Is the Gospel Worth It? (Random Thoughts on Friday)

WHAT I'M PREPARING FOR SUNDAY

When Paul writes Ephesians 3 his life is not at peace.  He is suffering for the gospel.  The gospel is the story of God's redemption of mankind for His glory.  Through His son God has not only paid the penalty of sin, but He is calling unto Himself a people who through repentance and faith, live for Christ in the final season of redemptive history.  After rehearsing the implications of the gospel story for his readers, Paul makes a simple request of them:

"So I ask you do not lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory (Eph. 3:13)."  In this simple request there are some deep considerations for us about the gospel.

1. The gospel requires suffering.  Even though it is an amazing story, it is met with great resistance. This will require some degree of suffering from every person who receives the gospel.
2. The suffering required by the gospel will cause some to lose heart.  Whether it seems unfair or unfitting that God would allow such difficulty, the reality of the suffering required by the gospel is something that we are not well prepared for, nor are we well equipped.   Why?  Perhaps it is a mixture of bad theology and American idealism, but if it does not require us to suffer we cannot rightly say it is the gospel.
3. The suffering required by the gospel is for the benefit of others.  Paul said that not only is he suffering for his readers, but it is for their glory.  Initially, a thought like this makes us angry.  It makes us angry when we find out that those who pay taxes are funding the lifestyle of those who do not.  It makes us angry when we pay higher car insurance premiums because of those who do not.  It is making us angry now that we are finding out that those who are paying for health insurance are going to have to pay even more next year because of those who have not.  Yet the gospel requires us to suffer for the glory of others.  How do we reconcile this in our already angry American minds?
4. The suffering required by the gospel is worth it?  What is it that Abraham, Paul, Jesus and countless sufferers have found in the gospel that makes it worth the suffering it requires?

I hope you can join us Sunday at Liberty Baptist Church www.libertybaptistchurch.ws.  

WHAT I'M LOOKING FORWARD TO THIS WEEKEND

This weekend my wife turns 29 again.  Next week my firstborn turns 13 for the first time.  This is MardiBranam weekend.  Party!

On Sunday night Caleb Waid will be at Liberty.  I am really looking forward to seeing Caleb, Brittany, and Finn.  Caleb was a Junior in High School when I went to Ridgecrest in 2002.  I have spent a lot of time with Caleb over the years both pouring into him and just enjoying serving Christ with him.  Caleb makes me laugh.  He keeps me humble.  He reminds me why I love what I do.  I can't wait to hear him preach again and see the fruits of our labors together.

WHAT I'VE BEEN READING THIS WEEK

Crazy Love by Francis Chan
Practice Resurrection by Eugene Peterson
Listening to the Language of the Bible by Lois Tverberg and Bruce Okkema
Fusion: Turning First Time Guests into Fully-Engaged Members by Nelson Searcy and Jennifer Henson

WHAT I'VE BEEN MEDITATING UPON

Haggai 1:7, "Thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider your ways."

Put Your Heart to Your Road

Haggai is a very small, relatively unknown book of the Old Testament.  Many people think Hezekiah is an Old Testament book, but have no idea that Haggai actually is.  Haggai is one of the prophets God used to motivate the people to rebuild the Temple after the Jews returned from Babylonian captivity.  Though there are only 38 verses in the book, Haggai carries a weighty message.  Here are two key themes from the book.

1. The way the people treat the Temple says a lot about how the people relate to the Lord.  In the New Testament context we understand that our bodies and the Church are the Temple of the Lord.  The way we behave morally in our bodies and the way we relate to God’s church are tangible displays of our relationship with God.  A person may claim to know the Lord, but if we have no consideration for His Temple (our bodies and His people) we are deceiving ourselves.  Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 6 and 2 Corinthians 6 are very much the message of Haggai for our time.  
2. Sin and attitudes are contagious (Hag. 2:10-14).  By Old Testament law a defiled thing contaminates everything it touches.  The defilement is subsequently passed along then until the objects are brought back to purity.  The same can be said for our influence over other people.  Sin impacts the way we think.  Living in sin is an open invitation, a conduit for the negative impact of uncleanness to defile our relationships.  Bitterness is but one negative attitude by which many become defiled (Heb. 12:15).  Encouragement can become equally as contagious.  We must make a choice.    

So how should we respond?  Do you want to make some real progress?  Haggai says to put your heart to your road.

To put your heart to your road is the Hebrew idiom we translate into the English phrase, “Consider your ways (Hag. 1:5).”  In the Hebrew language the heart is the seat of thought.  To put your heart to the road means to take a hard look at your life.  It means to evaluate what is behind you and be honest about what is ahead if you continue in the same path.  Haggai tries to show his people their path (1:6-11).  Life isn’t working.  It’s time to think about our past, be honest about our future, and make a turn in direction before it is too late.  Someone said that the definition of stupidity or insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result.  Haggai is begging the people to put their heart to their road and end the insanity.  

