Category Archives: Religion

March 20, 2015 · 7:13 pm

A Half Hour Before Dinner

It was a pleasant afternoon in Naples, Florida.

The gentle breeze and mild temperature reminded me of why people always assume you’re on vacation if you’re here in late February.

Actually I had just finished attending Haggai Institute’s annual meeting in nearby Bonita Springs. I had risen at 4:00 AM this Monday to make three trips to the local airport with some of our guests and staff.

Now that was completed and Frank, my former colleague at Prison Fellowship, had picked me up and we headed for Naples. I would attend a one-day ministry conference on the persecution of Christians around the world scheduled the next day.

But first, it was visiting with some of my old friends at PF over dinner that evening.

I was a little tired but felt great.

We would meet in the hotel lobby at 5:30.

In my room, I had just lifted my suitcase onto the bed.

The sharp pain shot through my stomach. I assumed it was heartburn and took some medicine. While it eased, in a few minutes it returned. It was spreading to my chest and left shoulder.

I took more medicine but this was relentless and intensifying.

It might not be heartburn.

I made it the lobby on time but I had a growing sense that there would be no dinner – not for me.

“Jack, are you OK? You don’t look so well.” I told Dick that I was having very bad pain in my stomach. He found an Urgent Care on his phone and Tommie volunteered to drive me there.

“Thank you, Lord, for these friends.”

After an EKG cleared me of a heart attack, I found myself strapped to an ambulance gurney headed for the emergency room.

This wasn’t on my itinerary for the evening. It was on God’s.

Every short breath was followed by a violent stab just beneath my sternum. I hoped I’d pass out.

The emergency room nurse was unable to attach an EKG because I was drenched in sweat.

Finally I got something for the pain but not until a CAT scan revealed either a hole in my small intestine or a perforated ulcer. The doctor told me he hoped it was the ulcer. Both were potentially life -threatening and emergency surgery was required.

Dick appeared from behind the curtain.

“Do you want me to call Beth?”

I had no right to be blessed with a friend like this.

“Don’t alarm her,” I said. And Dick, always a bundle of calm reassurance, handled it perfectly. Then he prayed with me just before they took me in.

Praise God for a perforated ulcer!

I was blessed to be alive.

Over the next several days my friends Dick, Frank and Dave formed a trinity of care and support while I lay in a hospital room far from home.

Dick picked Beth up at the airport.

Frank drove her to and from the hospital each day. He took her to get dinner. When I was released the next Sunday, Frank drove us to Tampa to Dave’s home, where we stayed three more days until I was able to fly back to Dallas.

“Count where all man’s glory most begins and ends,” wrote Yeats, “and let my glory be that I had such friends.”

In the prayers and well wishes of so many, I realized again that the greatest family on earth is the family of God.

The “one-anothers” of the New Testament are eagerly affirmed by all good Christians. They are only truly tested, however, in the unplanned crisis. In the race of life, only a true friend will stop to help a fallen runner.

Friendship is defined not by convivial convenience but by unforeseen interruption and self-denying sacrifice.

My best friend in this life came immediately to be by my side. She didn’t hesitate or complain – not once. Instead, she patiently and tenderly cared for me, encouraged me and watched over me.

Florence Nightingale had nothing on Beth.

Even as I write this, she daily injects me with antibiotics – a nurse showed her how. Yes, it’s a good thing I trust her.

I look back now and marvel in praise and thanksgiving to God. How quickly our well-ordered lives can, in a moment, be suddenly disordered. Our supposed self-sufficiency can be rendered impotent and with one sharp pain our strength can be turned to utter weakness. And then we are totally dependent on the kindness of others and ultimately on the unchanging providence of a sovereign God.

God spared my life. Underneath were his everlasting arms (Deuteronomy 33:27).

C.S. Lewis was right: Pain is the megaphone through which God often shouts to get our attention.

He got mine and I’m grateful.

I must learn to depend more on him, less on myself. I am so very weak and he is so incredibly strong.

And the thread by which we each hang is so amazingly slender.

We are fearfully and wonderfully made. I must take better care of this body God gave me.

Like Paul, we have the opportunity, even through intense pain, to glory in our infirmities and to experience in them the power of an almighty and loving God, the compassion of his people and the gift of his healing.

You never know when that will happen.

Sometimes it will be just a half hour before dinner.

May God bles you and your family.

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February 27, 2015 · 2:21 am

It Is Written

It was brutally hot during the day.

It was bitterly cold at night.

It was a barren land.

He was alone in a vast wilderness – a desert.

He must have felt it – to the very depths of his pure but still physical being.

He had just been blessed, baptized by his cousin John and commended by his well-pleased Father.

But from this celestial celebration he went into the wilderness.

This was his wilderness, his experience; his testing.

Luke says that Jesus was “full of the Holy Ghost” (Luke 4:1, KJV).

In this he was hardly alone. The Spirit was with him.

In fact, it was the Holy Spirit who had led Jesus to this desert.

Luke describes this experience. So does Matthew. Mark says little but notes that this happened “immediately” after Jesus’ Baptism and that our Lord was “with the wild beasts”, intimating a forbidding place.

It was here – in this arid, rocky wasteland – that Jesus spent 40 long days and, Luke tells us, “in those days he did eat nothing” (Luke 4:2, KJV).

