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The End is Near

December 20, 2012 / / 0 Comments

People and communities of people have been predicting the end of the world almost since the day the world began. Tomorrow’s Mayan Doomsday is merely the latest in a long, long line of interesting predictions about the demise of the planet and the return of our Lord.

500  – According to his calculations regarding the Bible’s mythical “6,000 Year Rule,” Hippolytus predicted the world would end this year. It didn’t. But that didn’t stop others from figuring their own dates with numbers from Scripture.

989  – Halley’s Comet always brings impending doom. Always.

1874  – The Jehovah’s Witnesses begin a long and lucrative career of predicting Armageddon, starting with this year. By the way, it didn’t happen.

1878 – It didn’t happen this year, either.

1881 – No, really. The Jehovah’s Witnesses were on a roll.

1910 – Again? Well, if the Jehovah’s Witnesses say so.

1914 – People are beginning to wonder about Jehovah’s Witnesses.

1918 – We like the four-year cycle, but could the Jehovah’s Witnesses maybe split it up into a summer apocalypse and a winter apocalypse?

1925 – About this time, people may be forgiven for hoping the world ends just to shut the Jehovah’s Witnesses up about it.

1975 – They gave us a 50-year break (which included World War II, which was full of its own apocalyptic signs), but the Jehovah’s Witnesses think now they’re on to something.

1984 – George Orwell buffs and Jehovah’s Witnesses alike considered this to be a significant year for the end of the world. Unless Van Halen is the anti-Christ (and that’s not completely unproven), they were wrong.

1994 – Nostradamus tries posthumously to beat the Jehovah’s Witnesses record for most failed predictions. Luckily for him, he’s much more vague and obscure, so he’s never really wrong…

1997 – No, really, the Christ is now here according to Share International. He’s already come.

2000 – The change of the millennium makes a great date for the end of time. Turns out to be merely the beginning of survivor-type trade shows and reality programming.

2008 – The Lord’s Witnesses (not Jehovah’s Witnesses!) are pretty sure it’s over this year. Or in 2009 or 2010. It’s one of these years, they’re 100% certain.

2012 – This is a very popular choice. It will remain a fairly popular choice until probably Friday night or Saturday morning.

2014 – This one comes from a Pope, so it must be true. In 1514, Leo IX gave us 500 more years. You’d think that would be long enough to get our act together. Apparently not.

2017 – The “Sword of God Brotherhood” say they will be the only ones to survive this year and they will be tasked with repopulating the planet. Hopefully, there’s a “Sword of God Sisterhood” too.

2240 – The Talmud says the world as we know it will only last about 6,000 years, starting with the creation of Adam. A computer-assisted numerical analysis says this is the year.

2280 – The Qur’an gives us 40 more years than the Talmud. Same kind of analysis of the text. We’ll see.

3797 – This one comes from Nostradamus, but so have quite a few other dates. Just in case this was the year he really meant, clear your schedule.

The Church says, “Lord, come quickly!” And Jesus replies with, “I am coming soon!” And he says this to encourage us, to comfort us, and to empower us. He tells “I am coming soon” to motivate us and keep us going. This “coming soon” assures us that our time of trial is not indefinite. According to God’s plan, our time of suffering and tribulation has a limit. We don’t know when it will end; but we are promised by Jesus it will end.

And that gives us hope. By hope — I want to be very clear on this — I mean knowing that what our God has started, he will finish. Our faithful God is bringing this thing to completion. Our hope is not about wishing this is true, it’s knowing how it turns out. It’s like the cartoons and we’re the Roadrunner: we’ve got an arrangement with the writer! It’s like seeing the Indiana Jones movie for the 40th time: I know without a doubt he’s going to escape!

I don’t know when it’s going to happen. Nobody does. Jesus says it’s happening soon. And in faith, the church says, “Lord, come quickly.”

Peace,

Allan

Win Them By Our Life

December 17, 2012 / / 0 Comments

“Let us astound them by our way of life. For this is the main battle, the unanswerable argument, the argument from actions. For though we give ten thousand precepts of philosophy in words, if we do not exhibit a better life than theirs, the gain is nothing. For it is not what is said that draws their attention, but their inquiry is always what we do. Let us win them therefore by our life.”

