Despicable Me (a lament)
O God, You are loving and kind
Yet, I am hurt and angry at Your church
Why did they embrace a despicable man?
Make them see their folly; their idolatry.
For, I am hurt and angry at Your church
I want her to weep and keen
Make them see their folly; their idolatry
Pierce their hearts to feel my pain.
I want her to weep and keen
Why did they embrace a despicable man?
Pierce their hearts to feel my pain
O God, You are loving and kind.
“Prepare the way of the Lord;
Make straight in the desert
A highway for our God.
Every valley shall be exalted
And every mountain and hill brought low;
The crooked places shall be made straight
And the rough places smooth;
The glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
And all flesh shall see it together;
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.” Isaiah 40:3-4
The prophecy I’ve quoted above is a reference to a coming King to Israel. This King would be unlike any other King. When He comes the truth about the nature of the Living God would be revealed in a three-dimensional and very accessible way. God would come as a man, the man Christ Jesus.
So?
Sometimes I am asked what is supposed to happen to a person’s functional life when they fully embrace the Gospel of Jesus Christ. How does it change daily behavior when a person becomes a Christ-follower?
I believe this change shows up in at least three significant ways:
We all have a basic motivational drive. It’s what gets us out of bed in the morning and gets us to do what it is we do. For most of us I think it is fear.
Fear of missing out…
Fear of not measuring up…
Fear of failing…
Fear of not having what it takes…
And all religions of the world aggravate this fear. All other religions say God is “out there” and “up there.” We have to reach Him and religion tells us how.
Buddhism: You must reach the Divine by following the 8-fold path.
Islam: You must keep and pursue the 5 pillars of faith.
Judaism: Keep the Torah (the Ten Commandments)
Secularism: Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die.
American Folk Religion: Be successful at all costs. Even if that means losing your family in the process.
I heard a man say recently, “Our work is the summary of who we are.” And that is fine until you can’t do your work anymore. Or when you never achieve the level of accomplishment you dreamed for your life. And If you are an average worker and success is the ultimate measurement of your value, that can only mean that you are a loser.
But the religion that most haunts most of the people I know is as follows:
All you need is to be “saved” and go to church when you can; being a disciple and living the life Jesus actually lived and doing the deeds He actually did is optional and for the special few.
But the truth is that Jesus did not come to this earth, live a perfect life, teach the wonderful things He taught, die on a cross, pass through the hell of death and rise on the third day to give you cheap fire insurance.
He came to give you eternal life at the core of who you are so that you will be able to let Him live His life through your hands, eyes, mind, heart, and feet. That’s how the Kingdom of God comes; one soul at a time.
The Bible says that God has come to us. He has come, and it is possible to have a heart that knows we are loved by God therefore we want to live a life of gratitude. We obey the teachings of Jesus and emulate His lifestyle from a motivation of grateful joy, not out of fear. Jesus came to us because He knew we could never reach Him.
When this “good news” or Gospel metastasizes in the depths of our souls it also provides us with…
If you really are hurting and you pour your heart out to someone and all they do is give you tons of facts about what you should do or not do. We might be the recipients of good data, but that often does not translate into the best help. Most of us know what we should be doing.
But if you pour your heart out about what’s wrong with you and the person says “I went through that very same thing. And maybe they show you that they even went through worse things. And they tell you the story of their experience, then they say they will be with you as you go through it! How do you feel?
No religion on this planet says that God has been through deep suffering except Christianity.
The other gods were strong; but Thou wast weak;
They rode, but Thou didst stumble to a throne;
But to our wounds only God’s wounds can speak,
And not a god has wounds, but Thou alone. — Edward Shillito
Not only will Jesus change the fundamental motivation of your life and give you a tremendous resource during suffering, He also provides us with…
Jesus coming into this world means God got a physical body. And when He died He was raised from the dead. Which means He wasn’t just raised spiritually, he was raised physically.
And what this teaches us is that the purpose of Christian salvation is not escape from the material world, but the redemption, the renewal, the healing, of the material world. In other words, it foretells about the end of times when there will be new heavens and new earth.
Therefore, not only salvation of the soul and forgiveness of sins, but fighting disease and poverty and injustice is on the agenda of the salvation of God. Don’t you want to join Him in what He is doing in this world?
This prophecy of Isaiah says that the gospel of Jesus Christ is rooted in the ancient hope of Israel for a king to come someday who would take down every mountain and raise up every canyon and heal the world of all of its disease and brokenness.
We Christians agree with the ancient prophesy and believe, “That King has come.”
…suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice… Acts 9:3,4
The life of Francis Thompson was a downward spiral that landed him on the streets of nineteenth-century London—a useless vagabond, an opium addict, a starving derelict. There, God caught him. Finally.
The son of a doctor, Thompson started out with great potential. His father sent him to study for the priesthood, and then to another school to become a doctor. But he failed at both professions and be¬came a wastrel instead, running from responsibility, family, and God.
Eventually, this prodigal hit bottom. Wandering the back alleys of London, he was hungry, friendless, and addicted to drugs. With tattered clothes and broken shoes, he barely survived by selling matches and newspapers. Still, God did not relent in His dogged chase to capture the young man’s soul.
A ray of hope came when Thompson began to write poetry. Wilfred Meynell, an editor, immediately saw Thompson’s genius. He published his works, encouraged him to enter a hospital, and personally nursed him through his convalescence. This marked a spiritual turnaround in Thompson’s life. He writes of his flight from God and God’s pursuit of him in the poem “The Hound of Heaven.” A few lines…
I FLED Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.Still with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
Came on the following Feet,
And a Voice above their beat—Naught shelters thee, who wilt not shelter Me.
