The Kingdom, The Kids, & The Cowboys

“I meditate on your precepts and consider your ways.
I delight in your decrees; I will not neglect your Word.” ~Psalm 119:15-16

When we meditate on the words of God, they become a part of us. These words deal specifically with our souls and they’re written to transform us into people who reflect the glory of God. A daily diet of Scripture allows these holy words to enter our souls just like food enters our stomachs. It spreads through our entire system of blood and air and organs and nerves and functions. We assimilate it. And it becomes holiness and love and wisdom.

The same is true of prayer. It’s a complex act of speaking to and listening to the Creator of heaven and earth. It’s an act of submission. It’s a declaration of faith. It’s basking in the presence of our God, delighting in his love and grace, taking comfort in his mercy and forgiveness.

Reading God’s Word and praying to the Father are not intellectual exercises. It’s not a hobby or a pastime. This is life and death. It’s urgent. It’s right now. It speaks to every facet of our everyday lives. It nourishes us. It transforms us. It gives us the Holy Spirit strength we need to live as mature disciples in a hostile world.

Jesus made a habit of withdrawing “privately to a solitary place.” Our Lord spent much of his time in Scripture and prayer: listening to God, communing with him. As his followers, we too set aside a time every day for prayer and Bible reading. Thirty minutes. An hour. In the morning. During lunch. Before bed. The time and place are not important. Making this meditation time a daily priority is very important. It’s a vital part of attaining to “the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.”

The focus for baptized believers — those saved by the blood of our Lord — is spiritual growth. Maturity. Discipline. Transformation. Christian accountability to God and to one another. Christian responsibility. The expectation for all our members at Legacy is that they each dedicate a quiet time with God every day in prayer and Bible reading.

It’s a way of being consistently present before the living God. And allowing his Spirit to get inside you, to change you, to move you. To make you more like him.

Peace,

Allan

Have you ever read Psalm 88? I would encourage you to read it. First, a word of caution: don’t read it as the last thing you do before you go to bed tonight. Don’t read it when you’re all alone. Or on a cloudy day. Try to read it in brightly-lit room full of your closest friends. Because Psalm 88 is a downer. It’s tough.

“My soul is full of trouble and my life draws near the grave.
I am set apart with the dead, like the slain who lie in the grave,
whom you remember no more, who are cut off from your care.”

Of the 150 Psalms, nearly half of them are labeled as lament psalms. Lamentations. Anger. Doubt. Bitterness. Confusion. Questions. Complaints against God. Even accusations against God. And Psalm 88 may be the most uncomfortable.

“You have put me in the lowest pit…”
“You have overwhelmed me with all your waves…”
“You have taken from me my closest friends…”

Psalm 88 is the only lament psalm that doesn’t, at some point, turn to praise. There’s no praise here. No thanksgiving. There’s not even any hope that God will eventually change his mind or eventually rescue. The psalmist here declares that praying to God is doing no good. God has abandoned him completely. And there’s no light at the end of the tunnel.

“Why, O Lord, do you reject me?”
“Your terrors have destroyed me.”
“The darkness is my closest friend.”

Maybe you’ve never read Psalm 88. But have you ever felt Psalm 88?

This past Sunday here at Legacy we read Psalm 88 and then we prayed it. We lifted up to God our despair and depression, our confusions and doubts. We lifted up to God all those in our congregation suffering from cancer and other disease, those dealing with divorce, those struggling with unemployment, those battling family issues such as rebellious children and abusive spouses, our people who are suffering through the loss of loved ones — both recent and a long time ago. On Sunday we were honest with our God about our faith and our fears. We asked him the hard questions. Why are these things happening? How long will they continue? We told God plainly that we don’t always understand.

Those aren’t easy words to pray. It’s unusual in that we rarely pray this way at all, especially in a corporate Sunday morning setting. But the reading and the prayer and the open and honest theme of the day seemed to be especially meaningful to the many, many, many, many people of our church who are feeling Psalm 88.

It would be impossible to share with you in this space the more-than-usual number of phone calls, emails, and pop-in visits I’ve received in just the two days since Sunday’s service regarding what we did together as a church family. Being publicly and completely honest with God and with ourselves about our pains — physical, emotional, and spiritual pains — resonated with young and old, men and women, from every background and worldview imaginable. It touched people. It bonded people. Because a whole lot of us are feeling Psalm 88. At some point, most of us have felt Psalm 88.

