Greetings,
There are times when I just don’t want to hear words being sent in my direction. Something about this week has been that way and so I’ve been listening to a lot of instrumental Jazz this week – especially a new live double disc from Return to Forever.
I’m not sure why the avoidance of words is such a big deal for me this week, but it is. I think it started Sunday when I felt moved to throw out the words I had written on the page and take off in a totally different direction. I haven’t done that in years. But out of the blue and somewhat against my will, an hour before the sermon, I found myself praying like Robert Duvall in the movie ‘The Apostle’ .
As you know if you are a regular reader of this blurb, my heart has been heavy over the last few weeks for the condition of the church, for the shallowness of the faith in people’s lives, for the unwillingness to truly change. Well, none of that has changed and yet in the midst of my prayer scream on Sunday morning I realized (duh) that we are in the midst of Spiritual warfare and to be honest some people seem to be going down in the cross fire.
I have to continually remind myself that my responsibility is to proclaim the truth to the best of my ability. I have no control over the outcome of people’s lives. But I want to. I want to just slap people into submission. I want to turn a switch and make them be new people. I want to solve the problems of the world with the twitch of my nose. Yes, I want to be Samantha Stevens instead of Brad Stephens. I want the gospel to be magic but it’s not.
I’m tired of hearing empty words when it comes right down to it. I’m tired of hearing the word change without seeing change. I’m tired of people saying the word 'repent' right before they turn and run in the opposite direction. I’m probably just tired of me, who can be the embodiment of all of those things without much effort.
I’m not sure why I am this frustrated because good things really are happening, extraordinary things. Just this week I was called to baptize four women who made professions of faith last week when I spoke at the local jail. I haven’t baptized an adult in 25 years. The joy that flooded my soul at the sight of those women coming up from the water shivering with excitement (and frigid water), the excitement that was in their faces, was tarnished for me by the knowledge of the difficulty of the journey that lays before them. To rehash a saying from awhile back, will their baptism take?
Will gang life, addiction, abuse, and dysfunction overwhelm what has happened in their lives the last couple of weeks? Truthfully? Not if it was for real. If Christ has truly sent his Spirit to abide in them then nothing can stop their transformation. They are new creatures and they will always be new creatures even if the life they used to lead tramples them down and leaves them for dead.
It’s the ‘for real’ part that has me worried. When was the last time I saw a ‘for real’ conversion. Part of that inquiry is due to a blurring of lines and dumbing down of the good news into tidy packages because if I am honest with myself I see conversion in my life on a regular basis. Compare the me of 5, 10, 15 years ago to the me of today and you will see night and day difference but you have to spread it out over time to see it. Compare me yesterday and today and not much seems to have happened.
Salvation is not a one time shot. It is a life time shot. I’m finally beginning to see that I was saved before the foundation of the world but that salvation has been working its way out in my life since before I was born. Yes, I was born dead in my sins but the plan of God had secured me in spite of my condition. Even when I didn’t have a clue, God had a plan. At 5 when I walked down the aisle because the kid next to me did, God had a plan. On December 11, 1971 at the age of 11 when I was told to remember the date of my salvation, God had a plan. He began the process of saving me before I was a glimmer in my parent’s eyes.
Did he show me the fullness of my salvation all at once? Not on your life because if he would have shown me the pain that salvation would bring into my life I would have turned and run away. But God took me where I was and saved me from myself in a way that I could understand at the time. Was I any less saved at 11 than now, not at all, I was just different. I was immature I was a babe in every sense of the word. In many ways, I still am. but maybe I’ve moved from newborns to pull ups. It’s hard to tell when you can’t really see what grownups are supposed to look like.
So while I can feel for those women and for all the others who are in the midst of facing repentance on a day to day basis, I still have hope. I have hope that my baptism will continue to take after all these years. I have hope that he who began a good work will be faithful to complete it. I have hope that the gates of hell will not remain standing against the onslaught of the Kingdom of God. I have hope that of all the ones that the Father has given to the Son he will not lose a single one.
I have hope because God is God and I am not.
In the immortal words of the Reverend Al Green: Take me to the river, drop me in the water.
(and keep it up til the old man is good and drowned).
Grace and peace,
Brad
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Sunday Sermon 8-1-10
Last week I spoke from second chronicles about the rediscovery of the law in the temple just a few years before they went into captivity. I want to continue in that same direction today. Like Josiah’s day, the church has been captive to non-biblical ideas and ways of doing things for a long time – since long before I was born. I believe God is beginning to prepare some of his people for the task of rebuilding the body of Christ so that when the nation we live in is finally judged for its iniquities there will be a remnant of the people of God whose faith is built upon the whole word of God and who can demonstrate enough wisdom in the midst of the foolishness that surrounds them that they will be able to lead the people in righteousness in every area of life.
I’m sure you’ve heard me pray for God to give us eyes to see. We can’t move in the things of God unless we see them. God could be moving in people’s lives right next to you, even in your own family but if you don’t have the eyes to see it you will miss what God is doing. I want to show a short video that will demonstrate how easy it is to miss what is going on right in front of you. Now if you have seen this video before don’t say anything to ruin it for everybody else.
http://viscog.beckman.illinois.edu/flashmovie/15.php
So, what is it going to take for you to see the gorilla of what the Holy Spirit is doing here, now in our midst? You can live for years without seeing it but once you do you can never go back to seeing things the same way again. I have tried several times to watch that video and not see the gorilla like the first time but I can’t do it, I can’t go back to the way it was.
It was the same way for me with the understanding of the Sovereignty of God, with the law of God, with the moving of the Holy Spirit in people’s lives. Once I got a glimpse of a new way of seeing things I couldn’t go back again. That is a part of what it means to begin to think Christianly in every area of life.
In my own life, I did not begin to understand the importance of the law of God until I was 25 years old. I had never even considered that the law of God was meant to be applied to my life before that. I certainly never thought of it as the path to life. I couldn’t see the gorilla because I was too busy looking at other things. When I saw the gorilla of the law my life was changed forever because I could no longer go back to the scriptures and look at them the old way again. My eyes had changed. Scientists call that a paradigm shift. Something clicked in my head which allowed me to see that the law applied to me, that it was meant for my good and I had to repent of despising God’s word and learn to embrace it.
You see when I was younger I had a passion for God. I hungered after God. I wanted God to do things but I wanted God to do things on my terms. I wanted to play the god game using my rules. And my rules were that the law didn’t apply: That the Old Testament wasn’t for me; that repentance just meant asking for forgiveness; that becoming more like Christ didn’t mean giving up doing the sin that I loved so much. You see I didn’t want to be set free: I just want life to be easy and the trip to heaven to be cheap. But the truth is life isn’t easy and getting to heaven is anything but cheap – it costs your life. You have to die on the cross. You have to take up your cross and die daily. If you don’t die to you, you don’t get to heaven.
You can be saved and still be a mess. In fact, you should be a mess at the beginning of the journey just like a newborn baby is a mess when he or she comes out of the womb. There is a lot of cleaning up and growing up to do from the time you’re born until the time you arrive in the presence of God the father.
Seeing your true condition can be a precursor to repentance and change. I had to come to grips to what I was really like and how messed up I really was before I became willing to change. It was another gorilla that I had to recognize. I had to make another paradigm shift so that I could view reality more fully and live in keeping with the truth of reality.
I want to go back to second Chronicles today and begin to develop this theme some more. We read last week that during the time of Josiah the church rediscovered the law. Josiah had a heart for God early on in his life which is kind of weird because he didn’t come from a good Christian family. You can read about the evils of his daddy and his granddaddy in chapter 33 of 2nd chronicles.
And yet in spite of his family life, early on Josiah begins to have a heart for God. Verse three of chapter 34 tells when he was 16 years old he began to seek the God of his father David; and by the time he was 20 he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem of the graven images that were throughout the land of Israel, or in reality throughout the church, because Israel is a type, a picture of the church. He has a passion for God even without the scriptures. Remember up to this point the law has been lost and that was all of the word of God there was. So in some sense he is working solely by the unction of the Holy Spirit here. But then at the age of 26 God uncovers the word of God for him, the law is found and when he hears it for the first time he tears his clothes in mourning for the condition of the church.
But, even though Josiah had a heart for God, when trouble came knocking on his door he was still too young and too unfamiliar with the path of life to have acquired biblical wisdom. I can finally admit this on the brink of fifty looking back on my own life: Having a heart for God doesn’t keep you from the consequences of being stupid and acting like a fool. God calls us to wisdom and very few of his people make it there. Josiah’s lack of wisdom cost him his life. He rushed into war to protect his nation against the very words of God. He died in the process. And yet God used him to lay a path for those who would come after his death.
Some time in the 39 years between the death of Josiah and the fall of Israel to Bablyon, probably about midway through those dark times, Daniel is born and his parents or somebody raise him with the knowledge of the law, and to be humble before God. From what I can gather, Daniel was somewhere around 14 when what we read in Daniel chapter one was written: 1 During the third year of King Jehoiakim’s reign in Judah, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it. 3 Then the king ordered his chief of staff, to bring to the palace some of the young men of Judah’s royal family and other noble families, who had been brought to Babylon as captives. 4 “Select only strong, healthy, and good-looking young men,” he said. “Make sure they are well versed in every branch of learning, are gifted with knowledge and good judgment, and are suited to serve in the royal palace. Train these young men in the language and literature of Babylon.” 5 The king assigned them a daily ration of food and wine from his own kitchens. They were to be trained for three years, and then they would enter the royal service. But Daniel was determined not to defile himself by eating the food and wine given to them by the king. He asked the chief of staff for permission not to eat these unacceptable foods. 9 Now God had given the chief of staff both respect and affection for Daniel. 10 But he responded, “I am afraid of my lord the king, who has ordered that you eat this food and wine. If you become pale and thin compared to the other youths your age, I am afraid the king will have me beheaded.” 11 Daniel spoke with the attendant who had been appointed by the chief of staff to look after them. 12 “Please test us for ten days on a diet of vegetables and water,” Daniel said. 13 “At the end of the ten days, see how we look compared to the other young men who are eating the king’s food. Then make your decision in light of what you see.” 14 The attendant agreed to Daniel’s suggestion and tested them for ten days. 15 At the end of the ten days, Daniel and his three friends looked healthier and better nourished than the young men who had been eating the food assigned by the king. 16 So after that, the attendant fed them only vegetables instead of the food and wine provided for the others. 17 God gave these four young men an unusual aptitude for understanding every aspect of literature and wisdom. And God gave Daniel the special ability to interpret the meanings of visions and dreams. 18 When the training period ordered by the king was completed, the chief of staff brought all the young men to King Nebuchadnezzar. 19 The king talked with them, and no one impressed him as much as Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. So they entered the royal service. 20 Whenever the king consulted them in any matter requiring wisdom and balanced judgment, he found them ten times more capable than any of the magicians and enchanters in his entire kingdom. 21 Daniel remained in the royal service until the first year of the reign of King Cyrus.
Now too often we make what Daniel did about eating healthy and not consuming alcohol but to do so is to miss the point. What we consume with regard to food and drink only defiles us if it breaks God’s commandments. In the time before Christ some foods were considered by God to be unclean. And they remained so until Christ atoned for their uncleanness on the cross. What Daniel did was obey the law of God that was in effect at that time. He refused to eat those things which would defile him in God’s eyes. This passage is not about the evils of desert verses the holiness of vegetables or liquor verses water. It is about honoring God in the midst of pagans. It is about choosing to think and act with the wisdom of God instead of the foolishness of men.
Daniel trusted the word of God. He trusted God. He trusted God enough that he was willing to have his captors put him to the test. Daniel was also wise enough at this young age to have compassion on others. He doesn’t want to see his guard punished for not doing what he was told to do. So he offers to let God prove himself to the captor’s satisfaction.
