer calling on our Father to bless us and to bless others also. We let God speak to us through His word, so that we might learn more about Him and His ways. We are there for edification and growth and reunion and communion. But then I thought...

Should we not invite others to dinner? Don't we ever invite outsiders to our homes for dinner with our family? And of course, I had to answer, yes. Yes we do. And while it generally is not the purpose of our dinners together, we do invite others to join us and we fellowship with them and laugh with them, there are even times when we cry with them. And when we have done all of these things and the dinner is finished, I think to myself, I am closer to those folks than I was before they came for dinner. I know more about them than I did before. I enjoyed being with them. I hope we can be friends.

I'm thinking, that is the way it ought to be with the dinner we share on Sunday morning. We need to put some extra emphasis on it. Be a bit more open with it; call others to share it with us. Invite the lost to dinner and let them see the faith, communion and union we share in that one great act of worship and fellowship. It would be a bit more like home and hospitality, don't you think? And...and...it's just possible that when they see it and share it and talk with us and laugh just a little, that they might like to come again. And just think, they might even want to join our family and invite some people that they know. Should that happen, and we want it to, we could all rejoice speaking the words of the scarecrow when he realized he could do math and said, "Oh joy, rapture."

What I've Got They Used to Call the Blues

2010-09-02T09:30:00.000-05:00

There are days when hope seems distant and happiness always out of reach; Days that drag, crawling along at a snails pace and leaving us tired, lost and alone, even if there is a crowd surrounding us. Karen Carpenter sang about it. Remember "Rainy Days and Mondays"?

What I've got they used to call the blues
Nothing's really wrong
Feelin' like I don't belong...

Yea, that's the kind of day I'm talking about. We all go through them. We're there, but not really. People talk to us and we respond, but never actually join a conversation; We're aloof without trying to be, distant and cut off. There are times when people think we're being stand-offish, but it's not that at all. And it's not really something that you can easily control. It may come from tiredness, illness or even an argument with your spouse or a close friend and there you are...Rainy Days and Mondays.

So what do you do about it? Pray? Funny thing, you don't feel like praying. Laugh? That's even less likely. Jogging or a long walk where you can just be alone with your thoughts? Wow. That often drags me father down, because I get into those thoughts and they were bad enough without thinking them. Once I start concentrating on them I get sucked farther in as if it were a black hole and the vacuum is inescapable.

For the majority of usI have no real advice as to what one should do when we get the blues or are depressed, filled with sorrow, sadness, emptiness or dejection. I do know that for most of us it will pass. Tomorrow or the next day we will feel better and a smile will be back on our face. And for those who are like this, well, just live with it for a day or two.

For those who live a life time with the blues and depression is not just a momentary thing, you can't take it lightly and you can't just ignore it. You have to get help. I hate that you have it and it makes me feel badly thinking that there are people out there who feel the way I do at this moment, but they won't get over it as I know I will. I know also that there are people out there who have knowledge as to what to do for you and they can help and want to help. Seek them out. Don't live with it by yourself. Here are some things you can do:

Find supportive friends and spend time with them. It needs to be those who really love you and that you can pour your heart out to
Exercise. One of the worst things to do is lie in bed all day. Remember Paul Simon's "Slip Slidin' Away" and the woman who said, "A bad day's when I lie in bed and think of things that might have been"? You can't stay in bed, depression only gets worse.
Take a walk in the woods
Try a relaxing hot bath
Watch a funny movie or comedy
Go out to lunch with a friend or just have a friend over for coffee
Spend some time in the sun today - this one's very important - the sun has healing powers just by brightening our day
Challenge your negative thinking

Right now I have the blues, but writing about them has helped my mood. I hope something said here might help yours.

Song Three

2010-05-20T16:07:00.000-05:00

Beyond any doubt that I have there are five greatest events. The first is creation. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. What power displayed, what wonder offered to us and what tremendous blessings are ours in this grand earth and life given to us for our use and pleasure. The second is the birth of Christ Jesus, but let me skip that for now. The third is the Savior dying on the cross so that His blood might wash us clean and we could be adopted into the family of God the Father of all. Surely it was a black, dismal day, filled with pain, gore, blood, heartache and death. But it was a wondrous day too. A day when sins were condemned in the flesh, life and death of Jesus. A day when the greatest words, as Jesus pushed himself up on his nail stabbed feet, were whispered through teeth clenched against the pain, "Father, forgive them for they don't know what they're doing." A handful watched and wept while the majority ranted and ridiculed, laughing at his torment. But then, early on Sunday morning, the fourth great thing happened. Resurrection! The stone rolled; soldiers fainted; angels came to see; the death cloth neatly folded and Jesus came walking out and lying battered, bloody and beaten behind him, still in the tomb, was the great enemy…Death. Death was defeated and became a servant to believers from that moment on.

And the fifth? That's the strange one. The fifth was the day I was born and for you it was the day you were born. That day you and I were blessed to take part in this great thing called life. We were blessed to share the earth and its glories. We were given an opportunity to share a relationship with the God of all grace, who loves us more than life itself, as He demonstrated on the cross. Without our own birth, of course, we wouldn't know any of these things and we couldn't share them. So we have to count our own birth as one of the greatest things that ever happened, don't we?

Now let me go back to number two. Imagine yourself on a grassy hill outside of Bethlehem. Sheep are nervously baaing all around you and the ebon-dark sky, filled with stars, leaves you at peace and you drowse a little, head bobbing onto your chest. The sheep quiet their moaning and there is a wonderful stillness. Suddenly a great light and terribly awesome voice breaks your weariness and jolts you upright.

"Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord."

After that the sky is filled with angels all singing "Glory to God in the highest. Peace. Good will toward men!"

The poet, Placide Cappeau put himself there and wrote the words to my third favorite song: "Oh holy night, the stars are brightly shining…" And as he wrote and wondered at the greatness of the news he came to the one conclusion that we all ought to come to: "FALL ON YOUR KNEES! FALL ON YOUR KNEES!" When Adolphe-Charles Adam put the words to music he knew that those words couldn't be sung pianissimo. They were words of crescendo meant to be sung forte. This was the great earth event: God came to live with us! God came! Think of this, let your heart be filled with it. How deep is the love of God? Deep enough that He came to eat at our dinner table and wash our feet. God came and the angels sang "GLORY!" God came and we "FALL ON OUR KNEES!"

Martina McBride sings it A Cappella – this is a version I think you might like.

Oh Holy Night

Song Two

2010-05-20T16:03:00.001-05:00

In 1989 Don Henley won the "Best Rock Vocal Performance-male" for his album "End of the Innocence". One of the songs on the album was called "The Heart of the Matter." It wasn't meant to be a spiritual song, but it certainly is, because the heart of the matter is forgiveness. Of all the things we are looking for in this lonely, desperate world the greatest is forgiveness. Cheating lovers want to be forgiven. Murderers want absolution. Liars and deceivers want to hear "I forgive you," more than anything. Oh, I know that many times we want that only after we get caught, but still…

Psalm 32 talks about David's struggles after committing adultery with Bathsheba and having her husband killed in order to cover up his infidelity. His mouth is dry and his stomach aches continually. His bones feel arthritic and he can't look up to God whom he loves, but has hurt desperately. The Psalm, written after Nathan the prophet came and confronted David, expresses the relief felt when the sin was exposed and forgiveness granted. While it's true, David still lived through the consequences of his sin, he was also forgiven. His relationship with the Father of glory was restored and his body aches and dry mouth ended with forgiveness.

I've felt those same pains and feelings. Arguments with my wife, children or friends and the separation, the broken relationships and isolation all bore into my heart and filled me with the loneliness of great need. And I knew that the only thing that could take care of the need was forgiveness. A simple owning up to what I had done and an "I'm sorry," would clear it all away. How stupid of me those so many times when my pride kept me waiting many hours, days and even weeks to find the humility to say a short little two word sentence.

Don Henley sings, "I've been trying to get down to the heart of the matter, but my will gets weak and my thoughts seem to scatter, but I think it's about forgiveness, forgiveness, even if…you don't love me anymore." How sad it is when we wait too long to make those approaches and bend the knee, with hands lifted upward, pleading "I'm so sorry. Forgive me!" that by the time we say it the love our lover one time felt ended up too tarnished to reflect the feelings we offered and our pleas went unheeded.

How many broken homes and relationships; How many alienated children and parents; How many friendships lost forever, because we refused or waited too long to say "I'm sorry"? How many more will there be? Forgiveness comes when we offer our humble apologies in time to make a difference. So, whatever it is… don't wait.

I couldn't find the song on You Tube, but here's the link for Grooveshark. Play the one on the End of the Innocence album.

The Heart of the Matter
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Song One

2010-05-20T14:18:00.002-05:00

There are two songs that really move me emotionally and a third that makes me want to fall on my knees in worship to the God of all creation for His unfathomable love and the peace that passes all understanding.
The first two are love songs. Well, at least the first one is a love song. My wife and I have been married for forty three years. Neither of us is the same person we married all those years ago. We’ve grown older, of course, but we’ve also grown accustomed to each other. She depends upon me and I defend her. She hurts and I try to ease her pain. I hunger and she feeds me. I feel the need for closeness and she’s always there. It’s comfortable knowing she’s in the house and that we’re together, even when she’s doing her thing and I’m doing mine.

Helen Reddy sang a song called “You and Me Against the World” and though it’s generally a song of a mom’s love for her child, it’s still what I think about my wife. It’s always been the two of us against the world. Standing with each other, yet falling down so often. Loving each other, yet in that love we have hurt each other, sometimes badly. Still, through the hurts, heartaches and happiness we have stuck together and in the sticking we have become one – more and more, with each passing day…one.

The song (I’ve put a link below, please go listen to it) has a line that says:

And when one of us is gone
And one of us is left to carry on
Then remembering will have to do
Our memories alone will see us through
Think about the days of me and you
You and me against the world.

I know so many who have lost a spouse and I see the loneliness in their eyes and the pain of loss in their hearts and I know, yes it will be like this for one of us one day. The odds are we will not die together and one will be left to carry on. Ah, but love doesn’t have to die and memories are great gifts that God has given us so that we can be sure that we are never really alone. We can close our eyes and relive all the good times. And what’s so wonderful about memories is that every time we remember we can fix those memories to be however we wish them to be and we can remember them even greater than when they were first fixed in our minds.

I know it’s a great blessing that our memories alone will see us through. So, Baby, should you go first, I promise to remember…

You and Me Against the World

The Agony of the Heartache

2010-03-29T12:43:00.000-05:00

I just heard that someone I knew long ago committed suicide and left their family with broken hearts and a million questions. I can imagine what they are going through and my heart breaks for them too. I can also imagine the kinds of questions they are asking. The greatest, of course, is "why?"

Why would someone do this?
Why does it hurt so badly?
Why was he/she so selfish?
How could they leave their family?
What are we supposed to do now?
Is there any hope for them eternally?
And on and on and on...

The worst part of it all is that there are no answers. We can't say why someone would do something like this. Were they in physical pain and just wanted it to stop? Was their heart broken and the pain was too great to bear? Had they just gotten fed up with the hypocrisy they saw around them? Was it? Could it have been? Do you suppose? Ah, all the questions, but still no answers. The only real thing left to those who cared is the agony of the heartache. And what can ease that pain?

I know little canned or trite answers will never do. Saying things like, "God loves you," is not really helpful. They already know He does, even though there is now that seed of doubt. "He let them die, after all. How much could He love me?" But deep down in their hearts they know God loves them. So saying "Smile, God love you," may just make them angry and shut the doors to further dialogue. So what do we say?

I'm honestly thinking that we ought not to say anything more than "I'm sorry and I'm aching with you and praying for you." If we say this and just let them know we care and that love will find a way, then we've said enough. They will know and it will make a difference. We won't be able to explain it, so our simple, sincere, heartfelt "I'm sorry" will do more than anything else.

Just a few weeks ago, the young son of some close family friends was lying on the bed with his dying grandfather and they were not talking to each other, just lying side by side. The boy's mom, hearing nothing, whispered to her son that he needed to talk to his grandfather. The boy told her, "Mom. We're men. We don't have to talk to show that we love each other." And, of course, they didn't and the grandfather went to be with the Lord knowing deep in his soul that his grandson loved him with all his heart. We can do the same with the folks spoken of in this little blog or our loved ones who are hurting, whose struggles may be more than we can see or even understand. A little quiet love can help ease the agony of the heartache.

A Little More To It

2010-03-26T10:03:00.002-05:00

I just read a note on FaceBook that said, "What DO I DO to be saved? You’re 2000 years too late - It was all DONE for you by Jesus on the Cross. ‘IT IS FINISHED!’ John 19:30 Rick Warren.” We read this and some want to shout “WHAT?!” Others want to shout, “YES!” Still others want to mumble, “Who cares?”

We know, don’t we, that Jesus did what needed to be done to see to it that the way to heaven was opened for us. There is nothing left for us to do to open the way. At the same time, some sort of response from us is essential. We cannot access the salvation that is in Christ Jesus without doing something. Even the faith only people believe we have to have faith. Faith is something, isn’t it?

I know that Paul was inspired by God to write what he wrote in the various letters of the New Testament, but still I believe he knew more about God and His eternal plan for us than I know. Yet, when he was asked by the Philippian Jailer, “What must I do to be saved?” The Jailer wasn’t told he was too late, he was told to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Then he and his family were taught more about Jesus Christ and they asked to be baptized into Christ, which was done in that very night.

Simplistic statements like Rick Warren’s lead to arguments and division rather than deeper understanding. To say that there is more to say than Rick’s statement is not (generally) a knee-jerk reaction, it is a reasonable thing to say. There is more to it, otherwise God spent a lot of time having men write the Bible than He needed to. Psalm 119:160 says, “The sum of your word is truth” (ESV; NASB; ASV). Does this mean you just grab a passage and say that is the truth or do you take the sum of what is said and call that truth?

Yes. Jesus condemned sin in the flesh and opened the door to heaven, but He also said, “If you love me you will keep my commandments.” So His dying wasn’t all there was to it, even though it was all we needed Him to do.

Good God 4

2010-02-02T12:25:00.001-06:00

"...he withdrew from them about a stone's throw and knelt down and prayed, saying, 'Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.' And there appeared to him an angel from heaven, strengthening him. And being in agony he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground." Luke 22:41-44 (English Standard Version).

These words were spoken by an individual who chose to be sinless. He was tempted in every way, just as we are, yet He chose not to sin (Hebrews 4:15). Sin had been mankind’s master and ruled over him because man gave him the right. When sin said “Obey me!” man said “I will,” and we allowed him to master us. But we were not made for sin; we were made for righteousness. So, God came in the person of Jesus Christ and showed us that it was not necessary for us to be a slave to sin. Sin could be mastered and the purpose of man could be found apart from sin. Jesus lived without sinning, and because He was able to live a life without sin, He condemned sin in the flesh (Romans 8:3). He showed us that sin was not the real master, God was. But it was not an easy lesson to teach. It was costly!

