“…we’re facing some big things, Lord.
And You whisper: “Child, look — look at Me.
Now You’re facing the Best thing, who dwarfs all the other things.”
And we exhale.. and we get it, God, because that is the thing:
Prayer isn’t so much to remind our God of what all the problems are —
but to remind all the problems of who our God is.
And You cup us close tonight and tell us: No matter what you’re facing, look into My face — and know it, feel it:
Your God is greater than what you’re trying to face,
your God is bigger than what you’re trying to escape,
your God is better than anything you’re trying to chase.
And our problems fade in the light of Your gentle face, Your tender embrace….

#SharingPrayerTogether (Ann Voskamp)”

That’s just the thing. We tend to think of prayer in terms of reminding God of all our desires and wishes and problems, as if He’d at some point forgotten since the last time we prayed and needing constantly to be reminded and motivated. We tend to think of God as like us, only smarter, bigger, stronger, faster . . . . but He’s not. He’s completely other.

God knows every prayer of every saint throughout time and space. He knows every single one, just as He knows every single one of those who offered those petitions in the first place. He knows your name. He knows what you’re asking, even when you don’t.

What prayer does is remind your problems of who God is. It’s a reminder to the one praying that prayer still moves mountains. It’s to call our minds throughout history to all the times when God has delivered His people, granting to them in their hour of need what they needed most.

I love what Oswald Chambers said:

“To say that ‘prayer changes things’ is not as close to the truth as saying, ‘Prayer changes me and then I change things.’ God has established things so that prayer, on the basis of redemption, changes the way a person looks at things. Prayer is not a matter of changing things externally, but one of working miracles in a person’s inner nature.”

Back in ye olden days, I learned in Sunday School that the rainbow was a sign of God’s promise to Noah to never again destroy the world by flood. It would be present after every storm as a reminder to God’s people of God’s faithfulness to keep His promises.

When I saw this double rainbow this afternoon, it reminded me that God has always been faithful to keep all His promises that He has ever made. Even when those promises seemed delayed or slow in coming, God’s people could rest assured that they were delayed but not denied.

Not only does God keep His promises, but He fulfills them at the perfect time. With God, there is never a moment too soon or too late. There is never bad timing or the wrong day or “you caught me at a bad moment.”

It’s not that God’s promise isn’t ready, but that I’m not always ready to receive it at that moment. I believe that if I got everything God had for me all at once, it would be too much for me to handle. It would destroy me, not because God’s gifts aren’t good but because I wouldn’t have the maturity to use them for good.

Above all, God’s greatest promise is God’s presence. He said He’d never leave me nor forsake me. That’s the promise I cling to above all others, the one I rely on when I have nothing else, the one that makes every other promise meaningful.

A friend posted this on Facebook and I was blown away by the sheer sacrifice. It’s how each of the original apostles died according to church tradition. I knew some of it, but not all. It always convicts me how comfortable American Christianity has become. Maybe that’s why there’s so much compromise and so little conviction.The Church has always flourished the most under persecution, yet in this country, we talk about church growth in modern buildings with comfortable seating and all the amenities. It’s no wonder that so many are walking away from this Americanized gospel that purports to be different yet more and more looks just like the culture it’s trying to save. Check this out about the disciples of Jesus:

“1. Matthew. Suffered martyrdom in Ethiopia, Killed by a sword wound.

2. Mark. Died in Alexandria, Egypt , after being dragged by Horses through the streets until he was dead.

3. Luke. Was hanged in Greece as a result of his tremendous Preaching to the lost.

4. John. Faced martyrdom when he was boiled in huge Basin of boiling oil during a wave of persecution In Rome. However, he was miraculously delivered From death.
John was then sentenced to the mines on the prison Island of Patmos. He wrote his prophetic Book of Revelation on Patmos . The apostle John was later freed and returned to serve As Bishop of Edessa in modern Turkey . He died as an old man, the only apostle to die peacefully

5. Peter. He was crucified upside down on an x shaped cross. According to church tradition it was because he told his tormentors that he felt unworthy to die In the same way that Jesus Christ had died.

6. James. The leader of the church in Jerusalem , was thrown over a hundred feet down from the southeast pinnacle of the Temple when he refused to deny his faith in Christ. When they discovered that he survived the fall, his enemies beat James to death with a fuller’s club.

This was the same pinnacle where Satan had taken Jesus during the Temptation.

7. James the Son of Zebedee was a fisherman by trade when Jesus Called him to a lifetime of ministry. 

As a strong leader of the church, James was beheaded at Jerusalem. The Roman officer who guarded James watched amazed as James defended his faith at his trial. 

Later, the officer Walked beside James to the place of execution. Overcome by conviction, he declared his new faith to the judge and Knelt beside James to accept beheading as a Christian.

