Page 404 of 497

Thanksgiving for Roadblocks

November 30, 2009 / Allan / 1 Comment

“I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth…” ~Matthew 11:25

John the Baptist is the one who knows more about the coming Messiah than anyone else in the world. He’s been ordained by God, commissioned to prepare the way for the Holy One of Israel. And in Matthew 11, with John in jail and Herod acting more arrogantly and ruling more aggressively than ever, the desert proclaimer begins to doubt. He questions. From his prison cell, through his disciples, he asks Jesus, “So are you the one, or what?”

The people who know Jesus the best, his own family and friends, are ignoring him. The very ones he worshiped with and grew up with and played with and worked with in the villages of Capernaum and Bethsaida and Korazin are not accepting Jesus as Lord. They’re not repenting. They’re not turning to God as a result of Jesus’ teachings and miracles.

The situation in Jesus’ Kingdom life is not good. His mission. His calling from God. His whole purpose for coming to earth. Everything Jesus stood for and sacrificed for and was working for. None of it was going very well. He was running into dead ends and roadblocks. Barriers and hard hearts. Misunderstanding and indifference.

And this from the people who all should have known better.

If I’m Jesus — and, yes, I know I’m not; I’m reminded every day —I’m looking at John and these neighbors of mine and I’m maybe beginning to question all of it, too. Maybe I’d better do something different. Maybe they’re right. No crowds. Nobody’s lives are changing. I need to try something else. I need to be bigger and louder and brighter. We need bigger screens. More video. Maybe I should lose the tie. Tell more jokes. Be funnier. We should maybe set up a coffee shop or a book store. I should probably stop saying words like “sin” and “salvation” and “Zion.”

If I were Jesus, I’d look at the misunderstandings and indifference and say, “Why isn’t God helping me here? Why isn’t God doing anything? What’s the deal?”

Instead, Jesus prays thanksgiving to God.

“I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure.”

Jesus knows that God’s way is to work his gracious will, to fulfill his marvelous plans for the universe through the childlike. The simple. The humble. Those who don’t think they are themselves some kind of gods. God works through people who understand very plainly their deep need for him.

The point is this: none of this throws Jesus off. The fact that John misunderstands what’s happening with Jesus doesn’t derail him. Jesus doesn’t slam on the brakes when the villagers reject him. None of this slows our Savior down.

Not so with us. We can get caught up in junk like this. I know I can. I know whole churches that can.

There are so many conditions in God’s Church and in this country and in this world that cause us to wring our hands and gnash our teeth. Oh, the Church is in trouble! Oh, people aren’t captivated by the Bible anymore! Postmoderns won’t ever believe the absolute truth of salvation in God through Christ! And we worry and get anxious and write articles and teach classes and rail against systems and complain about programs. And we get so worked up because God’s not working anymore.

But this prayer from Jesus puts everything in perspective. It brings us back to base.

The powerful and unstoppable energies of the Kingdom of God are always moving, always growing, always surging just beneath the surface. All around us. Huge rivers of prayer and faith and hope and praise and forgiveness and salvation and rescue and holiness flow right by us every day. In every single nook and cranny, hidden in the shadows, overlooked in the crowds, drowned out by the noise, are these humble infants. These little children.

So—thanksgiving.

Not just for the day and the weather and the beauty of nature. Not just for family and friends and food and clothes and shelter. Not just for good things in good circumstances. But, thanksgiving in — yes! — less than ideal situations. Thanksgiving offered in faith that our God is very much alive and active and working in mighty ways that we don’t always see.

Peace,

Allan

Protected By His Name

November 23, 2009 / Allan / 1 Comment

We live in a world not just of disbelief and cynicism. We’re in a truly hostile environment. We’re promised all kinds of trouble as we live for Christ on earth. But we’re also guaranteed great victory by our faith in the One who conquers death. In the meantime, we need strength. We need provision. We need protection to live as Christians here. It’s dangerous. It’s spiritually dangerous to follow Jesus in Texas.