From the birth of Jesus Christ, man, spurred on by Satan, attempted to put Him to death. Herod sent his soldiers to kill the Christ when He was less than two years old. They succeeded in killing all the boy babies two and under who lived in the area, but they missed the Savior. Fleeing for their lives, Joseph and Mary took the boy and went into Egypt. When Herod finally died, they returned to the Holy Land and went to their hometown of Nazareth, where the Christ Child grew up in stature and in favor with both God and man.

As He came into manhood He went to the Prophet John and was baptized of him, even over the protests of the baptizer. "I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?" But Jesus answered him, "Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness."

You can picture Jesus coming to John. The crusty John, in his camel hair clothes, long beard and gruff voice would have been standing and preaching to the people who came to hear the message of the coming savior. After a time he would have asked the listeners to respond and be baptized for the remission of their sins; many would. A line would form and Jesus would have been in the line. Why? Not because He sinned. No, that’s not the reason.

He stood in line because He was one of them – one of us. The word became flesh and dwelt among us. There was the nation of Israel standing before the Father condemned by their sins and national repentance was called for and the response to that repentance was baptism. Because Jesus was one of them/us He took His turn and joined hands with them in baptism. His fellowship with man, although apart from sin, was what God always wanted. Love needs to express itself and from the creation God has been showing us His love for us in fellowshipping with us. When He became flesh He became one of us.

He could not stand aloof and tell His people that He wanted no part of them because they were sinners. No. While we were still sinners, even enemies, Christ came to fellowship with us (Romans 5:6 and 10). As we look at the Apostles we can see that they often sinned, arguing who would be greatest in the kingdom, denying the Christ, cursing and lying. Yet Jesus did not remove Himself from them as if they were too sinful for Him to be around. On the contrary, He came to clean them from their sin, but He had to be one of us in order to do that.

Eventually, of course, He offered a sacrifice that no other could offer and that was a sinless by choice body. Babies were sinless, but not by choice. They knew nothing about sin. When they grew and learned what sin was they chose the sin over and over again. Jesus knew the sin and chose righteousness every time. We killed Him for it. The innocent died for the guilty and in dying He was telling us that sin could be overcome. He was also telling us just how bad sin really was. Sin killed the creator. Sin had no qualms about striking God and putting Him to death. Sin was in the crowd standing before Pilate and shouting, “CRUCIFY HIM!! CRUCIFY HIM!!” Sin thought he had won the victory and that’s just how wicked sin really was and is.

How can one stand before the almighty God and not just threaten Him, but actually beat Him, spit in His face, push a crown of thorns onto His head and nail Him to a cross? Because that’s what sin urges us on to do. Kill God and rule yourselves, but even the simple among us know that it is not within us to rule ourselves. Sin ruled…until the Christ came and overcame it. But it cost Christ His life. Hated, always criticized, ridiculed, arrested, rejected, beaten, stripped naked and crucified, He told sin this was His choice. Rather than give in to sin just once, He said He would take the abuse. And He did, showing us the only truth that can set us free.

So when we are asked why did this or that terrible thing happen? We don’t have to say it was a judgment from God because of man’s sin and then feel threatened when someone says, “show me the passage that tells you that.” All we have to do is explain that any tragedy is a part of the curse and tragedies, all tragedies, ultimately come about because of man’s sin. This is God telling us that sin is that terrible and must be dealt with. It is God saying turn to me. It is God saying I want you and there is a better life ahead, just turn away from this one and I will see you through to the real life that lies just around the corner.

We can deny this. We can say, “No. Not my God.” We can argue and criticize and say that makes no sense, but we can’t turn to Genesis three and not see that a very dramatic thing happened right after man sinned and as a result man’s existence changed dramatically. Pain, suffering, old age and death were now a part of man, and there was a very good reason for such things. Sin. All of those things are better than sin.

Good God 3

2010-02-02T12:06:00.001-06:00

When Adam and Eve sinned and ate from the forbidden tree everything changed. They went from living in a paradise to living in a world of chaos. They went from perfectly formed fruits and vegetables to thorns and thistles. They went from bodies being fed by the tree of life, never aging, never dying to bodies that began to grow old, have hurts and pain and sickness, finally to die because they were worn out. Look at these passages from Genesis3:

To the woman he said,
"I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing;
with pain you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you."

To Adam he said,
"Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you,
'You must not eat of it,'
"Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat of it
all the days of your life.

It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.

By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return."

Pain is introduced, whether it was there prior to their sin is merely speculation. There is no hint that it was, but surely it was going to be there from then on. Other things changed as well. The relationship between husband and wife would be different; the woman was now subject to her husband and he was to rule (oh, we hate that word and thought, don’t we?) over her. It doesn’t mean she was going to allow him to, but it does mean that that was now the natural order of thing.

Adam was to be the provider and it wasn’t going to be easy. In Eden things just kept on producing and the work was light, but now… Thorns and thistles were going to fight the farmer and the good plants. Sweat would be the norm and the end of it all was to be dust. “For out of it (dust) you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Life changed for man and what once was easy was now a chore. Physical death would now be a part of every man’s life and the hurt and heartache was to be common.

Then the LORD God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—" therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the Garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life. English Standard Version

Good and evil were now part of man, but he was not equipped to handle it. Only God was able to live above sin, so that sin could not control him. Man was weakened by his flesh and unable to live without sin. And as man sinned it became easier and easier and more a part of his psyche so that the distance between what God wanted for him and where he actually was became greater with each passing day. Man became more and more evil and corrupted. God could not allow wickedness to be eternal, so He took away access to the tree of life. Man was driven from the garden and began from that moment to suffer aging and death. Still the question remains, “WHY?” The why of corruption is easy. We can understand why He couldn’t allow sin to grow and grow until it became the only thing we ever did, so He limited us and our time here. But what about the pain and suffering? That’s the difficult part.

The simplest answer is that pain, suffering and death are things that God uses to chastise us, so that we might learn how bad sin really is and turn away from it, so that we might return to the God who loves us. One might say, “But you cannot show a verse that says Haiti’s people suffered an earthquake because of their sin,” and they would be correct. On the other hand, one needs only to examine Genesis three to see that these tragic things are what God put here in order to get our attention and turn us back to Him. If there had been no sin there would have been no reason for pain, suffering and death.

Good God 2

2010-02-02T11:36:00.002-06:00

One of the difficulties of trying to examine an individual tragedy to find answers for the why‘s and wherefore‘s, whether it included one person or a hundred thousand is that there is often nothing specific we can put our finger on to say this is the reason God would allow such a thing to happen to this person or these people. There are cases, of course, where we see good reason for something terrible to happen to someone. For instance, a man walks into the Post Office and begins shooting people and the police shoot and kill the perpetrator. We understand why the guilty man should die, but at the same time we wonder why the innocent should have been allowed, by God, to be wounded, maimed or killed. And what about the families of the victims and even the perpetrator‘s? Should they suffer the heartaches that the horror has brought to them? When any type of tragedy happens there is rarely only one person who suffers from it. So we ask, “why?” Where are the answers for these things?

I think there is an answer to these searing questions, but we don’t want the answer I am going to give. It can’t be that simple can it? No! No, no! We can’t easily accept it, but it doesn’t change the truth of it. The answer is sin. The whole reason for all of these tragedies, all the hurt and heartache, all the pain and suffering is SIN. The world in its continuous defiance of God refuses to look at sin as a reality, much less the cause of our traumas and troubles, but the truth of all the world’s angst and trials can be laid at the feet of sin.

A simple law was given in Eden, don’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. A penalty was given along with the command, but it all went unheeded. And because of the nature of law it could not be unbroken. Once you break the law you break it forever. There is nothing in the law that can patch it, much less restore it to it’s original flawlessness. So when the law was broken God handed down the penalty for breaking the law. The way to the tree of life was taken away and man began to die. Death came into a world where there had been none. Pain and heartache and masses of sin was both committed and understood. Man began doing atrocious things to other men and the world itself turned against man. Thorns and thistles began growing instead of the beauty of Eden. Floods and droughts reached out to destroy farms and families. Man had to fight to bring in a harvest and as he fought, he aged and with the aging came the penalties of age. There was the weakening of the flesh, brittle bones, lower energy and a host of sicknesses and all because the way to the tree of life had been taken away. And why did this happen? Sin. All because of sin.

We can treat it like it’s nothing, pooh, pooh it and say that’s crazy Christian talk. Denial is another alternative, saying good or bad is all in the heart of man and his mind. We make the determination and not some God up in some by and by place that no one has ever seen. Yes. We can do these things, but they change nothing. The truth remains, whether we accept it or not, there it is. Truth stands because it is absolute and therefore eternal. All the problems of this world are a direct result of sin.

But! But! We shout in our anger at such an explanation… But what about all the babies that died in Haiti or that are dying all over the world? They never sinned but they are being punished along with the rest. What about them?

While it’s true that babies suffer, there is no truth to the notion that they are being punished. The innocent have always suffered because of the guilty. Jesus and dying babies are just two examples. Babies are not being punished because there is nothing to punish them for, but that does not mean they do not suffer because of the sins of their parents. A child who depends upon his mom and dad to bring him up, feed, clothe and care for him suffers when his father goes out and robs a bank and ends up spending twenty years in prison. The child suffers even though he did nothing wrong. What about the child who is in the back seat of a car driven by a mother who is high on booze and drugs and runs into another car killing herself and maiming her child and the people in the other car. The child was innocent, yet the sin of his mother caused him grief, pain and loss.

A great problem with these examples is not that they are not true. On the contrary, they happen every day. No. The problem is we fail to learn or accept the truth uttered in them. The babies are telling us that they are suffering for us! Their pain is suffered for us, to teach us that sin is not just an awful problem it is THE problem.

Good God 1

2010-02-02T09:35:00.010-06:00

When man sees something as horrific as the Haiti earthquake and its results he responds in many different ways. Some scream “WHY?! Why God, Why?” and answers don’t come, except from a handful of people who answer a trite, “It’s because of sin,” then leave you there to dangle in a hangman’s noose of doubt and anger. Others completely turn from God, telling us that a good God would never allow such a thing to happen, and others nod their heads in agreement. Some, while not completely leaving God, start to doubt and in their weakened condition begin stumbling ever more frequently, until they drop from the fatigue of constant falling and getting up. Still others tell us that God had nothing to do with it, but that it was just the natural result of a shifting earth that, when stressed too greatly, quickly snapped loose and moved with unstoppable force. These and dozens of other responses come to mind, but where is the truth? It seems that easy answers are just shadows that show something, but never really explain the real thing. So we wonder where God fits into this whole question.

Many of those of the Christian faith want to remove God from the situation because they want to protect God. “No. No. God could never have allowed that.” We mumble in His defense, while at the same time wondering why He did allow that. We want it both ways. God wouldn’t, when it’s something horrific, but surely God did, when it’s something wonderful.

Some might say, “I bought some stock the other day and it more than doubled – Wow! Isn’t God wonderful!?” Or some child is healed of cancer and we shout praises to God for His mercy and kindness. We quote, “Every good and perfect gift comes down from the Father of lights…” and then stand in His defense when the gift doesn’t seem perfect or in the least bit good. I’m amazed that we give God credit for all the good that happens and put the blame on Satan, chance, natural forces or a thousand other things when the outcome is tragic or seems bad to us. Not all, of course, have thought this way.

Job was a good man. He loved God and offered praises and sacrifices on a regular basis. He was deeply concerned about the sins of his children and offered sacrifices for them (1:4-5). He treated servants, both male and female, rightly and gave food and other gifts to the widows. He taught the ignorant and lifted the hands of the weak, yet in all of these things he never thought of himself as something superior. He was a man just as those he served or who served him were men and women. He knew he was a right living individual and knowing that believed only good would come his way. Yet a day came when everything Job thought he knew fell apart.

Plunderers came and destroyed, stole and killed. Weather crushed and collapsed. He lost his children, his homes, livestock and fortune. There would be just one left from each of the separate events who would come and tell him of his great loss. Heartbroken, he stripped his clothes from his body and put on sackcloth, sat on an ash heap and wondered what was going on. His faith in God, however, remained as strong as ever and he never failed to give Him the glory. Satan was stymied at this and asked to touch his body. God allowed, as He had allowed all the other terrible things to be placed against Job. Soon, as Job sat on the ashes, he took shards from pots and used them to scratch and scrape the open sores on his body. After some time Job’s wife came to him and scolded, saying, "Are you still holding on to your integrity? Curse God and die!"

Yes! That would make sense. If God would be so unreasonable as to allow such awful things to happen to a good man like this then who was that kind of God that we should follow Him anyway? So Job’s wife gave the best advice she could come up with. “Curse God and die!”

How many of us have felt the same emotions? Pain, hurt, loss, death and all those awful things that happen to mankind have happened in our lives and haven’t we wanted to just curse God and die? When my best friend and his wife were killed in a terrible traffic accident, while taking their son to the airport so he could go on a mission trip to Germany, (what kind of sense did that make?) we all asked “why? They were trying to do good. How could you, a good God, allow something so awful to happen when someone was trying to do good?”

“Curse you, God.” Job might have said. “You aren’t a good God or, at the very least, you are not an all-powerful God.” And if Job had said such a thing we might have agreed and said, “That’s what God deserved.” Ah, but that’s not what Job did.

Job looked at his wife and, perhaps pointedly, but I think gently, for she also had lost all in this great drama, asked her, "You are talking like a foolish woman. Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?"

Job was not putting the blame for what was happening on Satan or even dumb luck. No. He was stating that he believed it was coming from God, and surely it was (Job 42:10-11). We can use terms like “allow” but whatever we use, at the end of the matter, when all’s said and done, it’s still God who made the final decision. We can say, Satan did it, but God made the decision. We can say, natural forces did it and it was no one’s fault, but God made the decision. We can say what we want, but if God is all powerful, and He surely is, then He has the power to stop all harmful things from happening and there are many, many times when He chooses not to. Haiti is one of those times. So we want to know why!

2010-02-02T09:35:00.001-06:00

Being Good Takes God

2010-01-25T09:31:00.003-06:00

One of my friends and brothers, Linn Hartman, spoke to me concerning a 60 Minutes spot about a young man named Greg Epstein, the Humanist Chaplain at Harvard University. Epstein wrote a book titled, You Can Be Good Without God. In describing his book, Epstein tells us it is a book about community or being a community of Humanists who can be and are good without God. He speaks about nurturing the spiritual (offering a disclaimer saying you don't have to use the word spiritual, you could use the word emotional) needs of people that arise because we're human.