8. Bartholomew. Also known as Nathaniel. He Was a missionary to Asia. He witnessed for our Lord in present day Turkey. Bartholomew was martyred for his preaching in Armenia where he was flayed to death by a whip.

9. Andrew. He Was crucified on an x-shaped cross in Patras, Greece. After being whipped severely by seven soldiers they tied his body to the cross with cords to prolong his agony. 

His followers reported that, when he was led toward the cross, Andrew saluted it in these words, ‘I have long desired and expected this happy hour. The cross has been consecrated by the body of Christ hanging on it.’ He continued to preach to his tormentors For two days until he expired.

10. Thomas. He Was stabbed with a spear in India during one of his missionary trips to establish the church in the Subcontinent.

11. Jude. He Was killed with arrows when he refused to deny his faith in Christ.

12. Matthias. The apostle chosen to replace the traitor Judas Iscariot. He was stoned and then beheaded.

13. Paul. He Was tortured and then beheaded by the evil Emperor Nero at Rome in A.D. 67. Paul endured a lengthy imprisonment, which allowed him to write his many epistles to the churches he had formed throughout the Roman Empire. These letters, which taught many of the foundational Doctrines of Christianity, form a large portion of the New Testament.”

Again, it’s tradition and not necessarily gospel truth, but I think each of these men gave their lives for the true gospel because they absolutely believed it with every fiber of their being. And John, the only one to live to old age, ended up exiled on the island of Patmos. I believe God spared him so he could be the one to pen the book of Revelation, where we see all the martyrs through the ages finally rewarded for their sacrifice.

May we be as willing to lay down our lives for the sake of Christ. Maybe then we will see true transformation and growth in our churches.

In other words, just eat the bacon and be happy.

I recently was reading in Joshua 6 about the famous battle of Jericho. From a human perspective, it has to be one of the worst battle strategies ever designed. March around the city walls once a day for six days, then march around them seven times on the seventh day and give an almighty shout? That’s your plan?

Actually, that was God’s plan. It might have seemed ridiculous to the people at the time, but they were faithful to obey, and God honored that obedience with success in battle.They completely destroyed the city, leaving alive only Rahab and her family. There aren’t too many examples of God’s people actually doing what God said to do, but when they did, God always fulfilled His end of the promise.

I keep thinking about that verse lately in regard to my own church. We’ve been trying to start renovations on our new property, but we lack one stamp of approval on one piece of paper from one department. That’s all. We sent in the paperwork months ago and have been in bureaucracy limbo ever since.

Maybe the solution isn’t lawyers and litigation, but praise and worship. I was walking the property when I believe God spoke to me. He said, “When you worship loud, the walls fall down.”

I’m not claiming to be any kind of a prophet or anyone who has special revelations from the Lord. I’m not much into people who are always hearing a word from God. I believe that the Bible is the final and complete revelation of what God has spoken.

I do believe that God can speak to people within the context of the Bible to specific circumstances. I believe that God will never say anything that goes against His established and written Word.

I believe that the Bible says God can turn the hearts of kings like water, so He can turn the hearts of a few city council members. I believe God can grant us favor with the city and provide the approval we need. And I believe in my heart that He will when the time is right.

Until then, maybe it’s time to turn the worship up loud.

“We raise our glasses and drink to a love that never gave up.”

Whether your glass has wine or grape juice or sweet tea or just water, I hope you will find time sometime before the day is over to raise a toast to this Easter love that found a way through the cross and the tomb to find you in your moment of darkest despair. I hope you will drink to the reckless love of God that spared no expense to buy you back when so many said you weren’t worth saving.

Because of Easter, everything has changed. We’re no longer outcasts and strangers to the promise. We’re no longer without hope in the world. We’re no longer dead in our sins and trespasses and enemies to God because of our rebellion against everything He stands for.

Easter love is hesed love, the love that gave absolutely everything to those who had the right to expect absolutely nothing. Easter love is the essence of unconditional love with the sacrifice of life for those who would ultimately ridicule and reject it. Easter love is where God so loved the world — that God so loved you and me — that He gave His one and only Son so that we might not perish and be lost forever but have an eternal and abundant life with God.

We drink to love that never gave up every single time we take the cup that symbolizes the blood shed and the bread that symbolizes the body broken. Every time we take Communion in remembrance of Jesus, we are eating and drinking to this love that never quit.

“Christ arrives right on time to make this happen. He didn’t, and doesn’t, wait for us to get ready. He presented himself for this sacrificial death when we were far too weak and rebellious to do anything to get ourselves ready. And even if we hadn’t been so weak, we wouldn’t have known what to do anyway. We can understand someone dying for a person worth dying for, and we can understand how someone good and noble could inspire us to selfless sacrifice. But God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him” (Romans 5:6-8, The Message).

“O God, you enlightened this most holy night with the glory of the Lord’s resurrection. Preserve the spirit of adoption which you have given to all your people, so that renewed in body and soul, we may serve you in all purity; through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.”