So how do we put our hearts to the road?

1. Write your story and erase the blame.  It is hard to know where you are going if you haven’t really thought much about where you have been.  Why are you as you are?  It is no accident.  Along the way you have had plenty of collisions and collusions.  It is easy to blame others for the reason life is as it is.  While there may be plenty of people who are blameworthy in your story, you must remember, at the end of the day you are the only one left to choose how to respond.  Great people become as they are because they have made great choices.  There are plenty of great people who have a horrible past.  There are plenty of horrible people who have a great past.  Its all in how you choose to respond.  Write your story and evaluate your choices.  You have no one to blame but yourself from this point onward.  It’s your heart.  It’s your road.  Think hard about the next steps.
2. Invite someone else into the conversation.  It is easy to be honest about what we think about other people.  It is very difficult to be honest about ourselves.  We insulate ourselves with self justification and clothe ourselves in blindness.  We all need someone in our life who will be honest; someone to answer the hard questions.  When you find that person, appreciate them, don’t push them away.  You may be angered by what you hear.  It’s natural.  But remember, this is your heart on the road.  This is not a safe place for a heart to be.  Vulnerability is a foreign feeling for most of us, but we need it if we are going to accomplish real change.
3. Invite someone else to walk with you.  Once you find that person who will be honest with you, you may want to invite them, or someone else, to walk with you.  If we are open only to one honest conversation, at some point your vulnerability and their honesty will be a distant memory.  The conversation needs to continue.  We need constant course correction.  When people walk alone, they walk in circles.  They go right back to where they were.  People who live life in honest community with others tend to make greater progress.  They walk a linear path because they have people all along the way who will not allow them to return to where they once were. 
4. Journal the journey.  They say that our brains never really forget anything.  If that is true, the brain may be a brilliant database of memories, but the problem is in the recall.  If my brain truly has all of my memories, the problem for me is that I can’t remember them.  Journaling helps us remember where we were and in turn journaling helps us see the progress.  Journaling is published progress.  My appearance changes a little everyday.  Even though I use a mirror every morning, I don’t notice it.  Yet if I look at a picture of myself 10 years ago, the change is apparent.  Journals are not mirrors to the soul.  Journals are snapshots, markers that will help you notice the changes or lack thereof.  Journals are a great way to put your hear to the road.  

Its time to end the stupid, insanity of being the same.  It is time to truly change your ways.  It's time to make real progress.  Let’s follow Haggai’s advice.  Put your heart to the road.

Revival Hangover, Where Do We Go From Here?

This weekend our church (Liberty Baptist in Dalton, GA) hosted Francois Carr from Heartcry Ministries of South Africa.  His topic for the Sunday morning was cultivating a relationship with God patterned after the example of Moses.  Moses and his brother Aaron were each chosen by God to deliver Israel from Egypt.  Together they witnessed the mighty miracles of God in the Exodus.  But somewhere along the way, between the giving of the covenant and the golden calf Aaron lost his way.  The difference, Carr argued, was that Moses fostered a relationship with God, still seeking new manifestations of God's glory, while Aaron was content only to enjoy the memories of miracles past and to approach God but once a year as high priest in the tabernacle.

On Sunday night Francois preached on "Bridging the Gap" from Psalm 1.  How do we live a life that is pleasing to God in a world so corrupted by sin?  The key to success is found in Psalm 1:2, the righteous man meditates on the law of the Lord day and night.  Enoch, Noah, and Abraham were all able to walk with God in a generation of scorn and rebellion.  These men knew the Lord and provided such pleasure in their life that they were not willing to compromise.  Francois pointed out that here in America, we have the best.  We have many translations of the Bible, we have comfortable church facilities to meet in, we have Bible book stores, Christian printing houses, Christian programming on television and radio, verses sent to our cell phones everyday, but yet we are not living a life that pleases God.  Why?  Because we are failing to realize that to walk with God we need only what Enoch, Noah, and Abraham had, faith.

These messages were weighty on my soul.  Once again we experienced a great move of God in our midst.  But where do we go from here?  Sundays are often so exciting and full of the Spirit I am often left on Monday with a spiritual hangover wondering, what was all of that anyway?

Perhaps my favorite time of the weekend was not in hearing Francois preach, but in getting to drive him from place to place.  Just this morning I spent time with him as I drove him to the airport in Atlanta.  He challenged me with this; that I begin to meditate and ponder on what God was saying to me and to the church?  Why were those messages preached?  What are the common ideas?  What ideas are stirring in my own soul about them today?  What will I do with what I have heard?  How do these messages change the way I relate to my family?

