Several months ago, I purchased a ticket to see Eric Clapton at the Bridgestone Arena for September 21. Tonight was that night. And yes, it was fantastic.
I really wanted to see Jimmie Vaughan of the Fabulous Thunderbirds and brother of the late great Stevie Ray Vaughan. I didn’t know what to expect from a 76 year old version of the guitar legend, but I knew that I probably wouldn’t get many more chances to see him live in concert.
Whatever expectations I had were utterly surpassed and obliterated. He was in vintage form and his backing band was superb. I even recognized Paul Carrack as the organist/vocalist who sang lead on the very last song.
I didn’t even care that I sat in the uber-nosebleed section, two rows from the very back. It’s a good thing that I’m not overly acrophobic, because those were some steep stairs up that third level. But I was in the building. That was all that mattered.
It will be worth it even tomorrow when I will most likely be a member of the walking dead, fueled by lots of coffee and good memories.
The problem I’m seeing is that American Christianity for the most part is too busy trying to be relevant and not faithful to the teachings and beliefs of the very apostles that sat at the feet of Jesus. Too many churches have conformed to this world so that their teaching is no longer distinguishable from the teaching of the world. They have traded in the gospel of hope for a message of tolerance, giving up the very word of salvation that can actually change people’s lives and give them the purpose and meaning that we all so desperately need.
If we’re not careful, we will soon become irrelevant and obsolete. The world won’t hate us because we’re too different, but because we’re not different enough — or in some cases, there will be no difference at all.
The message that sets us apart is that old tried and true John 3:16 that says that God so loved this fallen and broken world that He gave His one and only Son that whoever recognizes his or her own sinfulness — and we’ve all sinned — and believes in God’s Son as the remedy for sin, will not be eternally lost but will have eternal and abundant life now and in the life to come.
But what we’ve done is recreated the Son of God in our own image — either as a passive anything goes leftist who will tolerate any abhorrent behavior of ours or as a judgy moralist right-winger who is all about pointing out every single mistake we’ve ever made to punish us for them. We’ve in essence tamed the Lion of Judah to fit within our political and ideological framework, rather than submitting our politics and ideologies to His reign and rule.
As Dorothy Sayers said, “The people who hanged Christ never, to do them justice, accused him of being a bore – on the contrary, they thought him too dynamic to be safe. It has been left for later generations to muffle up that shattering personality and surround him with an atmosphere of tedium. We have very efficiently pared the claws of the Lion of Judah, certified him ‘meek and mile,’ and recommended him as a fitting household pet for pale curates and pious old ladies.”
The Jesus who came hung out with prostitutes, drunkards, and outcasts. He forgave the woman caught in the act of adultery. Yes, He met people where they were, as they were, but He didn’t leave them there. Those prostitutes, drunkards, and outcasts didn’t stay prostitutes, drunkards, and outcasts any longer. He also told that woman caught in adultery to go and sin no more, not living by the old way she knew but by a new way that He had shown her and had empowered her through His presence to live out.
That’s the gospel — not conforming to the world but being transformed by the renewing of our minds through the hope of a living and risen Christ.
One of my favorite discoveries is when I get up to go potty, look at the clock on my phone, and realize that I still have three hours left of sleep. The worst is when I look at my phone and it’s 4:59 am with my alarm set to go off at 5 am. That makes me mad. Do I get out of bed early and get a head start on the day? Heck no. I stay in bed and try to cherish that last minute of sleep, annoyed as I am.
Another good feeling is when I take a nap in the afternoon on a Saturday or a Sunday and lie down for what seems like a minute, but then I realize 45 minutes have gone by. When I was younger, I’d have to set an alarm to wake myself up from a nap, or I would spend the rest of the day confused about who I was and what year it was. Now, I can pretty much guarantee that I can wake up in an hour or less.
I know that the title is Prayer of an Unknown Solder, but you don’t have to have served in the military in any capacity to relate to this prayer. The gist is that God often answers our prayers by giving us what we need instead of what we want. He gives us what we would have asked for in the first place if we had known all that He knows about us and our circumstances. His gifts and answers to prayer often take into account the bigger picture that we simply do not see most of the time.
“O my Father, give me eyes to see, a heart to respond, and hands and feet to serve you wherever you encounter me! Make me a billboard of your grace, a living advertisement for the riches of your compassion. I long to hear you say to me one day, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.’ And I pray that today I would be that faithful servant who does well at doing good. In Jesus’ name I pray, amen” (Max Lucado).
As I see it, it doesn’t matter which side of the mask or vaccine debate you fall on. It doesn’t matter if you have all the facts and figures and arguments on your side. If you don’t have love, if you’re not coming from a heart of loving compassion mirroring the heart of God, it’s worth nothing. Your words mean nothing.
Your shaming and name-calling won’t bring back a single person who has died during the pandemic. All your rage and anger won’t change the number of people who are testing positive or who are in the ICU on ventilators. Most likely, all your yelling won’t change anybody’s mind. So choose to be loving and compassionate in your words. Choose to be as merciful to others, regardless of their viewpoints, as Jesus was to you when you were yet sinners and strangers to God.
