adrian-rogers

God’s Heartbeat

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This is one example of why Dr. Adrian Rogers of Bellevue Baptist Church was one of the best communicators of God’s Word that I have ever heard. He was indeed a gifted pastor and preacher. I’m sharing one of the thousands of sermon excerpts that are the reason he is so well loved and remembered to this day, over 20 years after he passed to glory:

“Once I was reading the Houston Chronicle and came across a picture of a woman who had her ear on the chest of a man. And there was a caption under the photo that explained the man had received a heart transplant, and the heart that was beating in his chest was the heart of this woman’s son. She was listening by putting her ear to his chest to hear her son’s heart beating. When I read that, I thought, ‘Would to God that He could put His ear on my chest and hear the heartbeat of His Son.’

If God Almighty puts His ear to your chest, and Jesus is in there, you’re going to have a heartbeat for missions and evangelism. Jesus said, ‘As the Father has sent Me, I also send you’ (John 20:21). And why was He sent? Luke 19:10: ‘for the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.’

Does your heart beat with God’s heartbeat? Does mine? That’s not something that happens overnight. It takes a lifetime of prayer and obedience, of sacrificial love and surrender. It’s not something you can declare over yourself or magically wave a wand and automatically make it happen. It takes years of laying down your life and taking up your cross and following Jesus daily. Not sporadically or periodically or even regularly, but every single day.

Lord, make us Your disciples whose hearts truly beat with Your Son’s heartbeat. May people observe us in all our actions and hear us in our words and see not us but You in us. May they see Your Church at work and see Jesus with skin on in this world. Amen.

God Uses Broken Things

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“The prophet Jeremiah said: ‘Break up your fallow ground, and do not sow among thorns’ (Jeremiah 4:3). You’ll never have the crop you ought to until you put the plow in, until the old clods are broken. Even the Lord Jesus Christ took the bread at the last supper and said: ‘This is My body which is broken for you.’ People throw broken things away. God uses broken things for His glory” (Adrian Rogers).

I’m thankful God uses broken things instead of throwing them away. God can turn broken circumstances for good for His glory. Best of all, God can use broken people to accomplish His purposes. In fact, He gravitates toward those kinds of people instead of those who have their act together (or at least act like they do).

If you pay attention to the characters in the Bible, you begin to realize that just about every one of them were hot messes. Every single one screwed up at least once or had a character flaw. That’s why the hero to look for in any given bible story isn’t David or Moses or Noah. It’s always God.

Face it. We’re all broken to one degree or another. None of us come close to being perfect. In fact, most of us are doing good to remember our own names some days. But the beautiful part is that God not only works in us in our weaknesses, but He intentionally works THROUGH our weaknesses. They’re the places where God’s strength is made perfect. Just ask Paul.

Remember when the world looks for the best looking or the most talented or the most ambitious, God is looking for the most available. He’s looking for the ones who have messed up multiple times but still show up with expectation, saying, “Here I am, God. Use me today.”

Those are the ones God chooses. Those are the ones God uses.

The Rock of Ages

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I learned something else new today. Or at least I made a connection that I hadn’t previously.

It’s from a daily email I get with snippets of writings from the late Dr. Adrian Rogers, former pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, Tennessee.

He starts off by describing the Israelites wandering in the desert, complaining as usual. This time it was a lack of water, which is a very real threat when you’re in the desert because the human body can only go without water for a very short amount of time and water sources in your typical desert are scarce.

But God leads them to Rephidim and commands Moses to strike a large rock with his staff. Lo and behold, water comes forth from the rock, enough to quench the thirst of every last one of the Israelites. 1 Cointhians 10:4 say that they “all drank from the same spiritual drink. For they drank of that spiritual Rock, and that Rock was Christ.”

Fast forward to Jesus on the cross, the Rock of ages cleft for me (as the old hymn goes). What happened? After He died, the soldier stuck a spear into His side and what came out? Blood and water. Isaiah 53 says that He was stricken and smitten by God because of our sins, and what flowed out was water that gives life.

He had said earlier to the woman at the well that He was the Living Water, and whoever drank from Him would never thirst again. Once again, the Old Testament is pointing to Jesus for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear. We only have to know where to look and what to look for.

I’m thankful every day that the Rock of Ages was crushed and smitten for us. I’m thankful that He laid down His life for His people so that we could live. I hope I never get tired of hearing the Easter story as much as the Christmas story, because they both point to a Savior who came for me to rescue me from myself and my sin. When we couldn’t get to God, He came to us.

Hallelujah! What a Savior!