faith

A Living Sermon

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There’s an older gentleman that I see on Mondays when I volunteer at Room in the Inn. He isn’t one of the homeless men who get bussed in. He’s one of the many volunteers who faithfully devote their Monday nights to serving these men.

I noticed one night that he was missing part of his right arm. I didn’t think a whole lot about it. I figured it was probably something to do with diabetes. Then I read this and my world got blown up (in a good way):

The Best Sermon I Never Preached

I don’t need to add anything to that. I teared up a bit as I heard one of the volunteers read this tonight at our last Room in the Inn for the season. The guy who read it got choked up.

The lessons for tonight are 1) don’t take any part of your life for granted, 2) appreciate each moment as the rare and precious gift that it is, and 3) remember that worship is still the best medicine there is for what ails you.

 

An Easter Toast Revisited After Five Years

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

I wrote an entire blog on those twelve words five years ago. Little did I know at the time how much more I would grow to depend on that same love that still doesn’t quit.

Every Easter is a reminder of the unfailing love that went to extreme lengths to capture my affection. I’m again reminded that God’s love for me isn’t warm and fuzzy feelings or even admirable devotion but sacrifice of blood, sweat, tears, pain, and death.

So many of us feel unloveable. So many feel unwanted. So many will go to bed tonight believing that they will ultimately end up alone. So many feel that no one will ever find them romantically desirable.

Easter is the proof that no one ever is unloved or unwanted. God in Jesus showed that when He died for each and every one of us. The cross proves once and for all that He thought that you and I were worth dying for.

Sure, we sing the songs and read the verses, but do we really believe it? Not just a head knowledge, but a deep down to the bone belief that goes beyond intellect and feelings?

The Easter invitation is available beyond Easter Sunday. It goes out to all those who don’t feel good enough or smart enough or pretty enough or worthy enough.

The offer is this: Jesus can do amazing things with the ones who will just say Yes to Him, whatever He asks and wherever He leads. He can take even the worst of sinners and make them the greatest evangelists. He can take your worst moments of your life that you keep hidden in a deep and dark place and make those the first lines of your testimony (again, thanks to Mike Glenn for that one).

Easter is still for all of us ragamuffins who know they don’t have it together and still feel like hot messes most of the time. Easter is still for you and me.

 

Easter Even

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“If Easter says anything to us today, it says this: You can put truth in a grave, but it won’t stay there. You can nail it to a cross, wrap it in winding sheets and shut it up in a tomb, but it will rise!” (Clarence W. Hall)

Sometimes Saturday can seem to take forever.

I don’t mean the Saturday where you get to sleep in a little later and take it a little easier.

I mean that day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. That day between utter despair and renewed hope.

For most of the time most of us live in a perpetual Saturday. If you look at the headlines, you will see almost nothing but tragedy and horror staring back at you from the front pages or the biggest bold print on the news website.

How do you cope with all that devastation without the reality of the resurrection? How do you even begin to process all the evil that goes on without the knowledge that Jesus will one day ultimately set all things right?

The only way I can get through the crucifixion part of the story is that I already know the rest of the story. I know that death and the grave are not the end. They don’t get the final word.

Those who are staring the imminent loss of loved ones in the face can look to Jesus who wept over His friend Lazarus but then proceeded to call Him out of His four-day old grave clothes and decay into life. The same Jesus who looked His own death in the face and stepped out of His own tomb on a bright and sunny Sunday morning.

Without that, those who cling to faith are the most pitiful and pathetic people. With it, they are the ones who have the most reason for joy.

It was Friday and it’s been a long Saturday, but Sunday’s comin’!

 

Thoughts on Light and Dark

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“What we are telling you now is the very message we heard from Him: God is purelight, undimmed by darkness of any kind. If we say we have an intimate connection with the Father but we continue stumbling around in darkness, then we are lying because we do not live according to truth. If we walk step by step in the light, where the Father is, then we are ultimately connected to each other through the sacrifice of Jesus His Son. His blood purifies us from all our sins” (1 John 1:5-7, The Voice).

It struck me tonight how staggering the word picture of light and dark really is. I mean, you really can’t get more polar opposites than light and dark. It is literally a night and day difference.

John speaks of believers who formerly walked in darkness  who now walk in light.