Notice how he acts toward his unbelieving boss: He says please. He puts the ball in his court. “Please test us for ten days and then see how we look compared to the other young men. Notice that Daniel doesn’t pray about this. You don’t need to pray about whether you should obey the Law of God or not. It is God’s will that you walk in obedience, period.
Daniel understood that God was big enough to make people do and see what he wanted them too. He knew that God would honor the keeping of his word. He trusted God to actually DO SOMETHING. So he wasn’t afraid of putting the ball in his boss’s court. He knew that God determines the outcome and he trusted God enough to believe that even if the outcome didn’t fit into his own preconceived notions it would be ok.
How many of us trust God that much? How many of us trust that no matter what happens in our lives we can rest in the fact that God has our best interests at heart? Or are we quick to say ‘do your will oh God’ and then even quicker to hold a grudge against God when his will doesn’t match up with our will. How many of us in here have a grudge against God right now? We say we trust God but do we?
Daniel trusted God enough to give the control over to an unbeliever. Test us and then do what you want. He didn’t try to manipulate the decision. He didn’t try to bribe anybody. He didn’t do anything except offer a suggestion and then wait on God to do what God was going to do.
How long until we give up being in charge and let God do what he is going to do in our lives? How long will we keep singing: I did it my way?
Well, God comes through for Daniel and he and his friends are allowed to follow after the commands of God. That is a big deal and again we miss the point if we think that what Daniel is asking to do is just eat healthy. No where in scripture are we commanded to eat healthy and live. We are commanded to obey God and live. We must remember that we are free in Christ Jesus to do anything, except sin. Daniel is laying the ground work for obedience to God in the midst of a pagan land, nothing more and nothing less.
He is sent to public school for three years to learn the ways of the Babylonians. He learns their language, he learns their ways. I’m sure he was taught about their gods but his education had already been laid upon the foundation of the law word of God and so he understood that all the facts that he was being taught were created by the only true God. The language he was learning was created by God because of man’s rebellion at the tower of Babel. He learned new facts from the right perspective and so he could understand them rightly and apply them in a godly manner.
God blessed his obedience and he served in leadership in a pagan government, altering the course of that nation, and leading its leader to direct conflict with God for around 70 years when the Babylonians were conquered by the Persians or the Iranians as we know them today.
What is the point of all of this? Simply that the nation we live in, the bosses we have, the rulers that are over us are not in control of anything. They are not the determiners of our lives, or our well being. God is. Our calling is to obey God’s word, all of it, and walk humbly with our God regardless of the circumstances that surround us. We are in the mess we are in today because we have refused to walk in obedience to the commands of God.
We must remember that God keeps his word. He breaks those who break his commands. He honors those who keep covenant with him and if you are in Christ Jesus he is going to do whatever it takes in your life to soften your heart until you are willing to humbly obey him. Even if like Josiah’s grandfather he has to put the enemies hooks in you until you repent. Don’t think for a minute that you can fake God out, that you can manipulate him to do what you want. He knows the condition of your heart better than you do. He knows the games you play to keep up appearances to your family and community and he is not amused. There are two choices: Fall on the Rock and be broken to pieces, or have the Rock fall on you and turn you to dust. It is a life or death decision.
I plead with you to make today the day you start being honest with God and with yourself and humbly bow your heart before him. The times we are in are life and death. There is no playing around we must begin to prepare now for the times ahead that we may be wise in our day of testing and not foolish in our passion for the Lord like Josiah was.
Let’s close with prayer. Most Holy Father: Have mercy on us please. I beg you to change our hearts. Open our eyes that we might see things from your perspective. Give us eyes to see the gorillas in our midst. In Jesus name we ask these things. Amen.
Hear this warning from the book of Second Chronicles chapter 33: 10-13 10 The Lord spoke to Manasseh and his people, but they ignored all his warnings. 11 So the Lord sent the commanders of the Assyrian armies, and they took Manasseh prisoner. They put a ring through his nose, bound him in bronze chains, and led him away to Babylon. 12 But while in deep distress, Manasseh sought the Lord his God and sincerely humbled himself before the God of his ancestors. 13 And when he prayed, the Lord listened to him and was moved by his request. So the Lord brought Manasseh back to Jerusalem and to his kingdom. Then Manasseh finally realized that the Lord alone is God!
I’m sure you’ve heard me pray for God to give us eyes to see. We can’t move in the things of God unless we see them. God could be moving in people’s lives right next to you, even in your own family but if you don’t have the eyes to see it you will miss what God is doing. I want to show a short video that will demonstrate how easy it is to miss what is going on right in front of you. Now if you have seen this video before don’t say anything to ruin it for everybody else.
http://viscog.beckman.illinois.edu/flashmovie/15.php
So, what is it going to take for you to see the gorilla of what the Holy Spirit is doing here, now in our midst? You can live for years without seeing it but once you do you can never go back to seeing things the same way again. I have tried several times to watch that video and not see the gorilla like the first time but I can’t do it, I can’t go back to the way it was.
It was the same way for me with the understanding of the Sovereignty of God, with the law of God, with the moving of the Holy Spirit in people’s lives. Once I got a glimpse of a new way of seeing things I couldn’t go back again. That is a part of what it means to begin to think Christianly in every area of life.
In my own life, I did not begin to understand the importance of the law of God until I was 25 years old. I had never even considered that the law of God was meant to be applied to my life before that. I certainly never thought of it as the path to life. I couldn’t see the gorilla because I was too busy looking at other things. When I saw the gorilla of the law my life was changed forever because I could no longer go back to the scriptures and look at them the old way again. My eyes had changed. Scientists call that a paradigm shift. Something clicked in my head which allowed me to see that the law applied to me, that it was meant for my good and I had to repent of despising God’s word and learn to embrace it.
You see when I was younger I had a passion for God. I hungered after God. I wanted God to do things but I wanted God to do things on my terms. I wanted to play the god game using my rules. And my rules were that the law didn’t apply: That the Old Testament wasn’t for me; that repentance just meant asking for forgiveness; that becoming more like Christ didn’t mean giving up doing the sin that I loved so much. You see I didn’t want to be set free: I just want life to be easy and the trip to heaven to be cheap. But the truth is life isn’t easy and getting to heaven is anything but cheap – it costs your life. You have to die on the cross. You have to take up your cross and die daily. If you don’t die to you, you don’t get to heaven.
You can be saved and still be a mess. In fact, you should be a mess at the beginning of the journey just like a newborn baby is a mess when he or she comes out of the womb. There is a lot of cleaning up and growing up to do from the time you’re born until the time you arrive in the presence of God the father.
Seeing your true condition can be a precursor to repentance and change. I had to come to grips to what I was really like and how messed up I really was before I became willing to change. It was another gorilla that I had to recognize. I had to make another paradigm shift so that I could view reality more fully and live in keeping with the truth of reality.
I want to go back to second Chronicles today and begin to develop this theme some more. We read last week that during the time of Josiah the church rediscovered the law. Josiah had a heart for God early on in his life which is kind of weird because he didn’t come from a good Christian family. You can read about the evils of his daddy and his granddaddy in chapter 33 of 2nd chronicles.
And yet in spite of his family life, early on Josiah begins to have a heart for God. Verse three of chapter 34 tells when he was 16 years old he began to seek the God of his father David; and by the time he was 20 he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem of the graven images that were throughout the land of Israel, or in reality throughout the church, because Israel is a type, a picture of the church. He has a passion for God even without the scriptures. Remember up to this point the law has been lost and that was all of the word of God there was. So in some sense he is working solely by the unction of the Holy Spirit here. But then at the age of 26 God uncovers the word of God for him, the law is found and when he hears it for the first time he tears his clothes in mourning for the condition of the church.
But, even though Josiah had a heart for God, when trouble came knocking on his door he was still too young and too unfamiliar with the path of life to have acquired biblical wisdom. I can finally admit this on the brink of fifty looking back on my own life: Having a heart for God doesn’t keep you from the consequences of being stupid and acting like a fool. God calls us to wisdom and very few of his people make it there. Josiah’s lack of wisdom cost him his life. He rushed into war to protect his nation against the very words of God. He died in the process. And yet God used him to lay a path for those who would come after his death.
Some time in the 39 years between the death of Josiah and the fall of Israel to Bablyon, probably about midway through those dark times, Daniel is born and his parents or somebody raise him with the knowledge of the law, and to be humble before God. From what I can gather, Daniel was somewhere around 14 when what we read in Daniel chapter one was written: 1 During the third year of King Jehoiakim’s reign in Judah, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it. 3 Then the king ordered his chief of staff, to bring to the palace some of the young men of Judah’s royal family and other noble families, who had been brought to Babylon as captives. 4 “Select only strong, healthy, and good-looking young men,” he said. “Make sure they are well versed in every branch of learning, are gifted with knowledge and good judgment, and are suited to serve in the royal palace. Train these young men in the language and literature of Babylon.” 5 The king assigned them a daily ration of food and wine from his own kitchens. They were to be trained for three years, and then they would enter the royal service. But Daniel was determined not to defile himself by eating the food and wine given to them by the king. He asked the chief of staff for permission not to eat these unacceptable foods. 9 Now God had given the chief of staff both respect and affection for Daniel. 10 But he responded, “I am afraid of my lord the king, who has ordered that you eat this food and wine. If you become pale and thin compared to the other youths your age, I am afraid the king will have me beheaded.” 11 Daniel spoke with the attendant who had been appointed by the chief of staff to look after them. 12 “Please test us for ten days on a diet of vegetables and water,” Daniel said. 13 “At the end of the ten days, see how we look compared to the other young men who are eating the king’s food. Then make your decision in light of what you see.” 14 The attendant agreed to Daniel’s suggestion and tested them for ten days. 15 At the end of the ten days, Daniel and his three friends looked healthier and better nourished than the young men who had been eating the food assigned by the king. 16 So after that, the attendant fed them only vegetables instead of the food and wine provided for the others. 17 God gave these four young men an unusual aptitude for understanding every aspect of literature and wisdom. And God gave Daniel the special ability to interpret the meanings of visions and dreams. 18 When the training period ordered by the king was completed, the chief of staff brought all the young men to King Nebuchadnezzar. 19 The king talked with them, and no one impressed him as much as Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. So they entered the royal service. 20 Whenever the king consulted them in any matter requiring wisdom and balanced judgment, he found them ten times more capable than any of the magicians and enchanters in his entire kingdom. 21 Daniel remained in the royal service until the first year of the reign of King Cyrus.
Now too often we make what Daniel did about eating healthy and not consuming alcohol but to do so is to miss the point. What we consume with regard to food and drink only defiles us if it breaks God’s commandments. In the time before Christ some foods were considered by God to be unclean. And they remained so until Christ atoned for their uncleanness on the cross. What Daniel did was obey the law of God that was in effect at that time. He refused to eat those things which would defile him in God’s eyes. This passage is not about the evils of desert verses the holiness of vegetables or liquor verses water. It is about honoring God in the midst of pagans. It is about choosing to think and act with the wisdom of God instead of the foolishness of men.
Daniel trusted the word of God. He trusted God. He trusted God enough that he was willing to have his captors put him to the test. Daniel was also wise enough at this young age to have compassion on others. He doesn’t want to see his guard punished for not doing what he was told to do. So he offers to let God prove himself to the captor’s satisfaction.
Notice how he acts toward his unbelieving boss: He says please. He puts the ball in his court. “Please test us for ten days and then see how we look compared to the other young men. Notice that Daniel doesn’t pray about this. You don’t need to pray about whether you should obey the Law of God or not. It is God’s will that you walk in obedience, period.
Daniel understood that God was big enough to make people do and see what he wanted them too. He knew that God would honor the keeping of his word. He trusted God to actually DO SOMETHING. So he wasn’t afraid of putting the ball in his boss’s court. He knew that God determines the outcome and he trusted God enough to believe that even if the outcome didn’t fit into his own preconceived notions it would be ok.