As much as I have been learning about the season of Lent leading up to Easter and the holy week including Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, I haven’t really found out much about Holy Saturday, also referred to as Easter Eve. No one really seems to commemorate the day.

Maybe it’s because nothing really happened. It’s the day between the Good Friday of Jesus laying down His life and the Easter Sunday of Jesus being raised up from the dead. I know there’s a passage in 1 Peter 3:19 about Jesus preaching to the spirits in prison. Some believe that Jesus descended into hell and proclaimed His victory to the spirits there. Some believe it was Jesus preaching through Noah to those before the flood came. I’m not sure what I believe.

I do imagine that feeling of hopelessness the disciples must have felt on that Saturday. All their hopes seem to have died on the cross with Jesus. They couldn’t quite grasp what He was talking about when He said He must be handed over and lifted up and killed to rise again. They had seen their Rabbi whom they had followed and been with every single day for three years die. They had no where to go.

But thankfully, the story doesn’t end with Saturday. The story doesn’t end with the sealed tomb and sorrowful hearts and sad faces. I heard that because of Easter Sunday, the worst thing is never the last thing. Because of Easter Sunday, your story will not end with ashes, to paraphrase Elisabeth Elliott.

It may be Friday (or in this case Holy Saturday), but Sunday’s comin’!

Does it strike anyone else as odd that today of all days is referred to as Good Friday? This is the day when they took Jesus, beat Him, tortured Him, nailed Him to a piece of wood, and murdered Him in the guise of crucifixion. In terms of how most people define good, this was anything but a good Friday.

But in God’s economy, this was the fulfillment of all the prophecies about a Messiah and Suffering Servant who by his stripes and suffering would heal us and make us whole. By the worst moment of suffering ever endured by anyone in history, Jesus made a way for us to be right with God.

I love the definition of sin as me trying to put myself in God’s place, while salvation is God putting Himself in my place. The difference is that sin fails to dethrone God but salvation succeeds because God never tried to do anything. He just did it.

Good Friday is good because God so loved the world that He gave Jesus, so that whoever believes in Him might not perish but have eternal life. Good Friday is good because He who knew no sin became sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in Christ. Good Friday is good because the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many.

That means that even my worst day can turn to good if God is in it. My worst case scenario can be redeemed for God’s purposes and serve God’s glory instead of my pain and my shame. Easter means that the worst thing is never the last thing (according to Frederick Buechner). Easter Sunday makes Good Friday good and can make any day of mine good, too.

One of my new favorite traditions is observing Maundy Thursday. It’s only recently that I even know what Maundy Thursday is or what it means. Apparently, Maundy comes from the Latin word for command. As best as I can understand, Maundy Thursday is a reflection on the last Lord’s Supper before the arrest, trial, and crucifixion on Good Friday.

The service is typically a come and go service. It’s subdued and reflective. There’s usually a minimal amount of music and lighting with the majority of the focus on the cross looming in the foreground, a kind of foreshadowing of what’s to come.

It’s hard to see the bread and the wine (or the juice if you’re Baptist), and not see the body broken and the blood spilled out. Jesus was preparing His disciples for the next 24 hours, although they didn’t grasp His meaning until after the fact, after the cross and the grave and the resurrection.

Easter is a celebration. Maundy Thursday is a reflection, not only of what Jesus did but of what that means for us as followers still caught in the struggle of sin in the midst of a sinful world. Easter is not possible without Maundy Thursday and Good Friday and the Saturday in between.

May we prepare our hearts even now to truly receive the joy of the coming Easter.

“Be strong enough to admit your weaknesses. Be brave enough to show your fear. Be honest enough to confess the sham you’ve lived and all the masks you’ve been wearing. Love people as they are, not as you hope they will be. Let the love of Christ fill you and spill out into your world. Because His love alone can heal and make whole and set you free. His love alone can transform you into something like Himself” (Me, circa 2011).

I’m 98% certain I wrote those words, but I have no memory of the context of what I was thinking or feeling. I was definitely more in my head back then and a lot more fearful of what other people thought of me (or more accurately, what I thought other people thought of me). I probably scuttled a few relationships out of projecting my own self-rejection onto other people, but there were a few who were brave enough to look at me and see the diamond beneath all the coal.

I believe when someone is looking at you to see whether your Christ is real or not, what they want isn’t perfection but authenticity. They want real not religious. They need to know that someone like them who has messed up like them can find a new hope and a new direction. People need to know that they matter, that they are enough, that they can love and be loved.

Unfortunately, most look in all the wrong places, looking to broken cisterns for living water. Sometimes those people are the ones who have already found the true fountain, but they go back to busted wells because that’s what they know.

Honesty with yourself and God brings healing. Honesty with others brings restoration. Truth without love is worse than a lie but the truth spoken in love will set you free.