April 24, 2015 · 4:51 pm

That One

“Hi Mister! I’d like to see your puppies.”

The young boy smiled broadly.

The farmer led the boy to a pen where a litter of puppies scampered eagerly about their mother. The farmer was selling them and the boy had been saving his money. The farmer watched as the lad carefully scrutinized the black and white pups. After a few moments, the boy pointed to a quiet puppy sitting alone in the back of the pen. He called him and the little dog gingerly limped toward the boy, wagging its tail.

“I’d like that one,” the boy said.

“Well,” the farmer said softly to the boy, “I’m not sure you want that puppy. He was born with a bad leg. He can get around OK but he’ll never be able to run and keep up with you like these others would. Wouldn’t you rather have one of these other healthy pups?”

“I really want that one,” the boy insisted. Then the boy reached down and slowly lifted up his pant leg, revealing a steel brace that was attached to a special shoe. “You see Mister,” the boy explained to the farmer, “I don’t run too well myself and I figure this little guy will need someone who understands him.”

Someone who understands.

In all our weakness and vulnerability; in all our frailty and our fears, how much each of us needs someone like that. The world is not a sympathetic place. The world does not understand, the world doesn’t want to understand – the world cannot understand. That’s why we sometimes feel quite alone – surrounded by busy people on a mission that doesn’t include us. Like the little limping puppy, we struggle to keep up in the competitive race of life. And when it seems that everyone can run and jump except us, it’s not always easy.

Yet suppose that the greatest, most powerful, most awesome, most wonderful and most glorious Being in the whole universe understood you more completely than anyone else you’ve ever known. Then imagine that this eternal, omnipotent Being was a God of infinite love who not only knew and understood you fully, but in understanding you, loved you with an unfathomable love.

God does.

This is every Christian’s joyful testimony. We are unfailingly and unchangeably loved by the God who never changes and cannot fail.

At the center of God’s love, of course, is his glory and greatness. But there is also the element of mercy and redemption – and matchless grace – that makes divine love higher, longer, wider and deeper than anything we could ever experience.

God’s love is beyond dimension. That’s how he can understand us – and it’s why he does.

In Christ, God proved his identity with us. This is the glory of the incarnation. God came because he cared. And God cares because he came. And through his Son, God showed us he understood.

“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses,” the writer of Hebrews tells us, “but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are – yet he did not sin.”(Hebrews 4:15, NIV). Jesus understands our weaknesses and temptations because he has been “just as we are.” Sinless, yes, divine, certainly, but also fully human. And in the humanity of Christ we have hope.

We know that Jesus has been “touched with the feeling of our infirmities” (Hebrews 4:15, KJV).

I love that King James rendering. It’s so tender, compassionate and expressive.

Our Savior has been “touched” – moved and influenced.

Our High Priest isn’t some stoic god playing chess in the sky with our lives. He knows how you feel – intimately, deeply, and fully.

He knows too your “infirmities” – the frailties of mortal man. He understands your doubts and your fears. Because he was once in the flesh, he appreciates the limitations of the flesh.

The prophet Isaiah reassures us that God is never through with us, even when we’re down. “A bruised reed He will not break. And a dimly burning wick He will not extinguish.” (Isaiah 42:3, NASB).

God embraces us – the wounded, the limping. God will not break us while we are bruised. He will not snuff us out even if our fire of holy devotion that once burned bright may now be only a smoldering ember of pain and regret. God’s Spirit will fan life into us once again. He will never give up on us – even if we give up on him. Because he understands us, God loves us the most when we deserve it the least.

Every church must be a place where the wounded are welcome. God’s family isn’t what you join after you’ve got your act together. It’s where you’re safe to come while you’re getting your act together.

When we limp, God doesn’t pick on us, he picks us. “I’d like that one” he says. To him, despite our limp of sin and weakness, we are very special.

We are God’s gracious choice.

He holds us, cares for us, feeds us and loves us. God adopts us and he takes us home.

He understands.

May God bless you and your family.

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April 17, 2015 · 2:35 am

Play Dixie

There was plenty of celebrating.

That’s the way it is when you win.

It’s human nature to whoop and holler and congratulate yourself.

