Getting Ready for Sunday

I have been pondering ideas related to love, gratitude, attitude, and worship that were sparked by looking at a story Jesus told in Luke 7. Given that we gather as a church every Sunday, it is possible for us to think of church simply as a routine that might be a good thing in our lives, but hey, we all get tired or even bored of routines. 

The main thrust of the story in Luke 7 is not about worship, but is about love and gratitude. As I thought about my love for and gratitude toward God for what He has done for me, I was challenged to consider my attitude toward worship and how love and gratitude impact my attitude toward worship. Here is where my pondering took me: when we gather on a Sunday morning for a time of group worship, I believe that my love and gratitude toward God should be the motivator for me to be present in a service and for me to participate in the service. But clearly, my love and gratitude do not start with me. I do not create them. They are products of or responses to God’s love and forgiveness freely given to me through the Lord Jesus. To me there should be a wow in our lives, even in the context of a routine, when we consider what God has done for us. A wow that ignites me to action. When I ponder the truth of what God has done for me, the idea of gathering with others to worship seems like an incredible blessing, one in which I want and need to be a part of. Those thoughts are making me very eager to participate in our worship service on Sunday. Yes we gather every week, but when I consider what God has done, we need to gather very week and give thanks. I hope you are eager to participate too when you consider what God has done through Christ. 

A Prayer for 2014

When one year ends and another one begins, it is pretty common for us to stop, though maybe only for a moment, to take stock of our lives. But should we take the time to do this kind of thing? According to Plato, during Socrates’ trial for corrupting the youth of Athens in 399 B.C. Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” (http://www.patheos.com/blogs/scriptorium/2010/02/the-examined-life-of-socrates/). Should you take some time and examine your life?

I believe the quick answer to that question is a qualified yes. Your life should be examined, but it is nothing something that you can do alone, you need help, honestly we all need help to accomplish such a task. Recently I was reminded of why that is in fact the case. Jeremiah wrote these words a long time ago:

Jeremiah 17:9-10 – The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?  ¹⁰ "I the LORD search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds."

Our hearts, not the physical organ, by heart Jeremiah was speaking of the totality of our inner lives, are not something we understand. And sadly, our inner lives are not very pretty sometimes, yet how we act and the attitudes we project come from that mess. Though we need to be examined, it is not a private activity. As verse 10 shows us, the Lord alone is the One who can do such an examination.

As we embark on a new year, I would like to suggest that with some measure of regularity we need to pray a couple of verses of Scripture and wait and listen carefully for the Lord to answer that prayer. The verses are Psalm 139:23-24:

Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! ²⁴ And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!

Most men and undoubtedly many women go through each day at full speed and do not carve out time for the discipline of praying, contemplating, and reflecting over God’s answers. Such an activity may sound to some as a type of useless nasal gazing. But I believe it should sound to us like an incredible gift from God to us. Psalm 139 is written in the context of distress – note the harsh words of verses 19-22. And in that context, the psalmist, presumably David has noted that God’s knowledge of his life is complete and full (verses 1-12). Such knowledge should not surprise us given that God is the One who made us (verses 13-16) and should drive us to worship God (verses 17-18). If the first parts of the Psalm are true, then in a world that is not always what it should be, we may not always be the people we should be. We probably need an examination.

Maybe I am alone in this concern, but I wish I could do parts of 2013 over again, and way too many previous years. I made choices and mistakes that were ill informed, hurtful to others, and just plain stupid.  I know that I am capable of repeating the same actions in 2014 without inviting and heeding God’s examination. I need Him to help me see His discernment of my motives and actions. I need to move toward His transformative work in my life. Without asking for His examination, I will miss what I truly need, which only He can give.

Please pray Psalm 139:23-24 regularly this year. 

Thinking about an Incredible Christmas Gift

One of the blessings of God in my life was being raised in a family that loved God and loved each other. A noted result of that is Christmas is filled with many positive memories for me. Memories from the wonder of a six year old looking at the presents wrapped under the tree to 30 family members filling my parents’ home for Christmas dinner seem to bubble up for me this time of year.

Another memory that seems to re-surface each year is of being a college student teaching Sunday school. A couple of years in a row, as I taught 6^th graders and then moved up to work with junior high students (7^th-9^thgraders), the story of the angel appearing to Joseph seemed to be a part of the curriculum at Christmas time. Though the story has much richness to it, one verse repeatedly struck me:  Matthew 1:23. It reads:

"Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel" (which means, God with us).

