the first time i heard the beatles

I remember hearing my first Beatles song. She Loves You, Yeah, yeah.

1963 – I was in seventh grade, in gym class. Freeport Junior High in Freeport, Texas. Girls on one side in those ugly one piece gym suits, boys on the other. No mixed gym classes in those days.

For some reason, someone had brought in a record player, one of those units that had the speakers come off the player and set along side.

They put on a record. I listened to it and it was different. I asked someone who that was. They said it is that new group, the Beatles.

I wasn’t sure. I thought I had heard a preacher or someone talk against them at some point (preachers hated anything new in those days) so I wasn’t sure if I liked them or not.

I don’t know why anyone had a record player in the gym class or why they would play someone as avant garde as the Beatles.

But I will never forget hearing them for the first time.

I have listened to them now for almost five decades. I watched them flame up then flame out. I watched the individual Beatles do their stuff over the years and heard the songs they sang.

Some of them were great. Some of them – like John Lennon’s Imagine, one of the most inane pieces of gibberish to ever masquerade as music – were stupid.

But I have always liked them.  Or at least I liked their music.

And I remember the day I heard their music the first time on an elevator. It was You Say You Want A Revolution played by someone like Montovani’s Strings or the like. I realized at that time, we had passed a point. What had begun as counter-cultural became standard and mainstream.

It began to dawn on me then that I heard them a lot in the malls, that easy listening, the music that used to be lush orchestras, had become soft oldies rock.

Now our children listen to them and you can buy a t shirt with their pictures on it in Target.

One of these days I will hear them for the last time. I won’t know it at the time, but it will dawn on me that I no longer hear the Beatles. At that point, I suppose I will be ready to die.

My generation is already resented by many of the young people for what one called our “Cultural Death Grip.” I figure ten more years of that death grip and it will begin to loosen.

We will all begin to die and something else besides our music will take the Beatles’ place.

I wonder what.

surviving a really bad accident

He will cover you with his feathers He will shelter you with his wings. His faithful promises are your armor and protection. (Psalm 91:4)

I just saw a video on Facebook about a pastor and his wife who survived an car accident that was pretty bad.

As I was looking at it, I remembered an major auto accident I had.

It was October of 1971. I had been out of the army for only a couple of months. I was taking money out of pay phones for the telephone company and was driving back to Houston on the Gulf Freeway from Texas City. It was a beautiful day, sunny and warm. I was driving 65 mph when all of a sudden an old gray pickup appeared in front of me. He was only going about 40 mph.

I was driving a Step Van overloaded with coins from the pay phones. I slammed on my brakes and tried to miss the pickup. I swerved and clipped his left rear fender and went into the grass median between the freeway lanes.

I went end over end for a couple hundred or so feet. The only thing I can remember of the accident itself was holding on  to the steering wheel while glass flew around and the van turned over and over. I remember thinking Wow!

I came to standing on the engine. It was lying on the ground on the driver’s side. If I had been wearing a seat belt, I would have been dead, trapped under the engine.

I stood looking around for a moment. Then I leaped out of the van and stood on the top (the passenger side) looking at the crowd of people who had gathered. I suppose the adrenaline was going which helped me leap that far.

I got down from the van and several people tried to make me sit down but I was too pumped. I looked at the van and realized that I had totaled it, that there was little of it left, that for all practical purposes I should be dead.

It seemed that the only injuries I had suffered were a cut on the palm of my right hand, a small knot on my forehead, a light cut at my beltline in the back and the right lower pant leg had been cut off. A tow truck driver was there and helped to bandage my hand, which was bleeding profusely.

As I was talking, a Ford Country Squire pulled up and I told those around, there’s my mother. Since she drove a car just like that and it looked like her, it was logical. However, it turned out to be a tall thin man with a hairstyle just like hers. Everyone looked at me and tried to get me to sit down again. But again, I shrugged them off.

A highway patrolman gave me a ticket and I left. The tow truck operator that bandaged my hand took the truck back into Houston and I rode with him.

As we were entering Houston, my father pulled up beside the tow truck. Some nitwit had called Ella and told her I was in a bad accident but didn’t know anything else. She frantically called my mother, who got hold of an operator at Houston Lighting and Power who called my father on his car radio. He figured out where I would be and found me.

As the tow truck driver and I were driving along the freeway, I saw Dad. I said, there’s my father. You could see the tow truck driver deliberating. I had already seen my mother who had turned out to be a tall skinny guy, now I saw my father. I tried to get him to stop but he plainly didn’t know what to do. He probably figured I was unbalanced.

