Friday, February 26, 2010

Gracious to You

But God's not finished. He's waiting around to be gracious to you.
   He's gathering strength to show mercy to you.
God takes the time to do everything right—everything.
   Those who wait around for him are the lucky ones. 


Isaiah 30:18 [The Message]

Assurance

Miscellanies post:  Blessed Assurance


From Sinclair Ferguson’s lecture “Blessed Assurance & Bickering Theologians” (iTunes):
“Calvin’s great emphasis in The Institutes is that the Christian life is adoption into the family of God and that he is such a father as you would hope to be yourself as a father, who desires to leave his children no doubt whatsoever whether they really are his or not.

Part of the drive in Calvin to focus on Christ is a drive against the demonic doctrine of God that he saw in the Roman Catholic Church because it presented a father who needed a gentler son and a gentler son who needed an even gentler mother in order that the son’s arm might be twisted, that the father’s arm might be twisted, until at last—contrary to their better judgments—to give grace and salvation to lost sinners.

So you can understand the thrill and the joy of the reformation, to discover that the son is not hidden behind his mother, that the father is not hidden behind the son, but the son fully discloses the heavenly father. And as heavenly father his desire is not to leave his children in doubt, whipping them constantly into a spirit of bondage but to give to them the spirit of sonship by whom they cry ‘Abba! Father!’ [Galatians 4:6]. This explains the vigor and the joy that we find in the expressions of assurance both in Luther, but particularly in Calvin, whose theology is dominated by the wonderful release of having certitude. A huge motif in Calvin’s theology is this: The gospel gives us certitude.”

No Expiration Date

Mark Batterson post:  A Jericho Prayer

Fourteen years ago I did a prayer walk all the way around Capitol Hill. It was inspired by Joshua 1:3: "I will give you everyplace you set your foot."

I don't think there is any "magical" about that text. And I realize that Joshua 1:3 is a promise given to Joshua in relation to The Promise Land. But I also believe there are moments when God challenges you to step out in faith and claim a Promise Land of your own. That's what I did fourteen years ago with that prayer walk. It was a Joshua 1:3 moment.

There is something about praying around something that unleashes divine intervention. I like to think of it as a Jericho prayer. And Ebenezers is a good example. We didn't just stand on the property and pray. We didn't just lay hands on the walls and pray. We did prayer walks around it Jericho style!

Now here is the beautiful thing: prayer has no expiration date. I believe God is still answering that prayer. And He answers those prayers in ways we couldn't even conceive of. Our vision is much bigger than Capitol Hill now. And we've since become a regional church via multi-site. But Capitol Hill is still the epicenter where things began. And I can't wait to see how God answers that fourteen year-old prayer over the next thirty years!

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

No Way

Christine Wyrtzen Devotional: THE ONLY WAY PEOPLE FIND MY FAITH CREDIBLE

Uphold me according to your promise, that I may live, and let me not be put to shame in my hope.  Psalm 119:116

            Can others see that I have put all my hope in God?  Not if they don't see something supernatural.  If I live by my flesh, never take a risk, never soar above my problems, never forgive instead of talk about injustice, never give God glory when my trials would otherwise swallow me up, others will not see anything that doesn't look like normal human behavior.  When I speak of God, they will easily discount my faith because I think and act like everyone else.

            Job has become a spiritual legend because he never cursed God.  That is his greatest hallmark.  Who does that when their life completely crumbles around them? When my losses begin to compile and, one by one, things and people are taken from me, God can begin to look guilty.

            Every person tends to have a limit, a straw that breaks the camel's back.  When that 'thing' happens, we throw up our hands and say, "That's it!  God can't be trusted."  Our face turns sour, our trust erodes, our praise disappears, and our testimony ends.  We are put to shame by those who are looking for any excuse to turn their backs on God.

            David knew how tenuous his praise was.  He cried out for God to hold him up lest his faith fail.  If ever David had reason to wonder if God had abandoned him, David did.  Yet, he clung to faith and the awareness that someone in the throes of a trial cannot see the big picture.  He trusted an eternal, sovereign God, and never let fear and deception about God's character take root.  He declared Yahweh glorious despite the circumstances.

When others speak of my life, may they say... "There's no way anyone could have survived that without God."  I want you to be glorified in my life on the worst of days.  Uphold me so that I can be faithful to praise you.  Amen

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

I Will Not Neglect Your Word

Mark Batterson post:  Holy Desire

Ultimately, God wants to sanctify your desires so you want what He wants. Nothing like living out of holy desire. But most desires start out as disciplines. And if you discipline yourself long enough, the discipline becomes a desire. I think the goal for all spiritual disciplines is that they would become spiritual desires.

I think the best analogy is the physical disciplines that result in physical health. Going to the gym starts out as a discipline, but if you keep going it becomes a desire. If you get out of the habit, it goes back to being a discipline again. That is the way spiritual health works. You don't always feel like reading the Bible, and that's when it's a spiritual discipline. But if you keep reading, it'll become a spiritual desire again. Then, if you get out of the habit, you've got to make it a discipline again.

I love the resolve in Psalm 119:16: "I will not neglect your word."

You can't read Psalm 119 and come to any other conclusion than this: the Psalmist loves the word. He delights in the word. He desires the word. But part of that desire is buried in this discipline: "I will not neglect your word."



Prone to Wander

Words of Life:  Devotional

Breaking the Cycle of Defeat
by James Robison

O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
 Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;

The words of “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing” and the phrase“prone to wander” ring so true in our day and, sadly, throughout all of human history. From the moment God created man in total freedom and placed him in a beautiful garden, the subtle, seductive voice of the serpent has misdirected both the attention of man and his progress. The repetitive cycle of defeat continues today.

Man is the agent of free will. We have the right to choose whom we serve and to what belief system we commit. The right choices and the correct principles have always led to the blessing of fruitfulness and prosperity.

As I shared last week, during difficult times God’s own people sold themselves into slavery under Pharaoh’s government.  Rather than depending upon God and one another to overcome the challenges, men seemed determined to submit to some other source and power other than that of our Creator. Even after being delivered into the Promised Land and seeing their enemies totally overthrown, they began to take into their lives that which God said was, in fact, an abomination.  They began to worship idols, that which they had made with their own hands, rather than worshipping the Almighty God and Creator of all life.

They were so bound that even when Jesus came announcing that what the prophet Isaiah said was fulfilled before their very eyes, they could not understand. Jesus said, “"The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.... Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”1

On another occasion when He told them that if they would abide in Him, they would know the truth and the truth would set them free, they remarked that they had never been in bondage to anyone because they were the children of Abraham, the father of faith.2 How blind and how foolish that statement was! They had in fact been in bondage for centuries and lived as slaves, and at that very moment were the subjects of the Roman Empire.

People are so blinded by the god of this world, the attractions in this world, and the deception of our enemy that they cannot see truth standing in front of them. Mankind has never been able to handle the truth. We invariably and consistently mishandle it. We actually cast it aside and hold on to a belief system based on the lies of other men. Freedom not only produces the possibility of prosperity and the ability to make wise decisions, but also the opportunity to abuse that freedom. We are doing it at this very moment.