There are two things in the last sentence that are interesting to me: 1) The first word that came to his mind as he was discussing his Humanist Philosophy is the word "spiritual." No one uses the word spiritual when talking about the needs of a dog or a daffodil. They use the word when speaking about the needs of people. Why would that word come to mind? Could it be that there is within us a spiritual longing? We could use the word emotional or emotions, but it gives an entirely different thought than the word spiritual. When we think of emotions we think of feelings - depression or euphoria; happy or sad. But when we think of spiritual we think more of a state of being, something higher than earthly or touchy, feely, at least that's how I understand it. Why is it that man seeks things spiritual? It's a good question and needs to be pondered. 2) That he uses the word human. If there is no God why would we make a distinction between us and the other animals? We would be only a little higher form of primordial soup. We just happen to have climbed, through no plan or thought of our own, to a higher plain than our sign language capable monkey cousins.

Man makes distinctions between animals and us because there is an obvious distinction. There are so many distinctions that I couldn't make even a reasonable attempt to list them all or even half of them. But I will say that two of them, as stated above, are mentioned by Epstein and they demonstrate this great distinction. If we are just higher plain same, then these seeming distinctions must be brushed aside because me and my pet goldfish are equals.

In addition, where do we get the definition of good if there is no God? If I am just an animal and I kill another animal and I say it's good, is it not good? Why not? Does it take a collective to determine the good? And if a collective, does a 51 to 49 vote determine it or do we have to have a 65 to 35 ratio? Who decides what the ratio should be. Was Hitler correct in his attempt to annihilate the seeming weaker races? Why not? He was in power and the people beneath him appeared to agree with his doctrine. Would it not be good to kill all the Jewish people?

We understand that those who would espouse such a doctrine are evil (another of those without God undefinable words) and warped in their thinking. We understand it this way because we have within us that great understanding of what is right and what is wrong and it was placed there by an infinite God. Without the placing of those definitions we would be nothing but animals and good would be whatever I say good is.

Haiti and Millstones

2010-01-20T09:14:00.002-06:00

We've all been watching the terrible devastation in Haiti. Buildings collapsed, roads impassable, food and water cut off, bodies of those unfortunate souls lying, bloating in the streets. We've all watched...in horror. Yesterday I was glued to some news coverage as a small band of men dug, with their bare hands, through several feet of rubble to reach a crying child buried somewhere beneath them. As they struggled, the great drama was being witnessed by several women and children standing back from the ruins, yet altogether a part of them. The eyes of those standing around had already cried their fill of tears and their weakened, dehydrated bodies could shed no more. Yet anyone could see that their hearts were still weeping.

As I watched, there was sudden movement among the diggers and then applause from the onlookers and shouts, shouts of pleasure and joy. The crying was no longer buried under feet of rubble, but buried in the arms of one of the rescuers. A tragedy was avoided and a momentary release from the horrific scenes surrounding them was has by that small crowd. A baby was saved! Though thousands of babies lie crushed beneath the mass of rock, cement and destruction, one was saved and there was rejoicing.

The whole thing reminded me of Jesus telling his listeners that it would be better for them to hang a great stone about their necks and throw themselves into the sea than to offend one of His little ones. Then I thought, what if these people, out of fear of further collapse of buildings and the chance that they might get crushed, maimed or even killed, what if they refused to help the crying one? Would they be guilty of offending? Oh, I know Jesus wasn't talking about saving the life of a little child - at least not necessarily, but He was talking about caring for the weak and the struggling and the helpless. I understand that He was talking about not causing them to sin or stumble so as to be lost and that He wasn't necessarily talking about little children, but rather the weak in faith. Yes. Yes. I understand all that, but what about helping the helpless?

Should I stand by and allow the crying to continue until such a time as it weakens, slowly quiets and then subsides altogether to be heard no more? Would that be offensive for me? Yes, and I know we all cannot go down to Haiti and dig through the rubble, nor can we all adopt one of those unfortunate instant orphans. But there are other ways to dig a child from the rubble. A tiny gift of ten dollars wold help, and for those who do not see ten dollars as tiny could give a dollar. Working with those who are loading cargo containers is a possibility. You may not be able to dig out, but you could help fill up by lending your hands and back to load a container that will be sent to relieve the suffering of the devastated. Look around and see, there are things that can be and should be done. Things that you can do. And when it's done then we can all stand back and shout a shout of joy amid the rubble and know that we have not offended and the millstone can be laid aside.

A Good Laugh

2010-01-18T09:56:00.004-06:00

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh, boy! I've had a good laugh today. There is nothing better than a good laugh and foolish people always give me the best laugh of all. Today I've been laughing at the Lord's church. It's great fun! Hahahahaha. There are so many who don't agree with me, and I'm obviously correct in my understandings and interpretations. Wow! How funny those weak people are. I'm sure God sits up there and has a good laugh at His church, don't you think so too? People thinking that 1 Timothy 2:11ff actually has any meaning to or for us today are really funny. I just can't stop laughing.

I look at some of the ladies in our congregation who hold deep seated beliefs (In this day and age, can you imagine?) that they should not stand before the congregation, even to do something as service oriented as passing the communion (Yes. They actually believe this. Hahaha.) and I just laugh at them. They are lovely ladies, but oh so funny. Can you imagine that anyone with even a meager education could actually believe something as foolish as "women cannot stand and pass the communion"? Or what about those ladies who would be mortified if the teacher asked them to say something in class, because they believe a women should not speak. Hohohohohoh0, hahahahaha.

How could they be so silly.

Everyone knows Paul was a woman hater and wanted to be sure women stayed in their place, that's why he wrote those things. God never felt that way. That Genesis three stuff where we read, "Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you." That's just something some other male chauvinist threw in there. The intellectuals have shown us this plainly. So when people actually read that and believe it...why, it's just laughable and I can't stop giggling. Hehehehehehehehe....ohhhhhh....hahahahahaha.

I just love a good laugh and laughing at the expense of the body of Christ, why that's the ultimate in "good laughs." I can hardly wait until next Sunday when I can get back with those people who actually say they love the Lord and yet believe and practice so many foolish things, so I can have another good laugh at their expense.

Their actions remind me of the ones in the first century who would not eat meats sacrificed to idols, as if an idol was something. Hahahahaha. Paul sure told those weak and foolish people didn't...well... ummmm... yes...... I do know that Jesus died for them - 1 Corinthians 8:11, but still how funny...Hahaha, and Paul sure.... What? You actually think I could hurt someone with my laughter? Oh, but I would miss out on... and besides, I have this freedom... and, seriously, don't the rest of you agree with me that they are foolish? Won't you join me in a good laugh?

No. No. Don't read the next few lines, they are just more of Paul's maudlin drivel.

^{1 Corinthians 8:9}Be careful, however, that the exercise of your freedom does not become a stumbling block to the weak. ¹⁰For if anyone with a weak conscience sees you who have this knowledge eating in an idol's temple, won't he be emboldened to eat what has been sacrificed to idols? ¹¹ So this weak brother, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge. ¹² When you sin against your brothers in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ. ¹³Therefore, if what I eat causes my brother to fall into sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause him to fall.

Oh Paul, you're so funny! Ha, haha.

This is tongue in cheek sarcasm. I am writing to express my sadness at those who would laugh at or ridicule others who may be more conservative in their beliefs, yet love the Lord as deeply and dearly as any. I am not trying to espouse any particular doctrine except to be kind to one another.

Meaningless, Meaningless

2009-12-30T08:36:00.003-06:00

I was on Facebook a few moments ago and one of the young women at our church made the following statement:

"You can't describe (ascribe - JBT) great cosmic significance to a simple earthly event. Coincidence, that's all anything ever is, nothing more than coincidence. There is no such thing as fate. Nothing is meant to be."

This may have been a quote from someone or her own thoughts, I'm not sure, but this I do know, life is more, much more than coincidence. The fact that we exist at all is a choice made by the only true God and the choice was made so that we might seek Him - Acts 17:27. God is love and love, by its very definition, must express itself. God chose to express Himself in us. We were made in His image - Genesis 1:26 - and are recreated in Christ Jesus in order that we might conform to His image - Romans 8:29. We reflect God to a world lost in its own desperation. We are testimony that says God cares and is active in the lives of everyone. Listen to the following from Matthew 5:

"⁴³You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' ⁴⁴But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, ⁴⁵that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. ⁴⁶ If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? ⁴⁷And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? ⁴⁸Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect."

This love of the Father that was and is expressed in the creation of the universe - has there been a greater cosmic anything that exceeds creation? - is demonstrated over and over in the rains that fall on the just and unjust, righteous and unrighteous. God is saying He loves everyone and there is nothing we can do or have done that will shut off that love. And for those of us who trust Him, we too must and will love those who are against us, those who abuse us and excuse themselves. We do this because we learn it from our Father and His Son. And we learn that our doing this is no coincidence, but is all planned out - remember Romans 8:29 - and ultimately expressed in Calvary's Cross, where the greatest words ever spoken were offered; "Father, forgive them for they don't know what they're doing." This, all this and so much more is intentional.

Coincidence is rare. What we see about us is the plan and predictions of God being fulfilled in strange and wonderful ways, as well as terrible and dramatic happenings. I know it's going to rain today and when it rains it will be from God. It will fall on all types of people and it will be intentional. The wise man once said:

"Meaningless! Meaningless!"
says the Teacher.
"Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless."

Yet at the end of Ecclesiastes Solomon had changed his mind and recognized that there were no small things, no meaningless things, but all things had purpose (Remember chapter 3):

Now all has been heard;
here is the conclusion of the matter:
Fear God and keep his commandments,
for this is the whole duty of man.

For God will bring every deed into judgment,
including every hidden thing,
whether it is good or evil.

God...One of Us

2009-12-07T11:22:00.003-06:00

I'm always amazed at the anger of man and his eagerness to turn from the God of heaven and renounce Him. I have seen and heard dozens, if not hundreds, who have claimed there is no God. They find that pain, sorrow and death are too real to allow them to believe in a good, kind, merciful God, certainly not the God of the Bible. I think, however, that many have rejected the notion of God because they never really took a look at Him. They failed to see who He really was and that Failure led them astray.

I see God as one who desires the companionship of man. More than that, I see God as one who desires to be with me. This is not arrogance on my part, it is the reality of what Jesus came to show us. That God was not just interested in the multitude, but in the one. He showed it often throughout the New Testament. But if we had looked deeply enough we would have seen the same kind of thing in the Old Testament as well. God created Adam and Eve, placed them in that special garden and then walked with them. He was among them, sharing time and conversing with them. Why would a God that big settle for something as tiny as fellowship with us? The Psalmist asked the same thing: "What is man that you are mindful of him?" Good question.

When God led the Israelites out of Egypt He was with them in the pillar of cloud by day and fire by night. He was leading and protecting them. Eventually He told them to make Him a tent, a tabernacle because He was going to be with them. He didn't want a stationary temple, but a tent so that when they moved He would move with them and be with them. They made it and they felt His presence.

Then, so they/we would really know Him He came in person. And what was He like? He nursed at our breasts and played with our children. He went to town as a boy; grew to be a carpenter. Surely there was a time or two that He even smashed His thumb as He made some furniture or framed a house. Joseph tutored Him, showing Him how to make tables and benches. As a man He came to our weddings, went to our funerals, wept with us. He sat at our tables, ate our food and even spent time at our parties. He taught us, healed us, gave us sight and raised one or two of us from the dead. And all the time He was with us He was showing us who God really was. "If you've seen me you've seen my Father." Whatever Jesus was the Father was...is. There came a day when in our arrogance we failed to be of service to each other and He, God, mind you, took off His clothes, wrapped a towel around His waist, got on His hands and knees and washed our feet! What?! God washed my feet? Yes. Oh, yes!

God was telling us He wasn't someone who just needed us to kowtow to Him. He didn't need our worship or temples. He had everything He needed, if He had a need. What He wanted to do was show us that He was not really like the god we pictured Him to be. No. He was a servant, a giver. He wanted to pour out blessings, not just receive praise. His greatness wasn't wrapped up in His power, it was found in His service. He tells us that the greatest among us would be the servant of all. Greatness was found in serving. So our feet were washed and our hearts were broken with guilt of our selfishness.

Then God showed us the ultimate example of who He was and is. He went to the cross and offered Himself as a sacrifice. His blood was poured out and His body offered. His flesh became the doorway into heaven and we found out that God wasn't some kind of ego-maniac needing human sacrifices to satisfy His lust for the blood and fear of mankind. No, that was not Him. Instead He showed us that the greatest love is love that gives itself for those loved. The greatest love of all is not love of self, but love offered for others. It is love that gives.

God became one of us and in doing that He said to us, this is what I'm really like and what I really want. He was and is a giver and what He wants is to be with us. As He was preparing to leave, Jesus told us that the Father's house was big and there was room enough for all in that house. He was going to prepare for us so that one day we would all be living in the house of God the Father. God was waiting for us and preparing for the day that we would all be with Him. The Father wants us home.

The Elusive

2009-10-22T08:33:00.004-05:00

Somewhere, way back when, at a time that I thought I knew where I was going and even had a road map to chart the course, I lost my way. I ran into blank walls and dead ends. I followed false twists and turns moving, always moving, but failing in my attempt to get where I wanted to be and I ended up here and here is not the place where I expected I would end up. When this time in my life is supposed to be filled with the joy of family, laughter, grand-kids and a slower pace; I find heartache, stress, pain and trials instead. This is not the destination I imagined. Where did I miss the trail? At what point did I drift? Can I fix blame on someone or something other than me? Was the map wrong the path ill-marked? Did some prankster move a sign post and cause me to travel in a direction I was not wishing to go?

Ah, that would be the easy thing, wouldn't it? To play the blame game and put the onus on another frees me from responsibility and lessens my guilty burden. But it's not to be. I know. I can say what I like to others, but deep down in the recesses of my heart I know. Blame can't be like the Olympics Torch, passed from one to another. There comes a time when I or you, as the case may be, must accept the fact that we made the decisions that brought us to this place. I brought about the unchangeable, that dreaded immutable past that pushed me inexorably onward to this place, with its tears, its stress, its pain and heartache. And the truth of how I got here makes it all the more painful, all the more unbearable. So...

So, with sagging shoulders, bent and slowly shaking head, puffy eyes and tightness of the chest I ask, "How does one change the immutable?"

Crazy! What a crazy question. Immutable things cannot change. That's the reason they are called immutable. If there were a possibility of change they would not be called immutable. So, what then? This is the terrible part of the whole thought process. If the immutable is before you and tearing you apart, urging you to think crazy escape thoughts because of the nature of this beast and you find you must do something... What do you do?