~John Chrysostom, Homily on 1 Corinthians, 4th century AD

Why do we still mostly understand Church not as an every day, every hour Kingdom of Priests to the world, but in terms of what we do together inside our church buildings on Sunday mornings? We judge the faithfulness or worth of a congregation in terms of its structures. What’s the organization of the church? What’s the name of the church? How do they worship? The structures are almost always our starting point. So when we attempt to reform or revive or rejuvenate a church, what we normally do is go to the Bible to try to get the structures right.

I don’t know if getting the structures right is what God has in mind for his treasured possession. Is that God’s mission in the world?

I mean, what happens when all the structures are perfectly right but there’s no serious engagement with one another or with the world? If doing worship correctly or organizing the leadership chain properly takes the place of living justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with God, are we honoring our Father who calls us his priests to the world?

When the church becomes more a set of structures and less a way of life in the world, our focus can become obsessively inward. We think of church life as an end in itself rather than something to be lived and given for the sake of others. We like our church, we’re comfortable in our church, we don’t want anybody to mess up our church or change it in any way. We can be very easily distracted by our own church life.

“Now a church came up to Jesus and asked, ‘Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?’
‘Why do you ask me about what is good?’ Jesus replied. ‘There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, obey the commandments.”
‘Which ones?’ the man inquired.
Jesus replied, ‘Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, honor your father and mother, and love your neighbor as yourself.’
‘All these I have kept,’ the church said. ‘What do I still lack?’
Jesus answered, ‘If you want to be complete, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor. Then come, follow me.’
When the church heard this, it went away sad, because it had great wealth.”

Is it possible for a church to do all the right things and still lack the one thing it needs? Is it possible for the church to be so consumed with its own life that it fails to care for the world around it? Is it possible for a church to retreat so deeply into its own righteousness that it can’t hear the cries of a lost world?

The call to follow our King requires a giving up of our own lives. Jesus did not die for his Church so we could preserve our lives and cater to our own needs. Never! God forbid! In the name and manner of Jesus we are to spend our lives for the sake of the world. The Church, just exactly like its Lord, is being sent into the world not to be served, but to serve and to give its life for the sake of others.

Peace,

Allan

Creation and Salvation in Connecticut

December 14, 2012 / / 7 Comments

I was preparing to write today’s post about Josh Hamilton and the Rangers. It wasn’t going to be a very long post. My main concerns with the team are not with losing Hamilton. Or Michael Young. Or Mike Napoli. My main question is: Why don’t big-name, free-agents want to play in Arlington? I’ll write more about it later. Maybe.

While I was heading to the Dallas Morning News website a few moments ago to get some stats I wanted for the post, I learned about the elementary school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. And everything has changed for me now. I can’t write about baseball. Baseball is insignificant. It’s meaningless. ~~~~~~~~~~~~

We Americans live in a decidely violent culture in an increasingly violent country. We’re eaten up with violence. We watch it in the movie theaters and on our TVs. We sing about it along with the radio. We joke about it with our friends.We cheer war. Our kids (and adults) use violence in their video games. And it shows up more and more and more in our local and national newscasts. A movie theater in Colorado. A shopping mall in Oregon. A football stadium in Kansas City. A downtown bar in Amarillo. An elementary school in Connecticut. It’ll be something else tomorrow or the next day. Just another bloody shooting on another screen?

God help us.

We’re surrounded by violence at this church. Talk to Patty who was baptized into Christ last week. Or Amanda or Melinda who put on Jesus as Lord last month. Talk to any of the people at Prayer Breakfast or Loaves and Fishes around here. There is a severe shortage of respect for human life. We are confronted every day — usually through news outlets but, sometimes, face to face — with senseless violence by and against children of our God who are created in his holy image. And it sickens me.

This is the kind of thing that makes us cry out to our God, “How much longer, Lord?”

It’s also the kind of thing that turns a lot of Christians against God’s creation. A lot of Jesus followers believe that our salvation is a divine rescue from the evils of the world. Salvation from God, a lot of Christians believe, is salvation from the flesh, from being human, from living in a world of skin and bone, free will and choice, people and things. There are a lot of disciples who don’t seem to care much about the world. “It’s all going to be burned up anyway!” they say. “Heaven holds all to me,” they sing. So much so, I’m afraid, that they separate salvation from creation. To many Christians, the world and whatever is of the world or in the world is evil and worthless and sad. We don’t care about the world. We’re being delivered from the world.