Jesus knows that. It’s why he prays for us the way he does:

“Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name.” ~John 17:11

“I protected them and kept them safe by that name.” ~John 17:12

“My prayer is…that you protect them from the evil one.” ~John 17:15

Jesus knows that representing God in this world is a call to genuine battle. It’s a war with casualties and injuries and fear and strategies and winners and losers. It’s real. And he knows it. He acknowledges the power of the enemy.

What a blessing to know that our protection and our salvation doesn’t depend on our character or our nature or our conduct. Our protection and salvation is found in the nature and character of our God. Our holiness doesn’t come from our futile attempts to comply with a long list of do’s and don’ts. Our safety doesn’t depend on our ability to not sin. Our salvation is not tied to our good behavior. It all comes from the faithful and loving and forgiving and powerful name of God.

God, by his name, hides our life; he protects it and keeps it. And he promises us that when his Son appears again in glory, we are also going to be appear with him in that same glory.

Peace,

Allan

Carley's Crutches

November 20, 2009 / Allan / 2 Comments

It’s Achilles Tendonitis. We’re not sure what’s caused it or even exactly when it happened. X-Rays show us that there’s not a tear or a fracture. But Carley’s achilles tendon is stretched out and even frayed in a couple of places where it connects to her heel. The doctor says it’s probably overuse. She’s been doing gymnastics lately in PE. And she and I have hit tennis balls three or four times over the past couple of weeks. But who would have thought this could be a result? She’s only ten-years-old!

Doctor’s orders Tuesday afternoon were for a pair of crutches. Carley is not to put any weight or pressure of any kind on her right foot for two weeks. Fourteen days. Total rest for quick healing. Every step she might take on it only slows the process down.

We got home from the imaging center at about 2:00 Tuesday afternoon. The appointment to have the crutches fitted was for 5:45. And for those three-and-a-half hours, I carried Carley all over the house. Upstairs. Downstairs. She wanted to hop. I wanted to carry her. She wanted to crawl. I wanted to get things for her. Shoes. Clothes. Snack. Books. Let me do it for you, honey. Let me help you.

She hated it.

“Dad, I’m not helpless!”

“Dad, I don’t like being needy!”

Carley is our most active child. And our most independent. These past three days have been awful for her. She’s always wanted to do everything for himself. Even today with her little foot hanging by a thread. The last thing she wants is to be needy.

Just like all of us. We hate to be needy. We never want to be helpless.

But that’s exactly what our God wants us to be. Needy. Helpless. Actually, that’s what we are in reality. Our God just wants us to recognize it. To acknowledge it. To embrace it.

Having real needs doesn’t reduce our lives. It doesn’t flatten anything. Being helpless allows us to receive from our Father every single wonderful thing he intends for us. Our needs — recognizing those needs — throws wide open the doors to God’s greatest blessings. If we try to live without needs, we’re trying to live without God.

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; he who seeks, finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.” ~Matthew 7:7-8.

This is what it’s like to live in the real world God created. Receiving what is given. Just look at the sky and the seas. Flowers and bees. Husbands and wives. This is life. To gratefully receive. Life is a gift. God so loved the world that he…

…gave.

This is the way our God is. It’s how his world works. It’s how he operates in his world. It’s real.

And I hear my heavenly Father today telling me the same things I’m now telling Carley:

“Relax.”

“Let me get this for you. Let me give this to you. Allow me to take care of this for you. I want to give you every single thing you need. Please, just relax and receive it.”

Peace,

Allan

All In The Family

November 17, 2009 / Allan / 0 Comments

I’m a sucker for old church directories. I can crack open an old pictorial directory and be in it for a couple of hours before I realize it. Is it just me? Or can you also lose track of time flipping through an old church directory? I love it. Do you keep old church directories or do you throw them away as soon as the new one comes out? You keep them all, don’t you.

