If two lie down together, they will keep warm; But how can one be warm alone?
~ The Preacher
“I’m going to go out and cut some wood.”
There’s something sexy about a woman in the woods with a chainsaw.
“Want me to go with you?” she asked.
“That would be great.”
Living in the mountains is something I have dreamed about for over forty years—and now that dream has come true at the foot of Mt. Princeton. I am in heaven. I step out on my deck at night and can see a million pin-pricks of light in the night sky. Like so many tiny holes to heaven. I can go for a walk and dodge prickly pairs, see antelope, and smell the gentle decay of fallen leaves in the river bottom.
I am living my dream.
My wife is living my dream—not hers.
She is a city girl. She likes the close proximity of Hobby Lobby, Dollar Tree and Costco. She likes the security of people she loves very close to her or within easy driving distance. She likes well-kept lawns, paved streets and stop lights.
So what is she doing volunteering to step outside and hold logs while I cut them with a chainsaw? She isn’t living her life. She is living life. A life she didn’t choose. A life that is happening before us as we follow the calling of the Lord.
Nearly 34 years ago we entered a covenant together for better or worse and she is anything if not loyal to a promise. When we watch the Lord of the Rings trilogy the character she most closely identifies with is Samwise Gamgee. If Frodo, the ring-bearer, must go into Mordor then Sam will follow. It is who he is.
It is who she is.
Last night my hand was hung loosely over the arm of my chair as we were mindlessly watching one of our favorite shows and she slipped her hand inside of mine. We are living in the confluence or our lives—now that kids are grown and gone and grandkids are a thousand miles away. Our souls are knitting together. We are becoming one—our hearts are beating together.
Did you hear about the couple who had been married for 72 years and loved each other to the very end? The couple was hospitalized after a car accident just outside of Marshalltown, Iowa. They were given a shared room in the ICU where they held hands in adjacent beds.
At 3:38 pm on a Wednesday, Gordon’s breathing stopped. Though he was no longer alive, his heart monitor continued to register a beat.
The nurse told Gordon and Norma’s son, Dennis Yeager, that the monitor was beeping “because they’re holding hands, and Norma’s heart beat is going through him.”
Norma died at 4:38 pm, exactly one hour later.
Even when we are cutting wood together or praying together over a meal, we are living in the confluence of our lives.
When the Word of the Lord comes to anything, it is never the same. In Genesis when the earth was a dark, soupy mess, the word of God came to that mess and formed this spinning blue planet we call Earth. When God decided to make mankind, He spoke and mankind was formed from the dust of the ground and placed on this beautiful blue planet. And in the fullness of time, God comes to us in person and speaks our language in the person of His son, Jesus.
Most scholars agree that this four chapter book was actually penned sometime after Jonah lived and died and several hundred years before Jesus came on the scene. And it is helpful to imagine Jonah as a ‘stand in’ for the people of God. What God is saying to Jonah, He is really saying to Israel and all of God’s people. That’s why I can hear this as a word for me. Whatever God is saying to Jonah, He is saying to Joe.
This was written to a group of people who had turned in on themselves and had forgotten who they were and why they were placed in that strategic part of the world. They mistakenly believed that because they were God’s chosen people that meant that they were His only people. But God loved the Ninivites enough to warn them to change their wicked ways. He needed a mouth-piece named Jonah.
That very first line in this little story tells us that we were created to find our purpose, meaning and our center in the living God and what He says to us. God wants His voice to define and shape our lives. This story teaches us that the only secure foundation for us to build our lives on is God and what He says.
All of us are on a search for a word that defines and validates our existence. There will be one WORD that is like a hub in the spoke of our lives. This “word” defines our values, which drive our behaviors and our passions. This word will give our lives definition. It will be the foundation that we build the structure of our lives upon.
Tim Keller quotes entertainer Madonna in one of his books:
I have an iron will, and all of my will has always been to conquer some horrible feeling of inadequacy. . . I push past one spell of it and discover myself as a special human being, and then I get to another stage and think I’m mediocre and uninteresting. . . . Again and again. My drive in life is from this horrible fear of being mediocre. And that’s always pushing me, pushing me. Because even though I’ve become Somebody, I still have to prove I’m Somebody. My struggle has never ended and it probably never will.
That is more honest than you or I are often willing to be. Her value above all values is for people to think of her as interesting and special.
What is the ‘word’ for your life?
We are all driven for someone or something to define our existence: to say that you are worthwhile. What is that for you? Some people believe if they get the right initials behind their name that they will finally be someone. Others just know that if they achieve certain accomplishments in their career that they will fill that void deep inside. Others rely on their physical attractiveness to feel special and noticed by someone significant. Still others are aching for a significant person in their life to finally say, “Well done!”
None of these things are bad, the problem is that they are unstable. All of us are looking for a word to build our lives on and ultimately the only stable word to center your life upon is Word of the living God. The One who created you and formed you for Himself.
