May
Have you ever heard of the condition “déjà vu amnesia”? Shai Linn, a speaker at the recent T4G conference, coined the phrase. It’s an especially common malady that affects Christians. We find ourselves saying time and again, “I know I’ve forgotten that before!” When it comes to God’s word and the truths of the Gospel we find we must often confess, “Oh yeah, I’ve been here before. I guess I forgot.” We’ve done that lesson, studied that passage, heard that sermon and even personally experienced the truth of God’s word on a particular subject and yet it seems we have to cover the same territory over and over again. We forget, even when we’ve known it before.
Part of the reason that the Lord calls us His sheep is that we are so easily distracted, preoccupied and prone to wander away. We forget the lessons we’ve learned and the truths we’ve been told; thus we have to learn them and hear them again. Have you ever noticed how often the Scripture calls us to remember? If you do a survey of the Old Testament, you’ll see in virtually every book a call for the people to remember the Lord and to remember the mighty work He did in bringing them out of Egypt and into the promised land. Of course the New Testament is replete with calls to remember Jesus Christ and the Good News of all that He has done. In 2 Tim. 2:8 Paul even goes so far as to tell Timothy to “Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead….” Timothy was a preacher of the Gospel, a herald of the Good News and yet Paul tells him to remember Jesus Christ!
We’re prone to forget. That’s why we must open our Bibles daily and actually aim to engage with the Lord through His word. We’re prone to forget. Which is why we need to regularly gather with other believers to study God’s word and worship Him together. We’re prone to forget. So we need to be intentional to set aside time to seek the Lord in prayer. We’re prone to forget. So it’s good to reflect on our salvation experience and remember our lives before Jesus saved us. We’re prone to forget. Which is why we need to daily rehearse the Gospel story and be reminded that the Son of God gave up Heaven for us, lived the life that we failed to live, died as our substitute, bearing the wrath of God that we deserved. We must remind ourselves that He is raised from the dead, securing our eternal life and imparting to us His Holy Spirit. We should also remember that He is seated at the Father’s right hand, interceding for us even now and that the day will come when He returns to gather us home and make everything right. I know you know all that. If you read these articles then you’ve read it all before and you may have skimmed over that last section thinking “there he goes again, spelling it all out like we’re little kids.” Nope. We’re sheep. We’re prone to forget.
You see, if we don’t intentionally remind ourselves of these things, we’ll find ourselves in the middle of our day being fretful, angry, envious, lustful, jealous, greedy, complacent or any number of other things we know we shouldn’t be. That’s when we’re tempted to kick ourselves and light the candle for our personal pity party, wondering why we never seem to get it right. Then we’ll get a note or read a post or hear a word from a friend that will remind us of the Lord’s faithfulness and His goodness to His children and we’ll find ourselves saying “I know I’ve forgotten that before.” To paraphrase Yogi Berra, “It’s déjà vu amnesia all over again.”
“But be sure to fear the Lord and serve Him faithfully with all your heart; consider (remember) what great things He has done for you.” 1 Samuel 12:24
IHMS,
April
So this Jesus of Nazareth is “the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” But someone might ask, “How can I know that for sure? I wasn’t there when He did all the miracles. I didn’t get to hear Him teach. I have no experience of Him interacting with me so how can I be sure that He is who Peter says He is? How can I have that same kind of confidence?”
The answer to that question will be celebrated this month. The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is God’s stamp of authenticity that Jesus is who the New Testament declares Him to be, the Christ, the Son of the Living God. Now there are plenty of folks who question Jesus’ resurrection, but they do so in spite of the evidence. If you were starting a new religion in the first century you would not write that women were the first witnesses to the event on which everything hinges. You would not portray the founding members of the religion as unbelieving cowards at the onset of that crucial event nor would you make a note that even after Jesus had made multiple appearances, there were still some who doubted that He was really raised from the dead. All of this on top to the dramatic change in the Apostles two months later is strong evidence that Jesus truly is raised from the dead. Paul said there were 500 people who witnessed His resurrection and he wrote that when most of them were still alive, essentially saying, “Go ask them if you don’t believe me.”
