The Kingdom, The Kids, & The Cowboys

Crazy energy. Non-stop noise. Constant. Loud. Interactive. Responsive. Hilarious. Meaningful. Life-changing. Momentous.

Jason and Jennifer and I triple-teamed 25 of our 6th and 7th graders (18 boys, 7 girls) over the past three days in our annual Faith Builders Day Camp here at Legacy. It’s an idea I got from Jim Gardner when we worked together in Marble Falls. It’s designed to engage our youngsters in the fundamentals of our faith in God through Christ Jesus.

The first day’s theme was “Sin: The Problem.” On Tuesday we studied “Jesus: The Solution.” And we wrapped it up yesterday with “Faith: The Response.”

The young people studied hard for almost three hours each morning. And then after lunch we enjoyed off-site activities like bowling, laser tag, swimming, and the movies. But then it was back home in the evenings for 30-minutes of homework with mom and dad.

The conversations were happening. What does it mean to be made in the image of God? Why did Jesus have to die? When were the dinosaurs created? What happens if I sin again after I’m baptized? Why does God let bad things happen? Bibles were being read. Light bulbs were going off. God is reaching out to his children. And the faith is being passed on from generation to generation.

Thank you so much to our church office staff and other parents and volunteers who helped write and apply the name tags and Bible stickers, chaperon our children to the afternoon events, stuff the folders, and stick on the Band-Aids. It couldn’t have happened without you.

And congratulations to Emma Gambill who was baptized into Christ last night here at Legacy. Emma, you now participate in the resurrection of Jesus. Death has nothing on you now. And neither does sin.

Peace,

Allan

I’m afraid I’ve become a “chucker.” I keep blaming my horrible performances during our Thursday basketball games on jet lag. But we returned from Ukraine seven weeks ago. Am I a “chucker?”

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I’m still not sure how to put into words what Legacy — my church family — is doing this week in the name of Christ. Ministering to a mother in jail and taking care of her three children is a beautiful thing. The ones in our church who are opening up their homes and their hearts are showing maybe the greatest acts of loving kindness these kids have ever experienced. By helping this family the way we are, we are actually BEING church, not just DOING church. We’re proclaiming to one another and to the world that Legacy really is the Family Place. We really are brothers and sisters. It’s not just a slogan on our letterhead or mere words on the sides of our vans. It means something.

We have given this situation to our God and to his Church. We’ve admitted to our Father that we don’t have any answers or wisdom or experience in cases like this. But we do know we are called to love one another like brothers and sisters, we’re called to sacrifice and serve one another like our risen Lord. And we’re committed to doing that and trusting God to take care of us.

When people place membership at Legacy, we tell them right there in the Sunday assembly, in front of God and everybody, that we’re going to love them and take care of them. We promise to defend them and protect them. We never say, “…as long as it doesn’t open us up to liability.” We never put conditions on our Christian love like, “…as long as it doesn’t involve any risk.” We don’t tell people they’re welcome to be members at Legacy as long as they can take care of themselves.

Yes, we might get burned. We might get burned badly. Praise God! That makes us more like Christ! And we are to rejoice when we suffer for his holy Name.

Or, we might not get burned at all. God may think our faith in him to provide and protect while we step outside our boxes to do the right thing is really neat. And eternally worthwhile.

I’m so glad I belong to this church family at Legacy. And I know three kids today who are saying the exact same thing.

Peace,

Allan

I felt like I was in the final scene of “It’s a Wonderful Life.” The conference room at the back of our worship center was packed — jam-packed — with more people than it was ever intended to hold. As I pressed and pushed and excuse-me’d my way to the center of the room, untold dozens of men and women kept pushing money into my hands. Twenties and tens. Lots of twenties and tens. Several dozen checks. A couple of hundred dollar bills. People gave me phone numbers and email addresses. And lots of money. Smiling people. Loud people. Happy people. Giving cheerfully. Offering themselves sacrificially. Some of these people I know very well. Others, I’m not sure I’ve ever met. I can still see their wide open faces. But there’s no way I can remember them all. I didn’t know what to say. Almost 36-hours later, I’m still not sure what to say. I just stood there. Speechless. Yes, without speech. I kept waiting for someone to break out in “Auld Lang Syne.” (Is that how you spell it? Probably not.) Surely another Clarence somewhere was getting his wings!