Some still balk at using this kind of language with God, even though all of God’s people in Scripture, from the Patriarchs and Judges and Prophets to Christ himself and the Saints in heaven, have used the language of lament to voice their complaints to God in the middle of great trial. But there’s great comfort in unburdening yourself. There’s great relief in unloading and getting things off your chest. There’s solace in knowing that he’s listening.

You know that.

It’s OK. God loves you, remember?

Peace,

Allan

I’ve watched and listened to with fascination over the past 48 hours the continuing coverage of the horrible shootings at Fort Hood. I’m drawn to the news stories for several reasons.

My brother-in-law was stationed there for a couple of years right in the middle of the Gulf War. He and my sister lived there at Fort Hood. Carrie-Anne and I visited there, met their neighbors, played ping-pong and air hockey in the rec center there, and shopped at the military store there. On two different occasions, Brent was designated for deployment to the Persian Gulf. On both those ocassions they gave him less than 48 hours notice to tell Sharon and their families goodbye. And we prayed. And prayed. And prayed. And on both of those ocassions, after he had been packed and processed, the orders changed and his unit was told to stay put in Killeen.

Their daughter, my first niece, was born at Darnell Army Medical Center there at Fort Hood. Her birth, on New Year’s Day 1991, interrupted my plans to watch the #3 Longhorns and the #4 Miami Hurricanes in the Cotton Bowl. We spent two days at that hospital on that base for Cassie’s arrival.

A few years later Carrie-Anne and I saw Foreigner at a rock concert on base they called “HoodStock”.

Twice after that I called high school games at the Killeen Kangaroos football stadium.

And so, while I don’t know anybody in Killeen anymore, we do have some very deep and vivid memories of some wonderful family times there. I’m watching this thing unfold and listening to the horror and watching the tears of the families and feeling deeply impacted. This is a truly horrible thing that’s happened here. It’s awful. It’s evil.

“Why, O Lord, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?” ~Psalm 10:1

And I recall the age-old statement of the skeptic: If God is good, he’s not really God. And if God is really God, he’s not good. In other words, God could have prevented what happened at this army base in Central Texas. The fact that he didn’t must prove he’s not good. And if he could have prevented it, he must not be the powerful God we think he is.

Wrong. And wrong again.

In times of tragedy — in our own lives, in our local communities, globally — we hold on in faith to the anchor of God’s eternal love for his creation. We know he loves. We know his great love is the force behind everything our Father does and everything he allows.

The truth is, we don’t see everything yet. We don’t fully understand everything. We’re assured that our God is working out everything according to his purposes. And we know that his purposes are driven by what’s in our best interests and what’s best for the redemption of his creation.

So, we trust and we pray.

It’s OK to appeal to God’s omnipotence and his righteousness and declare to him that we don’t understand. It’s OK to question God and wrestle with him and beg him to change things. These kinds of prayers actually reveal our deep faith. They say to God, “We know you are just and righteous and all powerful; we just don’t understand.”

“Pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge.” ~Psalm 62:8

Peace,

Allan

“I will praise you, O Lord, with all my heart;
I will tell of all your wonders.
I will be glad and rejoice in you;
I will sing praise to your name, O Most High.”
~Psalm 9:1-2

I am so blessed to be the preacher for a church that really understands the congregation’s worship of God. When considering the emotional hot-button issues that sometimes, unfortunately, characterize our corporate worship, I’m surrounded here by people who do comprehend — or are honestly wrestling with comprehending — that to worship the Creator of Heaven and Earth is to give him our all.

When Holy Scripture speaks of praising and worshiping God with all our hearts — or doing anything with all our hearts — it’s talking about all of the wholistic will. Not just our emotions. Not just our heads. Not just our feelings. Not just our reason and logic.

With all my heart.

God is worthy of my / our eternal adoration. So, we worship God intentionally, deliberately, and mindfully, even when we don’t feel like it. We put everything we have into it everytime.