The question for us is, do we really believe that Jesus is raised from the dead? As Paul implied in 1 Cor. 15, are we standing in the truth of the Gospel? Do we believe, as he says in v. 3, that Jesus died for our sins and was raised to life on the third day according to the Scriptures? Because if I believe that then Jesus can’t simply be a good teacher or someone pointing us to God. If He is raised from the dead then He truly is the Christ, the Son of the Living God! If that is true, then it has vast implications for my life. I think one of the reasons that the church in these United States is in decline is due to a lack of confidence in the true identity of Jesus. We may confess on Sunday that He is Lord of all, our Savior and King but come Monday we start living in the default mode of the age. We substitute Son of God and Savior for good teacher and guide. When we relate to Him in that way, as teacher and guide, then everything is optional. We seek His advice rather than bow to His commands. We set up His teaching as an ideal to be admired rather than as truth that brings life. We pick and choose the things that we’re comfortable with, that help us fit in with our group and lay aside the things that call us into a brand new way of living.
The Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God, calls us to a life of compassion, graciousness and generosity towards all people in contrast to the moralism that religion breeds. At the same time, it calls us to a life of purity, holiness and faithfulness in contrast to the hedonism of a godless society. The only way we’ll ever get there is by working the Good News of Jesus, all that He is and all that He has done, deep into our soul. It means that we must be continually asking “If it is true that Jesus is the promised Redeemer (Savior) and that He really is the Son of the Living God who died for our sins and is raised from the dead, then what am I to do?” That’s what the Bible is talking about when it calls us to believe. It’s not easy but it is necessary if we are ever going to be the kind of people He calls us to be. Maybe you’re like me. I want to cry out with the father of the boy who had a demon, “I believe; Lord help my unbelief!” The Lord is Risen; He is Risen indeed! (Now what are we going to do with that?)
IHMS,
March
“You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” This is the foundational statement upon which the church of Jesus Christ is built. At least that’s the way Jesus put it and since He is the One who is building His church, I think He would know.
When Peter made this declaration, Jesus said that he was blessed by the Father to have had this revealed to him. Last month we looked at the importance of Jesus being the Christ, the anointed Redeemer sent from the Father to rescue us from the curse of sin. Notice the revelation doesn’t end there. It could be imagined that the promised Messiah/Redeemer could have been another human being. Likely, that is what most of the people of Israel were actually looking for. A man could have fulfilled the role of “the seed of Abraham”, “another prophet like Moses” or “the root of Jesse, the son of David.” Like Moses or David a man could have led them to freedom and to victory over their enemies. Peter is given the unexpected piece of the puzzle; Son of the Living God.
Through the miracles, the teaching and the profound love of this man Jesus, Peter saw something more, something almost unimaginable for a monotheistic Jew. He was shown that the Living God- the God who formed the universe out of nothing, the God who created with just a word, who breathed life into mankind and who displayed His greatness and glory to the people of Israel-has a Son, a co-eternal, co-equal Son. One, who as Paul says, is the exact representation of God’s being. Standing there in the presence of Jesus and the other disciples, he blurts out words that must have sounded like blasphemy as they spilled out. Yet, Jesus does not deny them or rebuke them or dismiss them. He owns them and affirms them by implying that it is this understanding of who He is upon which He will build a new nation, a new people through whom the glory of God would be displayed. Peter would later write to the church, “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God…”
So we learn from Peter’s confession and the words of Jesus elsewhere that the one true God, the Living God is a Trinity, One God in three Persons. The best way that I know how to explain that is everything that God the Father is, the Son and Spirit are. Everything that the Son is, the Father and Spirit are and everything that the Spirit is, the Father and Son are. As the Son of the Living God, Jesus is the all wise, all knowing ruler and sustainer of all things. He is the rightful Judge of all the earth and all humanity will one day bow to Him. When He says, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life and no one comes to the Father except through me” He means it. This means He’s more than just another religious leader pointing the way to God, illuminating the path so to speak. If He is the Son of the Living God, then what He says is life and truth and all other options are off the table. It means His words are not simply suggestions or good ideas for us to incorporate into our lives when we get the chance.
I know this is an uncomfortable thought, but one day each and every one of us who claim the name of Christ are going to stand before the Son of the Living God and we will give an account to Him in regard to what we did with the things He said. In that moment, all of our excuses, rationalizations and justifications will be exposed for what they are: unbelief. It’s important that we put away our faulty notions of who Jesus is. Peter said He is “the Christ, the Son of the Living God” and that has some pretty serious implications for who we are and how we live as part of the Church that He is building.
