my upcoming birthday

Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too. (Philippians 2:3-4)

I was just talking to someone on Facebook about my upcoming birthday. 62 years old. It is truly hard to envision myself that age, yet I am. In spades.

I feel it too. Especially in the changing of the weather. My arthritis is speaking up. It started a few years ago and is beginning to come out in a large measure.

62 years is a fairly long time. Twelve presidents in that time. Music underwent a total revolution in my lifetime, as did society in general. A lot of things happened, and not that many for the better.

At the risk of sounding like old people always have, the world into which I was born was a lot better world than the one I live in now. The older I get, the more raw and rough our society becomes.

But 62 years old. That means my wife is 60. I still think of her in her 20’s or maybe 30’s. and I tend to think of myself in my 30’s or 40’s. But I am not. And I feel every year of my age today.

I am not sure I like what I have become. I guess most men say that, or at least a lot of them do. Things happened when I was younger that I should have turned left instead of turning right at. There were places in time that I took the wrong road. And I wish I could change it.

I did take the road less traveled, as Robert Frost wrote. I became a minister. There really are not a lot of those. In the denomination in which I started, most ministers quit before they get in their 50’s anyway, so I have outlasted most of them. Of course, I left that denomination when I was in my mid forties so I suppose it doesn’t count.

The denominations I came into had a lot of older pastors which was encouraging at the time. Again, of course, I found out that so many of them were not doing well in their older age.

And I am not. We are broke and homeless right now, living with my daughter, counting pennies. It is not what I thought I would be doing at this age. So many others are retiring now. I, on the other hand, am just about burned out and don’t really know where I am going or what I will do with the rest of my life.

It would not be so hard, I suppose, if it were not for the depression it engenders.

Someone the other night at the ladies meeting mentioned my desire to help people, to feed people, that it seemed to be a ministry of mine. In the last two churches, both of which I was at briefly, the church had no desire for that. They expected me to do what they wanted and to keep up Pentecostalism and the style it demanded in their minds.

I didn’t and was thrown away. And I sit here on this life refuse heap like Job wondering what is next, what will happen to me, to us, how we will live. I look around every day trying to figure out what I can sell, but I have little or nothing to sell. We drive a broken down vehicle, and live in a borrowed bedroom.

It is not hard in this situation to think of others as better than me. They are. In fact, most are.

My wife loves me and for that I am grateful. She lives where I am and is with me.

I suppose God is with me, although he has not shown himself to me in a while. He surely made a lot of promises when I was younger that so far have not come to pass. That is, of course, if they were promises and not just wishful thinking on my part.

I sure am tired. I sleep a lot.

God be praised in all his glory. Let your glory shine on me. Touch me with your grace and your glory and let me feel your presence. Please.

daily java

Daily Java:

No longer will you need the sun to shine by day,
      nor the moon to give its light by night,
   for the Lord your God will be your everlasting light,
      and your God will be your glory.
 Your sun will never set;
      your moon will not go down.
   For the Lord will be your everlasting light.
      Your days of mourning will come to an end. (Isaiah 60:19-20)

There is a perspective the Christian has that the world cannot understand, and it both frightens and makes the people without that perspective mad,

That perspective is the presence of God in your life.

It is like trying to imagine what it would be like not married to Ella. We have been married now for over forty years. I love her, but even more, she is a constant in my life. I really cannot imagine a life without her.

The same with God. I gave my life to him December 13, 1959 at the Freeport Church of Christ in Freeport, TX, when I was ten years old. I will be 62 years old in a couple of weeks. That is 52 years I have spent with my Lord.

Some of those years have been bad where I was trying to be an idiot. But most of them I have felt his presence strongly. Actually, even when I was being an idiot, I still felt his presence drawing me back. But he has been there in my life for a long time.

And I think about what it will be like in heaven where there is no pain or problems. I see it as being literally like it is figuratively here on earth. He will be the sun and the moon. His glory will be ever present, an everlasting light.

He is that way now. I can no more imagine a life without him than I can imagine a life without breath. He has been a part of me for so long that there is no real way he could not be a part of me.

He is my sun and my moon, my everlasting light that guides my way. And even though things happen to me that are bad, even thought there is sorrow and pain, there is no reason to mourn. He gives me joy and peace that I could not have without him.

Even though friends may leave and even though the church itself may turn from me and hurt me, I will still love him. He is my constant and perfect companion.

He is my God and I will ever serve him, now and through eternity.

daily java

Daily Java:

I trust that my life will bring honor to Christ, whether I live or die. For to me, living means living for Christ, and dying is even better. But if I live, I can do more fruitful work for Christ. So I really don’t know which is better. I’m torn between two desires: I long to go and be with Christ, which would be far better for me. But for your sakes, it is better that I continue to live. (Philippians 1:20-24)

I have come to the point in my life that I am ready to go. Dying looks more and more appealing to me as I get older. It is not a desire for suicide, but just a desire to be finished.

I suppose that it is a combination of things in my life, but I am ready for God to take me. And if it were not for the fact that my wife would be left alone, I would like it soon.

The apostle Paul felt this same way. He had gone through so much hassle in his life that he was ready to be through.

He had been persecuted, beaten, opposed everywhere he went, almost died at times and he would like to have been through.

Yet he knew that the church needed him. He was, after all, one of the apostles who would teach the Gentiles, who would bring the grace and message of God to the part of the world that many of the first century preachers wouldn’t touch.

He knew his life was important to the cause of Jesus. But at the same time he was tired.

Tiredness has stopped more people than anything else. That works especially when tiredness is combined with discouragement. The combination is hard to stand up under.

I have always wondered how Jesus would have been different if he had gone for longer than three years in his ministry. Three years is not that long. As a pastor of almost forty years, three years is just a moment. It really is hard to get very discouraged in just three years.

Of course, he was so active in those three years that it was almost like flaming out. Like many people who die young from the flameout character of their lives, Jesus couldn’t last long.

He made people mad enough in just three years to want to kill him, there really is no way that he could have lasted for much longer.

Long term discouragement is the one thing he could to have suffered. He had friends turn on him, try to use him, do stupid things to him – all these are things that happen to ministers on a regular basis. But he never had time to really get discouraged.

He even knew fear, real gut wrenching fear. You can see that in the Garden of Gethsemane when he asked God if there was any way he could not have to go through what he knew was coming.

He knew loneliness, desertion, deprivation – but never discouragement or despair. One could argue that if Jesus didn’t feel them, they are not valid emotions. But people who make such assertions usually do not know what they are talking about.

Discouragement is why most pastors quit. It brings depression, it brings a sense of futility, it works its way under the skin until it has taken over your whole life.

But there comes a point in each minister’s life when he says that he is ready. Come, Lord Jesus.

i am an advocate of the simple life

The Kingdom of God is not just a lot of talk; it is living by God’s power. (Ephesians 4:20)

I i. The simple life is a life lived free of stuff. It does not always work out for us, but we try to keep our stuff at a minimum.

When I was younger, I went through a time when I was really concerned with what I wore and what I drove. There was a period that I felt compelled to drive only “cool” cars.

The same with what I wore. I went through a period where my ties had to be just so or my clothes had to be just so. But, as I got older, it just didn’t matter as much.

Even so, I have never been one who put undue emphasis on the brands of things. I never felt compelled to wear name brand clothes. I liked Levis because they fit well, but in general, it didn’t matter.

The same with cars. I drive a 1995 Ford Aerostar van that has over 200K on the speedometer. It runs fine and I bought it for $100 five years ago.

It is a minivan, which isn’t cool, and is older, which isn’t either. But it fits us and I can put Ella’s scooter in the back easily and still carry people with me if I want to.

As I drive it, I wear mostly sale or thrift store clothes. I pay more for my shoes but that is because I have such bad feet.

But in general, it doesn’t matter what I drive or what I wear, as long as it fits.

My furniture is the same. It is all serviceable and in good shape, but is nothing fancy. I have an old TV that has a 27 inch screen, one of the old style tube kind and watch a lot of  my movies on VCR, as long as they are widescreen.

My family eats well, but I am an inveterate budget shopper and can buy more food for less money that anyone I have ever known. I buy marked down meat and whatever is on sale. I am the kind of shopper that grocery stores hate, since I buy almost all sale items and buy from several stores.

Since I love cheese, I wait until it goes on a great sale and then buy several packages of shredded and freeze it. Shredded cheese will freeze well whereas block will not.

There are times when it seems that I have a knack for buying things at a great price. None of my clothes cost that much because I buy them off season. Both Dillard’s and JCPenney’s have big and tall departments that put their stuff on great sale at the end of the season. Since I am 6’3” and 280 lbs, that matters to me. I only buy classic things, things that look good on me (inasmuch as I can look good) and that will last.

My jeans I buy at WalMart, as I do the rest of my stuff. But nothing in my closet except for the suit cost more than $15. And most of it was far less.