Winning is for winners. Losing is for losers.

The tall, gaunt man dressed in black moved slowly to the open window and wearily smiled at the exuberant crowd of 3,000 gathered below.

The band had been playing for some time and now waited for his request.

Abraham Lincoln paused and smiled again at the joyous crowd. He had never been particularly musical and always graciously declined to join in public singing. Yet he also enjoyed music, describing it, according to one friend, as a “simple unalloyed pleasure.” Self-deprecatingly unpretentious by nature, Lincoln once professed, “I only know two tunes, one is ‘Old Hundred,’ and the other isn’t.”

“I have always thought ‘Dixie’ one of the best tunes I have ever heard,” the president told the expectant crowd. “Our adversaries over the way attempted to appropriate it, but I insisted yesterday that we fairly captured it…I now request the band to favor me with its performance.”

The crowd cheered and the band struck up Dixie.

It was Monday, April 10th. Robert E. Lee had surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant the day before, ending the most devastating and tragic war in American history. This was a first symbolic step toward Lincoln’s noble vision of a re-United States of America.

That Friday, 150 years ago this week, Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth. Without regaining consciousness, the president died at 7:22 the next morning. It had been an act of vengeance committed in the name of the defeated South by a deranged narcissist.

Lincoln’s vision of national reconciliation after four long and costly years of bitter and blood-drenched conflict would perish with him. In a sad irony, the South had lost its most powerful ally – and its best friend – in the long and painful effort to heal the deep wounds of civil war.

The nation would eventually once again become the United States. But the path to reunion would be more difficult and filled with recriminations. Lincoln wanted the South restored. Now it would be punished.

As a presidential historian, I am often asked if I believe Lincoln was a Christian.

He kept his faith a private and personal matter, as most presidents have. It’s therefore impossible to say for sure, regardless of what some historians insist. While he often attended, he never joined a church. As a young and intemperate politician, he published a pamphlet advocating against religion. He later retracted it. Some suggest that after the death of his 11-year old son Willie in the White House, Lincoln gave his life fully to Christ.

It’s easier to make the claim that among all our chief executives, Abraham Lincoln – ambitious, scheming and shrewd politician that he surely was – was also among our most Christ-like presidents. He need not be deified as some American messiah, sacrificed on the altar of freedom on Good Friday. But in his temperament and his character, Lincoln consistently displayed those qualities that Christians seek and God desires.

Lincoln carefully read the Bible and knew it better than most ministers.

In his humility and patience, Lincoln was Christ-like. His favorite poem was Oh! Why Should the Spirit of Mortal Man Be Proud? Often slighted and mocked by the press and other politicians, he took it all in good humor.

So too in his mercy, his forgiveness and his extraordinary and tender-hearted compassion, Lincoln displayed an impressive Christian outlook that might be the envy of many believers.

There is not a single instance of Lincoln ever seeking mean-spirited revenge against his enemies or ever fretting of what any of them thought of him. His magnanimity was most fully and eloquently displayed toward the South as the war drew to a close.

It was his humble appreciation for the inscrutable purposes of a sovereign God that led Lincoln to refuse to blame the South for the war but to lay the blame upon the country as a whole. He recognized that “both sides” had responsibility. And he perceived God’s divine judgment in it all.

That is Christ-like wisdom.

He pleaded at his second inaugural for “malice toward none and charity for all.” He urged the nation to go forward “with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right,” and to “bind up the nation’s wounds” – to heal the deep divisions. He said the country must “care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan” – both North and South.

This was Lincoln’s vision for a stronger – and in the end – a happier republic. It was not steeped in angry and arrogant retribution but guided instead by “the better angels of our nature” – by kindness and goodness.

Even in the midst of violence and hate.

In his letter to the Galatians, the apostle Paul called them the “fruits of the Spirit.” He said the followers of Jesus Christ should display these spiritual attributes in our daily lives. It’s remarkable that Lincoln’s towering place in history is cemented, in large part, by these Christian virtues.

And 150 years later, it’s an inspiring example for us all.

May God bless you and your family.

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April 10, 2015 · 11:59 pm

Bake Me a Cake!

“Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man.

Bake me a cake as fast as you can.”

Well, not so fast, actually.