IHMS,
February
“You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” It was upon this declaration of truth that Jesus said He would build His church. When you read this passage in Mt. 16 you should take notice of something very important: Jesus acknowledged the statement as true. He didn’t blush and scuff His feet in the dirt and “Aw shucks” His way out of it. He didn’t laugh it off and tell Peter not to get carried away nor did He ponder the statement as if it had never occurred to Him. None of that. Instead He proclaims, “Blessed are you Simon…because my Father has revealed this to you and this is the foundation of what it means to be joined to me!” (not the exact quote) Peter’s confession sums up the reality of who Jesus is and what He came to do. If we fail to grasp these truths, then we will come up short in our understanding of what it means to belong to Him.
So what is this blessed revelation that Peter received from the Father? First, that this guy Jesus is the Christ. This is not His last name, it’s a title, an incredibly significant title. Christ is the Greek term for the Jewish term, Messiah, both meaning “the Anointed One.” The story of all of the Bible is wrapped up in this one title. You’ll recall that in the beginning God created everything, concluding with the pinnacle of His creation, mankind. Mankind is the only thing in all of creation made in the image of God, created to have a personal relationship with Him and to share in His likeness. But that wasn’t enough for them. Adam and Eve believed the lie of the serpent and rebelled against their Creator and in so doing brought death and destruction to God’s good creation. As God is explaining the consequences of their rebellion He inserts a promise. In speaking to the serpent He says, “The seed of the woman is going to crush your head.” This “seed of the woman” is the Anointed One, the One set apart to redeem mankind and restore the creation. All of the Bible is focused on this unfolding story. As you read the Old Testament there are hints and glimpses and types, moments when you might ask, “Is this the One God promised?” Could it be Noah, the one who built the ark? Maybe Isaac, the son of the promise? Moses, the one to lead his people out of bondage? Or David, the king whose throne would last forever? These and all the others failed. They could not defeat our ultimate enemies, sin and death. Yet each one is like a piece of a puzzle, giving us a portion of the overall picture. Then Isaiah proclaims, “Behold, the virgin will conceive and bear a son and she will call His name Immanuel” (which means “God with us.”)
So Peter was given a revelation, a moment when all the pieces came together. He realized that standing before Him was the Anointed One, the Promised One who would set His people free. Unfortunately, in that moment, Peter could only interpret that revelation through his cultural moment. He knew the Messiah was with Him but he thought He came to set them free from the Romans. He couldn’t fathom the cross that was coming for Jesus or the depth of the sacrifice that Jesus would make for him and for all of us. He could not envision the resurrection. He could not see, in that moment, that Jesus the Messiah, the Christ would soon defeat the power of sin and death through His own death and resurrection! He didn’t understand that Jesus came to redeem us, to buy us back from our old master, to crush the head of the serpent and make for Himself a new nation, a new race of people and to set into motion the restoration of all creation.
So here is a question for you and me. Do we believe, in the depth of our being, that Jesus is the Christ? Do we believe that He is the One sent from God to redeem and restore all things? To answer that we need to look and see where our functional trust is located. What is my ultimate hope for my family? Is it their safety, prosperity and personal happiness? Is my primary concern for my kids and grandkids to get a good education and a good job and to marry the right kind of person or am I aware that my family and I are part of the greater story of what God is doing through Jesus to restore creation to Himself? Am I caught up in the American dream or caught up in His plan and purpose for the redemption of every tribe, nation and language? Am I mentally dividing my community into people like “us” and people like “them” or am I able to see each person as someone created in the image of God and in need of His restoring grace (especially me)? Am I looking to an election to fix what is broken in our country or am I working to introduce broken people to the only true King, the One to whom ultimately every knee will bow? My answers will let me know if I truly believe Jesus is The Christ or if I just think that’s His last name.
IHMS,
P.S. We’ll look at what it means that Jesus is “the Son of the Living God” next time. You can also view a somewhat expanded version of this article on our website “colquittbaptist.org”
January
Forty years ago this month, I took a challenge that radically changed my life. In December of 1981 our pastor issued a challenge to the members of First Baptist Church of Boynton Beach. He challenged us to read the Bible through in the year to come, 1982. He made arrangements with a local Christian book store so that we could purchase a new NIV Bible at a discount and he provided everyone with a daily devotional guide produced by the Walk Thru the Bible organization. He knew that we would need some help in order to stick with it through the whole year.