How many of us trust God that much? How many of us trust that no matter what happens in our lives we can rest in the fact that God has our best interests at heart? Or are we quick to say ‘do your will oh God’ and then even quicker to hold a grudge against God when his will doesn’t match up with our will. How many of us in here have a grudge against God right now? We say we trust God but do we?
Daniel trusted God enough to give the control over to an unbeliever. Test us and then do what you want. He didn’t try to manipulate the decision. He didn’t try to bribe anybody. He didn’t do anything except offer a suggestion and then wait on God to do what God was going to do.
How long until we give up being in charge and let God do what he is going to do in our lives? How long will we keep singing: I did it my way?
Well, God comes through for Daniel and he and his friends are allowed to follow after the commands of God. That is a big deal and again we miss the point if we think that what Daniel is asking to do is just eat healthy. No where in scripture are we commanded to eat healthy and live. We are commanded to obey God and live. We must remember that we are free in Christ Jesus to do anything, except sin. Daniel is laying the ground work for obedience to God in the midst of a pagan land, nothing more and nothing less.
He is sent to public school for three years to learn the ways of the Babylonians. He learns their language, he learns their ways. I’m sure he was taught about their gods but his education had already been laid upon the foundation of the law word of God and so he understood that all the facts that he was being taught were created by the only true God. The language he was learning was created by God because of man’s rebellion at the tower of Babel. He learned new facts from the right perspective and so he could understand them rightly and apply them in a godly manner.
God blessed his obedience and he served in leadership in a pagan government, altering the course of that nation, and leading its leader to direct conflict with God for around 70 years when the Babylonians were conquered by the Persians or the Iranians as we know them today.
What is the point of all of this? Simply that the nation we live in, the bosses we have, the rulers that are over us are not in control of anything. They are not the determiners of our lives, or our well being. God is. Our calling is to obey God’s word, all of it, and walk humbly with our God regardless of the circumstances that surround us. We are in the mess we are in today because we have refused to walk in obedience to the commands of God.
We must remember that God keeps his word. He breaks those who break his commands. He honors those who keep covenant with him and if you are in Christ Jesus he is going to do whatever it takes in your life to soften your heart until you are willing to humbly obey him. Even if like Josiah’s grandfather he has to put the enemies hooks in you until you repent. Don’t think for a minute that you can fake God out, that you can manipulate him to do what you want. He knows the condition of your heart better than you do. He knows the games you play to keep up appearances to your family and community and he is not amused. There are two choices: Fall on the Rock and be broken to pieces, or have the Rock fall on you and turn you to dust. It is a life or death decision.
I plead with you to make today the day you start being honest with God and with yourself and humbly bow your heart before him. The times we are in are life and death. There is no playing around we must begin to prepare now for the times ahead that we may be wise in our day of testing and not foolish in our passion for the Lord like Josiah was.
Let’s close with prayer. Most Holy Father: Have mercy on us please. I beg you to change our hearts. Open our eyes that we might see things from your perspective. Give us eyes to see the gorillas in our midst. In Jesus name we ask these things. Amen.
Hear this warning from the book of Second Chronicles chapter 33: 10-13 10 The Lord spoke to Manasseh and his people, but they ignored all his warnings. 11 So the Lord sent the commanders of the Assyrian armies, and they took Manasseh prisoner. They put a ring through his nose, bound him in bronze chains, and led him away to Babylon. 12 But while in deep distress, Manasseh sought the Lord his God and sincerely humbled himself before the God of his ancestors. 13 And when he prayed, the Lord listened to him and was moved by his request. So the Lord brought Manasseh back to Jerusalem and to his kingdom. Then Manasseh finally realized that the Lord alone is God!
Thursday, July 22, 2010
I need a miracle every day
Morning Everyone,
I’m trying to get back into my routine but it’s rather hard this time. Do you ever feel pulled from multiple directions at the same time? Life is turning out to be so different than I was led to believe it would be. It’s so much harder and complex than I ever imagined especially the ministry. With each passing day I am reminded over and over just how little power and control I really have.
It wasn’t supposed to be like that. People were supposed to come to Jesus and their lives were supposed to be great. Life in the church was supposed to be hunky dory. But people are complex and they are marred by sin and there is a strain of rebellion that runs deep in all of us that doesn’t want to come out.
I find myself driven to prayer not because I’m a praying man but because there really is no other option. And yet when I pray I often times don’t know what words to use. I find that I am relying more and more on the Spirit’s groans that are too deep for words. Because my words just don’t seem adequate for the immensity of the situation.
What was I thinking 35 years ago when I said I wanted to preach? Honestly? I was thinking it was much like being a rock star in the church. You go into a town preach, the Lord moves, everybody’s happy and you move on. What I didn’t understand was the part after everybody’s happy.
Because the truth is everybody’s happy until the high wears off and life get’s back to the way it was and you find that you haven’t changed all that much. When you go home at night and you find that you’re the same old you and you hope to God that nobody else finds out because you’ve talked the big talk, and faked the big walk and now well you’re stuck. I think U2 sings –you’re stuck in a moment and you can’t get out of it.
Somewhere between the time I rolled out of bed and made my way across town to this computer Eli flittered through my head. Not the Three Dog Night Eli’s coming hide your heart now or as I used to sing in the fifth grade, Eli’s coming hajah hajah (that’s what it sounded like to me) but Samuel's Eli. I was thinking about what he must have thought about his good for nothing sons. I wonder how many sleepless nights he stayed up praying for them to repent but they never did. That’s where the rubber hits the road isn’t it. Are we willing to keep praying even if God’s answer is no?
It is starting to sink in that this rock and roll fantasy that I have of God and how he is supposed to behave really is a fantasy. God does what God wants to do for his glory. None of this is about us, not really. I mean yes we get to be a part, we get to add to the glory of God but as hard as it may be to wrap your head around the truth is creation isn’t man (or woman) centered. It is God centered. More often than not we still believe the sun revolves around the earth. For sure in the church we think that the Son revolves around the bride but such is not the case.
I find myself, more than ever, with a heart bursting for ministry and yet at the same time more frustrated than ever with the lack of depth in ministry, the slowness of change, the lack of change, the stubbornness of hearts (my own included).
Please don’t get me wrong I’m not complaining. I just want so badly to see the promises of God fulfilled in people’s lives. I want so desperately to see salvation worked out to the fullest in broken hearts that the slowness of God’s hand moving seems excruciatingly painful. I realize that this slowness is shown to us everywhere in scripture but the 10 seconds that it takes to read, 'In the six hundredth year of Noah's life' cannot begin to reveal the pain and agony of living 600 years waiting for the judgment of God to come, 120 of it proclaiming that judgment to a rebellious people who laughed at every nail he hammered into the ark. He lived 600 years for a year long event and then he had to live 350 years after his mission was complete being reminded every single day by the lives of his children and himself that the rebellion didn’t get washed away in the flood. It was still there with him in his own flesh and blood.
After the miracle is where the rubber hits the road, isn’t it?
Like the Grateful Dead I think I need a miracle every day but the truth is I really just need to strengthen the hands that are weak and the knees that are feeble, and make straight paths for my feet, so that the limb which is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed. I need to pursue peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord. My calling is to see that no one comes short of the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble, and by it many be defiled; that there be no immoral or godless person like Esau, who sold his own birthright for a single meal. For you know that even afterwards, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place for repentance, though he sought for it with tears.
Even as I write these things from Hebrews 12 I realize that I do need a miracle everyday. I need the grace of God to lavish me more now than ever before because I can’t do any of those things alone. I am powerless but God is powerful. I am weak but he is strong. May he help me make it through not just the night but the next fifty years that seem to be an eternitybut in all actuality will be gone before I blink.
May your hands and knees be strengthened and your paths be made straight.
Brad
I’m trying to get back into my routine but it’s rather hard this time. Do you ever feel pulled from multiple directions at the same time? Life is turning out to be so different than I was led to believe it would be. It’s so much harder and complex than I ever imagined especially the ministry. With each passing day I am reminded over and over just how little power and control I really have.
It wasn’t supposed to be like that. People were supposed to come to Jesus and their lives were supposed to be great. Life in the church was supposed to be hunky dory. But people are complex and they are marred by sin and there is a strain of rebellion that runs deep in all of us that doesn’t want to come out.
I find myself driven to prayer not because I’m a praying man but because there really is no other option. And yet when I pray I often times don’t know what words to use. I find that I am relying more and more on the Spirit’s groans that are too deep for words. Because my words just don’t seem adequate for the immensity of the situation.
What was I thinking 35 years ago when I said I wanted to preach? Honestly? I was thinking it was much like being a rock star in the church. You go into a town preach, the Lord moves, everybody’s happy and you move on. What I didn’t understand was the part after everybody’s happy.
Because the truth is everybody’s happy until the high wears off and life get’s back to the way it was and you find that you haven’t changed all that much. When you go home at night and you find that you’re the same old you and you hope to God that nobody else finds out because you’ve talked the big talk, and faked the big walk and now well you’re stuck. I think U2 sings –you’re stuck in a moment and you can’t get out of it.
Somewhere between the time I rolled out of bed and made my way across town to this computer Eli flittered through my head. Not the Three Dog Night Eli’s coming hide your heart now or as I used to sing in the fifth grade, Eli’s coming hajah hajah (that’s what it sounded like to me) but Samuel's Eli. I was thinking about what he must have thought about his good for nothing sons. I wonder how many sleepless nights he stayed up praying for them to repent but they never did. That’s where the rubber hits the road isn’t it. Are we willing to keep praying even if God’s answer is no?
It is starting to sink in that this rock and roll fantasy that I have of God and how he is supposed to behave really is a fantasy. God does what God wants to do for his glory. None of this is about us, not really. I mean yes we get to be a part, we get to add to the glory of God but as hard as it may be to wrap your head around the truth is creation isn’t man (or woman) centered. It is God centered. More often than not we still believe the sun revolves around the earth. For sure in the church we think that the Son revolves around the bride but such is not the case.
I find myself, more than ever, with a heart bursting for ministry and yet at the same time more frustrated than ever with the lack of depth in ministry, the slowness of change, the lack of change, the stubbornness of hearts (my own included).
Please don’t get me wrong I’m not complaining. I just want so badly to see the promises of God fulfilled in people’s lives. I want so desperately to see salvation worked out to the fullest in broken hearts that the slowness of God’s hand moving seems excruciatingly painful. I realize that this slowness is shown to us everywhere in scripture but the 10 seconds that it takes to read, 'In the six hundredth year of Noah's life' cannot begin to reveal the pain and agony of living 600 years waiting for the judgment of God to come, 120 of it proclaiming that judgment to a rebellious people who laughed at every nail he hammered into the ark. He lived 600 years for a year long event and then he had to live 350 years after his mission was complete being reminded every single day by the lives of his children and himself that the rebellion didn’t get washed away in the flood. It was still there with him in his own flesh and blood.
After the miracle is where the rubber hits the road, isn’t it?
Like the Grateful Dead I think I need a miracle every day but the truth is I really just need to strengthen the hands that are weak and the knees that are feeble, and make straight paths for my feet, so that the limb which is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed. I need to pursue peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord. My calling is to see that no one comes short of the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble, and by it many be defiled; that there be no immoral or godless person like Esau, who sold his own birthright for a single meal. For you know that even afterwards, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place for repentance, though he sought for it with tears.
Even as I write these things from Hebrews 12 I realize that I do need a miracle everyday. I need the grace of God to lavish me more now than ever before because I can’t do any of those things alone. I am powerless but God is powerful. I am weak but he is strong. May he help me make it through not just the night but the next fifty years that seem to be an eternitybut in all actuality will be gone before I blink.