I have known those who have escaped. They listened to their own craziness and followed the path that seemed the only one left them. I cannot say if they found themselves better off. I can only say that they found themselves dead. Is that ever the answer? If the only path in the battle seems to be kamikaze, is it reasonable to take such a course? The conflict, the contention, the back and forth of Hamlet three leaves one wondering if anything is noble or, as the teacher said, "Smoke, nothing but smoke. There's nothing to anything—it's all smoke." (The Message) Yes. Smoke. This would be easy to accept. Then it wouldn't matter. Noble. Ignoble. Love. Hate. Guilty. Mercy. Forgiveness. All of these would just be words; They would be meaningless, smoke, nothing but smoke. But reason says these are more than words and something must be done.

So, for more than just me, the quest continues; dreaming the impossible and fighting the unbeatable leaves one broken and in need of someone who, though he may not take away the past, gives us the one thing that makes it all bearable and takes away the emptiness and hara-kiri thoughts. So we ask, who is it and what does he give? Where can I find him? Will he accept me?

When I was young Bob Lind sang about the "Elusive Butterfly." That there was love, somewhere, and he needed to find it was his message. And it's surely love that we need and it's an arduous task to find such a thing, though we do feel hints and pieces of it here and there. Yet, there is the most dangerous aspect of love that we really need and it's the most difficult for us to receive. We can give it and even mean it when we do, but to get it, well, that's another thing altogether. Don Henley calls it "The Heart of the Matter." It's offered in abundance by the Great I Am, and we surely need it from Him, but we need it from one another also and it's too terribly evasive and dangerous for one to give lightly - though no one wishes for the "light" version of it. So it's rarely given.

Forgiveness. Is there anything we need more? Forgiveness. We use the word, but it's more than a word. It's the one thing that changes everything. The past? Forget about it! That's forgiveness. If the past is still an issue, there is no forgiveness. This is what is so dangerous about forgiveness. To say I've forgiven you means our relationship to each other and the past has changed forever. We can say it and even believe it, but if the past is still an issue there has been no change of heart and no real forgiveness. The real thing demonstrates itself in a multitude of ways.

The I am called to His Father, "Forgive them, for they don't know what they are doing." And then He sent His messengers to invite them to His house. They murdered Him and He spoke comforting words to them, forgave them and made everything brand new. The past was taken away because they were new creations. Strained relationships became strong relationships. They and He became one fulfilling, "that they all may be one, Father, as I am in you and you are in me that they may be one in Us."

But, but... For so many spouses, parents, children, brothers, sisters, families and friends... no forgiveness. No change. No renewal. No burying of the past, for it's a dead thing. No hope for anything better because of the bitter. No. No. No...

So the sagging shoulders, bent head, puffy eyes and tight chest linger and the most elusive of butterfly traits remains elusive. Forgiveness is not found and without it, I'm ready to go.

One Thing

2009-10-07T08:56:00.003-05:00

I know of an old lady who never heard of the SEC or the NFL. I doubt she knew anything of the Great Lakes or Republicans or Democrats. In fact, she never had the opportunity to learn much, to go to high school or any school ever. She was neither stupid nor retarded though she could not read or write. She had only one dress to her name and no shoes at all. In fact, she never even left her, unknown to the rest of the world, little village in northern Ghana until the day she died and went to be with the Lord. And Jesus didn’t care. He just put His arms around her and took her home.

I don’t know what her name is, but I’ll call her Mary… Can you hear the words Jesus said to her sister? “Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, ‘Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.’"

"But the Lord answered her, ‘Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.’"

I think I'll memorize that "one thing is necessary" part...

The World and Its Mess

2009-10-02T11:10:00.005-05:00

Here we are living in the world, a great big globe with billions of people on it. And somewhere there is God who created the world and all that is in it. And here’s the free-willed creature made in God’s image. Yet, even being made in God’s image, we are responsible for much of the suffering that we see around us. In this world there are millions of calamities happening every single day. A child runs out in front of a car and is critically injured. A man with a gun goes into a Post Office and begins to blast away and several are killed while others are wounded and bleeding. A tsunami comes and wipes out whole villages and towns and hundreds are swept away in the great flood. Families are torn apart when the husband comes home with his girlfriend, packs his clothing and drives away. Alcoholics in drunken stupor rage against children and wives, beating them senseless and, when sober, beg for forgiveness and offer promises of “never again,” only to break them over and over.

This is us and the world we live in. And where is God in all of this? Why is this allowed to continue? Why was it allowed to happen in the first place? If God is all powerful and loving and kind why did He create a world in which things could go wrong? Why are there floods, tsunamis, Katrinas, tornadoes, droughts and the like? Why do righteous people suffer in these things? We understand the wicked suffering, even if we don’t like it much (We make excuses for those we care for. He didn’t mean to beat his wife to death – he was drunk, or under the influence of some drug – he couldn’t help himself. He’s my husband. Please don’t send him to prison for stealing all that money. What will my children do without a father figure around?), but why the righteous? What’s that all about?

And if God is all powerful and He recognizes the mess the world is in and that it breaks down every once-in-awhile, why does He not fix the breakdown problems and make the world function properly?

There are answers to these questions, but we believers don’t care for most of them. The ungodly, the wicked and the apathetic don’t mind some of the answers, but if we think ourselves believers we don’t really like them. In fact, we downright hate some of them.

Here are some answers:
1. God is not all-powerful
2. God is not all-loving
3. God enjoys watching us suffer – He sits in the heavens and laughs (Psalm 2)
4. God is not paying attention
5. God started it in creation and just let it go all by itself to some natural conclusion where the universe simply runs out of power and everything turns cold and dies
6. God just allows everything to happen however it all happens. Total randomness – (Ecclesiastes 9:11) and then He works some good out of it. God is a step behind and uses things He had nothing to do with in order to work out something Good.
7. It’s a mystery and we cannot understand anything unless God specifically said it (God moves in a mysterious way – Job 9:10; Romans 11:33)
8. God brought the suffering and has an eternal purpose for it

I’m guessing there may be many more explanations people might offer, but these are a good sampling. So how are we to understand things? Are any of these true? Are any of them helpful?

Concerning the first four, I am convinced, most believers would deny these outright. God is all-powerful and all-loving and He does not enjoy watching us suffer. He is paying attention and sees what is going on. If this is true, what then?

Number five is a possibility. The world is like a wind-up clock, the creation was wound tight at the beginning and just continues to run until… The problem with this is that it almost totally leaves God out of the equation. That will never do.

What about six? This is possible. God waits until something happens and then makes something good out of it, the tsunami of a couple of years ago, for instance. It just happened and God thought, “Hmm, I can get some of my people to go there, take a little food, clothing and blankets and they will have an opportunity to speak to them about my Son.” I think I’ll use this for that purpose.” Or perhaps the Joseph sent to Egypt episode, if one prefers a biblical example. Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery and God thinks, “Hmm. I can use this to get all of the family in Egypt.” This might do, but it leaves God a step behind in everything that happens. God is always trying to catch up. It reminds me of Willy Nelson’s “My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys;” “Sadly in search of and once step in back of themselves and their slow moving dreams…” Yow. Can I believe God is always a step behind? I don’t find ANY comfort there.

That brings us to seven. (Six and seven are a combination of this really) This is one that many believers attach themselves to. It is a part of the “Open Theism” theory. God doesn’t know those things that haven’t happened yet. He chooses (He’s forced, because they haven’t actually happened, so how can one know what is going to happen until it has actually happened?) to know them the same way we know them, by waiting for them to happen. When they happen God knows them. Once He knows them then He can make something out of them, but for us it’s all a mystery. How can God do something with an event if He didn’t even know that event was going to take place? Or does He choose to know – in advance – some things that will happen and not know others things that will happen until they happen? For instance, He knew Jesus was going to be crucified, but He didn’t know I was going to be born or you were going to be born until we were born. Or (You fill in whatever you think He didn’t know until it happened). I struggle with this one because we know that God knew many things were going to happen before they happened because He specifically told us they were going to happen and then they did! So what do we do with this idea? Personally, I reject it. God is either omniscient or He’s not. If He knows everything He doesn’t have to wait until it happens before He knows it.

That brings us to number eight, which I believe is the only plausible answer to the whole question of suffering, pain and death. Not only is it plausible it is filled with comfort. It tells me that my suffering isn’t totally random and it’s not totally from the devil either. Of course randomness exists. God tells us it does (Ecclesiastes 9:11). But remember, God allows random things to happen. God chooses to allow what He allows. So even randomness isn’t TOTALLY random. Of course Satan is involved with our suffering. Job one teaches us this, if we ever questioned it. Again, Satan was there in the garden leading Adam and Eve into sin and became part of the reason for our downfall. He is called the ruler of this world (John 16:4b-11). But these being true it does not take away the purpose and plan of God to work out our salvation through trials and sufferings.

Genesis chapter three tells us that God brought a curse on the woman, man, the earth itself and even Satan. He took away man’s access to the tree of life so man could not live forever on this earth in his sin. From the moment man’s access was taken away he began to die. The death process includes aging, weakening, sickness and ultimately the ceasing of the body being able to function and man dies. God told us the PURPOSE of this: ”Then the LORD God said, ‘Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—‘ therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.’

The implication seems obvious to me that now man knows good and evil (prior to this he was naïve, but once knowing good and evil man chose/would choose the evil) and would more often than not choose the evil over the good. He could not be allowed to live forever with or in such a condition. Imagine how awful, how dreadfully appalling life would be if man was allowed to live forever in his evilness. We would end up getting worse and worse and worse. Having some movie producer drug a thirteen year old girl and then sodomize her, as wicked as that is, would be trivial compared with what we would become if we were allowed to live forever with no fences to curtail our wickedness.

So death is not a total enemy. It is a fence put there to restrain some of our sinfulness.

And suffering is not a total enemy either. Remember what we are told about the good and righteous Jesus? In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence. Although he was a son he learned obedience through what he suffered. And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him, (Hebrews 5:7-9).

Did Jesus suffer? Yes! Was it of any benefit to Him? Again, YES! Was it of any benefit to us? The suffering was essential to His perfection. He was not a complete and acceptable sacrifice without the suffering. A baby Jesus could not be offered because it would be unacceptable. It could not have known to choose the good over the evil. It would not have been allowed to choose God over Satan. No. Jesus could not have been offered as a baby and suffering is a part of what this planet’s human creatures have to undergo. If Jesus was to be one of us, and He was (John 1:1-5, 14), then He had to suffer right alongside of us. He had to be tempted in all points like as we. Read Hebrews 2:5-end over and over and see the point that Jesus was one of us. He was human. He underwent the things we undergo. Pain, suffering and death are a part of this existence and Jesus needed to undergo those in order to bring us to glory!

So, even if we cannot see the benefit of suffering in our own lives, but I believe we can, we obviously can see it in the life of Jesus Christ. The reading of Hebrews chapter 2 makes it very plain that Jesus suffered because He was one of us and He had to suffer in order to bring us to glory. I know I said that earlier, but it has to be repeated over and over so we understand that suffering is NOT without purpose.

I'm In Pain - Where's God?

2009-08-19T08:44:00.005-05:00

I recently heard a lesson in which it was said, "There are a lot of people who seem to think that God has some kind of master plan and that afflicting you or me is a part of that plan." and "Well, God has a master plan, but sending bad things into your life is not part of it." Later, speaking about bad things happening, "because we are flesh He uses those things for good purposes, but that's different from saying that God has a master plan and the plan includes sending those things into your life. As if somehow God wants you to suffer in order for His master plan to be realized. The Bible no where teaches that."

There are more problems with the statement above than I can easily tend to in this short blog, but one glaring problem is that it leaves God out of our sufferings. It implies that God only uses these things after the fact. Such as, Joseph ends up in Egypt and God thinks to Himself, "Hmmm. Maybe I can use this to get the rest of his family here." (I borrowed this bit from Jim McGuiggan)

It also says that God did not plan for man's sin, that He had no plan for dealing with it and that He just reacted after the fact. This denies plain Bible teaching that says, "...Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. He was chosen before the creation of the world..." 1 Peter 1:19-20. Note also Colossians 1:22, "But now he has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation." God fully intended to bring Jesus to grief, Acts 2:22-23. The grief Jesus suffered was and is redemptive. Without the death of Jesus there could be no redemption. It was essential to the saving of our souls. But the suffering of Jesus isn't finished yet. All the sufferings of Christ are not over. Take time to read Romans 8:17 and Colossians 1:24. Christ is continuing to suffer through His church. On the Damascus road Christ confronted Paul with, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?" It is clear that Jesus was speaking of the persecution that the church was undergoing. The church was filling up the sufferings of Christ. The sufferings that were PLANNED before the foundation of the world.

The truth is, God does deliberately bring struggles, sufferings, pain and even death into our lives. He does it because He loves us. Recall the letter to the Laodiceans found in Revelation 3. In it Jesus says, "Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest, and repent." His loves compels Him to discipline us and doing so works in us a greater reward than earth could offer.

God's anger, His wrath, is an expression of His love for us. He is not angry because we disobeyed Him and He is God after all. No. He is angry because of what our disobedience is doing to us. Do parents say to their child who, after being told that it is a rule that you don't push anything into an electric outlet except a plug that is meant to go into it, pushes a piece of plastic into the socket, "You broke my rule. I loved that rule. My rule was good and you broke it"? No. Parents explain that it is dangerous and the child could get hurt or even killed. If the child continues to disobey the parents may choose to spank the child to emphasize the importance of obedience in this matter.

Look at Amos 4:6 and following. Did God PLAN to send a famine? Did God PLAN to send an enemy? And what was the purpose of the PLAN? Redemption? Of course it was. God planned to use the sufferings of life to bring redemption. He planned for man to suffer. He sends the rain on the just and the unjust. I find no hint that there was any suffering before Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, but immediately after the eating they were chased from the garden FOR THE EXPRESS PURPOSE OF TAKING AWAY THE POSSIBILITY OF THEIR EATING FROM THE TREE OF LIFE AND LIVING FOREVER IN THEIR SINS. Genesis 3:22-24. And the taking away of the tree of Life meant they were going to die. It was God who expressly did this. Did He think of this at the last moment or was it always a part of His plan?

So my point is this, suffering is both universal and redemptive. Because God loves us (John 3:16 the world) He rebukes and chastens us. Pain, sickness, accidents and the like are all a part of God's planned redemption. Without these there could be no redemption. So when you/I/we suffer we know that God is in the suffering and that it is for our good and the good of others and if Chicken Little is right and the sky is falling, God's behind it and it will turn out all right. Take a moment and read Romans 8:17-18 and see if this is not so.

Do yourself a favor. Buy a copy of Celebrating the Wrath of God by Jim McGuiggan and help your faith to grow.