As God speaks to the preacher man named Jonah it quickly becomes clear that he has built his life on something other than God and what God says about him, and so he runs…
God has a word for you.
Slow down and listen, that word is probably behind you and if you won’t listen to the whisper, just keep running and you might find a storm.
One Sabbath, when Jesus went to eat in the house of a prominent Pharisee, he was being carefully watched. Luke 14:1
Meals say things about us. Throughout history meals have been used to show off and dramatize the power of the host. But Jesus shows in this meal that God is saying something about how He feels about broken people.
This meal takes place on a Sabbath day and Jesus is going to dinner with a leader among the Pharisees. Now, imagine this scene: Perhaps Jesus and this man had just returned from Synagogue where they read Torah and worshipped Yahweh and now they are on their way to share a meal together.
The host of this meal is an important person. He is a member of the powerful sect called Pharisees. He not only was a member of this powerful group he was a leader. This was no Storm Trooper Pharisee; this was a Sith Lord Pharisee.
And this dinner invitation is not as innocent as it might first appear. A person who is ill just happens to be present. These religious leaders know that Jesus has a penchant for healing sick people and here one is placed right in front of him, tempting him to break a Sabbath rule.
Jesus looks at the crippled man and back to his host and says, “On this day when we worship a loving, compassionate God who creates, redeems and restores—would be Okay with you if I heal this person who is in pain?”
Silence.
Jesus takes their silence as permission and heals the man.
Then he asked them, “If one of you has a child or an ox that falls into a well on the Sabbath day, will you not immediately pull it out?” And they had nothing to say. Vs. 4-6
Apparently they had a rule against answering questions on the Sabbath.
And because everyone in this story is so prone to miss and misunderstand what God is doing in the world through Jesus, He tells a story and makes a parable out of the dinner itself.
Then Jesus said to his host, “When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. 13 But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, 14 and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” Vs. 12-14
Thus Jesus clearly teaches that you should not have your relatives over for dinner. Some of you have been searching for this verse your whole life long! You’re going to go call up the relatives and say, “Sorry, Jesus says you can’t come to my house for Thanksgiving Dinner—Luke 14:12.”
Is Jesus really saying here that it’s a sin to fix a meal for your relatives? No! Of course He’s not doing that! He’s contrasting conventional human wisdom with life in the Kingdom of God. Conventional wisdom says, if you’re going to do something nice for someone, make sure that they can do something nice back for you. Quid pro quo. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.
But Jesus is saying that in the Kingdom, people sometimes do nice things for other folks who cannot do anything back for them at all.
Those of us seated at the King’s table ought to be marked by radical hospitality. There is a specific sequence to the people listed here. It is a sequence that Jesus mentions several times in the Gospels. The conventional and popular wisdom of the day among the religious elite is that those specific groups had apparently done something to sin away their spiritual standing. Therefore they were going to be excluded when God set up his Kingdom.
So Jesus is telling this religious Sith Lord Pharisee, “The banquet God is throwing is for all the wrong people.” This means for those of us already seated at the table, that we are never to be selective about who we bring with us to the meal. I am the wrong kind of person, who better than a person like me to bring others like me to the table?
Most other species forage alone, so that feeding is a solitary business, but human beings seem to love eating together. Even when we are stuck alone with a frozen dinner, most of us will open a magazine or turn on the television just for company. It is, at any rate, one of the clues to his presence. There is always the chance, when we are eating together, that we will discover the risen Lord in our midst. ~ Barbara Brown Taylor, “The Gospel Medicine”, page 95
Who around you needs to be welcomed into your life and into your home? This might mean you need to clear some time on your schedule for those outside your circle. I believe Christians ought to throw the best parties!
Who do you need to welcome to your Spiritual home? Most of you were invited by someone to attend a family of faith. Someone in your world right now would go to a gathering of believers if you invited them. And there they will hear the Gospel of Grace and find a place they are welcomed and loved—you did.
Who do you need to make space for that is strange to you? Who is your Extra Grace Required (EGR) person? In every gaggle of believers there is someone who is an extra grace required person. If you look in your group and don’t see one, that means you are the EGR person. Who in your world do you think is too far from God’s grace or secretly hope they are too far? Who is too dirty, rude, obnoxious or strange to sit at God’s table?
Who are the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind in your world that need to know that there is a chair waiting for them at the King’s Table? Are they on your mind and heart? They are on someone’s heart…they are on the King’s heart.
When we really absorb Jesus into our core we all will be people who are marked by hospitality. It is a gospel for the misfits, a banquet for the broken.
