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Joyful Imitation

November 24, 2008 / / 0 Comments

“Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus.” ~Philippians 2:5

ArthurFonzerelliSo I’m talking about The Fonz during yesterday’s sermon. You remember The Fonz from TV’s “Happy Days” 30 years ago? The leather jacket, the hair, the magic touch, the super cool? “Aaayyyy!”

When I was nine-years-old I wanted to be The Fonz. He was the very definition of cool. And I poured myself into being exactly like him. I did everything a little boy without a motorcycle could to imitate Fonzie. I wore my blue jean jacket with the collar up, even when it was 95-degrees outside. I blew on my fist before hitting the button on the Coke machine at the city rec center. I carried a comb in my back pocket. I called my friend Mike Cunningham’s dad “Mr. C.” When I went to the bathroom I said I was stepping into my office. I called my sister “Shortcake.” I told everybody to “Sit on it!” And I was constantly sticking up both thumbs and declaring a profound, “Aaayyyy!”

It didn’t make anybody’s joy complete.

My parents that year took away the TV, my bicycle, my allowance, and my football trying to break me of those habits.

I told the story yesterday to illustrate what Paul does in Philippians 2. He tells us to be like Jesus, to have his attitude, to have his outlook. And that sounds good. It sounds great. Who could argue with that concept? But what does it look like? What does Jesus say? What does Jesus do? How does Jesus act?

“Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death — even death on a cross!”

Christ Jesus gives up everything. And dies for others.

How do we consider others better than ourselves? How do we look to the interests of others? Paul says, look at Jesus.

Jesus sacrificed for us, he served us, by giving up completely everything that was his. He poured out his diety. He let go of his equality with God. He sacrificed his eternal power. He gave up his heavenly glory. Our model, the one we follow, willingly traded heaven for earth, glory for shame, a royal scepter for a slave’s water basin, life for death — even death on a cross!

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus. You should give up everything and die for others.

When I got home yesterday afternoon there was a message on my phone from Charlie P. Charlie is raising his six-year-old grandson. And he had called to tell me that after lunch, he had found his grandson in the garage wearing a blue jean jacket with the collar up. He had wet his hair and combed it straight back. And he was posing with his thumbs up. “Aaayyy!”

My prayer is that everybody went home yesterday and began to imitate Jesus with the same fervor and energy this little boy used to imitate me imitating The Fonz.

What are you sacrificing to be a Christian? What are you giving up to be a member of your church family? What is it costing you to imitate our Lord? Are you dying to yourself every day to benefit the person who sits behind you at the assembly? What are you giving up to be a Christian?

Aaaaayyyyy,

 Allan

The Mice In The Piano

November 21, 2008 / / 0 Comments

The Mice In The PianoA few of you have asked for copies of “The Mice in the Piano,” a short little story I read Wednesday night as an illustration to a lesson I was teaching on 1 Samuel 26. God had put Saul and Abner and 3,000 well-trained soldiers into a deep sleep which allowed David and Abishai to sneak undetected through the camp all the way to the King’s sleeping bag. It appears that David had no idea God had done that. The information comes to the reader from the author almost as an aside. It’s just between us. God was personally and intimately involved in what David was doing, whether David knew about it or not. “The Mice in the Piano” illustrates that. It also serves as a perfect follow-up to yesterday’s post about the new efforts of athiests in the United States to portray themselves as normal and loving and kind and happy and everywhere.

Think about David as you read this short story. But think, too, about Doug Krueger, the athiest quoted in yesterday’s post who says, “We’re just regular people who have perfectly satisfactory lives without believing in God.”

Imagine a family of mice who live all their lives inside a large piano, just as you and I live our lives in our fragment of the universe. To the mice in their piano-world came the music of the instrument, filling all the dark spaces with sound and harmony. The mice were much impressed by it. They drew comfort and wonder from the thought that there was a Someone who made the music—invisible to them, yet close to them. They loved to think of the Great Player whom they could not see.

Then one day a daring mouse climbed up part of the inside of the piano and returned to the colony very thoughtful. He had discovered how the music was made. Wires were the secret—tightly stretched wires of graduated lengths that trembled and vibrated. Now the mice must revise all their old beliefs. None but the most conservative could believe any longer in the Unseen Player.

Years later, another explorer mouse came back with still further explanations. Hammers were the secret; numbers of hammers leaping and dancing on the wires to produce the beautiful sounds. This was certainly a more complicated theory than the one their forefathers knew. But it proved they lived in a purely mechanical and mathematical world. The Unseen Player came to be regarded as a myth.

And the pianist continued to play.