But the Incarnation of God drastically counters that viewpoint.

The birth of our Lord Jesus, instead of separating creation and salvation, actually connects creation and salvation. It joins the realities of heaven with the ordinary and sometimes terrible affairs of life on earth. By becoming one of us, God reaffirms the original goodness and purpose of his great creation. Our human condition — even with all our flaws and weaknesses, shortcomings and sins, violence and greed — is not so evil and worthless and sad that God himself is above becoming flesh! In fact, it is Jesus taking on our everyday human condition that is the means for our salvation. God reclaims us and our world as his own by becoming one of us.

You know, not everything that happens is God’s will. In the Gospels, God intervenes to rescue Jesus from Herod. But at the same time, the little boys of an entire village are still slaughtered. That part was not God’s will. It wasn’t providential. And we struggle with the concept of God’s sovereignty and man’s free will all the time. God as all-knowing and all-powerful together with man’s ability to do whatever he pleases is troublesome. It’s complex. God’s people have been debating it since the beginning of time and, I suppose, we always will.

But looking at the birth stories of Christ helps clear it up a little for me. You have this perfectly seamless union of the human and the divine. It’s a story of collaboration. Both elements working together so perfectly — and so mysteriously — we’ll never figure it out. But the Incarnation gives us a sense of the big picture. God is indeed sovereign. He does have plans for his world. And he has the authority and the power to intervene and control things any time he pleases. But there’s no reason to create us and seek a relationship with us if our lives are already programmed  and scripted.

What we see in the birth of Jesus is not God controlling or manipuating the situation. We see God joining us in a partnership. Some people, like Mary and Joseph, cooperate beautifully. Others, like Herod, don’t. God allows and he honors both sets of choices. And he works through both sets of circumstances. He is God with us, not God instead of us.

Yes, all of creation is groaning. We read about this latest school shooting in Connecticut and we realize we live in a sinful place in a fallen world. Today, especially, again, we are groaning as in the pains of childbirth to become what we were truly created to be.  And it seems impossible for this horrible stuff to be redeemed. How can it be salvaged? Where is the good? Just come quickly, Lord, and take us all away from here.

No.

He created our “here.” And he’s working to fix it.

Our merciful Father is at work today in Newtown, Connecticut. He’s joining creation and salvation today in mighty acts of grace and love, service and sacrifice. He’s redeeming that entire situation and the hundreds of people there who are mourning intense and personal loss.

We’ll become more like our Christ when our hearts ache at the loss of human life like our God’s heart does. We hurt when his creation hurts, we groan with all of creation today. And we look for his gracious acts of forgiveness and reconciliation. We look for signs of the salvation he is most assuredly bringing.

Peace,

Allan

It’s a Wonderful Church!

December 12, 2012 / / 5 Comments

I’m a sucker for Frank Capra’s 1946 movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life!” Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed, Bert and Ernie — what’s not to love? My family and I find ourselves quoting from the movie often. “You call this a happy family? Why’d we have to have all these kids?” “Another red letter day for the Baileys!” “Here’s your hat, what’s your hurry?” When one of the girls feels sick, I put my palm all the way across her face to check for fever the way Stewart does with Zu Zu. When the issue of money comes up in family discussions, one of us will inevitably borrow George Bailey’s response when his guardian angel, Clarence, says they don’t need money where he comes from: “Yeah, well it sure comes in handy down here, bub!”

The question in that movie is: What if George Bailey had never lived?

Stewart’s character is about to go to prison because of something his incompetent uncle messed up. And he’s standing there on the bridge, in the snow, in the dark, contemplating suicide. Most of you know the story. He winds up face to face with Clarence (“you look like the kind of angel I’d get!”) and eventually admits that things would not be better if he were dead. Instead, he declares, “I suppose everybody would be better off if I’d never lived!” And the angel grants his wish. George Bailey gets to see Bedford Falls as if he’d never been born. And it’s awful.