May your hands and knees be strengthened and your paths be made straight.
Brad
Monday, July 19, 2010
Waiting on the World to Change
Good Morning everyone,
Sorry, but I didn’t find the time to write last week. I did post the sermon I spoke at the Fellowship of Mere Christianity last week on the blog page so if you’re interested you can check it out http://withgodonhisside.blogspot.com/
Since I got back home from Brownsville I have found myself getting better acquainted with the passage from John 2 which says: Now when He was in Jerusalem at the Passover, during the feast, many believed in His name, observing His signs which He was doing. But Jesus, on His part, was not entrusting Himself to them, for He knew all men, and because He did not need anyone to testify concerning man, for He Himself knew what was in man.
I have to remind myself not to get overly optimistic at the things I think I see in the midst of ministry. I mean if Jesus didn’t trust everyone who made a profession of faith because of his own ministry why are we so quick to jump on the bandwagon?
Perhaps on my part it is desperation. I want to see God work in lives, to change lives so badly that when I see any sign of potential activity of the Spirit of God I get all excited. But I’m finding that in most people’s lives it’s more like one step forward one hundred steps backwards.
I’m too quick to forget what is in man. For that matter what is in me. I’m still watching sludge being removed from my own heart at the age of 50, ok 49 and 11\12’s; why should I expect people who seem to be in the labor pains of being born again to be any different? I find myself wanting to fall back into the easy believism of my younger days and just get people to say the words and get dunked and then never have to worry about their salvation again but the longer I struggle with the depth of sin and the depth of salvation in my own life the more I am confident that salvation is anything but easy, any thing but quick.
We had our quarterly Circus night at church last night. That happens when our in house wiccan wanna be and his sister show up for our Sunday night bible study. Not too long ago I told you all that Mr. Wick was baptized at a church not too far down the road from us. Last time they were at our bible study I had prayed for him and asked God to send the Spirit to minister. This week, however, he was back to his old belligerent self. I heard him quip to my wife that his baptism didn’t take. He was back to spouting his doubts and almost at the point of railing against the gospel.
His rather tender hearted sister was asking questions about who was going to hell, was there really a hell, did you really have to believe in Jesus to get saved or could you just believe in god. I have no reason to doubt that she is sincere. But I will hedge my bets nonetheless. I answered her questions with scripture and the ladies would answer the same questions with love and compassion. Not that I wasn’t being loving and compassionate but the scriptures do have a rather sharp edge to them and the ladies wanted to make sure the goodness of God was doing the drawing.
I don’t mind it when the circus comes to our church, it can be very refreshing but I’m learning not to trust the words I hear when it comes to people changing. I am learning to start dragging my feet a bit and wait for God to do what God is going to do, to the fullest. More often than not what I am prone to do is interrupt His surgery in the middle and say ‘well I'm glad that's done, let’s get moving’.
The last thing Sister said to me last night was I'd like to get Baptized in this church’. The cynical, hardhearted, Christ like man that I am becoming said something like ‘that could happen’ without making any promises or jumping to any conclusions. I’m learning to wait on the Lord, even though it drives me crazy.
The radio stations were so pitiful in Brownsville that I bought a John Mayer Cd – continuum. It’s old but it was on sale and I’m cheap. The first song hit me and it seems to fit. The lyrics to the last verse and chorus go like this:
Now if we had the power To bring our neighbors home from war They would have never missed a Christmas No more ribbons on their door And when you trust your television What you get is what you got Cause when they own the information, oh They can bend it all they want That's why we're waiting, Waiting, on the world to change We keep on waiting, Waiting, on the world to change. It's not that we don't care, We just know that the fight ain't fair So we keep on waiting, Waiting, on the world to change. One day our generation is gonna rule the population. So we keep on waiting, Waiting, on the world to change.
If I could keep that in my head I would have a lot less anxiety in my life. I must remember that I can’t save anybody. I can’t bring anybody home from their war against God. I do not have the power. I have to wait for the world in them to surrender to the call. I have to wait for them to switch sides. Only God can bring that change. The fight isn’t fair, it isn’t easy but I know in my heart that one day a generation of the kingdom of God is going to rule the population and what I must do is keep on waiting, waiting for the world to change.
For too long I have believed that the wicked were too powerful for God to do anything about. God was too small to save the world so he was just going to destroy it. I have had to repent of believing that lie repeatedly. The one true, triune God of Scripture is in the process of changing the world one person at a time, in his own, very slow, time frame. Over and over again the scriptures call us to Wait on the Lord.
I don’t like it, but as I see glimpses of the depth of rebellion in people’s lives I find myself resigned to simply wait on God while I press on to the higher calling of my Lord.
Grace and Peace,
Brad
Sorry, but I didn’t find the time to write last week. I did post the sermon I spoke at the Fellowship of Mere Christianity last week on the blog page so if you’re interested you can check it out http://withgodonhisside.blogspot.com/
Since I got back home from Brownsville I have found myself getting better acquainted with the passage from John 2 which says: Now when He was in Jerusalem at the Passover, during the feast, many believed in His name, observing His signs which He was doing. But Jesus, on His part, was not entrusting Himself to them, for He knew all men, and because He did not need anyone to testify concerning man, for He Himself knew what was in man.
I have to remind myself not to get overly optimistic at the things I think I see in the midst of ministry. I mean if Jesus didn’t trust everyone who made a profession of faith because of his own ministry why are we so quick to jump on the bandwagon?
Perhaps on my part it is desperation. I want to see God work in lives, to change lives so badly that when I see any sign of potential activity of the Spirit of God I get all excited. But I’m finding that in most people’s lives it’s more like one step forward one hundred steps backwards.
I’m too quick to forget what is in man. For that matter what is in me. I’m still watching sludge being removed from my own heart at the age of 50, ok 49 and 11\12’s; why should I expect people who seem to be in the labor pains of being born again to be any different? I find myself wanting to fall back into the easy believism of my younger days and just get people to say the words and get dunked and then never have to worry about their salvation again but the longer I struggle with the depth of sin and the depth of salvation in my own life the more I am confident that salvation is anything but easy, any thing but quick.
We had our quarterly Circus night at church last night. That happens when our in house wiccan wanna be and his sister show up for our Sunday night bible study. Not too long ago I told you all that Mr. Wick was baptized at a church not too far down the road from us. Last time they were at our bible study I had prayed for him and asked God to send the Spirit to minister. This week, however, he was back to his old belligerent self. I heard him quip to my wife that his baptism didn’t take. He was back to spouting his doubts and almost at the point of railing against the gospel.
His rather tender hearted sister was asking questions about who was going to hell, was there really a hell, did you really have to believe in Jesus to get saved or could you just believe in god. I have no reason to doubt that she is sincere. But I will hedge my bets nonetheless. I answered her questions with scripture and the ladies would answer the same questions with love and compassion. Not that I wasn’t being loving and compassionate but the scriptures do have a rather sharp edge to them and the ladies wanted to make sure the goodness of God was doing the drawing.
I don’t mind it when the circus comes to our church, it can be very refreshing but I’m learning not to trust the words I hear when it comes to people changing. I am learning to start dragging my feet a bit and wait for God to do what God is going to do, to the fullest. More often than not what I am prone to do is interrupt His surgery in the middle and say ‘well I'm glad that's done, let’s get moving’.
The last thing Sister said to me last night was I'd like to get Baptized in this church’. The cynical, hardhearted, Christ like man that I am becoming said something like ‘that could happen’ without making any promises or jumping to any conclusions. I’m learning to wait on the Lord, even though it drives me crazy.
The radio stations were so pitiful in Brownsville that I bought a John Mayer Cd – continuum. It’s old but it was on sale and I’m cheap. The first song hit me and it seems to fit. The lyrics to the last verse and chorus go like this:
Now if we had the power To bring our neighbors home from war They would have never missed a Christmas No more ribbons on their door And when you trust your television What you get is what you got Cause when they own the information, oh They can bend it all they want That's why we're waiting, Waiting, on the world to change We keep on waiting, Waiting, on the world to change. It's not that we don't care, We just know that the fight ain't fair So we keep on waiting, Waiting, on the world to change. One day our generation is gonna rule the population. So we keep on waiting, Waiting, on the world to change.
If I could keep that in my head I would have a lot less anxiety in my life. I must remember that I can’t save anybody. I can’t bring anybody home from their war against God. I do not have the power. I have to wait for the world in them to surrender to the call. I have to wait for them to switch sides. Only God can bring that change. The fight isn’t fair, it isn’t easy but I know in my heart that one day a generation of the kingdom of God is going to rule the population and what I must do is keep on waiting, waiting for the world to change.
For too long I have believed that the wicked were too powerful for God to do anything about. God was too small to save the world so he was just going to destroy it. I have had to repent of believing that lie repeatedly. The one true, triune God of Scripture is in the process of changing the world one person at a time, in his own, very slow, time frame. Over and over again the scriptures call us to Wait on the Lord.
I don’t like it, but as I see glimpses of the depth of rebellion in people’s lives I find myself resigned to simply wait on God while I press on to the higher calling of my Lord.
Grace and Peace,
Brad
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Sermon from the FMC Convocation
Good morning. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak today. Let’s start with a word of prayer.
Oh Father, I ask you my Lord and King, to pour out your Spirit upon the men and women here today. I pray that you would give us eyes to see and ears to hear and that you would lavish us with grace and mercy that we may become more like Jesus in every area of life. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.
The topic given to me was: The gospel never fails the church but the church sometimes fails the gospel. I want to begin by asking: What is the good news anyway? I don’t think most people that go to church have a clue. From my perspective, I think the best place to get a decent definition of good news is Isaiah 61. Let me read verses 1- 3: The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, Because the LORD has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted; He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to captives and freedom to prisoners; to proclaim the favorable year of the LORD and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn, to grant those who mourn in Zion, a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a spirit of fainting so they will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that He may be glorified.
And then jumping down to verse 10: I will rejoice greatly in the LORD, my soul will exult in my God; for He has clothed me with garments of salvation, He has wrapped me with a robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. For as the earth brings forth its sprouts, and as a garden causes the things sown in it to spring up, So the Lord GOD will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations.
That, my friends, is good news.
Song writer and performer Randy Newman in his song, “I’m dead, but I don’t know it” sings: “Dear God, Sweet God protect me from the truth.” Brothers and sisters: That is the unspoken prayer of the majority of the American church.
I don’t know about you, but I grew up with a very limited view of what good news was. It was pretty much limited to the forgiveness of sins. Now that is not a bad thing, if you really understand the fullness and depth of what sin is, but most evangelicals believe in the forgiveness of sins because it’s easy.
Let me explain: Do you remember the story of the paralytic who was let down through the roof of a house by some of his friends so Jesus could heal him? Jesus said to the man “your sins are forgiven you.” Now the Pharisees got all bent out of shape over that statement and said that Jesus was blaspheming because no one but God could forgive sins. Jesus’ reply was: Which is easier to say to the paralytic: your sins are forgiven or arise take up your bed and walk?
Had the Pharisees answered they would have probably said ‘take up your bed and walk’. We, however, find it much easier to say: ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ not because we can forgive sins, but because we can say it and no one can prove whether it’s true or not. With our words we say: Your sins are forgiven; but at the same time we also have an unspoken rule that says: Don’t talk about your problems. We have, in effect, limited the good news to the intellectual concept of forgiveness of sins. We have neutered the gospel.
Now, we will allow God to give us religious truth. We love religious truth; but like the good humanists we are; we don’t believe God is really big enough to do anything about things on this side of heaven. So we end up saying, ‘Jesus saves’ on the outside while on the inside we suppress the truth in unrighteousness because our God isn’t big enough to save us from ourselves.
