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A Powerful Weapon Against Satan

March 8, 2013 / / 0 Comments

“You ought to forgive and comfort him so that he will not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. I urge you, therefore, to reaffirm your love for him… in order that Satan might not outwit us. For we are not unaware of his schemes.” ~2 Corinthians 2:7-11

The situation in the Corinthian church was critical: a sorrowful, repentant brother and a congregation reluctant to forgive and restore. The apostle Paul knows that Satan will attempt to use this circumstance against the Kingdom of God. The devil is hell-bent on destroying the mutual forgiveness and acceptance that is supposed to characterize the people of God. We, the Church, are the evidence — we’re the banner, the big flashing billboard, the huge neon sign — we’re the proof, the testimony of God’s redeeming work in Christ and the unity created by the Holy Spirit. Forgiving and restoring this brother, reaffirming their love for this brother, would prove to the whole world that Jesus really is who he says he is and he really is changing people.

Well, Satan can’t let that happen. So the devil does what he does best. He tempts the congregation to bear a grudge. To judge. He tempts us to pride. And arrogance.

“That guy can’t just say ‘I’m sorry’ and expect you to roll over and act like nothing happened. You’ve got to stand up here. You need to teach this guy a lesson. This guy needs to prove himself first. He’s not equal to you. Yeah, you’ve got some sin in your life; but you’ve never done what this guy did!”

Do you hear Satan?

“I suppose maybe you can forgive him; but that doesn’t mean you have to talk to him. OK, go ahead and forgive him; but that doesn’t mean he might not need to find another church.”

You ever heard that in your ear before? Or in your heart? That’s the devil talking, it’s not God’s Holy Spirit.

More than anything, in this situation, Satan wants the sorrowful brother or sister to be overwhelmed. The devil wants the outcast to feel empty and useless and all alone. So the devil does what he does best. He accuses. And he lies.

“These people will never understand you. They can’t relate to you. Nobody in that church has ever done what you’ve done. Everybody’s got friends here except for you. You’ll never be accepted. You’ll never get connected. You’re always going to be alone.”

Do you hear Satan?

“They say they forgive you, they say they love you. But you’re the only one who knows the truth: You can’t even forgive yourself. You can’t even really love yourself. These things you’ve done, those things that have happened to you, that deal you’re going through right now, nobody in the Church can help you with that.”

You ever heard that in your ear before? In your heart? That’s not God’s Spirit talking, it’s the devil.

God’s Spirit says forgive. Comfort. Reaffirm your love.

Satan cannot outwit us, the devil has no power over us as long as we’re ministering in these ways with one another and in the world. Forgive. Comfort. Reaffirm your love.

Naming and exposing sin is not at the core of what it means to live for the glory of God. Finger-pointing is not the Gospel. Witch-hunting is not the Gospel. Shaming the outcast or ostracizing the wrongdoer is not ministry. Those are all Satan’s tools and methods.

Forgiving sin! That’s Gospel! Forgiving sin! That’s Christian ministry done in the name and the manner of Jesus! Forgiving!

Scripture doesn’t tell us to grab a mop and a bucket and work harder to scrub the sin away from our lives and the lives of our neighbors and friends. And God doesn’t automatically remove all sin from our lives at baptism like exterminating roaches or amputating a diseased limb. Sin is not dealt with by more laws and rules. It’s not handled by isolation and shame. The Holy Creator deals with our sin by forgiving us!

And that’s how we deal with it, too.

Forgiveness isn’t going soft. It’s not wimpy or sissy to forgive. It’s not an apathetic or ineffective shrug of the shoulders. Forgiveness is hard-edged, hard-core, bad-to-the-bone Gospel! Forgiveness is the white-hot flame of resurrection love forged in the fiery furnace of the cross! Forgiveness doesn’t ignore the sin. And forgiveness doesn’t avoid the pain. Forgiveness deals with the problem head on. And it opens the door to healing. It clears the path for Holy Spirit transformation. Forgiveness is powerful. It’s a mighty and miraculous wonder that comes straight from heaven. And it’s a nuclear arsenal of unstoppable might against the devil and his schemes.

Peace,

Allan

Do We Have a History?

March 4, 2013 / / 2 Comments

“Every renewal of the church, every great age in its history, has been grounded on a renewed reading of history.” ~Justo Gonzalez

You know the familiar quotes and the wisdom behind them: Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it; Whoever wishes to foresee the future must consult the past; History cannot give us a program for the future, but it can give us a fuller understanding of ourselves so that we can better face the future.

