The Kingdom, The Kids, & The Cowboys

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You ARE the Light!

November 8, 2007 / / 1 Comment

“You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.”   ~Matthew 5:14-16

Public Agenda, a national research group, published the results of a study three years ago entitled “Rudeness in America.” The survey queried respondants on the increasingly common breaches of etiquette we encounter in society such as cell phones in restaurants, selfish driving, and public cursing. The report claims that 79% of us believe lack of respect and courtesy is a serious problem. 88% of us encounter people who are rude or disrespectful at least 3-4 times per week. 50% say they’ve walked out of a store in the past month because of poor customer service.

But what do we do about it?

The survey shows that 42% of us believe walking away from the person or circumstance is the proper way to handle rudeness or lack of respect. 36% replied that the proper response is to flood the situation with excessive politeness.

These kinds of things, while they do drive us crazy, may seem trivial in light of the “bigger issues” facing us and our communities. But isn’t this exactly what our Savior meant when he charged his disciples to be salt and light? As trite as it may sound, our actions do speak much louder than our words.

Jesus is preaching in Matthew that the Kingdom of Heaven is near. It’s breaking into earth. It’s here. It’s changing people. It’s changing lives. It’s impacting the world in profound ways. And you, my disciples, are living proof of it. You’re not just bringing the light of the good news into the dark corners of the world. You ARE the light! It’s like what Paul told the church in Thessalonica: forget the message, you ARE the message!

We must LIVE the truth of the gospel so people see that it’s real, that it’s not just so much talk. The Kingdom produces changed lives in us. The world sees by our actions and good works that it’s true. And they, in turn, praise our Father. Being salt and light means being seen being different. And it happens in the ordinariness of life. We’re to live in a transformed way in our everyday activities.

Are you rude or disrespectful? Do you go along with the crowd in ripping the football player on the opposing team? How do you treat your customers? Your students? Your waiter? Your brothers and sisters in Christ?

I’ve been criticized for this, but I won’t apologize. I will not apologize for holding my brothers and sisters in Christ to a higher standard. I’ll never apologize for expecting more out of Christians than I do those in the world. We should never tolerate Christians being rude or disrespectful to anyone, much less to fellow believers. I hear people sometimes excuse selfish and hurtful behavior in the church by saying, “Well, that’s just the way he is.”

No, it’s not! He’s been baptized! He’s a Christian! The Scriptures tell me he’s a brand new creature. The Holy Spirit lives in him. Getting loud in someone’s face in inexcuseable.

Donald McCullough wrote a book in 1998 called Say Please, Say Thank You: The Respect We Owe One Another.

“I’m more interested in the little things, such as remembering to say ‘thank you’ and to call your mom on Mother’s Day. These things may not seem very important when compared with the major problems facing our culture. Yet they may be the best place to begin; they may be the only place to begin. If a person can’t remember to say ‘thank you’ to her housekeeper, it’s won’t matter much if she writes a major philosophical treatise on kindness; if a person is rude to his family, the angels in heaven won’t give a holy rip if he preaches soaring sermons on the nature of love.”

If we are disciples of Jesus, we are the light of the world. The light to the world. Our lives are changed, we’re different, and it’s obvious. As obvious as lighting a lamp in a dark room. If we’re courteous, respectful, considerate, and others-oriented, it’ll be clear to those around us that Christ does make a difference. It’s not just talk.

Peace,

Allan

The Word of God in the Bible

November 7, 2007 / / 0 Comments

“All that is required is a firm resolve that the Bible should be allowed to speak for itself.”    ~Karl Barth,

The Bible is not a book of man’s thoughts about God and the actions of God, but rather God’s intimate thoughts and actions about and regarding man. It is the Word of God revealing God to his world. It isn’t merely a compilation of truth or a set of statements, but a complex act in which God has spoken, God is speaking, and God will speak. Through his Word, God encounters man by the incarnation of his Son, by the confirmation of that incarnation by the prophets and the apostles in the Scriptures, and by the continuing testimony of that act by the Christian community. That is God’s Word.

“The Bible tells us not how we should talk with God, but what he says to us; not how we find the way to him, but how he has sought and found the way to us; not the right relation in which we must place ourselves in him, but the covenant which he has made with all who are Abraham’s spiritual children and which he has sealed once for all in Jesus Christ. It is this which is within the Bible. The Word of God is within the Bible.”

And that Word is living and powerful. It impacts every person who hears it and it changes every person who believes it. It transforms people. It is a field of divine activity, an instrument of holy communication. It shapes us and molds us into the image of the Son. If only we’ll let it.