Finally I told him to stop or I would hurt him. He did and it really was, to his relief, my father.

Dad and I followed the tow truck into the telephone company shop and then to the doctor. He also called his dispatcher who told my mother who told my wife what was happening.

As it turned out, I had glass in my hand, which required some stitches, and a few days later penicillin for the infection which set in. Nothing else was bad. I had escaped a major accident almost unscathed in which I had totaled a Step Van.

It was a bad accident, one in which I should have been killed.

But I wasn’t. He sheltered me. He covered me with his armor and protection. Why he allowed me to be spared I do not know. And why he allowed others that day to be killed I do not know.

Last year when we were driving up here every week from central Missouri, there was a blizzard. We drove for over 50 miles in raging snow at no more than 15-20 mph. It was frightening. We saw more than 50 cars in the median along with ten tractor trailer rigs.

We made it fine. But that same weekend, the pastor of a neighboring church flipped his car and was killed.

Why did he help me but not the other guy? Both of us were pastors, both of us were doing his work, yet one died and the other (me) didn’t.

I have no answer. But when I think about that accident I had in 1971, I realize that God had a purpose for me. I do not believe it was random in nature.

What it was I do not know. I just hope and pray that I had lived up to what he wanted. But I will ever praise him and serve him.

daily java

Daily Java:

“The coming of the Son of Man can be illustrated by the story of a man going on a long trip. When he left home, he gave each of his slaves instructions about the work they were to do, and he told the gatekeeper to watch for his return. You, too, must keep watch! For you don’t know when the master of the household will return—in the evening, at midnight, before dawn, or at daybreak. Don’t let him find you sleeping when he arrives without warning. I say to you what I say to everyone: Watch for him!”  (Mark 13:34-37)

There is a lot of talk about how the end of the world is obvious from what is happening right now in the world. and that is just what it is: a lot of talk.

There is of course, the Mayan calendar that gives 2012 as the end, there are a bunch of people from some church that say May 21, 2011 will be the end, others just say that the events in our world today are an obvious indicator that Jesus will be back soon.

The problem is: no one really knows when that will be. And it has been 2000 years since Jesus began talking about it. His own people thought it would be soon, but it has turned out to be a long time.

John even ended his book of Revelation with the comment He who is the faithful witness to all these things says, “Yes, I am coming soon!” Amen! Come, Lord Jesus! (22:20) They all thought it would be pretty quickly. Paul even writes in the Thessalonian letters that they quit watching for the return of the Lord and go back to work.

Back in 1988, I received a book that was entitled, “89 Reasons Why the Lord Will Come in 1989.” It was funded by the American Bible Society and was written by a guy who had duped a lot of people into pouring a lot of money into his idea that Jesus was coming back in 1989.

As it turned out, he had been wrong before. There have been rumors of the end for centuries and still, Jesus has not come back.

Jesus told his disciples: But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone. (Matthew 24:36). He told them that even he had not been told when the end of the world was going to come.

I really believe God didn’t tell Jesus when he was coming back because he didn’t need to know. Jesus was, after all, human and didn’t need to know a bunch of stuff. And it was possible the human Jesus would weaken and tell his apostles not to worry, it would be a long time.

But the point is we do not know. The Master will return in the evening, at midnight, before dawn, or at daybreak and will be expecting us to be ready.

Don’t worry about when. Worry about who. You. Concern yourself with getting your life right and be ready for the Master when he comes.

Come, Lord Jesus.

words and prophecies

“But you may wonder, ‘How will we know whether or not a prophecy is from the Lord?’ If the prophet speaks in the Lord’s name but his prediction does not happen or come true, you will know that the Lord did not give that message. That prophet has spoken without my authority and need not be feared. (Deuteronomy 18:21-22)

One of the problems with Pentecostalism is people who are convinced that they have a word from God when they do not.

The person will come up to you and say something on the order of, “I have a word from God for you.” Your response, then, is to stop and quietly and humbly accept the person’s comment. You are to be grateful and immediately acquiesce to their “word.”

The problem is that many times it is not a word from God, it is a figment of their own imagination.

I believe that God speaks through us today. I believe that he brings his will through the agency of others to help us deal with things in our lives.

But how do you know if it a word from God or just something somebody wants and pretends it is from God?

One way is if it matches with the written word of God. Whatever word we may get from him has to match with what he has already said. If it doesn’t, it is not true automatically.