We’re taking the advice to heart with our current Sunday morning adult Bible class series here at Central. Our curiculum is based on Gary Holloway and Doug Foster’s book “Renewing God’s People: A Concise History of Churches of Christ.” With this book as our guide, we’re considering our past, contemplating its relationship to Scripture, and having conversation about the paths ahead. The hope is that we can raise our “historical spiritual consciousness” by gaining a better understanding of how our faith and our churches have been shaped by inside and outside forces we may have never even considered.

In doing so, our aim is to collectively come to a better understanding of the vision and the call that resulted in the beginning of the American Restoration Movement, of which Churches of Christ are a part. They had a dream, right? There’s a reason Stone and Campbell and those founding fathers left their churches to begin our movement, right? Well, what in the world was it? What was so compelling that they left their own faith traditions and family stories?

Secondly, we want to see just where, why, and how we drifted so far away from that initial dream. What happened? What were the influences that got us off track? What role did culture play? History? The American Revolution? The Civil War?

Next, we need to determine if those original dreams and vision were right. Were those ideals on which our movement was founded faithful to the Gospel and to God’s mission for his Church? And, if so, how do we recover the best parts of those ideals for Central today? How do we reclaim the best parts of the Restoration heritage in our local context and setting, time and place?

We started yesterday by discussing the things that make the Churches of Christ different from the rest. What sets us apart? What makes us unique? The response from our class — a diverse group of people who range in age from late 20s to late 70s, some CofC lifers and a couple of people who were just baptized two months ago — was fairly typical. We ran down the list pretty fast: acappella worship, weekly communion, autonomous congregations led by a plurality of elders, believer’s baptism by full immersion, limited role for women, and a high regard for the authority of the Bible and personal knowledge of the Scriptures. After that came the slogans: Speak where the Bible speaks and be silent where the Bible is silent; We do Bible things in Bible ways and call Bible things by Bible names; etc., And then came a little honesty: Somebody mentioned that we’re perceived as thinking we’re the only ones going to heaven, and one of our brand new Christians confessed rather sheepishly that her mom had always told her the Church of Christ was a cult.

For the most part, these distinctives are dearly held by those of us in the Churches of Christ. For a lot of us, these are red flag issues. It’s emotional. Just mention a buzz word or a key phrase related to any one of these things around most of us and you’ll receive an impassioned plea touting the merits of such a practice or belief. Or a fight.

What we learn when we look at church history is that those things are not that unique to us. We didn’t come up with this stuff. It was all handed down to us by the Christians who went before. Martin Luther is the one who pushed for the authority of Scripture alone. John Calvin is the one who caused us to pay more attention to the sovereignty of God. The “anabaptists” of that same era were persecuted and mercilessly killed for their move to believer’s baptism by full immersion. John Knox and the Presbyterians pushed for the autonomy of local congregations led by a plurality of presbyters, or elders.

Any of that sound familiar?

Would it surprise you to learn that a whole mess of these faithful Christians came to America in the 18th century from Germany and Switzerland and Geneva and England and Scotland and brought their peculiar Christian beliefs and practices with them? And that Barton Stone and Alexander Campbell were among them?

We can find traces of us, Churches of Christ, in almost every strand of Christianity. They are our spiritual ancestors, too. They faithfully did the best with what they had at the time and diligently moved the Gospel story forward. We are not the first Christians. Or the only Christians. And we won’t be the last.

Our God is faithful; and very, very good.

Peace,

Allan

Stuck Truck

February 27, 2013 / / 1 Comment

I picked Greg up at about 1:00 yesterday so we could both come up here to the church building for a few hours and get some work done. The main roads between Greg’s house and mine — Bell, 45th, Hillside — were, for the most part, cleared. But the residential streets were all still very tricky. A near-record 19-inches of snow doesn’t just go away in a couple of hours, even in the sunshine and temperatures in the upper 30s. I slowed down to a crawl in the middle of his street so he could jump in as I went by and, dodging stranded vehicles among ten-foot walls of plowed snow, we made it to the church parking lot in pretty good shape.

It was on the way out of the church parking where we got in trouble.

For a couple of guys in a really big truck with a bunch of snow around, a three-foot drift in front of the office doors looked really inviting.  But we weren’t totally certain the truck could make it through. So we eyed the smaller 18-inch drift in the circle drive. Yes, we can get through that.

And we almost did.