By the grace of God, I stuck with it and it changed me. Contrary to the experience of many, reading the Old Testament changed my thinking and the way I related to God as much as reading the New Testament. Many people try reading the Old Testament and all they see is lists of genealogies, rules and regulations, nations at war or a God who seems angry all the time. It’s led many Christians to ignore the Old Testament and some to declare it irrelevant. That breaks my heart, because I saw something else and still see it today.
I saw grace. I saw how people rebelled against God time and time again, how they snubbed Him and turned away and did what they wanted over and over again. Yet, over and over again God was patient. He didn’t give people what they deserved. He forgave and provided and called people back to Himself. I saw this most emphatically in regard to the nation of Israel. God made them a nation and declared them to be His chosen people. He rescued them from Egypt, delivering them through the Passover and through the Red Sea and to Mt. Sinai. Through all of it they went kicking and screaming, complaining at every turn. They panicked at the Red Sea, grumbled at Meriba, turned their backs on Him at Mt. Sinai and refused Him as they stood on the border of the promised land. After they finally got to the promised land it only took one generation before they went chasing after other gods. Still, God was patient with them. Time and again He sent invaders, plagues and drought to get their attention. Over and over and over again He sent judges and kings and prophets to call His people back to Himself.
In all of that, God showed me myself. I came to realize that I was no different. I saw where I had turned my back on Him, complained against Him and had done my will rather than His. I saw that I was just as stubborn, unbelieving and rebellious as they were. But, there was something else that also jumped out at me in my reading. Every time the people turned back to God, every time they repented and cried out to Him, He received them, He forgave their sin and He welcomed them back. I figured if He responded to the people of Israel that way, then I could trust Him to respond to me in that way as well. And He did, over and over again!
In the book of Exodus Moses asks to see God’s glory. The Lord then hides Moses in a cleft and passes by. This is what He says as He passes by, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet He does not leave the guilty unpunished; He punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.” Is He the God of justice? Absolutely. But notice what He leads with: compassion, grace, patience, forgiveness and love. Giving us what we deserve is not His first inclination. His heart is to show mercy and grace. We know this of course, because the Old Testament is not the end of God’s revelation of Himself. He proved that He is abounding in love because He sent His Son to atone for our sin and satisfy His justice once and for all. Jesus is the embodiment of God’s declaration to Moses. He is the One who physically and visibly displayed the compassion, grace, patience and mercy declared on Mt. Sinai and extended to the Israelites time and again. This is, in large part, what the letter to the Hebrews is getting at when it says that Jesus is “the exact representation of (God’s) being….”
So how do you read the Old Testament? Full of fire and brimstone? Does it leave you with an image of God as angry and brooding, just looking for us to mess up so that He can smite us down? Did Jesus have to come to rescue us from the God who is out to get us? If that’s the case, may I encourage you try again? 2022 would be a great year to read it all again believing that God is who He says He is. It could change your life. Then you could say with the Psalmist, “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good.”
October
On August 30 I celebrated my 61st birthday (if you forgot to send a card it’s okay.) On August 31 I got on a plane and flew to Boston, MA for the purpose of meeting some church planters and exploring the possibility of partnering with them in the work of the Gospel in the greater Boston area. It was my first trip to Boston and to the New England area in general and I found it to be much nicer than I expected. It’s quite a fascinating old city. There is so much history, being in many ways the birthplace of our nation. At the same time, it is a very modern, diverse and influential city with an abundance of stark reminders as to how easy it is to slip away from our foundation in the Gospel.
Boston is home to 39 different universities, Harvard being the premier university not only of New England but of our nation. Did you know Harvard was founded as a Christian university to primarily train men for Gospel ministry and missions? Have you heard that for this academic year they have appointed an avowed atheist to be their new chaplain? Granted, it took them a couple of hundred years to get there, but get there they did. Harvard is simply a reflection of the greater Boston area which, according to the most generous estimates is only 2% evangelical Christian. What was once the epicenter of Gospel ministry and mission in the United States now has fewer Bible believing Christians than many Muslim nations.
In the picture I’m standing in front of the building that at one time housed the First Baptist Church of Watertown. If you could enlarge the picture you would see 1899 inscribed on the memorial stone on the front of the building. That was the year the church built that beautiful building. Unfortunately, there is no longer a church meeting in that building. As far as I know there is no congregation known as First Baptist Church in Watertown. The building you see was converted several years ago into luxury condominiums. In fact, there is an entire industry in New England dedicated to finding old church properties and converting them into condos or assisted living facilities or office space.