It was too much. Almost chaotic. People were cramming themselves around the room. Others were pressed against the glass, unable to squeeze in. A line three and four across stretched out into the halls from both doors. I fully expected the ceiling tiles to be ripped apart and more people to be lowered down on mats and ropes. We had to move everybody back out into the worship center.

A Legacy family is in crisis. Major crisis. And we gave it to God by giving it to his Church. We spilled it all before the whole Body of Christ. No holds barred. Raw honesty. Brutal truth. All the pain. All the sin. All the darkness. Here it is, we said. Now, let’s help this family.

And we did. And we are. And I still can’t believe it.

Why am I so surprised? God is faithful. He’s always promised to take care of us if we’ll just depend on him. And he’s never broken one of those promises. Never. So why am I so shocked that he moved our church to such great depths of Christian love yesterday? Why was I so blown away?

Because it’s so rare?

Maybe.

Why is it so rare?

Because we don’t always depend on God the way he wants us to?

Maybe.

I really believe the key is to totally and completely and wholly rely on God instead of ourselves. And we never do that. Except when we get in a “hopeless situation.” Except when we find ourselves in the middle of a cyclone of horrible news and dreadful circumstances. Except when we hold meeting after meeting after meeting and discover we’ve got nothing. Nothing. No answers. No wisdom. No suggestions. No solutions. Nothing.

And we wind up with no choice but to give it all to God. In all humility and brokenness and helplessness, we give it to God.

And then he does that thing he always does. He rescues. He saves. He delivers. Just like always. And I imagine our heavenly Father looks at our surprise and says, “Now you know that I am the Lord.”

Praise God. He alone is God. There is no other. Praise God.

Allan

We live in interesting times.

One hundred years ago the German philosophers and theologians were telling us that things were getting better. Science and technology were making us better people. All our problems would soon be solved. World peace would soon be the result of all our science and technology and education. City and state police departments would soon be obsolete. There would be no need for armies of any kind.

Then came two bloody World Wars. And self-indulgent Baby Boomers. And whiny Generation-Xers. And national security crisis. And economic crisis. And health care crisis.

The BP oil spill is nearly 100 days old.

And now we’re hearing and reading that people are losing their faith in science and technology. Science and technology can’t solve the world’s problems. Science and technology don’t have all the answers. This world is too big and too broken to be fixed by science and technology and government and education and armies and wealth.

We live in interesting times.

Today seems like the perfect time to remind ourselves and the world where our faith lies. Not in science or technology, education or wealth, armies or governments, vaccines or oil. Now’s the time to preach it and teach it; now’s the time to sing it and shout it; now’s the time to live it! Now’s the time to tell the world — your street, my community, our world — that our hope is built on nothing less than the faithful love of Almighty God, eternal salvation from his Son, and the earth-altering power of his Holy Spirit!

Peace,

Allan

I’m convinced that Jesus looked at the people around him and thought, “Anything is possible.” I believe he regularly surveyed his circumstances and said, “Anything is possible.”

The Samaritan woman in John 4 drops her water jar and runs into town to tell everyone about Jesus. He had welcomed her. Jesus had accepted her. Even in her horrible sins, even with all her baggage, he had treated her with respect and dignity and hospitality. And this hopeless woman now had hope. This dead woman now had life. She’s redeemed. She’s reconciled. She’s saved. And it’s stunning to me that by the end of the story, the entire village of Sychar is taking their religious direction from the town sleaze! Anything’s possible! The way Jesus treated this one lonely woman rocked the whole city!

With Jesus, anything is possible.