The point is that it takes a lot less to live on that people think. I always dressed my family from thrift stores. I have a couple of basic principles when I buy stuff there.

1. I buy only things that look good or new. I will not buy silly things that are worn out.
2. I only buy things that fit. There is no greater waste of money than things that do not fit.

Because of these two principles, my kids and my wife always look well-dressed. All of my suits except for one and all of my blazers came from thrift stores. You can find great things there that if you did not tell people, they would never know they came from a thrift store.

We do not eat out much, mainly due to finances. But quite frankly, we probably wouldn’t anyway. Except for Chinese food, I can cook anything we get at a restaurant about as well.

Again, the point is I absolutely refuse to spend a lot of money on things I can buy cheaper. Some would call that cheap, others thrifty. I prefer the word judicious. I am judicious as to how I spend my money. I do not have much and will not waste it.

On the other hand, we have a house full of good furniture, a closet full of good clothes and a refrigerator full of good food.

That is part of living by God’s power. As another translation says, the kingdom of God is not by food or drink, but power. There are better things in life than stuff.

I would rather get to heaven and find my treasure there than in stuff that burns up here.

The power comes in the divorcing of oneself from the world and in living full lives in him.

If I had all the money I wanted, what would I do? I honestly do not know. Probably buy a motorcycle, a Harley, and a new mini-van.

But I do not. There are some things I would like to have, but I live quite well without them.

i should have been killed

Lead a life worthy of your calling, for you have been called by God. (Ephesians 4:1)

October of 1971. I was I was 22 years old, fresh out of the army and freshly married, and working for Bell Telephone in Houston, TX, taking money out of pay phones. It was a good job for a young man. You got to go everywhere. Everybody, no matter how fancy or ordinary, if they had a business, they had a pay phone.

And my job was taking the money out of them, putting it into a big barrel kind of thing in the back of a step van and taking it back to the central office over on Polk Street in downtown Houston.

It was a sunny afternoon in October, a beautiful day. I was driving along the Gulf Freeway south of Houston coming back from Texas City, just about completely loaded with coins. These were mostly dimes and nickels as phone calls were 10 cents. The truck was really heavy.

All of a sudden, there was an old gray truck in front of me and I swerved to avoid him and went into the median, bouncing end over end. The whole time the accident was happening, I was holding onto the steering wheel thinking, Wow!

When I came to, the step van was lying on the driver’s side, the engine was lying on the driver’s seat and I was standing on the engine. I have no idea how I came to that position. If I had been wearing a seat belt, I would be dead, crushed by the engine.

I jumped up to the top of the van (I had both adrenaline and youth on my side – I was 22) and there was a crowd of people looking at me as if I were Lazarus come back from the dead. No one expected the driver to even be alive, much less mobile.

I leaped down and everyone gathered around me to see if I was a ghost or something.

I had glass in my hand, a small bump on my forehead, a tiny cut on my back at the beltline and the right bellbottom of my pants cut off. That is all.

The truck was demolished and I was barely touched. Everyone wanted me to sit and I didn’t. I was too pumped. Soon a 1965 Ford Country Squire station wagon came up and I said, there’s my mother. A weird looking guy got out who had the same hairdo as my mother. The people around looked at him and then at me and began to encourage me to sit down again. Again I refused.

A tow truck guy (who must have been following me on spec) bandaged my hand and took me to the office.

On the way, my father pulled up beside me in his dark blue Houston Lighting and Power car. The phone company had called my wife who called my mother who got my father on his radio and he came to find me. he figured, how many demolished phone company trucks would be going up the freeway so he didn’t figure it would that hard.

I turned to the tow truck driver and said, there’s my father. He truly didn’t know what to do since I had already seen my mother (who wasn’t). I finally convinced him to pull over (in fact I had to threaten him) and my father came up to the tow truck. Needless to say, the tow truck driver was relieved. My father took me to the hospital.

Forty years ago this next month. I destroyed the truck  I was driving and I was barely hurt.

I have always felt the Lord had a reason for me to survive. I just hope I have not disappointed him.

daily java

Daily Java:

Seek the Lord while you can find him.
      Call on him now while he is near. (Isaiah 55:6)

Have you ever waited too late to take advantage of something? A sale, an offer from a friend for something, pursuing a job opportunity?

You wait, thinking that it will be there when you get ready and then when you go to look at it again, it is gone.

Everything has an expiration date, even the offer of salvation from God. There will come a time when you can no longer accept it.

The Bible is pretty explicit when it says call on him while he is near, look for him while youc an still find him. One day, it will be too late if you do not.

One day you will die. And when you die, the offer of grace will be closed. That is the unforgivable sin that Jesus talks about. In Mark 3:28-29, he says: I tell you the truth, all sin and blasphemy can be forgiven, but anyone who blasphemes the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven. This is a sin with eternal consequences.

There will come a time when you will have blasphemed the Holy Spirit, turned your back on the grace of God, refused the final time to accept his offer of love.

When it does, and you have died, there are no more offers. He has closed the chance to accept him.

What can you do then? Nothing. You have refused to call on him.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. You do not have to be lost, you do not have to be outside his grace.

The apostle Peter said this same thing in 2 Peter 3:8-10: But you must not forget this one thing, dear friends: A day is like a thousand years to the Lord, and a thousand years is like a day. The Lord isn’t really being slow about his promise, as some people think. No, he is being patient for your sake. He does not want anyone to be destroyed, but wants everyone to repent. But the day of the Lord will come as unexpectedly as a thief. Then the heavens will pass away with a terrible noise, and the very elements themselves will disappear in fire, and the earth and everything on it will be found to deserve judgment.

God never made hell for us. He made it as a place for the devil and his angels to reside (2 Peter 2:4). He never wanted us to go there.

But it is where those who refuse to accept God go. If they refuse to accept his grace and his love, they cannot go to be with him, so they go to be without him.

Don’t wait too long. Call on him now.

the end times will come when they are ready

While Peter and John were speaking to the people, they were confronted by the priests, the captain of the Temple guard, and some of the Sadducees. These leaders were very disturbed that Peter and John were teaching the people that through Jesus there is a resurrection of the dead. They arrested them and, since it was already evening, put them in jail until morning. But many of the people who heard their message believed it, so the number of believers now totaled about 5,000 men, not counting women and children. (Acts 4:1-4)

Persecution has been happening to the church since Acts chapter four, not all that long after the church began.

But Americans are running scared that it is the last days. And the reason? Because it is happening to the American church.

Look at the world. all over the world people are dying for Jesus. And they have been dying for Jesus since the church began.

But the American church has always enjoyed a sort of immunity from persecution. Nothing much bad has ever happened to its members. They have floated along in a “Christian nation” and nothing bad has ever happened.

Then came the 1960’s with the questioning of authority. Little by little the favored position the American church enjoyed for a couple of centuries began to erode. The church began to lose ground and when it did, it began to be persecuted.

Of course, the persecution was not the same as the rape squads in the middle east or the gladiators in ancient Rome. But even so, persecution began.

Prayer began to be limited, morality was loosed, the schools began to ignore Christian principles, the church began to be ridiculed by celebrities. And when all this happened, the American church joined the sad fraternity of countries who were not Christian.

The rest of the world had always felt that persecution. But when the American church began to do so, they saw it as the end of time. We are having trouble, therefore the church is having troubles.

The problem was, the American church always saw itself as the favored people of God. When they lost that, they began to see all of the prophecies in the Bible as pointing to them. It became an arrogant Christianity. It was the idea that we are the greatest bunch of Christians that ever came along so when we suffer, the end of the world is near.

Sadly enough, there has been persecution since Acts 4 and after America is gone and the American church is gone, there will still be God and his church. And there will be future persecution for that future church.

God didn’t tell Jesus when he was going to come back.  In Matthew 24:35-36, Jesus said: Heaven and earth will disappear, but my words will never disappear. However, no one knows the day or hour when these things will happen, not even the angels in heaven or the Son himself. Only the Father knows.

What does that mean? It means that if you can tell it is the end times by looking at current events and seeing prophecies and all, you are doing more than God would allow Jesus to do. Even Jesus didn’t know when he was coming back.

Prophecies are good, but you cannot see what Jesus could not see no matter how good you are at reading prophecies.

Yes, this is the end times. It has been the end times since the former times ended at the cross.

But because it is the end times does not necessarily mean Jesus is coming again in the next few years. He may or he may not. If he does it will be because God decided and not because somebody read a prophecy right.

In other words, don’t worry about it. 1 Thessalonians 5:4 says

But you aren’t in the dark about these things, dear brothers and sisters, and you won’t be surprised when the day of the Lord comes like a thief. 

2 Peter 3:9-11 says:

But the day of the Lord will come as unexpectedly as a thief. Then the heavens will pass away with a terrible noise, and the very elements themselves will disappear in fire, and the earth and everything on it will be found to deserve judgment. 