When those days had passed, Jesus was terribly hungry.

We who have fasted a day or so – or even a week – might have some idea of what Jesus felt. But we were never in a desert. Not likely alone. And not for 40 days.

And then, in the weakness and longing of his hunger, the test came.

This is the second great titanic clash of spiritual powers recorded in the scriptures. There have been many others, of course: tests, deprivations, temptations and trials.

The Bible is a book of spiritual conflict from beginning to end.

But they all pale in comparison to this one – and to the much earlier one.

The first temptation took place, not in a wilderness but in a garden. It came not to a man alone but to a man and his wife. The first temptation came in a place of sinless perfection and beauty. The second great temptation came in a world filled with sin and in a place of unadorned barrenness.

The devil came to the first Adam – through his wife Eve.

Satan used pride – as C.S. Lewis called it, “the greatest sin.”

And the devil made a frontal assault upon the authority – the very veracity – of God’s Word.

“Hath God said?” he rhetorically asked Eve.

The devil knew what God had said.

But here he must plant a seed of doubt in the woman’s mind and in her heart (and the man’s too, we’ll not let Adam off so easily; he was there when God spoke his command). The first step, let the biblical record show, was to call into question God’s Word.

The disintegration – and the descent – begins there.

It always does.

Perhaps God didn’t mean it. Perhaps we just don’t understand it. Perhaps God’s being unfair and unreasonable in this matter. After all, what’s wrong with a little supposedly forbidden fruit? It looks so good. It must be OK. It would have to be OK. Otherwise, why would we want it so badly?

Perhaps God didn’t say it at all.

Adam and Eve had every reason to resist but they surrendered.

Our second Adam had every reason to give in but he resisted.

Again, it was pride that Satan used. Again, it was a direct assault upon the Word of God. And again it was craftily laced with questioning and doubt.

But this time, the quotations were from the written record. Jesus and Satan both knew the scriptures.

As in the garden, the devil struck again at hunger, appetite and physical desire. He knew how long Jesus had gone without food.

“If you are the Son of God,” he whispered, “tell this stone to become bread” (Luke 4:3, NASB).

Jesus came back at him – with the Word of God. He wielded the Sword of the Spirit in the power of the Spirit which filled him even now in this lonely and forsaken place.

“It is written, that man shall not live by bread alone,” Jesus replied, “but by every word of God” (Luke 4:4, KJV, quoted from Deuteronomy 8:3).

The Word is paramount. It is the true bread.

Twice more before this ordeal ended, Satan thrust at the Savior with pride, ambition and out of context texts. Each time, Jesus parried with the Word of God, the mighty sword of truth.

With this sword, Jesus Christ defeated Satan in the wilderness.

No wonder John calls Jesus the Word become flesh.

And how sad when Rob Bell, once an evangelical mega-church pastor and hero to thousands of young Christians, tells Oprah Winfrey that homosexual marriage must prevail because how can “letters written 2,000 years ago” possibly compete with the longings and desires of the human heart.

Without a compass we become lost.

Without an anchor we drift.

Without a plumb line, we sway.

Without confidence in the unchanging and ever-relevant authority and power of the Bible as God’s Holy Word, individual Christians have nothing to say to a hurting world. And the church has nothing to say worth listening to.

When God speaks all discussions must cease. When God is silent, all discussions are irrelevant.

May we never compromise and never apologize for declaring, with Jesus, “It is written.”

May God bless you and your family.

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February 20, 2015 · 1:50 am

“People of the Cross”

It could have been the New England coast.

Beautiful, tranquil, quiet.

Some rocks.

The waves calmly lap the shore under cloudy skies.

The peaceful scene makes the graphic and gruesomely violent video all the more shockingly surreal.

Soldiers dressed in black march a line of men, clad in orange jumpsuits, along the shoreline.

They stop. The men are forced to their knees. Then a masked and hooded man from behind brandishes a knife and begins his diatribe into the camera. Only his dark steely eyes are visible.

When he is finished speaking, the men on their knees are pushed to the ground and summarily beheaded with knives.

All 21 of them.

ISIS has struck again. The professional video. The ceremonial butchery. The cold and stomach-churning orchestration designed to strike fear into the viewers.

These are sickeningly familiar to the world.

This time was different.

The 21 executed men were Egyptian Christians.

The place was different too: not in the desert but on a beach in Libya.

The video had an introductory caption:

“A Message signed with blood to the Nation of the Cross”

As the victims were lined up on their knees, the words above them read:

“The people of the cross, the followers of the hostile Egyptian church.”

The men were Coptic Christians – members of the oldest Christian sect in Egypt. Like you and me, “people of the cross.”

As in everything else they viciously do, the militants invoked the name of Allah. They vowed to storm Rome and promised to turn the sea behind them red with the blood of “the crusaders.”

Christians.

In its statement denouncing the beheadings, the White House carefully avoided calling the victims Christians. Instead, they were described as “Egyptian citizens.” This inexplicable omission was less than a fortnight following President Obama’s controversial assertion that holy crusaders had done much evil in the name of Christianity a thousand years ago.

It didn’t change the fact that these martyrs were slaughtered like sheep because of their faith in Jesus Christ.