That’s not about being a little nicer and a little more patient. That’s not about being a better and more improved version of yourself.

That’s about as radical a change as you can have. That’s about the difference between being dead and being alive.

It makes me wonder why there is such little difference between the lives of some believers and the lives of the unbelievers around them. If I’m truly walking in God’s light, how can I continue to act out of dark motives and desires?

I’m not suggesting that those who follow Jesus are supposed to be perfect. I am saying that they should look and sound different.

My favorite pastor once said that the problem that an unbelieving world has with Christians is not that they are too different from everybody else; it’s that they are too much the same. They speak a good game, but they don’t live the way they speak.

I can say that because I live that way too often. Too many of us are too good at being incognito Christians.

May God continue to lead us into a place where we strive to walk in the light and reflect the radical difference that comes from what only God can do.

 

Dear Abba

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“Dear Abba,

Ten thousand things are already vying for my attention. Wait, actually make that ten thousand and one. Some of them are shallow — like what shoes I will wear today — but some of them are legitimate: lunch with a friend, a doctor’s appointment, responding to a letter. Still, they are all earthly things. So startle me, I pray. Burst into the compound of my senses and steal me away from the urgent tyrannies already seeking to keep my eyes fixed on things below. You died for me. For me. That is the one thing; nothing else compares” (Brennan Manning).

That’s my prayer, too. That I would be startled away from the tyranny of the urgent in my own life, to have my eyes fixed on the reason for both Lent and Easter.

I think that says it all on this Saturday before we celebrate Palm Sunday.

 

 

Someone In Your Corner

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For Jesus is not some high priest who has no sympathy for our weaknesses and flaws. He has already been tested in every way that we are tested; but He emerged victorious, without failing God” (Hebrews 4:15, The Voice).

I saw something I thought was beautiful yesterday at the Youth Evangelism Conference last night.

After the invitation, I saw a young girl talking with an older woman, probably a youth leader or a youth parent. The young girl was obviously upset about something and crying and the woman was giving her best sympathetic ear.

That may not sound like much to you, but it spoke to my heart.

I’ve been in places before where the one thing I needed was to know that someone was in my corner, that someone believed in me enough to listen to what I had to say, crazy as it may have been.

Sometimes, you may not even want solutions. You just want someone  who will listen without judgment and who can say, “I know exactly what you feel because I’ve been there.”

The good news possible is that I have a high priest who understands. You have a high priest who understands. Jesus has experienced everything you and I go through, yet without failing like you and I sometimes do.

The best news is that Jesus isn’t someone who feels bad for us, which leaves two people feeling bad. He’s actually able to do something about it (credit to Mike Glenn for that one).

He’s actually able to take those stupid mistakes and bad decisions and to turn the outcome into something glorious. He’s more than able to redeem a life previously wasted and without meaning and make it count. Make it shine.

We have a High Priest who specializes in second chances and do-overs. That’s what I’m thankful for again tonight.

PS My time volunteering at the YEC was a blast (as usual) and God willing, I plan to be back next year for what I think will be my sixth year. Or maybe seventh. I’m really not good with the math.

 

Every Little Thing Matters

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“Lord, when I feel that what I’m doing is insignificant and unimportant, help me to remember that everything I do is significant and important in your eyes, because you love me and you put me here, and no one else can do what I am doing in exactly the way I do it” (Brennan Manning, Souvenirs of Solitude: Finding Rest in Abba’s Embrace).

That’s it.

As Mother Teresa once said, there are no great acts, but rather only small acts done with great love.

To put it another way, when done out of the right spirit, out of a genuine and abiding love for Jesus, everything you do and say can become an act of worship. Even cleaning toilets or scrubbing floors. All those menial tasks that don’t have much inherent value can be living prayers if they’re done as an offering to Jesus.

That makes all the difference in drudgery and delight, between surviving and thriving.

Maybe you’re not exactly in the high-profile career you thought you’d be in by now. Maybe you’re not pulling down the big bucks.

Then again maybe your job is to make a difference in the lives of those people in your office. Maybe your best gift is to be quite possibly the only positive light to someone who otherwise only exists in darkness.