I am privileged to “eavesdrop” on a couple of on-going cyber conversations within our church family. I was struck (inspired, moved to thanksgiving, convicted) by a couple of comments made late last week regarding our Sunday morning worship here at Legacy. With their permission, consider this from Don Garrett:

“I have found that my worship has intensified as my awareness of God’s forgiveness of my sins has increased. Those times when I lose sight of the fact that God has forgiven me of a LOT of sins, my worship begins to lose its intensity and other, worldly things begin to encroach on my worship. When I have a deep sense that my Father has forgiven me of a lot…I have little trouble concentrating intently on my worship to him. I also find myself LESS affected by things like song selection, or heating / cooling problems in the building, or too many babies crying, or someone worshiping in a slightly different way than me, or all the other mundane things that can detract from our personal worship. I also find myself having less patience with those who gripe about such things (that is probably more a part of getting older and more grumpy).”

And this from Mason Scott:

“I will admit that I have been one to come into the worship center and anticipate to sing my favorite songs, hear the right sermon, and be engrossed with an uplifting worship experience. When I look for the right songs, the right sermon, or complain about the song leader, the song selections, the Scripture reader, or the sound booth, I’ve turned God’s time into ‘Mason Time.’ Yes, I feel small. The Lord is molding my mind and heart this week to come this Sunday with my offering. The offering I’m talking about is my heart. I will come this Sunday with the desire to give my heart, my mind, my adoration, and my money to praise and worship our Creator.”

Can’t you see why I love being Legacy’s preacher?

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Only 18 days ’til the Cowboys kick off their historic 50th football season. And today’s second-best player in team history according to jersey number came down to back-up quarterbacks. And the Red Ribbon Review is going with the only man to back-up both Roger Staubach and Danny White, UNLV’s own Glenn Carano.

Wade Wilson played for five teams and lost his only start for the Cowboys. Bernie Kosar played only one season in Dallas and lost his only start. Carano, a second-round pick in 1977, played his entire seven year career for the Cowboys and won his only start, a 37-13 whipping of the Colts in 1981. He suited up for five NFC Championship Games as a Cowboy backup and two Super Bowls. And he threw only one interception in his 57 career attempts.

My only memory of Carano is from the end zone seats at Texas Stadium on Thanksgiving Day 1981. I was 15. I can’t remember who was starting for the Bears that year —Bob Avellini? — but Vince Evans had replaced him that week. Danny White got knocked out early in the first quarter, and we wound up watching Evans and Carano duel to a sloppy 10-9 Cowboys win. It was only the third or fourth Cowboys game I’d ever attended. And I was disappointed. My team had won. But I was bent.

I was clearly already developing the cynicism and negativism that would serve my sports radio career so well.

Peace,

Allan

“Clap your hands, all you nations;
     shout to God with cries of joy.
How awesome is the Lord Most High,
     the great King over all the earth!
God has ascended amid shouts of joy,
     the Lord amid the sounding of trumpets.
Sing praises to God, sing praises;
     sing praises to our King, sing praises.
For God is the King of all the earth;
     sing to him a psalm of praise.
God reigns over the nations;
     God is seated on his holy throne.
The nobles of the nations assemble
     as the people of the God of Abraham,
for the kings of the earth belong to God;
     he is greatly exalted.”

                                  ~Psalm 47

“They are all defying Caesar’s decrees, saying that there is another king, one called Jesus.” ~Acts 17:7

To all the preachers out there, the fearless proclaimers of God’s wonderful news:

“When I called, you answered me; you made me bold and stouthearted.” ~Psalm 138:3

The Word we preach is mind-blowing, earth-altering, history-changing Truth. We proclaim the unmerited love and favor of the Creator of the Universe, a right relationship with him through the sacrifice of his Holy Son, and unsurpassed power and authority extravagantly given by his Spirit. It is the greatest news this world has ever heard. It impacts all who hear. It transforms all who respond. And preaching it week after week comes with a price.

Hang in there.

“I will praise your name for your love and faithfulness, for you have exalted above all things your name and your Word.” ~Psalm 138:2

If we are truly passionate about the texts and the Lord of the texts when we preach, it will cost us. We are painting a vision of the Kingdom of God in opposition to the reign in this world of other powers, so it is a spiritual battle we are fighting, which will also physically exhaust us. We have to allow ourselves plenty of time to recover, a Sabbath of rest. We might also have to fight the darkness of doubts, the fiends of seeming failure in society’s terms, the monsters of personal hang-ups, the demons of misunderstanding on the part of those who hear or refuse to hear. (from Marva Dawn’s A Royal Waste of Time)

For all those times when our words don’t come close to matching what’s in our hearts, when our sermons don’t live up to the power of the Truth, when our best efforts fall woefully short of the splendor of our King and the beauty of his love and the majesty of his reign…

…hang in there.