With this same breathless pursuit, the Hound of Heaven once chased another running man. This person was not a vagrant; he was a well-educated and very powerful Pharisee. Nonetheless, he stubbornly fled from Christ until, one day; the Hound caught him on the dusty road to Damascus. I’m talking about Saint Paul.
He was a Jewish zealot. He despised the very name of Jesus of Nazareth. Not unlike how Osama Ben Laden hated everything America stood for; Saul loathed everything followers of Jesus stood for.
Luke tells us that he enthusiastically approved of the lynching of Stephen and that he ravaged the early church. Who was the meanest man you ever knew? Saul was meaner by ten. Paul could have written:
I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the Temple and Synagogues;
I fled Him, down the old Damascus road.
He was running.
Clutching the arrest warrants from the high priest, Saul set’s out on his distorted mission. 
However, several days into the journey, the Hound of Heaven catches him and turns his world upside down. A flash of heavenly light at high noon knocks him off his horse and a Voice speaks from within the light and Saul is converted to faith in Jesus.
The Hound of Heaven has his teeth deeply in this missionary that will change the Roman world. But look at him now; the story tells us he was blinded by the light and he is shuffling arm and arm with a guide into the city—stumbling all the way. He is a blind and broken man.
Five years ago, when I broke my leg backpacking and the Snohomish County Search and Rescue came to my camp just under Gothic Basin, they took over and started calling the shots. They told me to sit still and they would pack up my gear. Told me to lie back on a litter and they would carry me to the pickup zone so I could be choppered to safety. They strapped me on to the litter wrapped a tight fiberglass shroud around me, folded my arms across my chest so that I couldn’t even scratch my nose.
It hurts to be helpless. But, I’ve learned that grace, like water, follows the path of least resistance.
We dog-ear someone’s life on the page of their greatest failure. But God doesn’t do that. God looks at the totality of their life. He even takes into consideration the good deeds that they will do in the life to come. There is always a clean slate of grace with God.
God sends a gentle saint named Ananias to Saul to touch his eyes and change his life. With tenderness, Ananias ministers to undeserving Saul. As the blinding scales of hate fall away, Saul opens his eyes, and for the first time he sees the truth of Christ’s love. And the two men embrace. Once enemies, now brothers.
Each dawn that peaks over the chalky hills of Damascus brings the soft light of hope and deeper meaning. The Holy Spirit lives inside the man-hater now and he is changed. But somebody had to do a lot of forgiving of Saul. Somebody’s mother had been thrown in prison. Someone’s brother had been lynched. Stephen’s children are crying in the night for their father who will never come home again. A lot of forgiving was given to this former enemy of the Church.
A restoration happened. A mending turned enemies into brothers. It is a healing that only occurs when the Holy Spirit fills the skin of a band of brothers and sisters who are willing to risk loving an enemy. The hunter became the hunted. The persecutor had become the preacher. Saul started out with all kinds of power, and now he is able to live for Jesus with authority that comes from being rescued, mended and restored.
Some of you don’t know it, but He is nipping at your heels.
Or maybe you are Ananias waiting for your orders.
“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep…~Jesus
A man tells me of a pornography addiction that has escalated into group sex with strangers and random sexual encounters with men. I listen and pray with him for weeks and months give the Biblical wisdom about such things.
A woman has an affair with a co-worker and her husband finds out. My wife and I spend hours, days, and weeks meeting with them. I get calls and texts in the middle of the night for months from one or both of them because their hearts are on fire with pain and betrayal. We pray, listen, give counsel from the Bible. We declare to them both that we will walk with them all the way to a marriage of restoration. They stay married.
A man comes to faith in Jesus. I baptize him and spend hours teaching him the basics of the Christian life. We pray together, we talk, and we walk together for months and then years. He grows and grows in his understanding of the faith.
Another family joins the fellowship and begins to serve in the church. I meet with the man for coffee hours after hours and yet he and his wife begin to drift apart and he begins to date a married woman so I ask him to take some time off serving until he settles his marital status. I pray with him and show him the scriptures clear teaching about such things.
A recovering alcoholic and I meet for coffee and great conversations about life, rock n roll, and Jesus.
A woman and her daughter begin coming to our Church and breathe such a sigh of relief at finding a safe place from which they can recover from a toxic church relationship. They are enfolded deeper and deeper into the Church and begin to serve. The younger woman is unable to have children with her husband who is hostile to the Church. So, we pray and pray and pray for the couple to conceive and give birth to a healthy baby. We pray for the husband to begin to attend Church. He begins coming and is faithful to come even when his wife is too ill with morning sickness. He begins to serve in the Church. A healthy baby is born to this lovely family.
A single mother and her daughter attend and serve. I go to her place of employment with the horrible news that her father has suddenly died. I carry her in my arms with another member to her car and drive her home. My wife and I pray with her and love her; care for her.
A man and his wife have been in our home to share a meal tells his wife I am a fake.
And now I must stop typing for the tears in my eyes. Those sheep have all left the fold. They have left my church. Some attend other Churches; prettier and sexier Churches. Others just don’t go to church anymore. They all left in the span of 18 months in a previous ministry.
Forbes released a list a couple of years ago of the toughest leadership roles – and a church pastor ranks among them. More than 1,700 pastors leave the ministry every month.
This staggering number includes some of the brightest, most inspiring pastors in the country. Over the years of having about as many people leave my ministry sphere as stay, I thought I’d share a thing or two, because I’ve seen a thing or two.