Our nation was born not only as a result of the pursuit of freedom, but with an understanding of its importance and the principles necessary to establish it. Our founders also understood how quickly it can be mishandled and foolishly forsaken. Respected English orator and statesman G.K. Chesterton, when lecturing in the United States, referred to our “great experiment in democracy” as being of “divine origin.” I agree and this fact implies that this special freedom must be preserved by people submitted to divine order.

The freedom God offered to us can only be maintained by people who are responsible and live under the control of those guiding beliefs. Jesus came and spoke to people in both religious and national bondage and announced that He came to set them free. The people in His day interpreted it to mean that He must become a central power source, exerting force and control over the people. In other words, a king on the throne who controls his subjects!

Jesus rejected every attempt to put Him in a national place of authority and made it clear that His kingdom was not of this world. Instead, it was to be established within the individual. His kingdom was to be in us as believers, and He was to be the supernatural, controlling force in our lives.

He spent many hours with a circle of close friends and followers. He proclaimed truth and demonstrated it everywhere He went. But even the people who listened to the greatest teacher who ever walked on this earth could not comprehend what He was saying. He told them, “I have many things to tell you, but you can’t handle it.”3

It was obvious they couldn’t even hear God speaking directly from heaven and interpreted the sound to be thunder! They couldn’t appropriately apply the very things He was saying to them directly, so Jesus said, “It is necessary for your sakes that I leave and send another one of the same kind, another power, another person just like Me who can in fact live inside you. I must send the Holy Spirit to live in you to enable you to live in the freedom I came to provide.”

The disciples did not understand He had to die for their sins and the failures of all humanity in order for them to be redeemed and reconciled to the Creator and Father God. They even protested this and didn’t understand when it happened. It was only after the resurrection and power of this other person, the Holy Spirit, filling them to overflowing that they began to express the kingdom life that He was talking about. After denying Jesus three times, Simon Peter stood in the power of this indwelling Spirit to deliver the keynote message at Pentecost.

Jesus shared this liberating truth: “Greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world.”4 We cannot overcome the world and the temptation to live under its influence and its power, becoming idolatrous in our own hearts, without supernatural enabling and the marvel of God’s grace. God alone can give us the strength to overcome the temptations of this world, the deception of the enemy, and the promises of feeble men, however politically powerful they may be, or whatever religious position they may hold. He alone can guide us to the liberating truth necessary to keep us living freely and responsibly.

I am convinced that at this very moment God is calling every believer to begin living in the freedom Christ purchased with His very life, and to live as an overcomer through the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit. We will not live under control unless it is under the control of the Spirit. You can’t create or enforce enough laws to keep people under control when they have decided to depend on something other than God and adopt a belief system other than His eternal truth.

He is calling us to return to Him with our whole heart, begin living in harmony – first with Him and with one another – and to reject the spirit of divorce that not only splits marriages, but also divides the church of Jesus Christ. We must stop arguing and fighting over the nonessentials and begin to live like a family with all of our disagreements and misunderstandings.  We can gather around Him, and let Him be the center of our lives and begin to live as a healthy family. Believe me, it is possible! Jesus Christ prayed for it to be so -- one with God, and one with each another.5 This is the hour for it to happen!

I believe that the family of God can stand up right now and begin to let the river of God’s life freely flow through us, reach out to one another and those in need, and see this nation return to the sanity and the dependence upon God necessary to restore prosperity and give us the opportunity to continue sharing with those in need all over the world. This is the time for the church to be the example. With all of the frustration and discontent in the nation, this is our opportunity as believers to show people the way out of darkness and the way to not only defend liberty, but begin to demonstrate what it really means to live in freedom. Jesus not only died to make it possible, He sent the Holy Spirit to enable us to live as over comers. Please join me in prayer that God will bring us back to an understanding of His will and the absolute necessity of depending upon Him, His grace and His power to reveal the power of His kingdom in us.

Lyrics from “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing” by Robert Robinson.

1 Luke 4:18, 21
2 John 8:32-33
3 John 8:43
4 1 John 4:4
5 John 17:21

Monday, February 22, 2010

Trust

Ray Ortlund post:  The book of Job


I used to think the book of Job is in the Bible because it presents a rare and extreme case of human suffering.  “Look at this worst case scenario.  If you can see the truth here, then surely in your comparatively small problems . . . .”

Now I think the book of Job is in the Bible because the story is so common.  Many are thinking, “What on earth has happened to me?  I can’t see what I’ve done that explains this devastation.  Where is God in this?”

Enter Job’s three friends.  They were cautious at first.  But with their tidy notions threatened by his untidy realities, the moralism started pouring out of them: “Come on, Job, get real with us.  You must have some dirty secret that explains all this.  Admit it, and this misery will start going away.”  Their finger-pointing oversimplifications intensified Job’s sufferings, and this too is a common experience.

I don’t think the book of Job is about suffering as a theoretical problem — why do the righteous suffer?  I think it’s about suffering as a practical problem — when (not if) the righteous suffer, what does God expect of them?  And what he expects is trust.  When the righteous cannot connect the realities of their experience with the truths of God, then God is calling them to trust him that there is more to it than they can see.  As with Job, there is a battle being fought in the heavenlies.

Trust in God, not explanations from God, is the pathway through suffering.

Read Proactively

Mark Batterson post:  Sanctified Expectations

The Bible is a prayerbook.

You don't read it statically. You read it proactively. As you read, the same Holy Spirit who inspired the writers illuminates the readers. How awesome is that? The Holy Spirit quickens the Word and something gets in our spirits.
I'm convinced that the Bible is the means to just about ever spiritual end. I promise you this: if you are reading the Bible, God will convict you of sin that you need to confess. So in that regard, the Bible is the key to purity. You will also find plenty of promises to claim. The Bible sanctifies our expectations so we have more confidence after we read the Word. In that regard, the Bible is the key to faith. And, of course, it's the key to so many other things. What I'm getting at is this: prayer is a byproduct of Scripture. It is the way God talks to us. Then prayer turns the monologue into a dialogue.

My point? I'm not worried about your prayer life if you're reading the Bible. I think the quality of your prayer life will be directly proportional to the quality and quantity of Scripture you're reading.

My Strength, Portion, Deliverer

A part of the lyrics to "Made Me Glad" by Hillsong that were mentioned yesterday:

I will bless the Lord forever
I will trust Him at all times
He has delivered me from all fear
He has set my feet upon a rock
I will not be moved
And I'll say of the Lord

You are my shield, my strength
My portion, deliverer
My shelter, strong tower
My very present help in time of need

 

Friday, February 19, 2010

Be Glad - Exult

I will give thanks to the LORD with my whole heart;
   I will recount all of your wonderful deeds.
I will be glad and exult in you;
   I will sing praise to your name, O Most High.


