Babies…and the Bible

by | Mar 8, 2018 | Devotions, discipleship, pastor, Pastor's Reflections

It has been a few seasons now, but I remember the transition of our family from no kids to having children. Sure, sleeplessness increased as did the grocery bill. Sure, laughter increased, but so did the tears. Another thing that changed was…EVERYTHING! We could not go to the store or out to eat without packing 3 days of potential supplies into the car. We arranged our schedules around feedings and naps. We changed our own personal habits…and even altered how loud we talked around how it would affect the baby.

Yes, a baby changes everything! Now exchange the baby for God’s instruction through his Word.

Your word I have treasured in my heart, that I may not sin against You. Psalm 119:11, NASB. You may have a translation that renders this verse as I “have hidden,” (NIV, NLT, NKJV) or “stored up” (ESV). The semantic range of the Hebrew word supports all of these renderings, but the sense of the usage relates to more than merely storing something away or hiding it from sight, but of placing it under lock and key as you would your most precious jewels or family heirlooms. As David communicates this truth of “hiding God’s word” he is emphasizing the value he places on it and how he aligns his life around it.

We often speak of Psalm 119:11 when making the case for Scripture memorization. Memorize Scripture…hide it in your heart! Yes…but let’s not be misled into thinking that memorizing Scripture is the same as treasuring it. The Pharisees who were nearly universally in Jesus’ crosshairs could recite books of the Pentateuch (first five books of the Bible)…but they missed the Messiah…not because they did not memorize Scripture, but because they did not treasure it.

David communicates throughout Psalm 119 that the Word of the Lord influenced his actions in every regard. David depended on God’s Word for wisdom, comfort, encouragement, restraint, and knowing the course of every step in His life. He did not simply memorize a verse or a book of verses, but he considered them and meditated on them and aligned his life around them. He treasured the word from the Lord.

Many years ago, our oldest son attended a Christian school and was required to memorize Scripture. He came home with a long passage which he had been working on and the head of the school required that it be memorized in an older translation. After Dillon recited it to me, I asked him to simply tell me what it meant. He was clueless. We immediately found him a different translation and focused our reinforcement on explaining the verses to the point of understanding. We did not stop memorizing Scripture, but we made sure that the goal was understanding what we memorized so we could treasure the Word.

Someone said, “We (today’s Christians in churches) know far more than we apply.” To our shame…I must agree.

Here’s today’s question: How does your knowledge of God’s Word affect your parenting, your web-surfing practices, your work ethic, your view of and actions toward the poor, your approach to disagreement and conflict resolution, and your making of disciples?

What we treasure changes us. It changes our actions. O Lord, Your word have treasured in my heart that I may not sin against you.

Motivated by Grace and Glory, not Guilt

by | Mar 5, 2018 | church, Devotions, discipleship, Leadership, pastor, Pastor's Reflections

“For I testify, that according to their ability and beyond their ability, they gave of their own accord, begging us with much urging for the favor of participation in the support of the saints…” 2 Corinthians 8:3-4.

A video of an impoverished village in a third world country with children displaying distended bellies from malnourishment…juxtaposed with a clip of a middle-class American community with two cars in the drive of a 3,000 square foot house and the top of the 26-foot Boston Whaler boat peering over the privacy fence to the backyard. Two cultures…two reference points…one purpose: to make the argument that there is something fundamentally unfair about some having so much while others lack the basic necessities of life.

There is truth in the assertion perhaps…but the motives for displaying the contrast give rise to the question…what should motivate generosity for the Christ-follower? Often times, the motivation is guilt…but the Scripture presents the case that the motivation should be gratitude for the grace of God in the believer’s life and the desire for God’s glory to be manifested…everywhere.

Yesterday I shared a message that included the text above and recognized that Paul was enamored with GRACE throughout the passage. In fact, he used the Greek Word charis seven times in the chapter. Charis is most often translated “grace,” though the semantic range can include words like “favor, thanks, gracious work,” and the like. The point is, Paul saw GRACE (or better-the understanding and appreciation of grace) as the motivator for deeds that touch human need.

To make this case, let me point out three things:

  • Wealth and possessions are not bad things. God gives them to people. It is not what you possess that is evil, but what possesses you.
  • The generosity of Paul’s example church (the Macedonians) was based on their grace-motivated kindness amid their deep poverty and great affliction (2 Cor 8:2). IOW- they had no connection to middle-class suburban American lifestyles, and were abundantly generous, even beyond their ability!
  • It was the JOY in the Macedonian church that overflowed in generosity. That is to say, they evaluated their circumstances (God’s grace toward them even in the midst of their trials and poverty) and were so joyful at its value, that they could do nothing but give generously to touch those who were in need.

