The Kingdom, The Kids, & The Cowboys

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Swallowed Up In Victory

January 4, 2011 / / 0 Comments

I have stared at this blank computer screen for almost 15 minutes. I have written and deleted and re-written and re-deleted the opening lines half a dozen times. It’s not that I have writer’s block. It’s not that I don’t know what to say. It’s that I want to write about Richard Dutton and Bob Robertson. And I’ve got way too much to say.

I’m overwhelmed.

Our family of God here at Legacy is hurting today. It was a tough weekend. And a glorious one.

It’s going to be a tough next couple of days, a tough week. And it’ll be glorious.

Richard Dutton, a long time Legacy member-deacon-songleader-teacher, passed away Friday. Bob Roberston, a long-time Legacy member-elder-teacher passed away less than 24 hours later. They both died surrounded by their families, wrapped in the loving arms of our God, and forgiven by the blood of our Savior.

I want my words about these two great men of faith to do justice to their lives of sacrificial service to our God and his Kingdom. And I find that my words are neither big enough nor beautiful enough.

I want my words about Richard and Bob to adequately express what they have meant to me and my preaching ministry here at Legacy. I want to tell you about the encouragement, about the cards and emails, about the pats on the back, about the prayers. And I find that I don’t have enough space to even start to describe how these two men have lifted me up.

I want my words about these dear brothers to comfort you if you’re grieving their deaths, to inspire you, to encourage you, to give you great hope. And I find that my words are wholly lacking when stacked next to the actual lives of these two Christian disciples.

Both Richard and Bob gave everything they had to the Lord. They submitted fully to him. Every action, every thought, every word was subject to Christ. They bowed to Jesus hourly. They reflected the glory of our God continuously. Their faith in him was unshakeable. Their trust in him, immoveable. And nothing would keep them from serving and loving and exhorting and praying and teaching and sacrificing in his great name.

It was my honor to know these two men. And I thank God for allowing me the privilege to pray and study and worship with them, to serve with them, to be friends with them.

“When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: ‘Death has been swallowed up in victory!’ …Thanks be to God, he gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!” ~1 Corinthians 15:54-57

I imagine that when Richard and Bob breathed their last breaths in this time and space dimension, our Father nudged the angels in glory and said, “See? Now THAT’S what I’m talking about!”

Thank you, God, for Richard and Bob. Lord, come quickly.

Allan

To My Co-Workers In God’s Pulpits

December 30, 2010 / / 2 Comments

To Jason, Jim, Grady, Jim, Rick, Kyle, Greg, Chris, Erich, Charlie, John Mark, Jordan, David, Scott, Terry, Larry, Buddy, and Patrick:

You are not a salesman, you are a mediator of God’s Holy Spirit. You are not a motivational speaker, you are a faithful proclaimer of God’s Gospel. You are not a therapist, you are a Christian minister. Self-help tips are not the tools of your trade; it’s the inspired Scriptures. You are not a church chaplain, holding the hands of church people as you go about church business; you are a powerful spokesman for God, confronting sin and calling our Lord’s people to repentance. You are not a comedian, you are a comforter to those who dwell in dark places. Your call did not come from a family member or a spouse or a professor or a mentor, it came from the Almighty Creator of Heaven and Earth. Your passions are not motivated by financial gain or popularity or prestige, but by the burning desire in your bones to seek and save the lost. Your goal is not to fill pews and collection trays, it is to forcefully advance the Kingdom of Heaven in the hearts and lives of your hearers and in your community.

You guys are so cool.

You give it up every day. Every day. You live it. You breathe it. You assimilate it into every cell of your being and it radiates through every one of your words and deeds to bless with God’s grace every person you meet. It’s incredible, really, how powerful you are. Very powerful. A critical cog in God’s salvation plan for all mankind, a vital link in his eternal chain to reconcile the world to himself and redeem the heavens and earth. You reside in the company of Isaiah and Ezekiel, Amos and Hosea, John the Baptist and Peter and Paul.

It is our God who works in you. And the cool thing is that you know that without a doubt. It is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purposes.

I love you guys. All of you. You inspire me to be better.

I pray God’s richest blessings for you and your great ministries in 2011.

