The Kingdom, The Kids, & The Cowboys

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Prayer and Praise

February 19, 2009 / / 0 Comments

Prayer & PraiseBiblical prayers are saturated with praise, the recognition of who God is and what he does. It’s giving God the glory. It’s never that we add to his glory—that’s impossible. But we’re willingly and openly recognizing God as God. All prayer has to begin with praise, recognizing who God is and what he does.

Psalm 146 is a perfect example of this kind of prayer. It recognizes God as the creator, the sustainer of life, and the Sovereign King. And it calls on the one reading the prayer and those praying the prayer with the reader to live their lives for the sole purpose of praising God.

“Praise the Lord.
Praise the Lord, O my soul.
I will praise the Lord all my life;
I will sing praise to my God as long as I live.
Do not put your trust in princes,
in mortal men, who cannot save.
When their spirit departs, they return to the ground;
on that very day their plans come to nothing.
Blessed is he whose help in the God of Jacob,
whose hope is in the Lord his God,
the Maker of heaven and earth,
the sea and everything in them—
the Lord, who remains faithful forever.
He upholds the cause of the oppressed
and gives food to the hungry.
The Lord sets prisoners free,
the Lord gives sight to the blind,
the Lord lifts up those who are bowed down,
the Lord loves the righteous.
The Lord watches over the alien
and sustains the fatherless and the widow,
but he frustrates the ways of the wicked.
The Lord reigns forever,
your God, O Zion, for all generations.
Praise the Lord.”

Sweet Little Sixteen

February 17, 2009 / / 0 Comments

Whit&DPWednesday, February 17, 1993. South Austin Medical Center. 10:15 pm. Whitney Leigh-Anne came into the world and into our lives kicking and screaming and needing some extra oxygen. I was able to calm her down in those first couple of minutes by singing “Love Me Do” and “Eight Days a Week” softly to her in the delivery room. And I’ll never forget looking for the very first time into those bluer than blue eyes. So blue. And so beautiful. She had a huge ragged mop of dark black hair. And those little crooked toes. And it all BlueEyesknocked my socks off.

How amazing to have this innocent, vulnerable, newborn infant. How terrifying that she depends on me for her very survival. How humbling to realize I’m responsible to her and to our God for bringing her up in Christ Jesus.

Whitney is my sports nut. Big time. She was hitting plastic baseballs off a plastic tee with a plastic bat when she was two. She was eating popcorn and chips and hot sauce and watching football games with me by about the same age. She throws like a boy (Yes!). She loves basketball. She watches ESPN News for 15 minutes every morning. She wants nothing but sports jersies and posters for birthdays and Christmas. We can’t play enough air hockey and backgammon together. And she argues with me about the Cowboys almost daily.

HookEm  Whit’sGuns  SheShootsSheScores

And I love that about Whitney. It really connects me to her.

But what I really admire about Whitney, and the thing I’m most grateful for with her, is her sweet spirit and positive attitude. Whitney is an angel. She’s had to overcome, and is still working to overcome, so many difficulties in her young life. WhitGoesDeepMultiple surgeries. Subsequent therapies. Physical limitations. Hearing aids. Glasses. Fine motor skills. Her list goes on and on. But through it all, somehow, Whitney maintains an incredibly upbeat attitude. She’s never down. The doctors’ appointments and medical reports never drag her down. She keeps that same smile on her face and that same positive attitude day after day after day. She’s such a blessing. She’s endured so much pain in her life, especially with her legs and her feet, and yet she’s generally much more concerned with her sisters’ feelings than with her own.

Whit’sSpecsWe tell her all the time that God is going to use the trials she’s enduring now to produce through her amazing things for his Kingdom. We tell her all the time that she’ll be able to minister to other people in ways that I never will because she can personally relate to so many things that other people are going through. As Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 1, she’ll be able to comfort others with the same comfort she’s received from God. She’ll be better equipped to encourage others because of the ordeals she’s facing every day.

I see our loving Father in Whitney. I see him in her trusting spirit and her faithful dependence on him. I see him already using her to teach others around her—namely her dad—about keeping our eyes on the things that are unseen, the eternal things, not the seen things that are temporary.

I can’t wait to see what other huge, wonderful things our God is going to do through the Whitster.

Happy Birthday, girl. I love you.

Dad

A Delivered People

February 16, 2009 / / 0 Comments

Freedom!“But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” ~1 Corinthians 6:11

We are Christians, yes. We are God’s children. We are his Church. Yes, we are sheep. We are saints. We are co-laborers with the Lord. We’re disciples. We’re a family. Yes.