Revelation 3:3 says:

Go back to what you heard and believed at first; hold to it firmly. Repent and turn to me again. If you don’t wake up, I will come to you suddenly, as unexpected as a thief. 

Revelation 16:15

Look, I will come as unexpectedly as a thief! Blessed are all who are watching for me, who keep their clothing ready so they will not have to walk around naked and ashamed.

The Lord, when he comes, will come as a thief with no warning.

daily java

Daily Java:

He looked out across the plain toward Sodom and Gomorrah and watched as columns of smoke rose from the cities like smoke from a furnace. But God had listened to Abraham’s request and kept Lot safe, removing him from the disaster that engulfed the cities on the plain. (Genesis 19:28-30)

Imagine being the only good man in your whole city. Everybody is bad. Everybody has turned from God. Everybody is evil and sinful and full of debauchery.

It seemed like such a good place when you first came. Abraham, your uncle, gave you the choice of where to go and your chose Sodom. It was a beautiful place, a place you could make a home in.

You stayed because you thought that you might make some difference. Maybe some day you could break through the barriers and bring the knowledge of God.

But you know now that you never will. And worse of all, you see your family corrupted by the ever-present evil, your daughters have married men that are no good and are rapidly becoming that way themselves. Your influence on them, while still strong, is waning. Even your wife is succumbing to the pervasive evil.

You don’t know what to do. You are at an impasse. On the one hand, Sodom is your home. Everything you have is here. On the other hand, it has ceased to be your home. Nothing you are is in common with what they are.

Then two men come to your door and you invite them in, just as you were taught to do. The men of the city find out they are here and want them to come out so they can destroy them with their perversions. You even find yourself offering your daughters to them, much to your shame, but for whatever reason, they want the two men.

What do you do? You can leave everything behind. All you have worked for and achieved you can just leave. Or you can stay and die with these people you don’t even like, these people you have grown to loathe.

The two visitors, men you are beginning to suspect are more than just men, pull you in just in time before the men of Sodom hurt you and break into your home. The men of Sodom are blinded and the two men tell you to leave. Take nothing with you except your wife and two daughters and leave the city. Don’t even look back. Just go.

You run. And your daughters and wife protest but they run with you. The Lord agrees that you can go to a small village nearby, but when you reach it, your wife looks back and turns into a pillar of salt.

In grief you stay there with your daughters. They are angry at leaving all their friends and their husbands and you are in grief over not only the loss of your home, but your wife.

And then to top it all off, your daughters, who are convinced that they are some of the few people left in the world decide to get you drunk and get pregnant by you.

Yet you retain your trust in God. All you know and love is gone, but you remain faithful to God.

nothing but the word of our God lasts

A voice said, “Shout!”
      I asked, “What should I shout?”
“Shout that people are like the grass.
      Their beauty fades as quickly
           as the flowers in a field.
      The grass withers and the flowers fade
          beneath the breath of the Lord.
      And so it is with people.
 The grass withers and the flowers fade,
         but the word of our God stands forever.” (Isaiah 40:6-8)

Forty years ago, I had been out of the army for about a month. Civilian life was still new and exciting to me.

Since I was a draftee, I still had a couple of years of reserve left. I didn’t want to do it, but then again, there was nothing I could do about it.

I showed up for reserve the first month with my new muttonchop sideburns. No one cared that I was there, no one noticed me. I left and went home and never went again.

And I grew my sideburns and mustache long along with my hair.

Forty years ago. That is four decades. And in many ways it seems like yesterday.

We lived in an apartment on Lawndale St in Houston, TX. I worked for Bell Telephone and Ella had a job with Transcontinental Gas Pipeline Corp. We were having a good time.

The old song says, “Those were the days, my friend, we thought they’d never end, we’d sing and dance forever and a day.” It seemed like it would go on forever.

Still newly married (January of that year), still reveling in the new familiarity that was the United States after a year and a half in Germany for me, six months for Ella. Stores were open late (they closed at five in Germany), hamburgers were huge, all the stuff. It was just plain fun.

Forty years ago.

So what do I tell my kids? What do I tell kids in general?

I tell them people are like grass. I tell them the grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of our God stands forever. That’s what I tell them. Things that seemed so permanent are gone. And America has changed so massively, and not for the better.

Nothing but the word of our God lasts. Nothing but his love and grace are eternal.

Of course, when you are young, and the blood runs hot in your veins, you don’t think of the temporality of life. You are invulnerable. You cannot die. You are strong and healthy and full of life.

September of 1971. My hair was getting longer, I had traded fatigues for bellbottoms, I was making friends and driving fast and just in general having a good time. “In the Year 2525” and “Admiral Halsey” were on the radio, Nixon was president, gas in Houston was less than twenty cents a gallon and we were feeling fine.

But – beauty fades as quickly as the flowers in a field. The grass withers and the flowers fade beneath the breath of the Lord.

Stuff stops being so easy and you get older. You get tired, arthritis replaces good muscles, you get cataracts, yada yada.

Unfortunately, like it was with Isaiah, people do not want to hear that things will change. And sometimes I cannot tell them.

But it surely is true.

daily java

Daily Java:

Who among you fears the Lord
      and obeys his servant?
If you are walking in darkness,
      without a ray of light,
   trust in the Lord
      and rely on your God.
But watch out, you who live in your own light
      and warm yourselves by your own fires.
This is the reward you will receive from me:
      You will soon fall down in great torment. (Isaiah 50:10-11)

The old 60’s expression, “If it feels good do it.” Doing things on the power of your own wisdom and your own thought.

There was a song in the 70’s which had the line, “How can it be wrong, when it feels so right.” It was a very popular song. In essence, it says, if I think it is good, it is good.

Living life by your own light. Isaiah said here in this passage that living by your own light, warming by your own fires -–all leads to destruction.

Jeremiah 17:9-10 says The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is? But I, the Lord, search all hearts and examine secret motives. I give all people their due rewards, according to what their actions deserve.
When we try to apply our own ideas to how life should be lived, we are using a flawed measure. We are too close to the situation and cannot see all of the ramifications. Only God can see the whole picture. Only he can provide an objective measure.

His word, as the Psalmist said, is a lamp to our feet and a light to our paths. Any time we try to live by our own ideas, we fall.

Our light, our fires seem so substantial. But the funny thing is, the older you get, the more those things you thought were so great, so powerful, turn out to be so small.

What is of massive importance to you are 25 is not at 65, or even many times at 35.

Life changes and the perspectives around it change. But God doesn’t. And his guidance is always going to be good. He will always lead you right.

daily java

Daily Java:

However, he has given each one of us a special gift through the generosity of Christ. That is why the Scriptures say, “When he ascended to the heights, he led a crowd of captives and gave gifts to his people.” Notice that it says “he ascended.” This clearly means that Christ also descended to our lowly world. And the same one who descended is the one who ascended higher than all the heavens, so that he might fill the entire universe with himself. Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ. This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ (Ephesians 4:11-13)

God gave us gifts. It is hard to imagine the God of the Universe giving us stuff, but he did. And the gifts he gave us are many. He talks about them at length in this book of Ephesians.

But then the apostle Paul says that God gave gifts to the church. He gave the gifts of leaders.

It really is hard to imagine the fact that the things pastors, teachers, evangelists and other leaders do is a gift from God to the church, but it is.

And he says he gave the gifts of leaders for one main purpose: to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church.

Leaders were given the gift of leadership, and then they themselves were given as gifts to the church. Pastors and teachers are gifts to the church.

I suppose it is striking to me because I see how churches treat their leaders. They do not treat them well. Instead of gifts, they are treated more like employees or hired hands, people expected to do the bidding of the church.

They are not. They are ultimately responsible to God and as such, do what he wants.

One of the major denominations has a clause in its bylaws that says:

The pastor is God’s gift to the church; the board is the church’s gift to the pastor.

In other words, God gives the pastor to the church to lead the church into great things. The board is the church’s response to the gift of the pastor to help him lead and to support him in what he does.

Unfortunately it is not that way. The board sees the pastor as an employee whose job it is to keep the church happy and to uphold their traditions. And in so doing, they negate that gift from God and throw it back into his face.

Harsh words, but true.

If the pastor is God’s gift, if teachers are God’s gift, if evangelists or apostles or prophets are gifts from God, they are holy. Yes, they are people, men and women just like everybody else. However, their function, their calling, their office is far different from anyone else.

In 1 Samuel 24:6, King Saul is chasing David, the newly crowned king to kill him. He figures if he can kill David, God will have no other choice but to let his family continue as rulers. David has a chance to kill Saul and his men urge him to take it. But he won’t. He said, “The Lord forbid that I should do this to my lord the king and attack the Lord’s anointed one, for the Lord himself has chosen him.”