What is that distant thunder we hear in the heartland of America?

It is the collective voice of conscience. It is the cry of faith.

It is the bugle blast of courage.

The State of Indiana set off a firestorm of controversy in recent weeks when its legislature passed – and its governor signed – the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Christians who supported it drew a line in the cultural sand of our new morality and said, “No further.” It would now be illegal to force any person to deny his or her religious beliefs.

That declaration was met by other cries:

“Bigotry!” “Discrimination!” “Jim Crow!” “Intolerance!”

People were getting hoarse.

The new law was over-broad, flawed in its wording, awkwardly explained and often sheepishly defended. Corporate interests, fearing the vindictive wrath of an articulate and wealthy constituency, lined up to threaten Indiana’s political leadership (ironically Republican) with economic sanctions were the law not immediately repealed or, in the nomenclature de jure, “fixed.”

We’ve seen all this before.

Homosexual activists and their liberal allies invoke the weary shibboleth of racist comparisons. Business cowers and politicians either grandstand or temporize, depending. And the envelope is once again pushed forward, a victory for the forces of correctness.

But this time may have signaled a difference.

Despite its legal weaknesses, Indiana’s new law was as morally sound as a dollar. In seeking to protect the sincerely-held religious convictions of all its citizens, the law sought to balance the need to prohibit discrimination with the need to guard an inviolate constitutional right.

One wouldn’t have concluded much thoughtful nuance from the hyperventilated debate, but the reality is that this issue is about competing and yet equally valid rights and protections.

Discrimination is wrong.

Religious freedom is sacred.

Most Americans agree with both these propositions.

The government’s job is to balance these interests when they come into conflict.

The Christian’s duty is to place obedience to God above allegiance to the state.

While refusal to serve gay people at a place of public accommodation – a restaurant for example – was the unsavory and unrealistic illustration invariably cited by the law’s opponents, the protections sought were of a quite different nature.

If a baker who is a Christian is asked to bake a cake for a gay wedding and he is religiously opposed to homosexuality, as most Christians are and will remain, is he being asked to deny his faith by participating in the wedding? Would he be disobeying his conscience before God if he joined in an activity which he believes is sin? The same may be asked of a Christian florist.

Should civil authority force him to do this? Should the law have the right to punish him if he refuses? With anti – religion and especially anti-Christian sentiment growing, these questions will become increasing relevant and paramount.

This concern is the result of the legal triumph of gay marriage. It prompted the Indiana law.

The state will need to decide. And so will the church.

So too will the individual believer.

Where will the line be drawn? Where should it be drawn?

And in a sea change of morality, what will come next?

Will the law and the courts now be used to force people to forsake their moral convictions – to coerce under threat an approval of behavior against conscience itself? Could churches eventually be targeted? In Houston, led by a lesbian mayor, they already have been.

This is not “live and let live.” This is becoming, “renounce your beliefs or else.”

Followers of Christ must continue to display respect and charity toward all people.

No thoughtful Christian believes we should return to the days when homosexuality was illegal. Nor do most believe a gay citizen should lose his or her job because of sexual orientation or be refused public accommodations or service. In this sense, we have, as a society, advanced along the course of a reasonable justice. Christians in this country have accepted gay people as fellow citizens entitled to the equal protections of the law.

In the Old Testament book that bears his name, Daniel, living in captive exile in a land that rejected his Jewish faith, offered the king an accommodation on the rule about the food he and the other captives could legally eat. Let them eat as they wished and then see who was more physically fit at the end of ten days (Daniel1). Daniel prevailed and he and the other young men passed the test.

In making this offer, Daniel displayed both discernment and decisiveness; diplomacy but also determination. He showed respect to the authorities without compromising his righteousness.

But later, when the law insisted that the king alone be worshiped over God, Daniel refused to bow to anyone except the Lord who reigned supreme over all civil authority. He knew the price for his unwavering loyalty. He was willing to pay it.

Christians must remain conscientious objectors to all sin, whether in the guise of “rights” or not.

“So whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God” (I Corinthians  10:31, NLT).

Even if it’s baking a cake – or not.

May God bless you and your family.

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April 3, 2015 · 11:40 pm

As a Matter of Fact

It was unimaginable.

