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Category: Colossians (Page 11 of 11)

Plunder Taken, Captives Rescued

August 28, 2008 / / 3 Comments

“Can plunder be taken from warriors, or captives rescued from the fierce?
This is what the Lord says:
‘Yes, captives will be taken from the warriors,
and plunder retrieved from the fierce;
I will contend with those who contend with you,
and your children I will save.'” ~Isaiah 49:24-25

“No one can enter a strong man’s house and carry off his possessions unless he first ties up the strong man. Then he can rob his house.” ~Mark 3:27

PlunderTakenCaptivesRescuedAs Jesus teaches and loves and heals and drives out demons in Mark 3, he’s accused by religious leaders and his own family of being possessed by Satan. But Jesus makes it clear: what’s happening is not the result of some civil war within Satan’s ranks. This is a direct frontal assault from the outside. The strong man is Satan. His house, his domain, is this world which he’s trying desperately to secure and hold on to. His possessions are his victims, these people he’s taken captive. He’s trapped these victims. He’s imprisoned them with sin and fear and death and disease and demons. He’s holding them with divorce and crime and addiction and unemployment and cancer. He’s got ’em. But then along comes the stronger one, Jesus. He comes from God, empowered by the Holy Spirit, to cross the barriers of time and space, to smash through the walls of the devil’s house, to tie Satan up and carry off his precious possessions. To free the captives. To rescue the prisoners.

God himself overcomes the mighty one. He destroys forever the destroyer.

Satan uses our fears of the awful things we see all around us. Hebrews 2 says Satan holds the power of death and holds us in slavery, keeps us paralyzed, holds us in prison, by our fear of it. And then God himself breaks through, as the divine Son of Man. Jesus comes to earth, right into the middle of Satan’s house. He walks our streets. He teaches our people. He hugs our kids. He eats with us. He touches us. And he brings with him the eternal Kingdom of God! He wages war—not against the petty tyrants and selfish leaders and evil empires. He comes here intent on destroying THE Kingdom of Satan which has enslaved all of humanity. Christ Jesus, by his birth and life and teachings and ministry and death and burial and resurrection and exaltation, takes Satan’s plunder and rescues Satan’s captives and he ties Satan up and makes him watch.

We are that plunder taken. We are the captives rescued. This is us. We were the ones imprisoned by Satan. We were the ones held in slavery by our sins and paralyzed by our fears. We were the ones stuck, doomed, distressed, condemned. We were the hostages. We were the sentenced prisoners. We were headed to an eternity of death and despair. Damned by our own selfishness and sin. We were hopeless. We were already given up for gone.

But now we are rescued. We’re freed. We’re liberated.

We’re not just rescued from ourselves and our sins, we’re snatched from the life-choking clutches of Satan himself! We’re freed from the Kingdom of Darkness to walk eternally in newness of life.

“For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the Kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” ~Colossians 1:13-14.

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Several of you have been asking about Debbie Miller, the wife of one of the Four Horsemen, one of my dearest friends. Her surgery was yesterday. And it couldn’t have been more successful. It couldn’t have gone any better. And our Father couldn’t have answered our prayers in any more of an amazing way. All the cancer is totally gone! 100% gone! There wasn’t any in her muscle tissue. There’s not any in her lymph nodes. It was all contained in the tumors and the tumors are gone! Praise God!

I talked to Dan last night. He told me it was the greatest and happiest day he’s had since….and then he said it’s the greatest and happiest day of his entire life. Our God is great. He answers prayer. And he delivers his people. And we rejoice today with Dan and Debbie.

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We’re leaving Friday for Searcy, Arkansas to spend about 24 hours with my brother, Keith, and his wonderful family. And then it’s off to Benton, Arkansas to hook up with Jimmy Mitchell and the Benton Church of Christ. Jimmy was our Youth Minister in Marble Falls when we were there from ’05-’07. I’ll be preaching for them in Benton on Sunday. Please keep our family in your prayers. And ask God to bless our time with great family and great friends.