It is also apparent when the person giving the word expects automatic obeisance. Someone will come to the pastor and demand that they receive the word that God has allegedly given them and before they give it, the pastor is to kneel so the person giving the word can put his or her hands on their head.

When this is done, it is an automatic indicator of pride and greed for position. Nowhere in the Bible did anyone ever do this by decree. If they did, it was because they recognized the one giving the word. Anyone who demands you kneel before them is looking for position, not giving genuine words from God.

Another thing is that God will send no prophecy or word that will cause division in his church, or cause wrong things to happen. Now sometimes bad things will happen and the Old Testament prophets foretold that.

But someone who says blithely, “The Lord has told me to - -” and the thing they say the Lord has told them is something that will harm his church, or smacks of revenge, you know it is not true. God does not tell people to leave their congregations or to take others away. He never tells them to cause divisions in his body. That is not a word from God, it is a wish the person has that he articulates and pretends it is from God.

The problem is, when they say it is from God, it blames God for all the things that will happen. “Well, if God didn’t want that, then he wouldn’t have told me - -.” The people who give the words get their way and God gets the blame.

If the word is couched as a prophecy, then you know it is true if it comes true. Until it does, it is just somebody talking. When it does, it is real.

“Words from God” are many times people trying to coerce the church into doing something they want, or trying to get leaders in the church to do what they want. They figure if they couch it as a word from God, then the person is stuck and has to do it. After all, who can argue with God?

I love a genuine word or prophecy from God and pray for more. But I despise fake ones. They do nothing more than hurt and tear and the ones who give them want nothing more than position and power.

I listen, I weigh myself what they have to say and then I decide whether or not to receive it. If it is true, I will know. If not, I will know too.

daily java

Daily Java: 

“When these things begin to happen, watch out! You will be handed over to the local councils and beaten in the synagogues. You will stand trial before governors and kings because you are my followers. But this will be your opportunity to tell them about me.  For the Good News must first be preached to all nations. But when you are arrested and stand trial, don’t worry in advance about what to say. Just say what God tells you at that time, for it is not you who will be speaking, but the Holy Spirit. (Mark 13:9-11)

Well, something to look forward to, isn’t it? I have to admit that the prospect of being arrested for my faith does not fill me with joy.

But there is something else here that does. Jesus told his disciples that when the time came and they needed to say what was just exactly the right thing to say, the Holy Spirit would give it to them.

In other words, what we say in the proclamation of the gospel comes from God himself. He will not leave us there trying desperately to structure out three points and a good introduction and conclusion. A couple of good illustrations, start off with a joke. Get the torturers to laughing and then hit them with the gospel. Maybe a good altar call. Pass the plate afterwards.

No. When we need it, whatever the circumstance, we just listen to what God tells us. Even if it is just the guy next door and you are both sitting in your yards talking. Or the lady in the supermarket that asks you something or that guy at work.

Nothing we say is of ourselves, or it isn’t of God. It is not of our own devising nor of our own understanding. Zechariah 4:6 says, It is not by force nor by strength, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies. It is through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think (Ephesians 3:20).

We just stand still and talk. In that time of trial, he will give us words.

That doesn’t mean everything you have to say all the time is from God. Preachers who blather on and on with no preparation or study and think that everything they say is pearls of wisdom are usually as wrong as they are goofy.

We need to speak as though God himself were speaking through you (1 Peter 4:11). But you can know that he will not leave you when you need him. You study and prepare and fill yourself with the written word of his Spirit and he will be with you.

daily java

Daily Java:

And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you? He requires only that you fear the Lord your God, and live in a way that pleases him, and love him and serve him with all your heart and soul. And you must always obey the Lord’s commands and decrees that I am giving you today for your own good. (Deuteronomy 10:12-13)

The list of rules and regulations that many churches make up (unofficially, of course) for their members is sometimes staggering in length.

They range from dress to personal behavior to what they can or cannot engage in. They didn’t start out to be rules. They started out to be guidelines to help new members learn to do what the older ones thought was right. But it wasn’t long until they had ossified into full blown rules.

One denomination I was part of had tremendous rules and regulations not just for pastors but for the members themselves. And in so doing went far beyond what the Bible had said.

One of the strongest accusations lodged against Jesus by the religious intelligentsia was that he didn’t follow the rules. His answer: the rules were made for man, not man for the rules.

The Sabbath was made to meet the needs of people, and not people to meet the requirements of the Sabbath. (Mark 2:27)

His point was that the things God told us to do were more important than the things people told us to do. And they hated him for it.