But who we are only has meaning, it only brings us great joy, it only really matters, in relation to who we were.

Immoral. Idolaters. We are sinners. We are enemies of God. We’re dead. Dead in our transgressions. Dead in our sins. We are disobedient. Rebellious. Following the ways of the world. Following our own evil desires and thoughts. We are prisoners of Satan. Slaves to iniquity. We’re held captive by the devil. We’re in jail. We’re not going anywhere. Condemned by a holy and righteous God. Destined to be forever separated from the One who created us. We are hell-bound. Facing an eternity in a lake of fire and powerless to do anything about it. Powerless. We can do nothing. This is who we are. Not tired, not asleep, not sick, not even in a coma. Dead! It’s over. We’re finished. No hope. No luck. No chance. Only a promise. The promise of eternal damnation.

But…

“But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in our transgressions.” ~Ephesians 2:4-5

The noose was around your neck. The chair had been kicked out and your legs were dangling when God rode in and rescued you. Through no merit of your own — nothing! not a single thing you did or could ever do — you were saved.

You were dead, but now you’re alive. You were lost, but now you’re found. You were headed to hell, but now you’ve been re-routed to heaven. And you’ve never done anything to deserve it. Christ Jesus took the punishment for you. Jesus took your place. Jesus stepped in and did for you what you could never do for yourself.

His love, his mercy, his grace, it makes no sense. It’s incredible. It’s amazing.

We are saved!

And this is what identifies us. This is who we are. This is what shapes the way we think and informs the way we behave. This is at the very heart of how we view our God and ourselves and one another. This is what gives us our great joy.

Who we are in relation to who we were.

Praise God for his amazing grace!

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“The one unifying constant that defines whether or not such a congregation is included…is the practice of a cappella worship services.” ~Carl Royster, from his introduction to Churches of Christ in the United States

Wow. I had no idea we had just added a quarter-billion Eastern Orthodox to our movement! Who says our numbers are declining? Cool.

Sarcastically and sadly,

Allan

Unconverted Membership

February 12, 2009 / / 0 Comments

“Our greatest trouble now is, it seems to me, a vast unconverted membership. A very large percent of the church members among us seem to have very poor conceptions of what a Christian ought to be. They neglect prayer, the reading of the Bible, and the Lord’s Day meetings, and, of course, they fail to do good day by day as they should. Twelve years of continual travel among the churches have forced me to the sad conclusion that a very small number of the nominal Christians are worthy of the name.” ~James A. Harding, 1887

Is it comforting or disturbing?

When you read the stories of Israel in our ancient Scriptures and recognize that we, today, continue to fall away from the Lord, cry out to him in time of trouble, come running back to him vowing a renewed life of total commitment, only to fall away again a short time later, how do you feel? Does it make you feel better that some things never change, that God’s people have always acted like this and always will? Does it ease the pain of our own shortcomings and rebellions to know that God’s used to it? Or does it really bother you? You mean we’re still acting as God’s people the same way we acted four thousand years ago?!? Are you kidding? How depressing. What are we doing? Are we ever going to get it?

Over and over again. Nothing changes.

When you read a statement made by Harding 120 years ago that sounds like it could have been written yesterday, is that good or bad? Does it comfort you or disturb you?

I go back and forth on things like this. It mostly depends on what kind of day I’m having. My mood changes. My outlook on Christian progress, the advance of the Kingdom in this country, the sanctification of God’s holy people, it changes from time to time based on recent experience, I suppose.

This I know: through all the ups and downs of the cycles of God’s eternal people, he loves us. He loves us unconditionally. He sacrifices all and gives it to us. Uncompromisingly. He is a faithful God. Even when his people are faithless. He is patient with us. And he’s working on us right now.

Peace,

Allan

Flexing Our Autonomy

February 11, 2009 / / 0 Comments

FlexWouldn’t it be great to be truly non-denominational? What if our Church of Christ stream of the Christian faith took our stance on autonomous congregations seriously? What if this philosophy—no, most of us would probably label it a theology—of autonomy were upheld in practice the same way we preach it in theory?

What if our flashing sign out on Mid-Cities Boulevard one morning began proclaiming “Legacy Church of Christ: A Non-Denominational Community Church”?

It’s everything we claim to be. It’s everything they tell me we aspire to be. But I’d never get away with putting it on the sign.