When we experience revival hangover I think we make a mistake in wanting to get over it too quickly and then to look only to what happens next.  In America we seek experience at the expense of meditation.  We go from one high to the next with no moments of clarity in between.  This, I believe, is why we do so much but change so little.

Whether you were at Liberty yesterday or at another place in which God moved greatly in your soul, join me today and let's meditate on what God has said to us this weekend.  Let us be content to allow the messages from yesterday to "hang over us" for some time.

Why You Shouldn't Skip Church When There is a Guest Speaker

In my years of being a pastor I have noticed many fickle behaviors amongst God's sheep. Sheep do not like rain. The adage is that it takes a tub full of water to get a Baptist in, but it takes only a drop to get him out.  True!  Sheep will go to a ball game on Saturday even if they have an arm barely hanging on at the elbow. Yet, they will not get out of bed on Sunday morning due to the vicious pain of a hangnail.  If Jr. has a low grade temp below 103 we will send him to school on Monday, but if Jr. sneezes on a Sunday morning the whole family needs to stay home. Such is sheep. 

Another fickle fixture of sheep is that when the pastor's away, well, the sheep "do" play. No pastor = No go. I have also noticed that for some this applies to any service in which there is a guest preacher whether the pastor is present or not. Yo sheep, this should not be. 

No matter who is preaching on a particular Sunday, God's people should never compromise faithfulness.  The Bible tells us that we should not forsake the assembling of ourselves (Heb. 10:25).  If the threat of persecution the church experienced in the first century was not a sufficient excuse, a guest speaker falls well short of justified absence.  Stay faithful.  

Furthermore, as great as your pastor may be, he does not possess all the gifts. Ephesians 4:12ff teaches us that Christ gifts the church with various leaders, each of them, when received, add to the maturity and unity of the church. Your pastor may be a great teacher, but you also need the evangelist to stir you up.  People that love the fiery “in your face” prophet sermon need also to be tempered with the teacher.  Those that feast on deep teaching often fail in practicality and passion.  The deep swimmers need to surface and feel fire from time to time just to keep them from getting too heady.

The guest speaker may not be your “full time gig”, but truth is, you need what he offers if you are to mature.  The guest speaker may not be familiar, but he adds to our life as a gift of Christ to His church.

Whatever your preference, truth is, Jesus knows you need something else as well and He gifts the church accordingly.  Failing to receive the diverse preaching gifts Christ has given the church is like eating a banana every meal. Ironically, they say you can live longer eating only bananas than any other food, but at some point you will die. Learn to appreciate the various gifts Christ has given the church.  Receive them all, the preachers, the teachers, the evangelists, and the missionaries.  We should also learn to appreciate the various speaking styles among them (the yellers, the talkers, the story tellers, and deep thinkers). Bananas are good, but sheep need more to reach full maturity.

Desert Rain

Some things need to be dry.  Damp shirt - bad.  Damp socks - yuck.  Bread does well with jelly, but not so well with water.  Forget to roll up your window on a summer day; a passing shower will inevitably leave you a gift to remind you that driving a car is better done dry.

Dry is a difficult season for the soul.  You pray, no answer.  You read the Bible, it's like stale bread.  For pastors sermons come hard in the dry season.  You want to dig deep into God's Word but it seems like all you find is more sand.  Where is the artesian well of abundant life Jesus promised?  For blogger, writer, wannabe people like me dry seasons leave you with no ink.  It has been so bad that people who read my blog and listen to my sermons online have been emailing me, "Are you O.K?"  I'm fine, but that's where I've been for months now, dry.

This is not my first walk on dry ground.  If you follow the Lord long enough you know that eventually He brings rain.  We may be dry.  He is always faithful.  Whether you are on a polar cap or in the desert, the air may feel different but the sun is always the same.  My experience may change me, but it will not change God.  It will rain.

There have been several times in my life when God has spoken to me in an unmistakable way.  I'm not talking about sensing God's leading in a certain situation, I'm talking about God telling me something clearly.  It's not wishful thinking.  It's not my brain having its own conversation (you know what I mean).  It's God.  The first time this happened I was a college student.  My grandfather had just been moved to a nursing home.  My grandmother had lost an important check she needed to pay her bills.   Before I left her house I held her hand and prayed she would find that check.  When we finished praying I knew she would find the check within a day.  I told her, "Mamaw, God is telling me you are going to find that check within a day."  The next day she called me.  She had not only found the check, but she got another one in the mail to match it.  Rain!

Before I moved from Crossville to Birmingham God spoke clearly to me. The same thing happened in our move from Birmingham to Dalton.  Rain!  It doesn't happen often to me, but when God speaks you know it.  So for several months now I have been walking in the dry again.  I hate it, but I knew at some point it would rain again.  The problem with being human is that God is greater than the calendar and it is impossible to tell when His providential seasons will end.