Even though King Saul was corrupt and had gone bad, still David recognized that he had been a gift from God to Israel to be its king. And since he was from God, he was not to be harmed. Whatever his state, he was at one time touched by the holy hand of God.

It does not matter what you may think of your pastor. He is there because God wants him there. If you hurt him, or denigrate him or degrade him in any way, God will hold you accountable.

He cannot do what God told him to do if you do not let him. And if he cannot do what God told him to do because of you, you will be responsible for the harm done to the church. There are no two ways about it. Hurt the pastor and you have gone against the will of God.

Again, harsh words, but true.

the church as community

All the believers met together in one place and shared everything they had. They sold their property and possessions and shared the money with those in need. They worshiped together at the Temple each day, met in homes for the Lord’s Supper, and shared their meals with great joy and generosity – all the while praising God and enjoying the goodwill of all the people. And each day the Lord added to their fellowship those who were being saved. (Acts 2:44-47)

We went to the mall in Columbia yesterday. As I was walking around it dawned on me why I like to go to the mall.

We went a lot in Lincoln. It was close and it was free and I got to sit and look at people and also walk around in an are where the wind wasn’t blowing 30 mph or it wasn’t 30 degrees below zero. Those are not fun and a place to get me out of them is good.

But as I walked around, I was looking at all the people and I felt a sense, although admittedly artificial, of community.

That is what malls bring: community. They are the new main street in our culture today. In a small town, people still gather downtown and sit and talk. But in a larger town, they do not.

The mall provides that sense of community. But as I was there, it dawned on me that I would rather be with other Christians doing something. It dawned on me that we do not do enough stuff together as Christians.

I used to read the blog of a man in another town, I believe Cleveland, it has been a while. He and his wife both died of cancer.

But he had a ministry in downtown in a large two story storefront. He had made it into a community. It was a church, and a coffeehouse, and a library and a visiting and meeting place for his group.

He and his family lived on the second floor. He made the comment that no matter what time of night or day, he could go downstairs and there would be someone to talk to, someone to visit with.

It sounded great and I tried my level best to achieve that end in the town where I planted a church. It didn’t work for me. But it did for him.

As I was walking through the mall, I told Ella that the model he had given was exactly what I thought church should be. We just do not get together enough. We do not hang around together enough. We really do not know each other that well to want to hang around together.

It is a shame. After all that is what Christians do. They hang around together.

And it is the hanging around together that makes them strong. It is impossible to be connected to people you do not know, at least not in any real meaningful sense.

We do not hang around together enough. There ought to be some situation, some place we can go almost any time and find people there.

I remember at one church I pastored, for a while people just hung around the church. Someone made the comment that you never knew who was going to be there. And it was great.

Sure it is hard for the pastor to get any studying done, but there are more important things than having a well put together sermon. There is life and association and being together. There is bonding and hanging around together. There is getting to know each other. There is being connected on a level greater than Sunday or even Wednesday.

We do not have a Wednesday service so we go from Sunday to Sunday without seeing those who are supposed to be our spiritual family. We do have the two Sunday meetings and that is good. At the evening class thing, we always have something to eat and it is highly informal which brings out a lot of great interchange among each other.

But there is still Monday through Saturday.

That sure is a void in our association. And I just miss people, Christian people. I also kind of hate to have to go to the mall to get that sense of community, and an artificial one at that.

daily java

Daily Java:

Don’t envy evil people
      or desire their company.
For their hearts plot violence,
      and their words always stir up trouble. (Proverbs 24:1-2)

I read a couple of websites to see what people in Holly wood are doing. Both are conservative websites that do not glorify Hollywood or the actors and actresses. I want to know something about our culture but I do not want to be trapped in it.

But I cannot help noticing the absolute adulation in which America seems to hold these people. They are adored and loved and almost worshiped. If they go somewhere, there are hundreds of people there to watch them go eat dinner, or go shopping or go to a movie. If they buy something, everybody else wants it too.

People adore them. And I really cannot figure out why. Maybe it is some personality deficit I have that doesn’t make me want to swarm over them.

But at the same time, I have an inordinate amount of curiosity. Occasionally when I watch a movie or hear a singer or something, I will wonder about that person. So I go to imdb.com and see who they are, a little bit about them.

Invariably, I am depressed when I am finished. Chances are they are the kind of person I would not walk across the street to talk to. They are the kind of person that would never like me nor I them. We would have nothing to do with each other if we met in real life.

In fact, there are times when I despise them. And it impacts the movie I am watching or the performance I am hearing. Some of my favorite actors, when I read more about them, came to absolutely turn me off to their movies.

Some of my favorite actors and actresses and singers, too, I have grown to dislike intensely. When I see them or hear them, it requires quite a suspension of belief to enjoy them in the role.

Maybe they have come out hard and heavy against the things I hold dear. So many “celebrities” think that since people like them and they are good at pretending to be other people or good at singing, they have opinions that are worth trumpeting.

They do not. Simply because a person is a good actor or a good singer does not mean that I want to hear them come out in public with strong pronouncements against what I hold dear.

I remember watching a rerun of the Monkees a few years ago. At the end, they brought out the group and asked them what they thought on various topics. One was Vietnam. Their answers were a hoot. It was obvious they had no real opinions. These were actors who pretended to play and sing on a TV show. They came out as stupid.

Just a couple of days ago, one of my all time favorite singers came out with the notion that 9/11 was our fault. The people we were bombing asked us to stop so when we didn’t, we deserved 9/11. This man was in his 80’s and had spent his life building a reputation and a following.

With me he almost killed it. He recognized that he had hurt his image and came out with a vague apology.

Another singer I have enjoyed since I was a teenager came out with a really stupid insult to the former president, one that was not only untrue, but uncalled for. And he hurt his fan base. I read about it for a long time, and when I see him now, I think about it.

Most people in Hollywood have become corrupted by the power and glory that comes with success. If they were not sorry people when they came, they become that pretty soon.

Proverbs says, do not fawn over them, don’t prefer them over good people. In general, people in Hollywood are really not that great. If they are not corrupted, they will be. And event hose who I see remaining above the fray, sooner or later will give out some boneheaded comment, thinking that because they are popular, they are also smart.

It takes a certain ability to pretend to be other people on the screen. And one of the requirements is to not have that much inside yourself. That way you can absorb another persona easily.

In fact, most actors are playing a role all the time. Usually, when they find their center, their character type, they will play that all the time. John Wayne will be John Wayne 24/7. The same with Clint Eastwood, Audrey Hepburn, Harrison Ford, Kurt Russell – the list goes on.

These are not people to emulate. They are really people to stay away from. I watch them in movies, but I am careful not to get absorbed in the person, just the character.

They are trouble if you try to emulate them.

daily java

Daily Java:

We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. (Romans 5:3-4)

The main difference between a strong and hard Maine pine and a soft and easily broken Texas pine is the weather. Both have the same basic wood, but both are markedly different.

For all of its life, the Maine pine stands under extreme cold and wind. It lives on the coast of Maine where the brutal northeast winds come off the ocean. It grows slowly and fights for every inch. The wood it produces is hard and dense because of this.

The Texas pine, on the other hand, doesn’t go through this harsh a life. It lives in Texas where the temperatures are much more even. There is a little cold but there is also a lot of heat. It grows quickly. The wood it produces is soft and rots easily.

One goes through a lot of trials growing and the other doesn’t. both are good pines and useful for  building. But at the same time, both are different.

The same with our faith. A faith that is never tested is a weak faith. Those who have never gone through problems in their lives have weak faith. They may feel strong and they may believe in God and all that. But their faith has never been tested.

Of course, if nothing bad ever happens, it is easy to be strong. But real strength comes from trial. Faith is a muscle and has to be exercised to be strong.

To get strong muscles, you have to stress those muscles. The only way to get strength is by picking up heavy objects. In other weightlifting. You cannot be strong unless you do.

But the more you pick up, the more you can pick up. The harder you go, the stronger you get.

Strength is only gained through exercise. Faith is only gained through exercise.

The exercising of your faith is never fun. That’s because it takes the from of trial, of problems in your life. The devil works on you and it is no fun. But the apostle Paul in the passage above says that the end result is worth it.

With the problems comes  endurance, the ability to keep on. With the endurance comes strength of character. You do what is right and you and God and those around you know it. And with that character comes the knowledge that you are a child of God.

It would be great to go through life with no problems, no difficulties, no hassles. But if we did, we wouldn’t have much faith. And what little we had would be weak and small.

the sin that so easily trips us up

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. (Hebrews 12:1)

There is that one sin that gets you, that one sin that you seem to have no power over. It does not matter how you try, it is there. You can conquer it for a while and you begin to think you have the answer to it all, but it comes back with a vengeance without any warning.

It sits there, idling under the surface like an unholy engine, waiting for a moment of weakness to come back.

