July 28, 2017 · 4:58 pm

Hop In!

The last thing everyone does is the last thing most of us want to do.

Die.

The poet Emily Dickinson famously wrote:

“Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.”

Most of us would rather not “stop for Death.” We don’t even slow down. We don’t think about death, we don’t talk about it and we don’t much prepare for it. And so Death will always stop for us. Usually when we least expect the visit.

We’ll step into the carriage and we’ll be chaperoned by Immortality out of this world. Ready or not, we’ll “put away” our labor, and our leisure too.

Dickinson expressed but one of countless interpretations of this great universal event. Thomas H. Johnson called Death “one of the great characters of literature.” Shortly after his beloved son Quentin died in World War I, Theodore Roosevelt said that “life and death are part of the same great adventure.”

I’ve always liked that view.

The following year, TR passed away quietly in his sleep. Vice President Marshall commented that “death had to catch him sleeping. If he had been awake, there would have been a fight.”

One man who waged a long and courageous fight against death was the iconic high-tech inventor and entrepreneur Steve Jobs. Jobs, who abandoned Christianity in his youth and became a Buddhist, lost his battle with cancer at the age of 56.

He said concerning death:

“Death is very likely the single best invention of life. Almost everything, all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure: these things just fall away in the face of death.”

Every cemetery, in its quiet solemnity, reminds us that death is the great equalizer.

The Bible describes death as an appointment: “It is appointed to men once to die” (Hebrews 9:27, KJV).

Death isn’t just a definitive, transformative event – it’s a scheduled one.

The last thing Jobs told his biographer Walter Isaacson was that he would beat the cancer that had ravaged him. But even Steve Jobs wasn’t strong enough, wealthy enough, resourceful enough or smart enough to reschedule his appointment with eternity. The great business leader, like all before him, had to put away his labor, and his leisure too.

The Bible pulls no punches about the great matters of life and death. And its wisdom is the wisdom of God.

“Lord,” the psalmist writes, “remind me how brief my time on earth will be. Remind me that my days are numbered – how fleeting my life is…My entire lifetime is just a moment to you; at best, each of us is but a breath.” David adds perspective to all our plans and hopes; our dreams and schemes:

“We are merely moving shadows, and all our busy rushing ends in nothing.” [Psalm 39: 5-6, NLT].

Steve Jobs was right: “these things just fall away in the face of death.”

The biblical metaphors of life and death speak of brevity and certainty. The Bible teaches us to value life as a precious but fleeting gift. The scriptures don’t dodge death, or minimize it; they confront it.

For the person who has placed his or her faith in Jesus Christ, all fear of death has been removed. This spiritual reality has enormous implications. When Christ rose from the dead, his resurrection changed everything forever.

Jesus defanged and defeated death. Alluding to the prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 25:8), the apostle Paul, in his letter to the Corinthians, taunted death:

“Death is swallowed up in victory.

O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” (I Corinthians 15:54-55, KJV).

Then Paul tells us the massive eternal difference it all makes:

“But thank God! He gives us victory over sin and death through our Lord Jesus Christ” (verse 57, NLT).

We stand at every grave triumphant.

For the Christian, “life and death are part of the same great adventure.”

In death, we will be more alive than ever before.

Instead of being a fearsome “grim reaper”, Death is now a kindly and civil escort who will guide us to a new and glorious life of which this life, for all its beauty and joy, is but the momentary prelude. We’ll be happy to “put away” our labor, and our leisure too.

We’re going home.

We cannot postpone the appointment. Instead, we’ll welcome it.

In the face of the sober truth of mortality, David rhetorically asked:

“And so, Lord, where do I put my hope? My only hope is in you.” [Psalm 39: 7, NLT].

It is more than enough.

We need not fear the summons. Heaven will be opened before us.

Afraid? I can hardly wait! I’m going to hop into that carriage.

It’s the difference Christ makes.

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July 26, 2017 · 5:13 pm

Unlikely

He walked the dusty road alone.

He was old but strong.

The sun beat upon him as he maintained his swift, determined pace. His long, white hair flowed behind him and his piercing eyes squinted into the broad horizon.

He was sad for the man he had chosen and now left behind. He had begun with such promise but somehow, over time and in ways unforeseen, his judgment faltered and his integrity ebbed.

Samuel painfully remembered the day King Saul pleaded with him to stay so they could worship together. Saul had conceded his sin and willful disobedience to the Lord’s clear command.

He explained to Samuel that the people had demanded he keep the plunder of battle. He listened to them and not to God.

Saul begged Samuel not to leave him. The prophet told him that God “has rejected you as king of Israel” (I Samuel 15:26, NLT).

As Samuel turned to leave, the desperate king, trying to hold him there, grasped the hem of his robe, tearing it.

Samuel turned and faced Saul squarely.

With a look both pathetic and compassionate, tears welling in his eyes, the old man told him:

“The Lord has torn the kingdom of Israel from you today and has given it to someone else – one who is better than you”(I Samuel 15: 28, NLT).

Such high hopes now dashed by character too weak for leadership.