The blind see, the lame walk, the prisoners are released, the dead are raised. The fisherman who betrays Jesus three times the night he’s arrested becomes a foundation stone for the eternal Church of God. The angry apostle who begs to call down fire to incinerate a whole village that rejects Christ winds up giving God’s people the most beautiful words about love ever written. The Church’s biggest enemy, the killer of Christians, becomes by the grace of God the Church’s greatest writer and preacher and church planter.

Anything is possible.

Zacchaeus is pulled out of a tree. Lazarus walks out of a tomb. Demons are sent back to hell. The hungry are fed. Money is found in a fish’s mouth. Doubting Thomas believes. Storms are stilled. The temple is cleared. Gentile jailers are baptized. And camels pass through the eye of a tiny needle.

We will never grow, we will never be transformed, we will never be moved, we will never live up to our God-ordained potential until we adopt the mind of Christ and begin to see and believe that anything is possible! It really is!

But, Allan, my church will never change.

Wrong answer! With Christ Jesus, anything is possible!

But, Allan, this world will never change.

Oh, no! With Jesus, anything is possible!

Allan, I don’t think I can ever change.

Are you kidding? Have you read the gospel story of salvation from God in Christ? Have you heard the good news? The almighty Creator of heaven and earth loves you! He welcomes you! He’s taken care of your sins! And it’s all very, very, very possible!

Peace,

Allan

“But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?” ~Matthew 16:15

Peter answers his Lord by confessing Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the Living God. In similar circumstances — we could argue we live 24 hours a day in that circumstance — we would all make that Christian confession.

And Jesus would respond, “Blessed are you, Allan. Blessed are you, Joe. Blessed are you, Jane. Blessed are you (insert your own name).

And we’d just sit there, together, basking in the quiet moment, reflecting on the eternal implications of that confession.

And then what if you broke that silence by turning the question back on Jesus? What if you asked Jesus, “Who do you say I am?” You ever thought about that? What would Jesus say if you asked him who he says you are? You know he has an opinion. He knows you. He knows everything about you. What you say. What you do. The ways you think. He knows. And you ask him…

“…Who do you say I am?”

Well, what does he say?

I think Jesus would say, “Allan, you are a faithful proclaimer of the Gospel. You are a compassionate minister in the Kingdom.”

See, Jesus would always go to the positives first. That’s the way he operates. Our tendencies are to see the negatives first. Even in our self-evaluations, we look at the negatives and blow them out of proportion. But Jesus would initially attend to the good things about us. It’s called grace.

And then, I’m afraid my Lord would say, “Allan, you have a real lack of trust in me. Your faith isn’t nearly as strong as it should be by now. And you have a real problem with looking at things from a worldly perspective. Even things in my Church. You make judgments and decisions based on worldly principles.”

He would say other things about areas in my life I’m needing to change. But he would probably keep coming back to my lack of faith.

If you were to ask Jesus, “Who do you say I am?” what would he say?

Seriously.

He has an opinion.

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The cops are coming to get me at noon today. No Thursday hoops. I’ll be in jail in Bedford trying to raise the rest of the $1,480 bail money needed for MDA. As of this writing, we’ve raised $950. Thank you, thank you, thank you! If you’d like to contribute to the cause, please click here. Again, thank you.

Peace,

Allan

“Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you!” ~Luke 1:28

The angel isn’t telling Mary, hey, the Lord is in the next room or the Lord is watching you from heaven. Gabriel’s not even telling the future mother of the Messiah that God is living in her heart. “The Lord is with you” is a biblical formula that means so much more.

“The Lord is with you” is what the angel told Gideon in Judges 6. Gideon balks at the divine instructions to fight so God himself jumps in to say, “Go in the strength you have! Am I not sending you?” The Lord is with Gideon and a great victory is won for God’s people and Yahweh is glorified.

“The Lord is with you” is a statement of promise. It’s a guarantee of God’s help in the assignment he’s about to give you. “The Lord is with you” means God is intervening in your life in a special way to fulfill his promises to you and his holy purposes through you.

