The last few months, I’ve had the privilege of speaking in some of our Sunday gatherings. I thought I’d post the recordings here. So, if you feel so inclined, take a listen.
Repost: Dead, Yet Alive
This was first posted on June 15, 2012.
Those of you who have read this blog over the past three or four months know that one of the topics I wrote a fair amount on was death. Death to self, dying for others. Those posts came out of some recent experiences, and as I was thinking about them the other day, I was concerned that I may have come across as a bit morose. Over the last couple of months, I have learned a few things. Believe it or not, I am still very much a work in progress and am continually learning.
The biggest thing that I am learning is the difference between what so many of us see as living, and what Scripture tells us about life. Many people (Christians included) see life as all about getting as much stuff as you can. That stuff can be money and possessions, or career satisfaction and success. It can be friends and followers, or family. It can be any number of things. The prosperity gospel preachers tell us that if we just have faith, God will give us a life filled with health and wealth, and devoid of problems. Some preachers preach that if we just love everyone, our lives will be filled with friends. Many evangelicals preach that if we follow a number of steps (based on the Bible of course) we will have great marriages, successful children, and a joyous life. Even those who look on horrified at all those things teach that if we keep all the rules our life will be wonderful.
In John 10:10, Jesus states that he came so we could have an abundant life. There are many places in Scripture where a life of following Jesus is presented as the ultimate way to live. Jesus says in Luke 17:33 that those who lose their lives for his sake will find life. In Luke 18, Jesus states that those who give up family, etc. to follow him will receive those things back, and then some. Jesus does call us to come and die. He also says that dying is the way to real, abundant life. The problem comes when we expect that abundant life to include lots of friends, success in our endeavors, good health, enough money to do anything we want, or anything else we think will make us happy. We are like those described by C.S. Lewis in Weight of Glory, “It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
We tend to see life in terms of what we can see and touch, when the life Jesus offers us rises far above the mundane things of this life. We are far too easily pleased. We set our sights on things that will pass away and miss the eternal pleasures the Father has for us right now. I wonder how many of those who believe God is in the business of giving them whatever they want believe that they will have those things in the new heavens and new earth. I hope none of us really believe that the things of this earth are the things that count. We do act like it many times.
As Christ calls us to die, let us remember that he also calls us to live. Live in him.
Goodbye and Hello
2017 has passed into history. There have been a few years in recent memory to which I bid “Good riddance.” This past year is not one of those. 2017 was a good year for me and my family. Jan and I became grandparents. Twice. I started a new job, which I love. There were some hiccups. It was not a perfect year, but overall it was peaceful, without the drama of some recent years.
As I look back on the past year, I am thankful for the good things that God has blessed us with. Grandchildren and the new job are right up there at the top of the list, along with a deepening of our relationship as husband and wife. Our relationships with our friends has also grown stronger, and we are grateful for them. This year has been more active than most, but we have been blessed with the energy we needed. I have no idea what 2018 holds. I hope that it is as good as 2017, but I realize that it may not be.
I don’t know if your past year was good or bad. I don’t know if you are looking forward to this new year or not. I do know how it feels to be glad one year is gone and also dread the coming year. While I can’t totally understand what everyone goes through, I can empathize. I can also hope and pray with you that 2018 is a good year for you.
Let me encourage you to trust God this coming year. There may be times when you can’t even begin to figure out what he is doing, or if he is even working at all. Those times when you can’t see his hand at work, trust his heart. Trust that the Father’s love for you is so strong that he will never let anything come into your life that he does not use for your good. The last part of Romans 8 is true. There is absolutely nothing on earth or in heaven that can separate you from Abba’s love.
Don’t live this year worrying about the state of your finances, your health, your relationships. Don’t be worried about the future of the country’s politics, or world affairs. The Creator of all things, who is your Father, is in complete control. Since even the fall of a tiny bird doesn’t escape God’s attention, trust that he has your situation firmly in hand. As Julian of Norwich said, “…all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”
May your 2018 be full of the love of Abba!
Some Things I Don’t Understand
A young teenage girl died this week. She left behind family and friends who loved her dearly. I know all the things that are true. She lived far longer than expected. She is no longer in pain. God is good and kind and he is in control. I know all that and I believe all that. Still, there are some things I don’t understand.
Last night some of us sat with two friends of the young lady. Most of that time was spent in silence. We grieved with them. At this time, it’s the only thing we could do. I spent some time wondering about the brokenness of this world and the pain that we humans have to endure. Jan and I have lost both of our parents in the last few years. That kind of thing is more normal. Children are “supposed” to outlive their parents.
This is different. Parents are not supposed to bury their children. Teenagers are not supposed to spend evenings grieving for other teenagers. People are not supposed to die that young. This world is not supposed to be the way it is. Even though I know the creation is broken and groaning because of sin, I still don’t understand why it sometimes works out the way it does. Even though I know God is good and compassionate, I still don’t understand why this compassion sometimes plays out the way it does.