The final verse of I Samuel 15 is one of the saddest in all the Bible:

“And Samuel came no more to see Saul until the day of his death: nevertheless Samuel mourned for Saul: and the Lord repented that he had made Saul king over Israel”(KJV).

Saul failed.

Samuel wept.

God regretted.

It was the end of a sad and cautionary chapter in the history of God’s chosen nation.

Now Samuel was on his way to Bethlehem. God told him he had mourned for the disgraced Saul long enough. It was time to face the future.

“Find a man named Jesse who lives there,” the Lord said, “for I have selected one of his sons to be my king” ( I Samuel 16: 1, NLT).

The selection of this new king is a well – known and oft – recounted story.

When Samuel first saw Jesse’s oldest son, Eliab, he was certain this tall, muscular, chisel-chinned young man had to be the one who would be king.

“Surely this is the Lord’s anointed”.

God stepped into this selection process early – not just for Samuel’s sake, but for ours.

“ But the LORD said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him: for the LORD seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart” (I Samuel 16:7, KJV).

We can’t help it. We’re only human. We’re almost always sure that the cover tells the story of the book inside. And that’s exactly how we judge it.

Then we’re wrong.

Not all the time, but much of the time.

Hey Samuel! Listen to me:

“Looks aren’t everything. Don’t be impressed with his looks and stature. I’ve already eliminated him … Men and women look at the face; GOD looks into the heart” The Message).

And so it went. Jesse presented all seven of his sons to the prophet Samuel. God whispered into the prophet’s ear each time:

“Nope”.

Samuel looked at Jesse. Jesse looked at Samuel.

Samuel scratched his hoary head and quizzically stroked his long white beard. He knew this was Bethlehem. He had heard that right. And this guy standing before him was Jesse – the census showed only one.

“The Lord has not chosen any of these … Are these all the sons you have?” (verse 10-11, NLT).

Jesse looked at Eliab and Abinajab, who rolled their eyes and smirked.

“There is still the youngest,” Jesse told the prophet. “But he’s out in the fields watching the sheep and goats” (verse 11, NLT).

The older brothers snickered.

Samuel paid no attention.

“Send for him at once”.

The lad was handsome, of average build. He was polite, smiled nervously. He wasn’t sure why he’d been summoned from his father’s back field. Samuel noticed his beautiful eyes. He seemed as innocent and naïve as the sheep he was guarding.

Samuel heard God’s voice: “This is the one; anoint him”(verse 12, NLT).

In this young heart, God saw his own.

That’s how it happened. It was a day like any other. David awakened the runt of the litter and headed for the fields; and the sheep and the goats. By dinner time at sunset, he had been anointed with oil by the mightiest and most revered man in Israel.

He would be King David.

Israel’s greatest leader.

The king upon whose throne would someday sit the King of all kings and the Savior of the world. Born in this very town.

Warren Harding looked every inch a president. James Buchanan had the most star-studded resume.

Today they are remembered as probably the two worst American presidents in history.

It’s the humble and awkward rail-splitter from Illinois who occupies the place of honor; whose homely features are carved in Rushmore, who memory is “enshrined forever” in the hearts of the people.

He served a single term in Congress before he saved the Union.

Unlikely.

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July 21, 2017 · 12:17 pm

Profit and Loss

The ornate office building had a spacious lobby.

Sitting in the corner, in a large, voluptuous brown leather chair, the dapper businessman in the blue pin-striped suit and dark red tie listened attentively.

He had just finished an interview with The New York Times.

Asked what he believed in, he looked earnestly into the eyes of the young reporter. “God, family and hamburgers”.

Then as he got up to walk to the elevator, he turned and smiled broadly. “But when I go in the office I reverse that order”.

Ray Kroc, founder of the McDonald’s empire, had climbed to the top of the world with a ruthless passion for the franchise sale of hamburgers and fries. By the time Kroc died in 1984, the ubiquitous Golden Arches spanned the globe.

Ray Kroc died rich.

In his business, profits came first, followed by family. God came last. He compartmentalized and prioritized his busy life. Sunday may have been set aside, but it had nothing to do with the rest of the week.

God was good. But money was king.

Christians recoil at such a blatant diminution of God. We all profess to put God first in our lives. For me, it’s sometimes easier said than lived. Every day, I face the world, the flesh and the devil. They work in a diabolical tandem to distract my attention from First Things.

Priorities. They may be important but they’re not always easy. Sometimes I find myself inadvertently reversing the order. It’s a challenge – and temptation – that many of us struggle with. We’re in this world, Jesus sends us into the world and we can’t escape the world – nor does the world escape us.

William Wordsworth observed:

“The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers”.

In the scriptures, God reminds us of the primacy of the spiritual. Jesus drove the point home on many occasions, in many ways.

When the wealthy farmer boasted of his gains and his plans, Jesus tells us that God gave him a dramatic reality check:

“God said, ‘Thou fool! Tonight, thy soul shall be required of thee’” (Luke 12:20, KJV).

Death would sweep away a lifetime of prideful illusions of self – sufficiency in an instant. As often as it happens, man still presumes.

“Man proposes,” wrote Thomas a’ Kempis, “but God disposes”.