We “high-centered” it, according to the terminology used in the warnings I had received from Scott and John Todd as the blizzard approached Sunday night. I was only about six inches away from getting through. But I was stuck. While Greg dug around the church flower beds for some garden mulch and sticks to put under the tires for traction, Mark came out of his office with a shovel. And we dug out. Mark and Greg were laughing; I was upset I couldn’t make it all the way through the snow drift. But now we were running late to pick Whitney up from work. So Greg got in and — good gravy!!! — I proceeded to back right into another snow drift not ten feet away from where we were! Mark hadn’t even walked back to his car to lock up the shovel. This second drift wasn’t even twelve inches, I don’t think. But we were stuck. Again.

This time, while I dug out, Greg snapped a few pictures on his cell phone. And the one you see here wound up on the home page of our church website last night under the heading “Breaking News” and the caption “Our preacher from Dallas took his chances with the snow… Anybody have a shovel?”

I saw it early this morning. Nice, Hannah.

The parking lots are still a mess here, the east side of our building is still packed in ice, and 15th Street isn’t good. So we’re cancelling Bible classes and Wacky Wednesday and our youth group Huddles and Muddles for tonight. Everything should be scraped clean and dry for Sunday morning. But just in case, I’m packing a shovel in the back of my truck.

Peace,

Allan

Nineteen Inches!

February 25, 2013 / / 1 Comment

(The opening paragraph with all the meteorological details is for my dad because… well, because he’d be extremely disappointed if I didn’t. Of course, mom, you’ll have to print this off and hand it to him.)

It’s official! The National Weather service measured an even nineteen inches of snow at the airport today, falling just three-tenths of an inch shy of the all-time record for snow in Amarillo during a 24-hour period which was set way back in 1934. While achieving close-but-no-cigar status on that all-time mark, today’s snow dump did set a couple of other records worth noting. It breaks the all-time February 25th record of ten inches and the all-time record for any day in February, twelve inches set back in 1893. If you want some real perspective on the grand scale of all this, consider that the Donut Stop was closed today. First time in nearly forty years. So, yeah, this doesn’t happen all the time up here. Not even close. What we’re enjoying here is downright rare and even historic.

The snow stopped at about 2:00 this afternoon and the winds died down from the 50-55 mph range (a top gust of 75 mph was observed at the airport! That’s for you, too, dad.) to about 15-20 mph and the clouds actually cleared out enough for the sun to shine through for a couple of hours. Carley and I did venture back out in the mess to do a little more exploring and tackle a couple of building projects while the other three girls in the house drank hot chocolate and watched “Lord of the Rings.” (Help me.)

Carley and I buried each other in the snow, made snow angels with disproportionately small heads in the four-foot drifts in the alley, shoveled the front walk and half of the back drive, surveyed wind damage at a couple of spots in our fence, visited with neighbor Joe and his precious little girl as they cleared their driveway, and talked for a while with neighbor Warner and his little dog, Charlie, as they braved the elements for a much needed walk. As for the building projects, we attempted to dig a long tunnel under the massive drifts in front of the house (failed), build a snowman (failed), build a snow flamingo with a super long neck (failed), and construct a very sophisticated igloo / fort (jury’s still out on the fort; it got dark before we finished). Valerie did venture out once this afternoon to collect enough snow to make some delicious snow ice cream. It was treacherous for her as Carley and I bombed her with snowballs as she scrambled back to the door. The ice cream is excellent!

I’ve spent a good deal of the in-between time today reading a new book, Lombardi and Landry. It’s written by Ernie Palladino, a long time beat writer for the New York Giants back in the 50s with the Journal News. The whole book tracks the beginnings of the Hall of Fame careers of Tom Landry and Vince Lombardi, when they both worked together on the Giants’ staff of head coach Jim Lee Howell. Can you imagine that? Lombardi running the offense and Landry in charge of the defense. It was said at the time that Howell was just in charge of blowing up the footballs during those championship years. It’s a fairly decent read so far, all of it written from the Giants’ perspective and, in my view, a little Lombardi heavy. I was surprised to read Palladino giving Landry credit for suggesting the Giants move Kyle Rote from halfback to flanker and changing Sam Huff from an offensive lineman to the first true middle linebacker in football history. Of course, the rest is history with those two legendary players. But I’ve never heard Landry credited with those obviously important decisions. I read Huff’s autobiography a couple of years ago, and I don’t remember reading anything about that. Anyway, it’s an OK book. I’m almost halfway through it. I’m up to the 1956 championship season, Frank Gifford’s breakout year.