I know and believe that my Father is loving. I know and believe that his love extends to the young lady and the family and friends she left behind. Having said that, I still have to admit that I don’t understand. The only thing I can do is try to trust my Father’s heart. I have to trust that Romans 8 is right, that God works in everything for the good of those who love him. I have to believe, not only for me, but in some way for my friends who lost a loved one.
I have to trust my Father because I can’t trust my own understanding.
A New Morning
It was quite definitely early morning now, not late night.
“I’m so cold,” said Lucy.
“So am I,” said Susan. “Let’s walk about a bit.”
They walked to the eastern ridge of the hill and looked down. The one big star had almost disappeared. The country all looked dark gray, but beyond, at the very end of the world, the sea showed pale. The sky began to turn red. They walked to and fro more times than they could count between the dead Aslan and the eastern ridge, trying to keep warm, and oh, how tired their legs felt. Then at last, as they stood for a moment looking out toward the sea and Cair Paravel (which they could just now make out) the red turned to gold along the line where the sea and the sky met and very slowly up came the edge of the sun. At that moment they heard from behind them a loud noise–a great cracking, deafening noise as if a giant had cracked a giant’s plate.
“What’s that?” said Lucy, clutching Susan’s arm.
“I–I feel afraid to turn round,” said Susan; “something awful is happening.”
“They’re doing something worse to Him,” said Lucy, “Come on!” And she turned, pulling Susan round with her.
The rising of the sun made everything look so different–all colors and shadows were changed–that for a moment they didn’t see the important thing. Then they did. The Stone Table was broken into two pieces by a great crack that ran down it from end to end, and there was no Aslan.
“Oh, oh, oh!” cried the two girls, rushing back to the Table.
“Oh, it’s too bad,” sobbed Lucy; “they might have left the body alone.”
“Who’s done it?” cried Susan. “What does it mean? Is it more magic?”
“Yes!” said a great voice behind their backs. “It is more magic.” They looked round. There, shining in the sunrise, larger than they had seen him before, shaking his mane (for it had apparently grown again) stood Aslan himself.
“Oh, Aslan!” cried both the children, staring up at him, almost as much frightened as they were glad.
“Aren’t you dead then, dear Aslan?” said Lucy.
“Not now,” said Aslan.
“You’re not–not a–?” asked Susan in a shaky voice. She couldn’t bring herself to say the word ghost. Aslan stooped his golden head and licked her forehead. The warmth of his breath and a rich sort of smell that seemed to hang about his hair came all over her.
“Do I look it?” he said.
“Oh, you’re real, you’re real! Oh Aslan!” cried Lucy, and both girls flung themselves upon him and covered him with kisses.
“But what does it all mean?” asked Susan when they were somewhat calmer.
“It means,” said Aslan, “that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backward.”
C.S. Lewis: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
Christ is risen!
Church Signs: “The Best Thing We Can Give Someone…
…Is Our Prayers.”
Usually my church signs posts are about the disagreements I have with the message on a particular sign. This time I agree with the message, to a point.
We are encouraged and commanded to give our requests to our Father, whether those requests are for ourselves or for others. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus tells us that we are to ask God to change a person’s heart when anything we might say to them would be like giving pearls to pigs. Prayer is important and it is a perfect way to show others that we care.
Unfortunately, it’s far too easy for us to use prayer as an excuse to avoid doing things for people. We’ll say that we will pray for someone when we have the ability to help them out ourselves. Sometimes we simply forget to even pray for them. That is not a good thing. James tells us that if we say, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” it does no good. In the same way, if we say, “I’ll pray for you,” but don’t help when we can, it does no good.
The criticism that Christians are more interested in a person’s soul than their physical needs has some validation if the only thing we do is pray. At the same time, prayer is not a last resort when nothing else is working. We need to do both. We are to pray for the kingdom to come and for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven, and sometimes we are the means through which that happens.
The best thing we can give others is prayer, and our help, and our love.
Following Jesus: Part 3-Loving Others
The second of the two commandments Jesus said summed up the Law and the Prophets is love your neighbor as yourself. This is another way we follow Jesus. In John 15, Jesus gave a new command. He said we were to love our brothers and sisters as he loved us.
The love that Jesus commands us to practice is a love that puts others first. It is a love that sacrifices for others, even to the point of laying down our lives. It is a love that does the same for others that Jesus did for us.
One of the primary reasons the early church turned the world upside down was their love, for each other and for their neighbors. The first Christians were well known for the way they cared for their brothers and sisters and the way they looked past social, racial, and other differences to form a family with God as their Father. They were also known for caring for their neighbors, often putting themselves at risk. No matter what else was said about the early followers of Jesus, it was obvious that they loved others in a way far different from the culture around them.
It seems as if those who of us who call ourselves followers of Jesus are known more for what we are against and our fighting than for our love for others. We seem to be quite willing to forget the command to lay down our lives in exchange for what we think is power and influence. At times our worship seems to be more about ourselves than about the One who gave his life for us. The things that capture our imaginations are many times antithetical to the Kingdom and are self-centered instead of others-centered.