Some may question if the Macedonians were a one-time example…or if their actions are intended to be exemplary for believers at all times. The Scriptures suggest that the generous display of the Macedonians is exemplary and not merely a one-time explanation. Beyond the fact that Paul actually used their story as a motivator for the churches of Corinth, the principle agrees with other places in Scripture: The boy who gave up his lunch that was used to feed the five thousand (Matthew 14:13-21), Mary’s anointing Jesus with her own funeral oil (Matthew 26:6-13), and even the words of Christ Himself that “it is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35).

A true understanding of grace ALWAYS results in an overwhelming response of humility, gratitude, worship…and a physical response that springs up from the fertile soil of these elements. Grace begets grace. We receive grace and therefore we demonstrate grace! In most cases, we demonstrate grace and then we receive it back! After all, how could we really comprehend the grace of Christ toward us and it not rise up from our soul as a spring of abundant joy resulting in a wealth of generosity toward others.

It’s true…when we touch poverty. It’s true…when we love the unlovely. It’s true…when we communicate the gospel.

May the grace of God spring forth from your life today! Because He came, lived, died, was buried, rose again, and called you to tell the story…in both Word and Deed.

Don’t Discount the Difficulties…

by | Feb 27, 2018 | Devotions, discipleship, Faith, Leadership, Pastor's Reflections

Life is hard. Even on its best days, there are moments that test you, try you, and even grieve you. Some believe that difficulties are the times we must endure so that we can get back to God’s plan for our lives. In these cases, it is as if the difficulties are an interruption to God’s good favor on our lives. What if, however, difficulties were significant and good and glorious and God’s design?

I was meditating on Psalm 23 this morning and thinking through events of recent days. This verse arrested me: “Even though I walk through the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, because You are with me…” (Psalm 23:4).

No one volunteers for “the valley of the shadow of death.” That would be crazy; however, it was in the valley that David recognized God’s presence. (Because You are with me…)

This observation is not new. It is not trendy. It is not unique to the Old Testament. It is, rather, a consistent theme. It was under a Juniper tree in the desert when God sent an angel to minister to Elijah. It was walking on the waters of the Sea where Peter experienced Jesus’ salvation. It was in the prison that Paul and Silas, having endured beatings and humiliation that they were stirred in their hearts and sang hymns that ushered God’s saving presence into the jail and saved a household.

James opens his epistle by reminding us to “Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.” (James 1:2-3).

Perhaps a better view of trials and difficulties is required. When facing the trials, consider these five things:

  • What is God Doing? If this trial is intended to cause me to stumble, it is not a trial but a temptation…meaning that it is not God who is acting. (James 1:13).
  • Where is God working? God never wastes His time. Pause and pray, asking to see what God is up to. What areas of the trial are most heart-wrenching and prevalent.
  • How does this trial build on what I learned in the last one? In my experience, God doesn’t use a one and done (Like: Oh, you need some humility. Here is a humbling experience. Check. Ok, back to your regularly scheduled life—God).
  • What are you confessing? Often, our trials are connected to the sins we are confessing. For instance, “God I struggle to love others with a love like Christ. Forgive me…” This may be followed by a trial of loving an unlovely person or losing an opportunity to love someone…through death or disconnection.
  • Who is God putting in your path? If you read and reflect on 2 Corinthians 1, you realize that God is always shaping us through our experiences to be a conduit of comfort and grace toward others. Often, God teaches me compassion toward others by allowing me to experience a similar struggle. This really does influence my empathy.

Ultimately, if we hold to a correct doctrine of God’s sovereignty we must declare that God is sovereign both on the mountaintops and in the valleys. So…don’t discount the difficulties. They are gracious gifts from a loving and sovereign King.

Be Glad They Don’t Know What I Know About You…

by | Feb 21, 2018 | Devotions, pastor, Pastor's Reflections

“Now before the Feast of the Passover, Jesus knowing that His hour had come that He would depart out of this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.” John 13:1, NASB.