Maybe life would go on but for them it would be forever changed by the tragedy of these past few days.

Hope and joy had turned so quickly to despair and confusion. The events unfolded beyond their control – and beyond their belief.

Anticipation they once held with such certainty now seemed so long ago, shattered by the inexplicable horror and fear that had engulfed them.

As they walked, the two of them, they spoke of what they had seen. What did it mean – “all these things”? Why did this happen? What would the future hold now? It would doubtless be something quite different than what they had expected.

Luke tells us that these two disciples “communed together and reasoned …” as they walked the dusty seven miles from Jerusalem to a village named Emmaus (Luke 24: 15, KJV).

They were trying to process all that had just happened.

This was hard for them. It’s hard for any of us to understand tragedy and dreams that vanish overnight.

Lost in deep thought, their hearts riveted with grief, they sought to comfort one another. So absorbed in their shared heartbreak, they hardly noticed the stranger on the road who “drew near, and went with them” (Luke 24:15, KJV). Luke tells us that this was a divine concealment – “their eyes were held that they should not know him” (verse 16, KJV).

He was friendly – and showed concern.

He asked them what they were discussing and why they seemed so sad. What’s happened?

They stopped on the road and looked at him. They seemed amazed, even in their sadness.

The man named Cleopas asked him, “Are you the only visitor in Jerusalem who does not know what just happened there?” (Luke 24: 18, NCV). The things that took place have stunned so many.

“What things?” he asked (verse 19, KJV).

Cleopas told him about “Jesus of Nazareth.” He was a mighty prophet, in both word and deed, favored by God and the people. But then “the chief priests and our rulers delivered him to be condemned to death, and have crucified him. But we trusted”(KJV) – “we were hoping” (NCV) that he was the Messiah, the one promised so long ago, who would come and set Israel free (verse 19-21).

Our hopes soared.

And now he’s dead.

This all happened three days ago, Cleopas explained to the stranger.

But there’s more.

Cleopas told him that some women who visited his tomb that very morning insisted it was empty! There was no body! So Cleopas and others went to see for themselves. Sure enough, they saw the tomb and it was empty. But where was his body?

A mystery.

Cleopas hesitated.

These women had told them that they had seen “a vision of angels, which said that he was alive” (verse 23, KJV).

Alive?

Alive!

Jesus may have smiled, struck by the irony of his anonymity.

What Jesus did next is worth noting. He didn’t engage their speculations or ask any more questions. He didn’t join them in wonder. He didn’t ponder unknown meanings.

He taught them.

From the Old Testament, as they walked together on the road to Emmaus, Jesus expounded on the promises and prophecies concerning himself. He ignored theories and taught truth.

What has just happened is not fantasy, he told them. It’s fact.

This is not some hallucination. This is reality.

As they neared the village and it was getting dark, Cleopas and his friend persuaded Jesus to have dinner with them. As Jesus prayed and passed around the bread, their eyes were opened and suddenly they recognized him.

And then he was gone.

Jesus had always been audacious on the subject of death.

“Destroy this temple,” he announced to the stunned Pharisees, “and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19, KJV).

To the grieving sister of a dead friend, Jesus declared, “I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live” (John 11: 25, KJV).

No other religious leader in history promised to defang death – to conquer this last enemy – and then did it.

He tells you and me that if we place our faith in him, we will never die. And then he asks us simply:

Do you believe this?

When he appeared to his disciples, after his resurrection, he was again taunting death.

Ha! You look like you’ve seen a ghost!

“Why are you frightened?” he asked them. “Why do you doubt who I am? Look at my hands. Look at my feet. You can see that it’s really me. Touch me and make sure that I am not a ghost, because ghosts don’t have bodies, as you see that I do!” (Luke 24: 38-39, NLT).

Jesus held out his hands. He showed them his feet.

Then he ate some broiled fish while they surrounded him and stared in dumbfounded amazement.

Where was his body? Here was his body! Not hidden or stolen but eating dinner.

The resurrection is more than a feeling or a sentiment or even an indwelling power.

It is more.

The resurrection is not just an experience. It is an event. It is history.

It is a matter of fact.

He Is Risen!