“You can make many plans, but the Lord’s purpose will prevail” (Proverbs 19:21, NLT).

“God said …”

God told the man his life would be over that night – not a jealous rival, not a disgruntled employee, not an ignored wife – God said it to him.

Jesus asks each of us:

“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Mark 8:36, KJV).

“Is anything worth more than your soul?” (Mark 8:37, NLT).

It’s not wealth that is the root of all evil – that verse is often misquoted and misunderstood. Nowhere does Jesus condemn riches or success. It’s the love of money above all else – especially above our love for God – that is the sin that so easily ensnares us and hollows out our lives.

When we begin to lust for more, when we cut ethical corners to succeed, when we abandon our families to pursue our material goals; when we vainly imagine that our own skill and talent and hard work have given us our money – and, worst of all, when we proudly assume it’s our money and not God’s, then we run the risk of losing our own soul in order to gain the world.

Then wealth becomes our master and not our servant; our idol rather God’s gift; our end and not our means.

When this happens it’s a tragedy. Ebenezer Scrooge could warn us of the shallow folly of a materialistic and selfish life.

God forbid it in our own lives!

Priorities? What is profit – and what is loss? Theologian and author Leland Ryken aptly observed:

“We worship our work, work at our play and play in our worship”.

Ray Kroc may have “reversed the order” of his priorities when he entered his office but on the night God required his soul it didn’t matter how many burgers and fries the world was eating.

Jesus told us our priority – the First Thing of our lives; the One Thing that will forever dwarf all others and insure, when that day of reckoning comes, our life was lived at a profit and not at a loss.

“But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you”(Matt 6:33, KJV).

The day is hastening when it won’t matter who was rich and powerful or popular – or poor, scorned and unknown.

God tells us what’s important:

“Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom,
Let not the mighty man glory in his might,
Nor let the rich man glory in his riches;
But let him who glories glory in this,
That he understands and knows Me” (Jeremiah 9:23-24, NKJV).

Try and save your life by trusting in the power and wealth of this world and you will surely lose it. Lose your life for the cause of Christ and his kingdom and you will save it through all eternity.

There is a profit. There is a loss.

What does the balance sheet of your life show?

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July 7, 2017 · 9:40 am

A Letter to Ruth

He detested typewriters.

He wrote all his personal correspondence – and it was extensive – with a pen. He believed the noise of a typewriter interfered with the flow of creative thought.

His brother later typed his letters, being the only one who could decipher the scrawled penmanship.

This particular letter on this day required thoughtful attention. It was the reply to a young girl named Ruth Broady. Ruth had written to say how much she enjoyed his books.

He smiled at the affirmation. He loved children as much as he hated typewriters. Taking pen carefully in hand, he wrote the date in the upper corner: 26 October, 1963.

“Many thanks for your kind letter, and it was very good of you to write and tell me that you like my books; and what a very good letter you write for your age!”

He paused for just a moment. Then he wrote:

“If you continue to love Jesus, nothing much can go wrong with you, and I hope you may always do so.”

Then he paused again. This next part would be interesting:

“I’m so thankful that you realized the ‘hidden story’ in the Narnian books. It is odd, children nearly always do, grownups hardly ever”.

The Chronicles of Narnia, one of the greatest pieces of children’s literature ever written, was sometimes attacked by academics as racist. Others assailed it as sexist. Everyone had an opinion; everyone had an interpretation. The scholars thought they knew. This work of allegorical fantasy was examined and analyzed from various perspectives and prejudicial mindsets in search of supposed underlying cultural themes.

In the end, CS Lewis knew that children would get it.

They would embrace it in its purity and creative beauty. They would accept it and enjoy it for the wonderful and imaginative story it was.

Children would cast no cynical judgment on the work nor offer any smug critiques. They would perceive “the hidden story” that “grownups hardly ever” recognized.

What Lewis appreciated about children is what Jesus also celebrated.

Jesus attached great importance to child-like faith.

When his disciples got into an argument about who would be the greatest in the kingdom of heaven – a childish preoccupation typical of adults – Jesus stopped them and startled them.

“And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them” (Matthew 18:2, KJV). Jesus didn’t want these arguing grownups to miss “the hidden story” and so he brought it center stage.

Jesus looked at the little boy and smiled. He caressed the lad’s tousled hair. And he held him tenderly in his arms.

Then Jesus looked at his disciples – the men who would be the first leaders of his church.

“Except ye be converted and become as little children,” he told them, “ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3, KJV).

How often have men and women missed the profound simplicity of the Gospel because they’ve refused to believe it could be that uncomplicated? They’ve wanted to add to it, analyze it and work for it. Anything but simply accept it as God’s free gift.

That’s too easy. Nothing this important could be that simple.

So many people remain blinded by their sophistication and cynicism; by their success, their money and their power; by their intellect, the approval of their peers or political correctness.

Saddled by skepticism, they miss the “hidden story” of God’s great love. They fail to “become as little children” and so never enter the kingdom of heaven.

They miss it.

When the disciples scolded parents for bringing their children to Jesus to be blessed by him because they thought it was a distraction, Jesus brought them up short.