If you don’t carry them in your heart, your compassion will be stiff and stultified—helping no one. If you hold them too tightly your fingers will hurt when they pry them open to go their way. Besides, they are not your sheep anyway.
A shepherd never ever drives his or her sheep. It’s a cliché, but none-the-less true: Folks don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. If you are going to make a mistake in leadership, make it on the side of mercy and grace. After all, that’s what your Shepherd has done for you.
A pastor without a pastor is a man or a woman who is trying to be a Messiah. Find someone you can trust that will shepherd your heart with equal parts grace and truth. When you find that safe person, submit the care of your soul to them. Wasn’t it Ben Franklin who said, “He who cannot obey, ought not command”?
When (not if) they leave you will want to be strong enough to complete your calling and love those that remain in ways that make them look more and more like Jesus. Beyond that, when you stand before the Lord one day, He’s not going to ask you to show Him your sheep. He’ll ask to see your soul. Make sure you have one to show Him.
The calling of a pastor is a heavy one, but we are not without resources. We have a Good Shepherd that holds us as we hold others. Now, excuse me I hear the bleating of a hurting soul and I must go.
For I am a pastor.
And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper… I will not leave you orphans. —Jesus
I need help loving folks. You probably don’t, but I certainly do.
Many years ago, I was a corporate trainer, traveling from city to city teaching management and communication courses to businesses. I spent a lot of time in airports. Typically, after 6 hours of training on conflict management or assertive communication skills, my quota of words had been spent and my emotional tank was empty. That meant that I did NOT want to talk to anyone.
The thought of being seated beside a talker on a long flight home is my idea of hell. To mitigate that I would often begin my “Get off my lawn” scowl as I passed through security. I’ve been known, with one look, to put the fear of God in TSA officers. I would also put earbuds in my ears, which is a clear indicator that I am not to be spoken to.
So, in the Oakland airport, armed with a menacing stink eye and with earbuds firmly in place, I prepared to board my Southwest flight home to Seattle. Southwest does not assign seats. You get your choice of seats based on zones and the earlier you check in the better the zone. If you are in zone “C” you very well might get a middle seat. And because I am 6 feet four inches tall and none-of-your-business pounds, I don’t travel well in the middle seat, to say the least.
You might imagine on this day I had zone “C”. I am not a happy man.
As I am waiting to board, I notice a young man who had white bellbottom pants on and wearing a navy-blue pea coat. A large khaki duffle bag lay at his feet. He is talking on a cell phone and tears are streaming down his face. I deduced that he was about to be deployed from Bremerton Naval station up near Seattle on a ship that would take him out to sea for several months. He was saying goodbye to someone he loved. He hung up his phone and began to sob as he pulled the high collar of his pea coat up around his face.
I sighed deeply and heard a pestering Voice say to me,
“That boy needs someone to minister to him.”
“I’m not a pastor anymore,” I thought.
“You have a heart, though. Don’t you, Joe?” A Voice said.
“I’ve worked very hard all day and have no more words or energy.”
“Your meat is to do the will of the Father,” the Voice said.
“He probably doesn’t want some stranger talking to him in such a vulnerable state!”
“Love suffers long and is kind,” the Voice said.
“I know he needs help, but I don’t want to!”
“He that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin,” the Voice said.
“What would I say?”
“I will dwell with you and will be in you,” the Voice said.
“Okay, okay,” I said. If he gets on the plane and no one is sitting beside him I will sit beside him and see if I can help.
The voice on the PA system called for zone “A” to board and he got up and made his way to the plane. I smiled because I am in zone “C” on a very full flight.
I felt good. I had submitted to the pestering voice in my conscience and at the same time that guy is in zone “A” and I am in zone “C”—what are the odds that an open seat would be beside him? More than a little smugness came into my heart.
As I walked down the aisle to find any non-middle seat I could, I saw the sailor sitting in a window seat—with a middle seat next to him open.
Sigh.
I remembered my promise to the pestering voice that if there were an open seat next to him, I’d sit there.
I sat beside him and as the plane leveled off at cruising altitude I asked him his name and we chatted for a while. His name was Nick; he was newly married and his wife was pregnant. She was going to have his baby while he was at sea. She was all alone in the bay area and he was worried about her.
I asked him other questions about his home town, his interests, his favorite sports teams, (I was relieved to discover he was not an Oakland Raiders fan. #decencymatters) hobbies. He talked and talked and talked.
We landed and I walked with him towards baggage claim and his weeping returned. As we walked together, I told him that SeaTac had a chapel and the USO also had a kiosk. He thanked me.
I started to walk away and looked back to see Nick standing there unsure of where to go next and what to do. He looked as lost as a puppy without it’s mama. I went back and stood in front of him and said, “Nick, Jesus loves you very much. If you will call upon him while at sea, He will never leave you alone.” Nick nodded his head.
“Nick, can I pray for you?”
He nodded his head.
I placed my hand on his shoulder and said a prayer of blessing and protection over him, his wife, and child—as a sea of humanity swirled all around us.
“The Lord bless you and keep you;
The Lord make His face shine upon you,
And be gracious to you;
The Lord lift up His countenance upon you,
And give you peace.”’
After the prayer, I hugged him and walked away.
He called out, “Sir? Thank you.”
As I made my way to my car, you know what? I felt empowered. I felt fresh and energized. My steps were lighter. My heart was full.”
The play write, Arthur Miller described his wife, Marilyn Monroe’s, ability to walk into a room filled with people and point out the folks in the room who grew up in an orphanage. She’d say, “There is a pain and loneliness in the eyes that is absent in all of the other eyes. I know who grew up without love.”