I learned by example that God could do anything he wanted to do; he just didn’t want to do anything in this world except take us home to be with Jesus. You see, all of the people I grew up with in church believed in God with all their heart when it came to salvation in the here after, but they suppressed the truth in every other area of life because they thought if they faced up to what was going on in the real world; they’d have to put a bullet in their head. They wanted to get as far away from the truth of their lives as possible and they mistakenly thought that the gospel was supposed to help them do that.
I spent the first 30 years of my life knowing my sins were forgiven but I was crippled on the inside, broken, battered, and captive, a prisoner to fear, shame, pain and a hundred other things. I tried to muster the faith to believe that everything was ok, but I had all this deep dark stuff in my life that I wasn’t allowed to talk about. So I learned to just push that stuff down and hope that Jesus would come back before I exploded. He didn’t and I did. But that was what everybody I knew called the good news so I went along for the ride.
I was so good at suppressing the truth that I had no clue that I was broken until I was thirty. I knew Jesus had taken care of my sin, I just figured he had done all he was going to do and that I had gotten all the salvation I was going to get until after I died. I mean I had as much salvation as anybody else I knew. It was pretty clear from looking at the people I knew in the church: You come to Jesus, you get saved and then you spend your time in hell until Jesus comes back. That was the essence of the good news that I believed, that everybody I grew up with in church believed. Nobody ever dared to believe that the gospel could change our secular lives, our home lives, our inner lives.
Now, if you have accepted Christ as your personal savior but you still hurt like hell inside, you remain just as broken after saying the sinner’s prayer as you were before saying it, what are you supposed to do? How are you supposed to get by in the real world? I did what any desperate person would do; I turned to idols. But I was in a real predicament as a Christian because I couldn’t bow down to alcohol or drugs because those things were actually recognizable as sin. So I turned to the Christians favorite invisible idol - Lust.
Did you know a recent survey shows that there are more people inside the church struggling with pornography than there are outside the church? I can tell you why that is: It’s free, it has no odor, it doesn’t dilate your pupils, it is for the most part undetectable and yet the endorphin rush it brings can numb pain just as well as drugs or alcohol. Lust is the church’s drug of choice. It is our idol of choice.
Why are we worshipping at the foot of idols, especially this idol, so readily? The answer to that is found in second Timothy 3:5 where Paul says: They have a form of godliness denying the power. Welcome to American Evangelicalism where God isn’t big enough to save you from yourself.
In my own struggle with the good news, I have found that I turn to idols whenever I think my problems are too big for God to handle. These idols are the sins that I use to cover the pain and problems in my life. You see, a person is born and then the stuff of life happens, pain comes, sin is manifest, life hurts and most of us don’t deal with life very well so we stuff it down. We suppress the truth in unrighteousness. It begins to accumulate, and pretty soon we always know that it’s there. It begins to gnaw at us. Everybody deals with that gnawing in different ways. Some of us drink, some of us lust, some of us work, some of us clean, some of us nag, and some of us go to church. You can fill in your own blank here. All of us bow down to an idol of our own making.
As the gnawing inside gets worse we need to worship our idol of choice more and more to be able to ignore the pain. Eventually, even the idols we use to numb our pain become problematic and our lives self-destruct. However, the things we bow down to in order to numb our pain aren’t our main problem. The real problem is that we haven’t let the good news be the good news. We haven’t let the gospel get under our skin.
This is the condition of the church in our day and age: We come to Jesus and get our sins forgiven and then stand around going: What do I do with all this stuff? It may be forgiven, but it’s still there. To deal with it we do the only thing we know to do: We push it down, we suppress the truth. Unfortunately, most Christians call that the good news. But that is not the good news; that is sin. Thank God it doesn’t have to be that way.
Let me tell you about the real good news. Jesus came and shed his blood not just to forgive your sins; he came to save you. The word for salvation in the New Testament is Sozo. It is the same word that is used for healing. Isaiah 61 gives us a glimpse of what Salvation/healing should look like. Jesus came to bind up the broken hearted, forgive the debts of the poor, give liberty to captives, open the prison doors to prisoners, comfort the mourning, give the oil of gladness instead of ashes, a garment of praise instead of faintness of heart, to rebuild the ruins of lives, to raise up the devastation, and instead of shame and dishonor to give the highest honor a double portion, and everlasting joy.
Jesus Christ shed his blood to pay for all that stuff you carry around. He knows those deep dark things you try to hide better than you do and he has paid the price for them. They are already dealt with. You can begin to let go of them. You do not have to be in bondage to those things.
You may ask: But how do I get free? I am so afraid of these things and of the consequences of letting them out. Well, first of all, you don’t get yourself free. You are set free. Getting free is just as much a gift of grace as getting saved. Justification – being forgiven of your sins and being declared righteous is a gift of the grace of salvation; so too is learning to walk in righteousness. Sanctification is by grace alone and it is included in the good news package for no extra charge.
Look at verse 10 of Isaiah 61: My soul shall exult in my God for he has covered me with the garments of salvation, he has clothed me with the robe of righteousness. What a beautiful picture of God’s gracious salvation. God dresses me in salvation and righteousness. He forgives my sins and imputes Christ’s righteousness to me. I am holy and blameless in Christ Jesus by the grace of God.
But it doesn’t stop there look at verse 11: For as the earth brings forth its sprouts and a garden causes what is sown in it to sprout up so the Lord God will CAUSE righteousness and praise to sprout up. That is the result of you being clothed in salvation and robed in righteousness. God’s grace will cause righteousness to spring forth in you.
That doesn’t happen by magic. By that I mean, saying the right words doesn’t make everything in your life better. More often than not we treat the word of God as if it is a magic spell. Just repeat the words and everything will work out alright. If you have a problem I’ll just shove scripture down your throat until you choke that will make everything alright.
No it will not! Christianity is reality based. The word of God is meant to be applied to every area of your life, not just spoken over it like some magic incantation. First Timothy 1:8 says “But we know the law is good if it is used lawfully. That statement applies to the whole word of God. The word of God is good if it is used lawfully, if it is used according to its purpose. The Pharisees knew the word of God backwards and forwards but it did them no good because they used the word unlawfully. Jesus said: ‘Do the word and live’. He didn’t say: have the word in your head or speak the word; he says do it.
The word of God is not meant to be a magic incantation to overpower your problems and put you on easy street. Its purpose is to teach you how to live in righteousness by God’s grace; being rooted and grounded in love which is the keeping of the commandments. We are to be rooted and grounded in the commandments of God. Jesus was pretty clear about this: Do the commandments and live. You see grace and righteousness go hand in hand. They are like opposite sides of the same coin; you can’t have one without the other.
Let me try to explain all that I have been saying out of my own life. By the time I was 30 I had been a Christian for nearly 20 years, but I had been pushing down all this stuff for so long that something had to give. My life became out of control. I came to the place where I just couldn’t push anything else down. There were too many balls to juggle and I began to drop them. My life began to fall apart. At the time, I thought it was the worst thing that could ever happen to me, but now I see that it was the spade of God breaking up the fallow ground of my life so that righteousness could begin to sprout. It was God beginning to keep his promises and cause righteousness to grow.
Until that point in my life I had used the law unlawfully. I was saved. I was in the word night and day. I was redeemed but I was burying the things I had been redeemed from. I was raising up idols to try and take care of my problems. I hid the sins and the dark things. I pretended to the rest of the world that they didn’t exist. I prayed to my idols to make me comfortably numb.
I was lying. I was bearing false witness about myself to others. I was saying everything was alright, but it wasn’t. God in his wonderful mercy forced me into righteousness by taking away all other options. I had to start speaking the truth about myself. There was nowhere else to go; except death. So I began to speak the unspeakable. I began to break the no tell policy I had been taught. It was not easy. When scripture says work out your salvation with fear and trembling, it means fear and trembling. I was going against everything I had ever been taught at both home and church. No one that I knew had ever told the truth about their inner condition. That was forbidden territory and I was sure entering there would destroy me. But I did it anyway because I was out of options if I was going to stay in the land of the living.
When my life crashed and burned God led me to some wonderful brothers and sisters who stood with me and bore my burdens with me. Mostly they just sat beside me and let me uncover the stuff that I had buried for 30 years. The things I had kept hidden for so long didn’t scare them, it didn’t make them hate me or reject me. They didn’t try to shove scripture down my throat. They also didn’t let me run away. They stood beside me and helped me take these things one by one and put them under the blood of Jesus. The body of Christ was doing what the body of Christ is supposed to do; it was building itself up in love.
Throughout that process the grace of God was forcing righteousness out of me. God was lavishing me with grace upon grace. What did grace look like? It looked like anger and hatred, cursing and crying, fear and arrogance spewing from the depth of my heart. It looked like the truth. Someone asked me awhile back if it was ok to be angry with God. The answer is: no it’s not. But; it’s also not ok to lie and say you aren’t angry at him when you are. He already knows if you’re angry. He is strong enough to be able take the truth from you. He already knows what the truth is. He knows the truth about you better than you do. Realizing that was one of the biggest blessings of my life. God is never afraid of the truth. I was given the freedom to let out the things that I had been bottling up inside me and I did. I was afraid the tirade wouldn’t stop once it started, but after a couple of years it did. The result was the beginning of freedom from bondage for the first time ever.
God continued to lavish me with grace and I found that once I started to speak the truth bondage began to fall away. I didn’t work harder at not sinning. I worked harder, by God’s grace alone, at doing righteousness. I worked hard at beginning to tell the truth about every area of my life. I lived for 30 years learning and perfecting the art of lying. God forced me to begin to tell the truth and once I started I couldn’t seem to stop. The weird thing was that the more truth about myself I told the less lust began to have a hold me. Bondage that had held me since I was 5 years old began to fall away.
That was and is wonderful but there is another side to salvation and the freedom it brings. You see being in bondage is to be without responsibility. Let me give you an example – the lame man in the temple. Peter and John came up and the Spirit of God used them as instruments to heal a lame man. His life was changed. He could now walk, but the next day he realized that he could no longer beg for a living. Here he is an adult, and he now has to learn a new trade because of grace. Grace, in some ways, made his life much harder; it forced him to become more responsible. Grace took away his excuse.
There’s a scene in the movie Monty Python’s The Life of Brian that shows lepers on the street begging. The camera goes by one, two, three lepers and then you see this guy who looks perfectly healthy begging and you hear him say “alms for an ex-leper, alms for an ex-leper.” In the movie we find out that Jesus had come by and healed this man and in the process taken away the only job he’d ever known. He said he went back to find Jesus to see if he could just partially heal him maybe just give him a slight limp on Tuesdays and Thursdays or something like that.
You see, there are people out there who don’t want to be well. Freedom means increased responsibility. To be free in Christ means to be responsible in Christ. Thank God he gives us grace upon grace. The grace to deal with the new responsibilities that grace brings into our lives.
What is the point of all of this? Simply stated the point is this: redemption is so much bigger than your sin and bondage. Christ has come to set you free from all of it. Did you hear that? Christ has come to set you free from all the bondage in your life. He has come to mend your broken heart and he is not going to wait until heaven to do it. If you want to be saved, to be sozo’d – to be healed of your broken heart just ask. Whosoever calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved. That doesn’t mean that you will like the way God answers your prayer.
Sometimes the healing process can be more painful than the brokenness but know that it will not always be this way. God knows about all those secrets you hide in your heart. He is not afraid of them. He is mature love and mature love casts out fear. God wants to lead you down the path of gracious obedience. He wants to make righteousness sprout forth in your life. Guess what – what God wants he gets. He who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it until the day of Christ Jesus. God is not going to stop lavishing you with grace until the job is done: Justification, sanctification, glorification – all by grace alone.