It is embarrassing to you, because you thing of yourself better than that. No one else knows of your struggle with this sin, but it doesn’t matter. You know. And the secret of this failure in your life – although private – is painful.

You are a Christian, maybe even a pastor or elder, you have been in the Lord for a long time. You are mature, you teach Bible class, you preach, people look  up to you for advice and counsel in living and you give it freely.

You love others and you love God and you love his word. You are grateful for the sacrifice the Lord gave for you when he sent Jesus to die for you. And you have accepted that sacrifice and given your heart to him. You know your place in the kingdom is assured.

Yet – there is that sin.

You hate it because it demeans you. It stands between you and God. It is ugly and it makes you feel dirty.

But it is there, idling away, just waiting for a moment of weakness, a moment of laxity. When that moment comes, there it is, almost as if it had never gone away. Wham!

And you hate it.

You fast and pray but it comes back again and again. You have no power over it.

So what do you do? You can either accept it or reject it, you think.

If you accept it, you learn to live with it and go ahead and pursue it. That, of course, is wrong.

If you reject it, you fight against it day after day, with all of your time spent in trying to keep it away. That seems impossible.

Or a third thing. You can know that it is there and trust God to help. You mean, go ahead and do it and figure God will help? No.

It is, after all, a sin and needs to be gone from your life. But if it is there and you know it is, you can also know that God is greater than that sin.

Even if you do that which is wrong, you can know that God loves you anyway. Not only that, but he knows you will sin.

The sin is wrong, yes, but you are holy and righteous. And as long as you try, you will still be holy.

You do all you can to get rid of the sin, even sometimes to what seems like the plucking out of your eye or the lopping off of your hand. But in the end, it is God who enables, it is God who saves, it is God who delivers and loves you anyway.

All sin and fall short of the glory (Romans 3:23)

If we say we have no sin, we lie and the truth is not in us (1 John 1:8).

You have to remember that we all are sinners and everybody in the world, no matter how holy or righteous they may seem, are beset with some sin that they can do nothing about.

And if they have any love for God, they hate that sin. But they love God and he loves them in spite of the sin.

Keep on keeping on. Keep on working on the sin, trying to excise it from your life. All those people who came before and will come after also had a sin like that in some way.

what a meeting of all of my Facebook Friends would be like

I was mulling over the idea of what a meeting of all of my Facebook Friends would be like.

A few days ago, I asked an open question. Do you think the people we talk to every day on Facebook would be anything at all what they seem like if we met them in person. One person answered and said No way. Chickens.

But what would it be like if we had a party to which we invited our best Facebook friends to come? I’m not talking about the weird friends we have, like the Texas City Dike or professional organizations – stuff like that. I am talking about the people we talk to all the time on Facebook.

I have built up a relationship with a few people and would like to get to know them better. I probably, and sadly, never will.

But if we got together, had dinner and something to drink, what would it be like?

There are people I have not seen in a long time. There are people I saw last weekend. There are people I have never seen. All kinds.

There are people I knew in high school. There is one girl I would have given a lot to date, but never gave me much more than the time of day. There is another I should have gotten to know better. Another who was unavailable (going with a surfer!). Another I dated a couple of times but who is never on Facebook. A couple of guys I kind of knew.

Then there are the relatives. There are people I am related to and met for the first time in many, many years last February at my Dad’s funeral. There are relatives I have never met.

There is my mother, of course, my wife, son, daughter and her husband, brother, sister, brother-in-law, uncle, some cousins, some nieces and nephews. There is one weird cousin that I saw about twenty or thirty years ago, but haven’t seen since. And there is his half-sister, who I have never met.

There is one college friend, a different guy that was one of the funniest people I ever met (other than myself, of course). Another who turned out far better than I ever thought he would (he and I ran a radio show together), another who ran a rival radio show but wasn’t as funny or talented as we were.

Then there are the professional friends, some of which have turned out to be good Facebook friends. We discuss theology and other stuff almost daily. I would love to have coffee with them and share face-to-face with them, but probably never will.

There are old (relatively speaking) members of my past youth groups and past churches, people I knew as a child, people I went to seminary with, others.

Then there are friends that have somehow attached themselves to my page that I talk to fairly often but do not even know. Maybe friends of friends or something. And some of them I have gotten to like.

Some I would love to know better, some I know as well as I probably want. Some, amazingly enough, I have grown to love and it pains me that I may never get to touch them, to hug them, to pray with them personally, to help them iron out their many faults with my wisdom.

All I can do is keep in Facebook touch (which when it comes down to it is the most shallow of human interchange) and know that it will have to do.

I wish I could talk to each, some more than others, but still.

What a party that would be. I would probably have to hire a hall or something. I don’t think the church fellowship room would be big enough. Maybe a band. Barbeque for dinner. Cake.

And maraschino cherries. I threw a birthday party once for myself where I had lots of maraschino cherries available, and noise-makers. If we are going to have a party, it might as well be a loud one.

daily java

Daily Java:

Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, “Listen to this message from the Lord of Heaven’s Armies: The time is coming when everything in your palace—all the treasures stored up by your ancestors until now—will be carried off to Babylon. Nothing will be left,” says the Lord.  “Some of your very own sons will be taken away into exile. They will become eunuchs who will serve in the palace of Babylon’s king.” Then Hezekiah said to Isaiah, “This message you have given me from the Lord is good.” For the king was thinking, “At least there will be peace and security during my lifetime.” (Isaiah 39:5-8)

This was always an odd passage to me. Hezekiah hears a prophecy that says that his nation, and even his children, will be destroyed. Yet he is happy because it will not be in his lifetime.

It would be like the Lord telling me, you family will die, you grandson will be made a eunuch, everything is going to be horrible and I respond with, well at least I will be gone.

It just goes to show you that sometimes even good people can be selfish.

daily java

Daily Java:

After Hezekiah received the letter from the messengers and read it, he went up to the Lord’s Temple and spread it out before the Lord. And Hezekiah prayed this prayer before the Lord: “O Lord of Heaven’s Armies, God of Israel, you are enthroned between the mighty cherubim! You alone are God of all the kingdoms of the earth. You alone created the heavens and the earth. Bend down, O Lord, and listen! Open your eyes, O Lord, and see! Listen to Sennacherib’s words of defiance against the living God. “It is true, Lord, that the kings of Assyria have destroyed all these nations. And they have thrown the gods of these nations into the fire and burned them. But of course the Assyrians could destroy them! They were not gods at all—only idols of wood and stone shaped by human hands. Now, O Lord our God, rescue us from his power; then all the kingdoms of the earth will know that you alone, O Lord, are God.” (Isaiah 37:14-20)

An interesting picture. The Assyrian army, the most powerful army in the world at the time, is camped outside the gates of Jerusalem ready to take the city over. God was rapidly becoming finished with Israel because of their wickedness, but every once in a while a good king would come who would turn to the Lord in obedience.

Hezekiah was such a king.

His father was Ahaz who had closed the temple and set up pagan altars of worship all over. And even though he himself was a good king, Hezekiah’s son, Manasseh, was the king whose debaucheries provided the final tipping balance for God. He was so evil that God said he would destroy his favored nation of Judah.

Even though Hezekiah was good and righteous, the nation’s DNA had gotten so corrupt that goodness was more of an aberration than the norm. And God was through with them.

But for now, there was Hezekiah, trying his best to be a godly man. And the Lord rewarded him for it.

Sennacherib, the king of Assyria, sent a letter saying that the God of Israel was so weak that he could not stand up before the Assyrian gods. And he said that he would treat Israel just like he treated all of the other countries. He would conquer them, burn their God and assimilate them into the Assyrian culture.

Hezekiah put the letter on the altar and asked God what he would do.

God answered strongly.

That night the angel of the Lord went out to the Assyrian camp and killed 185,000 Assyrian soldiers. When the surviving Assyrians woke up the next morning, they found corpses everywhere. Then King Sennacherib of Assyria broke camp and returned to his own land. He went home to his capital of Nineveh and stayed there. (Isaiah 37:36-37). 

Sennacherib was killed not long after he got back to Nineveh by his sons who were staging a military coup.

And it was all because Hezekiah placed the letter on the altar before the Lord and asked him for help.

That does not always work, but it does more than not.

God promises his presence when things are bad and he tells us we can tell him what we need.

And just as Hezekiah heard so strongly from God, so can we.

tearing up a church

I hate those with divided loyalties. (Psalm 119:113).

Anyone who tears up a church because they want to be in control is tearing up the body of Christ. Anyone who tries to drive a pastor out is hurting one who God has placed in that situation.

Even David would not do that when confronted with King Saul even though Saul was bad.

And any church that allows it to happen over many years not only will never really grow, it will produce more of the same kind of people. It will never prosper.

If people are causing divisions among you, give a first and second warning. After that, have nothing more to do with them. (Titus 3:10). Like it or not, that is scripture.

i have come to set the world on fire, and i wish it were already burning!