That might be true of some of you. Would you allow Jesus to look you in the eyes, like He did His friends 2,000 years ago, and receive these words, “I will not leave you orphaned. I am coming to you”?
On January 20th of 2017, we said goodbye to the first President of Color in the history of our country. My admiration for Mr. Obama has nothing to do with his politics. (Most of which I disagree.) My respect is derived from his character. He and his family conducted themselves with class. Much like the immediate previous occupants of the White House.
President Barak Obama
I wrote the article below the day after Barak Obama won the election in 2008. (By the way, I voted for McCain)
I was living in Eastland, Texas the first year the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was in full force. At that time, Texas was not the most integrated State in the land. I remember specific sections of town being designated “Colored Town.” (That is what polite people called it.) Sometimes we would drive over the railroad tracks and pass through that part of town and I remembered the houses on stilts with no skirting and lacking paint. Here and there a car up on blocks with the wheels removed.
For the most part, yards were neat and tidy with bright, colorful clothes hung on the line in the back yards. Old men sat on the front porch—some smoking corn cob pipes, others just sitting in straight back chairs with dazzling white T-shirts, wearing fedora hats. And in my young mind, I felt as if this were not a good thing—this separated place for these people. I couldn’t say it then, for I did not have the language, but it felt oppressive. It felt unfair. Like they had done something wrong and living separated was their punishment.
My best friend that year in school was a girl named Victoria. Her desk was right next to mine in Mrs. Smith’s first-grade class. We had nothing in common. I was a boy and she a girl. (girls were covered in germs back then) She was very good in school. I was an average student. She never got in trouble. I got in trouble all the time. I wore plain clothes. She wore bright colors. I was quiet in class. She was outspoken. I desperately wanted to fit in and play with the cool kids at recess. She was content to sit alone and read or jump rope by herself.
The one thing we had in common, however, was our sense of humor. I remember I could make her laugh. She had an easy and infectious laugh. That was one of the reasons I got in trouble because she would laugh at my silliness. And she was just as funny. We couldn’t play together at recess because boys didn’t play with girls in first grade without some major teasing by the cool kids. But in class—when Mrs. Smith had her back to us—we had a blast. Victoria was a great gal.
On parent /teacher night my mom wanted to meet this Victoria that I chattered so much about. I told her that it would be easy to meet her because she sat next to me. I was hopeful that she would be there that night at the same time we were there. My hopes came true. As my mom and I went into the classroom I took her over to show her my desk and there was Victoria with her mom too!
I turned to my mom and said, “This is Victoria.”
My mom paused.
Then she smiled and bragged to Victoria and her mom about how much I talked about Victoria when I came home from school every day. It’s “Victoria this and Victoria that. Victoria said this and Victoria said that. Joe just goes on and on about Victoria.”
I remembered Victoria smiling and looking down at her shoes in a bit of awkward shyness. My mom and her mom exchanged some pleasantries. I just smiled at Victoria and she smiled back. But her smile eclipsed mine with her white teeth contrasted against her jet-black skin.
Years later my mom reminded me of that night. She said the thing that she was so proud of about that first-grade friendship was the fact that I never mentioned Victoria’s skin color. Which told her that she and my father were doing a good job of raising color blind children in a segregated south.
First Grade Class
Siebert Elementary School
1965
I am the one with the ears…back row third from the left. I suppose you can guess which one is Victoria.
On November 4, 2008, our country elected its first black president. When Barak Obama wowed us with his victory speech I remembered “Colored Town. “ I remembered unpainted and un-skirted houses. I remembered news reports of National Guard troops being sent into volatile places in the south. I remember George Wallace blocking a doorway somewhere. I remember my mom crying when a white man killed Marin Luther King, Jr. I remember the news reporting race riots all over the country.
And now my president is a black man!
When President-elect Obama’s wife came on the stage with their two little girls——I also remembered Victoria.
Now some 43 years later I don’t know where Victoria is…. but I bet she is laughing.
I am laughing too, for change has indeed come. I am proud of our country.
Heavenly Father, please protect President Trump and his family. Give him compassion for the unborn and voiceless of this world. Give him strength to protect the innocent. Close his ears to evil. Give him discernment to be a good steward of the trust and treasury of our great land. Give him grace and your blessings. Let no evil or harm befall him. Keep him humble and dependent upon You. May you be glorified through our new president. Amen.
Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus…
Jesus, who, being in the form of God…made Himself of no reputation…that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow… Philippians 2:5,6,10
Despite the current political and cultural climate, there is coming a day when every knee will bow to Jesus
Galaxies and grasshoppers; Angels and ants will bow their knees. He is Lord over Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and Vladimir Putin. He is Lord over the Republicans, Democrats, and Libertarians. He is Lord over Bill Gates and Meryl Streep. He is Lord over Bill O’Reilly and Dan Rather. He’s Lord over Oprah and Big Bird. He is Lord over Dr. Ruth, Dr. Kevorkian, and Dr. Seuss. He is Lord over Steven Spielberg and Lady Gaga.
They may not know it yet, but the day is coming when every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord of Lords and ruler of the Kings of the earth!
Even in our day, in the vocabulary of the world, “down” is a word reserved for losers, cowards, and the bear market. It’s a word to be avoided or ignored. It’s a word that colors whatever it touches: down and out, downfall, downscale, downhill, downhearted, and worst of all, down under. It’s a word for the weak, the poor, the losers, or the dead.