Peace,

Allan

Glory In The Church

December 29, 2010 / / 3 Comments

“To him be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever. Amen!” ~Ephesians 3:21

We spent all of 2010 here at Legacy camped out in God’s self-description in Exodus 34:5-7. Moses tells God, “I want to see your face. Show me your glory.” And God responds by telling Moses, “I’ll show you my glory. I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you.” And God reveals himself to his servant. He declares his name, his eternal qualities, his divine characteristics to Moses. We learn in Exodus 34 that God is compassionate. Gracious. Patient. Loving. Faithful. Forgiving. Holy.

Scripture tells us we are to reflect that same glory of God. As we are being transformed into the likeness of Christ, we are to increasingly reflect that glory of God, with the same glory that comes from the Father. We are to be compassionate. Gracious. Patient. Loving. Faithful. Forgiving. Holy.

On the last Sunday of 2010, I wanted us to consider what it means, what it looks like, to reflect the glory of God in his Church. What does it mean for God’s Church, this family at Legacy, to embody these eternal qualities of our Father? In preparation for this final Sunday, I asked our congregation about four weeks ago to send me their photos. I wanted them to send me pictures of God’s glory. How do you see the compassion of God? How is his faithfulness communicated to you? Where do you experience God’s great love?

I received 146 pictures from more than 70 of our members. Pictures of sunsets and babies, mountains and baptisms, grandmas and Give Away Day. And we shared the pictures with one another during communion.

 

Koinonia. Communion. Sharing. Partnership. Community.

What better place than at our Lord’s Table to share these testimonies to our God’s great grace and love? As we ate the bread and drank the cup, we rejoiced together in God’s great salvation as manifest in pictures of God using Legacy to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and lift up the fallen. Pictures of the empty tomb followed pictures of our quilting ladies. Pictures of Jesus as the Great Shepherd were mixed in with pictures of our families reading the Bible together. Images of missionaries and sunflowers, vast oceans and VBS chaos, congregations in Vietnam and Ukraine and our own small groups singing at local nursing homes. Pictures of Al & Marie Grant, whose 70-year marriage reflects the uncompromising love God has for his people. A picture of Quincy, who is a constant witness to the glory of our God. A picture of DeAnn’s new back door, installed by her brothers and sisters at Legacy. DeAnn sent the photo to me, explaining that it daily reminds her of “the love that has been shown to me and my girls over the last few months. Not only have they repaired our home, but in doing so have begun to repair our hearts. That is God’s glory! I am blessed!”

                                  

Sunday at Legacy we combined the table imperatives of “recognize the body” and “do this in remembrance of me” in a powerful way. We saw Christ in each other on Sunday. We gave honor to what God is doing for and among his people. We explored what it means to be a “body.” And we recognized our God in Christ as the gracious force behind those faithful blessings.

Our table time should be the most important time of our Sunday gatherings. It should get the most attention. It should serve as the climax of our assemblies.

Sunday at Legacy, it was.

Peace,

Allan

To Us A Child Is Born

December 25, 2010 / / 0 Comments

“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given.” ~Isaiah 9:6

Yeah, yeah, God is with us. I know he lives with us. But only metaphorically, right? God is with us in a spiritual kind of way, a mental or psychological way. There’s no way God can actually live with us on earth. I mean, God is perfectly perfect. Infinite. Transcendent. Holy. Divine. Eternal. Wholly other. The barriers of time and space and divinity are too great. God can’t actually live with us here. After all, we are human. And sinful. Finite. Physical beings with physical limitations and shortcomings. God with us isn’t really real.

Isaiah 9 says “Wrong!”

It says God came to us. It says the Incarnation of our great God is a real, physical, historical fact. God left the glory in heaven to come to us.

Now that would be a very horrible thing if God were a monster. If God were bent on destroying us or desired to torture us, his coming to us would be a terrifying thing.

But our God loves us. He is a loving God. He desires communion with us. He wants to be family with us. He calls us his children and wants us to call him our Father. He loves us so much that he determined a long time ago to do whatever it takes to get us out of the dark and into his eternal Kingdom of Light. Even leaving heaven. Even putting on our flesh and taking on our great burdens of suffering and sin and shame.

To save us.

“The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.” ~Isaiah 9:2

I pray that you have a great Christmas with your family and friends. I pray that you are blessed today with peace and good will. And I pray that you give thanks today for the incomprehensible gift of God’s coming to us in humility, in the form of a helpless newborn baby, to rescue us.

Merry Christmas,

Allan

Hallelujah!