School has already been cancelled for tomorrow. Again. It’s supposed to get down to nine-degrees tonight with wind chills below zero. So, no alarm clocks! Maybe we’ll finish the fort tomorrow. Maybe it’ll be OK after lunch to try to get out on the road, see a movie or something. Maybe I’ll just throw another few logs on the fireplace and keep reading.

Peace,

Allan

Snowbound!

February 25, 2013 / / 2 Comments

It’s almost noon Monday, there are thirteen-plus inches of snow on the ground, 36-plus-inch drifts here and there around our house, and it’s still coming! Sideways! It’s supposed to keep snowing until maybe 5:00 or 6:00 this evening, and the winds are still supposed to be blowing at a sustained 40-45 miles per hour with gusts of 50-55 miles per hour until Tuesday night. The National Weather Service “Blizzard Warning” remains in effect for all of Amarillo until 3:00 tomorrow morning. And we are stuck. I mean stuck big time. We’re not going anywhere today and maybe not even tomorrow.

It’s so cool!

We knew something was happening. They had issued the Blizzard Warning late Saturday afternoon. But when we walked out of Ruby T’s after church at 1:00 yesterday, the skies were clear, the sun was shining, winds were calm, and it was 65-degrees. Carrie-Anne and Valerie went to the store to grab a few things for small group and came home reporting long lines, huge crowds, empty shelves, and near chaos of apocalyptic proportions. It was like Russia near the end of the Cold War. The front hit about an hour later and it snowed a little bit between 6:00 and 7:00. But when we left the Bentleys’ house at about 8:00 it was all gone. No snow.

Until 10:00. That’s when it really started pouring. And it hasn’t let up since.

We had just settled in to watch the news and Carrie-Anne spotted it first. I wasn’t really looking for it, I wasn’t expecting it. But she saw it on the little crawl at the bottom of the TV screen. “Did that say Amarillo ISD?” I rewound the beginning of the local news a couple of clicks on the back button (Thank you, DVR!) and oh, my word, there it was! Amarillo ISD classes canceled along with almost every other school district in the tri-state area.

Those of you reading this post from outside the panhandle don’t fully appreciate the magnitude of this development. I really didn’t, either, until I had exchanged a few texts with Kim, a local principal here and a great friend of ours from Central. Yes, we’re in the middle of only our second winter up here, and, yes, we’ve only experienced a couple of bad snows. But school has not been canceled one time for weather. Not for a seven-inch snow last year and not for a three or four inch snow two weeks ago. According to Kim, this is only the second time in the past forty years (!!!) that Amarillo ISD has cancelled classes for snow the night before the actual event. Whoa.

After Doppler Dave and Prowlin’ Allan and all the other local weather men assured us that, yeah, this one’s going to be for real, I made the decision to head back up to the church building and get all my stuff for Wednesday night’s class and next Sunday’s class and sermon. Just in case. I had about a half mile visibility to and from the church building. And I was the only one on I-40. I didn’t see any other vehicles the whole way there and back. By the time I got home at 11:00, it was on. For real.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We stayed up another hour or so watching the snow pour down. We went to sleep with the consistent howl of the north winds as a background track and woke up this morning to snow like I’ve never seen in my life. Three and four foot drifts and snow blowing so hard I couldn’t see our back fence from the back door. The snow plows weren’t even running because of zero visibility. This is a real-deal blizzard! All the highways are completely closed: I-40 in and out of Amarillo is shut down; I-27 between Amarillo and Lubbock is closed both ways; 287 is also closed both ways. There’s no getting in or out. Some of the drifting in the middle of our alley and down Roxton is 24-inches deep. I couldn’t get anywhere in this if I wanted to.

And… I kind of want to.

Carley and I were the only ones to brave the outdoors this morning. The other three women in the house are enjoying the blizzard wrapped up in blankets on the couches watching “Fried Green Tomatoes.” Wimps. So my youngest daughter and I bundled up and explored the property, plowing through almost waist high drifts, marveling at the cool snow sculptures shaped by the wind around our eaves and fences, and taking a lot of measurements and pictures.

We’re going to do a little more of that later today, maybe after lunch. There’s a big pot of chicken and dumplings on the stove and, once we’re sufficiently warmed back up, Carley and I will get back outside.

All my appointments and meetings have been canceled for today and tomorrow and we really are stuck here at the house. I can’t imagine that anything will happen until Wednesday or Thursday. It really is a mess out there. My sister, Rhonda, told me this morning that I’d better watch it or I’ll start feeling like Jack Nicholson in “The Shining.” So, you might pay attention to my blog. If I write, “All work and no play makes Allan a dull boy” over and over again, call somebody.

Peace,

Allan

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