From the world’s perspective, up is the only direction to go. Just as a compass needle points north, the human needle points up; in each heart is a built-in mechanism that craves self-promotion and advancement, the climb of ego.
Do whatever it takes to conquer gravity. Why? Because that is the direction of greatness. That’s what the world says. But, Jesus is a king who descends into greatness. He is unlike any ruler or authority figure the world has ever seen.
All this language of Lord, Kings, and Rulers is a little unnerving to us on a couple of levels. For one thing, we haven’t had a Lord or a King in this country in quite some time. But on a much more personal level, because we are living lives in which folks in authority over us over have abused their power: parents, pastors, coaches, bosses, teachers…many of us have an allergy to authority.
Therefore, we choose to be ruled by the tyranny of the self.
But Jesus is a king, but a king of a different kind. His strategy for conquest is to love us into submission. Jesus rules through forgiveness, love, and grace. He rules by serving even at great cost to Himself. You can trust a king like that.
Listen, there is no room in the house of your life that you can’t feel safe inviting Jesus to 
enter. There is no secret that you need to worry about when you give it to Jesus. There is no wound, no matter how deep, that you can’t trust in His hands. Why? Because those very hands in which you place your wounded and broken heart are scarred themselves.
If you want to be truly great, then the direction you must go is down.
If you want to be a real follower of Jesus, then express your Christianity the same way Jesus did…think like Jesus thought…act like Jesus acted…have the same attitude or mind that Jesus had.
You develop the same values, the same mindset…you follow in his steps.
What would it look like for you and me to follow Jesus and joyfully descend? In what ways, can we empty ourselves of our time, emotional energy, and material possessions to serve others and give glory to God?
What about grudges? When you are tempted to walk down another aisle at your local grocery rather than come face-to-face with a person who has harmed you. Will you meet them in the produce section and say, “Hi” and give them a hug? That is a person who is following Jesus down as he loves God and serves others.
When you are in an argument and you decide to let the other person get the last word like Jesus did before Herod and Pilate. That is when you are following the humble King down into greatness.
When you show up to a social gathering and instead of wondering how you might make an entrance that lets everyone know that you are now in the building, you look around for the one person who looks like they are alone and decides that you are going to make them feel as if they are the reason the party was thrown. Who here is lonely? Who here is discouraged? That is a moment in which you are imitating the humble king.
Descend into obscurity in the eyes of the world, and greatness in the eyes of God. You won’t be lonely there. That’s where you’ll find the carpenter from Nazareth.
If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!” ~ Jesus
This doesn’t seem to be how the analogy should end. The kids need food, not the Holy Spirit.
What could Jesus possibly be saying here? Here’s what I think He is saying, “Sometimes, what we think we need more than anything in the world is answers, help, a fix, a cure—but the thing we most need is God. We need the presence of God more than we need the provisions of God. What we need more than what God gives, is God.
His very best gift to us is Himself.
Jesus lived for us, died for us, and was raised from the dead for us so that the third person of the Trinity could actually live in our lives. The Christian message is NOT that your life will be trouble-free. It was not true for the people who heard Jesus teach this 2,000 years ago, it was not true of the saints down through the ages, and it is not true for us today.
This was not even true for Jesus Himself. Jesus’ didn’t get His resurrection before His death.
Often awful things happen to very good people. The good news is that when we are confused about why the heavens are silent when we are in trouble, sick, or broken is that the cross and the empty tomb proves that God is with us right now—and that is enough.
And the resurrection is exhibit A that God is mighty enough to right the wrongs of this world and will one day make everything sad come untrue. What God did to the dead and stiffening cadaver of Jesus, He will one day do for this rotten world. He will bring ‘up there down here.’
In 1758, Robert Robinson wrote one of the most beloved hymns of the church, Come, Thou Fount. The words have moved Christians from the time he wrote it.
Come, thou Fount of every blessing,
tune my heart to sing thy grace;
streams of mercy, never ceasing,
call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I’m fixed upon it,
mount of thy redeeming love.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
prone to leave the God I love;
here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
seal it for thy courts above.
A lot of people don’t know that, after writing that hymn, Robinson left the faith. It was not that he no longer believed. He believed in the doctrine but his own failure and sin caused him to lose his belief that God could love him. Years later on a summer evening he was riding in a carriage with a lady friend. They rode past a church and heard the strings of the hymn Robinson had written so many years before coming from the open windows of the church.
Robinson began to cry. His friend asked him the reason for his tears and he told her that the hymn was his. “I would give everything I own,” he said, “to know the peace that I knew when I wrote that hymn.”
I wish I could have talked to Robert Robinson. I would have liked to have told him that he will never know the peace he longs for by being on the outside looking in. I would have told him to get down off his horse carriage and go to the Father, Almighty. He won’t be angry. He’ll love you and it will be as if you had never left!”
That is the hope we cling to when we call God “Our Father, Almighty.”
When I was a trustee on Lifeway Christian Resources back in the 90’s, I was flying into Nashville for a board meeting. Somewhere along the way we hit some of the worst turbulence I’ve ever been through in my entire life. I have flown quite a bit and usually don’t get too spooked about this kind of thing. But this was really bad. That kind of experience tends to make you pray. I prayed intensely during that bumpy ride. But the really irritating thing was that I was seated beside a woman who slept through the entire thing. When we finally landed, she woke up and stretched and wiped the sleep out of her eyes. I said to her, “Lady, we almost died and you slept through the entire thing! How could you sleep through that?
She laughed, and said, “Mister, I can’t fly the plane!”
God and God alone is Almighty.