My God, My God 1

2009-08-06T13:52:00.002-05:00

How are we to understand the atonement? We usually understand that Jesus was punished by God to pay for our sins and that Jesus cried out to Him, "My God, my God. Why have you forsaken me?" showing that God turned His back on Jesus. I'm convinced that is not so. I cannot understand how the Father could do some evil to bring about good. In the law God explicitly says, "The soul who sins is the one who will die. The son will not share the guilt of the father, nor will the father share the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous man will be credited to him, and the wickedness of the wicked will be charged against him." (NIV) And, "But he did not put to death the children of the murderers, according to what is written in the Book of the Law of Moses, where the LORD commanded, 'Fathers shall not be put to death because of their children, nor shall children be put to death because of their fathers. But each one shall die for his own sin.'" If God said these things, how could He punish Jesus for our sins?

I'm writing this just to get you thinking about what you have believed and to examine it. We may believe something, and it may be true, but we always need to examine and reexamine so that we know where we stand and why.

More on this later...

Only One Throne

2009-07-31T11:38:00.004-05:00

Many Americans and others believe that the center of all there is in Washington D.C.. Others believe it is Beijing or Moscow, perhaps even Paris or London. We look at things this way because our minds are centered on earthly things. We see things from the only perspective many have, the physical. What we are truly looking at, however, is something terribly temporary. I was watching a documentary on corn the other evening. We were told that corn is one of those things that needs man to control it or it would disappear after just a very few short years. It cannot successfully propagate itself. If an ear of corn dries and falls to the ground, most of the seeds would begin to grow. The problem is, they would be so wound together that most would die and nothing would be produced. Fewer and fewer corn plants would grow until there were none. That is what the world is like. It does not go from chaos to perfection, but from perfection to chaos. Leave a brand new house empty for four or five years and when you go back to occupy it you will find that it is full of mold and falling apart. Insects would have eaten into it; water would have damaged it and neglect would have contributed to the decay. This would happen because the physical is just temporary.

Only things of the spirit are eternal. My body, which had a beginning, will surely have an end. The earth, our solar system and the universe all had a beginning. They all came from some place. They could not have been here for eternity because the sun would have long since burned up and everything would be one terribly cold temperature. Life would not exist. Because of the great design demonstrated in the earth and the life of it, we know that it was created - or we can know this. We are without excuse, we are told in Romans chapter 1. The creation testifies that there is a God who designed and created this world.

Why are we so afraid to see that? I think it's because of two things:
1. We want to be the boss. If God is boss then we are not and we are subject to His rules. We always hear people say, "You're not the boss of me." We might have said it ourselves. We don't want God to rule. We want to rule.
2. If God rules then we have some deep responsibilities and there are consequences if we fail in our responsibilities. Who needs this?! Who wants this?

By His grace, there are many who seek the eternal and see the cross as the throne of God as the center of everything. Look at Revelation chapter four. John sees God sitting on His throne and everything circles around the throne. That is telling us where the true center is. This being so, it excludes every other throne that would try to place itself in the center.

Who Sinned?

2009-07-29T10:16:00.007-05:00

Lisa Burley has a blog (http://burleyblog.blogspot.com/) and having read one of her articles recently it reminded me of something I think is worth sharing. When Jesus healed the man born blind (John 9) the apostles asked, "Who sinned, this man or his parents that he should be born blind?" It's an interesting question and one that many seek the answer to, because far too many believe that bad things only happen when you sin and good things happen when you are good. Believing that kind of thing forces us to live with tremendous guilt and a total feeling of being inadequate. Just before dying from his wounds, Captain Miller (Saving Private Ryan) told Ryan, in a clenched-teeth, breathy whisper, "earn it!" What?! What was he saying to him? Earn the death of the eight men who went to find him? Earn that? (I'm yelling here!!!) It's impossible, so Ryan struggled with their deaths his whole life and ended up begging his wife to "tell me I'm a good man!"

Back in John 9 Jesus explains that their view of sin and blessings is skewed and that they were ignorant of God's devices. "'Neither this man nor his parents sinned,' said Jesus, 'but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life...'" There is a passage found in Exodus 4:11 that reads, "The LORD said to him, "Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the LORD?" We don't wish to say things like this. We want to defend God and say, "Oh no! God would never do such a thing." But Jesus tells us that the man born blind was born without sight so that God might display His work in that man. Take a moment and read John 20:30-31 and see that the signs Jesus did were for the purpose of giving us faith that who He said He was He really was/is.

The above being so, we are to understand that God does not operate under our rules or ideas. He does things He knows are right, just, honest and good and that our understanding has nothing to do with it. The Apostles were wrong and Jesus explained their error. Bad things do happen to the innocent. Evil people do not always receive evil in return for their deeds. Sometimes they receive great financial gain and live in Good health their whole lives.

The truth is, and this should be everyone's world view, God is in charge and He is doing everything for the express purpose of taking us to heaven. (See Acts 17:24-28, especially 27) This world exists ONLY because God wants us to live with Him eternally. So God does things that will lead us to Him. Sometimes He even makes a person be born blind...

Should I Write It Down?

2009-07-24T10:05:00.003-05:00

One of the problems we have when we write things down and express our beliefs on a page, blog or even an oral recording is that it’s there for everyone one to see, I know, that’s the purpose of it. The problem, however, is that we are going to grow and change. We are not going to hold to those absolutes exactly as we did the moment we recorded them. The politician who makes a statement in a speech fifteen years earlier is held to that even though he may have given a hundred speeches since that say he no longer believes that. The Biblical scholar who writes a commentary based on what he believes at the time may discover he was wrong all along, but it’s been written and people have purchased the commentary. How does one correct such a thing? Or is correction needed?

If you have seen a picture of me when I was twenty and you see one of me today I will look much differently. You may not even think they are the same person. Maturity has a way of changing us. If someone I haven’t seen in twenty years meets with me today and we have a long discussion, I hope they will end up saying or thinking, he’s not the same man I knew twenty years ago. If I’m the same man, shame on me.

So, when you read my blog today and then read what I write ten years from now, should God grant me the time, I hope you will say something about me changing and maturing. Trust me; I really don’t look today as I looked when I was twenty.

No Small People

2009-07-20T08:20:00.000-05:00

I was teaching a class on Genesis yesterday. In reading the chapter and preparing for class I noticed what I thought was a great lesson out of chapter 35. There is one verse, written almost in passing (God doesn't really write anything in passing, does He?) about Rebekah's nurse, Deborah. It says, "Now Deborah, Rebekah's nurse, died and was buried under the oak below Bethel. So it was named Allon Bacuth."

Here was a lady who died almost in obscurity. She is mentioned only twice in the Bible (24:59 and here) and her name is mentioned just this once. So the truth is, we know almost nothing about her. I'm assuming she was like Rebekah's nanny and was involved with her life from beginning until Allon Bacuth. It seems to me, that though we have to speculate if we are to guess anything about Deborah, the name of the place of her burial gives us some insight. The place was named "The Oak of Weeping." Now, perhaps I'm making too great a distinction here, but weeping tells me there was a great depth to the feelings of those weeping. Crying seems, to me at least, to be that momentary thing done at the appropriate time, but is quickly over, while weeping is found in deep emotional mourning. Don't you find it better said that "Jesus wept," rather than "Christ cried"? And why would they name the place Oak of Weeping? Could it be that they were all feeling the great loss of this woman? That she wasn't just hired help or even slave, but she was family. She was involved with all that they did. But more than this, she must have been loving and kind in her dealings with Deborah and her people, if not then there would have been no real weeping.

In addition to this, it seems important to me that God mentioned her. Who was she? No one, really. At least not in the grand scheme of things. She was no Abraham or even Sarah. She wasn't Deborah the Prophetess, she was just Deborah the nurse. Yet the God of heaven chose to tell us about her. I love this. She is like the widow with two mites; another nobody, but Jesus points her out and speaks of her wonderful gift of faith. Dorcas, there's one for you. Just an old lady who sewed things for people and when she died they wept and God mentioned her. I think He's telling us something wonderful in these mentionings. He's saying that there are no small people nor small lives. We are all important and carry some influence in the lives of others. We can make a difference if we choose to and God will know it.

Picture a great gathering in heaven as all kneel around the throne and the God of the universe calls your name and asks you to step forward. Up you go and God tells everyone, "This is Mary Smith. Her neighbor was dying from cancer and Mary went to her house every day to clean it and get her two children ready for school. She made their breakfasts and packed their lunches." Mary might think, "What? It was just a little cleaning and helping out once-in-awhile, but nothing worth mentioning." That's what we all might think, but remember the scripture said, "Now Deborah, Rebekah's nurse, died and was buried under the oak below Bethel. So it was named Allon Bacuth."

Books You Ought to Read

2009-07-16T12:03:00.000-05:00

One of the greatest books dealing with the purpose of suffering and loss is Celebrating the Wrath of God, by Jim McGuiggan. The question asked most by humanity is "Why?". Jim gives us some insight and helps strengthen our faith. Do yourself a favor and read this - not just once, but several times. It will help your soul. It's available used at Amazon.

A second book by Jim McGuiggan you need to read is The Dragon Slayer. Jim deals with the atonement showing its purpose and meaning for this world. It's not a book that you can just read. You have to have your Bible open and do some serious study, but the time given to the study will give your faith a great boost.

A Piece of My Life

2009-07-13T10:30:00.000-05:00

It's not that I worship any of the stars that have fallen, whether it's Elvis or Michael Jackson. I never met either one, or any of the others that have touched my life. And though they were bigger than life they were still just people. But people, all kinds of people, these are what make life special here on planet earth. We are touched by those around us even if they are/were "superstars" they touch us and become a part of what makes us us. I was just a kid - 9th grade, Mrs. Mitchell's Algebra class, about 1:30ish on that Friday afternoon - the message came over the loudspeaker. "President Kennedy has just been shot and is being rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital..." School got out for the rest of the day shortly after that. And all American's lives changed that cold November afternoon. Not in some really dramatic way for most of us, but we changed because a piece of our lives was gone and so was a piece of America.

The day Elvis died I was driving back from Memphis, stopped in a gas station and the attendant came out. "Did you hear the King died?" "What King?" I wanted to know. "Elvis, man! Elvis." He could hardly speak it without crying and his emotion was real. It was August in Arkansas, hot; Yet I turned ice cold. Elvis was part of my youth, my life. I'd been listening to him for as long as I could remember. I sang his love songs to my wife. Part of me died that moment. I wiped tears from my eyes before I got back in the car and told my wife. We drove the last fifty miles home in silence.

Though it's a bit different now, I'm obviously much older, but the death of Michael Jackson has also affected me. As weird as it seems, I think "Thriller" is one of the best music videos ever produced. I've watched it many times. When I heard that Michael had died I felt it. As a child of God, waiting for eternal life, I was reminded that I am mortal and terribly finite as far as life here on earth is concerned. If I live another twenty years I know it will slip by so quickly that it will be gone before I realize it and so will I. And when I die, it won't be just me, but worlds will die with me. All the lives that have touched me will be gone. My dreams and hopes, my memories and earthly relationships... all gone. And those left behind will have some of the same thoughts I'm having now. One or two will think about how I was a piece of their life. And they will die just a little. We have that effect on people. I'm thinking I ought to live in such a way that many people will feel the loss when I'm gone. Not because I was a good dancer, but because I was able to make their lives just a little bit better.

Job said this in defense of his life:

When I went out to the gate of the city,
when I prepared my seat in the square,
the young men saw me and withdrew,
and the aged rose and stood;
the princes refrained from talking
and laid their hand on their mouth;
the voice of the nobles was hushed,
and their tongue stuck to the roof of their mouth.
When the ear heard, it called me blessed,
and when the eye saw, it approved,
because I delivered the poor who cried for help,
and the fatherless who had none to help him.
The blessing of him who was about to perish came upon me,
and I caused the widow’s heart to sing for joy.

Notice that respect was paid to Job "because..." I want to be a piece of people's lives because of the becauses. Don't you?

Losing All That Others Might Have

2009-07-01T15:41:00.000-05:00

On December 4, 2006, Pfc. Ross A. McGinnis was manning the 50 caliber machine gun on the Humvee he and four buddies were traveling in. Looking up, McGinnis saw an Iraqi toss a grenade off the roof of one of the buildings they were passing. He had ample time to jump from the Humvee and save his life. But as the grenade bounced onto the vehicle and down inside, Ross McGinnis yelled, “Grenade!” into the microphone and dropped down the hole and placed his back against the grenade. The blast killed him instantly, but it saved the lives of the four others. At 19, Pfc. Ross A. McGinnis drew his last breath and gave himself that others might have. Where does that mindset come from?
In looking at war and all of its atrocities one wonders why men are so wicked as to wage it to begin with, but when we stop to give it real thought we understand that it’s not the ones who fight that wage the war, it’s the leaders. Most of us would just as soon live in peace. Most are satisfied with a family, home, food to eat, clothes to wear and an education for our children. But there are some who demand more and will sacrifice others to gain it. So our young men go to war. Day after day they sacrifice their lives that others might have, but why? What do they get out of it? I think of the Minutemen who stood face to face with the British and took bullets for freedom. Yet when they died they left all that freedom behind. They took nothing with them. It was all for others.
Long ago Moses faced God’s anger and spoke to persuade God not to exterminate the Israelites. The golden calf and the people’s reveling were not pleasing to the Lord, but He listened to Moses and relented. Moses went down to rebuke the people and then back to seek God’s mercies. When he stood before the Lord he said, "Oh, what a great sin these people have committed! They have made themselves gods of gold. But now, please forgive their sin—but if not, then blot me out of the book you have written." Look at the feelings expressed by Moses. He’s not just facing some enemy with a weapon; he’s standing before the God of the universe, the creator of all things. As he stands he pours out a depth of feeling that is remarkable, especially in light of the way the people have treated Moses. What he is telling God is that he loved Israel and would die for those people.
I honestly believe that we have these depths in us because God put them there. We love, because He first loved us. We would not know love without the God of creation placing within us the capacity. And that capacity goes beyond life. It is willing to, how did the Man of LaMancha say it, “willing to march into hell for a heavenly cause”? We see this type of thing all around us and read of it regularly. A man runs in front of a fast moving truck to push a child out of its path. The child is saved, but the man meets an untimely death; a mother who runs back into a violently burning house to save her child. Pfc. Ross A. McGinnis pressing his back on a live grenade sacrificing himself so his buddies might live. Jesus the Christ willingly leaving heaven to come to a world filled with despair and anger. And here He offers Himself as the ultimate sacrifice for a people who were willingly killing Him.
I want that spirit in me. I want to be able to give myself so that others might have. I don’t mind losing it all if somewhere in my losing blessings might fall on someone who desperately needs it.