I have come to set the world on fire, and I wish it were already burning! (Luke 12:49 NLT)

This is a side of Jesus we do not see often. We always think of Jesus as a peacemaker, ready to make people feel better.

In fact, the world’s view of Jesus is totally opposite this. The world’s picture of Jesus is a milktoast that allows people to do pretty much whatever they want.

The idea of a Jesus who is actually causing division is one we have trouble seeing.

The Bible talks enough about not causing division that we get to thinking that all division is wrong. It isn’t. Division in the body is wrong. Division in the body is never right.

But Jesus divides in a different way. You don’t have to look very hard to see this.

Hollywood is full of the division Jesus causes. He calls us to God, Hollywood calls us to glorification of self. He calls us to morality, Hollywood calls us to hedonism. He calls us to holiness, Hollywood calls us to debauchery.

You see that division in the world at large, too. Jesus calls us to God through himself. Islam calls people to a false god through a false prophet. The world becomes angry at the call of Jesus and tries its best to stamp it out. Countries all over the world outlaw Christianity only to find it growing even stronger.

In 1 Peter 2:8, the apostle Peter writes: He is the stone that makes people stumble, the rock that makes them fall. They stumble because they do not obey God’s word, and so they meet the fate that was planned for them. This means that just by being himself and carrying out his mandate from God, Jesus becomes divisive.

He is like a stone that sits in the road that people try to ignore and end up falling over. And then those who are too ignorant to see the stone and acknowledge it for what it is, get mad.

The mad takes several different forms. Some try to outlaw Jesus and all of his teachings. Some try to lessen what he had to say and put him in a category with a bunch of others they claim are like him. Some take him and try to make him into a poster boy for their cause. Some try to bend him to their wishes. Some ignore him altogether.

But they all trip over him because he is there no matter what anybody may say or do. His influence is all through the world and will continue to be until he comes again.

Jesus is real, and one day as Philippians 2:9-11 says, all will know it. Therefore, God elevated him to the place of highest honor and gave him the name above all other names, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

He will be acknowledged by all the world one day, but for too many it will be too late.

The world is already burning for Jesus. Those who know it and accept it are purified by the fire. It makes them that much holier. Those who do not are burned up in the fire.

As Hebrews 12:29 says, our God is a devouring fire. And the fire that devours is Jesus, the Great Divider.

daily java

Daily Java:

And a great road will go through that once deserted land.
      It will be named the Highway of Holiness.
Evil-minded people will never travel on it.
      It will be only for those who walk in God’s ways;
      fools will never walk there.
Lions will not lurk along its course,
      nor any other ferocious beasts.
  There will be no other dangers.
      Only the redeemed will walk on it.
Those who have been ransomed by the Lord will return.
      They will enter Jerusalem singing,
      crowned with everlasting joy.
Sorrow and mourning will disappear,
      and they will be filled with joy and gladness. (Isaiah 35:8-10)

The happy road. The road of righteousness. The highway of holiness. A place where God is and also a place where we go to God.

You can almost imagine the post-apocalyptic setting that is the surrounding landscape. But through this landscape is a highway. And on both sides of the highway, are trees, and green grass and brooks full of clear, cold water. Cutting through this landscape of destruction, there is an avenue of life, of joy, of peace, of tranquility.

And as a Christian, we travel this highway. Sure, all around us are the reminders of destruction and sin, the desert stands in stark reminder of where we could be.

But we are not in that desert. We are on that highway.

Evil-minded people and fools can’t travel there. They are not suited for it. They need the destruction to keep happy. They have denied God in their hearts so they are not happy in the peace of that highway. They need the “excitement” of sin to stay happy.

There are no dangers there. Yes, to the side are dangers galore, but on that highway ,we are safe.

On that highway is happiness, peace, joy. Those who have been ransomed by the blood of the Lamb will be there. Sorrow and mourning have been wiped away, joy and gladness have taken their place.

Traveling the highway of holiness. What a trip!

don’t use foul or abusive language

“Don’t use foul or abusive language. Let everything you say be good and helpful, so that your words will be an encouragement to those who hear them.”(Ephesians 4:29)

I was standing at the gas station today waiting for the guy to ring up the charge for my auto inspection.

This is one of those rare stations in America that only are seen in small towns. It is a full-service station. The guy comes out and cleans your window and pumps your gas. It is good if you are getting gas, but it is lousy if you are waiting on the guy to do some stuff for you on your car.

Anyway, I am waiting and two men are talking about tires. One of them is a modernly profane fool, one of these people who has absolutely no brain power to discern where they are and who might be listening.

These kind of guys listen to movies and hear people say all kinds of things everywhere on TV and get to thinking that it is normal. They think that Orange County Choppers and that pawn shop show and other “reality” shows are normal human activity. Instead, it is the habitation of wackos, people with no morality.

I suppose that nothing moves me to possible violence faster than these people. They are stupid and have no sense of self or propriety.

In fact, truth be told, I am not a fan of vulgarity in the first place. Chalk it up to prudery if you want, but it is possible to register all of the ranges of emotion available to a person without ever using profanity. In fact, it takes some knowledge to say what you want without cursing. It used to be called the gentleman’s fine art of the insult.

Yet we use profanity so casually. Two young people, a boy and a girl, running into the mall laughing about something, cursing while laughing. The old expression “cursing like a sailor” cannot be beat by what children say today in public in mixed company.

It hurts our society. I remember a guy in high school back in the 60’s who cursed a fair amount around other guys. Someone mentioned to a girl one day that he did and her comment was, but he doesn’t around girls. It was a mark of breeding of sorts that he was discrete in his language around girls. But not now.

So what do we do? I don’t know.

I do know that the Bible says to use your language in such a way that you help and not hurt others. In fact, it says specifically, don’t use foul or abusive language. That cuts out most of the conversations today and most of the public discourse about politics.

Politics has really brought out the animal in people. The vitriol and bitterness expressed in what people say about each other. The accusations of lying and all. 100 years ago, people would have been killed in honor duels over what is said today in common speech. At the least, someone would get beaten up for calling someone else a liar.

And that has been in my lifetime, since I was in the army. When I was younger, you didn’t call another man a liar without suffering the consequences. I am not sure that it would not be a good idea to go back to those days. It would surely make for more civil discourse.

Say stuff that is good. Don’t smart off so quickly (one of my own problems). Make what you say be encouraging, good and helpful.

Oh sure, and then you and Pollyanna will be close, personal friends and we can all ride unicorns. It probably will not happen and will probably get worse.

What a sad end to a great country.

daily java

Daily Java:

Don’t envy sinners, but always continue to fear the Lord.
You will be rewarded for this; your hope will not be disappointed. (Proverbs 23:17-18)

It’s easy to look at what others have and be envious. Especially if you are feeling short on blessings yourself.

And there is nothing wrong with possessions as long as the possessions do not rule you. They should belong to you, not you belonging to them.

It makes it doubly hard when you go without and there are those who are openly sinful, openly evil, openly rebellious to the things of the Lord who seem to have all they want or need. Especially, again, when you are doing without many of the basic needed things.

They have several houses on several continents and you do not have a place of your own. They have several cars and planes and such, and you have an old broken down car. They dress their children in expensive designer clothes and you wear clothing that is several years old. They eat gourmet food and you have trouble buying necessities.

It makes it worse when you see them living a life of debauchery and evil, yet they seem so blessed.

It is blatantly unfair and you know it, but it is the way it is.

The key is to remember what is important in life. So many of these people have nothing but the stuff. They do not have God in their lives, they have no real hope or even real happiness. They go from broken relationship to broken relationship, never seeming to achieve what you have achieved so firmly: that of a good marriage with a good mate.

The desire to get more gets stronger and stronger until before long they are in tax trouble because they spent everything on stuff and didn’t pay what they needed to pay. Life is spent fueled by drugs and alcohol or sex or whatever with no end in sight. They grow old and ugly from the multiple plastic surgeries bought to try to keep themselves young and pretty.

Hard as it is to believe when you are living a life of deprivation, but these people are many
times miserable, without friends, without love, without happiness.

The child of god has the internal joy and peace that comes from service in the kingdom of the Almighty God. And if they get to really looking at it, there is more to life than stuff.

The reward is greater for the child of God, although it is delayed.

Sometimes that is hard to keep in your sights. But it is absolutely true.

my 900th posting

But, my child, let me give you some further advice: Be careful, for writing books is endless, and much study wears you out. (Ecclesiastes 12:12)

This is my 900th posting in a little over a year and a half.

199 more and it will be 1999. Hard to believe that a man has that much talking. Over 400,000 words worth.

If I could just figure out how to make a living out of it.

early morning musings

O Lord, God of my salvation,
      I cry out to you by day.
      I come to you at night.
Now hear my prayer;
      listen to my cry. (Psalm 88:1-2)

It is 4:30 in the morning. For some reason I cannot sleep. I have had busy dreams all night, dreams in which I am busy doing things, trying to get them done, unable to stop doing stuff. That gets tiring after a while. I kept waking up and thinking.