The times of God’s greatest developmental work in a leader’s life are often in the desert or the dungeon. While a leader can learn on a mountaintop, nearly all proclaim that the most formative experiences are sitting in a desert, under a Juniper tree, wishing to die. (1 Kings 19:4). This week, for me, has been one of great development.

Leaders experience criticism. By definition, leaders attempt to shepherd people toward an outcome that they might not choose on their own. Pastoral leaders (pastors) do the same, only having received their orders from God. Pastors, however, don’t get emails that are time and date stamped and wrestle with the same draws toward ungodly actions as everyone else. We KNOW that often the difficulties we face originate with the devil (yes, I believe in a literal devil/satan/slanderer/accuser); however, it is not always easy to distinguish the force behind a person’s actions from the actions themselves. In one sense, “the devil made me do it” is true; whereas, in another sense, the person always willingly participates in the plan.

This week has been one of pretty intense criticism. The details are not as important (from my perspective and for the purposes of this article) as the lessons I’m learning, so I am intentionally leaving them out. My hope is that a reader might be able to transfer some of the principles of the lessons I’m learning to their own situation, even if the circumstances don’t precisely line up.

After three days of anxiousness in my chest and alternating emotions of fear, anger, and despair, the Lord reminded me of a few things today:

  • Whatever they are accusing you of is far less severe than what I ALREADY KNOW about you. (Be glad they don’t know what I know about you…they would talk.)
  • They accused me of stuff I never did and of righteous stuff I did that they did not like.
  • Be like Me.

Well, I am not Jesus. The more I grow in Christ, the more I realize how far I have yet to go toward zeroing in on my own sanctification. On days I start to think that I am making progress, God simply unmasks another layer of my wicked and deceitful heart. Sometimes He does that in prayer or reading the Scriptures. Sometimes the enemy simply screams in my ear. Sometimes the Holy Spirit opens my eyes in the midst of my sin. At other times, God uses the actions of others. In each case, the enemy has a purpose and God has a purpose. The enemy seeks to destroy, discourage, and defame (John 10:10a). God seeks to give us abundant life through unmitigated dependence on Him (John 10:10b). He seeks to conform us to the image of Christ (Romans 8:28-30).

So, this morning God graciously terrified me with part of that image: Christ on a cross, stripped naked, nail-pierced hands and feet, a crown of thorns, bloody from beatings and dried saliva all over his body…praying to the Father, “forgive them…for they know not what they do.” (Luke 23:34). I’M A ‘THEM,’ that Christ interceded for. I’m one of those sinners…

So how can a sinner elevate himself to a place of judgment against another sinner? Sure, he can and must discern that sin has occurred and who did it and all of that…but to “judge” in that context is to withhold love toward that person. If a person withheld love he may find a perfect consensus from other sinners that he is righteous but Jesus says that to do so is to testify that you are not a follower of His. “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34-35).

Wow, pastor…that’s hard!  Yes…it is. Well, surely God must only mean love those who are easy to love or those that are His own…right? If that were true, how could we reconcile that with “God demonstrates His own love toward us, that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us, (Romans 5:8), and “Christ is the propitiation for our sins, and not our only, but also for the whole world (1 John 2:2). [Propitiation speaks of the satisfactory payment for our debt] Furthermore, it is specifically in the case of sinful offense that we are told to love and told that love covers sin. “Above all, keep fervent in your love for one another, because love covers a multitude of sins.” (1 Peter 4:8).

Paul indicates that to harbor anger or resentment or to clamor or slander is to grieve the Holy Spirit and that we must resist this and walk in love, just as Christ loved us.

Ephesians 4:29–5:2 (NASB95)

29Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment, so that it will give grace to those who hear.

30Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.

31Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.

32Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you.

1Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children;

2and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma.

Back to the cross. If Christ can face what He faced, and ask God to forgive me for spitting on Him, whipping Him, crucifying Him, mocking Him, and prancing around in my self-righteous head-wagging strut…how can I not love, learn, and leave it at the cross?

So, as painful as criticism is…as hard as the days can become…I choose love, for love covers a multitude of sins.

Give me an undivided heart…

by | Feb 5, 2018 | Devotions

“Teach me Your way, O Lord; I will walk in Your truth; Unite my heart to fear Your name.” Psalm 86:11 (NASB95)

Recently, this verse struck me in my morning quiet time. Essentially, this is a prayer/psalm of David where he makes several requests of the Lord. Hear and answer me, O Lord (v.1); “Preserve my soul” (v.2); “Be gracious to me” (v.3), etc. He also observes essential characteristics about the Lord. “You, Lord, are good and ready to forgive” (v.5); You are trustworthy to answer me (v.7); You are great and do wondrous deeds, You alone are God (v.10).