Peace,

Allan

Eat This Book

November 6, 2007 / / 1 Comment

“If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read it? A book must be like an ice-axe to break the frozen sea within us.”   ~George Steiner, 1970

Three of God’s greatest prophets — Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and John — were given the Word of God and told to eat it. Eat this scroll. Eugene Peterson writes about this spiritual way of ingesting Scripture in Eat This Book. His point, and the point that’s been made by God’s people and the Christian community for centuries, is that we don’t just learn or study or use the Scriptures; we take it into our lives in such a way that it gets metabolized into acts of love and cups of cold water and missions and encouragement and worship and justice and service in the name of our Father. We live and breathe and eat and sleep the Word of God. It’s the Word of God that transforms us into the image of the Christ. But it doesn’t transform us if we’re merely reading it.

We have to eat it.

Reading Scripture is not just an objective act of looking at the words and discerning their meaning. We can’t read the Bible the same way we read a novel or a cook book or a biography or a car manual. It’s different.

Scripture is a revelation. It’s our God revealing himself and his ways to us. He’s not telling us something as much as he’s showing himself to us. Revelation. The Holy Bible as authored by the creator of heaven and earth.

Peterson writes that, however broad our inspiration theology, “the Christian church has always held that God is somehow or other responsible for this book in a revelatory way, in contrast to a merely informational way. The authority of the Bible is immediately derived from the authorial presence of God. In other words, this is not an impersonal authority, an assemblage of facts or truths. This is not the bookish authority that we associate with legislation codified in a law library, or the factual authority of a textbook on mathematics. This is revelation, personally revealed—letting us in on something, telling us person to person what it means to live our lives as men and women created in the image of God.”

Eat this book.

I’m preaching this Sunday about the Word of God and its power to transform lives. I may be writing about that topic here for the rest of the week.

Peace,

Allan

Thwarting Satan's Schemes

November 5, 2007 / / 6 Comments

Regarding a member of the church in Corinth that had obviously sinned against Paul and the local congregation the apostle wrote this in 2 Corinthians 2:7-11:

“…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.”

Paul’s purpose with this wayward brother who had sinned and then come back to the church was not to reestablish his reputation or the reputation of the church. It was purely redemptive. Love this hurting brother. Forgive him. Comfort him. Accept him. Because if you don’t, Satan wins.

If the Church is the visible evidence of God’s salvation work through Christ — God’s work of forgiving and accepting — then Satan’s schemes would be devised to destroy that evidence. Our mutual acceptance of one another and our forgiving one another is our participation with God in Christ of that same salvation work. Accepting and forgiving each other is how we demonstrate what Jesus has done for us. The whole point of the gospel is forgiveness and acceptance. And if Satan can keep us from doing that, he would consider himself successful. If we can’t practice forgiveness and acceptance with each other, how could we possibly be expected to practice it with others? Satan knows that. Our refusal to forgive and accept compromises the gospel. Satan knows that. We proclaim the gospel by the way we act toward each other. Satan knows that. He’s trying to outwit us. But we are not unaware of his schemes.

Forgiving each other and accepting one another thwarts the devils schemes against God’s Church. Let’s practice some of that strategic forgiving and accepting this week.

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John Weber, the long time team chaplain of the Dallas Cowboys, died Thursday evening of a heart attack at the age of 59. You can read a couple of the stories about his passing along with player comments about John here and here.

I had the very good pleasure of knowing John from our trips on the Cowboys charter while I was at KRLD. He and I sat next to each other on several of those trips and shared our faith and our love for ministry. It was on two specific trips, both in 2003, one to Philly and one to Detroit, that I talked to him about my desires to get out of radio and into Christian ministry full-time. He counseled me to stay in sports radio. He told me that there weren’t very many Christians in the industry, which I knew all too well (it was one of the reasons I felt I needed to get out), and that I was serving God by the way I was living my life in the world. He told me that over and over.

I eventually wound up rejecting that advice. But John was just so sincere and so optimistic and compassionate about me as a Christian and as a person that I’ve always cherished the conversations we had together. I was just talking about John to my Wednesday night class here at Legacy last week. John had introduced me to Russell Maryland at an Athletes in Action golf tournament that our radio station was co-hosting in 2004. And I was using the example of Russell, this massive former Pro-Bowler and Outland Trophy winner and Super Bowl champion, as an illustration to convey the idea of meekness in the Beautitudes. Power under control. The way Russell acted so gently with the small, fragile, handicapped children he met at that tournament. I was talking about John in my Bible class. And within 24 hours he was gone.

I remember a particular lunch at Chili’s off of LBJ and Preston Road in the spring of ’05. We were talking about discipleship. And I remember leaning over my cheesesteak sandwich and telling John, “Jesus never said ‘accept me.’ He said ‘follow me.'” We both decided right then that true discipleship to Jesus was what was missing in our churches.

John and I emailed each other only a couple of times after I left radio to go to school at Austin Grad. He was very gracious and encouraging and full of praise and affirmation. After I’d been here at Legacy a couple of weeks, I told him where I was and what I was doing. And we both said we needed to get together for lunch and get caught up.