The people who do surveys and track numbers, statistics and trends are telling us that in the South, the Bible Belt, we will be in the same place as New England or our western states in less than 30 years. Imagine a Colquitt County where only two out of every 100 people believed the Gospel and sought to live according to God’s word. We’re tempted to believe it couldn’t happen here but we need to keep in mind that New England was once the Bible Belt of our nation. Sad to say but there are plenty of indicators that the experts will be proven right. Think about your kids or your grandkids for a moment. How often do they participate in the life of the church? How many friends do they have who are actively involved in a church? How active is our own involvement in the life of the church? How often do we pray for our neighbors specifically? Invite them to church? Have a gospel conversation with them? How much time do we spend in personal devotion verses reinforcing our political viewpoint or tracking our favorite team? How generous are we with our time and our resources? Are we more concerned about the condition of the church building or the health of the body of Christ that meets there? Do our personal preferences take priority over Gospel proclamation? Here’s the main question to be asked. Does Jesus Christ and His kingdom get priority over everything else in my life? Our answers will determine whether or not the experts are right. May we hold fast the foundation we have in the Gospel of Christ!
IHMS,
August
On Saturday, July 10, I was standing on the edge of the Klutina River looking across at the place where it merges with the Copper River. Both rivers were running about 30 mph over rocky riverbeds on their way to the sea. During the course of the day I watched a bald eagle pull a scrap of fish out of the river and get chased into the woods by two golden eagles. Later, that same bald eagle flew about 20-30 feet over my head and landed on the bank about fifty yards away. My son had taken me to this remote spot in the backwoods of Alaska to go salmon fishing. We didn’t catch a thing. It wasn’t for lack of trying. The fish just weren’t there that day.
After we got back to the truck Stephen apologized for the fact that we didn’t catch a salmon. He had apologized several times during the day and I knew he was disappointed. I looked out the window and then at him. I said, “You know, I got to stand in a place and see things today that 99.9% of the world will never see. I got to see that eagle flying about and view this incredible creation. On the way here I’ve seen glaciers and mountains and rivers and wildlife that is just amazing and I got to do all of this with my son. I’m a blessed man.”
We have a tendency as human beings to focus on the thing that didn’t happen or the thing that we didn’t get and miss the blessing that’s starring us in the face. We might look around at Colquitt County and think that it’s a pretty mundane and ordinary place and that our lives are much the same. Yet, if you’ll take a moment to look just a little closer there are things here that we are blessed to enjoy that the majority of the world will never experience. Our mundane and ordinary lives are chock full of blessing if we’ll only pause for a moment to take stock. There are little snatches and glimpses of beauty and glory, majesty and wonder all around. We don’t have to travel half way around the world to see it.
Some might say that the ability to appreciate the little things comes with age and maybe growing older does help the process, but I don’t think that’s the main factor. I think this ability is the by-product of the ability to appreciate the One who created it all in the first place. More than once the psalmist said that the creation displays the glory of God. It shouts and sings His praise to anyone who will listen. When we come to the place of not simply acknowledging but really believing in the core of our being that God is both great and good, that changes our perspective about our lives and the world around us. When we stop approaching Him with the mindset of “what can God do for me today?” and begin to consider all that He has already done for us it will melt our hearts and open our eyes to wonder, beauty and grace that’s been there all along.
I’m a blessed man. If you know Jesus Christ as Lord then you are blessed as well. The favor, love and mercy of the God of all creation rests upon you. It doesn’t mean that the day will be a cake walk. You could be going through something very difficult. You may face some incredible disappointments but there will be glimpses of glory even in the midst of them. You may only see them in hindsight, but they are there and they are reminders of the love and compassion that the Father has for you in Christ. “Praise God from whom all blessings flow….”
IHMS,
An Object of Grace
As many of you know, my Mom passed away on the 11th of May. As I’m writing this, over a week has already gone by and once again I’m amazed at how time keeps persistently moving forward. But that’s not why I’m telling you about my Mom’s passing. There’s something more that I want to share with you, but I’m going to ask a favor of you before we continue. I want to ask you to withhold judgment until you’ve read the whole story.
So here we go. My Mom and I were not emotionally close. We were never ugly toward one another; we just didn’t talk much or share much with one another. I loved my Mom in a dutiful sort of way and I’m confident that she loved me though she was not demonstrative about it. You’re liable to think I’m a terrible son when I say that I have not cried over her death, but I can honestly say it was a blessing because she was physically and emotionally miserable.