He Is Risen Indeed!

May God bless you and your family.

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March 27, 2015 · 9:37 pm

Yet…

He threw himself on the ground.

In the darkness of the ancient hilltop garden, surrounded only by the silent massive trees, he fell on his face. The lonely torment of his soul is unmatched by any in history.

He had brought with him three of his closest companions, who just hours earlier had sworn unyielding allegiance. Now, exhausted by the emotions of the crisis, they had fallen asleep – unable to utter a word of comfort or to lift a finger of support for their friend.

Jesus was alone.

In the Garden of Gethsemane, as he kneeled and then fell prostrate, he felt the full force of a descending terror. Before him lay the massive cosmic evil that would soon engulf him and viciously tear him ragged beyond recognition; the reign of iniquity that would sunder his body and eviscerate his soul beyond all telling – and beyond all knowing.

God would soon lay upon him the sins of us all.

It was to be an unprecedented suffering. This both Father and Son knew.

Here in this lovely garden of olives, in the stillness of the night, we see the utter humanity of our Savior as we see it nowhere else. We hear in this crying voice of desperate pleading the mortality of a thirty-three year old man who doesn’t want to die. In this hour of lonely struggle, the calm and steadfast assurance that has marked his ministry and his nature is suddenly torn away to expose an agony so deep and pitiful we scarce can take it in.

The healing, tender, composed and triumphant Good Shepherd of our Sunday school days is, in this garden of early morning hours, revealed to be a sweating, writhing, begging and terrified young man. The Creator, the Lord of the universe, the King of all kings, is on the ground pleading so fervently to escape his eternal destiny that the physician Luke tells us that “his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.” (Luke 22:44, KJV).

Nothing proves the full humanity of Christ more than Gethsemane. This lonely, agonizing night in that beautiful garden shows the world the Son of Man.

In an age of convenience and comfort, we do not wish to look upon this garden scene. We are repelled by the unpleasantness.

Yet we must look. We must see. We must contemplate. And we must force ourselves to think. We must somehow try to grasp – though it is a great mystery beyond us – the pain and suffering and agony and terrible despair of that night.

More amazing still, perhaps, is the transaction between Father and Son.

Mark says that Jesus cried out “Abba! Father!” The Arabic term of filial endearment is best rendered, “Daddy”. In prostrating himself before the heavenly throne, the Son employs the name that bespeaks their intimate union.

Jesus appeals to the Father’s omnipotence: “All things are possible for Thee; remove this cup from Me.” (Mark 14: 36, NASB). “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me” (Matthew 26: 39, NASB).

Jesus knows God can; he’s asking that he will.

At his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, Jesus, in predicting his death, had asked, “Should I pray, ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But this is the very reason I came!” (John 12:27, NLT).Now, in the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus prays that same prayer in order that he might indeed be saved “from this hour” and escape this destiny.

The Father and the Son have not come to a parting of the ways in the garden, but they have come to a parting of the wills. The plan from eternity past to secure a bright eternity future is turning now on the Son’s obedience.

The Son wants to obey but he doesn’t want to go to the cross.

He’s praying to his Father – pleading with his Father three separate times – and he hopes his prayers will be answered.

According to the Son’s will, that he may not have to suffer and die.

“Yet”.

On this little word pivots the world’s salvation.

“…yet not as I will, but as Thou wilt.” (Matthew 26:39, NASB, emphasis added).

In the end, Jesus surrenders his will to the Father’s, though he knows what it will mean – for both of them. When he was asked to teach his disciples to pray, Jesus said: “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” (Matthew 6: 10, KJV, emphasis added).

God’s will, Jesus knew, was what mattered more than anything else. It is a truth we must learn – and, at times, relearn. Paul reminds us that Jesus, in giving up his heavenly glory and privileges and coming to this earth, “humbled himself in obedience to God” (Philippians 2: 8, NLT).

If Jesus, in his hour of greatest need – with the stakes and the cost so high – prayed for God’s will and not his own, should his sublime example lead you and me to do any less when we pray?

Receiving his answer, Jesus regains his composure. “Arise, let us be going,” he says to his weary disciples, and the Savior of the world leaves the garden to face his future.

May God bless you and your family.

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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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