Don't Call It Proselytizing

November 20, 2008 / / 3 Comments

In Monday’s Wall Street Journal, reporter Stephanie Simon writes that atheists are reaching out in new and far-reaching ways to declare to America: We’re here, and we’re just like you.

Keep in mind, I don’t read the Wall Street Journal. I can’t. I won’t. But a good friend forwarded the article to me and I was immediately struck by the subtle and brilliant ways Satan is stepping up his efforts to discredit the faith.

Membership is growing in local and national associations of athiests and the Secular Coalition of America has finally raised enough money now to hire its first full-time congressional lobbyist, Lori Lipman Brown. She says their aim is to raise comfort levels in this country about atheism by making the point that non-believers are “just as ethical and moral as anyone else.” 

Doug Krueger, a philosophy professor in northwest Arkansas, says, “Step one is for people to know we’re not crazy, we’re just regular people who have perfectly satisfactory lives without believing in God.”

Simon writes:

Rather than renew old battles, such as the symbolic fight to remove “In God We Trust” from currency, members are mobilizing to repair what they view as breaches of the wall between church and state—such as federal funding for faith-based charities…They believe many others sympathize with their views but are too timid to commit. So the American Humanist Association is spending $42,000 to plaster buses in Washington, D.C., with ads asking: “Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness’ sake.” FreeThoughtAction and its local affiliates have put up billboards all over the country asking: “Don’t believe in God? You are not alone.” Eight billboards are going up this month in Denver. At the same time, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, based in Madison, Wisconsin, has hit at least nine states in the past year with billboards that look like they’re made of stained glass but say “Beware of Dogma,” “Imagine No Religion,” and—coming soon—“Reason’s Greetings.”

According to this article, local groups of athiests are also making a point of getting out in public to show they’re part of every community. The Pennsylvania Nonbelievers rehabbed a women’s shelter this fall. Kansas City FreeThinkers hold monthly walks in a dog park and advertise weekly coffee-house meetings online. Secularists in Sacramento stage a family friendly FreeThought Day each fall, complete with balloons and magicians.

They say they’re not trying to evangelize. Their goal is to make the public more comfortable with the concept of athiesm.

This strategy, embraced and waged by this country’s news and entertainment media, public education systems, and government, has certainly succeeded in making us immune to almost every other anti-Christian message and practice. We don’t even notice anymore the sex and violence and greed that surrounds us. We invite it into our homes. We buy bigger screens and faster systems and louder speakers to bring it in quicker and brighter. We go see it. We push our kids into it. We incorporate its messages into our business practices. It sneaks into our churches and we don’t make a move.

Satan isn’t trying to obliterate Christians. He is only attempting to blur the lines. And, brother, they’re blurred.

Christ Is Preached

November 19, 2008 / / 4 Comments

“The important thing is that…Christ is preached.” ~Philippians 1:18

Christ Is Preached!While Paul is in jail there are some other preachers there in Rome piling on. They’re preaching Christ out of envy and rivalry. Their motivations are all wrong. They’re involved in power plays and intentionally trying to harm Paul and discredit him in the eyes of the church and the community. It’s selfish. It’s insincere. And Paul says, Surprise!

“It doesn’t matter. The important thing is that Christ is preached. And because of this, I rejoice.”

At the end of the day, after all their efforts to oppose Paul, they’ve only succeeded in doing the one thing that matters most to Paul: they’re preaching Christ! Paul’s not concerned about identifying this group. In fact, it’s impossible to tell who these other preachers are here, because to Paul, that’s not important. These other preachers are mean and selfish and they’re using Paul’s chains to promote themselves. But they’re preaching Christ and him crucified for the forgiveness of sins. So Paul’s attitude is just like what he told the Corinthians: “Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated?”

Just as in Corinth Paul felt it was more important for the church to act like the church than for its members to receive the personal satisfaction of winning lawsuits, he takes his own advice here in Rome. He’s facing people who’ve wronged him. But he shrugs off their animosity and is able to rejoice because they’re preaching Christ.

We have a hard time with that, I think. But we’re in good company.

The apostles run to Jesus in Luke 9 and say, “We saw a man driving out demons in your name and we tried to stop him because he is not one of us.” And Jesus says don’t do that! Just because he’s not with you doesn’t mean he’s not with me.

If we’re going to experience a revival, if we’re going to experience a spiritual awakening, we’re going to have to understand that God’s salvation work is bigger than me and what I’m doing. His work to redeem the world is bigger than us and what we’re doing. He’s using me. He’s using us. No question. Praise God. But he’s using all kinds of people in all kinds of places to reconcile creation back to himself. And when we have that joyful perspective, we don’t argue or bicker or fight with Christians who don’t do things the way we do things. We don’t talk bad about them. We don’t look down on them in any way.