But I’ve come to know my Mom a bit better since May 11th. She left me and my sister and brother a gift that we were largely unaware of. Mom liked journals, at least she liked the idea of them because she would buy them and start writing. None of them are complete but her story is there in bits and pieces. The gift to me was the journal where she wrote about her life growing up and about her first marriage to my birth father. Peyton Place has nothing on this story.
Mom was born in Wheatland, WY, the youngest of six children, one of whom died in infancy. Her father was an alcoholic and when she was around 12 her father caught her mother in bed with another man. Her parents divorced and the court determined that neither one of them were fit to be parents so Mom was shipped off to live with her siblings, each of them keeping her for a few years until she was 19 or 20. Then she decided to move to California with one of her cousins. It was the late 1950’s. After a time, she and her cousin parted ways. That’s when she met my birth father. She writes that he was charming, a smooth talker and she wrote multiple times that she was naïve. She was young, longing for someone to love her and not very wise. She had told me bits and pieces about him through the years but her journal revealed that the man was an absolute scoundrel (I’m being polite).
They went to Reno, NV to get married because his divorce was not final. He had four children by his first wife and likely I have other siblings because he was a womanizer. He would leave my mom for days at a time, crossing the border into Tijuana to go to the strip clubs. Not too long after they were married he stole $3000 (equal to $28,000 today) from a Go-Cart club that they belonged to. After stealing the money, he took my mom to San Francisco. The club members tracked him down and when he didn’t pay back the money they had him thrown in jail. A short time after his parents bailed him out I was born. While she was in the hospital my Mom gave him $200 to pay toward the hospital bill and he took the money and went to the bar. That was the final straw for Mom and she divorced him. She goes on to talk about being a young single mom and the trauma of irresponsible baby sitters before she met Jack Brown, the guy who would give me his name and become my Dad.
That’s where the journal ended. Pretty crazy, right? Those of you who know me would have never guessed my tragic, convoluted origins. You would likely never imagine that I was the offspring of such a despicable man or that any woman could be so gullible as my mom. It is truly an amazing thing that I am the person I am in the place where I am. That’s what grace is all about. I am only who I am by the sheer grace of the Lord. I can think of a thousand different ways that my life could have turned out. There are thousands of “what if’s” that pop up when I think about what my life could have been and most of the outcomes are not pretty. I can confidently confess with Paul that “I am what I am by the grace of God!” By His grace He orchestrated the course of my life, moving us from San Fran to Idaho to Ft. Lauderdale and finally to Boynton Beach and the Christian Academy at FBC Boynton where for the first time I heard and understood the Gospel, asking the Lord to forgive me and receive me as His own (Mom and I were baptized together at FBC Boynton and my Dad about a year later.) I’m twice adopted! Finding Mom’s journal has blown me away. Not because of how awful or tragic it was but because of the clarity of God’s grace to me in all of it. The story of my life is shot through with the grace of God!
However, there is another take away in all of this and I hope you’ll hear my heart in this. I didn’t just turn my life around. I was rescued! If you are a believer, your life is shot through with the same grace. You and your family may have a long history as Christ followers. You couldn’t even begin to imagine yourself or someone in your family getting caught up in the kind of chaos described in my Mom’s journal. But here’s the reality. If you go digging back in your family history far enough, you’re going to find someone whom the Lord rescued out of the chaos and brokenness of their family and changed the trajectory of their life and that of their family. You’re just as much a recipient of grace as I am. We’re all in need of rescue because we’re all lost and hopeless without the grace of Jesus.
One last thing. I hope my story is a reminder to all of us to be careful not to write people off. We never know how the grace of Christ can change a life. It certainly has mine!
IHMS,
May
In Proverbs 30 we’re introduced to a guy by the name of Agur son of Jakeh. We don’t know anything about him beyond his name because it is the only time he is mentioned in all of the Bible. Well, we do know one other thing: he liked to list things in sets of four. Five times he mentions a list of four things. Some of these things anger him, some of them grieve him and some of them impress him. In vv. 18-19 he says, “There are three things that are too amazing for me, four that I do not understand: the way of an eagle in the sky, the way of a snake on a rock, the way of a ship on the high seas, and the way of a man with a young woman.”
He says in essence that these things are a mystery to him and yet at the same time they are fascinating to him. Even in our scientific, highly informed age where science has explained in detail how eagles soar, snakes crawl and ships sail (though they have yet to give a solid explanation for romance) we can still be quite enthralled by something like an eagle circling in the air.