The religious intelligentsia felt he was disregarding all of the wisdom accumulated through the ages, that he was throwing all of their tradition back in their faces, that as a teacher of the law (which he was – just not their law) he had the obligation to adhere to their rules.

Jesus’ response: no. In fact, it was not even, no, thank you. It was just no. he said that he refused to keep their commandments, that he came with a higher authority. He came with the authority of God.

Moses boiled the whole Old Testament down into two little verses here. Fear God, live for him, and love and serve him. That’s it.

When we fear him, we acknowledge that he is God and that he is the source of our lives. It is not that we sit in abject terror of him. that is for sinners. 1 John 4 says

Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love. We love each other because he loved us first.

Fear in the sense of terror is not the response of love. Fear in the sense of respect is.

When we live for him, we show our response to his love. We do like he wants. We acknowledge his preeminence in our lives and give him first place. He is our pilot and we are co-pilots.

When we love and serve him, we show respect and homage. He is first in our lives and we let everyone know it.

Several times in the Bible, the writer makes that connection, that we are to do more than just follow rules and regulations.

Moses, again, in Deuteronomy 6: Listen, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength

Micah 6:8 No, O people, the Lord has told you what is good, and this is what he requires of you: to do what is right, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.

Romans 12:14-18 Bless those who persecute you. Don’t curse them; pray that God will bless them. Be happy with those who are happy, and weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with each other. Don’t be too proud to enjoy the company of ordinary people. And don’t think you know it all! Never pay back evil with more evil. Do things in such a way that everyone can see you are honorable. Do all that you can to live in peace with everyone.

In other words, just live like you love God and he will take care of the rest.

What is amazing is how many people will fight you over that.

a letter

Awake, O sleeper, rise up from the dead ,and Christ will give you light. (Ephesians 5:14)

I just got a letter from someone who wanted to share it with my church. He had a letter on the back encouraging me to reproduce the front as much as I wanted and to give it to as many people as I wanted to.

The interesting thing about it was that it was basically unsigned. It had a man’s name on the bottom one side, but no contact information except for the return address, and on the side to be copied, there was nothing at all. There was only a desire to tell people that there is a heaven and a hell.

Now I could be critical. And I often am with unsolicited letters. There were misspelled words, it was all in caps (something most people disregard as ranting) with brackets and underlining, it was KJV, a translation I do not use, it was very hard line.

All that is true. But – it was unsigned and someone sent out these letters on standard postage from Miami, FL. I guess they went to everybody, maybe just to Foursquare Churches. I don’t know.

But the point is, someone went to a lot of expense to mail out these letters evidently simply
because they cared. No attribution, no credit, just sent out to be copied.

What if we all cared little how much credit we got. What if we all did stuff without worrying about who was going to be benefited, if the only person we had in mind to benefit was Jesus.

I gave you a bunch of reasons above to not use it.

But I am including here in this blog. I do not have the money to send it out. And I don’t know that I would if I did. But at the same time, it deserves something better than just being trashed. When is the last time I did something like this?

daily java

Daily Java:

Remember how the Lord your God led you through the wilderness for these forty years, humbling you and testing you to prove your character, and to find out whether or not you would obey his commands. Yes, he humbled you by letting you go hungry and then feeding you with manna, a food previously unknown to you and your ancestors. He did it to teach you that people do not live by bread alone; rather, we live by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. For all these forty years your clothes didn’t wear out, and your feet didn’t blister or swell. (Deuteronomy 8:2-4)

I am very rarely ever sick. I will get down and sometimes I will have allergy problems in which I cough and stuff. But as far as getting sick, I rarely am.

But the past few days have been the exception. My temperature ran almost 101, I have been shaking from being cold, I have slept a lot and I have had a really bad cough along with a horrible rasping in my lungs.

But I am through now, it seems. Yesterday my fever broke and today I feel much better.

My friend Jim wrote on my Facebook page, “You’re getting lots better – you now realize God isn't finished with you yet.”

I am not sure that is the exact point of my recovery. Even stupid people get well eventually. But still.

It is humbling to be sick and dependent on someone else. Personally, I hate it. I do not like to be virtually helpless.

Of course, that is the point of marriage: that we help each other through hard times. “For richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, until death you do part.”

Ella and I have always taken that seriously. There have been times when she was incapacitated that I helped her. And vice-versa (whatever that means).

When I was young, early 20’s, we had not been married long, I was promoted in the telephone company to lineman. Since this is the most important basic component of the phone company (dealing as it does with the infrastructure and equipment), it made a good bit more money than taking money out of pay phones.