“When Jesus saw what was happening, he was angry with his disciples” (Mark 10:14, New Living Translation).

These men had a lot to learn about children and the Kingdom of God and this was another teachable moment.

“Let the children come to me,” Jesus told them. “Don’t stop them! For the Kingdom of God belongs to those who are like these children” (vs. 14, emphasis added).

Then Jesus said:

“I tell you the truth, anyone who doesn’t receive the Kingdom of God like a child will never enter it” (vs. 15, emphasis added).

Then Jesus gathered these little boys and girls lovingly into his arms; he hugged them and put his hands on their heads and he blessed them.

Children are humble, transparent, trusting, affectionate and unaffected. Many lose these qualities as adults. And when they do, the kingdom of God grows more distant.

The true Christian is one who has not lost the child’s heart.

Pray that you may always be child-like in your love and faith.

“I’m afraid the Narnian series has come to an end,” Lewis wrote in closing his letter to Ruth Broady, “and am sorry to tell you that you can expect no more.

God bless you”.

Less than a month later, CS Lewis, who never lost his child’s heart and never stopped loving Jesus, walked through the Gates of Splendor into a heavenly kingdom more glorious, more beautiful, more colorful and more creative than even he could ever have imagined.

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July 1, 2017 · 1:13 pm

Bernie and the Founders

It was another day and another public hearing.

There are hundreds of them every year.

Most of them are boring, uneventful and part of the routine grind of government in our nation’s capital. The media half reports, senators half listen, if they’re there at all, and witnesses drone on.

On this day, however, it was different.

Russell Vought had been named by President Trump to be the deputy director of the White House Office of Management and Budget.

An unknown nominee chosen for a non-controversial bureaucratic post in the executive branch. Hardly the sort of choice or office to ignite a firestorm.

Then Senator Bernie Sanders, the plain-spoken Vermont socialist who swept America’s college campuses in his uphill but impressive insurgent campaign for president last year against the Hillary Clinton establishment, decided to make a point.

Sanders questioned Vought about an op-ed piece he had authored about Muslims.

Mr. Vought is a born-again Christian and graduate of the evangelical academic flagship Wheaton College. In 2016, a Wheaton professor insisted that Christians and Muslims “worship the same God.” The professor was ultimately fired for expressing a view in stark violation of Wheaton’s Statement of Faith and Educational Purpose.

That statement, like similar professions of faith in virtually every single church and institution in America that regards itself as authentically Christian, says that personal salvation and eternal life are secured through faith in Jesus Christ alone.

Christians do not regard this core belief as incendiary, inhumane, defamatory, cruel, unkind or un-American. They see it instead as a basic and non-negotiable tenet of their faith, grounded in the scriptures, openly professed by the Christian Church for centuries and self-evident in the teachings of Jesus about himself.

To deny this belief is to renounce Christianity.

Christianity is centered on Jesus Christ – his incomparable deity, his miraculous virgin birth, his sinless life, his sufficient atonement, his glorious resurrection, his undeniable perfection, his eternal word, his unchallenged omnipotence and his imminent return to earth.

This why our religion is called Christianity.

This is theology. This is doctrine. This is sacred writ. This is personal religious convictions. This is freedom of conscience.

This is not politics or ideology.

Since Russell Vought, as a devout Christian, believes all this, he wrote an article defending his alma mater’s decision to fire the heretical professor.

In his op-ed, Vought wrote:

“Muslims do not simply have a deficient theology. They do not know God because they have rejected Jesus Christ his Son, and they stand condemned.”

This is what provoked Senator Sanders at Mr. Vought’s confirmation hearing before the Senate Budget Committee.

This champion of collectivism and the all-powerful State, from his seat in the Senate, repeatedly – and with heightened irritation, and then outright anger – demanded that Mr. Vought either renounce his beliefs or admit he’s an Isamophobic racist and a bigot for believing that Jesus is the only way to heaven.

When Mr. Vought calmly explained that he is a Christian and this is his faith, Sanders announced:

“This nominee is really not someone who is what this country is supposed to be about. I will vote no.”

Bernie Sanders had conducted his own religious inquisition, demanded the witness recant his false beliefs and swear allegiance to the God of Tolerance.

When Mr. Vought declared, in essence, “here I stand; I can do no other”, Sanders pronounced his sentence:

Russell Vought is not qualified to hold any office in American government.

Why?

Because Russell Vought is a Christian.

When Sanders saw he had created a front-page story – and none too flattering – he began to back-peddle. But he stopped short of admitting his own flagrant intolerance and bigotry – or his patently unconstitutional error.

Nor did the Vermont senator apologize to Mr. Vought for his arrogant, demeaning and brow- beating tirade.

As we approach our annual celebration of American liberty, it might be a good time to remember that our nation’s founders, true libertarians, sought, in every possible way to protect the new American republic from fiery and narrow ideologues like Bernie Sanders.

Why?

Because Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, Hamilton and Madison had the wisdom and foresight to know such religious intolerance had no place in a free land of free people.

This is not “what this country is supposed to be about.”