Now the Passover, a feast of the Jews, was near. Then Jesus lifted up His eyes, and seeing a great multitude coming toward Him, He said to Philip, “Where shall we buy bread, that these may eat?” John 6:4-5
As we look at the bread in the rugged hand of this carpenter turned rabbi from Nazareth, John wants us to make the connection that the one holding the bread is more than a miracle-worker. He wants us to see that what bread is to the body, Jesus is to the soul. When you are starving and you eat simple carbohydrates you are on your way to a restored life.
John is saying that is true about believing in Jesus. He drops a bread crumb clue that The Jewish Passover Feast was near. That isn’t just a time-stamp reference; that is John’s way of pointing to the meaning of the miracle. These meals are connected and the bread and Jesus are connected.
The Passover Meal was the central event in the life of the people of Israel. They marked their calendars by it. When Israel was in bondage in Egypt and Charlton Heston came to liberate them, they sprinkled the blood of an unblemished lamb on the doorpost of the home so the Angel of Death would “pass over” that home. That act forever burned into their memory that they could be rescued by the death of an innocent third party sacrifice.
Also, tied to this Passover Meal was the bread God provided for them as they wandered in the barren wilderness. It was called manna, literally meaning “What is it?” It lay on the ground each morning for them to gather. It was the first Wonder Bread.
Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
“Sir,” they said, “from now on give us this bread.”
Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry …vs. 32-35
Jesus is speaking to thousands of impoverished people who consume half of their caloric intake per day on barley bread—poor people food. Quite literally most of these people on the hillside went to bed each night with stomachs rumbling. And Jesus has the audacity to say to perpetually hungry people, “I will feed you in a way that you will never be hungry again.”
How can he say that?
Jesus knows there is a hunger that is deeper in and further down than all of our physical hungers, thirsts, and social cravings, that is why he declares, “I am the bread of life.”
Maybe a great magnet pulls
All souls towards truth
Or maybe it is life itself
That feeds wisdom
To its youth
Constant craving
Has always been ~ K.D. Lang
There are two common words for life found in Scripture: “bios” and “zoe.” Bio refers to that which is physically alive, whereas zoe refers to a quality of life. Vines Bible Dictionary describes the difference this way, “Bios is life extensive…while zoe is life intensive.”
Jesus is saying that behind every biological hunger is a spiritual hunger and that is what I have come to satisfy. Behind every physical and social craving is a spiritual longing that only Jesus can provide.
What are you hungry for? Your constant cravings are clues to the kind of zoe/life God has designed for you.
A popular commercial these days has Larry the Cable Guy pitching a new kind of acid reducer. In this commercial he asks this question, “Why make a flavored heartburn pill? Because this is America, and we make things you want and things you didn’t know you wanted. Like a spoon made into a fork, spray cans of cheese, and jeans made from sweat pants!”
Jesus stood on that hillside and made a meal they wanted that pointed to a meal they didn’t know they wanted. All of our cravings and longings are aches for God: His love, mercy, grace and presence in our innermost being.
As a pastor, I can tell you many people have full stomachs and emaciated souls. Because you are what you eat. Listen to your hungers, to the rumblings in your own life right now. Go to Jesus to satisfy your deepest longings.
I have trained for and completed three marathons. As I stood at the starting line of my first marathon with my best friend, I was nervous. Did I have what it takes to run 26.2 miles? My friend saw worry etched on my face and leaned over to me saying, “Two things, big guy: 1. Trust your training. 2. I will be on your left shoulder every step of the way. Together we can do this.”
At some point you have to discipline yourself to trust Jesus and believe that He is going to be with you every step of the way.
There are some verbs in verse 11 that are important: Jesus “takes” the bread, gives “thanks” for the bread and “gives” the bread away. Takes—thanks—gives
At the last supper, same pattern…
And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.” Luke 22:19
Something mysterious happens when I come to the Lord’s Table with a broken heart over my efforts to satisfy longings apart from Jesus, and with an open heart full of gratitude and willingness to love God, love others and serve the world.
I saw a white apron one time with bold and black letters that said: “Life is too short to eat bad food!”
May I change that to say, “Life is too short to eat good food thinking it is going to satisfy your constant cravings?” You are what you eat…so come to the table, take—give thanks—and give your life away to Jesus and to the world.
“And from Jesus Christ…the ruler of the kings of the earth.” Revelation 1:5
When we hear “kings,” we think about the sphere of government or politics because in our day power tends to be divided up into different spheres — government, education, media, and the arts.
In those days the king ruled over everything. So when he says Jesus, the one who returns, is the ruler of the kings of the earth, he is saying Jesus’ lordship extends to every area. Jesus is Lord over all powers — media, the arts, business, everything.
Jesus is Lord over Barak Obama, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Jesus is also Lord over Bill O’Reilly and Anderson Cooper. He is Lord over Jon Stewart and Dr. Phil. He is Lord over Sponge Bob Square Pants and Big Bird. He is Lord over Afghanistan, Iran, Israel, Germany, France and Oakland Raider Fans.