Psalm 9:1-2

Thursday, February 18, 2010

He'll Get the Credit

Everything in the world is about to be wrapped up, so take nothing for granted. Stay wide-awake in prayer. Most of all, love each other as if your life depended on it. Love makes up for practically anything. Be quick to give a meal to the hungry, a bed to the homeless—cheerfully. Be generous with the different things God gave you, passing them around so all get in on it: if words, let it be God's words; if help, let it be God's hearty help. That way, God's bright presence will be evident in everything through Jesus, and he'll get all the credit as the One mighty in everything—encores to the end of time. Oh, yes! 

1 Peter 4:7-11 [The Message]

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Contest with Sin

Neil Anderson Daily in Christ

A STRUGGLING SAINT
Romans 7:15
I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate

Perhaps the most vivid description of the contest with sin which goes on in the life of the believer is found in Romans 7:15-25. In verses 15 and 16, Paul describes the problem: "For that which I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate. But if I do the very thing I do not wish to do, I agree with the Law, confessing that it is good."
Notice that there is only one player in these two verses--the "I," mentioned nine times. Notice also that this person has a good heart; he agrees with the law of God. But this good-hearted Christian has a behavior problem. He knows what he should be doing but, for some reason, he can't do it. He agrees with God but ends up doing the very things he hates.
Verses 17-21 uncover the reason for this behavior problem: "So now, no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which indwells me. . . . If I am doing the very thing I do not wish, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me." How many players are involved now? Two: sin and me. But sin is clearly not me; it's only dwelling in me. Sin is preventing me from doing what I want to do.
Do these verses say that I am no good, that I am evil, or that I am sin? Absolutely not. They say that I have something dwelling in me which is no good, evil, and sinful, but it's not me. If I have a sliver in my finger, I could say that I have something in me which is no good. But it's not me who's no good. I'm not the sliver. The sliver which is stuck in my finger is no good. I am not sin and I am not a sinner. I am a saint struggling with sin which causes me to do what I don't want to do.
Romans 6:12 informs us that it is our responsibility not to allow sin to reign in our lives. Sin will reign if we use our bodies as instruments of unrighteousness (Romans 6:13). We must renounce every such use and submit our bodies to God as instruments of righteousness.
Prayer:
Thank You, Lord, that I don't have to sin. You made it possible for me to control sin's power over me. You delivered me from the wages of sin and blessed me with the gift of eternal life in Christ.

Heart Reformation

Christine Wyrtzen Devotional: CONQUERING MY AVERSION

I have inclined my heart to perform your statutes forever, to the end.  Psalm 119:112

    Tell a child, "Don't do that!" and they'll set out to do it.  Tell a child "Do this!" and they'll want to do anything but that.  Being told what to do is distasteful.  Rebellion is bound up in the heart of every newborn.  If not conquered, rebellion will remain a spiritual disease for the breadth of their lifetime.  Though they are God's child, they will strain under His commandments.  They will obey from time to time, but down deep, they will resent being told what to do.

    David is tough on himself.  He knows that without some hard work in prayer, his heart will not be engaged to obey with gladness.  David tells God how he deals with his heart's desire to be autonomous.  He does whatever it takes to bend his heart toward loving God's ways.

    Are there any ways in me that are still childish?  Do I obey God only when I feel like it?  Do I obey only the things which don't require sacrifice?  If so, I am no better than a pouting three year old.  To grow up, I enter into the conflict of my flesh and my spirit.  I recognize and own that my flesh wants one thing; my spirit quite another.  I take my own flesh to God in prayer and admit that it's bent in the wrong direction.  I cry out for mercy, for a heart change.  I don't want to grind out a life of obedience that is rooted in behavior modification; all the while my heart privately dreams of doing my own thing.  I will resent God and truly believe He is the one keeping me from joy.

    When I teach, I often face a church full of sullen faces.  They are 'technically' in the kingdom but their hearts have not discovered that Jesus is their treasure and that His burden is light.  Heart reformation has never been taught.  Doing the Christian thing has been the focus of their environment.  Satan keeps them in chains, a bondage built on the lie that they know best and God is One who steals their joy by asking them to live in the prison of rules.  They have no idea that the way of the disciple is freedom and exhilaration.  They do not know that the supposed autonomy is the tomb and obedience is walking out into the spacious place of the resurrection.
   
If my heart is not inclined toward you and what you ask of me, change me.  Amen

Think Globally

Dan Kimball post:  Things I Learned in S. Korea



Got back from S. Korea and straight into prepping sermon for yesterday's gatherings at Vintage Faith Church. But while my memory is fresh, a few things I learned while in Korea are:

1) God is active and moving in S. Korea. He is active all over the world, but it is always thrilling to stop and see another part of the world and what is happening. I was amazed at how many churches there were 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 people. At the church I spoke at, which is over 20,000 people - I got to see rooms packed with children (hundreds and hundreds) and seeing them learn and worship was quite incredible.


2) The church in S. Korea is facing some of the same things we did in the USA. At least from what I understand from talking to those at the youth conference, there is a shrinking amount of teenagers and young adults in churches. So there is a lot of thinking about how the church must change for future generations, much like we had discussion 10 years ago about this very thing. They had all my books translated into Korean, which I didn't know until I got there. So it was funny seeing different covers for the books and how they were portrayed.

3) There are incredible younger leaders doing innovative things and church planting. I met a church planter who planted a church 3 months ago. They opened a coffeehouse when they planted this church where their offices are and they have smaller meetings there and rent a school for the Sunday meetings. They already have over 200 people in the church and over 50 of them have become Christians over the past 3 months.

4) Prayer is a major part of Korean churches. Even in the younger churches, I learned that they have prayer meetings almost every day of the week. I specifically asked and it is about 20% of the church who goes to the prayer meetings. But still an amazing thing. Every day at 6:30 AM. I also saw in the worship meetings that there would be times when things would stop and give people time to pray and everyone would start praying outloud intensely in this beautiful way.

5) At least in one church, they had this blessing song as a guest speaker starts. When I was being introduced and then walked up a strange thing happened. Everyone there stood up and outstretched their arms towards me and began singing. It was quite uncomfortable as I had no idea what was happening. The translator next to me then told me to put my arms up, so I did. But I found out it was a prayer blessing song that they sing right at you before you speak. It was a beautiful little song, but very different to be up there and suddenly that happens as they all are looking right at you as they sing.


6) The Korean Christians were incredibly kind and overly gracious. I don't think I ever have had as gracious, serving, kind, caring group of people who were looking after the speakers and taking care of everything. Charles Kim and the team who put on the event did a great job finding volunteers from S.Korea who helped out. Even when my laptop had water spilled on it by someone accidentally, they whisked that thing away, had tech people opening it up and blow-drying it within minutes.

7) Although globalization is happening, there are also strong cultural differences. It is weird that in a place like S. Korea music from the USA, movies etc. abounds everywhere. So you walk into a store and Lady Gaga is playing and Avatar is at the movie theaters. So much of the clothing also was from American companies that we wear here. But also I learned that there is no higher suicide rate amongst teens than in S. Korea. There is intense pressure for education and success. In churches I also learned that they barely talk about sex/dating as that isn't seen as something the church should discuss or teach about. And when I mentioned homosexuality in one session, not a single leader said that is ever discussed in their churches. I assume some do, but at least the session I was in no one said they did. Which is another topic of the need to be discussing things so teenagers don't feel they don't feel isolated or alone. But these were some cultural differences I learned about.