December 21, 2010 / / 1 Comment

There were over a hundred of us on the stage at the end of Sunday’s worship assembly. Young and old. Men and women. Great singers and mediocre singers. The confident and the panicked. Friends and family and complete strangers. It was quite a collection of saints.

And we sang the Hallelujah Chorus.

Charlotte Greeson led us. And we followed as best we could. We only had two 45-minute rehearsals. The practice times were short and hurried and intense. Charlotte was tough, but full of grace. She was strict, but so loving. She was hardest on the tenors. And we deserved it. Good night, we deserved it. After Wednesday’s practice, one of the tenors suggested that Charlotte could rip you apart and make you like it. I was reminded of what Tom Landry famously said to his mid-60s Cowboys: I make you do what you don’t want to do so you will become what you want to become.

Paul Dennis read the prophesy from Isaiah 9. “To us a child is born, to us a son is given.” Steven Johnson followed up with the Christ hymn from Philippians 2. “Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father!” And I wondered if we tenors would all hit that opening F-sharp. At the same time.

I still don’t know if we did or not. But, man, whatever happened during those four minutes was really incredible.

There were smiles and hugs and tears and laughter. A wide range of emotions felt and experienced. God was given glory and honor. And his people were encouraged. One lady near the back of our worship center commented afterward that the whole church was inspired by this use of our God-given talents. A much younger boy reportedly told his mom, “That was pretty good for old people.” One lady who took the backstage ramps with her walker to join us for the song wiped back tears as she exclaimed that, at her age and in her health, she wasn’t sure she would ever have had another chance to sing the Hallelujah Chorus in that way with a large choir and an audience. She was blessed. I was blessed. We were all blessed.

Music is a powerful thing. It moves us. It lifts us. It sustains us. And sometimes it transcends us.

Here’s the link to the YouTube video of Legacy’s Hallelujah Chorus.

Thank you Charlotte Greeson and Mary Hollingsworth for a Sunday worship assembly we’ll never forget. Thank you to the leadership of the Legacy church that allows and even encourages us to find new ways to express our faith and praise. And thank you to all who sang and all who encouraged.

Peace,

Allan

Daniel’s Innocence

December 16, 2010 / / 1 Comment

I’ve missed something in the story of Daniel and the Lions Den. I know about the praying three times a day toward Jerusalem, the King’s edict outlawing that practice, Daniel’s insistence on obeying God rather than man, his execution sentence, and the angel of God that shut the mouths of the killer cats. I know all that. What I’ve missed all these years is Daniel’s over-the-top integrity in every single facet of his life. I’ve missed his uncompromising character that controls every aspect, reigns over every compartment and category of his existence.

Daniel is so good, so loyal, so successful that King Darius is planning to make him second in command. Daniel’s peers become upset and look for ways to discredit their rival.

“The administrators and the satraps tried to find grounds for charges against Daniel in his conduct of government affairs, but they were unable to do so. They could find no corruption in him, because he was trustworthy and neither corrupt nor negligent.” ~Daniel 6:4

They’re looking for a scandal. They’re searching for some dirt. Something. Anything. They’re desperate. They want his job. They’re jealous. They deserve it more than he. They’re afraid. Daniel knows where all the bodies are buried. They’re digging through his trash. They’re talking to all his neighbors. They’re stalking him, trailing him, studying him, trying to discover his one vice, his fatal flaw.

“Finally these men said, ‘We will never find any basis for charges against this man Daniel unless it has something to do with the law of his God.'” ~Daniel 6:5

You ever noticed that before?

Can people say that about me? Would people who know you say that about you?

“We will never find any basis for charges against this man unless it has something to do with the law of his God.”

If someone were looking to find fault with you, how hard would they have to look? Could they check the “history” on your computer browser, the menu on your DVR, the text messages on your phone and still say there’s no fault here? What if they interviewed your spouse, had lunch with your co-workers, talked to your kids? Would the report be good? What if they had access to your emails? What if they sat in the back seat as you drove home from work? Let’s say they followed you around for a month and analyzed every word that came out of your mouth, recorded your every action, wrote down your every move. Would the enemies looking so hard to find fault with you finally slam their pencils down in frustration and hurl their recording devices through the window and shout in frustration, “There’s nothing wrong with this person! Unless we can make loving God and loving others illegal, we’ve got nothing on this guy!”

I’m afraid on some days the men trailing me would be done before lunch. It wouldn’t take long.

I pray that, by God’s grace and the transforming power of his Spirit, I’m getting better.

You, too?

Peace,

Allan

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