The founders adopted an individual Bill of Rights and placed it in the American Constitution. The first liberty the First Amendment guaranteed was freedom of religion. This included “the free exercise” of religious belief.

The founders further sought to protect Americans from inquisitors like Bernie Sanders by expressly and absolutely prohibiting any “religious test” for holding public office.

When John F. Kennedy addressed a convocation of Southern Baptists in Houston skeptical of his Catholicism during his 1960 campaign for president, he declared that he would disavow neither “my views or my church in order to win this election.”

He then told the Protestant clergymen that if “40,000,000 Americans lost their chance of being President on the day they were baptized, then it is the whole nation that will be the loser …”

With Peter and the apostles in Acts, Russell Vought made it clear he would obey his God rather than bow to the State.

Bernie Sanders sounded “a fire bell in the night.”

His is a sign of things to come.

May each of us be prepared to give an answer and to make our choice.

Our founding fathers did no less.

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June 9, 2017 · 8:28 pm

Pliable

The two men walked together down the pleasant shaded road.

This was going to be a nice trip – a journey one man knew of and the other wondered about. The one carried a sack on his back. He looked determined.

“Tell me more,” the younger man asked eagerly. “What will it be like, I mean when we get there?” The man carrying the sack explained what he had read in the book he held firmly in his hand.

It all sounded so wonderful to the young companion.

“Wow! That’s amazing,” he enthused. “Come on, let’s walk faster. I can’t wait to get there!” This was the zeal of a new beginning. Hope always abounds at the start.

When Christian, with that load on his back, and Pliable, his spirited but untried fellow traveler, fall into the Slough of Despond, it suddenly becomes an entirely different story.

Neither saw it coming.

As the two men thrash desperately, sinking deeper into the mire that represents the trials of life and the adversity to faith, Pliable asks, “Christian, where are we now?”

Christian didn’t know.

Pliable becomes indignant and worried.

“Is this the happiness you told me about?” he cries to Christian. “If it’s like this now, at the beginning, when we’ve gone only this short way, what is there still ahead of us?”

Struggling in the murky swamp, Pliable finally gets to the bank that is closest to his home.

Crawling out, he turns to Christian, still flailing in the swamp, and announces, “You will have to take the far country without me – I’m going back!”

And back he went.

Back to his old home, his security, his friends and his comforts.

John Bunyan tells us in this early episode of The Pilgrim’s Progress, that of Pliable, “Christian saw him no more.”

Christian is pulled from the Swamp of Despondence by a man named Help. Christian chooses, despite this early adversity, to continue his journey. He loses his burden of sin at the cross, encounters many a deceitful and powerful foe along the way but finally crosses the river and enters that beautiful far country that will be his eternal home.

Christian never gave up.

He also never saw Pliable again.

In The Pilgrim’s Progress, John Bunyan gave the world the greatest single book of Christian faith and doctrine since the Bible. When he began writing it he was in jail because he refused to stop preaching the Gospel. He spent twelve long years in that Bedford prison.

He suffered for his faith and his conscience.

Bunyan knew adversity and understood the importance of Christian perseverance.

Do we?

For the remainder of our lives on earth you and I will live in a world increasingly alien and hostile to Christianity. Our faith and our determination to live it will be tested in new and different ways in the years ahead.

In his story of the sower and the seeds, Jesus tells us that 75% of the spiritual seeds never grew to fruition. The various trials, distractions and temptations of this life deprived them of taking root in the heart and bearing a crop in the soul. The conditions and pressures were various but each of the three cases ended in the same wasted tragedy.

In each instance, there was a lack of perseverance – the failure of determination to stick with it and remain faithful despite the circumstances and opposition. Every time, the situation triumphed over the promise.

The Bible speaks extensively of the urgent need to persevere and The Perseverance of the Saints is a gloriously recurring and integrated theme throughout scripture and throughout the history of Christ’s Church. In Nave’s Topical Bible, the entry for Perseverance runs more than four pages, with biblical references from Genesis through Revelation.

And what is the entry just before Perseverance in this venerated reference work?

Persecution (six and a half pages).

Over and over again, we read that we shall prevail in our struggles of faith and life, “if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end” (Hebrews 3:6, KJV, emphasis added).

The writer says that you and I are “partakers of Christ”, sharing in his life and glory, “if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end” (Hebrews 3:14, KJV, emphasis added).

If we trust God “just as firmly as when we first believed” (NLT) – when faith was fresh, the sky was blue and the prospects for our journey glorious – before our first struggle in the swamp of temptation and despair.

Hard times come. They are part and parcel of the authentic Christian experience.

“If you follow Christ” wrote Charles Spurgeon, “you shall have all the dogs of the world yelping at your heels.”

You and I will not need more perseverance than the saints of old needed, but we may need more than we have needed until now.

The Christian has always had to endure “many dangers, toils and snares”.

Let us therefore remain “steadfast, unmovable” (I Corinthians 15:58, KJV).

Let us remember and avoid the tragedy of Pliable. And know that the grace that has led us thus far will take us to that far country – and our eternal home.

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June 4, 2017 · 8:38 pm

Answering TIME

It was very controversial.