But first, we had to go through an instruction class on how to climb poles. The pole-climbing school was short, but pretty necessary. The guy who was the main teacher was a kind of cool guy, one that impressed a lot of the guys, including me. Until, that is, he started talking about marriage.

This was, of course, the early 70’s when a lot of thought about marriage was changing among the stupid people. Which included him. He was talking one day about how hard it was to be married and how unglamorous it was. Sooner or later you found yourself having to help your wife up off the toilet because she was pregnant or something. He went on.

I was finished with him. Even at that young an age, I recognized that he was a fool. I had come from a committed relationship as modeled by my parents as had Ella. We had the perfect examples of people depending on each other.

That was what God wanted from the Israelites. What they wanted, though, was for him to feed them and clothe them and otherwise leave him alone, thank you. He wanted to love them, which they wanted also, and for them to love him back, about which they were dubious.

Even though he took care of them for so many years, they still refused to love him back.

I have thought about that guy in the telephone company for the past almost 40 years. He is probably on his fourth wife, and is never able to find anyone that will age according to his standards. He is probably miserable over it, while keeping up the appearance of a bon vivant. Just in general a pathetic guy.

I have known a lot of them over my life, sadly enough. And so often, they end up like Israel, broken down and defeated and bitter.

Not me. I love my Lord and I love my wife and cannot imagine a life without either of them.

daily java

Daily Java:

One day some parents brought their children to Jesus so he could touch and bless them. But the disciples scolded the parents for bothering him. When Jesus saw what was happening, he was angry with his disciples. He said to them, “Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them! For the Kingdom of God belongs to those who are like these children. I tell you the truth, anyone who doesn’t receive the Kingdom of God like a child will never enter it.” Then he took the children in his arms and placed his hands on their heads and blessed them. (Mark 10:13-16)

The apostles could be officious little twerps on occasion.

Here Jesus was teaching and talking and doing “important” stuff, they figured. And people kept bringing kids to him, bothering him. After all, he had more vital things to do than just to bless some little kids.

So the apostles thought they would run interference for him and keep out some of the people that kept on keeping him from his important work.

That made Jesus mad. Here was a group of people who wanted nothing more than to be with him. There is nothing quite like kids on your lap.

And Jesus got angry with his apostles. Quit that, he said, and let the kids come. It is the spirit that is in these kids that is what God wants in his disciples. Furthermore, Jesus said, unless you get like them, you can’t go to heaven.

Then he blessed the kids, took them in his arms, held them, tickled them, played with them. The mighty Lord of the universe, playing peek-a-boo with a baby, holding a little girl’s doll and asking its name, moving some Ninja Turtles around with a little boy. He discussed things of vital importance to a three year old, things like a bug he had seen.

These were real people. Everyone else wanted something from Jesus. These kids just liked him and wanted to be near him.

It is when we just want to be near him, to be near God that our prayer is the best. We are not asking for anything, or wanting anything other than just being near him and loving him.

That is the best thing a child can give an adult: just love.

bad cough again

I heard a loud shout from the throne, saying, “Look, God’s home is now among his people! He will live with them, and they will be his people. God himself will be with them. He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever.” (Revelation 21:3-4 NLT)

I am sick today. It is not a fever inducing sickness, at least not yet, but it is one that has brought on a bad cough.

Since I had pneumonia in 1987, I have had a predisposition to a cough. If one ever starts up, it is a bear to get rid of.

It feels like one is on the way now. And I hate it.

That means that tomorrow I will not be able to sing or speak very well. When I can’t, it seems that the day is incomplete. I love to sing and enjoy leading praise. Not only that, but I am the only one in our church capable of it at this time. We pray for more to come in, but so far they have not.

So tomorrow morning, I will go to church and hack and cough through the services.

But I will go. I do not miss church for any reason short of a major catastrophe. Even when my gall bladder blew up and I was practically unconscious back in the mid 1990’s, I still went.

As I recall, someone put me in my big leather desk chair and arranged my meat juice bag, the drain bag the doctor sent me home with after his botched operation. That day, a friend who was Catholic led my praise for me while someone else, I do not know who, gave a short lesson.

I was so out of it that day. But I will not miss, Lord willing. It is important to me and should be to all God’s children.

It is not that I am so good, it is that he was so good to me. He went through the pain of the cross for me. Beside that, my cough is nothing. And even if it wracked me, I would still praise him.

I will serve him all my days and in any situation he allows me to be in. Praise his name!