And when you think early in the morning, it is not usually good things. It is usually things you would be just as happy not thinking.

Tonight, I have been thinking about my life.

In 1915, Robert Frost published a poem called The Road Not Taken. It has always fit me well.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference

As a pastor, I took the road less traveled. I decided to be different and do something different. And I did. In the process, I found myself a wanderer. I belonged to a church with a fairly mobile ministry, never staying long in one place. And my wife wandered with me. It left us without roots or permanence.

At this point in my life I am not sure it was the right one. I have just come from two bruising works in which both my wife and I were hurt. We were financially impacted in a way from which we may never recover. We were torn up by this work.

Now I am sitting in a borrowed bedroom in my daughter’s house trying to figure out where I am going and what in the world I am going to do. At the age of 61 (I will be 62 in less than a month), I find myself unemployed with not income, no retirement and no real future. I would like to write but do not have the slightest idea of how to go about getting into that field. I truly do not know what to do.

I feel the failure strongly in my life, and all because I took a different road.

Why does a person become a minister? I am not sure. A desire to serve God full-time? I know there is more than that. Personally, I have always wanted to be an effective minister, to show God’s love to others, to have others love me as much as I loved them. The compulsion to teach has always been strong in my life. If it were not for Sunday evening Bible class, I do not know what I would do.

But it, this ministry, has not worked out and I find myself at the end of my life with a failed ministry, broke and in debt.

We were accepted into the church here again so well, and I teach Sunday night class, but at the same time, we are alone.

I guess I was like the guys who took off for the western frontier, who were looking for something different and more fulfilling to do with their lives. But the sad truth is that a lot of those men failed, and ended up starving to death, or killed by Indians or just dying by misfortune in some way. If nothing else, they slunk back home, financial failures, with their tails between their legs.

I cry out to God but he does not seem to hear me. I know that this is not necessarily my fault, yet Ella and I are the ones who suffer. And I know that this suffering even though not my fault is somewhat rife throughout the Bible.

Job did nothing wrong yet suffered extremely. And look at it any way you want, it was God’s fault he did. He was living righteously and God allowed the devil to hurt him anyway.

The same with many of the faithful of God. Hebrews 11 speaks of many of these who did the will of God to the best of their ability and yet died in the process. God is good, but he will not always treat his servants well on this earth.

Early morning musings. So it is 5:01 now in the morning and I am going to go back to bed. I am not an early morning person and do not enjoy seeing the sun come up.

I have entered the winter of my life and am waiting for what God wants of me.

I just wish he would take care of my wife. This has hurt her and has given her doubt for the first time in her life.

I come to you at night. Now hear my prayer; listen to my cry. Hear me, O God. Help us your children. We need you. Do not desert us when we are old. Do not let us suffer. We have served you faithfully all our lives and need you now more than ever before.

daily java

Daily Java:

Now, however, Israel is led by drunks
      who reel with wine and stagger with alcohol.
 The priests and prophets stagger with alcohol
      and lose themselves in wine.
They reel when they see visions
      and stagger as they render decisions.
Their tables are covered with vomit;
      filth is everywhere.
“Who does the Lord think we are?” they ask.
      “Why does he speak to us like this?
Are we little children,
      just recently weaned?
He tells us everything over and over—
   one line at a time,
      one line at a time,
   a little here,
      and a little there!” (Isaiah 28:7-10)

The picture would be a funny one if it were not so serious. A bunch of drunks who are leading another bunch of drunks are mad because they are not taken seriously by the rest of the world or by the Lord.

“You know, we are grown men. He thinks he has to tell us everything again and again.”

It is a bit like Jesus’ comment about the blind leading the blind. So ignore them. They are blind guides leading the blind, and if one blind person guides another, they will both fall into a ditch (Matthew 15:14).

The bad thing about these people is that they think they are normal. But they are not.

In a world where the morally bankrupt lead, where the liars and thieves are considered leadership material, where those whose lives are completely off kilter are made role models and guides, it is no wonder the people suffer.

The only way that the Kingdom of God could endure was if it was based on One who was perfect, who never did anything wrong. And the only person who could have done that was one from God.

If God had based his church, his faith process on anyone else than Jesus, it would have fallen quickly. Even Abraham, the father of the faithful, the one who stands as the beginning point of all the children of God, was a moral failure if you look at his life wanting perfection. At one point, out of fear for his life, he lied about whether or not he was married to Sarah. Not a big thing, but it does tend to show a real character flaw.

King David, a massive figure in the Old Testament, couldn’t keep his hands off women who were not his wife and even killed a man to hide an affair.

I could go on, but the point is, if you make your faith dependent on a person, no matter how good that person is or was, you are making it on a shaky foundation. Sooner or later, a flaw will emerge and when it does, it will shake the foundation of your faith.

If nothing else, the people in the past are dead. In John 8, those around Jesus kept bragging about the fact that they were children of Abraham. Jesus’ comment: Abraham is dead. Yes he was a great man. But he is gone. For a church to truly prosper, it must have a living leader.

And it must have a leader who is capable of leading. Those who are not capable of leading should not lead.

The only real leader is Jesus. He alone is the one capable of being the foundation of our faith.

daily java

Daily Java: 

Imitate God, therefore, in everything you do, because you are his dear children. (Ephesians 5:1)

I remember when I was in my mid teens and went to the store for something. I took my little three year old nephew. He thought I was great and tried to be like me. He even tried to match his little three year old strides to my almost six foot ones.

I had not had anyone imitate me before and it pleased me.

Someone once said, you are what you eat. In the same way, you are who your friends are. You are going to be like those you admire.

If you admire movie stars, you will want to be like them. That generally leads to a life of debauchery and immorality. It is hard to find a movie star or entertainment figure of any kind who has not been married multiple times and who doesn’t have a train wreck of a life.

The same with sports figures or otherwise. They may do well in one thing or another, but many times their lives are wrong. One of our most loved sports figures, a known golfer, recently has had this come to light. While people admired him and put him up as a Christian role model, he was involved with prostitutes to a degree that was amazing.

When I was in seminary, the head of the school was a strong dynamic figure. After a while, you would notice that the preacher boys (me included) would move their hands like his or furrow their brow like he did. We admired him so we imitated him.

The problem with imitating people, though, is that they have problems. Movie stars, sports figures, politicians – all have obvious flaws. Even my seminary head had some strong flaws. For one thing, he was exceedingly closed minded on subjects he felt he had already made up his mind on.

On the other hand, if you admire things of God, you will want to be like him. Only his things will last and bring any lasting joy. Like children admire a parent, you do best to admire and imitate God.

And as the apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 11:1: And you should imitate me, just as I imitate Christ. He didn’t say just imitate me, but imitate me as I imitate him who is worth imitating.

There is nothing wrong with role models, but we have to realize that they are flawed. Only God and only the man his Son have the true way to live.

daily java

Daily Java:

But when Peter came to Antioch, I had to oppose him to his face, for what he did was very wrong. When he first arrived, he ate with the Gentile Christians, who were not circumcised. But afterward, when some friends of James came, Peter wouldn’t eat with the Gentiles anymore. He was afraid of criticism from these people who insisted on the necessity of circumcision. As a result, other Jewish Christians followed Peter’s hypocrisy, and even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. When I saw that they were not following the truth of the gospel message, I said to Peter in front of all the others, “Since you, a Jew by birth, have discarded the Jewish laws and are living like a Gentile, why are you now trying to make these Gentiles follow the Jewish traditions? (Galatians 2:11-14)

Sin is so infectious. That is its nature. And no one is immune to its power.

Peter was the one who brought the Gentiles into the church. The early church even called him on the carpet to explain why in Acts 12 and he told them that it was God’s will.

Barnabas was a close associate of the apostle Paul’s. it was his mandate to go and preach the gospel to Gentiles, along with Paul.

If anyone knew that there was now no separation between Jew and Gentile in the kingdom, it was these two.

But James, the Lord’s brother, was a different kind of person. He was staunchly Jewish and tried his best to keep the customs of his people. When Paul came to Jerusalem in Acts 15 to consult with the rest of the apostles, he shared his commission: to be an apostle to the Gentiles.

If there was anything they had enough of, it was apostles to the Jews. But when Paul left Jerusalem, James made it clear to him that he could go and do that and that was fine, but he would stay here with his people. James had no desire to go to the Gentiles and to do anything other than what he was doing.

James had a problem with racism. He had a problem seeing a multi-racial church. And his failure to see that infected all around him. It even infected the great apostle Peter.