In Genesis 39, the writer makes it clear that the Lord was with Joseph. The Lord was with Joseph in Potiphar’s house and blessed Potiphar because of Joseph. The Lord was with Joseph in prison and blessed the warden and the cupbearer. The Lord was with Joseph in Pharaoh’s palace and blessed all of Egypt and the rest of the known world because of Joseph.

The angel tells Mary, “The Lord is with you,” and God works with her and through her to bring the prophesied Messiah to save the world.

Our problem is that we never get to hear the whole story today. The truth is that “the Lord is with you” today at work. And he’s blessing all the people around you, because of you. “The Lord is with you” today in your home. And he’s blessing your spouse and your kids because of you. You must understand that “the Lord is with you” when you preach on Sundays and he’s blessing all the people in your church because of you. “The Lord is with you” today at the grocery store and the post office and the soccer game. And he’s blessing everybody you contact. 

Our God is calling you to live for him in everything you do and say and think. And he’s promising to use you to fulfill his salvation will for the world.

“The Lord is with you” is a personal guarantee you can take to the bank.

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Thank you, thank you, thank you! You have donated $870 in bail money in advance of my arrest and imprisonment at noon tomorrow. It’s all part of a fundraising event for MDA. I need to raise a total of $1,480 in order to get out of jail. We’re almost there. You have been hilarious in your comments via email and blog. And you’ve been overly generous in your contributions to the cause. Click here for more information, a clever little video, and to donate. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

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If nothing else, the Rangers are fun to watch. Last night was another one of those games that dripped with drama on every pitch. Four lead changes and men on base in almost every inning. Twice the Rangers got down to their final strike and delivered the key hit to re-tie the game. There was a bullpen meltdown and some shaky defense in a couple of critical moments but, man, they just keep coming back. With guys we’ve never heard of before.

My regret is that, with a one-run lead heading into the 9th, Ron Washington decided to leave his well-rested ace closer in the bullpen for Darren Oliver. Big mistake. He admitted as much after the game. I’m still not sure Wash is a qualified good-decision maker. Period.

And all Rangers fans are concerned about the financial state of the team. It’s never been good. Ever. But it’s never been this bad. Not even close. By the end of the week, it looks like Bud Selig and MLB are going to take it over. It looks like there are going to be lots of lawsuits and hearings. And if Texas is still within a game or two of first place by the trading deadline, they still won’t be able to make a move. It’s frustrating. Again.

I can’t imagine they’d ever contract or re-locate the Rangers. That’ll never happen. This is a major media market. It’s impossible. MLB has to have a team here. But the last time Selig took over the day-to-day operations of a team, they moved the Expos to DC. I hope it’s just a coincidence that the Expos and Rangers logos look exactly the same.

Peace,

Allan

Paul writes his letter to the Philippians from prison. He’s chained to the guards in Rome. He’s awaiting a trial that could result in his execution. He doesn’t know if he’s going to live or die. On top of all that, there are other preachers in Rome who are bad-mouthing him. Paul’s brothers and sisters in Philippi are worried about him. They’ve sent money and supplies to him in Rome. They’ve sent Epaphroditus there to check on him. They want to know, “Paul, how are you doing?”

And Paul says, “I’m great!”

“Now I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the Gospel.” ~Philippians 1:12

Paul’s identity is in Christ and his focus is on the Gospel. That’s what shapes and informs Paul’s perspective. Paul comes at everything — EVERYTHING! — from the perspective of what God is doing to redeem the world. Paul sees everything — EVERYTHING! — from the perspective of how God’s using him to accomplish that redemption. And because of this, Paul’s able to rejoice. He sees things the way the Lord sees things. He thinks about things the way God thinks about things.

So Paul has a joyful perspective that radically impacts the way he thinks, the way he talks, the way he reacts, the way he sees everything.

Paul knows that the same same God who used Moses’ rod and David’s sling and Gideon’s pitchers and Joshua’s trumpets and a Roman cross and an empty tomb is now using Paul’s chains. And our God is doing the same thing today in your life, too. He’s using your chains. He’s using your weakness. He’s using your circumstance. Your illness. Your financial situation. Your house. Your relationships with others. God’s using all of those things to redeem those around you.