He really is, whether or not people recognize it.
He is Lord over Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift and The Rolling Stones. He is Lord over Brad Pit, George Clooney and John Elway. He’s Lord over Toney Bennett, Bill Gaither and Chis Tomlin. He’s Lord over CNN, TBN, MSNBC, and FOX News.
He’s Lord over John Hagee, Bill Hybels, Rick Warren, David Jeremiah, and Joe Chambers.
He is Lord over Main Street and Wall Street and State Street. He’s Lord over 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and over Constitution Avenue and over Madison Avenue and Park Avenue and , Lord over Hollywood Boulevard, Lord over Times Square and Lord over 28390 County Road, Buena Vista, Colorado.
He’s just Lord over it all. You go home and look at your address, and he’s Lord there too.
But does the Christ-follower haven anything to fear at the second coming of the Lord?
No.
I am so weary of the fear mongers on T.V. and the internet. I get asked weekly if I am ready for the coming revolution, collapse of our country or the second coming judgement of the Lord. Who are these folks listening to? I’ll tell you. They are listening to carpet-bagger preachers and talking ideologues in the media. They certainly aren’t listening to Jesus.
Listen, we Christ-followers have nothing to fear about the future.
“I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.” Revelation 21:2
It’s going to be like a lover and his beloved. It’s kind of like this: My youngest son, Caleb is looking into the future. He is starting to dream dreams. Dreams of life and love. He talks about it some, but I can see it in his thousand-yard-stare. He is filled with questions. Will I find my way? Is she the right one? What will it all look like?
But there will come a day when Caleb will stand at the front of a church in a formal suite, swallow a smile and wait for his bride. There will be such outrageous hope in his eyes. He will smile from ear to ear. His mother will weep. I will be composed. And he will be filled with such anticipation and outrageous hope for a life of unspeakable joy. And he will find it. And he will know it.
One day the trumpet will sound and the eastern skies will split wide and our beloved will call us to his side. And I can’t wait for that day. If you see me with a far off look in my eyes just know I am straining to see the arrival of my beloved, Jesus. And when that happens life will begin and joy will be abundant.
Because when He is Lord, there is nothing to fear.
“The gospel of the kingdom steadies us against believing anything bad about God. This world is a perfectly safe place to be as long as you’re in the Kingdom of God.” —Dallas Willard
Even Through the darkest phase
Be it thick or thin
Always someone marches brave
Here beneath my skin
Constant craving
Has always been K.D. Lang
And Jesus took the loaves, and when He had given thanks He distributed them to the disciples, and the disciples to those sitting down; and likewise of the fish, as much as they wanted. John 6:11
In 1863 a German philosopher named Ludwig Feuerbach wrote an essay entitled, Concerning Spiritualism and Materialism in which he poked fun at spirituality. He basically said that mankind is simply a co-location of molecules and it is an accident of nature that we rose to the top of the food chain. He pointed to the food that we eat and said that we are nothing more and nothing less than the food on our plate. He is the one who coined the term, “You are what you eat.”
The philosopher didn’t mean to, but I think he accidently agreed with Jesus even though he would be horrified at that assertion. Jesus taught that we hunger for a kind of life that only He can give. That we are created for a flourishing life and that what you take into your soul will affect whether your life will flourish or flounder. You really are what you eat.
Jesus offers bread for the world and bread for our souls.
This is the only miracle recorded in all four of the Gospels and John calls this miracle as “sign.” By using that word John is saying this miracle points to a higher and holier truth than simply the multiplication of bread and fish. This miracle points beyond itself to something much more significant.
What I love about the Gospel of John is that if we step back and look at it panoramically, you see John echoing the first book of the Bible. Genesis 1:1 begins by saying, “In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth. John 1:1 begins by saying, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.”
In Genesis there is a poetic rhythm to the way the author describes how God created the cosmos out of the soupy darkness and nothingness in seven segments or days. Throughout the Gospel of John there are scattered seven “signs” in which Jesus reveals who He is and what kind of Kingdom He has come to this earth to establish. John is saying that Jesus of Nazareth is the Creator-God of the cosmos and is now among us restoring the creation that has come unraveled due to our sin.
So, Jesus feeds this large, hungry, and rowdy crowd in a miraculous way. And, surprisingly, the crowd misreads the sign. They let the meaning of this miracle skip right by them like a stone on the Sea of Galilee.
If the miracles were simply power-displays, then I am confused as to why Jesus chose to showcase his supernatural abilities in this way. If it had been me, I would have levitated and then flown around the lake like those wingsuit base jumpers and buzzed the crowd; but Jesus feeds a crowd of hungry people.
If this miracle is simply the disruption of natural laws, we miss the point of what is happening here. The miracles are a glimpse of the restoration of the natural order; it is God putting His creation back to the original design. All of Jesus’ miracles are assaults on hunger, illness, poverty, decay, and death. They are never simply power-displays to attract a crowd.