Peace,

Allan

The Devil's Schemes

November 13, 2007 / / 2 Comments

“See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.”   ~Colossians 2:8

 Screwtape’s initial letter to Wormwood sets up a theme that runs throughout C. S. Lewis’ masterpiece: the devil’s genius in using the material to distract us from the eternal. Screwtape speaks of Hell’s “weapons,” the daily newspaper, radio, television, and, I would add, the internet. He tells his nephew that “man has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to have a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together in his head.” And it’s the devil’s intention to keep man focused on that “stream.” That stream of unchecked information that floods us and consumes us.

Information. Stories. Scores. Quotes. Good news. Bad news. Entertainment news. Business. Politics. The bizarre.

The “real world.” We’re so easily distracted by all of it. Bible study is good and prayer is good and church is good. But that doesn’t pay the bills. That doesn’t fly too far once you get out in the “real world.”

Why is Satan so good at making us feel that only the material things are “real?”

Screwtape explains, “Thanks to processes which we set at work in them centuries ago, they find it all but impossible to believe in the unfamiliar while the familiar is before their eyes.”

Information is not neutral. None of it is. All of it that we see and hear and take into our lives has an impact. It all comes from a certain world view. And most of those views are incompatible with what we profess to believe as children of God.

Satan’s plan is not to teach. It’s to distract and confuse. We are not unaware of the devil’s schemes.

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OK. OK! The Cowboys are good. They’re a good football team. I’ve not denied that since about week five. I still don’t necessarily like it. But I certainly don’t deny it. Your emails and your comments to me about your team are much appreciated, especially the dry sarcastic ones. Rub it in my face. It’s fine. Very nice. I actually appreciate it.

ThreeCowgirlsAround here, Lance Parrish, our junior high youth minister, always wears his Tony Romo jersey on Mondays after a Cowboys game. That’s only mildly obnoxious. He’s young. It’s cute. But now the office staff has taken it to a new level of irritation. Bonny, Suzanne, and Jackie—all normally mature, level-headed adults—showed up at the Monday morning staff meeting yesterday in their Cowboys shirts. Rubbing it in. Laughing. Mocking. Enjoying themselves fully. And then when I returned from lunch, I was met in my office by an 8×10 framed glossy of the three of them. Mocking me. A continual reminder of my tragically wrong preseason and week-to-week predictions.

Kipi, thank you for being strong.

Everybody else around here, thank you for being so much fun to work with.

Peace,

Allan

The Peace of Christ

August 20, 2007 / / 2 Comments

“Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”           ~Colossians 3:12-17

 Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.

Only our Savior brings true and perfect peace — the wholeness and completeness of a right relationship with God our Father and with each other. God’s ministry through his Son, his plan for all of mankind, is to reconcile creation back to himself. That’s peace. Perfect peace. The peace of Christ. And it’s marked by forgiveness and gentleness and compassion and it’s all tied up in love.

The rub comes when we understand that the peace of Christ isn’t always peaceful. Where a person or a group of people are allowing God’s Holy Spirit to work in them and through them and for them to make them more into the image of Christ and sanctified to God, there’s always going to be friction and conflict. It’s not easy. It’s difficult. The peace of Christ always comes with a sacrifice. With trials and suffering. The peace of Christ comes in the way of Christ. He calls us to be peacemakers, not peacekeepers. And there’s a huge difference.

As for letting that peace of Christ rule in your hearts, the picture there is of an umpire at the athletic games that were so very popular both in Paul’s day in Colosse and in our day in America. The umpire would serve to qualify those who were eligible to compete and disqualify those who weren’t. His “rule” was the rule. And at the end of the game, it was the umpire who rewarded the victor with his crown. The umpire ruled who was in and who was out, who won and who lost.

Paul says let the peace of Christ “rule” in your hearts. Let God’s ministry of reconciliation and perfect peace that’s only found in a right relationship with God and each other through Jesus, let that peace rule the things you say and do, the way you act and react and respond, the plans you make and execute in the Kingdom and in the community.

Let that peace determine what you throw out and what you keep.