I have a friend whose father, when my friend was a small boy, placed him on top of a kitchen counter and said, “Son, jump and I’ll catch you.” When my friend jumped, his father turned his back and let him hit the floor. Then his father said, “Son, you have just learned an important lesson. Never trust anybody…ever.”
God says, “Jump I’ll catch you.” When you do, we find that we are caught in the arms of a Father who has never broken a promise, never abused his children, never let us go.
I love the words of the late Brennan Manning:
May all your expectations be frustrated;
May all your plans be thwarted
May all your desires be withered into nothingness…
That you may experience the powerlessness and poverty
Of a child and sing and dance in the compassion of God Who is
Father, Son, and Spirit. Amen.
If you are a follower of Jesus you don’t need to wonder if you are welcome in God’s presence. There is no gatekeeper to the throne-room of heaven.
You have access to the Living God—because He is your Father.
One evening a few years ago, I was driving home in the gentle rain of the Pacific Northwest. In the back of my old Jeep lay a gift for the best grandson in the wide world that I had purchased from Toys-R-Us. The radio was slapping out the music of Bruce Hornsby on the radio and I was trying to sing along to the lyrics:
Listen to the mandolin rain
Listen to the music on the lake
Listen to my heart break every time she runs away
I was singing loud in my noisy Jeep cruising down the Highway. Suddenly, I heard a siren from somewhere behind me and off in the distance a muted Public Address voice with all the authority that comes with someone who carries a badge and a gun, “Halt! Where do you think you are going?”
I squinted into all my mirrors straining to get a glimpse of the flashing red and blue lights of the police officer that is yelling at me. I looked ahead and to my right then to my left. He was not ahead of me, not behind me, not beside me…yet the siren was still there and the voice from One-Adam-Twelve was still hollering at me.
I was getting more than a little frustrated and very confused, so I pulled over to the far right lane and wondered what I might have done to irritate the officer so much that he has to yell at me over the PA system and turn his siren on but without flashing emergency lights.
Did I run a red light? Was I speeding? Did I change lanes inappropriately? Did he think I fit the description of a mass murder or terrorist? Maybe he thought I was a “Deplorable.” What could I have possible done to incur such wrath when the only thing I had been doing for the last hour was to successfully purchase—not contraband mind you— but toys for my grandson?
I started pulling over to make my way off the highway and be frisked by an irritated police officer who had an authority complex. That badge and gun have gone to this guy’s head, I thought to myself.
Then the siren went off again and the voice on the PA system from somewhere behind me said, “To infinity and beyond!”
The tumblers in my brain clicked in recognition. Buzz Lightyear had fallen over in the backseat and activated his button and he had been cycling through all his lines from the movie Toy Story.
I started to laugh out loud. It has been a very long time that I obeyed the voice of a toy no matter how authoritative sounding that voice might be. I remember saying, “That is funny right there, Joe. You crossed two lanes of traffic and were about to get out of your jeep, put your hands on the hood of your Jeep and get spread-eagle for a …toy.”
That would be a toy story indeed.
I was not expecting to hear from Buzz that afternoon, but I heard from him and adjusted my behavior accordingly.
Would to God I would be as quick to obey the voice of Jesus as I did the voice of Buzz.
A person who won’t read has no advantage over one who can’t read.~ Mark Twain
Every year’s end I post a list and summary of my top ten reads for the previous year. In doing this I have to be selective in what I post because I read significantly more than ten books in a year. (Sorry if that sounded arrogant. No, I’m not sorry.) I will list the title, the publisher’s summary and a comment or two.
So here goes my top reads for 2016 in no particular order:
Reading Your Life’s Story, by Keith R. Anderson
Spiritual mentoring is a particular kind of friendship in which, according to Keith R. Anderson, “two or more people walk together in heightened awareness of the presence of yet Another”—the Holy Spirit.
“Spiritual mentoring is not a complicated process that requires technical training and complex protocol,” Anderson continues. “It is essential, authentic, and maybe even natural human speech that is focused, disciplined and nurtured by training for one of the hardest natural things we do: listening reflectively to another. It is sacred companionship as life is lived and story told. Available to almost all, it requires deliberate recruitment, preparation and practice.”
These pages unfold a vision for mentoring that invites us to read our own lives as narrative and to learn how to enter the narrative of another life. The book covers the scope of the mentoring relationship through various seasons, offering helpful and inspiring metaphors for mentoring. All are invited to enter the mentoring story.
My comments…
I’m currently working on certification program through Potter’s Inn in Divide, Colorado. I’ve had to range far and wide in my reading for that program. It has been wonderful. But this book is one of the best books on Soul Care and mentoring I have ever read. I can’t recommend it highly enough.
I will give it away to others and read it again and again for years to come.
Soul Feast, by Marjorie Thompson
First released in 1995, this spiritual classic continues to be a best-seller, as thousands each year accept Marjorie Thompson’s invitation to the Christian spiritual life. Offering a framework for understanding the spiritual disciplines and instruction for developing and nurturing those practices, Soul Feast continues to be a favorite for individual reflection and group study. Many new additions, including a new chapter on keeping the Sabbath, make this newly revised edition of Soul Feast a must-have.
My comments…
This book fed my soul very deeply. I found the prose very readable and the content extremely practical. If you want to give yourself some really good tools to deepen your walk with Jesus, this is a great book to help you on that journey.
A Public Faith In Action, by Miroslav Volf
Christian citizens have a responsibility to make political and ethical judgments in light of their faith and to participate in the public lives of their communities–from their local neighborhoods to the national scene. But it can be difficult to discern who to vote for, which policies to support, and how to respond to the social and cultural trends of our time.
