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Four Horsemen Ride Again!

February 25, 2010 / / 0 Comments

“In a good friendship each member often feels humility towards the rest. He sees that they are splendid and counts himself lucky to be among them.” ~C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves

(Regular readers of this blog know about the Four Horsemen. If you’re brand new, if you need a refresher, or if you just want to read something really cool about how God has used and is using four men with one another and for the Kingdom click here.)

Four HorsemenMy three greatest friends and I go camping together every year on the last weekend in February. It seems to be the one weekend that all four of us can consistently get away. Late February is far enough after the holidays and the start of the year and far enough before the madness of the spring to be just perfect. The odd date is also good for guaranteeing that we’re going to be the only ones at the campgrounds. Some years it’s sunny and in the 60s. Some years we nearly freeze to death. Yesterday Dan sent us all a picture of the National Weather Center’s weekend forecast for East Texas. Looks like it’s going to be perfect!

 Tyler Weather

This weekend we will pray together. And laugh. And argue. And eat. Somebody will almost get hurt really badly. We’ll talk about our families, our churches, our struggles, our triumphs. At some point the raccoons will get brave enough to go for an open bag of chips on the table. We’ll ask for advice and listen patiently to advice that’s unsolicited. Dan will encourage. Kevin will challenge. Jason will connect it all back to our God. And I’ll be thinking to myself the entire time, “Why can’t I be more like these guys?”

Our annual Four Horsemen Advance is regularly one of the best weekends of my life. We are all four so different. And I think we each genuinely appreciate the uniqueness in one another. We see very clearly the goodness in each other. And we recognize easily that it comes from beyond us. I have no doubt that our God brought us together for his divine purposes. And I thank him for that.

Jason and Dan and Kevin are splendid, indeed. And I am lucky to be among them.

Have a great weekend,

Allan

Hearers of the Word

February 24, 2010 / / 3 Comments

PreacherI realize every time I get up in the pulpit on Sunday mornings I’m preaching between 900-1,000 different sermons. Everybody within earshot hears something a little differently. The people in our churches arrive in the assembly and bring to our sermon different experiences, different worldviews, different backgrounds. They come from different family dynamics, different geographical locations, and different economic circumstances. These different contexts shape the sermon; what they hear; how they respond.

I’m also aware that what’s happening in the room also impacts the way I preach. I feel that I’m much more bold when I’m preaching in Arkansas or California to people I’ve never met. It’s not that I don’t want to be bold at Legacy. It’s just that it’s much more difficult to say hard things to people I’ve grown to love. I love these people and I think I speak differently to them. Obviously, it’s much, much easier to preach following an uplifting service of praise in which the entire assembly has together raised the roof in joyful song than following a half-hearted robotic effort to trudge through songs nobody likes or nobody knows. The songs are intended to edify the congregation, to uplift the people of God. And they do. They uplift the preacher, too.

The great theologian Reinhold Niebuhr knew that his Sunday morning sermons were better than his Sunday evening sermons. He realized that cicumstances do affect the quality of the message. And a lot of that, according to Niebuhr in Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic, has to do with how many people are in the room.

“A full church gives me a sense of fighting with a victorious host in the battles of the Lord. A half empty church immediately symbolizes the fact that Christianity is very much a minority movement in a pagan world and that it can be victorious only by snatching victory out of defeat.”

Yes, the preacher is impacted by the mood of the crowd, the lighting in the room, the events of the past week, and by the anticipated, yet strangely unexpected, moving of the Spirit. All those things, and many more, affect the sermon.

My faith is in the divine promise that God’s Word never returns to him empty. He puts his truth directly into the hearts of our hearers. Despite our shortcomings and inadequacies, despite our human tendencies to be swayed by temporal distractions, our Father uses preaching to reveal himself to the world.

That’s still pretty cool.

Peace,

Allan

As God Has Done Unto You

February 23, 2010 / / 1 Comment

Golden RuleJesus says the Golden Rule — Do unto others as you would have them do unto you — actually sums up the Law and the Prophets. But I think there’s a much bigger idea at work throughout all of Scripture. Our foundational motivation, our guiding principle as God’s holy people is “Do unto others as God has done unto you.”

“Forgive as the Lord forgave you.” ~ Colossians 3:13

“Accept one another as Christ accepted you.” ~Romans 15:7

“Love one another as I have loved you.” ~John 15:12

The key is in my understanding that God has treated me in ways I absolutely do not deserve. That’s the most basic part of this. It all falls apart without that genuine realization. It doesn’t work.

How much has God forgiven you? Everything. Everything? Yeah, everything. Is there anything he hasn’t forgiven you of? No. Nothing? Nothing. He’s really forgiven you of everything? Yes, everything. You deserve it? No.

“Forgive as the Lord forgave you.”

Has Christ accepted you? Oh, yeah. Without a doubt, I belong to him. Really? You belong to Jesus? Yes, sir, he’s accepted me. And you were perfect when he accepted you? Um, no. You weren’t perfect? No. Not even close. But he still accepted you? Yeah. Well, how bad were you? Pretty bad. But you never intentionally sinned, right? Oh, no, there were plenty of intentional sins. You had hurt Jesus with your words? Oh, yeah, plenty of times. You had disappointed him with your actions? All the time. Lousy attitude? Selfish pride? Stubbornness? Yes, all those things. Sin? Yes, I’m a sinner. I was a sinner when I met Jesus. I hadn’t been following him or listening to him or obeying him. I was a sinner. But he still accepted you? Yes. Did you deserve it? No.

“Accept one another as Christ accepted you.”