There are things like that in the Christian life, one such thing being prayer. What a fascinating mystery prayer is! We are called into this incredible relationship with the Creator of all things and encouraged to come humbly yet boldly into His presence through prayer. Jesus said we are to hallow or hold in highest esteem the name of our God, yet tells us we can address Him as Dada (Abba). Jesus also tells us to come before our Heavenly Father without pretense, being honest and open with the One who intimately knows every detail of our lives and the things that are on our hearts at any given moment. Elsewhere in the New Testament it is implied that through prayer we actually enter into the throne room of Heaven itself. Genuine prayer is a personal encounter with God Himself! Though we know and confess that He is the Sovereign Ruler of all things, yet we also know that our petitions and requests are heard and considered and that He is at work through the very prayers that we have uttered. What a great mystery and yet what a fascinating privilege and blessing we have to be able to pray!
One of the things the New Testament especially encourages is that we should pray together. It’s a blessing and a calling that as redeemed people we can pray together. On Thursday, May 6 we will have the opportunity to exercise that blessing. That day is the National Day of Prayer and there will be an observance and time of prayer in downtown Moultrie at the Courthouse Square. There is more info in this newsletter concerning the event itself, but let me encourage you to join with the body of Christ from all over Colquitt County to pray for our community and for our nation. It will start at noon and should last between 45-50 minutes. Who knows what the Lord might do as His people submit themselves to Him and seek Him in united prayer? I hope you will make the effort to join us!
The Obligatory Resurrection Article
Here it is. The obligatory article on the resurrection. It is April after all and Easter is the first Sunday in April and all that. So it is only natural to talk about the resurrection because this is the time of year we’ve reserved to talk about it.
By and large, that’s the problem. We don’t talk about the Resurrection enough. We don’t think about it enough or incorporate it in our discussion of the Gospel enough. I agree with those who say we don’t believe it deeply enough and therefore we don’t apply it to our everyday lives enough. On April 4, 2021 we will look forward to having a packed house at church and we will sing and clap and preach like the resurrection of Jesus from the dead is the greatest thing that ever happened in human history!
And that’s my point. It is THE GREATEST thing that has ever happened in all of human history and to a great extent we only truly celebrate it once a year! This goes back to my point that we don’t believe it deeply enough. Think about it for a moment. The vast majority of our Gospel presentations go something like this: You’ve sinned against God. Jesus died on a cross to pay the penalty for your sins. If you will put your faith in Jesus, you can have eternal life. I’m not wanting to disparage any of the typical Gospel presentations, but those that I’m familiar with, EE, CWT, ABC, The Roman Road, etc…, make no direct reference to the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Yet Paul said in 1 Corinthians, “This is the Good News that I delivered to you; that Jesus died for our sins according to the Scriptures and that He was buried and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.” Paul spends the rest of chapter 15 explaining how the death of Jesus has no value if Jesus is not raised from the dead, but is incredibly good news if He is! Again, I would in no way want to devalue the atoning sacrifice of our Lord. All I am saying is that we must hold the cross and the resurrection tightly together because one without the other is meaningless. Yet I want to affirm what Paul says, we are to be pitied more than anyone else if Jesus is not raised.
I would contend that there are two primary reasons that so many of us as Christians lead such ineffective lives in regard to the Gospel. The first would be a lack of deep gratitude for the substitutionary life and atoning death of Jesus. We fail to acknowledge just how desperately lost we truly were and thus we don’t like to think too deeply about all that Jesus had to suffer in order to save us. Unfortunately, many believe they just need a little help from Jesus. They fail to understand that without the righteous life and sacrificial death of Jesus they are morally destitute, bankrupt before God. The second reason we stumble along in our faith is a lack of understanding and true confidence in the literal, physical resurrection of our Lord and Savior. His resurrection is the means by which we have received the Holy Spirit, His presence with us. The resurrection is what frees us from sin’s power. We are no longer slaves to sin. It validates all that Jesus said and did, especially His atoning death. Because He is raised we have the greatest hope ever, that the day will come when we will be raised as well! Not to some ethereal, “spiritual” existence, but to a real, tangible, physical life that is infinitely better than anything we can imagine here; a new heaven and new earth! We will be in His presence forever! Let’s celebrate well on April 4 and may we live in light of His resurrection from that day on!
IHMS,