Language

2009-06-30T10:25:00.001-05:00

So many of us think we know only one language, but we, in fact, know several. We understand and speak body language. We have numerous facial expressions. Even our breath speaks volumes. A gasp says something; a sigh; a hiss. Remember the way your mom used to suck in her breath when she was disgusted with you? And then she would slowly let her breath out again. The sound of that breath told you how much trouble you were in.
Have you seen the commercial about the rollover minutes? The family is riding in their car. The boy in the back seat asks his mom for some minutes for his phone. She replies, “I just gave you some at the restaurant.” He tells her he has thrown them away because they were old. She begins a speech about the minutes and he finishes her sentence. Her eyes grow large, almost bloodshot with anger. He realizes he’s said too much and looks at his mom for a moment, then over to his brother to break the tension. The language of those looks is priceless. I laugh each time I see it because it’s so real!
Of course we know English too and it's a wonderful language. Often it’s the simpler words that can cause the most reactions. How many times I have been arguing with my wife and she will say something and my only response is a sarcastic “Ah.” Of course I know what buttons to push, so I say the “ah” in order to allow myself to stand innocent. “Whadaya mean I’m a jerk? All I said was. ‘ah.’ What was wrong with that?” I smile when I hear the word jerk because that’s exactly what I was, but that’s part of the fun of language. Don’t you think so?
I recall a quote from Paul Tillich about different words we use to speak of the condition of being alone – “Our language has wisely sensed the two sides of being alone. It has created the word loneliness to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word solitude to express the glory of being alone.” – Ah. Don’t you love language?

Gone For Awhile

2009-06-30T09:53:00.000-05:00

I was gone for awhile but I'm back. I'm going to try to write something at least once each week. I hope something I say might bless someone.

Dynamic Worship

2009-06-30T09:05:00.000-05:00

I read the article by Jonathan Perz (see below) and felt the need to say something. While much of what was said was true, one thing we need to remember is that we are not “First Century” Christians; we are twenty-first century Christians. Much of what we do from day to day is dramatically different than what was done 2,000 years ago. Our collective worship, though involving all the elements God has prescribed, is very different than what our first century brothers did. We sing very few chants today, yet much of their singing was in this form. Our four part harmony would be quite foreign to them. Does this make it wrong? Consider communion, did they have little plastic cups carried about in shiny metal trays? Most likely no. A good part of their Bible lesson/sermon was a simple reading of the various letters sent by the apostles. Though there is nothing wrong with the way we do our preaching, we are adding thoughts and opinions that are not found in the words of the apostles. We have padded pews, speakers and microphones, along with powerpoint and projectors. What would those first century folks think of us?

Frankly, I want dynamic worship. While it’s not about me, it comes from me, from my heart and yours. Part of our worship to Him is also for us. Remember, “Speak to one anotherto the Lord.” with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart (Ephesians 5:19) Note the underlined portions. We are singing praises to the Lord, but we are also singing to each other. Worship is to God, but it is also for our edification and strengthening. We can make it dull and lifeless or we can make it dynamic. If we make the story of Jesus the (forgive me for this) “Old Old Story,” people are going to look at it that way. I want the story of Jesus and my worship to Him to be new and fresh and suitable for the people I live among. I want to be able to reach people who live in the twenty-first century. In order to do this I have to speak the language of the twenty-first century. Jesus should not grow old to us, but should always be dynamic. He is always up to date and we should treat Him and the gospel like that.

Following is the article mentioned above

A sign advertising a local church’s worship service read “Two DYNAMIC Worship Services.” While it is not uncommon nowadays tosee such words used to describe a worship service, should such even be a consideration for our worship to God?Does God want “dynamic worship” or does He seek spiritual and true worship? The Lord directly answers this question when He says,“But the hour is coming and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth” (John 4:23-24).

“Dynamic worship” is obviously being advertised in contrast or comparison to some other kind of worship. Typically, those who desire “dynamic worship” are tired of what they consider boring, dull or “old fashioned” worship. They want energetic, contemporary worship that they can relate to. They want exhilarating worship that is in keeping with the times. They want emotion filled worship that appeals to them. They want uplifting worship that makes them feel good. So, local churches are making changes to provide such worship for their worshipers. The problem with this is two-fold.

First, such worship is worshiper-oriented, not God-oriented. Is not our worship for God and to God? Why then are we innovating our worship to God to meet the desires of the worshiper? Should not the worshiper’s concern be for the desires of God (cf. 1 Thess. 4:1)? Are not God’s ways of worship satisfying enough for us? Are not the approved methods of worship demonstrated by the first century Christians good enough for us? Are we not to imitate them (cf. 1 Cor. 11:1)?

Second, such worship might engage a man’s spirit, but it fails in regard to truth. Is not God’s word truth (John 17:17)? Should not God’s word be our authority in all spiritual matters, to include worship (cf. Col. 3:16-17)? Should not our worship then resemble and conform to first century worship? It can be confirmed that apostolic worship was approved worship, spiritual worship and truthful worship (cf. Acts 2:42; 20:7; 1 Cor. 1:21; 11:23-27; 16:1-2; Eph. 5:19). Can we prove that “dynamic” worship rises to that mark established by the Lord (1 Thess. 5:21)?

You see, we can have spiritual and truthful worship that is “dynamic.” However, not all “dynamic worship” is in spirit and truth (cf. Rom. 8:8). The dynamics of worship are not based on externals that appeal to the flesh. The dynamics of worship are based on internals that appeal to the spirit and truth. Thus, when worshipers emphasize spirit and truth in their hearts, the dynamics will be where God expects them to be. Most who desire “dynamic worship” would argue that their worship

is in spirit and in truth. If such is true, then why not simply advertise your worship as such? Can there be any higher type of worship than true worship?

By: Jonathan Perz, Church of Christ, Moody, Alabama

Four Things

2007-04-10T09:21:00.000-05:00

Here's a passage:

18And Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in^[a] the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age."

Matthew 28:18-20

I see four things here that I am supposed to do:

Go
Make
Baptize
Teach

Here are some comments about these four things:

We have it backwards. We think if we build it they will come. Jesus tells us to go and get them.
People are not naturally God's disciples - they have to be made into disciples. We have the ingredients and they are the things of first importance. Paul states them in 1 Corinthians 15.
As we make disciples, part of the process is baptism. We are born again. We die to ourselves, we are buried in a watery grave and we are raised to walk in that new life. We are, in other words, born again.
Once we have made disciples there is still much teaching to do.

Sounds like an awesome responsibility. I better get at it before it's forever too late.

Josiah Tilton

A Split Second

2007-04-03T08:23:00.000-05:00

The talking heads and late night MC's had a field day with Hillary's picture. Jokes of all kinds were made and laughs were had all around. Many people drew conclusions about what type of person Hillary was/is just from seeing this picture. I'm sure she lost votes as a result of this split second in time. What a shame - not about votes, but that we would judge someone by a single incident or a moment out of a lifetime.

I sin. I also teach Bible class on Sunday morning. Which one defines me? If the people who are in my Bible class saw me sin and that was all they remembered of me then they would have a very difficult time trying to hear anything I might say in class. They would limit me to my sin. The truth is, however, that I am more than my sin. I am more than a snapshot; more than a moment in time.

Fortunately, the Father of all has made it plain that He thinks more about us than our sin(s). He is like fathers everywhere. We know our children are not perfect, but we do not see them just as their imperfections, we see them in their totality. We see them on good days and bad. We know they are a combination of happy and sad, of good and bad, of righteous and unrighteous. We do not see them as fodder for humiliation and bad taste joking. We see them as someone worthy of our love and loved whether worthy or not. So it is with God. He sees us as His creation. He loves us because that is what He is. It is not what He does, but what He is - God is love. And love finds a way.

It is not that split second that tells honest people what we are it is a lifetime of living that says "this is me."

What is Truth

2007-02-06T08:15:00.000-06:00

As Jesus stood before Pilate he was questioned about being the king of the Jews. There is an understanding in Pilate that Jesus is not just anyone, but is someone special. Unfortunately, Pilate was a weak man and would not stand up for the right. So when he asks, "Are you the king of the Jews?" Jesus tells him that "You are right in saying I am a king. In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me."

Pilate, in disgust - not with Jesus, but with those who brought Jesus to him, I think - snaps back, "What is truth?" And that's the question, isn't it?

What is truth? We hear people debating global warming and presenting good points on both sides of the issue. When they're finished we wonder - "What is truth?" In politics we hear that this is the worst economy in decades by the President's opponents and his own people say just the opposite. We are left with uncertainty as we try to decide - "What is truth?"

The same is true in religion. There are hundreds of creeds, sects, persuasions, religions, etc. and I wonder if it is possible that they are all correct. As I struggle to decide truth I look at the many "Christian" religions and see conflicting doctrines. Can all be right? Even in conflict? Even if what they teach might be antipodal to another's teaching?

I struggle with this. I wonder...Do you?

Twisted Politics

2007-02-05T14:35:00.000-06:00

We live in a crazy political world, don't we? The other day Joe Biden was politically beaten because he used the word "clean" while describing Barack Obama. How foolish can we be? Biden, whom I do not support and would NEVER vote for, was trying his best NOT to say anything that could be misconstrued racially. He praised Obama and was trying to show how open minded he was. Ah, but we see what we want to see and hear what we want to hear. The political pundits had a heyday with Joe Biden as the butt of their drivel.

If you are a republican, were you happy about this? If you were a democrat, did you applaud the media's stupidity? What is wrong with us that we cannot see things for what they really are, but we see them with all the twists and turns that we can wrap into them and that way we always have someone out there to belittle and beat.

Shame on us.

Who Will Cry?

2006-05-30T08:23:00.000-05:00

America and the world wept and then sacrificed when the tsunami killed 150,000 people in one day and we should have. Unfortunately, and I'm sure there are many reasons for our ignorance, 150,000 people, over half of them children, die every single month in sub-Saharan Africa. And most of the things they die from are totally preventable: Malaria, Malnutrition, Cholera, AIDS, War.

Where is the weeping?
Where is the sacrifice?
Who will cry for Africa?

What Do I Have?

2006-05-30T08:09:00.000-05:00

“For who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?”
1 Corinthians. 4:7 (ESV)

This passage, and several similar, is troubling to me. Troubling in the sense that if I accept it as written then I am led to understand that whatever it is that I have has been given to me, and if this is so, why do I live and act differently than this? Why do I act as if I’ve earned this or that? If every good and perfect gift comes down from the Father of lights, if, as John the baptizer says, "a person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven,” then why do I consider things I have as the things I have bought and paid for?

I know of an eldership who, when presented with a proposal from their mission’s committee about supporting some African preachers said no. Their reason for saying no is that “they don’t support nationals.” Their justification for that policy was/is because their support might put the nationals in a higher income bracket than their fellows around them, and that would cause jealousy. This sounds almost reasonable. If, however, the African preachers are children of God and the Elders are children of God, then all are brothers. What one has he has received from THEIR Father. Should the children not share what their Father has given them? And should they not especially share it with their own brothers?! Should they consider the things they have as things they have great power over because, after all, it was entrusted to them, not to their poor, poverty stricken brothers.

This is not an article meant to beat up on Elders. It is a questioning of our – especially Americans – idea that we have earned and therefore deserve anything. I breathe because God provides the oxygen. I’m an American because God caused me to be born here. I move my arms and legs because God has given me that ability. I see and speak because God has been generous to me. Look at this passage - Exodus 4:11 (ESV) “Then the Lord said to him, ‘Who has made man's mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord?’” Is this true? Not is it true that God said this, but is what God said true? If, as God says He does, He makes someone mute, deaf, seeing or blind, then the fact that I can see is because God has given this gift to me. I could consider this a “general” gift that God gave in the creation, but that is not what the passage says. And if it were, would it not be reasonable to assume that everyone would receive this gift? Yet we know that there are many who are born blind, or deaf, or mute. Who made them so? The question I’m asking myself then is, what DO I have that I have not been given?

Finally, all that I have been given has been given so that I might have to give to others, (Ephesians 4:28; Luke 12:48b). Those who sold houses and possessions and gave them to the Apostles to distribute to others as there was need, did God take care of them when they were old and unable to work for their keep? Since they sold what they had and gave it away, were they acting wisely? Were they doing the best they could do to care for their own families? Were they not depending on God too much? Or were they demonstrating that what they had was not their own and they were giving away only those things which they could not keep anyway? Were they saying “I trust you Father?”

A young boy was watching as the riotous crowd dragged the old man toward the stake. He watched as they viciously grabbed his arms, pulling them behind his back and around the stake. Others quickly grabbed kindling and larger pieces of wood, stacking it all around the old man, who was now bound to a stake, prepared to die. His only crime was that he believed in Jesus Christ. A torch was brought and the wood was lit. Whatever agony the old man suffered he bore it quietly, his head bowed in prayer.

One of the rabble noticed the wide eyed boy watching this horrendous episode of deranged humanity. “What are you doin’ here boy? The man growled.

“I’m learning the way,” was the boy’s response.

As for me, I’ve never made a sacrifice. I wish I had the faith to.

Days and Even Weeks

2006-05-30T07:48:00.000-05:00

I often watch such shows as Cold Case Files and The FBI Stories, not those popular ones on the big networks, but the accounts of real cases and real investigations on TLC, Discovery or A&E. It amazes me how terribly wicked man can be. There have been shows about serial killers, rapists, thrill murderers and the like, as well as more "civilized" crimes like embezzelment or kidnapping. I watched one about a man who would kidnap women, take them to his home, tie them up, beat, rape and eventually murder them. He did it to several until one finally escaped and he was caught. I would scream to myself... "How can people act like that?!" Later, I would look into the mirror and understand.

Yes, we would rather have someone lie to us than shoot us, but what does the lying say about our character. Do you lie? I know I do. And how do we act at home when we are all alone? Do we just sit an read the Bible or do we find ourselves watching shows with swearing, thefts and murders? Why do we watch such things? Why are we drawn to them? Do you think it's because it is our character, our nature to do such?

I sin and I often use the excuse that I can't help myself. Flimsy, but perhaps it is true none-the-less. I John 1:7-10 tells me that I am going to sin. Is this a license? I think not, but it does say something about me. It says something about my nature and character. I am a sinner. I hurt my wife, my sons, daughter-in-law and grandchildren, as well as my friends, even strangers. My faith often ebbs and flows as the tide. There are days, even weeks when I am strong and feel good about myself and my faith. There are days and even weeks when I wonder if I have any faith at all. When I should be strong I am weak and miserable. I have to cry out as Paul did, "Wretched man that I am, who shall save me from this body of death. Praise God! It's Christ Jesus."

Clap For Me

2005-11-22T14:18:00.000-06:00

A while back I came home from work and my wife was watching Dr. Phil. He had a lady on who was an addict. She gave him a hard time telling him that she didn’t really like him at all. He replied, “That’s O.K. because what you think of me does not affect my self-esteem in the least.”