As Isaiah wrote: I will greatly rejoice in the Lord; my soul shall exult in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. For as the earth brings forth its sprouts, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to sprout up, so the Lord God will CAUSE righteousness and praise to sprout up before all the nations.
If you have humbled yourself at the feet of King Jesus then you have been redeemed by the son, adopted by the father and sealed by the Holy Spirit. The enemy has been defeated. No one can pluck you out of the hand of the father, not even you. You are holy and blameless in Christ Jesus. You are a new creature in Christ. You are a saint. Old things HAVE PASSED away. Rest in the mighty redemption wrought by the blood of Christ that will not, cannot let you down. Nothing – not even your secrets - can separate you from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus; Nothing.
The true good news is wonderfully powerful - powerful enough to change you from the inside out. We may have the form of the good news but the form without the power to heal broken hearts and set captives free from bondage is not the good news of scripture. The Vigilantes of Love sing: There’s a little bit of truth left out there but it may not be enough to save a world where everyone’s demons are their best friends. If you cannot cast them out you learn to live with them.
The god of the American church may not be big enough to deal with the crap that you keep hidden inside but the God of Scripture is. The one True God of the whole bible doesn’t make peace treaties with sin and death; He crucifies it and replaces it with righteousness and life. On the cross Jesus Christ became that thing in your heart that you are so afraid of. He became that sin. He already took the blame for it. He already paid the price for it. Whatever it is, it is not too big for the blood of Christ to handle. Let go of it. Let the blood do what the blood is supposed to do and that is set you free from the bondage of sin and death. Quit trying to micromanage your sin and let the god you serve be the God of Scripture. If the God you serve isn’t big enough to save you from your life, he isn’t big enough to save you at all. Let your God be the all powerful, almighty God of scripture. Repent of your idolatry and ask God to give you the power of godliness that is supposed to be attached to the form.
May God give us the grace to experience real good news in the church once again.
Let’s pray. Most Holy Father, have mercy on your church. Bring us to our knees. Pour out the good news, the fullness of the good news upon our lives before the rottenness that is in our hollow words kills us. In the powerful and authoritative name of our King and savior Jesus the Christ we ask these things, So be it.
Oh Father, I ask you my Lord and King, to pour out your Spirit upon the men and women here today. I pray that you would give us eyes to see and ears to hear and that you would lavish us with grace and mercy that we may become more like Jesus in every area of life. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.
The topic given to me was: The gospel never fails the church but the church sometimes fails the gospel. I want to begin by asking: What is the good news anyway? I don’t think most people that go to church have a clue. From my perspective, I think the best place to get a decent definition of good news is Isaiah 61. Let me read verses 1- 3: The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, Because the LORD has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted; He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to captives and freedom to prisoners; to proclaim the favorable year of the LORD and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn, to grant those who mourn in Zion, a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a spirit of fainting so they will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that He may be glorified.
And then jumping down to verse 10: I will rejoice greatly in the LORD, my soul will exult in my God; for He has clothed me with garments of salvation, He has wrapped me with a robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. For as the earth brings forth its sprouts, and as a garden causes the things sown in it to spring up, So the Lord GOD will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations.
That, my friends, is good news.
Song writer and performer Randy Newman in his song, “I’m dead, but I don’t know it” sings: “Dear God, Sweet God protect me from the truth.” Brothers and sisters: That is the unspoken prayer of the majority of the American church.
I don’t know about you, but I grew up with a very limited view of what good news was. It was pretty much limited to the forgiveness of sins. Now that is not a bad thing, if you really understand the fullness and depth of what sin is, but most evangelicals believe in the forgiveness of sins because it’s easy.
Let me explain: Do you remember the story of the paralytic who was let down through the roof of a house by some of his friends so Jesus could heal him? Jesus said to the man “your sins are forgiven you.” Now the Pharisees got all bent out of shape over that statement and said that Jesus was blaspheming because no one but God could forgive sins. Jesus’ reply was: Which is easier to say to the paralytic: your sins are forgiven or arise take up your bed and walk?
Had the Pharisees answered they would have probably said ‘take up your bed and walk’. We, however, find it much easier to say: ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ not because we can forgive sins, but because we can say it and no one can prove whether it’s true or not. With our words we say: Your sins are forgiven; but at the same time we also have an unspoken rule that says: Don’t talk about your problems. We have, in effect, limited the good news to the intellectual concept of forgiveness of sins. We have neutered the gospel.
Now, we will allow God to give us religious truth. We love religious truth; but like the good humanists we are; we don’t believe God is really big enough to do anything about things on this side of heaven. So we end up saying, ‘Jesus saves’ on the outside while on the inside we suppress the truth in unrighteousness because our God isn’t big enough to save us from ourselves.
I learned by example that God could do anything he wanted to do; he just didn’t want to do anything in this world except take us home to be with Jesus. You see, all of the people I grew up with in church believed in God with all their heart when it came to salvation in the here after, but they suppressed the truth in every other area of life because they thought if they faced up to what was going on in the real world; they’d have to put a bullet in their head. They wanted to get as far away from the truth of their lives as possible and they mistakenly thought that the gospel was supposed to help them do that.
I spent the first 30 years of my life knowing my sins were forgiven but I was crippled on the inside, broken, battered, and captive, a prisoner to fear, shame, pain and a hundred other things. I tried to muster the faith to believe that everything was ok, but I had all this deep dark stuff in my life that I wasn’t allowed to talk about. So I learned to just push that stuff down and hope that Jesus would come back before I exploded. He didn’t and I did. But that was what everybody I knew called the good news so I went along for the ride.
I was so good at suppressing the truth that I had no clue that I was broken until I was thirty. I knew Jesus had taken care of my sin, I just figured he had done all he was going to do and that I had gotten all the salvation I was going to get until after I died. I mean I had as much salvation as anybody else I knew. It was pretty clear from looking at the people I knew in the church: You come to Jesus, you get saved and then you spend your time in hell until Jesus comes back. That was the essence of the good news that I believed, that everybody I grew up with in church believed. Nobody ever dared to believe that the gospel could change our secular lives, our home lives, our inner lives.
Now, if you have accepted Christ as your personal savior but you still hurt like hell inside, you remain just as broken after saying the sinner’s prayer as you were before saying it, what are you supposed to do? How are you supposed to get by in the real world? I did what any desperate person would do; I turned to idols. But I was in a real predicament as a Christian because I couldn’t bow down to alcohol or drugs because those things were actually recognizable as sin. So I turned to the Christians favorite invisible idol - Lust.
Did you know a recent survey shows that there are more people inside the church struggling with pornography than there are outside the church? I can tell you why that is: It’s free, it has no odor, it doesn’t dilate your pupils, it is for the most part undetectable and yet the endorphin rush it brings can numb pain just as well as drugs or alcohol. Lust is the church’s drug of choice. It is our idol of choice.
Why are we worshipping at the foot of idols, especially this idol, so readily? The answer to that is found in second Timothy 3:5 where Paul says: They have a form of godliness denying the power. Welcome to American Evangelicalism where God isn’t big enough to save you from yourself.
In my own struggle with the good news, I have found that I turn to idols whenever I think my problems are too big for God to handle. These idols are the sins that I use to cover the pain and problems in my life. You see, a person is born and then the stuff of life happens, pain comes, sin is manifest, life hurts and most of us don’t deal with life very well so we stuff it down. We suppress the truth in unrighteousness. It begins to accumulate, and pretty soon we always know that it’s there. It begins to gnaw at us. Everybody deals with that gnawing in different ways. Some of us drink, some of us lust, some of us work, some of us clean, some of us nag, and some of us go to church. You can fill in your own blank here. All of us bow down to an idol of our own making.
As the gnawing inside gets worse we need to worship our idol of choice more and more to be able to ignore the pain. Eventually, even the idols we use to numb our pain become problematic and our lives self-destruct. However, the things we bow down to in order to numb our pain aren’t our main problem. The real problem is that we haven’t let the good news be the good news. We haven’t let the gospel get under our skin.
This is the condition of the church in our day and age: We come to Jesus and get our sins forgiven and then stand around going: What do I do with all this stuff? It may be forgiven, but it’s still there. To deal with it we do the only thing we know to do: We push it down, we suppress the truth. Unfortunately, most Christians call that the good news. But that is not the good news; that is sin. Thank God it doesn’t have to be that way.
Let me tell you about the real good news. Jesus came and shed his blood not just to forgive your sins; he came to save you. The word for salvation in the New Testament is Sozo. It is the same word that is used for healing. Isaiah 61 gives us a glimpse of what Salvation/healing should look like. Jesus came to bind up the broken hearted, forgive the debts of the poor, give liberty to captives, open the prison doors to prisoners, comfort the mourning, give the oil of gladness instead of ashes, a garment of praise instead of faintness of heart, to rebuild the ruins of lives, to raise up the devastation, and instead of shame and dishonor to give the highest honor a double portion, and everlasting joy.
Jesus Christ shed his blood to pay for all that stuff you carry around. He knows those deep dark things you try to hide better than you do and he has paid the price for them. They are already dealt with. You can begin to let go of them. You do not have to be in bondage to those things.
You may ask: But how do I get free? I am so afraid of these things and of the consequences of letting them out. Well, first of all, you don’t get yourself free. You are set free. Getting free is just as much a gift of grace as getting saved. Justification – being forgiven of your sins and being declared righteous is a gift of the grace of salvation; so too is learning to walk in righteousness. Sanctification is by grace alone and it is included in the good news package for no extra charge.
Look at verse 10 of Isaiah 61: My soul shall exult in my God for he has covered me with the garments of salvation, he has clothed me with the robe of righteousness. What a beautiful picture of God’s gracious salvation. God dresses me in salvation and righteousness. He forgives my sins and imputes Christ’s righteousness to me. I am holy and blameless in Christ Jesus by the grace of God.
But it doesn’t stop there look at verse 11: For as the earth brings forth its sprouts and a garden causes what is sown in it to sprout up so the Lord God will CAUSE righteousness and praise to sprout up. That is the result of you being clothed in salvation and robed in righteousness. God’s grace will cause righteousness to spring forth in you.
That doesn’t happen by magic. By that I mean, saying the right words doesn’t make everything in your life better. More often than not we treat the word of God as if it is a magic spell. Just repeat the words and everything will work out alright. If you have a problem I’ll just shove scripture down your throat until you choke that will make everything alright.
No it will not! Christianity is reality based. The word of God is meant to be applied to every area of your life, not just spoken over it like some magic incantation. First Timothy 1:8 says “But we know the law is good if it is used lawfully. That statement applies to the whole word of God. The word of God is good if it is used lawfully, if it is used according to its purpose. The Pharisees knew the word of God backwards and forwards but it did them no good because they used the word unlawfully. Jesus said: ‘Do the word and live’. He didn’t say: have the word in your head or speak the word; he says do it.
The word of God is not meant to be a magic incantation to overpower your problems and put you on easy street. Its purpose is to teach you how to live in righteousness by God’s grace; being rooted and grounded in love which is the keeping of the commandments. We are to be rooted and grounded in the commandments of God. Jesus was pretty clear about this: Do the commandments and live. You see grace and righteousness go hand in hand. They are like opposite sides of the same coin; you can’t have one without the other.
Let me try to explain all that I have been saying out of my own life. By the time I was 30 I had been a Christian for nearly 20 years, but I had been pushing down all this stuff for so long that something had to give. My life became out of control. I came to the place where I just couldn’t push anything else down. There were too many balls to juggle and I began to drop them. My life began to fall apart. At the time, I thought it was the worst thing that could ever happen to me, but now I see that it was the spade of God breaking up the fallow ground of my life so that righteousness could begin to sprout. It was God beginning to keep his promises and cause righteousness to grow.