This nonpartisan handbook offers Christians practical guidance for thinking through complicated public issues and faithfully following Jesus as citizens of their countries. The book focuses on enduring Christian commitments that should guide readers in their judgments and encourages legitimate debate among Christians over how to live out core values. The book also includes lists of resources for further reflection in each chapter and “room for debate” questions to consider.
My comments…
The three worst days for our country in my life time:
November 22, 1963
September 11, 2001
November 6, 2016
2016 saw the election of Donald Trump. Many people I love very much voted for him. I shiver at that thought. I may have even lost a few followers on my blog when I wrote about why my wife and I could not vote for him. Decency still matters to us.
How do we then live? Miroslav Volf is one of the brightest and most dedicated Christian thinkers of our day. This book has helped me find a language to think about my faith and how it should shape my public discourse. If you are looking for red meat on your particular “hot button issues” this is not your book.
I love this book.
Rebuilding Your Broken World, by Gordon McDonald
What happens when your ideals and desires, plans and strategies, all go awry? From what sources might one find the resolve to begin a rebuilding process? “The fact is,” writes Gordon MacDonald in Rebuilding Your Broken World, “the God of the Bible is a God of the rebuilding process. And not enough broken people know that.”
No stranger himself to brokenness, Gordon MacDonald draws from personal experience and discusses the likely sources of pain, the humiliation, and the long- and short-range consequences of a broken personal world. And he offers encouraging answers to the questions everyone asks when their worlds fall apart: Is there a way back?
My comments…
As a broken world person and pastor this booked helped me in so many ways. My broken world was many years ago, and there was limited resources available to help guide me as Humpty Dumpty (me) began rebuild my life. I owned this book back then, but had misplaced it and suffered through the restoration process without it. Now, in God’s providence, I dusted it off and re-read it and found it resonating with my soul more now than it might have even back 17 years ago when I broke my world.
There are many really stood out but the two that spoke particularly to my heart where I am not this side of the mess were: Chapter 14 and 15 “The Peace Ledge Principles, and Chapter 18 “Rebuilt”
Today I am trying to position myself to help restore, or to use the author’s term, rebuild broken souls. This is a powerful, practical and inspiring guide in that restoration process. I can’t recommend it highly enough. Someone you know needs this book. Maybe even you.
A New Heaven and a New Earth, by J. Richard Middleton
In recent years, more and more Christians have come to appreciate the Bible’s teaching that the ultimate blessed hope for the believer is not an otherworldly heaven; instead, it is full-bodied participation in a new heaven and a new earth brought into fullness through the coming of God’s kingdom. Drawing on the full sweep of the biblical narrative, J. Richard Middleton unpacks key Old Testament and New Testament texts to make a case for the new earth as the appropriate Christian hope. He suggests its ethical and ecclesial implications, exploring the difference a holistic eschatology can make for living in a broken world.
My comments…
A man told me recently that he didn’t pray for peace in the world because his eschatology teaches that things have to get bad before they get better and he didn’t want to pray contrary to God’s will for the second coming of Christ.
My jaw hung open.
Our culture is in desperate need of a hopeful eschatology, properly interpreted from the ancient book that we love. Don’t be a “Panmillennialist.” (I’ll all pan out in the end.) Eschatology impacts our culture, geopolitical strategies, and even environmental perspectives.
Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush, by Jon Meacham
In this brilliant biography, Jon Meacham, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author, chronicles the life of George Herbert Walker Bush. Drawing on President Bush’s personal diaries, on the diaries of his wife, Barbara, and on extraordinary access to the forty-first president and his family, Meacham paints an intimate and surprising portrait of an intensely private man who led the nation through tumultuous times. From the Oval Office to Camp David, from his study in the private quarters of the White House to Air Force One, from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the first Gulf War to the end of Communism, Destiny and Power charts the thoughts, decisions, and emotions of a modern president who may have been the last of his kind. This is the human story of a man who was, like the nation he led, at once noble and flawed.
My comments…
George Herbert Walker Bush has become one of my favorite POTUS. He was a good man. Perhaps a man born out of season. He would have been a successful leader in a more patrician age. But, alas, time waits for no one.
This is a good book about a decent and much more complicated man than you might imagine.
In his time, Ulysses S. Grant was routinely grouped with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln in the “Trinity of Great American Leaders.” But the battlefield commander–turned–commander-in-chief fell out of favor in the twentieth century. In American Ulysses, Ronald C. White argues that we need to once more revise our estimates of him in the twenty-first.
Based on seven years of research with primary documents—some of them never examined by previous Grant scholars—this is destined to become the Grant biography of our time. White, a biographer exceptionally skilled at writing momentous history from the inside out, shows Grant to be a generous, curious, introspective man and leader—a willing delegator with a natural gift for managing the rampaging egos of his fellow officers. His wife, Julia Dent Grant, long marginalized in the historic record, emerges in her own right as a spirited and influential partner.
Grant was not only a brilliant general but also a passionate defender of equal rights in post-Civil War America. After winning election to the White House in 1868, he used the power of the federal government to battle the Ku Klux Klan. He was the first president to state that the government’s policy toward American Indians was immoral, and the first ex-president to embark on a world tour, and he cemented his reputation for courage by racing against death to complete his Personal Memoirs. Published by Mark Twain, it is widely considered to be the greatest autobiography by an American leader, but its place in Grant’s life story has never been fully explored—until now.
One of those rare books that successfully recast our impression of an iconic historical figure, American Ulysses gives us a finely honed, three-dimensional portrait of Grant the man—husband, father, leader, writer—that should set the standard by which all future biographies of him will be measured.