For the past three weeks or so I’ve been looking through old Legacy Church of Christ pictorial directories. We’re in the middle of the picture-making process for a new directory right now. And to encourage our people to sign up for the 20-minute procedure, I’ve been pulling old pictures of long-time members to show to the congregation on Sunday mornings. The old photos give us something to laugh about. The bald men in our church family used to sport a bunch of dark hair. The distinguished men among us used to wear huge, round glasses. Some of our ladies….

…Come on, I’m not an idiot.

I love looking through the old directories. It reminds me that we are a family.

We are.

We are a family with a shared history, shared stories, inter-twined lives.

Some of us have died. And we mourned the loss together. Some of our children have married each other. And we celebrated the union together. Some of the little kids in these old pictures are now ministry leaders in this church. And, no doubt, some of those now gone would marvel at which ones. Some of us have moved away. Some of us have gone and then come back. Some of us have suffered great loss. We’ve written and performed puppet shows together. We’ve cried together at baptisms and cried together at funerals. We’ve set up and taken down Give Away Day racks and shelves dozens of times together. We’ve fought. And we’ve made up. We’ve grown. We’ve discovered with great joy that God is working mightily in our weaknesses. We’ve been stunned by what he does for us and with us and through us. We have prayed together, had kids together, attended graduations and weddings together, and played Spades and Forty-Two.

Together.

I love old pictorial directories. They bring back floods of memories. Rod Stewart and Janis Joplin say every picture tells a story, don’t it? Every page brings a rush of sounds and emotions and images and places in our collective history with our God and his people.

And they remind me that Christians never do anything alone. We belong to our Father and we belong to one another. Through thick and thin, in good times and bad, when the sun’s shining down on us and on the road marked with suffering, we walk together.

The impersonal wasteland that is today’s electronic technology has obliterated personal visitation and replaced our song books. It’s killed off phone trees and made obsolete our sympathy and get well cards. It’s working on eliminating our Bibles. May it never touch our pictorial directories.

Peace,

Allan

Every Meeting a Privilege

November 16, 2009 / Allan / 1 Comment

I have the opportunity here to talk to lots of people. Lots of people. Every day. Every week. People in my study. People in the hallways between Bible class and worship. People on the phone. People in the parking lot. Every day.

Some people come by to encourage me. Some are here to complain. Some are cheerful. Some are grumpy. Some come to confess. To question. To praise. To get advice. To give advice. Some people are hurt. Some just come by to hang out.

What I must remember is that every single person I run in to — without exception — is a person created by our God, made in the image of our God, for our God’s purposes. They are all, each one of them, a child of our Father. And I must approach every single interaction with these people with that specific mindset.

Eugene Peterson, in his outstanding book Working the Angles, says we have to view every one of these meetings — planned or chance, positive or negative — as a great privilege.

“This face before me, its loveliness scored with stress, is in the image of God. This fidgety and slouching body that I am looking at is a temple of the Holy Ghost. This awkward, slightly asymmetrical assemblage of legs and arms, ears and mouth, is part of the body of Christ. Am I ready to be amazed at what God hath wrought, or am I industriously absorbed in pigeon-holing my observations?

The significance of what I see before me is not what I see before me but what Christ has said and done. Far more relevant than what I feel or think, or what this person feels or thinks, is what Christ has said and done. This is a person for whom Christ died, a person he loves: an awesome fact! Am I prepared to admire? Am I prepared to respect? Am I prepared to be in reverence?

Every meeting with another person is a privilege. In pastoral conversation I have chances that many never get as easily or as frequently — chances to spy out suppressed glory, ignored blessing, forgotten grace. I had better not miss them.”

Peace,

Allan

The Gift of Unity

November 13, 2009 / Allan / 2 Comments

Sometimes when we think about or talk about Christian unity, we do so in terms of what we can do to create unity or cause unity or foster more unity. What we need to understand is that we already have unity. It’s already been given to us.