God’s doing something wonderful with you.

To Jason R., Jim G., Grady K., Scott M., Charlie J., Kyle B., Jim M., David H., Jim H., Jimmy M., Chris V., Greg N., Rick A., Terry R., Robert W., Stan R., and every gospel preacher out there who labors in the Word, wrestles with the text, listens to our Lord, and then speaks that Word of Truth and Grace week after week after week:

“The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me; your love, O Lord, endures forever — do not abandon the works of your hands.” ~Psalm 138:8

Peace,

Allan

Biblical prayers are saturated with praise, the recognition of who God is and what he does. It’s giving God the glory. It’s never that we add to his glory—that’s impossible. But we’re willingly and openly recognizing God as God. All prayer has to begin with praise, recognizing who God is and what he does.

Psalm 146 is a perfect example of this kind of prayer. It recognizes God as the creator, the sustainer of life, and the Sovereign King. And it calls on the one reading the prayer and those praying the prayer with the reader to live their lives for the sole purpose of praising God.

“Praise the Lord.
Praise the Lord, O my soul.
I will praise the Lord all my life;
I will sing praise to my God as long as I live.
Do not put your trust in princes,
in mortal men, who cannot save.
When their spirit departs, they return to the ground;
on that very day their plans come to nothing.
Blessed is he whose help in the God of Jacob,
whose hope is in the Lord his God,
the Maker of heaven and earth,
the sea and everything in them—
the Lord, who remains faithful forever.
He upholds the cause of the oppressed
and gives food to the hungry.
The Lord sets prisoners free,
the Lord gives sight to the blind,
the Lord lifts up those who are bowed down,
the Lord loves the righteous.
The Lord watches over the alien
and sustains the fatherless and the widow,
but he frustrates the ways of the wicked.
The Lord reigns forever,
your God, O Zion, for all generations.
Praise the Lord.”

“What we have heard and known, what our fathers have told us; we will not hide them from the children; we will tell the next generation.” ~Psalm 78:3-4.

The apostle Paul calls life in Christ a race. He tells us to run the race in order to win. And we have to understand that this race we’re running is a relay. None of us is running this race alone. We’re all in it together. Someone passed the baton to you. And you are charged with passing the baton to others. Today we are standing on the shoulders of those who’ve gone before. At the same time, we’re paving the way for those who are coming after.

Nobody runs the race alone.

Notice these boys who are receiving the baton. Looking back. Eyes on the runners who are racing toward them. Stretching back with their hands open to receive the baton. Measuring their steps so they match up with their teammates.

Look at this girl who’s passing the baton. She’s running her fastest right here at the exchange. She’s given it all she has. Her part of the race is almost over. But she’s running faster and working harder now than she was at the beginning. Look at how she’s stretching and straining and lunging forward to pass this baton to the one who will run after her. Look how they’re both concentrating on this critical task.

Now look at the point of exchange. This is my favorite moment of a good relay. Notice how, for a time, these two are actually running together. Step by step. Side by side. In perfect rhythm. One finishing her assignment, one just getting started. Running. Cooperating. Sprinting. Enduring. Together at the point of exchange. Side by side.

We appealed to the older members of our Legacy church family last night to embrace their God-ordained mission of passing on the faith to the younger generations. And I want to repeat and reinforce that plea here today, specifically to those 50-years-old and older in our Legacy family, and generally to any of our older brothers and sisters who might be reading this today.

We believe the most effective way for us to pass on the Christian faith is through our deeply-rooted relationships with one another. And we believe those powerful relationships are best formed in our Sunday night Small Groups. These meaningful relationships are forged on living room couches and around kitchen tables. These bonds are strengthened in our homes and in our shared meals. And we need you older members of this body of believers to jump in with us.

We need you. We need your wisdom. We need your experience. We need your example of someone who’s seen it all, endured it all, and kept the faith. Our children need to see it in you. They need older people to look up to. We need your love.