They were “people of the cross.”

Even CNN called them Christians.

It fell to Pope Francis to eloquently express the moral outrage and solidarity of believers everywhere.

“They were executed for nothing more than the fact that they were Christian,” the Pope said. “The blood of our Christian sisters and brothers is testimony that cries out.”

Declared Pope Francis:

“Be they Catholics, Orthodox, Copts, or Lutherans, it does not matter. They are Christians, their blood is the same; their blood confesses Christ.”

Speaking of “an ecumenism of blood,” Francis said “the martyrs belong to all Christians.”

Indeed it seems in a situation like this that doctrinal and denominational differences – even substantive differences of theology – pale in comparison to standing in global solidarity with “the people of the cross.”

In a time of evil persecution, dare we not care?

How many of us will stand? How many of us – like these 21 – would be willing to die for our faith?

As I saw the water turned to red with the blood of our brothers that day, I thought of the water and blood that poured from our Savior’s side on the cross as he died for us.

This is the true message signed with blood – the message from God signed with the blood of his Son.

It is a message not of hate, but of love; a message not of vengeance, but of forgiveness; a message not of violence, but of peace.

It is the message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and it has the power – the sole power – to defeat hatred and transform lives. Our brave colleagues in the Middle East have told Haggai Institute to continue to train leaders for evangelism so that they may return and make a difference in their own nations, troubled and wracked as those countries are by the chaos and hate fomented by the evil one.

They too are people of the cross. They know its power. They will die for Christ if it comes to that.

What can you do?

Pray.

Then ask your pastor to pray – publicly before the whole church – for our brothers and sisters in the Middle East. Ask him to speak out in his preaching. It’s time now for the leaders of our local churches to rise above the immediate concerns that too easily dominate our conversations.

It’s time for them to speak out.

We need preaching from America’s pulpits that is both biblical and contemporary. Preaching fit for the challenges of these difficult days.

“The storm is coming,” says Rev. Franklin Graham. We must be fortified now to take our stand.

From his prison cell, Paul told the Philippians, “For unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake”(Philippians 1:29, KJV).

To be, to the end, “people of the cross.”

Those Egyptian Christians left the Libyan seashore that day to be welcomed into heaven by the multitudes of saints, prophets and apostles who had also given their lives for the cause of Christ.

“Faith of our fathers, holy faith! We will be true to thee till death.”

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February 13, 2015 · 2:40 am

Nothing at All

You might not recognize the name Sir Thomas Jones Woodward.

He was the Welch crooner.

A big hit in the 1960s, he’s better known as Tom Jones, one of the most popular vocalists of that rock and roll era. If you’re a Baby Boomer and you didn’t live under a rock, you remember that full-throated baritone.

If you’re younger than that, he’s the guy who lives across the street and works at the local Wendy’s.

Jones had 36 Top 40 songs in the United Kingdom and 19 in the United States.

Among them were It’s Not Unusual, Delilah, She’s a Lady and the country hit, Green ,Green Grass of Home.

One of Jones’ songs, Without Love, was particularly soulful, even for him.

It’s a song about the futility and emptiness of a life Without Love.

After saying that “To live for today and to love for tomorrow is the wisdom of a fool,” Jones began to sing his sad song:

“I awakened this morning, I was filled with despair All my dreams turned to ashes and gone, oh yeah As I looked at my life it was barren and bare Without love I’ve had nothing at all.”

 Then the rousing chorus is where the Baby Boomer Karaoke singers join in:

“Without love I’ve had nothing Without love I’ve had nothing at all I have conquered the world All but one thing did I have Without love I’ve had nothing at all.”

 OK, hold on, hold on!

Did you see the little bearded guy in a robe, sandals and thick-lensed glasses singing in the back?

Yeah, that guy!

He’s not Tom. His name is Paul.

Paul the Apostle.

He loves this song. In fact, Paul argues that he was the inspiration behind Jones’ lyrics.

In that well-known and beloved classic found in the 13th chapter of his first letter to the church at Corinth, written two thousand years ago, the great apostle begins with the very affirmation – the theme – of the old rock song:

“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal” (verse 1, NKJV).

Words, no matter how smooth, are nothing but meaningless noise without love. Eloquence is no match for authenticity.

“And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing” (verse 2, NKJV, emphasis added).

Keen spiritual insights, vast biblical knowledge and mountain-moving faith may astound the crowds and make you a celebrity in Christendom but devoid of love you are nothing. A Doctor of Ministry degree may impress a church but without love you’ll be a lousy pastor.

“And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing” (verse 3, NKJV, emphasis added).

You may give away money like Carnegie, serve like Mother Teresa and sacrifice like Joan of Arc but if you do not have love it all goes up in smoke.

You would have gained nothing – nothing at all.

Paul begins this beautiful tribute to love by first of all declaring the primacy, centrality and essential quality of this fruit of the Holy Spirit.

By love our character is defined and refined and made sublime.

You may conquer the world and lack just one thing. But what’s missing can turn your dreams to ashes and render your life barren and bare.

Because, writes Paul, you are nothing, nothing at all.

From Beauty and the Beast and The Hunchback of Notre Dame to It’s a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Carol, love – or the absence of it – has been transformative to the human soul.