I thought to myself, “Wouldn’t that be nice if we all could think that way?” The problem is we don’t. We are all looking for approval. Some of us are athletes, others are teachers or physicians, some are extremely intelligent, good speakers or just good looking; a few of us are rich or powerful, but in some crazy way we are all trying to get people to clap for us. We want people to cheerus and say that we are normal, healthy, moral, upright and good. And it’s not just that we want to hear it from someone, but many someones. And much more than we want to love someone, we want to be loved.

I know it’s easy to sit here and generalize, but the truth is I want to be loved. I want people to think I am not a loser. I want someone to redeem me from my pitiful little life and treat me as if I were wonderfully important and I want them, YOU to let me have my own way. Listen, though, to Eugene Peterson’s commentary/translation of Galatians 5:19-21 (It’s from the translation called “The Message:”

"It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on.
This isn't the first time I have warned you, you know. If you use your freedom this way, you will not inherit God's kingdom."

(The English Standard Version says it this way: "Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.")

We know this and yet we keep on with our selfish lives. At the same time, we don’t want to live these selfish lives. We want redemption…HOPE…PEACE. And the wonderful thing is, and in our better moments we know this, WE HAVE IT! We have redemption and the good part is it doesn’t depend upon how good we are or how much we are liked or if anyone claps for us at all. It depends upon the sacrifice of Jesus Christ upon the cross and that is why we can be assured of salvation. All we have to do is depend upon Him. He paid the price. He took the loneliness of the cross; He took the beatings meant for us; He took the humiliation and the shame of it all so that we might know, above all things, that we are loved and wanted. So that we might know HOW MUCH we are loved and wanted. And so that we might be redeemed from our little lives and adopted into the family of God.

Of all things we ought to be thankful for at this time of the year and always, it is for the assurance of that genuine love and the salvation it has brought to us. John says to us:

1 John 5:11-13 (ESV)
"And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life."

Knowing this…being assured of this, let’s be thankful.

Struggling to Know

2005-09-19T09:08:00.000-05:00

As the title suggests, I'm struggling to grasp a greater understanding of God and His righteousness. How does what He has revealed to us play out in the "real" world - I know this is not the real world, but it is the world I know best; It is the world I live in, but am trying NOT to be a part of. Following are just a few opinions and I want to stress the word OPINIONS.

1. I believe one of the greatest hindrances to the spreading of the gospel of Jesus Christ has been the invention of church buildings. The days of house churches where neighbors gathered together for a few moments of fellowship and getting to know one another as they got to know God and praise His name were times of explosive evangelism. In the homes people really got to know the person they were worshipping with. It was less structured and, it seems to me, while there was more true heartfelt friendship shared there were fewer spurious or artificial emotional touchy/feely moments. An example of what I mean is the practice of several congregations to take a few minutes at some point in the service for everyone to stand up and shake the hands of the people around them. This is done because Christians are supposed to be close and fellowship each other. Then, after the last song or prayer, the majority of people walk on out to their cars and drive away without saying hello or good-bye to anyone, including those who sat around them.
2. We equate what we do in the church buildings on Sunday mornings, most especially, with Christianity. They do not equate. Because of this practice we find ourselves struggling to make people feel they are a part of the church. We (not every congregation, you understand, but many) are having women get up and read or pass the communion, or sing solos and lead prayers. I am not making a judgement on these one way or the other. What I am saying is that real Christianity does not have to find ways to include anyone so they feel as if they were important to the church. We would not have to face the difficulties we are facing with issues about women's roles, worship leaders, etc. if we did not depend upon Sunday morning to define us. There are 168 hours in each week, yet many now determine that if they are not a part of that one Sunday morning hour then they are not truly represented in the church. So, right or wrong, women are insisting upon leadership (whatever that is) roles in the assemblies.
3. We spend BIG money on buildings and consider that our part for outreach. We have the (I've said this before) field of dreams mentality. If we build it they will come. The truth is, we were never given a command to sit back and expect the lost to find us, we were told to go out into the highways and byways and find them.
4. We are willing to spend the Big money on buildings but spend relatively little on real evangelism.
5. Money spent on buildings is for our comfort, which may be why we are so ready to spend it. We pad the pews, condition the air, carpet the floors, furnish the kitchens and recreation facilities, fill the basketballs with air, adjust the speakers for best tonal quality and make sure the video projector is in perfect focus. And who are we doing all this for? The Lost?! Outreach? Evangelism?!

I'm just throwing out my opinion here, but I was hoping that those who see this blog might think about what we are doing with our Sunday mornings . . .

Lists and Bullet Points

2005-08-12T08:08:00.000-05:00

There are so many formulas out there today. There are lists that say if you do these three things you’ll never have halitosis again, or if you follow this formula you’ll be able to win the cute young blond who just started working at the office. It appears as if someone has a five step program for just about anything we can think of. We seem to have that in the church as well. We “hear,” “believe,” “repent,” “confess” and “baptize” ourselves into salvation then heaven. And we’ve got those steps down pat. Ask anyone. But… What if, as we read the Bible, we discover that it isn’t lists, formulas, principles or bullet points that give us meaning and lead us to the high calling? What if it’s something less concrete – touch, feel, taste – and more abstract.

It seems to me that it isn’t obedience to a set formula that God is interested in. Remember David saying, “For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” Psalm 51:16-17 (ESV) The amazing thing is, just after saying God didn’t want any sacrifices David gave a sacrifice. Contradiction? No. David was doing what Jesus said we should, “If you love me, keep my commandments.” John 14:15. The thing that gives meaning to life, including eternity in heaven, is love and relationships. To have it all, yet have no love no relationships is to drift through meaninglessness and end up broken, desperate and lost. God wants us and He sent His Son to seek us out, to woo us, if you will. He’s done all that He could to bring us back into a loving relationship. Falling in love with Him will give us meaning.

What Should We Do?

2005-06-02T12:17:00.000-05:00

It is difficult for us to grasp the truth that 35,000 children die every day of easily preventable diseases and malnutrition. Especially we Americans fail to understand that cars, phones, refrigerators, televisions, couches, dining tables, running water, electricity and even our beds are luxuries that tens of thousands of our fellow human beings will never have. We see pictures of starving children in war torn countries and then hop in the car and go to Burger King for a Whopper and never give the child a second thought. It is not that we are selfish or hard hearted, but those people and their poverty are so far removed from us that we just don’t get it!
The truth is there is poverty in the world, terrible, bone crushing, heart breaking, life-robbing poverty and God expects us to do something about it. “Blessed is he that considers the poor…” “As we have opportunity let us do good to all men…” “But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him?”

What am I going to do?

2005-06-02T12:14:00.000-05:00

Children from the Village of Hope in Ghana West Africa

The time Has Come

2005-04-20T08:26:00.000-05:00

Have you read “Through the Looking Glass,” by Lewis Carroll? It is a crazy story full of weird characters, each carrying on strange conversations with others. Much of what they say makes absolutely no sense at all, such as –

Twas brillig and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe
All mimsy were the borogroves
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Or,

The sun was shining on the sea
Shining with all his might
He did his very best to make
The billows smooth and bright
And this was odd because it was
The middle of the night

All that they say is interesting, but strange, until the Walrus and the Carpenter were walking beside each other and the Walrus began to speak . . .

The time has come, the Walrus said
To talk of many things
Of shoes and ships and sealing wax
Of cabbages and kings

Now this makes sense. "The time has come to talk . . . " To speak of eternity. To say there is more to life than the present. To grasp the understanding that if we do not have God in our lives we are empty and vain. We eat today, but tomorrow we hunger again. We struggle with kids and coworkers, and tomorrow is a repeat of today. There has to be more than the day to day. There has to be reason, a greater reason than to be born, grow up, marry, have children, grow old and die.

There has to be more! And there is . . . Jesus Christ!

John 3:16 is more than a poster someone holds up at a ball game. It is truth . . . For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

Here's THE Question

2005-04-20T08:16:00.000-05:00

Pilate then went back inside the palace, summoned Jesus and asked him, "Are you the king of the Jews?"
"Is that your own idea," Jesus asked, "or did others talk to you about me?"
"Am I a Jew?" Pilate replied. "It was your people and your chief priests who handed you over to me. What is it you have done?"
Jesus said, "My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place."
"You are a king, then!" said Pilate.
Jesus answered, "You are right in saying I am a king. In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me."
"What is truth?" Pilate asked.
John 18:33-38a

Two Things

2005-04-13T11:11:00.000-05:00

I intend to live forever -- so far, so good.

And . . .

What happens if you get scared half to death twice?

Field of Dreams

2005-04-11T09:53:00.000-05:00

One of the things that bothers me most about the church of today is our insatiable appetite for buildings. We have the idea that a building will take the place of going into all the world. We erect our structures with the "Field of Dreams" mentality . . . "if we build it they will come." It just isn't so. Our congregation is getting ready to waste $2.5 million dollars on a new auditorium. Our claim is that it will help us reach out better. The truth is it will help us SHUT out better. Rather than erecting a building that attracts we seem to be building citadels, which cause people to shun us, as we shut them out. If our claim is that we will reach out better why are we not reaching out now? The truth is, we do not reach out to our community now, and we have a nice building. What would make us more apt to reach out if we had a new building?

For some reason we are trying to build mega-churches to take the place of our commission. The mega-church will, we hope, erase most of our guilt feelings for not going into all the world, because it will appear that we are doing something, after all we have a big congregation. Of course the members will not be there because we have reached into the community and served them so that they saw our light and glorified our Father in heaven, but rather they will be, as they are now, transplants from other congregations in the area. We are reaching desperately few from our community, and we are failing miserably in serving our fellow men, and we have lost our way in following the footsteps of Jesus Christ, but we have a nice building, and we will soon have a better one.

I'm sure God is proud of that!

Where Are The Heroes

2005-03-11T10:45:00.000-06:00

War at its very best is brutally evil. Though there are some good men in wars, there are times when the good men do terrible things. There are other times, of course, when war gives good men opportunities to do great things. One example of the greatness of good men happened during World War II.

In 1943, Americans were sending thousands of men, and hundreds of shiploads of war materials to England, for transfer to the front. On one particular crossing, the troopship Dorchester was on its way to Greenland, where the United States had a base. Sometime, shortly after midnight on February 3, the Dorchester was torpedoed. Many were wounded, several killed and the ship was sinking. Confusion that led to panic was everywhere. Men were screaming in pain, others were moaning their last breath, while leaders were shouting orders, trying to organize an abandonment of the ship.

On board the Dorchester were four chaplains, each from different religions. There was a Jewish Rabbi named Alexander Goode, two Protestants, Clark Poling and George Fox, and a Catholic Priest, John Washington. These four men stumbled and groped in the darkness going from man to man, helping people to abandon the ship. They worked hard, assisting men with their life jackets, and carrying some to the lifeboats, or helping others get over the side, before the ship went under. The time came when there were no more life jackets. Each of the chaplains knew that without a life jacket there was little chance of survival in the fridgid waters, yet none of the four hesitated. When the jackets were gone and still men were without them, they gave up their own, helped put them on others, and went back to their business of comforting and consoling those who would not make it.

As the ship slipped beneath the surface, the four chaplains were praying with, and holding onto the wounded. They were sacrificing themselves to save others, and comfort those beyond saving.

I don't know how I would act in similar circumstances, but I do know I want to be like those men. We need more men and women like John Washington, Alexander Goode, George Fox and Clark Poling. We need to find that spirit of self-sacrifice, and get rid of the "me and me alone attitude." America used to be great, but she isn't any more. We have macho policemen beating helpless victims, who are supposed to be in their custody. We have rebellious citizens burning and looting whole cities. There are teenage Satan worshippers who, in some sort of sadistic ritual, kill little children, in brutal, ungodly ways. We have wealthy men and women cheating in the stock markets, taking more and more from those who are honestly seeking to make a living. And we have a congress that is afraid to make any laws that will do anything except get them re-elected.

Who cares about America any more? We've taken prayer out of our schools, any mention of God from our textbooks, preach and teach evolution, humanism, and situation values and ethics, then wring our hands, as we sit and wonder why our children are becoming more and more like the Devil. Anything that has value, absolute truth, calls for sacrifice and self-discipline, like God's word, the Bible, we jump on it with both feet and scream "FIRST AMENDMENT! FIRST AMENDMENT! SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE!" There may have been a time when it was necessary to worry about the government making laws instituting a national religion, to which everyone had to belong, but those days are gone. The only religion congress has established is the religion of re-election and the worshipping of the pacmen, making sure one pays special honor to the priests in charge of the pacmen's coffers.

The blind have led the blind for long enough. Let's wake up America. Let's get back to where we went off the road of greatness. It's time to look for heroes somewhere besides the sports arena. Before it's too late, let's look at men like the four chaplains on the troopship Dorchester. These are men who are worthy of honor. Not because they scored 50 points in a "game," or were re-elected 10 times, but because they sacrificed themselves to help others live, and help those who were dying to know they were not dying alone, but were with someone who cared. These men were worthy, not only of the Purple Heart and Distinguished Service Medal each was posthumously awarded, but they are worthy of emulation.

Arthur Ashe

2005-03-10T08:10:00.000-06:00

Do you remember Arthur Ashe or have you heard about him? He was a black tennis star. Quite good and popular. On February 6, 1993, at approximately 3:13 p.m. Arthur Ashe died by homocide. It was death by lethal injection. The fatal dose was "innocently" administered by a health care professional. Though it was given ten years earlier, and thus was a slow acting poison, it was just as deadly as 10 cc's of Cobra venom. Don't you think it a bit strange that if he had been injected with Cobra venom we would all be up in arms, screaming for his killer to be brought to justice? Because he was killed by the AIDS virus, however, we sew his killer's name into a quilt, honor him, and tell him, our children, and the rest of the world, "it's all right." Don't you think that's odd?

It's amazing to me that we have groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) fighting to send drunks who kill, with motor vehicles, to jail. These people are angry, and they should be. They are doing all they can to keep those killers off the roads. They have forced goverment to respond with tougher laws, and stiffer sentences for those who break the law. At the same time, we have "superstars" holding benefits to raise money to fight a disease that is TOTALLY preventable, and COMPLETELY the fault of the one struck with it (with the exception of those who received it accidently, such as by blood transfusion, as did Arthur Ashe, or from dental equipment that was not properly cleaned, or those who were born with it because their mother had it). And those same "superstars" honor the one's struck with the disease, in spite of the fact that they have it because of their lust and immorality. In addition, many of those who have AIDS pass it on to others, condemning them to an agonizing death. And how does the world react? We give five minute standing ovations! We applaud and cheer. We buy their books, and pay them money to come and tell us all about it.