I sometimes get asked why there is pain and suffering in the world and I can never provide an adequate answer. What I can say with a high degree of certainty is that hunger, illness, poverty, decay and death were never part of God’s original design. Those things were not God’s idea and he is working on setting things to rights through Jesus.
Jesus’ healings are not supernatural miracles in a natural world. They are the only truly ‘natural’ thing in a world that is unnatural, demonized and wounded.” —Jürgen Moltmann, The Way of Jesus Christ: Christology in Messianic Dimensions
Jesus was restoring the world! As we pattern our lives after Him, then serving the real-time, real-pain of this world is part of the expectation of what it means to follow Jesus. It is at the very center of what it means to be a church.
One time Jesus said, I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these… John 14:12
I used to think that meant if Jesus walked on water, I could fly if had I enough faith. If Jesus could raise Lazarus, I could empty the graveyard…if I had enough faith. But that is childish. I think Jesus is speaking to ALL of his disciples down through the ages. And if we were to add up all the acts of service done by Christ-followers for the last 2,000 years, it would far outweigh what Jesus was able to do in 3 ½ years of public ministry.
When we serve the deep needs of our community that is not just window-dressing and marketing for Jesus and our church. When we serve the City for the sake of the City, we are fulfilling this prophetic verse. We are contributing to the RESTORATION Jesus started 2,000 years ago.
Maybe you don’t think what you have to offer is adequate. You don’t have the time, the energy, the creativity, the talent, or the resources that Jesus could use to make any real difference in our community. Well, what did Jesus have to work with in this story? They aren’t bringing very much to the potluck. All they could find was a boy’s couple slices of Spam and a handful of saltines. He takes their little and uses it to re-weave, rescue, and restore this world.
Maybe you don’t have much to give, but that’s all the little boy had, and that’s all Andrew could find, AND THAT’S ALL THE LORD NEEDED. That is the way of Jesus. Little becomes much when placed in the hand of Jesus.
I want always to able a little boy and to have fun, grins Peter Pan. Then with one grand leap, he stretches out his arms and flies into the night toward the brightest star and Never Never Land.
As children, millions of us followed Peter’s pixie-dust trail to his land of rollicking adventures and returned with hearts full of fantasies. As grown-ups, we never lose our admiration of Peter—the boy eternal. With magical whirl, he always manage to evade the hook of adulthood. Nothing, not even the ever-ticking, clock-swallowing crocodile, spoils his fun or his freedom.
A little bit of Peter Pan resides in all of us. He’s our spirit of youth who likes to crow from time to time. Problems arise, however, when we always want to live like Peter Pan. The late psychologist and author Dan Kiley in his book The Peter Pan Syndrome, describes people with this attitude:
They don’t want anything to do with school, work, or anything else that smacks of adulthood. Their desire is to do whatever they must to remain just what they are: little children who won’t grow up.
Kiley actually sees Peter Pan as in illustration of a confused adolescent.
For all his gaiety, he was a deeply troubled boy…caught in the abyss between the man he didn’t want to become and the boy he could no longer be.
Spiritually, we can get stuck in that same abyss, becoming adolescence in adult bodies. Our playful desire to never grow up can backfire, affecting not just us but those we love.
Although Diotrephes is mentioned only once in the Bible, the brief reference speaks buckets about this type of person.
Diotrephes, who loves being in charge, denigrates my counsel. If I come, you can be sure I’ll hold him to account for spreading vicious rumors about us.
As if that weren’t bad enough, he not only refuses hospitality to traveling Christians but tries to stop others from welcoming them. Worse yet, instead of inviting them in he throws them out.
Friend, don’t go along with evil. Model the good. (The Message, 3rd John 9-11a)
This is a Church Bully. He is not the appointed leader, he is the self-appointed leader. He is not the anointed leader, he is the self-anointed leader. He wants his way and he is going to get it…at all costs. Diotrephes lives on with no sense of decency.
A recent statistical study conducted by Southern Seminary discovered that 116 pastors are fired every month in the Southern Baptist Convention. Another study I read found that it only takes five (5) people to get rid of the pastor.
When my friends and I get together and share our hearts, unfortunately a great deal of our time is spent encouraging each other and giving counsel on how to deal with the “Church Bullies” in our churches. Because before long you begin to feel like the Lord is leading you somewhere else.
The only problem is there is a Diotrephes waiting there…anxious to have you come.
Now, I don’t mean that every disagreeable person is a Diotrephes. That is not my point. But I am saying that it is easy if you are frequently negative, and have a steady bad attitude regarding the leadership of the church—it is easy to fall into a Diotrephes syndrome. That is part of adolescence–not wanting to grow up.