Does it bring people closer to each other and to Christ? Keep it. Does it take that peace of Christ to my neighbors? Do it. Does it only serve my selfish interests? Lose it. Is it only useful for making my wallet fatter or my car nicer? Forget it. Does it encourage? Is it kind? Does it relieve the burdens of others? Move on it. Does it tear down relationships? Does it give me pride or reason to boast? Is it unfair? Get rid of it.

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.

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I’m so grateful to Mark Shipp and Ray Vanderlaan for their excellent scholarship in our Hebrew Scriptures and for the ways they’ve inspired me to see the pictures in our Bible. I give them all the credit in the world for the slideshow presentation I made last night at Legacy and the message I delivered of seeing the ways God communicates great truth through pictures. I’m still, in so many ways, just a beginner in this area of Bible study. But it moves me. It speaks to me. It grabs my heart and my soul in brand new ways that I can’t help but want to share. I could have gone for a couple of hours. Some of you are glad I didn’t. But thank you so much to those of you who told me you would have stayed if I had.

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FranTarkentonThere are ten days left until football season — not preseason games or controlled scrimmages or two-a-day practices, real games that mean something and count in the standings, real games with real quarterbacks and running backs and wide receivers even into the fourth quarter. And in the continuing countdown to that first day of games, we honor the greatest football player to ever wear the #10: Fran Tarkenton.

As an All-America quarterback at the University of Georgia, he was drafted by the Minnesota FranAtVikingsVikings and threw four TD passes in his first ever NFL game. He took the Vikings to three Super Bowls — all losses — and was called by Bud Grant “the greatest quarterback to ever play the game.” OK, that’s a bit of a stretch. But he was pretty stinkin’ good. After his 18 year pro career — he spent his last five years with the Giants — Tarkenton was tops in the NFL record books for passing attempts, completions, passing yards, passing TDs, rushing yards as a QB (3,674), and rushing TDs as a QB (32).

The man could scramble.

He also hosted “That’s Incredible” with John Davidson and Cathy Lee Crosby and spent just a season, I think, on Monday Night Football.

Catching up from yesterday, #11 is “America’s Punter,” as Roger Staubach called him, Danny White.

DannyWhiteWhite set seven NCAA passing records while quarterbacking at Arizona State and he spent his first two professional years with the Memphis Southmen of the old World Football League. But it was with the Dallas Cowboys where Danny White made his mark, taking the team to three straight NFC Championship Games in the three years after Staubach’s retirement. As Staubach’s backup for four years he served as the Cowboys punter and was a legitimate threat to run or pass every time. He did both from 1980 – 1988, except for that weird controversy with Gary Hogeboom. And when he was forced out with Jimmy Johnson’s drafting of Troy Aikman, White left with a record of 67-35 as a starter on some pretty bad teams (41-11 at Texas Stadium), a 59.7% completion rate, and 155 TD passes. He still, today, holds eight Cowboys records.DannyInRain

Coach&QBDanny White never got his due. He was the victim of horrible timing throughout his Cowboys career. And if it weren’t for Dwight Clark’s catch, Wilbert Montgomery’s run, and the ’82 strike, White may have a couple of Super Bowl victories and a spot in the Hall of Fame. He is in the Arena Football Hall of Fame. As the head coach of the Arizona Rattlers, White went to five ArenaBowls in 14 years and won two of them. He’s also in the College Football Hall of Fame and was named the Arizona Athlete of the Century by some newspaper in Phoenix in 1999.

Ricky Williams, based solely on the fact that he was the NCAA’s all-time leading rusher when he left Texas, deserves at least a mention — I’m not sure how honorable — because he did wear the #11 during his freshman year. And who could forget the Eagles legendary quarterback, Norm Van Brocklin? But Danny White gets the nod. And tomorrow we’re into single digits.

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By the way, the Cowboys looked pretty good Saturday night for a team that’s going to go 8-8 this year.

(That’s not official. I’m giving my actual game-by-game prediction one week from today.)

Peace,

Allan

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