God’s story about us is a love story, culminating in its ultimate expression on the cross.

The love of which Paul writes “is patient and kind … is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out” (verse 4-6, NLT).

Here is where Paul adds practicality to supremacy. Love in its work clothes.

I take that checklist and study it and realize again how often I fall short of the great love of God. But it also gives me much to work toward and reminds me that without love I have nothing – and I am nothing.

Nothing at all.

Forrest Gump knew what love was. Tragically, our culture does not.

This Valentine’s Day weekend, Fifty Shades of Grey will open to packed theaters. Thousands will experience a voyeuristic pornographic film celebration of sadomasochism. It is a cold and violent and brutal mockery of everything that is good, pure and noble about love.

And a clear symbol of how far America has slouched toward the moral abyss.

For those of us who choose not to go, this weekend is an opportunity to renew our genuine love – for one another and for God.

And to remember that without love we have nothing – nothing at all.

May God bless you and your family.

 

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February 6, 2015 · 1:33 am

Tick…Tick…Tick

Last month, they set it ahead by a full two minutes.

It now stands at three minutes to midnight.

It hasn’t been this close since 1984, during the arms race.

The only time it’s been closer to midnight was in 1953, when the U.S. and the Soviet Union tested thermonuclear devices within nine months of each other. Then it was set at two minutes to the fatal hour.

It’s the Doomsday Clock.

First set in 1947 during the advent of the Nuclear Age at seven minutes before midnight, the symbolic clock is supposed to remind us of the precarious position of the world. It represents a “countdown” to global disaster, usually associated with the threat of nuclear weapons. Maintained by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the Doomsday Clock has been a sort of modern Damocles Sword hanging over the whole human race.

Sometimes the hand is set ahead – sometimes back. And so it goes – depending on a certain scientific view of world events.

As with the original ancient sword, the Doomsday Clock cautions those with great power of the accompanying responsibility.

From another point of view, one might conclude that the Clock is like the boy who cried wolf.

After all, it’s been warning us of impending worldwide doom for almost 70 years.

Nothing’s happened yet.

We’re all still here and life continues pretty much as it always has. Oh sure, change is a constant, but we adjust and move on. Let the hand of the Clock be moved as the scientists will.

It doesn’t affect us.

The scientists tell us they’ve moved the Doomsday Clock to 11:57 because of nuclear proliferation – more nations have nuclear weapons than ever before in the history of the world – and because of climate change. Both problems are getting worse, they say, and little, if anything, is being done about it.

Despite politics and theories, it would seem that circumstantial evidence would justify the scientific concern.

The weather of the world is wilder.

Extreme swings break old records.

Forty inches of snow in Boston recently over seven days made it the snowiest week in the area since records began in 1891. Reports show the oceans rising. Yes, climate change is real. And it’s becoming increasingly undeniable, even for naysayers.

Jesus foretold of climate change:

“And there will be strange signs in the sun, moon, and stars. And here on earth the nations will be in turmoil, perplexed by the roaring seas and strange tides” (Luke 21:25, NLT).

So this is not simply scientific fact. It’s prophetic fulfillment.

Ironically, the end of the Cold War has made the world, in many ways, a more unstable and dangerous place.

No one should be more concerned about the earth and the wise stewardship and conservation of its resources than Christians. No one should be any more dedicated to working and praying for peace in the world than those who follow the Prince of Peace. A Jordanian pilot’s barbaric death reminds us of the depravity of man and the long and difficult road to shalom.

Yet, for the follower of Jesus Christ there is no reason to give way to doom over the future. We must avoid the cavalier attitude of those who dismiss the coming cataclysm. “What happened to the promise that Jesus is coming again?” they mock. “From before the times of our ancestors, everything has remained the same” (II Peter 3:4, NLT).

But it hasn’t and it won’t.

One day, the clock will strike midnight.

Afraid? Not at all!

Jesus told us that this would be “the beginning of sorrows” (Matthew 24:8, KJV – “the first of the birth pains, with more to come”, NLT).

Creation is going into labor. The world is dilated. Perhaps even nine centimeters – or more.

Paul writes in Romans that “all of creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time” (Romans 8: 22, NLT).

That’s a long labor!

Since the infection of Eden, the world has labored under the curse of sin. We call it “the human condition.”

But pain always precedes the abundant joy of birth and new life.

“You will grieve,” Jesus told his disciples, “but your grief will suddenly turn to wonderful joy” (John 16:21, NLT). He likened it to a woman in labor. “When her child is born, her anguish gives way to joy because she has brought a new baby into the world.” (verse 21, NLT).

So it is with us who wait for his return.

Some day and in some way, this old world and all its anguish and suffering, will come to an end.

No Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists can ultimately prevent that. Time will end. The clock will strike.

But then will come new birth and new life.

A new heaven and a new earth.

You and I will enter that glorious land – the city with eternal foundations, the city “whose builder and maker is God” (Hebrews11:10, KJV).

No more sorrow, no more pain, no more death and no more tears.

“I will see you again,” Jesus promises, “and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you” (John 16:22, KJV).

In the meanwhile, every tick of the clock just leads us closer home.

May God bless you and your family.

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January 30, 2015 · 8:02 pm

Full

I couldn’t believe it!

I filled my wife’s Prius the other night for $14.95.

