Technical difficulties

Technology is a great blessing, but it can also become a burden when it doesn’t work as it should.  My new car features voice commands (similar to the Siri for iPhone that is currently popular).  The computer within the car responds to the sound of your voice and calls people, plays music, gives the weather and has other useful features.  When things are going well, what you say is what you get.  When you mumble or have background noise, the result is less than accurate.  

I think sometimes our spiritual lives are very similar.  We are blessed to have many versions of the Bible, many Christian friends, a loving church family and to live in a place where being a Christian is not dangerous.  We have many advantages and when we use them correctly, we are blessed and are able to grow.  The problem comes in the fact that although we have all these blessings at our fingertips, we often do not take advantage of them.  We muddle through our days without enlisting the comfort of the Scripture and the counsel of Christian friends.  We fail to speak up and ask for prayer and we fail to use all the opportunities for fellowship we are presented with.  The advantages we have around us do not help us unless we resolve to use them to their full potential.  Let us resolve to get the most out of the blessings and opportunities we have available.  When we gain strength from these blessings, we can then turn and help others as well.

When you wonder if you are following Him...

"By this all men will know that you are My disciples - in that you love one another."

~Jesus

Gray-headed crown

The last time I was at the salon, my hairstylist, remarked, "You sure do have a lot of gray hair."  She said it more with more surprise than compliment in her voice.  Personally, I have always thought gray hair was attractive on many people, but I did share her concern that I was graying in my late twenties.

The Book of Proverbs declares that, "Gray hair is a mark of distinction; it is a gift of righteous living."  Why is something that our culture usually tries to hide considered an attractive feature in Biblical times?  I think a couple of reasons could be presented as valid.  Gray hair is usually associated with advancing age.  The Old Testament writers firmly believed that as a general rule the righteous would outlive the wicked.  While everyone knows of good people who die young and cruel-hearted people who live to be elderly, it is true that many ungodly choices lead to a decline in physical health.  Violence, drugs and alcohol and decisions made while impaired can all rob a person of the years that lead to gray hair.  I believe there is another reason that gray hair is considered virtuous in Scripture as well.  Many people associate gray hair with worry.  While it is certainly not good to be a worried individual, according to this reasoning gray hair could well be a sign that a person has convictions and has made hard decisions.  People who never consider the consequences of their actions and who never wrestle with difficult moral choices cannot appreciate the beauty of wrinkles and the righteousness of gray hair.  Men with a conscience and an awareness of their own shortcomings bear these realizations in their physical bodies.  If gray hair is caused by stress, every thinking person should have a few gray hairs due to situations faced and overcome.

The next time you are looking in the mirror and see some wrinkles and some gray staring back at you, be thankful.  Many people never reach the maturity to see these signs of age.  With each line and each gray hair you can remember battles fought and won.  You will be able to say, "I may have gray hair, but I have a story for every single one."  Let us remember that maturing of the internal is more important than the adoring of the external.  Let us embrace who we are and the challenges and blessings that made us that way.

Church

There is something to be said for loving churches.  I have been fortunate enough to travel around the country and even some overseas and to see great cathedrals standing tall.  I have seen small buildings of brick and siding and large ones of glass and stone.  I have seen them with spires and bells, steeples and stained-glass.  Some church buildings are in and of themselves impressive, but to me the best churches are the ones who let what happens in them impress you more than the architecture.

These are buildings that house the simple sacredness of worship.  Powerful events like baptisms and communion take place within these walls.  People meet and gather and share and cry and pray and dream here.  Soon we realize that it is not the building that makes a church at all: it is rather the people that come together with one purpose and one vision.  This gathering can take place in an open field, under a summer tent, in a living room, in a jail cell or in a coffee shop.  If Scripture says that God is no respecter of persons, certainly He is no respecter of buildings either.

The next time that you say, "I am going to church," I hope you will be thinking of the people rather than the place.  Where God's people dwell there is a church.  Always remember a Body, not a building, is what Christ died for.

What are you thankful for today?