For a number of reasons the words “God with us” have always wowed me. The Lord Jesus came as a baby to save us from our sins, as Matthew 1:21 states, but the reason He did that was to be with us. Perhaps because as a college student I struggled with issues of personal worth and value, I was taken back in a good way by the statement that God the Son came to be with us. God desires to have a relationship with us to the extent that He reached out to us by coming to us. Though the analogy is far from perfect, indulge me for just a moment. As a child, and maybe even as an adult, there is something about having another child knock on your door and ask if you wanted to play. In coming, the Lord Jesus is like the neighbor kid coming and knocking on the door asking us to come out and play with Him. As I said, I know the analogy is not perfect, but it strikes me that Jesus came to be with us. I do not deserve His interest or attention, but I am dramatically blessed by it. We have been given an incredible gift in Jesus’ coming.

No longer being in college – now we have two sons and a daughter-in-law in college, with a third son starting next fall – that Sunday school teaching college student era seems like a life time ago, but the wowness of Jesus coming to be with us still shows up every Christmas. And I suppose part of the reason why is because before the Lord Jesus ascending to heaven, He made an amazing promise at the very end of the Gospel of Matthew. Matthew 28:20 ends with the words:

And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.

The gift of God’s presence at Christmas is not just a Christmas thing. Jesus is not just present during the time you have your nativity set out. If you are a follower of the Lord Jesus, He has promised to be present always. That is a Christmas gift that keeps giving and giving to us all year round. God gives the most incredible gifts. I pray your Christmas is about celebrating and thanking God for the amazing gift of a relationship with Him this Christmas.

Being Impacted

Since I was in the 11^th grade and God brought me into a personal relationship with Himself through the Lord Jesus, the Bible has been really important in my life. As I have studied the Bible and had lots of opportunity to teach the Bible, I have become increasingly convinced that the Bible is a gift from God to us to mark our lives. Perhaps more exacting, I should say that I believe is vital to us really being able to live life. 2 Timothy 3:16-17 have influenced me to reach that conclusion. Those verses read:

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, ¹⁷ that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.

That belief seems like a pretty big claim. Claims are easy to make, but do they actually happen in life? It feels trite to say that the Bible can promote or stimulate change in your life so you can really life. In the trenches of real life, we want to that it does, and we want to know how we can experience the impact, influence, and outcome of the Bible in our lives.

This Christmas season we have been studying Luke 1 and 2 as a church family. In going through those chapters I have been hit by a couple of things related to the above discussion. One is that Zechariah, hesitant to believe a message from God, was given 9 months of silence. Coming out of that period, he was changed (see Luke 1:5-20, 57-79). Mary, the mother of the Lord Jesus, is described in Luke 2:19 and 51 as treasuring and pondering the things said concerning the Lord Jesus.

Then, as I have trying to do work ahead on the series we will be doing in the New Year from the book of Joshua, the words of Joshua 1:8 captured my attention:

This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.

Zechariah, Mary, and Joshua are three people who were greatly impacted by God’s Word. A common thread in their stories seems to be either by choice (Mary), command (Joshua), or consequence (Zechariah) the impact of God’s Word can be traced to their noted reflection on God’s Word.

There are a multitude of things that constantly clamor for our attention, and often it is the squeaky wheel that gets the grease. To be impacted by the Bible so that God informs our attitudes and actions, maybe I need to see the Bible as a squeaky wheel. I need to give noted attention to what God says, so my life is shaped by God and not by those other sounds. A God-shaped life can look pretty good according to Psalm 1:1-3:

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; ² but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. ³ He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers.

Sounds like if we want to prosper as 2013 ends and 2014 begins,  we need to take some time to mull over God’s Word so God, through His Spirit, does some molding and moving work in us. 

Who Am I? How Reconciliation Should Impact Your Answer

In getting ready for Sunday’s message that will finish our 4 week Involveagram series, I was encouraged to think about the gospel – the good news that Jesus came, died for our sins, and rose again, making it possible for us to be forgiven and reconciled to God if we would repent and trust the Lord Jesus as our Savior. Specifically I was encouraged to think about some of the impacts in our lives of being reconciled to God, impacts that should inform how I look at myself. 2 Corinthians 5:14-21 is a passage that has helped me think about those impacts. It reads:

For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; ¹⁵ and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.  ¹⁶ From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer.  ¹⁷ Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. ¹⁸ All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; ¹⁹ that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. ²⁰ Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. ²¹ For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

In brief, here are five impacts those verses tell us are true about followers of Jesus:

·         Impact #1 – You Receive a New Life – 2 Corinthians 5:17 – In being reconciled to God, we receive new lives – literally we are new creations.