Well-Intentioned Dragons, Marshall Shelley:
Dragons, of course, are fictional beasts–monstrous reptiles with lion’s claws, a serpent’s tail, bat wings, and scaly skin. They exist only in the imagination.
But there are dragons of a different sort, decidedly real. In most cases, though not always, they do not intend to be sinister; in fact, they’re usually quite friendly. But their charm belies their power to destroy.
Within the church, they are often sincere, well-meaning saints, but they leave ulcers, strained relationships, and hard feelings in their wake. They don’t consider themselves difficult people. They don’t sit up nights thinking of ways to be nasty. Often they are pillars of the community–talented, strong personalities, deservingly respected–but for some reason, they undermine the ministry of the church. They are not naturally rebellious or pathological; they are loyal church members, convinced they’re serving God, but they wind up doing more harm than good.
They can drive pastors crazy…or out of the church.
Some dragons are openly critical. They are the ones who accuse you of being (pick one) too spiritual, not spiritual enough, too dominant, too laid back, too narrow, too loose, too structured, too disorganized, or ulterior in your motives.
These criticisms are painful because they are largely unanswerable. How can you defend yourself and maintain a spirit of peace? How can you possibly prove the purity of your motives? Dragons make it hard to disagree without being disagreeable.
I am sure Diotrephes never set out to tear up a church. But he just had to have his way. I am convinced that if a Diotrephes is still reading this article they are blind to their bullyness. They will not be able to tell they are the problem. In addition to prayer, it usually takes someone or several someones to stand up to the bully and challenge them to live by a different set of standards.
When you are tempted to manipulate and dominate, remember the lordship of Jesus. Who is ultimately in charge? We don’t have to push our way if we’re willing to trust our true Master.
“With fervent desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer; for I say to you, I will no longer eat of it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.” Luke 22:15-16
And in many ways, meals tell our stories.
I can still remember the soft, yet granular texture of my grandmother’s cornbread stuffing at Thanksgiving in Colorado Springs in 1971. And the smell the chili powder and cheese burning in the oven when I cooked a pan of enchiladas for Lynette in a single-wide trailer behind the skating rink in Shawnee, Oklahoma in 1981. I can also still taste the cloyingly sweetness of that white wedding cake in Slidell, LA at the reception after I pledged vows to my wife. Then there is the soft, yet bold aroma of Verona coffee shared with my friends after Lynette’s handpicked and homemade blackberry cobbler in Seattle.
Meals mark our moments and tell our stories.
It is striking that at the very heart of our faith and what it means to be a Christ-follower centers around a feast—a meal. Some call it Communion. Others call it the Eucharist. We Baptist call it The Lord’s Supper.
This Supper is loaded with layers of meaning. It points back to the exodus of the Jewish people out of the bondage of Egypt. It also points to the moment just hours before our Lord was crucified on a cross. And it points to a future feast when the Kingdom of God is brought into its fullest reality at the end of the age.
In the meantime, aren’t you hungry for something?
The scriptures often use hunger and thirst as a metaphor for spiritual reality. We have our hungers and thirsts for a reason. They are meant to lead us to the God who intends to share His table of love.
One of my favorite movies is Chocolat, about a little French village in 1959. In this town, you knew what was expected of you and where your place was. If you happened to forget, someone would remind you. They trusted in the wisdom of ages past, including tradition, family, and morality.
The Mayor is the self-appointed guardian of the town. He writes the preacher’s sermons, guides the townspeople in their moral decisions, and overall, tries to maintain the status quo at all costs.
Into this town sweeps a vibrant, young woman named Vianne who is anything but traditional. She does nothing by the book. She does not go to church, has a daughter without a father present, and has the gall to open a chocolate shop in the middle of Lent.
Her chocolate shop and her grace unexpectedly transform the town and its people. A wounded woman finds the courage to escape her abusive husband. A grandmother renews a broken relationship with her family members. Even the Comte de Reynaud (mayor), after an intense Easter Saturday conversion experience, is described as “strangely released”.
If a young woman selling chocolate can make that much of a difference (albeit in a fictional town)- mending family relationships, breaking free from abusive situations, opening their hearts for love – Just think what a difference can be made by the life of a man named Jesus.
I think this is a picture of what God does for us when Jesus comes into our lives and sets us free from our oppression, no matter how well-intended, with his sweet grace of love and acceptance.
A friend of mine told me about a missionary who had a collection of communion chalices. There were some that were ornate, some that were gold, some were bejeweled and some were silver. My friend said he was very impressed with the collection and asked about each of them and then finally asked the owner which of the many was his favorite. The missionary reached up on the shelf and picked up a rather ugly one sitting on the end of the shelf. It was a small orange/brown rough-metaled chalice.
He pulled it from the shelf and then told my friend that it had been given to him by a church community in Japan. The metal in the chalice was repurposed from a decommissioned bomb found in Japan after WWII. The very instrument that was designed and used to inflict death and destruction had been transformed into a vessel to hold life, restoration, and hope.