Gas prices are at a new low.

Even for a Prius!

Consumers rejoice. Producers moan.

My friends in Texas tell me it’s a market glut – the old law of supply and demand. An abundance of oil brings the price down. Soon America will be a leading petroleum producer. We will wean ourselves from dependence on the Middle East.

Given the instability there, most folks think this new energy independence is a good thing.

Still, the American oil and gas industry is a huge employer and there are plenty of concerns about the impact this new relief at the pump will have on the economy.

The low price won’t last. Maybe it can’t. Perhaps it shouldn’t.

Regardless of the economics, the gas in that car will be consumed. It will be gone. We’ll need a refill.

There’s hardly a limitless supply of anything.

You’re probably out of something right now. Or you’re in low supply.

We live in a world of limits.

Our time, our abilities and our energies are all limited.

The globe warms as its resources are consumed.

You and I face restrictions and limits every day. There are limits on size or amount. Only one bag is free at the airport and you pay for the second one, depending on how much it weighs.

Size limits, age limits, weight limits, number limits and speed limits.

We live with limits and nothing lasts.

Even our time on earth is limited.

Yes, you and I are bounded on all sides by life on this planet. We can only run so fast and jump so high. We have invented and we have soared yet even then, we have explored only an infinitesimal fraction of our own universe.

We are circumscribed creatures, you and me.

But here’s some great news: there’s one thing you and I need more than anything else in our lives – and it is unlimited.

It’s the love of God.

Our patience, our forgiveness, our understanding, even our own love – are all limited. We wish they weren’t but after all, we’re only human.

There is no limit to the love of God.

Paul gets excited about this incredible reality – this amazing abundance – this vast expanse of divine expression. The heart of God is big, Paul tells the Ephesian Christians – very big.

Writing of this to them, Paul says:

“That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man” (Ephesians 3: 16, KJV).

Out of God’s “glorious unlimited resources” (NLT), Paul wishes for the Ephesians to be strengthened and rooted in their new faith. He wants those roots of faith to grow deep “into God’s love” (3:17, NLT). And he wants them to try and understand – to grasp, if they can – “the breadth, and length, and depth, and height” of the love of God (3:18, KJV).

Consider the unfathomable dimensions of his love.

God’s love for you is broader than the scope of your sins. It is longer than your time on this earth. It goes beyond time. It is eternal. His love for you reaches deeper than your deepest despair and soars to Heaven itself, where Jesus Christ pleads on your behalf as your advocate with the Father.

How many individual grains of sand are on all the shores and beaches of the earth? Abraham didn’t know. He couldn’t tell God when the Almighty promised to multiply Abraham’s seed accordingly.

So is the love of God for us.

His love for you and me is unbreachable, unchangeable, unquenchable and unstoppable. Paul told the Romans that nothing at all – nothing in all of creation and nothing above, below or beyond it – could ever separate you and me from God’s love.

When a young German immigrant named Frederick Martin Lehman sat on some lemon crates in Pasadena California in 1917 he began writing a song about God’s love, inspired by a sermon he had heard a week earlier.

He had the chorus down:

“Oh, love of God, how rich and pure! How measureless and strong! It shall forevermore endure— The saints’ and angels’ song.”

He later found the words for the third stanza written on a card buried in his files at home. The words had been copied from the cell wall of an insane asylum years earlier. One of the workers wrote them down before he painted the cell after the inmate died.

It was later discovered that those words were actually remembered by the inmate from a Hebrew poem, written in Aramaic, and later translated and carefully preserved. The poem was written by a rabbi named Meir Ben Isaac Nehoria.

He wrote it in 1050 AD.

“Could we with ink the ocean fill, And were the skies of parchment made, Were every stalk on earth a quill, And every man a scribe by trade; To write the love of God above Would drain the ocean dry; Nor could the scroll contain the whole, Though stretched from sky to sky.”

 You may run out of many things this year.

God’s love for you will always read “full”.

May God bless you and your family.

 

 

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January 23, 2015 · 2:35 am

When Giants Strode the Earth

He stood high on the admiral’s bridge.

The great, gray warship floated in Placentia Bay, as the sun began to slowly rise over the coast of Newfoundland.

The rumpled stout man with thinning and unkempt sandy hair peered intently across the Atlantic. He had just gotten up but he couldn’t wait – not even to comb his hair.

Eager anticipation crossed the countenance of his determined features.

He had carefully labored and hoped for this moment – this meeting.

“Can you see any sign of them yet?” he asked an aide.

When the U.S.S. Augusta approached the HMS Prince of Wales at 11:00 AM, he had already dressed into a dark blue military uniform. He crossed the bay and boarded the ship.

There, on Saturday morning, August 9, 1941, Prime Minister Winston Churchill met President Franklin D. Roosevelt for the first time. Roosevelt, supported on the arm of his son Elliott, smiled broadly and shook Churchill’s hand. Though always a painful risk, especially on board a ship, the president had insisted on standing in his braces for this historic occasion.

It was a warm greeting FDR extended to his British counterpart. They had been in communication by cable. The meeting had been kept from the American press and public – a secret rendezvous on the high seas that would help determine the course of the world.

FDR jauntily lifted his head and smiled again at Churchill. “At last – we’ve gotten together,” he said. Churchill nodded and smiled back.