Loving others as Jesus loved us means giving up our “rights,” our interests, our wants, for the good of others. While we may be willing to step in front of a bullet for someone, how willing are we to give up our time, comfort, or possessions? How willing are we to essentially become nothing so that Christ might be glorified and others benefited?
Following Jesus can be distilled into two commands. We love God with every fiber of our being, and we love others. Everything thing else flows from that. It is not an easy thing to do. In fact, it is impossible if we try to do it in our own strength. If we belong to Jesus, we have his Spirit in us giving us the ability to love as we are called to love.
Following Jesus: Part 2-Loving God
If we follow Jesus, we will seek to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. The problem is that we don’t often really know what it is that we love. We may think that we love God, but our love actually belongs to something else. We pursue a different version of what the good life is, a different kingdom. In You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit, James K. A. Smith makes the case that we are primarily loving beings and that our love is formed by habits and liturgies that we engage in. Many of the things that we do in our day-to-day shape us and present a vision of a life worth living that is antithetical to the kingdom of God.
Smith makes the point that our love for God is formed and strengthened by the liturgy of the church through the centuries. Coming from a background where we said that we didn’t do liturgy (even though it really was a liturgy of sorts,), I have come to appreciate the parts of a worship service, from the greeting and call to worship where we are welcomed by God and called to come apart and lift him up, to the benediction where we receive one final blessing from God and are sent out to bring his Kingdom to bear in our day-to-day. In between, we sing praises to God, confess our sin and receive a reminder of his forgiveness. We give a portion of what God has given to us as an act of worship, and we hear the truth, goodness, and beauty of Jesus from the words of Scripture. We gather around the table and remember what Christ has done for us and receive a foretaste of the feast to come in the new heavens and earth.
All of these things have deepened my love for God, his Kingdom, and his people. I have found that they have begun to work in me to wean my heart from those things the culture says we need to flourish. I have a long way to go, but I am confident that God will continue to work in me and give me a heart for him.
May we all come to love our Father more and more.
Following Jesus: Part 1
When Jesus called people to follow him, they understood that he was calling them to spend time with him, to listen to him, and to learn to relate to God as he did. For Jesus, this meant seeing God as Father and following God’s commands. Jesus did something a bit different than the other rabbis though. He went to the spirit of the Law rather than just the letter. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus taught that the Law went beyond actions all the way to the heart. Jesus then took the entire Law and boiled it down to two commands; love God with every fiber of your being, and love others as you love yourself. And then, Jesus gave us the new command to love our brothers and sisters as he loved us.
I believe that these two things sum up what it means to follow Jesus. We love God with all our hearts, with all our souls, with all our minds, and with all our strength. We spend time with our Father, we learn what is important to him and those things become important to us. We seek his Kingdom above everything else. This involves far more than just reading and even studying the Bible, although that is an important part of it. It involves far more than just hearing sermons and Bible lessons, although that too is important.
We live in a world that asks us to love other things in place of God. There are a number of things that clamor for our affections and allegiance. These things all present a vision of the good life, a vision of a kingdom. Like the Sirens, these things try to draw us into the treacherous rocks where ships run aground and are destroyed. I want to look at that in a future post.
May God help us to love him and follow his Son as our King.
Blast From the Past: Light
This was first posted on August 25, 2009.
Sunday morning we were talking about 1 John 1:5 , where John declares that God is light. That verse is one of the few times where Scripture says God is something. It’s hard for me to imagine pure light with no darkness at all. God is light, and that light is so pure that it is impossible for one of us to see God and live. Maybe taking the idea of staring at the sun and multiplying it by infinity might approach the idea of God being light, but probably not.
Now think of Adam and Eve in the Garden before the Fall, spending their time in God’s presence. They walked and talked with their Creator. Were they pure enough to be able to see the glory of God and still live? I think that they were, even though I can’t wrap my tiny brain around that. Unfortunately, that purity and close relationship was broken by sin, and people could no longer stand to see God. Moses only saw the afterglow of God’s presence and had to put a veil on because the people couldn’t even stand to look on that reflection of God’s glory.
Then along comes Jesus, the One called the Light of the world. He revealed the Father to us and abolished the barrier between us and God by his death, burial, and resurrection. Now we are the light of the world. Think about what that means. If people are to see the glory of God, they will see it in those of us who follow Jesus. Jesus said that people don’t take a light and hide it, but rather allow it’s light to shine. In the same way, we are not to hide the light of God that is in us, but we are to live our lives in such a way that people see God in us.
I believe that we let our light shine by taking it where the darkness is. If you light a candle outside on a sunny day, there is not much light seen from that candle. In the same way, if the only time we shine is when we are with other followers of Jesus, our light is not going to be as bright. We also can’t sit behind walls and lob “truth grenades” at those outside and expect any light to be seen. We need to shine where those living in darkness can see God’s light in us.