Until that point in my life I had used the law unlawfully. I was saved. I was in the word night and day. I was redeemed but I was burying the things I had been redeemed from. I was raising up idols to try and take care of my problems. I hid the sins and the dark things. I pretended to the rest of the world that they didn’t exist. I prayed to my idols to make me comfortably numb.
I was lying. I was bearing false witness about myself to others. I was saying everything was alright, but it wasn’t. God in his wonderful mercy forced me into righteousness by taking away all other options. I had to start speaking the truth about myself. There was nowhere else to go; except death. So I began to speak the unspeakable. I began to break the no tell policy I had been taught. It was not easy. When scripture says work out your salvation with fear and trembling, it means fear and trembling. I was going against everything I had ever been taught at both home and church. No one that I knew had ever told the truth about their inner condition. That was forbidden territory and I was sure entering there would destroy me. But I did it anyway because I was out of options if I was going to stay in the land of the living.
When my life crashed and burned God led me to some wonderful brothers and sisters who stood with me and bore my burdens with me. Mostly they just sat beside me and let me uncover the stuff that I had buried for 30 years. The things I had kept hidden for so long didn’t scare them, it didn’t make them hate me or reject me. They didn’t try to shove scripture down my throat. They also didn’t let me run away. They stood beside me and helped me take these things one by one and put them under the blood of Jesus. The body of Christ was doing what the body of Christ is supposed to do; it was building itself up in love.
Throughout that process the grace of God was forcing righteousness out of me. God was lavishing me with grace upon grace. What did grace look like? It looked like anger and hatred, cursing and crying, fear and arrogance spewing from the depth of my heart. It looked like the truth. Someone asked me awhile back if it was ok to be angry with God. The answer is: no it’s not. But; it’s also not ok to lie and say you aren’t angry at him when you are. He already knows if you’re angry. He is strong enough to be able take the truth from you. He already knows what the truth is. He knows the truth about you better than you do. Realizing that was one of the biggest blessings of my life. God is never afraid of the truth. I was given the freedom to let out the things that I had been bottling up inside me and I did. I was afraid the tirade wouldn’t stop once it started, but after a couple of years it did. The result was the beginning of freedom from bondage for the first time ever.
God continued to lavish me with grace and I found that once I started to speak the truth bondage began to fall away. I didn’t work harder at not sinning. I worked harder, by God’s grace alone, at doing righteousness. I worked hard at beginning to tell the truth about every area of my life. I lived for 30 years learning and perfecting the art of lying. God forced me to begin to tell the truth and once I started I couldn’t seem to stop. The weird thing was that the more truth about myself I told the less lust began to have a hold me. Bondage that had held me since I was 5 years old began to fall away.
That was and is wonderful but there is another side to salvation and the freedom it brings. You see being in bondage is to be without responsibility. Let me give you an example – the lame man in the temple. Peter and John came up and the Spirit of God used them as instruments to heal a lame man. His life was changed. He could now walk, but the next day he realized that he could no longer beg for a living. Here he is an adult, and he now has to learn a new trade because of grace. Grace, in some ways, made his life much harder; it forced him to become more responsible. Grace took away his excuse.
There’s a scene in the movie Monty Python’s The Life of Brian that shows lepers on the street begging. The camera goes by one, two, three lepers and then you see this guy who looks perfectly healthy begging and you hear him say “alms for an ex-leper, alms for an ex-leper.” In the movie we find out that Jesus had come by and healed this man and in the process taken away the only job he’d ever known. He said he went back to find Jesus to see if he could just partially heal him maybe just give him a slight limp on Tuesdays and Thursdays or something like that.
You see, there are people out there who don’t want to be well. Freedom means increased responsibility. To be free in Christ means to be responsible in Christ. Thank God he gives us grace upon grace. The grace to deal with the new responsibilities that grace brings into our lives.
What is the point of all of this? Simply stated the point is this: redemption is so much bigger than your sin and bondage. Christ has come to set you free from all of it. Did you hear that? Christ has come to set you free from all the bondage in your life. He has come to mend your broken heart and he is not going to wait until heaven to do it. If you want to be saved, to be sozo’d – to be healed of your broken heart just ask. Whosoever calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved. That doesn’t mean that you will like the way God answers your prayer.
Sometimes the healing process can be more painful than the brokenness but know that it will not always be this way. God knows about all those secrets you hide in your heart. He is not afraid of them. He is mature love and mature love casts out fear. God wants to lead you down the path of gracious obedience. He wants to make righteousness sprout forth in your life. Guess what – what God wants he gets. He who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it until the day of Christ Jesus. God is not going to stop lavishing you with grace until the job is done: Justification, sanctification, glorification – all by grace alone.
As Isaiah wrote: I will greatly rejoice in the Lord; my soul shall exult in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. For as the earth brings forth its sprouts, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to sprout up, so the Lord God will CAUSE righteousness and praise to sprout up before all the nations.
If you have humbled yourself at the feet of King Jesus then you have been redeemed by the son, adopted by the father and sealed by the Holy Spirit. The enemy has been defeated. No one can pluck you out of the hand of the father, not even you. You are holy and blameless in Christ Jesus. You are a new creature in Christ. You are a saint. Old things HAVE PASSED away. Rest in the mighty redemption wrought by the blood of Christ that will not, cannot let you down. Nothing – not even your secrets - can separate you from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus; Nothing.
The true good news is wonderfully powerful - powerful enough to change you from the inside out. We may have the form of the good news but the form without the power to heal broken hearts and set captives free from bondage is not the good news of scripture. The Vigilantes of Love sing: There’s a little bit of truth left out there but it may not be enough to save a world where everyone’s demons are their best friends. If you cannot cast them out you learn to live with them.
The god of the American church may not be big enough to deal with the crap that you keep hidden inside but the God of Scripture is. The one True God of the whole bible doesn’t make peace treaties with sin and death; He crucifies it and replaces it with righteousness and life. On the cross Jesus Christ became that thing in your heart that you are so afraid of. He became that sin. He already took the blame for it. He already paid the price for it. Whatever it is, it is not too big for the blood of Christ to handle. Let go of it. Let the blood do what the blood is supposed to do and that is set you free from the bondage of sin and death. Quit trying to micromanage your sin and let the god you serve be the God of Scripture. If the God you serve isn’t big enough to save you from your life, he isn’t big enough to save you at all. Let your God be the all powerful, almighty God of scripture. Repent of your idolatry and ask God to give you the power of godliness that is supposed to be attached to the form.
May God give us the grace to experience real good news in the church once again.
Let’s pray. Most Holy Father, have mercy on your church. Bring us to our knees. Pour out the good news, the fullness of the good news upon our lives before the rottenness that is in our hollow words kills us. In the powerful and authoritative name of our King and savior Jesus the Christ we ask these things, So be it.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Standing on the rock
Hey Guys,
I’ve been finding myself drifting backwards in time the last couple of days listening to The Ozark Mountain Daredevils’ first album. I can’t believe it came out in 1972. I say that because as I was thinking about things I associate with listening to the album let’s just say I didn’t realize I was so young. I remember detasling corn one summer I guess it was 1974 or 75. I’m trying to determine the year by catching glimpses of pictures and scenes, corn stalks cutting my hands, flirting with a potential girlfriend named Andrea Pauley, cool early mornings and blazing hot afternoons in the fields. The girlfriend part puts it as 1975 (I think).
I was staying with my friend Gale for a week so I could work for $1.35 an hour instead of going on vacation with my family. Gale had the eight track to this album. I made his brother, Paul, so mad at me for blaring this album repeatedly one afternoon when it was just him and me there but until he yelled at me I was oblivious, which is typical of me at that point in time - self absorbed.
Paul died of aids several years ago. Andrea has had a real hard life. Gale is off somewhere either in Mainland China or the Ukraine. I can’t remember which , he and his wife bounce around from one to the other or so it seems. I’ve missed him by an hour the last two years at Christmas. I don’t think about the past too often. I don’t even remember much of the past, to be honest, but I think of Gale from time to time especially when I listen to this album.
I find myself longing to be numb and oblivious some days. But I only stay there for a moment or two because while it was nice being numb it’s nicer, though not easier, being closer to whole. I long for the day when the last remnants of brokenness are healed and I can find out what I’m supposed to look like when I’m all put together.
Next week at this time, I’ll be on a plane to Brownsville, TX to attend the Fellowship of Mere Christianity Convocation. I’ll be speaking on Friday morning at 10 am in some time zone either central or mountain. It’s another piece in the puzzle of my life. I still can’t really tell what the picture is I’m working on. So far there have been a lot of dark pieces put in place with a few scatterings of light. This one seems to be a lighter shade of pale but with my eyes it’s hard to tell sometimes.
I was listening to the Ozark boys sing Standing on the Rock on my way into work this morning: “I’ve been standing on the rock waiting for the wind to blow. I’ve been standing on the rock waiting for my seeds to grow.” And those words seemed to sum up where I am. I am standing on Christ the Rock waiting. Waiting for the wind of the Spirit to blow and do something; Waiting for God to cause the seeds to grow. Maybe they are growing, underground, but I’m at that place where it could go either way from my point of view. There are so many seeds in my life that just seem to lie dormant, and waiting for them to do something besides just lay there is almost unbearable.
Perhaps that is the point. Over and over again in scripture we are called to wait. Wait on the Lord. But why is he walking instead of taking a car? Why is he dragging his feet? Why does he move so slow? Wait on the Lord. ARRRRGGGHH! As my sophomore year English teacher used to say. (1975. It’s the theme of the day).
So I stand on the rock looking at the garden all plowed and sown and I wait. But there’s plenty to be done while I’m waiting fences need mending, etc , etc. So the call is to wait, and yet be faithful to do that which is set before me. Do the little things, weed and water, fertilize: Line upon line precept upon precept. Some day when the building is complete I probably won’t look at the individual blocks much but I’m working with each one right now putting them together as they come like pieces in a puzzle. Kind of like I looked at each seed as I planted it in the ground but when the harvest comes I’ll be looking at the full silo.
Do you think I could mix a few more metaphors into this thing? Probably, but I’ll try not to.
Anyway, part of the waiting is allowing me to be stirred in one direction or another. I’m finding myself drawn to prayer over the last week in part because of my opportunity to speak next week but also because of all that may possibly be happening in my congregation. I’m hedging my bets if you can’t tell. God is doing things: bringing some, not bringing others, bringing struggles, relieving struggles. The waters are churning. And this stirring has driven me to go fishing. More aptly it has caused me to go sit by the waters edge at 5 in the morning for a few hours and talk to God. I learned to do this long before 1975 as I sat in solitude in the early mornings at the city park lake we called the Lagoon. Mostly back then I prayed for the fish to bite but I was still praying. It is God who causes fish and bait to be joined together. So, I reinstituted that the last couple of weeks. I need to pray. I need to never stop praying because there are so many seeds in the ground and I can’t make any of them grow; not a single one.
Therefore, instead of casting my pearls before swine I cast my wheatie ball toward turtles. They were about the only thing that has been biting in this 90 degree weather. I also cast my cares upon the one who truly does care. I’ve been begging him, literally, to let the wind blow, to move on people’s hearts, to keep his promises, to heal broken hearts. I’ve been begging because with each passing day I realize more clearly that my words can’t do squat – unless the wind blows.
The answer my friend is blowing in the wind. Or to be theologically correct it is in the blowing of the wind. May he come with gale force winds to bring his church to her knees and his people to repentance so that their broken hearts may be healed.
Grace and Peace,
Brad
I’ve been finding myself drifting backwards in time the last couple of days listening to The Ozark Mountain Daredevils’ first album. I can’t believe it came out in 1972. I say that because as I was thinking about things I associate with listening to the album let’s just say I didn’t realize I was so young. I remember detasling corn one summer I guess it was 1974 or 75. I’m trying to determine the year by catching glimpses of pictures and scenes, corn stalks cutting my hands, flirting with a potential girlfriend named Andrea Pauley, cool early mornings and blazing hot afternoons in the fields. The girlfriend part puts it as 1975 (I think).