Maybe you don’t have to go to seminary and get ordained to have a ministry. Maybe your ministry is you showing up every single day and giving your absolute very best for eight hours.

Maybe if you’re faithful in the little things over time, God will entrust you with bigger things down the road.

Or maybe you’ll get to the end of your life and realize that all those little things done with great love really were the big things after all.

 

Jesus Loves the Little Children

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The Gospel of Mark tells a very interesting story of Jesus and children.

By the way, when John-Mark brings up children, what he has in mind isn’t our highly idealized view of children as cherubic and precious, but the ancient culture’s view of children as those who couldn’t yet contribute, so therefore weren’t worth very much.

In other words, when Jesus welcomed those children, He welcomed the disenfranchised and marginalized. He welcomed those who were outcasts and nobodies to most people’s eyes.

Jesus often sought out those overlooked by everyone else. He sought out those on the fringes of society, those who often got overlooked and ignored.

That’s good news for those who have never felt like we belonged anywhere, to those who always feel on the outside looking in.

Jesus is for you. No matter what you’ve done or where you’ve been or who you’ve been with, Jesus is still for you. He wants to be with you, to be your peace and your strength.

That leads to the next question: who are you speaking for in your life who has no voice? Who are you standing up for who can’t stand up for themselves? Who are you using your gifts and talents to be Jesus to marginalized and ostracized people the way Jesus was to you?

These are some questions that Chris Brooks brought up at Kairos. The main question of the night was this: is your faith childlike or childish? That’s a question that will probably hit close to home for a lot of us (including me).

The childlike faith is one that still has doubts but know where to take them. It doesn’t necessarily claim to have all the answers but knows Who does. It may not always get what it wants but is never deterred in its trust in the God who ultimately always comes through with all His promises to us.

That’s the kind of faith I want.

Judges: A Book Review

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So here I am, reading through the Bible again. I just finished the book of Judges. In my opinion, that has to be the most depressing book in the Bible.

In the first few verses of the book, it tells us that after the generation that claimed the Promised Land died out, the very next generation that came after didn’t know the Lord or what He had done for His people.

That didn’t take long.

There is a familiar pattern in judges, repeated ad nauseum. The people run after the next available god, fall into sin, get into trouble, and call on God. God sends a deliverer who bails them out and there is peace in the land — until another cheap idol shows up.

I read the Bible and I see the people of God by and large acting like anything but the people of God. It can be very frustrating.

Then I remember that I am one of those people of God. I find myself falling into familiar patterns of sin over and over, despite the guilt that remains from the last time. I find myself renewing the old promise of “never again,” which lasts until the next opportunity presents itself.

So I can relate.

I’m not excusing my (or anyone else’s sin). I’m just saying that doesn’t have to be the end of the story. It doesn’t have to be the familiar refrain.

I’m thankful for a grace that goes deeper and longer than any sin. I’m also thankful for a God who refuses to let me wallow in my self-destructive sin, but will provide me a way out. He won’t rest or quit with me until I am 100% sin-free.

I know that my story is your story. It’s the story of every child of God. But I also know that story doesn’t end with sin. It ends with grace.

 

 

Kairos 2.0

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I think I’ll like the new Kairos. I liked the old one with Mike Glenn and I’m 99.9% certain that I’ll like the new version with Chris Brooks.

There’s still some fantastic worship music from a band that lots of people would pay good money to see if they decided to go on tour. There’s some spot-on expository teaching that always hits home and is both comforting and convicting.

Tonight was no exception.

The text was Mark 7 where Jesus healed the man born deaf and dumb. Chris made the point that a lot of us trouble speaking the Gospel because we’ve gotten to where we can’t really hear Jesus speaking to us.

We have a spiritual speech impediment because we’re deaf to what God has to say to us. What people hear from us about Jesus says more about us and where we are than it does about who Jesus actually is.

My prayer for both you and me is that Jesus can again open our ears to hear Him speaking. I suspect that if we ever get to the place where we truly hear God speaking to us, our message might be very different than the morality sin management message that gets passed around a lot these days.

What turns people off isn’t necessarily the message, but the disconnect they see between what we speak and how we live. When our eyes and ears finally are open to what Jesus wants to say to us, then our lifestyle will line up with our lips and we will not only talk the Gospel but walk it as well.