“We have,” he replied.

They hit it off instantly.

England was standing alone against Hitler’s Germany in World War II. Churchill hoped to persuade FDR, who faced staunch isolationism at home, to help Great Britain.

The stakes had never been higher for civilization. Both men knew that.

The next day, Sunday, on board the Prince of Wales, the President and Prime Minister joined American and British sailors in a church service.

Churchill had carefully selected the hymns.

They were rich and glorious Anglo-Saxon declarations of faith and courage. They are not so frequently sung in churches today.

The first was O God, Our Help in Ages Past, based on the 90th Psalm.

The second was Onward Christian Soldiers.

 The service concluded with the singing of a hymn that FDR and Churchill, lovers of the sea and the Navy, would have found moving: Eternal Father, Strong to Save, known traditionally as “the Navy Hymn.”

Churchill wept and pulled a handkerchief from his breast pocket. “It was,” he later said, “a great hour to live.”

Prayers were offered. The scripture passage was from Joshua 1. The words rang clear and strong:

“…as I was with Moses, so I will be with thee: I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee. Be strong and of a good courage …be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest” (Joshua 1:5, 9, KJV).

Military and political strategies aside, that single worship service on the deck of the Prince of Wales, moved FDR deeply.

Later he confided to his son Elliott:

“If nothing else happened while we were here, that would have cemented us. ‘Onward Christian Soldiers.’ We are Christian soldiers, and we will go on, with God’s help.”

And they did.

Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill forged a close friendship of rare candor, warmth and mutual admiration.

It was the friendship that won the war and saved the world.

Yes, it was a “great hour to live.” And a time of maximum peril and challenge for the whole world. There was nothing quite like it before. There has been no time like it since.

And as great as the danger was, great leaders rose to meet it.

In a poignant scene from the film Lincoln, the president asks a young soldier:

“Do you think we choose to be born? Or are we fitted to the times we are born into?”

While interesting, it’s not likely Lincoln ever said that. He did confess that events had controlled him, rather than he controlled events. He quoted Shakespeare’s Hamlet about the “divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will.”

History reveals the hand of a sovereign God.

Great events and great lives remind us that this is indeed His Story.

No one who believes in God would dismiss the close collaboration of FDR and Churchill in the world’s greatest war as mere coincidence.

It was divine providence. It was God saving his world.

This year, interestingly, will serve as reminders of God’s sovereign control of events. January 24th marks the 50th anniversary of Sir Winston Churchill’s death. This April marks the 70th anniversary of FDR’s passing. That month is also the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s assassination and the end of the Civil War. In August, we commemorate the 70th anniversary of victory in World War II.

History, like a kind father, reminds us of the power, purpose and watchfulness of God and points us to a renewed faith in his judgment and care for us.

He rules the nations.

But let us remember too that the Lord of Hosts is also the God of Jacob. He cares about the individual no less than the universe.

“Remember the days of old,” sang Moses, “consider the years of many generations …” (Deuteronomy 32:7, KJV).

And thank God for the day when giants strode the earth.

May God bless you and your family.

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January 16, 2015 · 2:25 am

The Truth about Islam

It again struck.

Unreasoning, brutal and deadly, its calling card read “revenge for the honor” of the prophet Muhammad.

This time it was the Paris headquarters of a satirical newspaper that had dared to poke fun at the Prophet. Twelve people, including the editorial director, were killed. Three of the terrorists were later cornered and gunned down. But not before four other innocent victims lay dead on the floor of a kosher market.

France was stunned. Nothing like this had happened in a half century.

The civilized world recoiled and then united in defiant solidarity against terrorism. Millions marched in Paris and throughout the country. The mayor of the city made clear her determination to fight back. President Francois Hollande joined the leaders of Germany, Great Britain, Israel and representatives from more than 40 other nations, arm in arm, for the show of resolve.

And once again, pains were taken to explain that this was a united resistance only to “radical” Islam, not Islam itself.

With each attack, with each mindless invocation of Muhammad and each bloody cry for “Allah”, even the most reasonable are beginning to question this persistent premise.

Is it true?

Is the religion of Islam, the world’s second-largest with 1.57 billion followers, totally blameless in the rising tide of global butchery committed in the name of its god and his messenger?

Is it possible that the guilt-ridden and dangerous dogmas of political correctness and multiculturalism have blinded us to the stubborn facts – the unvarnished truth – about Islam? Have we, in the name of a false peace and uneasy co-existence, turned a blind eye to the troubling reality of this oftentimes fervent, harsh and unforgiving religion?

By embracing acceptance do we practice cowardice?

“Tolerance,” observed GK Chesterton, “is the virtue of a man without convictions.”

Ideas have consequences. And some of the ideas – and history – of Islam lend themselves to a stridency of belief and an extremism of behavior.

It is ideas that unite terrorists around the globe who repeatedly shriek that they are acting in the name of “Allah.” And when we see this religious violence committed in the name of a single religion – over and over again – we have every right – and the duty – to be aware, informed and suspicious.

And we have the moral obligation to condemn any religion that breeds this violence; whether it is deliberate or unwitting. The danger is no different.

If our political leaders had any spine they would stand up.