Friday, God spoke to me again about several things we had been praying about.  I told my wife, this weekend it will happen.  The weekend came and went.  Several things were happening with great potential; the clouds were gathering, but there was still no rain.  Even Sunday night, I told my wife, it is going to happen, I just know it.  Monday afternoon I got out of my car and thought, maybe I missed it.  Maybe I have made a mistake.  Again, God spoke to me, it is all about to happen at once.

Last night, for our family, it rained.  Its been raining all day today.  I can't tell you about it now, but I will.

But I know what it's like to walk in the dry.  Every great man of God went through the desert; Moses, Jesus, even Paul (Gal. 1:17).  If you are walking through dry right now, remember the season may change, but the sun is always the same.  God is God, even in the dry.   Keep walking, it will rain.    

Let's Talk (Part 1) Communication in Marriage

Let's Talk Part 1 from Brian Branam on Vimeo.
In marriage, talking is crucial; but men and women have very different opinions of what that means and just how necessary it is to talk. Women are looking for fulfilling conversation, men want fulfilling sex. The good news is that whether you realize it or not, we are striving for the same goal. Both men and women are looking for intimacy. When we learn to talk, the ultimate needs for both can be accomplished.

Rock Eating, Building Leaping, Devil Worshiper (Sympathizing With the Temptations of Christ) Part 3

Continued from - http://www.feelmyfaith.com/2013/03/rock-eating-building-leaping-devil.html in which we asked can Jesus really sympathize with our temptations?

Turning stone into bread.  Satisfy myself anytime I have the power to do so.

 In the first temptation Satan sort of pokes at Jesus nature.  He knows Jesus is the Son of God, there is no question here.  What Satan is saying is I know you are hungry, and as the son of God why don’t you do something well within your power, it should be no problem for you to just turn these stones into bread and eat them.  Use your power to satisfy your hunger. 

If you can do it, why not? 

Jesus beats back the temptation by quoting from Deuteronomy 8 where Moses is talking about the manna in the wilderness.  This moment for Israel was supposed to teach them that ultimately you are powerless, but it is God’s Word that provides for your life.  All God has to do is say it and you have what you need.  We shouldn’t starve for bread as much as we should starve for God.

But this is our problem.  We make our whole lives about bread.  We become indulgent and we grow to think that if I have the ability to have it, then I can satisfy that desire anytime I want.  If I have the money, well then its no question, why not just buy what I can buy?  Or if I’m sitting on a computer which is virtually nothing but a rock in and of itself; and I can turn it on and produce pictures, videos, and conversations that satisfy my desires, then why not do it and satisfy myself?  I’m hungry, I’m single, my wife and I are having problems, I’m bored, I’m a man and I have needs - life is not easy in the wilderness is it?  

The temptation here ultimately leads you to think that in the wilderness you don’t need God, all you need is bread, the ability to have what you want when you want it.  But enduring temptation teaches us that our physical appetites are not the most important.  Enduring temptation teaches us that our spiritual needs are more important than our physical ones.  “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul?”, Jesus asked in Matthew 16:26?  

The temptation for bread will tell you that the money you have is yours and that you should use it for no other reason but to satisfy yourself.  By doing so you become immune that there is any governance of God in your life over your means.  What if He wants you to do something else with your paycheck?  Maybe he doesn’t want you to stand at the Redbox like a monkey punching a button for food and spend $35 in a weekend watching movies.  Have you considered that there may be $15 or $20 God wants you to save for something else, or to give it away to someone in need?  When we go to buy a car the first thing the salesman will ask us in a roundabout way is how much can we afford?  And we will buy it to the penny of our means and probably most of the time a few dollars more.  Why?  Because we can make bread.  

Jesus was hungry.  The problem was not his inability to turn stones into bread.  In Luke 19:40 Jesus said that even the rocks would worship Him.  So why not flip the switch, pull the lever, satisfy your hunger in the moment?  The problem was that it was not the will of God for Him at the time.

When we live only for bread, eventually we will find ourselves in the wilderness with no thought of God, with no sense of His leadership in our lives.  All we are doing then is going through a time that should be one of the most meaningful experiences in our lives, in which God is trying to wean us off of the appetites of the world, but all we want to do is use our means to turn every stone we can get our hands on into bread.  When does it end?  So Jesus stops Satan and basically says, “Yeah, I can do it, but that is not what God has for me right now.  I’m living under the guidance of God’s Word, not by my power to make bread.”

This is not an easy temptation with which to deny long-term.  Give it 40 days without the pics on the internet, without as much food as you can possibly eat, without buying everything you want, without _______ you fill in the blank.  Give it 40 days and see if you are not ready to eat a rock!  But if you are honest enough to confess your indulgent self and recognize it for what it is, Jesus can sympathize even with that and He can guide you through it.  Why, because He’s been there.

to be continued . . .