Remember as always that Christ forgave His enemies, even as they were in the very act of murdering Him. Jesus told us that God would forgive us in the same way that we forgive others.
I don’t know that I really have anything to add to this. It’s just about perfect. I’m thankful that I don’t have to live in shame anymore. Sometimes, I still do, but it’s a choice and not a mandate. Jesus has set me free.
I don’t know where this is, or if this is even a real place, but I want it. I want my bedroom one day to look like this. There’s not really a spiritual point to this post. I’m just letting you know about one of my more shallow life goals. That’s all.
My life group is going through the book of Ruth currently. I’ve read the book a few times and have heard a number of sermons about it, but I never really thought about how the main character as being a fish out of water.
Think about it. She married one of Naomi’s sons and into a Jewish family. But after Naomi’s husband and both sons died, you would expect Ruth to go back to the old familiar life she knew. But she gave up everything she had ever known for a mother-in-law and a God she knew very little about. She gave up her homeland to go to a land where she was an outcast and a foreigner. Worse, she was a Moabite, one of Israel’s enemies.
She clearly didn’t understand everything about God, but she followed what she knew. She was faithfully obedient to what revelation of God she had. She knew to take care of Naomi and earn her own keep. And God blessed her for it. God brought her into the field of Boaz, who just so happened to be one of her closest relations through Naomi. No one else would have been as protective and kind to her as Boaz was. God saw to that.
Sometimes, we find ourselves in unfamiliar territory. Everything we’ve ever known gets ripped away and what’s left is unknown and a bit scary. The lesson of Ruth is that we don’t have to have a theology degree or a comprehensive knowledge of the Bible to trust and follow God in the midst of uncertainty. We don’t even need to have good grammar or people skills. All we need is the faith of a child.
The more Ruth trusted in the revelation of God she had, the more she saw of God. The more she followed and obeyed what she knew, the more God revealed His plan to her. The same goes for us. If we are faithful where we are, God will move us through the wilderness of uncertainty into a land of plenty. Better, He will be with us the whole way there.
“And if anyone longs to be wise, ask God for wisdom and he will give it! He won’t see your lack of wisdom as an opportunity to scold you over your failures but he will overwhelm your failures with his generous grace” (James 1:5, The Passion Translation).
I don’t know about you, but what I don’t need is more information. It sometimes seems like we’re overwhelmed with facts and figures and snatches of information from a plethora of sources. I don’t always trust these sources, but I don’t doubt that the information is out there. But it also seems like just having information and facts isn’t enough.
We need to know what to do with this information. We need to know how to apply all this available knowledge to our everyday lives. That applied knowledge is called wisdom. I love the quote that says that knowledge is knowing that tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it into a fruit salad.
Too many believers rely on too many sources other than God for wisdom. We turn to CNN or Fox News. We rely on social media and our little echo chambers of people we’ve chosen who will never disagree with us on anything and only say our thoughts back to us in different words. We rely too much on worldly wisdom, which is limited at best and downright deceiving at times. A pastor that I admire once said, “Don’t let the world teach you theology.”
I believe the best source for wisdom is the maker of wisdom and everything else, God. And the best place to hear God speaking wisdom is primarily through His Holy Word, but also through community with fellow believers and prayer.
Maybe instead of trying to convert other people to our way of thinking about the issues and crises of the day, we should seek God’s way of thinking. Instead of trying to argue people into seeing things our way, maybe we should pray that God would enlighten both them and us to see not our truth or their truth but God’s truth, the ultimate reality. Maybe we need to stay on our knees and not give up wrestling with God in prayer until we get the wisdom that God admonishes us to seek from Him. God loves to honor His promises, but not if we’re not seeking Him consistently and persistently.
I’ll admit there’s a whole lot I don’t know. I confess that in the last 18 or so months, my brain has hurt from trying to figure out all the information coming at me from all sides. This whole pandemic has royally messed me up, but it has taught me plenty.
One thing I’ve learned is that it takes a lot of maturity to say things like “I really don’t know the answer to that” or “maybe there’s still more that I need to learn.” It takes a certain amount of humility to realize that I don’t have all the answers — or anywhere close to all the answers — and that maybe that person over there has something to teach me. Yes, even that person that gets on my nerves.
Humility is posture of a teachable spirit grounded in the true knowledge of who I am in the grand scheme of things and in God’s eyes. I admit that at some point, all the talk about viruses and vaccines and science all started to run together in my mind and it all became a blur. I don’t know what or who to trust when it comes to the pandemic. I feel like you can believe that the pandemic is real, that vaccines (and masks to a degree) work, and also that COVID is being used for political purposes and public control. But I confess that I could be wrong.
Maybe if we all just stopped always trying to win arguments and started trying to reach understanding. Maybe if we stopped trying to talk over each other and started actually listening. Maybe if we finally grasped that arguing with people over social media isn’t going to change anybody’s mind about anything, we’d be better off. Maybe if you and I stopped trying to control everyone else’s behavior and concentrated on working on our own sins and mistakes, we could actually grow and become better people.
The Bible says that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. To fear the Lord is to see God and yourself properly, and to see where you fit in to the universe. It’s to think way less about yourself and way more about others and especially way more about God.