The red border set off even more boldly the bold red type.

As did the plain black background.

The magazine had never produced a cover with no image. Ever, in its long illustrative history.

The large letters spelled three single-syllable words – all that appeared on this cover, except for the name:

Is God Dead?

Time magazine took a lot heat for its provocative April 8, 1966 issue, not only for the inside story posited by the question, but for the stark cover itself.

The Los Angeles Times, in a 2008 story, named the Is God Dead? cover one of “10 magazine covers that shook the world”.

The wording was taken from renowned German atheist Friedrich Nietzsche’s oft – quoted assertion that “God is dead” (German: ‘Gott ist tot’).

Given the cultural and moral disintegration of the 1960s, Time dared to ask the question.

Since 1966, we’ve come to see in America – and throughout the globe – that, to paraphrase Mark Twain, rumors of God’s death are “greatly exaggerated.”

Despite all that may assail it in the modern era, faith in God persists.

God’s not only alive and well; he’s active, loving, guiding and in full control of the universe, moral and otherwise. Nothing God has purposed is diminished by the declining belief in him, nor has he yet chosen to curtail humankind’s freedom to mock and minimize him – and to dismiss his worshipers as dangerous and superstitious threats to progress.

God remains patient and longsuffering – a Creator of infinite mercy and unfathomable grace.

There is, however, a price to be paid for man’s desire to be free of God.

Exactly 51 years after its infamous cover, on April 3, 2017, Time magazine produced another cover story. It was identical in every way to the one that asked Is God Dead?

There was the same red bold type and black background.

Is Truth Dead?

It makes tragic sense that a half century of redefining, debating and readjusting our relationship to God – of distancing ourselves from him in our national life – would lead us to this place. As society has marginalized the supernatural, we’ve lost our belief in – and appeal to – moral absolutes; inviolate principles rooted in transcendent truth.

Perhaps we like being on our own.

Last year, American voters, in what might be described as moral poetic justice, made a choice between two deeply flawed candidates.

Today in our nation’s capital confusion reigns. We are besieged by “alternative facts” and “fake news.” Dueling cable networks report opposing realities. Everybody shouts, nobody listens. Political daggers are permanently unsheathed amidst a torrent of angry recriminations.

Seldom has our nation seemed so unmoored from a unifying belief.

Departing from our Guide, who is all truth, we wander in a thickening dark forest of contradictory subjective truths, driven not by purpose but pettiness and passion.

We’re sitting in a crowded, rambunctious classroom and the Teacher’s just walked out.

Of ancient Israel, the prophet Isaiah drew a depressing and eerily familiar picture of national life:

“No one cares about being fair and honest … so there is no justice among us, and we know nothing about right living. We look for light but find only darkness. We look for bright skies but walk in gloom. We grope like the blind along a wall, feeling our way like people without eyes.

Even at brightest noontime, we stumble as though it were dark. Among the living, we are like the dead … we look for justice, but it never comes. We look for rescue, but it is far away from us” (Isaiah 59: 4, 9-11, NLT).

The “next election” ends up being a mirage – the ultimate collective self-deception.

What is the source of this national malaise? This anger, hatred, and deep division?

“We know we have rebelled and have denied the Lord. We have turned our backs on our God” (Isaiah 59: 13, NLT).

In the wake of the proud and willful defiance of our once cherished values, what becomes of our integrity?

“Truth stumbles in the streets, and honesty has been outlawed. Yes, truth is gone and anyone who renounces evil is attacked” (verse 14-15, NLT).

The history of western civilization has made the pattern clear and unmistakable.

What of Christians in our current culture?

Understanding the times must leave us neither helpless nor despaired. While we may mourn change we must also joyfully embrace the change we can be as followers of the risen Christ.

We have been placed in this generation not to conform or dismay but to hold forth the bright light of his countenance; to “shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:16, KJV).

We are the voice, the hands and the feet of him who proclaimed himself “the way, the truth and the life” (John 14:6, KJV).

We answer Time for all time:

Is God Dead?

No, he lives and reigns forever.

Is Truth Dead?

No, through Jesus Christ we can and will know the truth – and that is a very liberating experience.

What an exciting opportunity!

“That ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world” (Philippians 2:15, KJV).

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May 26, 2017 · 5:39 am

These Boys, These Men

He stood erect and stately in his crisp and perfectly-tailored dark blue suit.

The day was cloudy, the wind blew gently across the northern sea. It was a majestic setting, these high, sharp cliffs.

Those seated in front of him wore stoic countenances on their weathered faces.

Forty years ago, these men were young and filled with both terror and determination. The task before them was as dangerous as it was noble.

On that historic day, D-Day, their president had lifted them up in prayer on national radio before millions of their countrymen:

“Almighty God:

Our sons, pride of our nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt unashamedly beseeched the aid of God in the great and hazardous undertaking.

The stakes had never been higher.

The whole world stood poised on the precipice of darkness and ruin. Good and evil stood balanced and faced each other. The eyes of the nation united in looking unto Him Who alone rules in the affairs of men and holds the nations in His omnipotent hand as the small dust of the scales (Isaiah 40:15).