These things, while not unusual in the Psalms, underscore the nature and confidence of the prayer. We ask of God because He alone is able and willing to provide, and we have confidence of this since what God does emanates from who He is.

The central focus of David’s petition is captured in verse 11:

  • “Teach me…” God, even though I know you and of you I don’t yet KNOW you.
  • “…Your way,” We don’t need God to bless our way but to show us His way so that we will align to it. The idea of “the way” is that of a journey rather than a destination. Our life in Christ is one of movement, discovery, and alignment of our will (which is evidenced by our action) to His.
  • “I will walk in Your truth.” One cannot simply ask God to share His proposal for our lives so we can examine and determine if we will follow. Prayer begins with a heart of surrender to whatever God will do based on faith in His person and character. Stated differently, prayer begins with signing a blank check to God.
  • “Unite my heart to fear your name.” The NIV says, “Give me an undivided heart…” Both translations capture the essence of the verse. David recognized that his heart can become conflicted within itself. In Jewish thought (the context of the verse), the “heart” was the locus of emotion, will, reason, etc. It is the “engine” that propels us.

David recognized what we sometimes overlook: our emotions often conflict with our will or our sense of reason. These three powerful forces can become divided in their interests and concerns. We can become driven by emotion or captive to our logic or so strong-willed that we listen to no one. His prayer is that God would UNITE his heart. “God… help me to maintain the appropriate tension between these powerful draws. IN fact, O God, take over when I am blowing it!”

Why ask God to steer our hearts properly…to keep us from losing balance or becoming driven by out of control emotions, logic/reason, or willfulness? Simply…so that we will fear the name of God.

This fear speaks of reverence or honor but we often work too hard to distance ourselves from fear (as in afraid). David recognized God’s awesome person and power, His mercy and graciousness. But He also recognized God’s holiness and resolute nature that would not be altered and will not permit His name to be tainted by sin. David prayed that his heart be united so that he might live submitted to the person and will of God…fearing the name of the Lord.

Rightly understood, we OUGHT to fear the Lord, as demonstrated in walking in His way. Our hearts can become easily divided in that pursuit; therefore, we ought to depend on the Lord to cause them to be united. We know what that is, as we learn more and experience more of God’s person in the journey of life with Him. Shalom.

Not Alone in the Dark…

by | Jan 22, 2018 | Devotions, discipleship, Pastor's Reflections

We never “really” get over it. That feeling that what we cannot see just might “get us!” When we were small children, our parents may have installed nightlights to show us that nothing was really in the room with us at bedtime. They may have inspected the closet and looked under the bed to demonstrate that nothing bad was there. They may have even explained to us all the reasons our fears were irrational and reminded us that they were on the far side of the house (away from us) and that if we needed them…we only needed to cry out.

The feeling never went away. We wondered if the object of our fears might be lurking in a shadow or may have been overlooked when inspecting the closet. Our real issue was not the darkness but the sense that we were alone.

How does one find peace from the fear and anxiety that bad things happen when we are alone?

I think this is the heartbeat of Jesus’ statement to His followers just prior to His ascension back to the Father in heaven… “and I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20).

Jesus never promised that bad people or bad things would not come against us. He never declared our lives to be filled with unicorns and cotton candy. He, in fact, declared the opposite, “In this world you will have tribulation!” (John 16:33). And at the same time, Christ indicated that we could experience a profound peace, even amid our difficult circumstance.

God’s PEACE is not experienced based on the absence of trouble but on the presence of God.

In Psalm 23, David declared, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for you are with me.” God’s presence put our “trouble” in perspective.

A boy was having difficulties with a bully on the walk to school. After several confrontations, he was so afraid of what would happen that he dreaded even walking that way again. His father, recognizing the real issue, did not promise to remove the bully but chose instead to walk with his son on the journey the next day. When they faced the bully kid along the walk, there was no issue. The bully was the same, but the son had confidence because his dad was bigger than the bully and HE WAS WITH HIM.

Today, as you face the challenges that are guaranteed to come, don’t fear the dark or dread being alone. If you are His child, you are never alone…not even in the dark. “Fear not for I am with you. Do not be discouraged, for I am your God.” (Isaiah 41:10).