There’s death and violence, depression and drunkenness, disputes and greed and lust — all kinds of evil has taken over the whole town. George Bailey had never been born to make the beautiful difference in that town, to have the fabulous impact on the people that had resulted in so much harmony and peace and good will.

Allow me to put a little twist on this excellent story. Instead of asking “What if George Bailey had never lived,” what if we asked “What if George Bailey had lived but had just made different choices?”

What if George had hesitated and thought of the great risk to himself as his brother slipped through the ice that morning? What if George had decided Mr. Gower’s problems were none of his business? What if George had taken off for Tahiti to chase his own lifelong dreams of fortune and glory instead of sacrificing those dreams to stay in that “crummy little town” to help others realize their own dreams? The answer is, the results would have been the same as if George had never been born.

Now, if God’s Church makes decisions and acts in ways that are only concerned with us, it’s as if the church were never born. It’s as if the Church doesn’t even exist. The results for the world are the same.

God has established his Church to be a Kingdom of priests, a holy priesthood, to live like Christ in a way that completely contrasts with the way the world lives. We are to show the world an alternative way to think and to act, an entirely different way to live. In the movie, the world deems war heroes and business tycoons as wonderful successes. But in God’s eyes, living life for the sake of others is what’s truly wonderful. Staying behind and giving up one’s own pleasures for the sake of others — a way of life ridiculed by the world — is what’s really wonderful. And it’s the same way for the Church. The world judges churches on attendance and money and buildings and membership demographics. God judges a church based on his heavenly directive to live holy and sacrificially important lives in a world that desperately needs his salvation.

You see, it really is a wonderful church. When we remember that it’s about serving, about being last, about sacrifice; when we remember that it’s not about us, it’s about everybody else; when we remember the way of our Lord and then live like him more every day, it really is a wonderful church.

Peace,

Allan

Through Water to Salvation

December 11, 2012 / / 1 Comment

“…this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you.” ~1 Peter 3:21

In recalling to his readers how Noah and his family were “saved through water,” the apostle Peter points us to Christian baptism that, in the same way, saves us. Peter’s clear, succint statement is astounding. For a lot of people, it’s scandalous. Peter tells us that baptism has a salvation function.

Paul draws the same conclusion as he looks back on the one foundational and identifying event for Israel: the exodus and the crossing of the Red Sea (1 Corinthians 10:1-4). He sees what happened in Exodus 14 as a baptism “into Moses” and compares it to our baptisms “into Christ” (Romans 6:3, Galatians 3:27). Paul wants us to understand our baptisms as a comparable moment of deliverance and redemption.

Baptism, just like the flood and the Red Sea crossing, is a saving event. Just as God saved Noah through cleansing the old world with water, so God saves us from our old lives through baptism. Just as God delivered Israel by using water to destroy their enemies, Pharaoh and his army, he delivers us by using water to eradicate our enemies of sin and death. Noah and Israel both pass through the waters into a new world, a new creation. Christians pass through the waters of baptism into a new world, eternal life with the Father through the death and resurrection of the Son.

It’s a divine gift. It’s a sacrament of God’s grace. It’s a salvation experience. In baptism our God redeems us, gives us a new identity, and frees us from slavery to sin and death. And it shapes who we are and how think and act as a people of God.