When they were in Antioch, a strong multi-racial church that sent out a lot of teachers to the rest of the world, Peter was fine. He ate with the Gentiles and did all the stuff he should have. But when James’ friends came from Jerusalem, they were so entrenched in the Jewish faith that they refused to “lower” themselves to eating with the Gentiles.

After all, the Gentiles ate such weird stuff and had such weird customs. They were just a lot more comfortable doing their own thing. Nothing wrong with the Gentiles, mind you, just they did not feel comfortable with them.

Their discomfort showed itself so strongly that after a while, even Peter began to shun the Gentiles. After all, this was Peter’s background, Judaism. He had been Jewish for a long time and it was hard to change his mindset.

And it was easy to lapse back into old ways of thinking, even if they were wrong.

Not only this, but he lapsed back so well and completely that before long others lapsed with him. One of them was Barnabas, one of the major teachers of the Gentiles.

There came up a pretty good sized schism. And Paul wasn’t going to have it.

If there was one thing Paul was good at, it was confrontation. He was full of his mission and full of drive to accomplish it. And he was also not a guy that you did something wrong in front of if he thought you should know better.

He called out Peter and Barnabas and roundly chastised them both. Paul always felt outside anyway, but it didn’t bother him a bit to be even more outside by opposing Peter, the lead apostle.

It doesn’t say what came of this, if Peter and Barnabas repented or told Paul to buzz off. I would imagine both of them knew they were wrong, but I would also imagine, given Peter’s personality, that he didn’t take it too well.  Especially from this new guy. Barnabas was probably used to it.

But Paul was such a driven man, such a perfectionist in his teaching. He would be a hard person to put up with.

I believe that attitude was why Jesus made him keep that thorn in the flesh (1 Corinthians 11). It kept him humble and reminded him that he was human. It reminded him that he was not some super-apostle, sent by God to save the world.

It would have been easy for Paul to think this, given his mindset and his nature.

But Peter showed himself to be gracious. In 2 Peter 3:15-16, Peter wrote this:

And remember, the Lord’s patience gives people time to be saved. This is what our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you with the wisdom God gave him – speaking of these things in all of his letters. Some of his comments are hard to understand, and those who are ignorant and unstable have twisted his letters to mean something quite different, just as they do with other parts of Scripture. And this will result in their destruction.

Quite a different reaction than you would think from one who was embarrassed publicly in front of people who thought highly of him.

I would hope I would have the same reaction.

my kind of cafe

My kind of cafe. A coffeepot cafe.

daily java

Daily Java:

I am shocked that you are turning away so soon from God, who called you to himself through the loving mercy of Christ. You are following a different way that pretends to be the Good News but is not the Good News at all. You are being fooled by those who deliberately twist the truth concerning Christ. Let God’s curse fall on anyone, including us or even an angel from heaven, who preaches a different kind of Good News than the one we preached to you. I say again what we have said before: If anyone preaches any other Good News than the one you welcomed, let that person be cursed. (Galatians 1:6-9)

You know how it is. You give the kids specific instructions and don’t even get very far from the house and they have already broken your rules. You show someone how to do something and turn your back and when you look again they have bollixed it up so bad that it is almost amazing to you.

Paul felt he had give the Galatian church all the teaching they needed to do great things. Then he left. And he says that he hardly got out of sight and they had messed up.

So quickly. So fast. The error had come in and it took root far faster than the teaching.

And what was the error? It was legalism

The apostle Paul had taught all his ministry in Jesus that we are saved by grace, not by works. But people came along behind him and told the churches he had been with that he was wrong. We have to do stuff in order to be saved. They told the churches that there were legal requirements God had made that if we didn’t keep them we would be lost.

In their case, it was often a blend of Old and New Testament stuff that they taught. They had to be circumcised, the had to keep certain feast days, etc.

The same thing happens today, only with a bit of a different twist. Someone preaches grace and someone else says, Wait, there is more you have to do. You also have to be baptized, you have to sing a certain way, you have to not celebrate certain holidays, you have to – the list goes on.

The problem is, there is nothing you can do to be saved. If there was, then Jesus died for nothing.

The Bible plainly says that we are saved by grace through faith (Ephesians 2:8-10). We believe God and he saves us. There are no formulae, no creeds to be kept, no rituals to keep, no anything to do that will ensure our salvation. Instead, what God says is that we do the things we do because we are saved, not in order to be saved.

There is a whole world of difference there. But the problem is it is hard to accept the fact that there are no written rules to be kept to ensure salvation.

The Bible is not a list of rules. The Bible is a guideline for a God-pleasing life. There are no boxes to be check, nor blanks to be filled in.

The only thing that God requires is faith working through love (Galatians 5:6). If we do that, we will be pleasing.

It sure is hard, though, not to add new things. It is one of the easiest things we can do. Especially when added under the rubric “My church believes in…”

It does not matter what our church believes in. What matters is what God says.

there are those who learn all their lives

Commit yourself to instruction; listen carefully to words of knowledge.

(Proverbs 23:12)There are those who learn all their lives. They never stop. I guess that I am probably one. I love the accumulation of new knowledge.

What do I do with it? Many times, nothing. I just gain it. My wife is amused at it sometimes. I just seem to have a never ending thirst to know new things. Even though it may be of absolutely no use to me, I still will go out of my way to learn it.

And I always picked up stuff fast, too. Languages, ideas, music, philosophies – they just came naturally to me.

I suppose they do because I search them out. I don’t know of anyone who accidentally learns stuff as a matter of course, that is smart by accident. I know you get a lot of your life knowledge accidentally (don’t touch the heater, don’t hold a knife by the blade, etc) but in general, people who are learned set out to be so.

It wasn’t necessarily a conscious decision to learn stuff. Most of the time it is just the way a person is wired.

For instance, I will go out of my way to learn new things. My wife, on the other hand, enjoys hearing about the new things I have discovered but will not pursue them herself. She likes to know the new things, but puts little effort into the learning.

Most people are like that, I think. The odd bit of weird knowledge is interesting but the life-long pursuit isn’t.

There is a book I have that is called “The Bathroom Reader.” It is designed to go in the bathroom to read at the odd times you are trapped in there. It is trivia, completely and utterly useless trivial information. It is fun to read, but useless to life.

I pore through it and others like it. It is almost a disease with me. And for the most part, I do well in Scrabble and Trivial Pursuit and things like that because of that tendency.

Most of the things I learn quite frankly do not stick. But it doesn’t matter. It is the learning.

The same with the child of God. To be pleasing, the child of God has to have a thirst for the knowledge of God. That is not to say that you are just memorizing scripture. Memorizing scripture does not necessarily mean you know God. It just means you know a lot of scripture by heart.

Unless you use that scripture in your service to God, all it becomes is trivia. It has to be used.

Commit. Listen carefully. Know what God wants and do it.

daily java

Daily Java:

We have heard about proud Moab—
      about its pride and arrogance and rage.
      But all that boasting has disappeared.
The entire land of Moab weeps.
      Yes, everyone in Moab mourns
for the cakes of raisins from Kir-hareseth.
      They are all gone now.
The farms of Heshbon are abandoned;
      the vineyards at Sibmah are deserted.
The rulers of the nations have broken down Moab—
      that beautiful grapevine. (Isaiah 16:6-8)

In my daily Bible reading I am reading in the book of Isaiah. Isaiah is delivering God’s condemnation to several countries round about Israel.

It can get rather depressing and I am always glad when I get through with this section. I don’t really care for it. For one thing, I have no emotional investment in all these countries and, quite frankly, do not care about them.

However, one thing struck me today. The passage above where the people missed their raisin cakes. What a strange thing to miss. Your whole country lies in ruins and people miss the raisin cakes.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized how caught up in food memories we are.

When I think of my grandmother, I think of her chocolate gravy. She made chocolate gravy like I have never had before or since. It was a special Saturday morning breakfast served over biscuits and was great.

My wife said that when she thinks of me and things I make, she thinks of either steak or lasagna. With her I think of stroganoff. Our daughter will probably think of green enchiladas, what we call sour cream enchiladas. Ella’s mother, she said, was roast, rice and gravy., her favorite aunt soup, my mother roast and french fries.

We all have memory keys of things that are gone. The Moabites were of raisin cakes. In the good old days, they say around eating raisin cakes. Now that the vineyards are gone, they cannot and they miss them.

I don’t really know what a raisin cake is exactly – a bunch of raisins mashed together, or a cake made with a lot of raisins – but when they thought of home that was it. And it was gone irretrievably.

When things are gone, not only the bad, but also the good is gone. The good old days were really only a few memories you have stored up that exclude the bad memories. Life in Moab was not all sitting around snacking on raisin cakes. Every meal of my mother’s was not roast and the chocolate gravy was a sometime thing.

But it is funny that you associate those not-to-be-repeated foods with different people and places.

John Donne said, “you cannot go home.” You can’t go back and have those foods in those situations. It is impossible. But how large they loom in your mind and how much you miss the people who gave them to you.