It’s a dream of mine that the congregation of believers at Legacy, and all families of disciples, would be guided by Christ and his Word, not ever by outside forces. Not by other congregations. Not by other denominations. Not by other faiths. Certainly not by the world and its standards and beliefs and practices. We’d have to jump totally off the A-B Line way of thinking to ever make that happen. And we can’t do that overnight. It’s going to take some time. It’s going to take an intentional shift in our thinking and our practices.

(Please refer back to my posts from last May Jumping Off The Line and Jumping Off The Line: Part Two. See, I’m pretty passionate about this.)

Some of our number glory in the recent decision by 21st Century Christian to remove from a Church of Christ directory 21 congregations who’ve added an instrumental worship assembly on Sunday morning. And they completely miss the irony when I say, “Well, somebody’s got to draw those lines if we’re going to be a real denomination!” Our brothers Stone and Campbell must be spinning.

On the issue of congregational autonomy, please take the time to read my brothers Terry Rush here and Patrick Mead here. Both of these posts were written in the past week.

Is autonomy important or not?

Yes. I think it’s important. I think it’s critical. I think it’s biblical. I think it’s theological. I think we’ve got a long, long way to go.

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The ShowI appreciate my friend Jim Gardner’s comments related to my plea that we don’t skip our Christian worship assemblies to watch the Super Bowl. I think we ignore the impact we’re having on our children and our neighbors when we make these kinds of choices. They’re not dumb. They see very well the message we believe and the message we’re sending. Whether it’s staying home to watch a TV show or taking our kids to their Sunday morning soccer game, what we’re saying is this: church is important, of course it’s important; it’s just not as important as this TV program or your ball game.

Peace,

Allan

Faith Underdogs

February 10, 2009 / / 0 Comments

The 40 verses in Hebrews 11 tell us everything we need to know about great faith. All these great names, great stories, great exploits, great victories, great examples show us clearly that faith is defined by bold action related to unseen future events motivated by the promise of God.

In each one of these familiar stories the hero was facing overwhelming odds. They were each huge underdogs. From a human standpoint they had little or no chance to come out on top. But here’s what they did by faith: they each took their eyes off the obvious, they turned their eyes away from the physical things they could see and acted according to the invisible realities they couldn’t see.

Noah refused to focus on the clear skies and sunshine. He totally ignored the five-day forecast. Instead, he took God at his word and focused on the promise. Abraham refused to look at the 100 candles on his last birthday cake and, by faith, looked instead at God’s word. Moses didn’t zero in on the glitter and glamour of the Egyptian palace or the safety he could find in worldly security. He acted outrageously, motivated only by God’s promises to love him and reward him in the future.

God’s people weren’t paralyzed by the giant army coming up behind them. They looked past the archers and warriors perched on the Jericho walls. Daniel walked into a den of lions. The Hebrew exiles walked into a fiery furnace. Not based on what made sense right then. Not based on what seemed smart at that moment. Not based on anything they could see today. They were motivated solely by the greatest reality of all, the reality that we serve a faithful God, a God who makes promises and keeps them, a God who speaks and acts, a God who promises and fulfills, a God who is forever faithful to his word and forever faithful to his people. For the most part, that reality, the greatest reality, is invisible. But people of faith, God’s people of faith, we understand that just because we can’t see something doesn’t make it any less real. We fix our eyes not on what is seen but on what is unseen; for what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

But those seen things—that seen reality—can be so powerful.

There are dozens of people here at Legacy who’ve lost their jobs in the past couple of months or are afraid of losing their jobs in the next couple of days. They see the unemployment numbers. They see the savings account dwindle. They see the empty offices and cubicles in their building.

There are people in our church family battling life-threatening diseases with everything they’ve got. They see the doctors’ reports. They see the test results. They see nothing but bad news around the corner. Every day is a little more painful than the day before. And less certain.

A lot of you are in a spiritual desert right now. The Bible’s not speaking to you. Your prayers aren’t getting through. Your church is no good. Nothing’s working. And you can’t shake it. You feel directionless. Lost. Maybe you’re caught up in sin. Whatever the case, you feel a long, long way from God.

You’re outnumbered, outmuscled, outsmarted, out of options, out of luck. You’re staring into the teeth of the lions. You’re tiny compared to the huge walls that are blocking you out. You’re walking into a furnace of fire. All these things.

Don’t you see? This is exactly the time for your faith to show itself in some bold action verbs!

By faith Abel offered…

By faith Noah built…

By faith Abraham went…

By faith Isaac blessed…

By faith Joseph spoke…

By faith Moses left…

By faith God’s people marched…

By faith David conquered…

By faith  (your name)  (your verb)…

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