What's wrong with us? Where did common sense go? Is there no such thing as right and wrong anymore? If not, who changed the rules? When will we wake up and realize that whether we are considering an individual or a nation it is still true - We reap what we sow. Though we hate to hear God speaking to us, He said something about sowing the wind and reaping the whirlwind. The children of Israel had lapsed into idolatry and forgetfulness of anything righteous. They were condoning sin and enjoying every aspect of it. The wicked were not punished but rewarded, as is happening in the U.S. today. They were sowing the wind and reaping the whirlwind.

Do we honestly believe we can continue in this moral decline and not reap a harvest of destruction for our nation? Look around. It's easy to see that the foundations of our society are crumbling beneath us. Listen. Can you hear it? It sounds like distant thunder. Is that the wind picking up?

Masquerade of Death

2005-03-10T07:54:00.000-06:00

Death? Sure, I know you. I've known you for as long as I can remember. I've known you as both dominant and vicious, with volcanic power, vomiting up deceit, war, famine and decimation. With a wonderful ability, you masquerade in innocence until, in a final desperate gasp, your victim reaches out, grasps your costume, and with his final act, strips you to reveal the bleached-white hideousness of your terrible face. Yes. I know you, but I see you much differently today than yesterday. Truth has given me an ability to see you as you truly are. Do you know what you are?

There was a time when you appeared in the mask of a Friday night vampire, and, I must admit, on those windy, full-moon-lit nights when wicked fingers of black and white shadows crept across the wall to attack my shivering little body, you paralyzed me with fear. I would call out to my father to come save me from your dreadful wrath, but somehow you clamped your icy fingers over my mouth and no sound would come out.

As I grew into a teenager, you stalked me. But the masks you were wearing made you difficult to recognize, at least until the stroke of midnight when you were revealed. Mike Voll didn't see you as he worked under his car. How you were able to sneak up on him without kicking a stone or crackling a leaf so as to warn him is a credit to your deceitfulness. (You are good at what you do.) It was only as you knocked the jack out from under the car that he saw you . . . recognized you . . . too late!

Was it before or after that (it is hard to recall) you hid behind the mask of suicide? I remember the fat boy, the one no one liked, played with or even talked to. Only since I've grown have I thought about his feelings. But you thought about them, didn't you? You used him, showed him the rope, the ceiling joist in the basement, the way out of his pain! You neither cared about nor considered his parents or brothers and sisters. What about their agony, the self-doubt, the "oh-if-I'd-have-only . . . " thoughts that tormented them.

Vicious! You were a vicious master. Yes, "were" is the proper word, for I've grown since then. I know you have been defeated. Your defeat angered you and you still try your best to hurt those of us who take advantage of your defeat and have thrown off the marks of your service.

You still torment me. You did so when you put on the mask of terminal illness and carried my mother away. Did you gloat over my agony? My tears, tears that had not fallen since childhood, would not stop their flowing. Their salty taste burned my tongue as they rolled down my cheeks into my wailing mouth. Rearing your ugly head in one swift act of rebellion and brutality, you seized my mother, covering her eyes with your endless mist, before she could discover the truth and cast you off like butterflies do their restrictive cocoons. Vicious, that's your name, and tormenting is your favorite activity.

It is true! You are vicious, but you are not the master any longer, are you. You have met the Master, haven't you? Your eyes are dropping, your shoulders seem bent. Yes! I know you met Him at the cross. You taunted. You laughed. You considered yourself indestructible, and in your bravado you mocked. For parts of three days and three nights you wrestled with Him, weakening with each new hold. Can you deny? I've read the account of it. The end came early on a Sunday morning as you lay bloody, battered, beaten and unable to do more than kneel at the feet of the Master who bested you. And now? Your name has been changed to Defeated, and you are no more than a slave to those who serve the Master. You do our bidding and carry us, as the Master directed, from this world to the world of glory.

Don't Look At Your Father

2005-03-09T11:12:00.000-06:00

Somehow she managed to get out of her seat belt. Opening the door she slipped to the ground. The exertion forced her to sit for a moment and rest, leaning her back against the car. Slowly, shock-numbed, she got to her feet and looked across the front seat at her husband. Though her head was cloudy from being smashed against the windshield a few moments earlier, still she realized there was no room for life between the seat and the steering wheel. Her heart broke at that moment, yet she could not dwell on her monumental loss. Her children, 22 year old Victor, and 20 year old Anne Marie were in the back seat. Dane Tate, one of her many "unofficially" adopted children, was also there, but Sandi (Lynn, her husband of 24 years, always called her Peaches) couldn't see him. Fear gripped her as she looked in the back, for there was no movement and no sound.

Sandi called to her children. Softly, for she had little strength, she whispered their names. I once read a quote that said, "We cough to clear our throats; we sigh to clear our hearts." I can almost hear Sandi's sigh when Anne Marie opened her eyes and looked at her.

Anxiously, Sandi called, "How badly are you hurt? How is Victor? Where is Dane?"

Love is a most powerful source of strength. People often go to great lengths, do heroic deeds, offer great sacrifices all in the name of love. It could be love of country, love of home, or love of family that gives one the power to accomplish. In Sandi's case it was surely the love for her children. For you see, what she was doing, standing there checking on the welfare of her children, was not an ordinary thing. The desire and the attempt would be ordinary, but Sandi did the extraordinary! With a badly broken leg - she should not have been able to stand - a broken arm, internal injuries and a soon to prove fatal head injury, she stood and talked with her children, checking on and comforting them.

"Don't look at your father," Sandi whispered.

The kids couldn't help themselves. Vic, who had come to for a few moments, and Anne Marie both looked. The slant of his head, the crushed, blood-stained face and his death closed eyes told them that their father was gone. Their own pain-induced shock kept them from crying, but they would never forget that moment.

How she did it God knows, but Sandi reached her head into the back seat and prayed with the kids. "Just a jumble of words," they said later, but surely God heard and understood. After the prayer she asked how badly they were hurt -

A fractured tailbone, cracked ribs and some internal injuries for Anne Marie (all diagnosed later, of course, but the pain was described when Sandi asked).

"Vic has a broken leg, and he says his hand hurts," Anne Marie, the most alert, reported.

As she checked Dane, who was had been thrown on the floor between the seats, it was obvious from the queer way his arm was twisted that it was broken. In fact it was so severely broken (crushed is a better word) that the Doctors at the first hospital he was taken to almost amputated it. They didn't, only because they were in too great hurry to get Dane to another hospital where he could have his transplanted kidney checked for any damage. By God's grace, the doctors at the second hospital rebuilt and saved his arm.

Knowing that her children would be all right, Sandi turned her attention back to Lynn.

"I need a blanket to cover my husband," she began telling the Samaritans trying to help. Somehow a blanket found its way into her arms. As she started around the car to her husband's side, she noticed a young man sitting on the ground across the road. He was in shock - shaking terribly. Her special mother's love pushed pain, and even thoughts of her husband out of her mind for the moment. She forced her badly broken body across the road and gently wrapped the blanket around the young man sitting there. He was the passenger and friend of the nineteen year old man who, in an adventurous race with some other friends in their caravan, was passing on a hill and, at the apex, in a flurry of twisted metal and broken glass, hit them head on . . . killing Sandi's husband. If the thought of what these young men had done crossed her mind she never showed it. Her love covered their dreadful carelessness.

After attending to the young man, She walked back across the street. North Flight helicopter and paramedics had arrived and they were trying to put Sandi on a stretcher. She allowed them to lay her down, but would not leave until they covered her husband with a blanket. One of the paramedics took a blanket, covered Lynn, and reported that to her. She looked over at her children and spoke her last words.

"I love you, kids."

Moments later she closed her eyes . . .

Paul records in 1 Corinthians 13: 13, "And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. " From the above we can see a woderful example how true this passage is, "The greatest of these IS love!" With love we can overcome any enemy, any difficulty, any setback, any failure. With love we can move forward, accomplish grand things, live great lives! With love the worst of our enemies, Satan, becomes a mountain cast into the sea. We know this is true because Love incarnate, our Savior Jesus Christ, came as the ultimate manifestation of God's love (1 John 4:9-10), and conquered our worst enemies - Sin, Death and the Devil! ( Isaiah 53:6; Hebrews 2:14-15; 1 Corinthians 15:51-57; 1 John 3:7-8).

While it is true that Satan is still powerful, and alone we cannot, must not face him, we can not only face him, but conquer him if we are in Christ Jesus. And in Christ Jesus every enemy is destroyed, because LOVE did the destroying.

Lynn and Sandi almost always went visiting on Lynn's day off. They would go from friend to friend, stopping for just a few minutes to say "hello." They wanted to cheer up as many people as possible, and they had a gift for doing that. After visiting for a few minutes, however, Lynn would put on his baseball hat, stand up and say, "Let's go, Peaches." Then he would walk out the door. Sandi never argued. She always got up, said they had to go, and with hugs and "good-byes" followed Lynn.

Shortly after the accident, from the other side of death's door, Lynn popped his head back in and said, "let's go, Peaches." From the bed in her darkened room in Munson Medical Center's ICU, Sandi rose, and as she always had, she followed Lynn home. It is faith, hope and love that has united them in eternity.

"And the greatest of these is love."

(This accident happened in 1989, but I was thinking about Lynn today and thought I would share this-JBT)

Jesus on the Plane

2005-02-16T09:42:00.000-06:00

Don Henley's 1989 Album "The End of the Innocence" had a song called "If Dirt Were Dollars." One of the lines is "I was flyin' back from Lubbock, I saw Jesus on the plane." I was never quite sure what his point was there, but I know this . . . I was flying back from somewhere and I did see Jesus on the plane. At least I saw Him working through the tenderness of a fellow passenger.

As I was sitting on the airplane, people were boarding and we were getting ready to leave. The last two people to board were an older man, perhaps fifty five, and a teenage boy. The man was behind the young man, and had his arms around the boys chest. He was struggling, face red, teeth gritting, sweat popping out on his forehead, trying to carry the boy into the plane. The young man was obviously paralyzed from the waist down, and had very little control from the waist up. Sweating profusely now, the man hoisted the boy onto the plane and just passing me, he put the young man in the seat behind me. He didn’t just dump him into the seat, mind you. He set him there, gently. There was value in the man’s attitude toward the boy. Something deep.

The plane was one of those little commuter jobs, one seat on my side of the plane and two seats on the other, perhaps six rows like that. Holding the boy in place, the man put the seat belt around his waist, then put a second belt, which he carried with him, around the boy’s chest and the seat so his fragile body wouldn’t slump over. The last thing the man did, after taking his seat just across the aisle, was to reach out and take his son's hand and hold it as we raced down the runway.

During the flight, we hit some rough weather a couple of times. The plane was tossed back and forth, up and down. Those little commuters tend to be shaken much easier than the big planes. It was during some of the roughest moments, the boy behind me lost his stomach and threw up. Calmly, and with a tenderness born of love, the man gently spoke to his son, as he wiped the mess from his face and clothes.

“Are you alright, son?”

A garbled, “Ahh . . .” escaped the lips of the boy.

“Don’t worry. It’s O.K.”

The stewardess brought some wet towels back and attempted to clean up the mess, but, with a smile of thanks, the man took them from her. He proceeded to wipe his boy’s face and clothes, then the chair and floor. With something bordering on spiritual humility, he handed the cloths back to the stewardess, and calmly took his seat.

The turbulence continued and in a short time the episode was repeated. It was like watching an instant replay on some sports show. The man was just as loving and tender the second time as he was the first. His attitude of love never wavered even though, I am guessing, he went through these kinds of things day after day. I’m not a particularly emotional man, but my eyes filled with tears.

I have no idea who that man was (No. Wait a minute, it was Jesus.). I only know he was a great man, and he taught me something about love and faith that day and changed my life, if only just a little bit. I may never see him again, but I’ll remember him always. In fact, I must never forget.

Another Favorite Poem

2005-02-11T10:54:00.000-06:00

The Convert

After one moment when I bowed my head
And the whole world turned over and came upright,
And I came out where the old road shone white,
I walked the ways and heard what all men said . . .
Forests of tongues, like autumn leaves unshed,
Being not unlovable but strange and light;
Old riddles and new creeds, not in despite
But softly, as men smile about the dead.
The sages have a hundred maps to give
They trace their crawling cosmos like a tree,
They rattle out reason through many a sieve
That stores the sand and lets the gold go free:
And all these things are less than dust to me
Because my name is Lazarus and I live.

G.K. Chesterton

Out, Out Brief Candle

2005-02-11T09:51:00.000-06:00

A fine man, a generous heart, and a friend just died. He was aged. We expect old people to die. This is how life is. We are born; we grow up; we get old; we die. I have some other friends who lost a child. He was a little over a week old. An odd twist of fate caused his death. This we do not expect. This we mourn over. This hurts . . . perhaps for as long as we live. We struggle with questions when such things occur. Why? The bane of mankind is not necessarily our death or that of a loved one, but our inability to understand.

Shakespeare has Macbeth mourning the premature death of his wife with these words:

She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Without God all this is too desperately true. Even with God the hurt is still painful, but hope is present and offers some peace.

My Favorite Poem

2005-02-11T09:19:00.000-06:00

Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou are not so:
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death; not yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy picture be,
Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow;
And soonest our best men with thee do go-
Rest of their bones and souls' delivery.
Thou'rt slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men, And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke. Why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And Death shall be no more:
Death, thou shalt die! -John Donne

Polio Praises

2005-02-10T11:49:00.000-06:00

I was sitting on a rough-sawn bench in a hand-made cement block church building in Tema, Ghana West Africa. There were, perhaps, 300 people there with me. We were singing a song of praise. I was seated close to the front, on the end of a bench, by an opening where a window would eventually be. It was HOT. I needed the breeze. I was gazing out the window and saw someone coming down the dirt road leading up to the building. It was a thirtyish man. He was in a wheel chair. The chair was propelled by a bicycle-type crank (like a pedal) moved by hand and arm power. He was a polio victim.

When the man got to the stairs that led into the building, he dragged himself off the seat, sat on the bottom step and began raising himself backward one step at a time. When he reached the top step and turned to a crawling position, I noticed that he had a pair of flip flops (rubber sandals) on his hands. I also noticed that his legs were without muscle, mere bones covered with skin. His knees were thickly calloused.

The door he came in was at the front of the building between the pews and the platform where the song-leader and, later, the preacher stood. Everyone in the building watched the cripple. No one rose to assist him. He crawled across the front until he got to the center aisle. No seats up front. He turned and crawled to the back row where there were a couple of open spots on one of the benches. Without aid he struggled to raise himself to a sitting position on the bench; he turned his sweat-wet face toward the songleader, raised his head back . . . and sang praises to God!