God is using the very things that right now may have you feeling trapped. God is very aware of those things that make you feel stuck or imprisoned. And he’s using them. He’s using you right now to advance the Gospel!

You do see that, right?

Peace,

Allan

You don’t have to wait for every single one of your doubts and fears to go away before you commit your life to Christ. You don’t have to be “strong in the faith” before you give yourself to God. It’s not the depth of your faith or the purity of your heart that saves you. It’s God’s work through Christ. Period.

Just trust him.

I love Timothy Keller’s illustration in his excellent book, The Reason for God:

Imagine you are on a high cliff and you lose your footing and begin to fall. Just beside you as you fall is a branch sticking out of the very edge of the cliff. It is your only hope and it is more than strong enough to support your weight. How can it save you? If your mind is filled with intellectual certainty that the branch can support you, but you don’t actually reach out and grab it, you are lost. If you mind is instead filled with doubts and uncertainty that the branch can hold you, but you reach out and grab it anyway, you will be saved. Why? It is not the strength of your faith but the object of your faith that actually saves you. Strong faith in a weak branch is fatally inferior to weak faith in a strong branch.

Trust him. Trust him with everything. Give him your doubts. Give him your fears. Admit them up front. It’s OK. Our God is big enough and strong enough to handle that, too. Just trust him. Reach out and grab him.

I’ve always believed in Jesus. But, I must confess, my heart’s most fundamental trust was usually somewhere else. My trust was usually in my own competency and decency. Now I see clearly how messed up that is. I’m not that good. I’m not that competent. I’m not that decent.

I’m only saved by Jesus.

Give everything to him. Transfer all of your trust to him. God will receive you and accept you, not for anything you’ve done or can possibly do in the future, but because of what Christ has done and promises to do for you.

Peace,

Allan

Pete Gent, the wise-cracking wide receiver of the early Dallas Cowboys teams, once walked by a rookie, slumped over at his locker, studying Tom Landry’s overly thick and complicated playbook. “Don’t bother reading it, kid,” Gent said. “Everybody gets killed in the end.”

Cynical. Funny. OK, brilliant!

In Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, the narrarator actually encourages Joseph while he’s in prison. He tells Joseph not to despair. Don’t give up. He says, “I’ve read the book and you come out on top!”

We don’t have that benefit. Our books aren’t finished yet. The chapters of our lives are written as we live them out every day. And nobody knows exactly what our endings will look like. But the call from our God is to run the race with endurance and faithfulness. Wherever we are. Whatever our circumstance. In great confidence that he is with us.

God is with you. In your place. In your situation. He’s right there with you. Joseph gets thrown into a pit and sold into slavery by his own brothers. Scripture says God was with Joseph. Joseph is made head over Potiphar’s house. The Bible says God was with Joseph. He’s thrown in prison by Potiphar’s wife. He’s rescued by a forgetful cupbearer. He’s put in charge of all of Egypt. And throughout the story we’re told that God was with Joseph. I’ve counted 27 times, through all the dramatic ups and downs of Joseph’s life, from Genesis 37 through Genesis 50, when it’s made clear that God was with Joseph.

The end of the story makes it crystal clear. It looks like Joseph is being made by Pharaoh. The king of Egypt gives Joseph his new office, his new status, his new robes, his power, his authority, his new name, his new wife. It all comes from Pharaoh. But from the standpoint of the biblical author — and in the view of Joseph himself — it all comes from God.

God sent Joseph. God was with Joseph. God raised up Joseph.

Joseph is not Pharaoh’s man. He’s God’s man. He’s not Pharaoh’s instrument of economic survival. He’s God instrument of salvation.

I don’t know how your story turns out, friend. I have no idea what you’re going through right now. But I do know God is with you.

“It is very sweet as life passes by, to be able to look back on dark and mysterious events, and to trace the hand of God where once we saw only the malice and cruelty of man.” ~F. B. Meyer

Peace,

Allan