·         Impact #2 – You Gain a New Outlook – 2 Corinthians 5:16 – instead of looking at people based on gender or ethnicity or socioeconomic status, we can look at people in light of eternity. So often we put barriers between ourselves and others people because of short-term stuff. But when with the new perspective we gain through being reconciled, we can invest in relationships across what used to be barriers.

·         Impact #3 – You Report to a New Leader – 2 Corinthians 5:15 – being reconciled means that the Lord Jesus is really the driver of my life bus, which means that my life is being led by the smartest, most powerful person there is. But that raises a question: Why I follow the best leader? My life can be very different when I do.

·         Impact #4 – You Are Stimulated by a New Motive – 2 Corinthians 5:14 – Lots of things can be the driving motive of our lives. Paul wants us to know love can be that motive of our lives, specifically verse 14 it telling us that we can be motivated by Christ’s love for us. Sometimes starting a new day is hard, but think of how different each day can be when the spark in our lives is not the cup of coffee we might crave, but will soon wear off, but instead is Jesus’ love for us that He declared in dying on the cross while we were His enemies.

·         Impact #5 – You Have a New Mission – 2 Corinthians 5:18-20 – when you receive Jesus, you are given the privilege of joining God’s State Department as His ambassador to your home, school, neighborhood, workplace, and social networks. There is a very real purpose for your life.

If you are a follower of the Lord Jesus you need to see yourself according to those impacts. That is who God reconciled you to be. Lots of things can influence how we view ourselves. But because of what the Lord Jesus did on the first Christmas, first Good Friday, and first Easter, one influence can truly be the most influential. Please, live according to the person God has reconciled you to be. Many will be blessed by the impact of you being the God-reconciled person you are in the Lord Jesus.

Praying for Central

Prayer is an incredible gift from God to us. But for many of us, prayer is something we struggle with and find hard to do. As a church, Central needs to be praying, but we can struggle with how to do that too. The more I try to study about prayer and look for ways to help people, including myself through the struggles we seem to have related to prayer, I keep being pointed to the same conclusion: to become a "pray-er," I need to pray, but then I run into my struggle as if it is a reinforced brick wall. In an effort to help all of us grow in prayer, please read this helpful article -Simple and Strategic Prayer for Your Church - by one of my professors. I pray it helps you and me grow in prayer.

Is God Central?

Recently, a man whom God has used greatly in my life, Dr. Gary Inrig, spoke at the Fall Bible Conference at Grace University, where our second son and our first son’s wife are currently students. Thanks to internet technology I have been able to listen to those messages (you can too by using this link http://blogs.graceuniversity.edu/gracelife/ and scrolling down). Dr. Inrig began his first message by quoting from the first sentence of A. W. Tozer’s book, The Knowledge of the Holy, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”

I have been pondering that sentence since hearing it. I am confident that there is much more to Tozer’s words than I have grasped or can write in a blog post – after all, the sentence was the springboard to an entire book – but I would like to share a couple of thoughts that I trust are of some value.

First, I believe the sentence reminds us of the centrality of God to all of life. Romans 11:36 I believe underlines that truth:

For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.

Often, too often, I can be self-absorbed and view life as if everything revolves around me. I suppose a good word to describe that is pride. But my pride is baseless. Things do not revolve around me or you. That in no way means we have no value. We have value, but that value is derived from God. What I mean by that is each person has value because each person is created in the image of God. That fact should have huge bearing on how we treat other people, recognizing God’s fingerprints on and purpose for their lives. In addition, when a person receives the Lord Jesus as his or her Savior, Ephesians 2:10 says that we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance for us. God believes we have something significant to contribute, we bring value to life.

If I forget or do not live in light of the centrality of God, I will actual undermine or even remove the basis for my personal value. Thinking that what I think about God is the most important thing about me does not diminish me, it allows me to see myself accurately. Though that is contingent on at least one factor, which is the second thought I had.

If Tozer’s sentence is true and God is central to life, including my life, then it becomes really important for me to have an accurate understanding of who God is. To process life, I need to think correctly about God. On page three of The Knowledge of the Holy, Tozer offered, “I believe there is scarcely an error in doctrine or a failure in applying Christian ethics that cannot be traced finally to imperfect and ignoble thoughts about God.” Thinking about God is a theological concern. But if God is central to life, then if I have mixed up thoughts about God, I can have some pretty mixed up attitudes and actions in my everyday life. To function well, I need to think rightly about God. If I do not, there will be disconnect, and sadly I may not even be aware of that disconnect. Tozer, on the second page of the book noted, “We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God.” If my thoughts about God are off, a lot of things will be off. I need to seek to understand God as He revealed Himself in the Bible, not how I would like God to be.

Please let me know your thoughts about thinking rightly about God.