7) I learned so much from the other speakers.It was great getting to hang out with Chap Clark, Ralph Winter and Marv Penner. Chap and Marv are veterans of youth ministry. Ralph was fascinating to talk with and I am so glad I got to meet him. We talked a bunch about the hero story in films and some of what "The Power of Myth" by Joseph Campbell is about with films. So as always, even though you go somewhere to speak, you come back having learned so much from others.

8) We do need to think globally more and more. I lived out of the USA for almost 2 years when I was in my 20's. And over the past several years I have got to travel to New Zealand, Singapore, Canada, Mexico and El Salvador on mission or speaking trips. But it is so easy to come back home and only think locally as in USA and I was reminded how we do need to be thinking globally.

9) Don't plan to speak at your church a day after you come back from a trip overseas. I never got to plan my sermon while there, so I stayed up until 5 AM prepping the sermon for Sunday. Why I thought I would have time there to do it, I don't know.

Thank you Charles Kim for setting this up and inviting me. It was a joy to be there with you and you were an incredible host and I came away with so much more than I ever expected.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Breathe Life

Ray Ortlund post:  Husband and wife


“Let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.”  Ephesians 5:33

God made Adam first and put him in the Garden with a job to do, a mission to fulfill.  In the heart of every fallen man is the self-doubt that wonders, “Am I man enough to climb this mountain God has called me to?  Can I fulfill my destiny?”  A wise wife will understand that question at the center of her husband’s heart.  And she will spend her life answering it, communicating to him in various ways, “Honey, I believe in your call.  I know you can do this, by God’s power.  Go for it.”  In this way, she will breathe life into her man.

God made Eve from Adam, for Adam, to help him follow the call.  In the heart of every fallen woman is the self-doubt that wonders, “Do I please you?  Am I what you wanted?”  A wise husband will understand that question at the center of his wife’s heart.  And he will spend his life answering it, communicating to her in various ways, “Darling, you are the one I need.  I cherish you.  Let me hold you close.”  In this way, he will breathe life into his wife.

Eternal Gain

Mark Batterson post:  Temporal Pain for Eternal Gain

John 21:17 says: "Peter was hurt."

Sometimes the Lord has to hurt us to heal us. Last weekend one of our campus pastors, Dave Schmidgall, broke his nose in our NCC snowbowl. This week he had to go back to the doctor to get it refractured. Seems like cruel and unusual punishment to break what is broken, but that is the only way to make sure it heals the right way.

In John 21, Jesus asks Peter the same question three times: do you love me? Peter was hurt that the Lord asked him three times, but I think it was His way of dealing with Peter's three denials. He didn't want to gloss over the issue. He wanted to deal with the denial. So in a brilliant fashion, Jesus healed Peter by hurting Peter.

If you want to be used by God, you better be willing to endure some temporal pain for eternal gain. The healing may be in the hurt.

Monday, February 15, 2010

Oneness

Words of Life Weekly Devotional: Lonely in Love

Love & War part 2: She Said
by Stasi Eldredge

And the two shall become one…” (Genesis 2:24)


This week's devotional is from Love & War by John and Stasi Eldredge, available with any gift toward Mission: Water for LIFE.

In the heart of every human being lies the desire to belong. It is primordial, primeval, linked somewhere in our deep memory to our need for survival. To be outcast is to be sentenced to death. To be shamed is the worst form of punishment. In our modern world, when we are deemed unworthy, physical gates do not bar us from the safety of our community but the gates are closed nonetheless.

All of us have known the cruelty of school cliques, social cliques and perhaps ministry cliques. Some have experienced the terrifying power of psychological bullying – mean girls, ruthless boys. Did you make the team, the squad, the court? Do you fit in? How many friends are on your Facebook page? Did you get accepted, asked, invited? Are you in or are you out?

Life is meant to be shared; we are supposed to feel “in.” We are meant to live in community, in relationship with others. People may drive us crazy sometimes, but still we need each other. Some of us are born introverts – we replenish our spirits and souls best in the company of just ourselves and God. In fact, everyone needs time alone – regularly. But in the same way, everyone needs to be in the company of others as well – regularly.

After turning his back on society and finding his way into the Alaskan wilderness with only himself as a companion, Christopher McCandless discovered that he missed people.  He missed, in fact, the very people he was trying to escape. He became profoundly lonely. He realized that life was not meant to be lived alone and that, “Happiness is only real when shared.”

Isn’t it true? When something really good happens, we can’t wait to share it.  My mother passed away seven years ago, but in a moment of victory or happiness, I still think of her and want to give her a call and share the news. The same holds true with tragedy. When a crisis occurs – when the doctor calls with scary news or when our world is shaken – we need the companionship of others. We need someone who loves us, who truly cares, to come alongside of us and share in our experience. As a woman, one of the best things about being married is this: The question, “Who will I go with?” is forever answered.  I belong to someone; I have a mate. We are a pair, a couple, a set. We are no longer single, we are double.  We have a tennis partner, a dance partner, someone to sit next to at the table, and a date for the rest of our Friday nights. We are a couple; we belong to each other. Two really are better than one, in a host of ways.

John and I have walked through some very hard times together: the death of dear friends; the loss of long-term relationships; many hospital visits; moving cross-country three times. We have also shared some really wonderful times: travelling in Scotland and Ireland; speaking together at conferences; snorkeling in Mexico; realizing a life-long dream of buying a ranch. And then there are the “in-between” times: making the boys’ lunches in the evening; texting each other when we are out and about; saying our bedtime prayers together for 25 years.

But we have also seen some really lonely years in our marriage. And to be lonely in your marriage is the loneliest feeling of all.

When John and I moved to Colorado, Luke had not yet been born. Sam was just over two years old and Blaine was only nine months old.  I worked part time a couple of evenings a week, but John was the primary breadwinner. I spent my days at home raising, nurturing, playing with and caring for our boys. As a man, John was finding his place in the work force – challenging himself, desiring to grow personally and professionally, as well as wanting to provide for his family. He worked hard and wanted to prove himself. After Luke came along, John went back to school to earn his Master’s Degree in counseling. It was a great program and I was 100 percent behind him.

But he was really busy. He still worked full time, traveling the country doing conferences many weekends a year. He was given Mondays and Tuesdays off to make up for the weekends he worked. And Mondays and Tuesdays were spent at the university. On a rare day off, in much need of rest and refreshment, John would take our one car and go fishing. Spending the day on the water brought life to him; God was meeting him there. More than half his days off were spent on the river by himself or with a friend. Not with me. Not with our sons.

It was common for him to be gone every day of the week for three or four weeks at a time. The longest stretch we went was seven weeks in a row of John being away from home every single day. The pattern went on for two years.

Somehow in my heart I knew God was moving in my husband. I understood I had to let him go and not demand he stay home. When he was home, John was completely present. But those were hard years. For both of us.

John has a circle of things he loves to do. It includes fly-fishing, rock climbing, working on cars, hunting, reading, and just about anything with adventure in it. I have a circle of things I love to do. It encompasses going to movies, working in my garden, talking, taking walks, worshipping and reading novels.