Does Jesus love you? Yes. How much? A bunch. A ton. How do you know? How do you know he loves you so much? He died for me. What’s that? He died for me. He died for you? Yeah, he died for me. How did he die? Look, he left everything he had in heaven by the Father’s side; he left his glory and his power and his authority; he left his prestige and position and status; he left his home; he gave up everything to come to earth and suffer horribly and die in agony and pain like a criminal on a cross! He did that for you? Yeah. He must love you a lot. Yes, he does. You deserve that kind of love? No. Not even close.

“Love one another as I have loved you.”

See, if we think we deserve God’s forgiveness, if we believe that we have lived in such a way or have worked in such a way as to actually merit Christ’s acceptance, if we suppose we’ve earned the right to God’s love, we’ll only show that same kind of love and acceptance and forgiveness to people we think deserve it. I’ll judge people as worthy or not of my acceptance. I’ll forgive people only as I deem them forgiveable. I’ll love only those I want to love.

Do unto others as God has done unto you. It’s basic.

Why do we miss it?

Peace,

Allan

Yet I Will Rejoice

February 22, 2010 / / 0 Comments

“Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?
Thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!”

Jenny BizThese are the words that popped up on my screen at just after 4:00 this afternoon. These were the triumphal words chosen by the family and friends of Jenny Bizaillion to communicate to their thousands of brothers and sisters in Christ who have been as united by her illness and struggle for life as they are by the blood of the Lamb that Jenny died today at 3:38pm.

I don’t understand it. I don’t get it at all. I don’t pretend to know why our God allows such a thing as this to happen. Why do horrible things happen to wonderful people? I don’t know. Why do great things happen to lousy people? I don’t know that either. Neither did Habakkuk.

“Yet I will rejoice in the Lord,

I will be joyful in God my Savior.”

As long as I live, I’ll never ever forget the faith and the strength shown by Rick and Beverly and Josh and Jonathan and their families during this very difficult ordeal. I pray that I would show half the faith in a similar circumstance. I also pray that nobody ever has to endure a circumstance like this. I’ll always remember David’s courage and endurance and steadfastness in caring for his sweet wife and their precious daughter. Tirelessly. Loyally. Faithfully. I was sitting quietly with Rick and Beverly Saturday afternoon when David emerged from Jenny’s room to go watch Malaya play in a church league ball game. He had been working with Jenny’s legs and knees, doing everything the doctors and therapists said needed to be done following the Wednesday amputations.

Hug your kids today. Kiss your spouse tonight. Call your parents. Express your love. Show your appreciation. And then get down on your knees and face and thank God for the wonderful people he’s put in your life.

Like the Rosses. And David. And Jenny Biz.

While you’re down there, pray for these families. Pray for our merciful Father to bless them each with his grace and comfort and peace.

“On this mountain the Lord Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples, a banquet of aged wine — the best of meats and the finest of wines.
On this mountain he will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations;
he will swallow up death forever.
The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces;
he will remove the disgrace of his people from all the earth.
The Lord has spoken.
In that day they will say, “Surely this is our God; we trusted in him and he saved us.
This is the Lord, we trusted in him;
let us rejoice and be glad in his salvation.'”

Peace,

Allan

Expectation #7

February 19, 2010 / / 0 Comments

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” ~Matthew 22:37-40

Love God, Love NeighborLove is the beginning and the end of our righteous relationship with God — and everything in the middle. Love pushes us. It motivates us. It defines us. Love is what Scripture says binds everything we do together in perfect unity. We must place unconditional, God-ordained love in the supreme position of our hearts and minds and in God’s Church.

God’s love for us depends completely upon his character, not ours. Everyone stands before our God equally. No human being can ever do anything to earn God’s love. That fact that we are sinners is woefully inescapable. The fact that God still loves us anyway is amazingly wonderful. And we respond to that matchless grace and undeniable love by loving him back and by loving all people the way he does.

And that doesn’t mean surface relationships. It doesn’t mean love at arm’s length. It doesn’t mean love all people, but don’t get involved in their lives. It means imitating God’s gutsy love, his all-in love, a love so full and so complete that it compelled Christ to suffer and die to show us.

May we be a people who receive one another as Christ receives us, who forgive others as we’ve been forgiven by God, and who love God and others as fearlessly and unconditionally as he loves us.

Peace,

Allan

The "Demonization" of the "Other Side"

February 18, 2010 / / 4 Comments

Vilifying the Other SideI was flipping through the TV channels a couple of weeks ago and accidentally landed on a news station. I stayed. Shame on me. This particular network was airing a 30-minute program about one U.S. political party that was claiming the other political party’s ideas and agendas were like Hitler’s. The anchors and reporters were refuting those claims by attempting to prove how, in fact, the first party’s thoughts and plans were actually more like those of Hitler.

The “demonization” of the other side is a disease that’s taking over the entire world.

And it’s killing us.

It happens in this country’s politics. It happens in our social settings. And it happens in our religious life. If we don’t see exactly eye-to-eye with somebody on something — anything — we have a real tendency to vilify that person from head to toe. That person is evil. That person is bad. That group is wrong. Through and through. There’s nothing good or redeemable about that person or that group of people because we have these one or two disagreements.

All conversation stops. All outreach stops. Love stops.

And it’s killing us.

I don’t have to actually talk to you because I know we disagree about this one thing. I’ve already labeled you as bad. You have this one certain viewpoint so I already know exactly where you and exactly where you’re going. Why would I spend any time or effort to get to know you?

Talk radio and talk TV are increasingly about this attitude now. Every other channel or station, every other show host and program, yelling and arguing, demonizing and vilifying the other side. It’s not just accepted as standard behavior or the expected response, it’s being promoted as virtuous!

You’re not involved in any of that, are you?

May we be a people who receive one another as Christ receives us, who forgive others as we’ve been forgiven by God, and who love God and others as fearlessly and unconditionally as he loves us.

Peace,

Allan

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