The praying president was humble and direct before the Creator of all the earth:

“They will need Thy blessings. Their road will be long and hard. For the enemy is strong. He may hurl back our forces … They will be sore tried, by night and by day, without rest – until the victory is won. The darkness will be rent by noise and flame. Men’s souls will be shaken with the violences of war.”

The president confessed the reality every parent of every soldier in every war dreads to face.

“Some will never return. Embrace these, Father, and receive them, Thy heroic servants, into Thy kingdom.”

FDR closed with a simple petition:

“Thy will be done, Almighty God. Amen”.

On June 6, 1984, standing on these cliffs on the northern shore of France where American soldiers had stormed ashore four decades earlier “to set free a suffering humanity”, President Ronald Reagan had come to salute those who had survived.

He was joined by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, Queen Beatrix of The Netherlands, King Olav V of Norway, King Baudouin I of Belgium, Grand Duke Jean of Luxembourg, and Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau of Canada.

In his clear and mellow voice, the President set the stage, as perhaps only an actor with a great speech writer – Peggy Noonan – could:

“We stand on a lonely, windswept point on the northern shore of France. The air is soft, but 40 years ago at this moment, the air was dense with smoke and the cries of men, and the air was filled with the crack of rifle fire and the roar of cannon.”

Reagan described what came next for the 225 Rangers who ran to the bottom of these cliffs at dawn that fateful day.

“Their mission was one of the most difficult and daring of the invasion: to climb these sheer and desolate cliffs and take out the enemy guns. The Allies had been told that some of the mightiest of these guns were here and they would be trained on the beaches to stop the Allied advance.”

The President spoke of how the men climbed up rope ladders amidst the German artillery fire descending from the summit. When one Ranger fell, another would take his place. When one rope was cut by the enemy, a Ranger would grab another and keep climbing.

“They climbed, shot back, and held their footing. Soon, one by one, the Rangers pulled themselves over the top, and in seizing the firm land at the top of these cliffs, they began to seize back the continent of Europe.”

After two days of undiminished perseverance, of the 225 who began the climb up the cliffs, only 90 could still fight.

Referring to the memorial behind him that honors their gallantry, President Reagan looked at the aged veterans. His voice filled with emotion, he said:

“These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who helped end a war.”

The old soldiers’ eyes glistened.

Reagan spoke to them:

“Forty summers have passed … You were young the day you took these cliffs; some of you were hardly more than boys …Yet, you risked everything here.

Why? Why did you do it? What impelled you to put aside the instinct for self-preservation and risk your lives to take these cliffs? What inspired all the men of the armies that met here?

We look at you, and somehow we know the answer. It was faith and belief; it was loyalty and love.”

Today, we also salute “the boys of Pointe du Hoc … the men who took the cliffs …” and all the men and women who have laid down their lives in the cause of freedom around the world.

The heroism that preserved liberty is the lasting legacy of a free republic.

Thank God for our soldiers, our sailors, our airmen. May we remember them always – and their heritage of sacrifice which is ours as a free people.

“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13, KJV).

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May 4, 2017 · 5:00 am

Abe’s Admonition

It came during dark days. It came in the midst of war.

War as we had never seen it, before or since.

It came to a nation bitterly divided.

The resolution had passed the United States Senate on the third of March. Now it was on the President’s desk for his signature. It called for A Day of National Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer.

The year was 1863. It was the third year of the Civil War.

President Abraham Lincoln had not grown up as a particularly devout man. In fact, early in his political career, he was forced to defend charges that he was an “open scoffer at Christianity.” Although the deaths of two sons, one just the previous year, had deepened Lincoln’s faith in Divine Providence, it could hardly have been said that the President was an avid practicing Christian, especially during the pious mid-nineteenth century. He had not, for example, joined any church, though he did occasionally attend a Presbyterian church in Washington.

Now, as the bloody conflict raged on and three months after signing the Emancipation Proclamation that officially ended slavery, Lincoln prepared to issue another presidential proclamation. He words were eloquent. They were also stark. The President, who never wore his religion on his sleeve and never pandered it to garner votes, spoke truth to power.

In his message, he revealed more spiritual insights and wisdom than many religious leaders – then or now.

Lincoln wrote that “nations, like individuals, are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world.” He argued that “the awful calamity of civil war, which now desolates the land, may be but a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins.” Lincoln revisited this theme of God’s judgment in his Second Inaugural Address.

“… inflicted upon us … “(emphasis added). The President was careful not to blame the South alone.

In this proclamation, he pointed out that America had been blessed with “the choicest bounties of Heaven” and “preserved these many years in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown.”

Then the President dropped the hammer.

“But we have forgotten God,” Lincoln wrote. “We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us.”

One might be tempted to think that Lincoln was familiar with the warning of Moses to the people of Israel found in the Book of Deuteronomy:

“For when you have become full and prosperous and have built fine homes to live in, and when your flocks and herds have become very large and your silver and gold have multiplied along with everything else, be careful! Do not become proud at that time and forget the LORD your God, who rescued you from slavery in the land of Egypt.” [Deut. 8:12 -14, NLT].