I am also the mother of three sons. I live in a household of men. I love them passionately, but it can be lonely at times being the only woman around.  I long for real relationship with them and have been praying for ways to connect.

John just gave me a ping-pong table for Christmas. My family had a ping-pong table while I was growing up and I spent hours playing with my brother and dad. Those are sweet memories for me, times of real connection with my family.  Now I am playing with my sons and my husband. We are spending time together doing something we all enjoy. Big sigh. Yay!

There is an ebb and flow to the companionship of a marriage. During hunting season, I don’t expect to see John much. But afterwards, I do expect him to come home and re-engage with me. There are seasons when the two of us are “connecting” well and seasons when we aren’t. I don’t like it when we aren’t, but that is all part of life.

What you want to do is create an environment where, over time and with intentionality, you nurture companionship. You really have no idea what depths of companionship are available until you venture into those waters, and hang in there for many years.  Who knows all that God has in store for both of you?

The goal of marriage being oneness doesn’t mean the two become one person.  It means the two separately become better people. That’s what John and I have learned to do. Together.

This Week
Ask God to show you if there are any issues in your marriage that are getting in the way of you and your spouse enjoying true companionship. Ask Him to help you create an environment where companionship and oneness are nurtured.

Prayer
“Lord, please open the eyes of my understanding to see what issues may be hindering me and my spouse from enjoying the companionship with each other you intend for us.  Thank you for giving us the inspiration and grace needed to create a nurturing environment.  In Jesus’ name, amen.”


Adapted from Love & War by John and Stasi Eldredge.

Friday, February 12, 2010

Winner - Whiner

"A winner does what is right and feels good.  A whiner wants to feel good before doing what is right."
                            - John Maxwell

Words Poured Out

Christine Wyrtzen Devotional:  STINGY WITH WORDS

Accept my freewill offerings of praise, O Lord.  Psalm 119:108

          
People who withhold words can do so to maintain a sense of power over others.  They refuse to affirm, to praise, and one never knows where you stand with them.  When those people are your parents, it's very unsettling for a child.  You grow up unsure of yourself.

            Am I stingy with words when I approach God?

When someone loves me, I want to hear all about their love.  Why they love, what they like best, when they first loved, how deep their love is.  God is no different.  May I never just croak out a stingy form of expressed love by joining the crowd in singing, "I Love You, Lord."  That doesn't do.
When someone has really hurt me and attempts to offer an apology, I don't want a token "Sorry!"  It's important to hear them express what they did, how they feel about the fact that they hurt me.  Feelings of remorse should be present if the apology is real. When I go to the altar to deal with my own sin, am I offering a token "Sorry!", or am I willing to tell God what I did and how I feel about offending Him?  Am I one who feels brokenhearted over breaking His heart and will I tell Him so?
          
            Hosea is one who encouraged plentiful words.  "Take with you words and return to the LORD; say to Him, "Take away all iniquity; accept what is good and we will pay with bulls the vows of our lips."  Hosea 14:2  If my words are few, I don't have a speech problem but a heart problem.  It is the heart which dictates what lips say.  If my heart is full, speech flows uninhibited.

            I have been in awkward situations.  So have you.  Words have been stuck in my throat.  My heart was in conflict.  If I find myself ambivalent about God, feeling loving one moment but untrusting the next, the most important thing I can do is admit it.  Pour out words in prayer that speak of my conflict.  If I'm just stingy because my heart has grown cold, then I must take myself to the Word and deal quickly with my spiritual condition.  The Spirit will show me when my heart died, and why.

            Having been someone who lived for long periods of time in wordless places, I know the exhilaration of having a language which bubbles over.  My passion for Jesus spills out in words.  Teaching, storytelling, pleading, encouraging, praying.  God has brought me out of a silent well to a spacious place.  The first thing I heard was my own voice.

Whether I weep or sing, my words are poured out toward your gracious heart for me.   Amen

Talk

Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.

Ephesians 4:29

Words

Ray Ortlund post:  WLC on the Ninth Commandment


“You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.”  Exodus 20:16

Q.  What are the duties required in the ninth commandment?

A.  The duties required in the ninth commandment are the preserving and promoting of truth between man and man and the good name of our neighbor, as well as our own; . . . a charitable esteem of our neighbors; loving, desiring and rejoicing in their good name . . . .

Q.  What are the sins forbidden in the ninth commandment?

A.  The sins forbidden in the ninth commandment are all prejudicing the truth and the good name of our neighbor, as well as our own; . . . speaking untruth, lying, slandering, backbiting, detracting, tale-bearing, whispering, scoffing, reviling, rash, harsh and partial censuring; . . . raising false rumors, receiving and countenancing evil reports and stopping our ears against just defense; evil suspicion; envying or grieving at the deserved credit of any, endeavoring or desiring to impair it, rejoicing in their disgrace and infamy . . . .

“At every word, a reputation dies.”  Alexander Whyte, An Exposition of the Shorter Catechism (Fearn, 2004), page 202.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

You, O Lord

But you, O LORD, are a shield about me,
   my glory, and the lifter of my head.


Psalm 3:3

No More Shock and Awe

Excerpt from Ed Stetzer post:  Guerilla Lovers

Vince Antonucci is the founder and lead pastor of Verve, an innovative new church for the unchurched on the Las Vegas strip. Vince's passion is creatively communicating biblical truth to help people find God. He is also the author of I Became a Christian and All I Got Was This Lousy T-shirt.


Vince is also part of The Verve Foundation, which does community service to meet needs on and around the Vegas Strip.

His new book, Guerrilla Lovers, is another encouragement to the church to love in "deed and truth." I was happy to have the chance to ask Vince a few questions about the book. He'll be on the blog today answering your questions in the comments.

The name of your book is "Guerrilla Lovers." What does that mean?I think there are two types of war - "shock and awe" and "guerrilla warfare." Shock and Awe is employed when you're bigger and stronger than your opponent, so you stay at a distance, hoping to bomb your enemy into quick submission. Guerrilla warfare happens when you're under-manned, under-resourced. It requires intelligence and creativity. You have to get close so you can pull off ambush attacks. It's a patient strategy where you realize you'll have to hit your opponent repeatedly before they finally decide it's not worth it to continue fighting. In this book I'm advocating that we start relying on guerrilla tactics.

So what does "shock and awe" look like in a church context?
Trying to impress people into the Kingdom - with the size of our buildings, the quality of our coffee bar, and assuming that we can "win the victory" in a single encounter - with one church service, or in one conversation with a stranger on an airplane, or with a big church event.

And "guerrilla tactics"? What do those look like in a church context?
It would be a patient, relational, servant-hearted approach. We love people. Creatively. Audaciously. Consistently and persistently. We love people till they finally have to ask why.