But, Allan, they don’t do this! Or have you seen the way they do that?

Paul says, so what? “What does it matter? The important thing is that Christ is preached.” And we praise God that here’s another group of disciples proclaiming the life, death, and resurrection of our common Lord.

Peace,

Allan

Faith In Community

November 18, 2008 / / 0 Comments

All Four Horsemen, all four wives, and our 11 kids all in the same house at the same time Saturday for the first time in at least five years. Kevin’s GPS got them there a little late. (Didn’t realize you could get to North Richland Hills from Rowlett without getting on a highway.) But it was a wonderful day of just catching up with one another, sharing our plans and our dreams, lots of laughing, and lots of mutual encouragement and support. We cooked together, we ate together, we talked about our kids, and we cried a little.

But the absolute best part was the last 30-minutes of the evening we spent together in prayer. All the adults and all the kids, holding hands and putting our arms around each other, lifting one another up to our Lord. Pledging before our God to love each other and support each other. Giving him praise and thanksgiving for blessing our lives with these powerful relationships. Realizing we would not be where we are today if not for his grace and these friends.

And then the conversations we had with our three girls later that night and again on Sunday. They all know what good friends we are with these three other families. They know how much we love each other. But we’ve elevated that conversation now. Now we’re talking about why we love these families, why we take care of each other, why we cry when we pray together, how we depend on each other, how we’re getting to heaven together and cannot get there by ourselves. What a memorable lesson for our kids, to see their parents so involved in the lives of other people because of what God has done for us through Christ. How important for them to see, up close, that their parents rely on other Christians for strength and support. How impactful to see that our God works through his people to sustain his people. We don’t do this alone.

We live in an increasingly individualistic society that fights against God’s plan for his people to live their faith in community. God places us—calls us—to live together in a faith community, his Church, so we can help each other and support each other and grow and get better together. To get to heaven together. But we’re so busy plugging speakers and phones in our ears and gluing our eyes to the millions of screens at work and at home and even now in our cars that we don’t even see the people around us.

There can be three people sitting right next to each other on an airplane, all three sharing armrests, but watching three different entertainment programs on three different screens. They can sit like that together for three hours and never even look each other in the eye. We’re arranged in cubicles in our workplaces. This is my space. We fence off our yards. Speaking of MySpace, we have more meaningful conversations—if you can call those conversations—over a screen with people we’ve never met than with our own family. We watch screens while we’re in line at Wal-Mart and then check ourselves out with a debit card while being greeted and thanked and wished a nice day by a computerized voice from a tiny speaker. Even now in our cars we’ve got our children watching movies instead of interacting with each other. I can’t get anybody to make eye contact with me during an invitation following a sermon because they’re all glued to the song on the screen. Even if we’re singing “Jesus Loves Me” they don’t take their eyes off the screens.

I had lunch yesterday with one of our wonderful Legacy teenagers. And we talked about relationships and community. He brought it up, not me. He’s worried about it. He notices that we come in, go through the paces, grunt our “hello” and “how’s it going?” and then disappear until the following Sunday. We’re so individualistic.

Robert N. Bellah, a pretty well-known American sociologist describes our values today as “utilitarian individualism.” He says:

We are mostly driven by the need for personal success and vivid personal feelings. Marriage becomes an instrument for personal development, work becomes a vehicle for personal advancement, and the church a means for personal fulfillment. We simply live as if nobody else were here.

We need each other. Whether we admit it or not, whether we’ve ever thought about it or not, whether we ever realize it or not, we need each other. We’ll never get to heaven alone. We’ll never grow in our faith or be transformed into the image of Christ alone. We’ll never confess our sins, we’ll never make sacrifices, we’ll never serve or practice patience alone. We live our faith with each other in community.

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KK&C Top 20 Logo 

November 18, 2008

The college football season keeps getting weirder. The Big 12 has five teams in the top 12 while the SEC only has three. And now the SEC is filing civil charges against Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban. Strange.

This week’s “KK&C Top 20″ shows very little change from last week’s poll. Again, only 12 of our 20 pollsters checked in. And they split their #1 votes: four for Texas Tech, four for Alabama, and four for Florida. The Red Raiders are number one overall for the second straight week, finishing a mere nine votes ahead of the Tide. The only shifting in the top seven is Florida leap-frogging Texas from #4 to #3. Apparently the Gators’ 56-6 win over South Carolina was more impressive than the Horns’ 35-7 win at Kansas.