You’re running the race. You’ve been running it a long time. But you’re not done. Now’s the time to pass the baton. It’s time to understand that we’re not running this race alone. As the younger lean back and strain with open hands to receive your love and concern and stories and faith, we need you to run faster and stretch out with everything you have to pass it on to us. You’re not finished. We need you.

Where else are you going to be able to have the impact on those younger than you? Not in our church assemblies where we sit in rows of pews and look through the backs of each other’s heads to a single person up on a stage and then go to lunch with people our own age. Certainly not in Bible class where, again, we naturally (and usually intentionally) segregate by age. It doesn’t happen there. It happens in our homes.

Please join us. Please work with us in forming intergenerational Small Groups where you can be energized by our kids and our energy and our relative youth, where you can be served by us and loved and appreciated by us as we get to know you in ways we never will otherwise.

And as we make the exchange, as you stretch out and we lean back, as we lock eyes and match our steps, as the faith is being passed in these Christ-centered relationships, we’ll soon discover that we’re actually running together. Side by side. Step by step. In perfect rhythm.

Amen.

“I have installed my King on Zion, my holy hill.” ~Psalm 2:6

 Psalm 2 is the psalm most used by Bible writers, quoted or alluded to nine times in the New Testament. Psalm 2 forms the very center and focus of the Church’s first recorded prayer in Acts 4.

“Why do the nations conspire
  and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth take their stand
  and the rulers gather together against the Lord
  and against his Anointed One.”
  ~Psalm 2:1-2 & Acts 4:25-26

Like those very first Christians, when we pray Psalm 2 it allows us to personally realize and internalize the tremendous canyon between the world’s ways and the ways of our God. It puts the reality of this unbridgeable gap between our ways and the ways of “the nations” right into our hearts and minds and muscles and guts.

Eugene Peterson translates Psalm 2:6 this way, “Don’t you know there’s a King in Zion?”

Peterson expands on the idea in his book, The Jesus Way:

“The first generation of Christians took Jesus at his word when he announced that the Kingdom was at hand—a real (not ideal) Kingdom with a real king, King Jesus. The words and sentences of Psalm 2 dismissed the pretensions of all these other ways and let Christ the King permeate their preaching and prayers and following. They followed the resurrected Jesus with an air of triumph and praise. The gospel was not something private that they cultivated in the cozy security of their homes and hearts; it was public, the most powerful force in human history, shaping the destiny of nations as well as the souls of men and women.”

Following Jesus is a unique way of living. It’s like nothing else. There is nothing and no one like Jesus. Following him gets us little or nothing of what we commonly think we want or need. Following him accomplishes nothing on the world’s agenda. Following him takes us right out of this world’s assumptions and goals and straight to a place where we can “insert a lever that turns the world upside down and inside out.” Following Jesus has everything to do with this world, but almost nothing in common with this world.

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I’m preaching my first Gospel Meeting (they’re not called Gospel Meetings anymore, are they?) beginning this Sunday evening through Wednesday at the Keller Church of Christ. My good friend Kyle Bolton is the preacher there, a long time friend of the family that traces back to his parents and my parents and my grandmother at P-Grove.

Here’s the lineup:

Sunday: “The Challenge to Know God” God reveals himself to us at Sinai & Zion
Monday: “The Challenge to Trust God” Isaiah 46 and Matthew 8
Tuesday: “The Challenge to Obey God” Abraham and the binding of Isaac
Wednesday: “The Challenge to Share God” The parables of Luke 15

My personal theme for the week is “The Challenge to Preach Four Straight Nights.” I invite you to join us for any and all those evenings.

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Some of you have asked me lately, in emails and in person, why I’m not doing a 99-Days of Football on the blog this summer like we did last year. Well, we can’t do the exact same thing every year. Where’s the joy in that? Something much bigger and much better and much more interactive is coming soon. In fact, I’m planning on announcing it this Monday, July 28 on this blog. If you’re a hard-core college football fan, this will be right up your alley. If you’re interested in the 99 Days of Football, you can still click on the green tab at the top of this page to relive the glamour and excitement of last year’s countdown to football season. In the meantime, bone up this weekend on your college football scouting reports and predictions and join me back here Monday.

Have a great weekend.

Peace,

Allan