My comments…
This book. This man. I’ve read a couple of biography’s about Grant. I know his story, but I never get used to the way he died. So brave. So heroic. Here is a man who failed at everything he ever tried to do except about three things: His marriage. (He had one of the great marriage in our country’s history. War. He was a great leader of men in the Civil War. Writing. He wrote the definitive autobiography of any POTUS. All other memoirs of presidents are measured against Grant’s. They all fall short, according to historians and writers.
This is a great book about a great man.
A Man Called Ove, by Fredrik Backman
Meet Ove. He’s a curmudgeon—the kind of man who points at people he dislikes as if they were burglars caught outside his bedroom window. He has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. People call him “the bitter neighbor from hell.” But must Ove be bitter just because he doesn’t walk around with a smile plastered to his face all the time?
Behind the cranky exterior there is a story and a sadness. So when one November morning a chatty young couple with two chatty young daughters move in next door and accidentally flatten Ove’s mailbox, it is the lead-in to a comical and heartwarming tale of unkempt cats, unexpected friendship, and the ancient art of backing up a U-Haul. All of which will change one cranky old man and a local residents’ association to their very foundations.
My comments…
Reckon if you read this book you will say, “That’s you, Joe Chambers.” Maybe that is why I was attracted to it. A friend recommended it to me and I was mesmerized by the tender love story and the humor of the author. If you want to laugh and cry, sometimes in the same paragraph, then read this book.
The Hero of the Empire, by Candace Millard
At age twenty-four, Winston Churchill was utterly convinced it was his destiny to become prime minister of England one day, despite the fact he had just lost his first election campaign for Parliament. He believed that to achieve his goal he must do something spectacular on the battlefield. Despite deliberately putting himself in extreme danger as a British Army officer in colonial wars in India and Sudan, and as a journalist covering a Cuban uprising against the Spanish, glory and fame had eluded him.
Churchill arrived in South Africa in 1899, valet and crates of vintage wine in tow, there to cover the brutal colonial war the British were fighting with Boer rebels. But just two weeks after his arrival, the soldiers he was accompanying on an armored train were ambushed, and Churchill was taken prisoner. Remarkably, he pulled off a daring escape–but then had to traverse hundreds of miles of enemy territory, alone, with nothing but a crumpled wad of cash, four slabs of chocolate, and his wits to guide him.
The story of his escape is incredible enough, but then Churchill enlisted, returned to South Africa, fought in several battles, and ultimately liberated the men with whom he had been imprisoned.
Churchill would later remark that this period, “could I have seen my future, was to lay the foundations of my later life.” Millard spins an epic story of bravery, savagery, and chance encounters with a cast of historical characters—including Rudyard Kipling, Lord Kitchener, and Mohandas Gandhi—with whom he would later share the world stage. But Hero of the Empire is more than an adventure story, for the lessons Churchill took from the Boer War would profoundly affect 20th century history.
My comments…
This book of history reads like a good fiction. Most of us know the elder Churchill. The goat of WWI and the hero of WWII. But this is a fascinating look at a young and precocious 24-year-old Churchill. You can see he had stuff of greatness even at that age.
Good read.
The Aviators, by Winston Groom
Written by gifted storyteller Winston Groom (author of Forrest Gump), The Aviators tells the saga of three extraordinary aviators–Charles Lindbergh, Eddie Rickenbacker, and Jimmy Doolittle–and how they redefine heroism through their genius, daring, and uncommon courage.
This is the fascinating story of three extraordinary heroes who defined aviation during the great age of flight. These cleverly interwoven tales of their heart-stopping adventures take us from the feats of World War I through the heroism of World War II and beyond, including daring military raids and survival-at-sea, and will appeal to fans of Unbroken, The Greatest Generation, and Flyboys.
With the world in peril in World War II, each man set aside great success and comfort to return to the skies for his most daring mission yet. Doolittle, a brilliant aviation innovator, would lead the daring Tokyo Raid to retaliate for Pearl Harbor; Lindbergh, hero of the first solo flight across the Atlantic, would fly combat missions in the South Pacific; and Rickenbacker, World War I flying ace, would bravely hold his crew together while facing near-starvation and circling sharks after his plane went down in a remote part of the Pacific. Groom’s rich narrative tells their intertwined stories–from broken homes to Medals of Honor (all three would receive it); barnstorming to the greatest raid of World War II; front-page triumph to anguished tragedy; and near-death to ultimate survival–as all took to the sky, time and again, to become exemplars of the spirit of the “greatest generation.”
My comments…
I love how the author overlays these heroes of flight. A quick and easy read. Hard to put down.
How Great is the Darkness, By Jamie Greening
Pastor Butch Gregory is a quiet man who only wants to serve the Lord and the small congregation he loves. His dream of peaceful ministry is shattered by a murderous conspiracy. One by one, pastors in his small Western Washington town fall victims to murder. What is going on? Why? Things get worse when it is apparent the murderers have targeted Pastor Butch for death. Pastor Butch, his colleague Terence Harrison, and an old familiar face try to find the killers while they also fight to stay alive.
My comments…
What a great read! The pace and character development kept me reading. The author balances a wholesome book and redemptive qualities with a very dark subject matter: corrupt clergy and a vigilante group of “Christians.” Nicely done. For me the star of the show was Wyoming. I really liked his street smarts and edgy character.
There were so many others that I could have mentioned, but this is already longer than most of you will have read. I hope you will go to a library, or your favorite bookstore and get your hands on some of these books.
You will be the better for it.
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