You do this in the book, but can you give our readers a couple examples of Jesus, and/or the Apostles, modeling this approach?
Absolutely. Jesus was the original guerrilla lover. His m.o. was to lead with love. I think immediately of Mark 1 where the leper approaches Jesus, hoping to be healed. And not only does Jesus heal him, he touches him. We see Jesus heal people without touching them, so this isn't necessary. I think it's that Jesus wanted this untouchable man to feel the love of God. And there's Jesus inviting himself over to Zacchaeus' house, when Zacchaeus was probably the most hated man in town. And after Jesus heals the woman who had been bleeding all those years, he calls her daughter. The reason we see the "tax collectors and sinners" always wanting to be around Jesus wasn't because he judged them and pointed out their sins, but because He loved them.

So are you saying no more big church buildings or coffee bars or church events?
No, but I am saying that churches in America have never done that better than they have in the last 20 years, and yet there are experts who estimate that there are 8 million less people going to church in America today than 20 years ago. And there's not a single county in the continental United States where more people are going to church. Shock and awe has not proven effective. And so I think it's time to go back to the strategy I think Jesus authored, and that was so effective in the first century, and more lately in China - guerrilla love.
          ...

Just Because

Excerpt from Miscellanies post:  Why does God love me?


At some point every Christian has frankly evaluated their own sin and has stood amazed by the grace of God. This leads us to ask the question: Why would God send his pure and eternal Son to be smudged and murdered at the hands of vile sinners—for me? Or said more directly: Why does God love me?

The answer to this question is simple and profound.
In a sermon on John 3:16, Puritan Thomas Manton (1620–1677) answers the question this way—
Love is at the bottom of all. We may give a reason of other things, but we cannot give a reason of his love … Why did he make so much ado about a worthless creature, raised out of the dust of the ground at first, and has now disordered himself, and could be of no use to him? We have an answer at hand: Because he loved us. If you continue to ask, But why did he love us? We have no other answer but because he loved us, for beyond the first rise of things we cannot go. And the same reason is given by Moses, Deuteronomy 7:7–8: “The Lord did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because you were more in number than any people, for ye were the fewest of all people; but because the Lord loved you…” That is, in short, he loved you because he loved you. All came from his free and undeserved mercy; higher we cannot go in seeking after the causes of what is done for our salvation.*
...

God loves you because he loves you.
This is the simple—and profound—answer.
————
* Thomas Manton, The Complete Works of Thomas Manton (Solid Ground, 2008), 2:340-341

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Subtracting the Idols

Ray Ortlund post:  What does it mean to "accept Jesus"?


“You turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God.” 1 Thessalonians 1:9

You and I are not integrated, unified, whole persons. Our hearts are multi-divided. There is a board room in every heart. Big table. Leather chairs. Coffee. Bottled water. Whiteboard. A committee sits around the table. There is the social self, the private self, the work self, the sexual self, the recreational self, the religious self, and others. The committee is arguing and debating and voting. Constantly agitated and upset. Rarely can they come to a unanimous, wholehearted decision. We tell ourselves we’re this way because we’re so busy with so many responsibilities. The truth is, we’re just divided, unfocused, hesitant, unfree.

That kind of person can “accept Jesus” in either of two ways. One way is to invite him onto the committee. Give him a vote too. But then he becomes just one more complication. The other way to “accept Jesus” is to say to him, “My life isn’t working. Please come in and fire my committee, every last one of them. I hand myself over to you. Please run my whole life for me.”  That is not complication; that is salvation.

“Accepting Jesus” is not just adding Jesus. It is also subtracting the idols.

Re-Affirm

Christine Wyrtzen Devotional:  CONFIRMING AN OATH

I have sworn an oath and confirmed it, to keep your righteous rules.  Psalm 119:106

When promises are made in the context of love, they are not usually uttered just one time.  When time and trials test them, reassurance is welcomed.  It comforts and it strengthens love and respect. 

An elderly husband says to a wife with serious health concerns, "I told you that I would be here in sickness and health.  I'm not going anywhere."  He promised it once many years ago but the memory of it is dim.  His confirmation is timely and sinks deeply into her frightened spirit.

God confirms His many promises to me with the whispers of His Spirit in scripture, with circumstantial breakthroughs, and through the encouragement of others in His family.  But it never occurred to me until this morning that it is probably meaningful for Him to hear me confirm the vows I have made to Him.  When time and testing could threaten my resolve, I take stock, review my oaths, and declare once again my love and commitment to love and serve Him.

Perhaps as I do, He stops what He's doing, closes His eyes and sighs with pleasure.  Some might say this humanizes Him to the point of over-sentimentality, but the heart of God is a longing One.  His eyes search from one end of the world to the other to find one whose heart is completely His.  His delight in the search and in the finding seems to me to be implied.

To love, to serve, to obey, to treasure you above all others is my solemn vow.  I re-affirm it this day.  Amen

Tuesday, February 09, 2010

My Prayer -- Your Love May Abound

And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.

Philippians 1:9-11

Enjoyment

DesiringGod post:  Easily Pleased






The script comes straight from C. S. Lewis:
If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. (The Weight of Glory, 26)

Monday, February 08, 2010

More Joy

You have put more joy in my heart
   than they have when their grain and wine abound.


Psalm 4:7

In Him Alone

Life Today Devotional


I Hate Valentine’s Day
Love & War part 1: He Said

by John Eldredge

“My soul finds rest in God alone…”
(Psalm 62:1)

I hate Valentine’s Day. There, I said it.

Most of the guys reading this just thought, “Yes! I can’t believe he said that.”

Most of the women just thought, “What a jerk! I can’t believe he said that.”

But it’s true. I hate Valentine’s Day. Stasi loves it; it’s one of her favorite holidays. (God, what are you thinking?!) I hate being told, “Today, you will be romantic. Today, you will be amazing. Today, you will ‘Get It All Right.’ And tonight, you will arrange for one of the most romantic evenings you two will have this year. Tonight, sex will be on a level with the Hallelujah chorus. Hollywood will have wished they had filmed this day.

Who wants to live under that kind of pressure?

The rule of human nature seems to be this: The harder you push, the more the heart flees. The more we demand the heart show up, the more it disappears. We may try to Get It All Right, out of fear or guilt (like most guys on Valentine’s Day), or maybe even out of a desire to be good. But that is not the same as loving.

So I find myself dreading the approach of Valentine’s Day. Can I pull it off? Will she be happy? And now we’ve got a culture crazed with the upgrade of everything. Dinner and a card used to be a home run. That sounds so blasé these days, like you barely even gave it a thought. Now you have got to make it an all day. We have blown this day way out of proportion. It has taken all the fun out of it.

And the truth is, women feel the pressure, too – the pressure to be beautiful, the pressure to have just the right earrings to go with the right dress, the pressure to have the perfect hair – to achieve “sexy” without tipping over into “skanky.” A woman feels the pressure to make all the right conversation, not to order too much at dinner, and certainly don’t eat it all. And a woman feels the sexual pressure coming – either to offer sex “because it’s Valentine’s Day” or because she wants to win her man.

Real romance doesn’t work like that.

Romance seems to happen not because you have turned your google-eyed attention to romance, but because the two of you are focused on other things – a beautiful fall day leads to a spontaneous walk in the woods. An evening out “just because” becomes lovely after the two of you stumble on a great little restaurant.