I hope you hear the longing in Jesus’ voice when, with crumbs on his beard and wine on His breath, He says to His friends and followers, do this in remembrance of Me.
Next time you celebrate the Lord’s Supper, linger over the bread and the wine and whisper to the Lord, “I remember.”
Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses …let us run with endurance the race that is set before us. Hebrews 12:1
I’ve finished three full marathons (26.2 miles) and almost 20 Half Marathons. At the start
Boulder Backroads Whidbey Island Seattle Rock and Roll
of the race you might be singing songs like:
Summertime, and the livin’ is easy
Fish are jumpin’ and the cotton is high
Oh, your daddy’s rich and your ma is good-lookin’
But at the finish:
Oh Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling
From glen to glen and down the mountain side
The summer’s gone and all the roses dying
‘Tis you, ’tis you must go and I must bye
In the last marathon I ran I saw lots of signs on the pinned to the backs of runners, but two stood out to me. One said, “Expected finish Tuesday about noon.” The second one said,“Courage to Start, Faith to Finish.”
WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO FINISH WELL?
Persistence in Prayer
Jesus tells us a story in Luke 18 about a widow who needs justice. She goes to her local politician and he’s a pretty weak kneed — turns out he’s on the take, he’s thoroughly corrupt. It’s hard to believe there could be such a thing as a corrupt politician, but use your imagination.
This woman has no connections, no money. She’s on welfare herself, can’t bribe him, but she calls him, writes him, e-mails him, faxes him so often he finally says to his staff, “Just take care of what she needs. Get her out of my hair and off my back.”
In Luke 11 Jesus tells another story and asks us to imagine that we have friends who are Methodists come to visit—uninvited. They arrive at midnight and they haven’t eaten since noon. Your kitchen’s empty and the local Town Talk Cafe is closed, so you go to your neighbor. You pound on the door. “The Methodists are here,” you say. “Give me some beer and some potato chips so I can feed them! For it is written that Methodists only partake of Beer and Chips.” (It’s in Luke 11, you can look it up.)
The neighbor says, “It’s one in the morning and the kids are in bed and it’s the first good night’s sleep I’ve had in a week. Are you crazy?”
But if you keep pounding long enough, Jesus says, he’ll give you food just to shut you up. If you are willing to persist with corrupt politicians and cranky neighbors, how can you not persist with God who listens to his children with infinite patience, who longs to give good things?
Sometimes the gift God wants to give you is growth, the kind of growth that only comes when you persist again and again and again.
Many years ago ministry and my selfishness had almost destroyed my marriage. My first post-ministry job was tearing down a cat lady’s house for $10 per hour, then I worked in an oil refinery for a few months, then I got a job as a corporate trainer and traveled the country teaching companies courses like, “How to Supervise People,” “Conflict Management,” and “Communication Skills.”
I felt as lost and unattached as a refugee. I spent night after miserable night in strange hotel rooms from Seattle to New York City. But I developed a discipline in that dark time of journaling three pages every morning no matter what.
I would start my day out, “Dear Lord, …”
I kept going to the Lord.
Then one day in Flagstaff, Arizona I was reading through Psalm 51 in The Message translation and came across this passage…
God, make a fresh start in me, shape a Genesis week from the chaos of my life. 11 Don’t throw me out with the trash, or fail to breathe holiness in me. 12 Bring me back from gray exile, put a fresh wind in my sails! 13 Give me a job teaching rebels your ways so the lost can find their way home. Psalms 51:10-13 (MSG)
God was sending me a message through His Word that in spite of my present circumstances, He was not finished with me. I would have never dreamed in that Comfort Inn in Flagstaff, that one day I would be pastoring a beautiful church in the mountains of Colorado.
I’ve gotten a lot of things wrong in my life, but one thing I’ve kept doing is I’ve kept going to God.
FIND SOME ENCOURAGERS
We need to find a few people who say, “Don’t quit, just keep running, and just don’t give up.” We need to find a little cloud of witnesses.
In my last marathon, I saw lots of sleek and strong bodies. But there were others that were not so sleek. I saw a lady bent over with osteoporosis. There was a man who was pushing his son in a wheelchair. Some run fast, some run slow — it doesn’t matter. Just keep running. Everybody has a race to run and not one of them is easy.
When you run in a race there are people along the way that cheer you on. I remember in the first third of the race, I would run by a group in lawn chairs cheering me on and I would think, “You don’t know me. You’re just cheering to hear your own voice. Leave me alone.”
But in the last third of the race when a total stranger shouted, “You can do it, big fella!” I’d run over to them and say, “Really? You think I can? I hope so. Thanks for cheering me!”
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if every Sunday when folks gather in their places of worship, they would know that they had a little cloud of witnesses? That when they were down and discouraged they could look into the eyes of those encouragers and find strength to finish their race.