Charlie J makes his return as a pollster after a three-week absence to mourn over his Aggies. Fellow Aggie Jerry K hates casting his top vote for “Texas-I-Hate-Myself-Tech.” Die-hard Texas fan Mark H is openly rooting for the Sooners this week. And Steve F says the national championship game will decide once and for all the debate over superiority between the SEC and the Big 12. Steve also gives us this helpful nugget in explaining the intricacies of the BCS system: “If Tech gets by OU, and OU gets beat by Oklahoma State, and Missouri beats Texas (unless the Longhorns get beat by the Aggies—again) in the Big 12 Championship Game, and Alabama loses to either Auburn or Florida, and USC wins out, the Trojans will play for the National Championship.”

Thanks, Steve. Now I don’t want to watch any of it.

UNC and Florida State fell out of the poll. Cincy and Oregon State are both back in. You can see the entire poll, all the panelists’ comments, and complete pollster profiles by clicking here or by clicking on the green “KK&C Top 20” tab at the top of this page. Enjoy.

Joyful Perspective

November 14, 2008 / / 0 Comments

JoyfulPerspectiveAsk me how I’m doing and I may talk to you about my family, my job, or my own health. I may talk to you about my schedule, what I’ve done or what I’m planning to do. Ask the apostle Paul how he’s doing and he talks to you about Christ.

He only speaks about himself and his own affairs as they relate to his Lord and to the advance of God’s Kingdom.

In his letter to the Christians in Philippi, Paul is in prison but that “has really served to advance the Gospel.” Rival preachers are attacking him but “What does that matter? Christ is preached!” He doesn’t know whether he’s going to live or die, but he sees great benefit in both. To Paul, dying means going to be with his Lord. Living means serving his Lord to advance his cause.

The breathtakingly comprehensive nature of Paul’s devotion to Christ and his good news of salvation is the most theologically significant part of the first part of his letter to the Philippians. At the time he wrote, every major feature of his life—his physical comfort, the opinions others have about him, his position with respect to the secular world, the question of whether he lives or dies—are molded by his commitment to the spread of the good news. His perspective is shaped by his loyalty and devotion to his King.

What would our lives look like? What would our speech sound like? What would happen if we cultivated this joyful perspective? If the decisions we made and the ways we looked at life as it relates to our families, jobs, recreation, where we live, and the things we buy were considered from this radical Christ-centered perspective, what would we be as a people? What would we become?

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FourHorsemenBack in the spring of 2001, Jason and Dan and Kevin and I gathered around my dining room table in Mesquite and vowed to serve our Lord and his Kingdom with everything we had. Together. We would do it together. We would pray for and with each other. We would encourage each other. We would challenge each other and we would hold each other accountable. We promised that day we would take care of each others’ families. We would support one anothers’ wives and kids. We would do this together.

For some reason we started calling ourselves the Four Horsemen. Kinda weird, but it stuck.

Seven years ago we had very little in common besides our intense desire to be loyal to our Savior. Today, there’s nothing that could ever separate us. We are the very best of friends. We all talk to each other weekly. We have a long lunch together in Dallas once a month. We spend the ACU Lectureships together every year. We have an annual campout every February. We support one another. We encourage one another. We pray together. We plan together. We counsel one another. We depend fully on one another. We selflessly serve one another.

But we dropped the ball with our wives and kids. Totally.

We’ve never incorporated our families into this most amazing Christian circle. Yes, we’re all friends. We all went to church together in Mesquite. But my life has changed significantly because of these three men. And they all three say the same thing. But our wives and children haven’t been in on it.

Since 2001, Carrie-Anne and Tiersa have become preachers’ wives. Tiersa’s way out in East Texas where “going to town” means a trip to Gilmer. Carrie-Anne’s gone back to school. Shelly’s raising two boys and twin girls and finding herself in charge of more and more at Dallas Christian. Debbie’s battling breast cancer and caring for aging parents. Each of our four families—each of our marriages—has gone through quite a bit of stress over the past six or seven years. We men have have found strength and encouragement in each other. But we’ve never included our wives.

Big mistake. I like to think it was short-sighted, not selfish.

That all changes tomorrow. We’re all spending the day together tomorrow at Stanglin Manor. Jason & Tiersa and their four kids, Kevin & Shelly and their four kids, Dan & Debbie and their three teenagers, and us. All 22 of us. Lots of visiting. Lots of sharing. Lots of open discussion. Lots of food. Maybe some college football. And lots and lots of prayer. A ton of prayer. We’ll renew our vows to each other to support and encourage one another. All of us. Together. We’ll promise to strengthen each other, to challenge each other, to comfort each other, and hold each other accountable. And we’ll get together like this, all of us, at least four times a year. This will become a quarterly deal for us.

By God’s grace we’ve been given another chance to make this right. And I’m really looking forward with great anticipation to what our Father is going to do with us and for us and through us to his glory.

Have a great weekend,

Allan

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