Romance requires free hearts.

Pressure, on the other hand, kills everything it touches.

I don’t think most of us have any idea how much pressure we bring to our marriages.

There is the pressure one of you feels from the other “to be happy.” Usually because somebody’s childhood wasn’t all that happy and they can’t bear the threat of unhappiness in the marriage, or because we deeply believe that If you’re not happy it’s because of me. The message comes across loud and clear: “Do not be unhappy.” The spouse feels the unnamed pressure and comes to resent it.

Christian couples feel the added pressure to have a model marriage, to be a “witness” to our families and neighbors. Therefore nothing can ever be wrong. We’ve got to present a good face to the world. We feel the pressure to pray together, to have family devotions, and to love going to church. We feel the pressure to be “Christ-like” in our marriages – and since none of us are even close to that level of sainthood, we feel a lot of guilt and shame. But we feel compelled to hide all that because, after all, we are Christians.

There is the pressure – and how bizarre is this, really – that someone love you. Of course we want to be loved. Of course it hurts when we feel we are not loved, especially by the closest person in our life. But insisting that someone love you is like telling a fawn you have just seen slip into the woods to “Come Back Out,” or commanding a hummingbird to land on your finger and “Stay There.”

And then there is the Biggest Pressure Of All – the pressure we feel to make each other happy. After all, this marriage is supposed to make me happy. Right?

The human heart has an infinite capacity for happiness and an unending need for love, because it was created for an infinite God who is unending love. The desperate turn is when we bring the aching abyss of our hearts to one another with the hope, the plea, “Make me happy. Fill this ache.” And often out of love we do try to make one another happy, and then wonder why it never lasts.

It can’t be done. You will kill yourself trying.

We are broken people, with a famished craving in our hearts. We are fallen, all of us. It happened so early in our story, back in the Garden of Eden, that most of us don’t even realize it happened. But the effects of the Fall are something we live with every day.

Every woman now has an insatiable need for relationship, one that can never be filled. It is an ache in her soul designed to drive her to God. She aches for intimacy, to be known, loved, and chosen. It also explains her deepest fear – abandonment.

Men face a different sort of emptiness. We are forever frustrated in our ability to conquer life (Genesis 3:17-18). A man aches for affirmation, for validation, to know that he has come through. This also explains his deepest fear – failure.

Now, take these fears, brokenness, and this famished craving, throw them together into the same house and lock the door. What ensues is the pain, disappointment, and confusion most people describe as their marriage. But what did you expect?

Of course you are disappointed; your spouse is disappointed, too. How can we possibly be enough for one another? Two broken cups cannot possibly fill one another. Happiness flows through us like water through a volleyball net.

Your unhappiness – and your spouse’s – means you both have a famished craving that only God can meet.

You have to have some place you can turn. For comfort. For understanding. For the healing of your brokenness. For love. To offer life, you must have life. And you can only get this from God.

Trying to sort your way through marriage without God in your life is like trying to be gracious when you are utterly sleep-deprived. At some point, you lose your ability to be kind; you lose all perspective.

We live in a great love story, set in the midst of war. The great and terrible clash between the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of darkness continues. They are fighting for the human heart.

Jesus is the hero of this love story and we are His Beloved. So the greatest gift you can give to your marriage is for you to develop a real relationship with Jesus Christ, where you are finding in God the life and love your soul so desperately needs.

This Week
 Ask the Lord to show where you have put pressure on yourself and your spouse to be enough to satisfy the craving in your soul, then ask Him to meet you there so that you can know the rest that is found in Him alone.

Prayer
“Lord, help me to have such a powerful relationship with you that I can give and receive love freely, without the pressure to be or need to demand from others that which only You can provide.”  

Friday, February 05, 2010

Help Them See

Celebrate God all day, every day. I mean, revel in him! Make it as clear as you can to all you meet that you're on their side, working with them and not against them. Help them see that the Master is about to arrive. He could show up any minute! 

Philippians 4:4-5 [The Message]

Dryness

“He [God] leaves the creature [believer] to stand up on its own legs—to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be. Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best. We can drag our patients along by continual tempting, because we design them only for the table, and the more their will is interfered with the better. He cannot ‘tempt’ to virtue as we do to vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles. Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger, than when a human, no longer desiring, but intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.” (p. 40)

C.S. Lewis, Screwtape Letters

Thursday, February 04, 2010

Simple

A two minute explanation of missional:

To Him

Mark Batterson post:  For God or To God?


I read a verse that stopped me in my tracks this morning. The Holy Spirit arrested me. If I were completely honest, I'd have to admit that most of "my ministry" has been for God not to God. I don't think that is just semantics. It's a whole different paradigm. So many of us are so busy ministering for God that we rarely minister to God.

Ezekiel 44:16 wrecked me today: "They shall enter my sanctuary, and they shall approach my table, to minister to me, and they shall keep my charge." Makes me think of the original commission in Matthew 10. Before Jesus "sent them out" he called them "to him." I think one of the greatest dangers leaders face is this: we get focused on what God wants to do THROUGH us instead of what God wants to do IN us.

Are you ministering for God or to God?

I think it's both/and, but you better prioritize ministry to God.

Wednesday, February 03, 2010

I Will Sing

But I will sing of your strength;
   I will sing aloud of your steadfast love in the morning.
For you have been to me a fortress
   and a refuge in the day of my distress.
O my Strength, I will sing praises to you,
   for you, O God, are my fortress,
    the God who shows me steadfast love.


Psalm 59:16-17

To Him Glory Forever

Excerpt from notes taken during Sam Storms:  The Practical Sin-Killing Power of Christian Hedonism


Here are five ways to work for your own joy and the joy of your people:
  1. Weave into the spiritual and intellectual fabric of your people the awareness that God's designs in the moral commandments of Scripture are to expand their capacity to enjoy him and not to inhibit it. (See Jonathan Edwards' sermon "Christian Happiness.")

  2. Preach often on the bigness and the beauty of God.

  3. Labor to turn their eyes from the pathetic, little, transient pleasures of what can be seen and felt and tasted to the grand and eternal pleasures of the glory that is to come.

  4. Build into the mental, emotional, and theological framework of your people an understanding of how suffering serves joy. (For a good resource, direct your people to Matt Chandler's videos about the brain cancer he is facing.)

  5. Be an example to them of joy in your own life and relationship with God.
My greatest desire for you is that you and I would be utterly captivated and consumed by the same spiritual energy that led the apostle Paul to cry out, "Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! 'For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?' 'Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?' For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen" (Romans 11:33-36).

What your people need most is for you to immerse yourself in the fountainn of this joy-generating revelation of God and to be saturated to the bone with what caused Paul to explode with this declaration. People are in bondage to sin today because they are bored stiff with God, and that's our fault. If your people don't hear you speak the same truths that Paul did and if they don't sense the enthusiasm in you that was in him, they will just go home and turn on whatever anesthetizes their pain. 

Telling the Mystery

And don't forget to pray for me. Pray that I'll know what to say and have the courage to say it at the right time, telling the mystery to one and all, the Message that I, jailbird preacher that I am, am responsible for getting out. 