What are you thankful for today?

Take 5 minutes as you sit at your desk to list some specific areas of gratitude in your life.  Often we pray generally, "Thank You LORD for all our many blessings." We need to learn to be more specific in prayer.  Thank God today for a person, a possession, a pet or some other special blessing in your life.  We must realize that we are only given this moment in which to praise and be thankful.  The past is gone and the future uncertain: give thanks while you have opportunity.

"Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning."

- James 1:17

"Read the Bible in a commonsense way. Pray after you have read it as much as you like. When you are reading it, if you come to a knotty point, do not skip it. You all have some Christian friend who knows more than you do; go to him and try to get the thing explained. Above all, when you have read any passage, and do understand it, act it out, and ask the Spirit of God to burn the meaning into your conscience till it is written on the fleshy tables of your heart."

-Charles H. Spurgeon on Bible study

"Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  Love never fails..."

-St. Paul in his first letter to the Corinthian church

From my files...

Paul begins II Corinthians 3 speaking of the fact that he and his fellow workers were well known to the Corinthian brethren. Other than his time in Ephesus and his earliest ministry in Cilicia, Paul spent more time in Corinth than in any other mission point during his ministry.

In verse 2, Paul says that the Corinthian Christians "are our epistle (letter) written in our hearts, known and read by all men." In other words, the actions of the Christian community at Corinth were a testimony to Paul's witness and word among them. In verse 3, Paul further states that "clearly you are an epistle of Christ." Not only did the Corinthians manner of life reflect the touch of Paul's pastoral hand, their lives shone with the very radiance of the personage of Jesus.

It might be good to think of each new day as a blank page of letterhead in a typewriter. With each thought, action and word, we type a few words upon the page. What we type reflects what has influenced us. Does our letter shine with the words and message of Jesus or does it contain things more fitting the prince of darkness than the Prince of Peace? Once the ink is applied to the page, it is difficult to remove the stain. Liquid Paper, White Out or a blotter may be used to erase the words, but the page will never look perfect again. Similarly, we who are in Christ have the ability to have our mistakes (sins) blotted out and covered over, but our lives are still impacted by their consequences. We may change our heart, but spiritual scar tissue remains. Thankfully, God has better vision than we do. When He divinely intercedes and removes the words of hurt, hate or hostility from our story, we are in essence given a fresh sheet of paper and told to start again. Though we often fall short, God's love never fails to cleanse the canvas of our lives and make us new.

If a person "read" your life, who do you suppose it would be a letter from? Would it be a "living epistle" of Christ or more like a nasty note from Satan?

Praying that we all become more Christ-filled and Christ-like as we live our lives from day to day so that our living letter reflects the love of Jesus to everyone we meet.

Letter versus Spirit

Some people make a great claim on righteousness.  They can tell you of all the good deeds they accomplish and all the evil they avoid.  They generally speak of things that are either done or left undone.  While it is certainly commendable to do good and to abstain from evil actions, there is another layer to righteousness that often goes overlooked.

Jesus spoke five times in Matthew 5 contrasting the Law of Moses with the new way of viewing the commandments that He was imparting to His disciples.  Moses had instructed the people to avoid wrongdoing (i.e. Thou shalt not murder, thou shalt not commit adultery, etc.).  Jesus tells His disciples it is not enough to avoid wrong action, but rather we must eliminate even the desire for wrong action.  Many a person can say they have never committed murder, but how many can say they have never been angry with their fellow man?  Most people never commit adultery physically, but how many can say they have never entertained impure thoughts?

To free ourselves of evil thoughts we must stay busy in good works and continually focus our minds on holy things.  If we can fill our minds with good things we will by necessity have less opportunity for evil.

Let us strive to keep not merely the letter of the Law which can be met, but to continually yearn to keep the Spirit of the Law which is limitless.

(Thanks to William Barclay's Commentary on Matthew for the source of these thoughts.)

Remiss

I realize that the month of November was not an active one here on the blog.  I am glad many of you are continue to read/watch the things I post here despite my recent infrequency.