These attacks, such as the one in Paris, may appear to be isolated but they are in fact united. What unites them is a sworn hatred of Western civilization and of Christianity in particular.

Muhammad is diametrically opposed to Jesus Christ. They cannot both be God’s sole messenger.

In Pakistan last November, a young Christian couple, living in poverty, was beaten to death with hockey sticks, rods and crowbars by an angry Muslim crowd of more than a thousand. The couple had been accused of burning a Koran while disposing of trash.

Muslim clerics used loudspeakers to incite the crowd while the couple was held captive. After being clubbed to death, their bodies were burned in the kiln where they had labored their whole lives. They left three small children. She was pregnant.

Where then was the outrage of Islam at such an act? Where indeed has it been throughout the Middle East in the face of savage persecution of Christians?

Even the new president of Egypt warned imams that they must rise up and condemn this terror committed in the name of Islam or their religion will disintegrate in a cauldron of vengeance.

When Abraham, doubting God’s promise, listened to his wife and was intimate with her slave Hagar, the son they had, Ishmael, was destined for violence. “‘This son of yours will be a wild man,’” the angel told the pregnant Hagar, “‘as untamed as a wild donkey! He will raise his fist against everyone, and everyone will be against him. Yes, he will live in open hostility against all his relatives’” (Genesis 16:12, NLT).

Ishmael is the father of the Arab race – the progenitor of Islam. Hate and violence are his legacy.

“I have been ordered (by Allah),” declared Muhammad, “ to fight against the people until they testify that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah and that Muhammad is Allah’s Apostle”

Blasphemy against Islam is a criminal act in many nations, punishable by death. Responsible Muslims must call for the abolition of these repressive laws.

There are many peace-loving Muslims and we must never hate anyone. The right to worship must be protected in this country – for everyone.

This must be the Christian response.

We must continue to evangelize Muslims – to lead them to the love of Jesus Christ and the freedom, grace and forgiveness that only he offers. This is both right and effective. Haggai Institute, the great ministry for which I work, has trained thousands of ex-Muslims in leadership for evangelism. At their grave peril, they spread the Good News to their friends, family and colleagues.

Many Muslims around the world have told of seeing the Savior in dreams and visions.

Yes, he loves and he comes. Yes, he comes to them too.

Let us pray that the scourge of religiously-inspired violence will end.

Let us love all people everywhere, as He wants us to.

And let us recognize the destructive danger of falsehood, the glorious power of truth and the triumphant reality that Jesus Saves!

May God bless you and your family.

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January 9, 2015 · 2:14 am

Highly Effective

It’s Habit Number Two.

It’s what we all should do if we want to be happy and successful.

“Begin with the end in mind.”

That’s what Stephen Covey told us in his best-selling book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

“The most effective way I know to begin with the end in mind,” Covey wrote, “is to develop a personal mission statement or philosophy or creed.” Covey said that this “mission statement” should be based “on what you want to be (character) and to do (contributions and achievements) and on the values or principles upon which being and doing are based.”

That sounds like good advice to me.

It’s practical, wise and grounded.

It makes perfect sense and is undoubtedly “highly effective.”

I wish I had read Covey’s excellent book before I began assembling toys on Christmas Eve. No matter how carefully I laid all the parts out on the floor of our living room; no matter how closely I studied the diagrams and read the instructions – several times – I still ended up with a leftover washer or screw.

They went somewhere, I just didn’t know where. I had made a mistake but didn’t know what it was, how I had made it or how to correct it. Still, if the toy functioned I didn’t worry. Not once did one of our girls ever ask me, “Daddy, where’s the missing washer?”

It wasn’t perfect but it was close and certainly good enough coming from a mechanical klutz like me.

My daughter was happy – she never knew the difference.

I tried to begin with the end in mind but still couldn’t get it all together.

My life seems to have been taken up with its share of unanticipated consequences.

It takes a lifetime to learn how to live and it’s only hindsight that offers the wisdom of clarity.

My dad used to tell me that “if our foresight was as good as our hindsight we’d be a sure sight better off.”

Some are good at predicting the future and making choices based on their intuition and perceptions. It seems always to turn out as they thought it would.

For the rest of us, life holds surprises. It is cooked in crisis, marinated with choices and threaded throughout with irony. But no matter how unexpectedly it turns out, life still tastes pretty good.

Of course, there’s no crystal ball for 2015.

All of us are going to be surprised by something. The future isn’t like a checkbook – it can’t be calculated, managed and neatly balanced each month. The beginning of the year reminds us that the future is enveloped in mystery – coincidence, happenstance, serendipity.

And it is determined and guided by Providence.

“Our God, our help in ages past,” wrote Isaac Watts nearly three centuries ago, “our hope for years to come, our shelter from the stormy blast, and our eternal home.”

The ancient immortal lyrics burst forth upon our human frailty with a majestic and resounding reassurance that has resonated with every generation of Christian pilgrims.

The unchangeableness of God is contrasted with the transitoriness of man. Our mortality is laid out next to his sovereignty.

“Time, like an ever-rolling stream, bears all its sons away; they fly, forgotten, as a dream dies at the opening day.”

To God, time is an unobtrusive irrelevancy. He lives and moves in what theologian Paul Tillich described as “the eternal now.”