Ephesians 6:19-20 [The Message]

Made for Another World

Excerpt from John Piper:  Lessons from an Inconsolable Soul


Here’s the closest thing that Lewis gives to a definition of this Joy: It is the experience “of an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction.” 14 This is why he chose the word Joy rather than “desire” or “longing” or “Sehnsucht” when writing his autobiography—because those words failed to convey the desirability of the longing itself.
I call it Joy, which is here a technical term and must be sharply distinguished both from Happiness and from Pleasure. Joy (in my sense) has indeed one characteristic, and one only, in common with them; the fact that any one who has experienced it will want it again. Apart from that, and considered only in its quality, it might almost equally well be called a particular kind of unhappiness or grief. But then it is the kind we want. I doubt whether anyone who has tasted it would ever, if both were in his power, exchange it for all the pleasures in the world. But then Joy is never in our power and pleasure often is. 15
Or again he says, “Joy is distinct not only from pleasure in general but even from aesthetic pleasure. It must have the stab, the pang, the inconsolable longing.” 16 So on the one hand, Joy has this dimension of “inconsolable longing,” aching, yearning for something you don’t have. But on the other hand, the longing and aching and yearning is itself pleasurable. It is in itself not just a wanting to have but a having.
True, it was desire, not possession. But then what I had felt on the walk had also been desire, and only possession in so far as that kind of desire is itself desirable, is the fullest possession we can know on earth; or rather, because the very nature of Joy makes nonsense of our common distinction between having and wanting. There, to have is to want to want is to have. Thus, the very moment when I longed to be stabbed again, was itself again such a stabbing. 17
Alan Jacobs is right to say, “Nothing was closer to the core of his being than this experience.” 18 And perhaps what sealed its significance for Lewis is that it brought him to Christ. He was an atheist in his twenties, but relentlessly God was pursuing him through the experience of “inconsolable longing.” And he was finding that the writers who awakened it most often were Christian writers.


One decisive influence was J. R. R. Tolkein, author of The Lord of the Rings. He argued like this, as Lewis did for the rest of his life: When this Joy—this stab of inconsolable longing—is awakened by certain powerful “myths” or “stories,” it is evidence that behind these myths there is a true Myth, a true Story that really exists, and that the reason the Joy is desirable and inconsolable is that it’s not the real thing. The True Myth, the Real Joy is the original shout, so to speak, and the stories and myths of human making are only echoes.

Tolkein pressed the analogous truth for Christianity. And Lewis did the same years later: “A man’s physical hunger does not prove that that man will get any bread: he may die of starvation on a raft in the Atlantic. But surely a man’s hunger does prove that he comes of a race which repairs its body by eating, and inhabits a world where eatable substances exist.” 19 In other words, “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probably explanation is that I was made for another world.” 20
 

Tuesday, February 02, 2010

Thank You

Some of the lyrics from Thank You by 33Miles

What if in the morning when I wake up
Even before I fill my coffee cup
I said Thank You
Thank You
Thank You

What if I looked at the day and the hours ahead
And before I moved forward I bowed my head
And said Thank You
Oh I said Thank You

What if I looked at my life in a different way
Took a little more time to stop and pray
I know it would change all the moments in between
So here I go






--------------------------------------------------------------
give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

1 Thessalonians 5:18

Act Courageously

Words of Life Weekly Devotional

Courage and Cowardice
by Traylor Lovvorn

But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable,
as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters,
and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with
fire and sulfur, which is the second death.” (Revelation 21:8)


I was introduced to HBO’s “Band of Brothers” a few months ago by one of the guys in my small group. He and a number of other guys in the group often referred to the show, so I figured I should check it out. I was immediately moved by the genuine brotherhood among these men that had been literally forged in foxholes all over Europe.

After watching two gripping episodes, I was struck by the incredible courage that these men displayed over and over again in combat. In scene after scene these men jumped out of the safety of their foxholes with mortars, bullets, and shrapnel flying all around them. In the middle of total chaos, with life and death literally hanging in the balance, they acted courageously.

I will most likely never see combat like that first-hand. I will never really know how I would have responded had I been a part of Easy Company. Would I have courageously stepped out of my foxhole, or would I have found myself on the ground in the fetal position, frozen by fear?

Each of us, however, does have situations that summon courage in us everyday, just like the men in Easy Company. While live ammo might not be whizzing by our heads and the situation might not be life and death, courage is called for nonetheless. In the verse in Revelation, it is interesting that “cowardly” made this list of what most would consider “big” sins. No one would argue that murderers, the sexually immoral, idolaters, and the detestable fit into this category, but when is the last time you heard a sermon on cowardice?

The root of the word used for cowardice in Revelation 21:8 means “to fear or dread.” How often have we failed to step into difficult situations with courage because we feared and tried to avoid potential conflict? Often we even sanctify our cowardice and feel good about ourselves simply because conflict was averted.

Conflict avoidance is not the goal of the Christian life and does not equate to righteous living. Most often, trying to avoid conflict is rooted in cowardice and fear. Jesus, the only perfect individual to ever live, did not walk around trying to keep peace with everyone around Him. On the contrary, He often created conflict with the Pharisees, even going so far as to call them some pretty strong names at times.

Many men in the Church today are trying to follow “gentle Jesus, meek and mild” and honestly don’t know what it looks like to assertively stand up with godly courage. Due to the fear of stepping out-of-bounds with their behavior, they have opted to sit passively on the sidelines and fold their hands nicely in their laps and simply stay out of trouble.

In light of this, it is no wonder that the use of internet pornography is reaching epidemic proportions, even among Christians. In my life and ministry, this is a growing issue. (More of my testimony is at my blog site.) Pornography is the ultimate act of cowardice in that there is no risk, it is always on our terms, and can be easily hidden. Intimacy with our spouse, on the other hand, requires the courage to pursue and the possibility of rejection.

The answer is not found with more accountability or more discipline, although those aren’t bad things at all. We must be honest about our fear of the unknown and how much we want to be in control and abandon ourselves to the big story that God wants to tell with our lives. He is calling us to a loving, intimate relationship and wants us to join Him in this great adventure. As Romans 8:15 says:

“For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!”

Because we are beloved sons and daughters of a Daddy who is good, we can live boldly and courageously as the assertive, passionate, loving men and women we were created to be. Even in areas unrelated to pornography, courage is a critical component of the Christian walk. We must be bold in our faith, uncompromising in our values and a light in a dark world.

This Week
Identify the fear and cowardice that has kept you living safely in your foxhole. Write down ways you have been passive and unassertive with your spouse, children, and work. What would you be doing with your life if you knew you couldn’t fail?

Prayer
“God, many times I have failed to act courageously when given the chance. Please forgive me and expose the fear in my life. Help me to boldly live the life You have for me. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”

Monday, February 01, 2010

Give Thanks

Praise the LORD! Oh give thanks to the LORD, for he is good,
    for his steadfast love endures forever!

Who can utter the mighty deeds of the LORD,
   or declare all his praise?
Blessed are they who observe justice,
   who do righteousness at all times!


Psalm 106:1-3