Like Moses, Lincoln laid the responsibility for national seriousness and remembering in the hands of the citizens themselves. Like an Old Testament prophet, he rebuked a forgetfulness brought on by the arrogance of success.

“…we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!”

If Lincoln wrote that in 1863, what would he say of us today?

The richest, greatest and most powerful nation on earth has neglected and trivialized worship, boasted of its own ingenuity and achievements, secularized Sunday and elevated and enriched those who those who are, to use Lincoln’s own term, “open scoffers at Christianity.” Our culture revels in debauchery and our national government continues to legislatively legitimize all manner of sexual immorality and – in the name of freedom – approves a virulent hostility toward religion.

Never in our history have we been more materially rich and spiritually destitute. It’s been aptly observed:

“We worship our work, work at our play, and play at our worship.”

Lincoln was a leader who understood and respected the power and holiness of a sovereign God Who had his own way with nations – even one as great as the United States. He had suffered tragic personal loss and had seen bloodshed on a massive scale. He knew it was a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

Today, May 4, is the National Day of Prayer. God tells us that national healing and spiritual renewal begin with “my people, who are called by my Name” [II Chronicles 7:14].

Christians should be the very first to heed Lincoln’s call:

“It behooves us then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.”

Let this be our prayer for America.

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April 28, 2017 · 10:44 pm

Intimate

“It is an absolute human certainty,” wrote John Joseph Powell in his book, The Secret of Staying in Love, “that no one can know his own beauty or perceive a sense of his own worth until it has been reflected back to him in the mirror of another loving, caring human being.”

To know, and to be known, is the greatest feeling you and I can ever have.

It is the secret of the truly satisfying life – the key that unlocks all our longings, the assurance of our embrace and acceptance, the heart and soul of our identity.

Nothing saddens us more than the sense that no one knows us – the isolation, loneliness and despair of being alone, even when we’re not.

Nothing gives us more hope and confidence and sheer joy than knowing, at the end of each day, that there is at least one other who understands us and loves us for who we are – and in spite of what we’re not.

Here is the essence of love without condition – to know and to still love. It is not to overlook, as is often thought, but rather to see clearly and honestly and then to love. It is not the denial of reality but the triumph of the heart.

In the most beautiful description of love ever penned, Paul the apostle tells us of a love greater than mere sentiment. He writes not of a pliable emotion but an enduring commitment. Not an easy ignorance but a knowing loyalty.

This is muscular devotion that knows and presses on:

“Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (I Corinthians 13:4-7, NKJV).

“Love never gives up … “(NLT).

This is not the shallow sensuous nonsense of Reality TV, with its flittering suitors. It is the ancient sacred vows.

Vows that acknowledge the hidden challenges of an unknown future and the inspired love strong enough to endure them – and deep enough to grow through them.

A love that fails not but bears out the victory.

This is agape. This is God’s love.

This love is based on two eternal and immutable, yet seemingly contradictory, truths:
God’s intimate knowledge and his undying compassion.

David knew God knew him – inside out, to every dark corner – and loved him still. David knew too that God loved him the most when he deserved it the least.

From this awareness of divine intimacy, the shepherd psalmist who became king wrote the incomparable 139th Psalm. Has there ever been a more beautiful description of God’s continual presence and abiding faithfulness?

“O Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me,” David confesses in verse one. The psalmist proceeds to tell of all the different times and situations in which God knew, understood and cared.

“You know everything about me” (NLT).

God sees him when he moves and when he’s still; when he speaks and when he remains silent. God knows David’s innermost thoughts. God is everywhere: “You go before me and follow me” (Psalm 139:5, NLT).

He’s closer than David’s shadow.

David admits this divine knowledge of his intimacy is “too wonderful for me, too great for me to understand!” (verse 6, NLT).

Everywhere David goes – every place he might go if he could – God is there.
“Whither shall I go from thy spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy presence?” (verse 7, KJV).

To the heavens, God is there. To the grave, God is there. If David could fly with “the wings of the morning” to the farthest oceans, even there God is present, alert and fully engaged.
Even if David wanted to hide from God, he knows it would futile.

He doesn’t.

For David knows that wherever he goes, “even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me” (verse 10, KJV). It is the presence of God that protects and guides him.

After acknowledging the intimacy of God in time and space, David exults in praise over God’s creative intimacy.

“I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (verse 14, KJV).

David describes the hidden knowledge of God; his exquisite detailed workmanship of body and soul. God had “knit me together in my mother’s womb” (verse 13, NLT).

David marvels at the beauty and perfection of the divine design. God saw David, and knew him intimately, even “when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth … and in thy book all my members were written” (verse 15, KJV).

“… as if embroidered with various colors” (The Amplified Bible).

David’s own worth is reflected in the glorious mirror of God’s intimate knowledge of him and of God’s care and compassion – his endless and unchanging agape.

“How precious are your thoughts about me, O God. They cannot be numbered!” (verse 17, NLT).

The best thing of all?

“And when I wake up, you are still with me!” (verse 18, NLT).

How wonderful to know that the God who knew and loved David so intimately is our own intimate God.

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