“We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.” ~Romans 6:4

~~~~~~~~~~

What a marvelous joy to welcome into our home overnight Friday our great friends David and Olivia Nelson and their sons, Caleb and Seth. The Nelsons timed their furlough in the States from their missionary lives in Ukraine to coincide with the birth of Seth last month in Lubbock. David and Olivia figured one boy born in Kharkov in Hospital 17 was enough. So we were very blessed that they took a long, winding route from Lubbock to Fort Worth, through Amarillo, to spend almost 24 hours with us last weekend.

After answering several questions Friday night from servers and other customers at Blue Sky about David’s accent, we stayed up way too late passing Seth around, drinking egg nog and Dr Pepper (no kafir, David)  and playing our favorite, Phase 10. Caleb entertained us the next morning by splashing through his pancake breakfast. And then we spent a good long while with our Father in prayer, thanking him for the awesome privilege of serving him in his Kingdom together on opposite ends of his world.

The Nelsons are in Fort Worth now for another month, reconnecting with the church family at Legacy, stocking up on picante sauce and Jello-O and other stuff they can’t get in Ukraine, and being reminded of how much they are truly love and appreciated and admired by everyone who knows them.

I praise our God for the ways he works through and with David and Olivia. I thank him for our rich friendship and partnership in the Gospel. And I acknowledge gratefully that I’m a much better Christian, a more faithful follower of our King, because I know them.

Peace,

Allan

Dead on the Shore

December 10, 2012 / / 1 Comment

“That day the Lord saved Israel from the hands of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians lying dead on the shore.” ~Exodus 14:30

God’s people were trapped. This rag tag band of slaves was cornered. The sea on one side and the desert mountains on the other and the mighty power of the Egyptian army thundering over the sand ridges right toward them. They watched in horror as their violent doom descended on them. It was over. They were as good as dead and they all knew it.

But then our God showed his power and sovereignty over nature and history by splitting the sea right down the middle so every last one of these rescued slaves could escape the enemy on dry ground. God caused the waters to spill back over the Egyptians — all their chariots, their horsemen, their archers. Scripture says “not one of them survived.”

“And Israel saw the Egyptians lying dead on the shore.”

Their enemies were powerless now to ever do them any harm. Ever. The escape was complete. The rescue was final. Their salvation was secure. They saw it. They saw their enemies dead now and strewn lifelessly about on the shore like washed-up seaweed. They saw it. And they feared the Lord and put their trust in him.

I believe God caused his people to see their dead enemies for a reason. He wanted them to see it. He wanted there to be no doubt that they were truly saved. They were totally secure. All threats had been erased. All evil against them had been eradicated. They really were free and in the faithful and loving arms of their all-powerful God. This visible and indisputable evidence gave God’s people the courage they needed to move from Egypt to Israel. God was taking them through the waters of salvation to a brand new place and they all needed to know that it was OK to press on in faith. He was taking them from one country to another. He was changing their story. They are no longer slaves; they are now the children of God. “The water flowed back,” Scripture says, cutting off thier connections to Egypt and their old way of life, their old story. They would only press ahead now, into the brand new story of freedom in YHWH, of salvation in the Lord.

As Moses and Miriam are leading the people in songs of praise to God for his mighty and final deliverance from their enemies and from their old horrible lives of slavery, it would have been impossible to imagine that within just a few weeks those same people would be begging to go back to Egypt. When things got difficult, their first instinct was to go back to Egypt. Their old lives were miserable; but they wanted to go back. Their old stories were terrible; but they longed to jump back. It was awful; but I suppose it was comfortable. Maybe. I’m not sure what made them want to return to Egypt back then. I’m not sure what makes us want to keep going back today.

Some of us are living the wrong story. We’re all on the other side of the Exodus. We’ve all crossed over from slavery to sin and death to a brand new life as God’s eternal people in complete subjection to him. In Christ, we’ve moved out of one country and into another. But some of us are determined to pass through those waters back to Egypt. Some of us are working for things and chasing dreams that the world says are important. And we’re not satisfied. We’re restless. Some of us are depressed or despondant because we don’t have the status or the security that our world says is so valuable. We’re unhappy. Some of us are living the story the world says is our story instead of the brand new story we’ve all been given by our God.

The enemies are dead on the shore! Do you see them? Our Father wants us to see those dead, lifeless, completely conquered enemies! In Christ, he has totally destroyed sin and death and Satan and all the things that might separate us from him. The pain, the past, the failure, the anxiety — all of it is helpless against our God. He’s already drowned it out in the salvation waters of our baptisms. It’s over! Whatever had so messed up our stories is gone now. In the promised Messiah, God has given us an eternal victory even more decisive than what the Israelites saw on the shore.

That’s our story. Our story is about the power of our God who acts in mercy and grace through his Son to deliver us from our enemies and bring us into a brand new life as his brand new people. Our identity is completely changed. Our values are totally different. Our story is radically transformed. Because the Kingdom we serve is not of this world. And neither is the King we worship!

May we be a people of the correct story — the story of salvation from God, not the story of fate and chance that comes from the world. And may that salvation story shape us by God’s grace into the holy people he has called us and saved us to be.

Peace,

Allan

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