Never did.

John was a great Christian man who impacted lots and lots of lives. He was beyond reproach in the way he lived and interacted with all those around him. The Cowboys have suffered two losses this season. Last Thursday’s loss of John Weber is the one that counts. It’s huge.

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I’d like to change my season prediction on the Cowboys to 15-1 and the Super Bowl.

Thank you,

Allan

Update on The Whitster

November 3, 2007 / / 4 Comments

WhitIt’s not fluid behind her eyes pushing on her brain and optic nerves causing the swelling and intense headaches. It’s calcium deposits.

Following the ultrasound on her eyes late yesterday in Dallas, doctors tell us that it’s fairly unusual, which fits the profile of our oldest daughter perfectly. It seems that since she was born she’s been defying the odds. Almost everytime a doctor says, “There’s a chance this awful thing could happen, but only about a one or two-percent chance…” it happens with Whitney. Bless her heart. We keep threatening to have her go buy a bunch of lottery tickets for us. She’s always beating the odds.

The calcium deposits were probably just there when she was born, or shortly thereafter. They say it’s not hereditary. And it’s not something that’s just recently developed. It’s just that the small percentage of people who have this (it’s called “Optic Disc Drusen”…sounds made up to me) usually don’t begin to notice the effects until they hit adolescence. So here we are.

In addition to causing the headaches, the calcium deposits are taking away her peripheral vision. She’s gradually, but steadily, losing it. And there’s no cure. Just treatment. They’re going to do another field test on December 7 to measure her peripheral vision again to see how slowly or quickly this thing’s progressing. And, depending on how that goes, they’re going to attempt to control the impact with drops to manage the swelling and the pressure on her optic nerves.

Right now, that’s about all we know. There’s a whole list of other things this probably leads to years from now. But right Whitneynow we’re just taking this a step at a time.

Dear friends, please do us the honor of lifting our oldest child up to our Father in prayer. Pray for healing. Ask our God to deliver Whitney from the effects of this condition. May his great love and power be demonstrated in our daughter. And may he also use this time in our lives to shape us and mold us in ways that will impact his Kingdom.

Peace,

Allan

The For-Profit Prophet

November 2, 2007 / / 0 Comments

Naaman, the great Aramean warrior, accepts the free gift of salvation. He submits to God. He vows to worship and serve only God. He is healed. He is cleansed of his leprosy. He is whole. And it came as a free gift from the God of Israel!

Naaman’s theology, though, is still a little mixed up. He takes a bunch of Samarian dirt home with him because he believes Yahweh can only be worshiped and served on his own regional soil. He still plans to attend the civic/religious ceremonies at the pagan temple of Hadad-Rimmon in Damascus, which is certainly not what Elisha is used to and certainly not what’s prescribed in Scripture. But instead of beating him over the head with it, instead of stealing his joy by telling him he’s not clean, he’s not saved, until he conforms perfectly to the way we worship and the way we believe; he’s not whole, he’s not right, unless he sees things the way I see them and does things the way we do them; instead of correcting or rebuking this new child of God, Elisha simply says, “Go in peace.”

Elisha leaves Naaman completely to his new faith, or better yet, completely in the hands of his God who sought him and found him and saved him.

Gehazi is the one who ruins it. Elisha’s servant, the for-profit prophet, destroys the message. He distorts the gospel and insults God when he runs after Naaman and asks for the gifts and payment that Elisha refused. Gehazi’s attitude is revealed by his words. “This Aramean!” he says. “This outsider, this foreigner! Elisha let him off the hook. Elisha made it way too easy on him. This man is an enemy! He owes us!”

Shame on Gehazi, who was stricken with Naaman’s leprosy the minute he got back to Elisha’s house.

I think the church family here at Legacy is about to really start reaching out to our community. I see signs of it everywhere. And I’m beside myself with anticipation. I hope Small Groups plays a big part. I hope our new buildings here will be a major draw. And the people we’re going to bring into the Kingdom by the grace of God will be outsiders, foreigners, on several different levels. They may very well be enemies — enemies of our comfort zone, enemies of our decency and order, enemies of our property values, enemies of our traditions.

Shame on us if we tell them they have to act just like us or that they have to think and talk and believe just like us. Shame on us if we force them to dress like us, pray like us, or worship like us. Shame on us if we in any way obligate anybody to anything or anyone other than our Heavenly Father, his Resurrected Son, and his Holy Spirit.

Our God didn’t reach out to Naaman because he was worried about his leprosy. He was concerned about Naaman’s salvation and an eternal relationship with Naaman. May our focus always be on God’s vision and God’s plans for his Kingdom, not our own. And may he work through us to save the outsiders and foreigners in our community.

Peace,

 Allan

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