We are beginning a study of the Sermon on the Mount on Sundays.  I am studying more for this class than I have studied in a long time and I am being amazed by the simple yet wonderful depth of Jesus' teachings.  We are using Matthew's account and I am looking forward to sharing my observations with our class.  Commentaries abound and I am making use of several different perspectives on the text.  While not embracing it totally personally, I have become a distant admirer of Reformed theology over the last year.  I believe this has been reflected in my preaching more than my Bible class teaching thus far.  The more I read and study about the nature of God and the personhood of Jesus the more I realize how little I know about those important subjects.  Books have become my seminary and I am thankful to be able to grow in knowledge.

May God continue to bless you on your journey and I do hope to be writing more soon.

"Whom have I in heaven but You? And there is none upon earth that I desire besides You."

-David in Psalm 73

"Enter into His gates with thanksgiving,

And into His courts with praise.

Be thankful to Him, and bless His name."

-Psalm 100

Pray for study

This Thursday, Lord willing, I will be meeting with some Mormons to talk about the Scriptures.  This is my fourth or fifth meeting with LDS missionaries, but only my second with these two guys.  Our first meeting lasted over an hour and they seemed open to discussing some deeper issues.  Most of my encounters with LDS members in the past have led to mutual respect but no lasting results.  For some reason I feel that at least one of these young men may be different.

Please pray that I will have God's Spirit and God's words as I speak to these young men.  Imagine what great missionaries converted LDS members would make?!  We are slowly building up to some important questions and I hope that we will find common ground in the truth of God's word.

Thanks for all you do.

Foolish?

What would you say if someone called you foolish?  We think of the title of being a fool as an insulting thing.  Jesus even taught that someone who uses the word fool in an attack against another person is in danger of hell (Matthew 5:22).  Yet the apostle Paul describes the message of the Gospel as foolishness in 1 Corinthians 1.  What is the difference and how can we reconcile these messages?

I believe Jesus is saying that to pass judgment on another person puts one in danger of eternal punishment.  After all, when you call someone a fool you are assuming that you are more wise than they.  This wisdom might be called worldly wisdom or the wisdom of men.  When we judge by this standard, we are in grave danger.

Paul teaches that God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise.  He speaks of the message of the Gospel as foolishness to Gentiles and a stumbling block to the Jews.  What I believe Paul is saying is that there is nothing rational about the Gospel message.  Many Christians today try to prove with apologetics and empirical facts the truth of the Gospel.  This is simply not possible nor is it necessary.  Christian faith requires that the believer agree to things that, from the perspective of worldly wisdom, seem quite foolish.  While faith can be supported by evidence, we cannot require evidence for every aspect of our faith.  We are blessed who have not seen and yet believe.

If we are to be fools, let us be fools for Christ and not the foolish followers of earthly wisdom.

"Then He said to them, “With fervent desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer..."
-Luke 22:15

Object of our worship

One trend that I see when I listen to men within our fellowship teach and preach is an apparent confusion about Who we worship.  In trying to assert the absolute authority of the Bible, many bow down before the printed page as the object of worship.  While it is true that Jesus is the Word, making the Bible the central focus of our worship can be a dangerous prospect.  We generally giving the largest portion of our assemblies to preaching and Bible study.  Prayer seems quite neglected in many churches and reflection even more so.  God has promised (as we know from the Bible, both Old and New Testaments) that He will be Lord of our lives in first position or we are not giving Him His rightful place.  To replace the Sovereign LORD with words about Him is to put an idol between us and God.  We know God through the Scripture, true, but we need to appreciate that our worship is directed by Scripture toward the Father.  Only when God is LORD to us does the Scripture find its proper place as a revealer of His nature and desires.

"When you talk, do not say harmful things, but say what people need--words that help others become stronger."

-Ephesians 4:29 (NCV)

"For great is your love, higher than the heavens;
your faithfulness reaches to the skies.
Be exalted, O God, above the heavens,
and let your glory be over all the earth."
-Psalm 108:4-5