Derek Redmond was prepared for the 400-meter semifinal race at the Olympics in Barcelona in 1992. He felt he was in the best shape of his life. His father Jim, sitting in the stands. Jim and his son were very close and he made it to all of the championship races.
Derek gets off to a good start. Coming around the first bend in the track, tragedy struck as Derek’s hamstring went. His leg would not function.
He hopped on one leg for half a lap before his father came to his aid. Together they finished the race arm-in-arm to a standing ovation.
When we get to heaven, the Lord won’t care if we won our race and beat anyone down here. He’s going to look to see if we finished.
Courage to start; faith to finish.
One day there will be a great cloud of witnesses cheering as we enter the fully realized Kingdom of God and hear our Heavenly Father say, “Well done thou good and faithful servant. Well done. Enter into the joy of the Kingdom.”
“When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.” I Corinthians 13:11 (NIV)
A parent can expect their child to challenge their authority regularly from the time he is about 15 months of age, if not earlier. The toddler is the world’s most hard-nosed opponent of law and order, and he can make life miserable for his harassed parents. In his own innocent way, he is adorable AND vicious and selfish and demanding and cunning and destructive.
When it comes to rearing children, every society is only 20 years away from barbarism. Twenty years is all we have to accomplish the task of civilizing the infants who are born into our midst each year. These savages know nothing of our language, our culture, our religion, our customs of interpersonal relations…the barbarian must be tamed if civilization is to survive.~ Dr. Albert Siegel
Let me borrow on that analogy and say the barbarian must be tamed if the church is ever going to reach its full potential. How difficult it will be to soar, to do what we have been called to do, if all of us don’t grow up and become adults, no longer childish and immature.
Has the barbaric nature inside your soul been tamed? If not, you’re part of the problem. You are one of the reasons the church still struggles to stay on its feet and behave. I am not referring to being childlike. There is a difference between childishness and childlikeness.
Childlikeness
Mentally they are teachable.
Childlike Christians are often anxious to learn about faith and ready to start exploring its many facets. We should never outgrow this insatiable desire to learn about God and the application of His truth
Emotionally they are touchable.
Like children, young believers are generally willing to let down their guard, place their trust in others, and become involved in people’s lives. This level of transparency and vulnerability should always characterize a Christian’s life.
Spiritually they are tender.
Christians who are childlike in their faith are usually open to God’s Word and respond positively to the Spirit. The Lord desires that all His people display that kind of sensitivity to the Spirit.
Children are so tender, and that is how God wants believers to be. Childlikeness is commended all through Scripture, but childishness is condemned severely. Especially when the childishness is in the life of an adult.
Childishness
Willful Defiance
“Do not prophesy to us right things; speak to us smooth things…” Isaiah 30:10
In other words, “I want to hear what I want to hear. If you’re going to get cranky, if you’re going to get negative, if you’re going to come down on us about holiness when we are only human, then go somewhere else and give your message.” That is a childish response.
He who cannot obey, cannot command. –Benjamin Franklin
A basic requirement for being a good leader is submitting to authority, not only before, but while leading. When will we learn to submit? When will we learn to bow before the Father and in all sincerity say, “Have Thine own way”? What is true of a leader is true for an adult Christ-follower.
Or it should be.
Superficial Commitment
Childish believers often desire to be entertained instead of transformed. They enjoy listening to great preachers and beautiful music. They may even serve in the church from time to time, but they have no genuine interest in applying the truth of God’s Word on a practical and daily level.
“When I was little we used to play church. We’d get the chairs into rows, fight over who’d be the preacher. Vigorously lead the hymn service and generally have a great carnal time. The aggressive kids naturally wanted to be up front directing and preaching; the quieter ones were content to sit and be entertained by the up-fronters.
Occasionally, we’d get mesmerized by a true sensationalistic crowd swayers. Like the girl who said, ‘Boo, I’m the Holy Ghost.’ But in general, if the up-fronters were pretty good, well, they’d hold their audience for quite a while. If they weren’t so good, eventually the kids would drift off to play something else like jump rope or jacks.
Now, that generation has grown up. But most of them haven’t changed too much. Every Sunday they still play church. They line up in rows for the entertainment, if it’s pretty good the church will grow. If it’s not too hot, eventually they drift off to play something else like yachting or wife-swapping.”~ Ann Ortlund
What game are you playing? Being willfully defiant is bad enough. But to add to it a superficial commitment is almost unbearable.
Easily swayed.
The older I get the more I am convinced that the best way to keep me from being easily swayed is to immerse myself in the Psalms and the Gospels and at the same time be deeply connected to mature brothers in Christ that are more committed to my growth in Christ than I am.
Where are you?
The innocence of children may be more a matter of weakness of limb than purity of heart. –Augustine
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