All Christians are united. All Christians are unified. All believers are together. It’s a gracious gift of God. We can’t do anything to cause Christian harmony. Christian unity is already an eternal reality. It’s just a matter of whether we want to accept it or not. Will we live into it, or not? Will we embrace the God-given and God-ordained blessing of unity or reject it?

“I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me.” ~John 17:22-23

Through Jesus we are given a profound spiritual intimacy with the Father and Son that changes all of human life. It’s a unity that encompasses the Father with the Son, all Christian disciples with them both, and, in turn, with one another. Jesus’ whole prayer in John 17 proclaims that unity is not something we maintain. Christian unity, this deep relationship and fellowship between all followers, is what God through Christ has already given us and continues to maintain through the power of his Holy Spirit.

“We know that we live in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.” ~1 John 4:13

Jesus lives inside us. We are part of that holy communion, that holy community, with the triune God. It’s not because of anything we’ve ever done, but because of this great gift.

“That I myself may be in them.” ~John 17:26

Those are the last words Jesus says to God before he’s nailed to the cross. His last desire is to indwell his followers, to fill them with his glory and joy, so we will all be one. Together. Unity.

John 17 shows us the intimacy and character of the relationship that exists between the Father and Son. We see clearly the unity — the community — that marks their very nature. This oneness is then given to us. Jesus says, “I’m giving them the glory you gave me that they may be one, just like us. I’m giving them the power of your name that they may be one, just like us. I’m living inside them by the Holy Spirit that they may one, just like us.” We have been given this oneness with the Trinity and with everyone whom God has saved.

As his children, this unity is our new nature. This is now who we are: one with Christ and one with his followers everywhere. What that means is that there is very little, if anything, outside of denying Christ as divine Lord by word or deed, that can ever separate us. And if that’s the case — and it is! — then living into that reality in a way that speaks to a lost and dying world requires that we make every effort to love one another. Serve one another. Build one another up. Bear one another’s burdens. Submit to one another. Defend one another. Give one another the benefit of the doubt. Speak well of one another. Protect one another.

Paul says that’s the difference between spiritual infancy and maturity. That’s the difference between being tossed about and held together. Between deception and truth. Between things of human origin and things of Christ.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To all preachers: click here for a recent word of encouragement and discipline from Terry Rush’s blog, Morning Rush.

Elders: a similar exhortation here.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Whitney’s Richland High School Rebels got blown out by Arlington Bowie last night in the first ever high school playoff game in Jerry Wayne’s new stadium. My alma mater, Dallas Christian, is hosting their/our bitter rival, Fort Worth Christian, in a bi-district playoff game this evening. Whitney and I will be there at Chargers Field tonight. I’ll have to bribe Valerie and Carley with the prospects of cotton candy or Sour Skittles to get them to go with us. Carrie-Anne couldn’t care less. I’m looking forward to showing the girls around the campus. I’ll probably spend most of the evening telling them old stories as the place and the setting flood me with wonderful memories. I’m hoping to see lots of old friends, classmates, teachers, and even a couple of coaches tonight.

Here’s a really strange thing: I’ll probably have more friends dressed in red sitting on the visitors side.

It’s weird living and working and ministering here in FWC’s community. I drive by Fort Worth Christian at least once every weekday taking Whitney to Richland. I know a few of the teachers and coaches. Several of our families here at Legacy attended FWC and/or have kids at FWC. One of our elders here used to be Fort Worth Christian’s superintendent. I play basketball at Cardinal Gym every Thursday. I speak to the high school at FWC chapel at least once a year.

Great people. Great friends.

Go Chargers!

Allan

The Kingdom, The Kids, & The Cowboys

Page 404 of 497

Thanksgiving for Roadblocks

Protected By His Name

Carley's Crutches

All In The Family

Every Meeting a Privilege

The Gift of Unity

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

Categories

Archives

Allan's Links