Watts was inspired by the 90th psalm.

“Lord, You have been our dwelling place in all generations.  Before the mountains were brought forth, Or ever You had formed the earth and the world, Even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God” (Psalm 90: 1-2,NKJV).

God is the premier Highly Effective Person.

He begins with the end in mind.

He always has.

God planned the whole of the future – yours, mine, the world’s – in the very distant past. And in God’s plan, there is no left-over screw and no wayward washer. His assembly of human existence – past, present and future – is perfect and complete, right down to the last detail.

It lacks nothing because its Creator lacks nothing. God never goes back to the drawing board of history. He scraps nothing and he has no “Plan B.”

He doesn’t need one.

As God begins with the end in mind, so too he begins with us in mind.

Paul told the Philippians that they could confidently rejoice in knowing this:

“God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns” (Philippians 1:6, NLT, emphasis added).

What a promise as we begin a New Year of living. To know God is working in us, for us and through us.

He will never abandon what he started – he has the end in mind.

Long before you were born, God had you in his mind – and in his heart.

“Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed. How precious are your thoughts about me, O God” (Psalm 139:16, NLT).

This alone gives us confidence and hope as we once again venture into the unknowns of time and circumstance.

God always begins with the end in mind. He’s highly effective.

May God bless you and your family.

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December 31, 2014 · 10:00 am

Colonel Davenport and the End of the World

People peered out the windows in astonishment.

Everything seemed enveloped in pitch blackness.

No one had ever witnessed such a thing before.

It was twelve noon, May 19, 1780.

This was some sort of natural phenomenon – an abnormal darkness had descended upon all of the New England and parts of Canada. Historians believe it was due to a rare combination of smoke from forest fires and a thick fog.

The darkness that day was so great that candles were required from noon until midnight. Witnesses said that in some places it was so dark that persons could not read common print at midday in the open air.

The birds went silent and disappeared. An ominous hush fell over the land.

One observer wrote later:

“If every luminous body in the universe had been shrouded in impenetrable shades, or struck out of existence, the darkness could not have been more complete.”

The fledgling thirteen colonies of America were in the fifth year of their monumental struggle for independence.

In Hartford, Connecticut the legislature was in session. Anxious word spread that it was the Day of Judgment and there were many fearful calls for adjournment.

But then Colonel Abraham Davenport rose to speak. Slowly and deliberately he stood up. The chamber fell to a respectful silence.

“Gentlemen,” Davenport said, “I am against an adjournment. The Day of Judgment is either approaching, or it is not. If it is not, there is no cause for an adjournment. If it is, I choose to be found doing my duty. I wish therefore that candles may be brought.”

And so they were. The Connecticut legislature finished its work. The American colonies, against all odds, won their freedom from Great Britain.

It was not the Day of Judgment. The world did not come to an end.

The darkness dispersed and at midnight the stars could be seen.

New England’s Dark Day was over.

Today, millions of Americans hold their collective breath as together we prepare to step across the threshold of a New Year. Hope is in the air; it’s in our hearts and minds; it stirs our souls.

This is a time when we want to be expectant. We want to embrace a brighter future.

We may look back upon this past year – with all its violence and war; its heartache and strife – and wonder what in the world is happening and what will the New Year bring.

It has been said that the optimist believes we live in the best of all possible worlds – and the pessimist fears that this is true.

I sometimes wonder if we Christians are too apocalyptic for our own good.

We’re just too down in the mouth about the future. We wallow in fear and catastrophe as if there were no God. Or as if he were an incompetent politician making it up as he goes along instead of reigning as the omnipotent Ruler of the universe.

This is very far from being the best of all possible worlds, that’s true, but God did make this world. He controls it, he has a plan for it and his purpose will never be thwarted – by anyone or anything.

And beyond this truth, stands another – grander far than mere mortal imagination can see.

The new heaven and the new earth God will create will be “the best of all possible worlds.”

That’s the future for all those who have placed their faith in Jesus Christ.

The end of this world will only be the beginning of a world without end.

If God’s so gloriously optimistic about our future, why shouldn’t you and I be perennially hopeful and exulting in joy about what he has planned for those who know him?

You and I have a choice.

We can curse this present darkness. Or we can choose to light a candle.

We can fear the future or we can embrace it. We can be a light or we can hide under a bushel. We can throw up our hands or we can make a difference.

Paul told the Ephesians that since they had the light of Christ within them by faith, they should “live as people of light!” (Ephesians 5: 8, NLT).

He told the Philippians that rather than complaining or arguing they should “live clean and innocent lives as children of God” (Philippians 2: 14-15, NLT).

They were to be, he wrote, like bright stars shining “in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation” – a world of spiritual and moral darkness (Philippians 2: 15, KJV).

You and I must be bright lights of hope and joy and love and decency – shining before our friends and neighbors; our colleagues and co-workers; our husbands, our wives and our children.

Let us resolve to do this in 2015.

This world may be nearing its end or it may not. Only God knows that. Only God knows the end from the beginning. If it is not the end of the world, there is no cause for alarm or concern. And if it is, then let us choose to be found doing our duty when Christ comes.

The world hasn’t ended – not yet.

Let candles be brought. Let them be lighted. And let them shine.

May God bless you and your family.

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