I was staying with my friend Gale for a week so I could work for $1.35 an hour instead of going on vacation with my family. Gale had the eight track to this album. I made his brother, Paul, so mad at me for blaring this album repeatedly one afternoon when it was just him and me there but until he yelled at me I was oblivious, which is typical of me at that point in time - self absorbed.
Paul died of aids several years ago. Andrea has had a real hard life. Gale is off somewhere either in Mainland China or the Ukraine. I can’t remember which , he and his wife bounce around from one to the other or so it seems. I’ve missed him by an hour the last two years at Christmas. I don’t think about the past too often. I don’t even remember much of the past, to be honest, but I think of Gale from time to time especially when I listen to this album.
I find myself longing to be numb and oblivious some days. But I only stay there for a moment or two because while it was nice being numb it’s nicer, though not easier, being closer to whole. I long for the day when the last remnants of brokenness are healed and I can find out what I’m supposed to look like when I’m all put together.
Next week at this time, I’ll be on a plane to Brownsville, TX to attend the Fellowship of Mere Christianity Convocation. I’ll be speaking on Friday morning at 10 am in some time zone either central or mountain. It’s another piece in the puzzle of my life. I still can’t really tell what the picture is I’m working on. So far there have been a lot of dark pieces put in place with a few scatterings of light. This one seems to be a lighter shade of pale but with my eyes it’s hard to tell sometimes.
I was listening to the Ozark boys sing Standing on the Rock on my way into work this morning: “I’ve been standing on the rock waiting for the wind to blow. I’ve been standing on the rock waiting for my seeds to grow.” And those words seemed to sum up where I am. I am standing on Christ the Rock waiting. Waiting for the wind of the Spirit to blow and do something; Waiting for God to cause the seeds to grow. Maybe they are growing, underground, but I’m at that place where it could go either way from my point of view. There are so many seeds in my life that just seem to lie dormant, and waiting for them to do something besides just lay there is almost unbearable.
Perhaps that is the point. Over and over again in scripture we are called to wait. Wait on the Lord. But why is he walking instead of taking a car? Why is he dragging his feet? Why does he move so slow? Wait on the Lord. ARRRRGGGHH! As my sophomore year English teacher used to say. (1975. It’s the theme of the day).
So I stand on the rock looking at the garden all plowed and sown and I wait. But there’s plenty to be done while I’m waiting fences need mending, etc , etc. So the call is to wait, and yet be faithful to do that which is set before me. Do the little things, weed and water, fertilize: Line upon line precept upon precept. Some day when the building is complete I probably won’t look at the individual blocks much but I’m working with each one right now putting them together as they come like pieces in a puzzle. Kind of like I looked at each seed as I planted it in the ground but when the harvest comes I’ll be looking at the full silo.
Do you think I could mix a few more metaphors into this thing? Probably, but I’ll try not to.
Anyway, part of the waiting is allowing me to be stirred in one direction or another. I’m finding myself drawn to prayer over the last week in part because of my opportunity to speak next week but also because of all that may possibly be happening in my congregation. I’m hedging my bets if you can’t tell. God is doing things: bringing some, not bringing others, bringing struggles, relieving struggles. The waters are churning. And this stirring has driven me to go fishing. More aptly it has caused me to go sit by the waters edge at 5 in the morning for a few hours and talk to God. I learned to do this long before 1975 as I sat in solitude in the early mornings at the city park lake we called the Lagoon. Mostly back then I prayed for the fish to bite but I was still praying. It is God who causes fish and bait to be joined together. So, I reinstituted that the last couple of weeks. I need to pray. I need to never stop praying because there are so many seeds in the ground and I can’t make any of them grow; not a single one.
Therefore, instead of casting my pearls before swine I cast my wheatie ball toward turtles. They were about the only thing that has been biting in this 90 degree weather. I also cast my cares upon the one who truly does care. I’ve been begging him, literally, to let the wind blow, to move on people’s hearts, to keep his promises, to heal broken hearts. I’ve been begging because with each passing day I realize more clearly that my words can’t do squat – unless the wind blows.
The answer my friend is blowing in the wind. Or to be theologically correct it is in the blowing of the wind. May he come with gale force winds to bring his church to her knees and his people to repentance so that their broken hearts may be healed.
Grace and Peace,
Brad
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Songs of Mass Destruction
Good Morning,
I find myself looking for the right words. I don’t want to be blindly optimistic. I don’t want to be naïve. But, I think I see God letting a few people start to run the race. A young man that I prayed with about a month a go was baptized last week at a sister church down the road a few miles. And another came to me last night asking what it meant to repent.
I know a lot of people who would think the job is over now but I understand that it has only just begun. Standing at the starting line doesn’t mean you’ll cross the finished line. It doesn’t even mean your running the race. I’m not trying to imply that one could lose their salvation, not at all. Rather, what I am saying is that I can’t see people’s hearts. I only know what I’ve been told and seen with my eyes. The secret things belong to God and the condition of everyone’s heart is a secret to me. Some days even my own heart is a secret to me.
One of the difficulties of being a pastor is being human, being finite – guessing what people’s actions and words really mean. I used to take them at face value but I’ve come to understand that relationships are so much more complicated than that. The young man last night has been so abused by the church, that for him to even be speaking to me is a big deal, a big risk on his part. What if I’m just like every other minister he’s ever known?
This guy knows the word but it hasn’t been allowed to go below the surface. It hasn’t been allowed to transform him, much like the rest of the church in our times: Words without power. But he needs the power badly. He needs to be changed. He needs to be healed and he knows it, but he also knows the church has played a big part in making him like he is. He is stepping lightly to say the least.
I picked up Annie Lennox’s album from 2007 the other day at the library. It’s called Songs of Mass Destruction. I haven’t had much time to listen to it until yesterday. For the most part it is an album of honest lostness (at least on the surface). She writes: Maybe I’m still searchin’ but I don’t know what it means. All the fires of destruction are still burning in my dreams. There’s no water that can wash away this longing to come clean. I can’t find no joy within my soul. It’s just sadness taken hold. I wanna come in from the cold. It takes strength to live this way; the same old madness every day. I wanna kick these blues away. I want to learn to live again. It’s a dark road and a dark way that leads to my house. And the word says you’re never going to find me there oh, no.
I’m afraid there are many who go to church every time the doors are opened that refuse to be so honest. Was it Marx that said religion is the opiate of the masses? Whoever it was I’m beginning to believe they were right. In my own experience it is church that keeps many people from coming to Christ. Part of that is that the church (at least the ones I’ve known) isn’t filled with Christ it is, to use a Flannery O’Connor term, haunted by Christ. We are filled with words, powerless words of a time gone by. When the Father, Son and Holy Ghost took the last train for the coast we let form take their place. We substituted words for power, words for healing, words for salvation, words for anything but reality.
We did these things because we couldn’t manufacture power, we couldn’t save anybody when the Spirit left so we changed the meaning of salvation so it couldn’t be measured. We turned to intellectual concepts that made us feel better about ourselves. We were forgiven, so we said, and that was what it was all about. We couldn’t prove we were forgiven and no one had the guts enough to say ‘arise take up your bed and walk’, unless of course they paid somebody 20 bucks before the service started and gave them a pair of crutches.
Maybe you think I’m cynical. Maybe I am cynical but I really think I’m finally able to be realistic about the condition of the church. People aren’t getting saved because they can get the crap we call salvation just about anywhere these days. Liquor stops the pain of life a whole lot better than empty haunted words.
So, given all of that, I have a man stand before me last night asking about repentance and I want to just scream for joy, but I restrain myself. Here is a man who knows the powerlessness of words better than most. He is broken, wounded, mourning –desperate. He holds out empty hands and basically says: 'Save me'. And I find myself begging God for power beyond words to heal his broken heart, to save him from the church. I find myself pleading with God to let me quit singing songs of mass destruction and simply feed and water, weed and nurture the man before me and pray that God would keep his word and cause growth.
That is our only hope now, isn’t it?
Grace and Peace,
Brad
I find myself looking for the right words. I don’t want to be blindly optimistic. I don’t want to be naïve. But, I think I see God letting a few people start to run the race. A young man that I prayed with about a month a go was baptized last week at a sister church down the road a few miles. And another came to me last night asking what it meant to repent.
I know a lot of people who would think the job is over now but I understand that it has only just begun. Standing at the starting line doesn’t mean you’ll cross the finished line. It doesn’t even mean your running the race. I’m not trying to imply that one could lose their salvation, not at all. Rather, what I am saying is that I can’t see people’s hearts. I only know what I’ve been told and seen with my eyes. The secret things belong to God and the condition of everyone’s heart is a secret to me. Some days even my own heart is a secret to me.
One of the difficulties of being a pastor is being human, being finite – guessing what people’s actions and words really mean. I used to take them at face value but I’ve come to understand that relationships are so much more complicated than that. The young man last night has been so abused by the church, that for him to even be speaking to me is a big deal, a big risk on his part. What if I’m just like every other minister he’s ever known?
This guy knows the word but it hasn’t been allowed to go below the surface. It hasn’t been allowed to transform him, much like the rest of the church in our times: Words without power. But he needs the power badly. He needs to be changed. He needs to be healed and he knows it, but he also knows the church has played a big part in making him like he is. He is stepping lightly to say the least.
I picked up Annie Lennox’s album from 2007 the other day at the library. It’s called Songs of Mass Destruction. I haven’t had much time to listen to it until yesterday. For the most part it is an album of honest lostness (at least on the surface). She writes: Maybe I’m still searchin’ but I don’t know what it means. All the fires of destruction are still burning in my dreams. There’s no water that can wash away this longing to come clean. I can’t find no joy within my soul. It’s just sadness taken hold. I wanna come in from the cold. It takes strength to live this way; the same old madness every day. I wanna kick these blues away. I want to learn to live again. It’s a dark road and a dark way that leads to my house. And the word says you’re never going to find me there oh, no.
I’m afraid there are many who go to church every time the doors are opened that refuse to be so honest. Was it Marx that said religion is the opiate of the masses? Whoever it was I’m beginning to believe they were right. In my own experience it is church that keeps many people from coming to Christ. Part of that is that the church (at least the ones I’ve known) isn’t filled with Christ it is, to use a Flannery O’Connor term, haunted by Christ. We are filled with words, powerless words of a time gone by. When the Father, Son and Holy Ghost took the last train for the coast we let form take their place. We substituted words for power, words for healing, words for salvation, words for anything but reality.
We did these things because we couldn’t manufacture power, we couldn’t save anybody when the Spirit left so we changed the meaning of salvation so it couldn’t be measured. We turned to intellectual concepts that made us feel better about ourselves. We were forgiven, so we said, and that was what it was all about. We couldn’t prove we were forgiven and no one had the guts enough to say ‘arise take up your bed and walk’, unless of course they paid somebody 20 bucks before the service started and gave them a pair of crutches.
Maybe you think I’m cynical. Maybe I am cynical but I really think I’m finally able to be realistic about the condition of the church. People aren’t getting saved because they can get the crap we call salvation just about anywhere these days. Liquor stops the pain of life a whole lot better than empty haunted words.
So, given all of that, I have a man stand before me last night asking about repentance and I want to just scream for joy, but I restrain myself. Here is a man who knows the powerlessness of words better than most. He is broken, wounded, mourning –desperate. He holds out empty hands and basically says: 'Save me'. And I find myself begging God for power beyond words to heal his broken heart, to save him from the church. I find myself pleading with God to let me quit singing songs of mass destruction and simply feed and water, weed and nurture the man before me and pray that God would keep his word and cause growth.
That is our only hope now, isn’t it?
Grace and Peace,
Brad
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)