Year: 2013

Categories
Christian Living

Love in the Face of Treason

Treason…
A distasteful word.
One we’d never want used about our behavior or actions.

When we think of our own lives, we think of ourselves as pretty good citizens… even patriots for our nation. But what if you have dual citizenship – what if you are not only a citizen of an earthly nation, but also of God’s Kingdom? Are you a good citizen in the eyes of the Sovereign King of that realm? How obedient are you to His commands?

We like to think that we are “pretty good” people, but the problem is disobedience to the King… which we term “sin.” And sin is a big deal. Here’s why: “Sin is not small, because it is not against a small Sovereign. The seriousness of an insult rises with the dignity of the one insulted. The Creator of the universe is infinitely worthy of respect and admiration and loyalty. Therefore, failure to love him is not trivial — it is treason.”

So because of our unwillingness to bring our lives under full control of the Sovereign King, we are people with treasonous actions and attitudes. Shouldn’t His amazing love for us be enough to drive out our sin? Shouldn’t His love compel us to love Him in return and keep us from being disobedient? Perhaps the problem is that we haven’t thought of our disobedience as being serious.

“We will never stand in awe of being loved by God until we reckon with the seriousness of our sin and the justice of his wrath against us.”

Until we can see our disobedience to both the “Thou Shalt Not” Commands AND the “Thou Shalt” Commands as serious acts of rebellion, we will never sense the full weight of His love in the face of our treason. He tells us not to do some things, but He also tells us plenty that we must do – specifically loving our neighbors as ourselves. Our failure to share His story with them and let them know how God wants to intersect and interrupt their lives with His love… that failure is treason against the King.

And yet He loves us still.

He loves us in the face of our treason.

“Today the word sin way too often misses this aspect of God’s heart regarding the Law. When His Word says, ‘Avoid all sin,’ we miss the ‘I love you, my child’ that lies behind it.”

Let us look at ourselves through the eyes of the King and see how far we miss the mark. When we do so and then realize that He loves us in spite of our own terrible thoughts, actions, and attitudes, we will start to see how deep His love goes… and then that love will begin to drive us into deeper obedience prompted by a desire to serve the One who loves us so well.

(quotes from ‘For Your Joy’ by John Piper; and ‘Every Man’s Challenge’ by Arterburn & Stoeker)

Categories
Relationships

Reconnect Off The Grid

So…
Long time, no Brian.
Or at least no Brian devotions.
Yes, I took a month-and-a-half break from writing devotional thoughts.
Life got busy and “something had to give.” That is no different than you – you are extremely busy as well. The only question becomes, what will you give up due to your busy-ness. The thing that I gave up was my on-line activity. Not just the writing but even the checking of social media and internet. I have hardly looked at facebook, twitter, my website, or even on-line news in the last 40 days.

And strangely enough, though we find ourselves addicted to our social media and to our connectedness to all the happenings of our friends, to the news of the day, and to our entertainment personalities, what I found was that I became addicted to staying “off the grid.”

It was good. In fact, I didn’t feel disconnected from the world. Rather, I felt a bit reconnected to others that I see face-to-face each week. It made it a bit hard to step back into the online fray. Not that I don’t enjoy the writing. I do. And I appreciate so much those of you who are always so encouraging about my writings. But I also found that I enjoyed not being in the glow of the phone/tablet/laptop screen. Maybe more of us need to take a break at times and learn to reconnect with others outside of social media.

I recently read that Japan has established Internet “fasting camps” where Internet-addicted children learn to engage in real relationships. Researchers have linked too much “screen time” to obesity, sleep problems, depression, and other not-so-good stuff. Japan has come to understand that our drive for “connectedness” can lead to stress, and our stress can keep us from engaging in activities that reduce our worry and anxiety. So they are doing something about this damaging cycle. And the funny thing is… Japan ranks 4th in the world for Internet use, somewhere behind us.

I’m not telling you to stop using social media. I just encourage you to have balance. But more than that, I encourage you to be sure you are connecting to real people right in front of you each week. Go out to eat lunch with a friend, and don’t look at your phone the entire hour. Or do the same around the dinner table with your family.

And when you get together this week with your family for Thanksgiving – thank God for them and enjoy them. Don’t bury your face in your phone or tablet – enjoy the few hours you are with your loved ones. You all will have carved out several hours to come together – so use that time to reconnect to one another. There will be plenty of time to update your status after you tell them goodbye and are riding home with a full belly.

Categories
Relationships

With Whom Are You Praying?

“God is great, God is good. Let us thank Him for our food. By His hands, we are fed. Thank You Lord for daily bread. Amen.”

A lot of Christian parents seem to do a pretty good job of helping their children learn to pray at meals and even to say their bedtime prayers. Hurray! This is excellent.

But based on my conversations with these same parents, I have a sneaking suspicion that these moms and dads aren’t praying together. So my question to you today is – Are You Praying With Your Spouse?

What I sense is that wives desire for their husbands to step into that spiritual leader role in the family and to lead in prayer with and for them, but that we men often shy away from doing so. Husband, are you leading you wife in prayer?

Prayer together with your spouse is a MUST. “Your prayer life together is important. Sure, you might be able to have a good marriage without it, but that misses the point entirely. The real question here is this: Can my marriage meet God’s call without shared prayer?” The answer is, or course, a resounding No! “If there are never times when you desire prayer with your wife… then your prayer life is on life support and your life is out of balance” (from Every Man’s Challenge)

I have been surprised that when I have had people pray together with their spouses at church, I have had multiple couples come to me and say – “Thank You for making us do that. I had never before heard my spouse pray for me.” Would your spouse say something similar?

Men, step up and be that spiritual leader. Do it before tomorrow. Before you turn off the light and drift off to sleep tonight, simply say, “Honey, I think we should pray before we go to bed.” Start tonight. And then don’t stop – repeat it each night. Pray for your children together, pray for your parents, pray for you two AS parents, pray for each other. And then watch the difference it makes in your life and in your marriage!

Categories
Worship

Thinking Deeply About God

We all think about God.
But when we give thinking about God a name, such as “theology,” we think to ourselves –
b-o-o-o-o-o-o-ring!

Systematic Theology. It even sounds boring.
And then when we hear preachers talking about words like glorification, imputation, sanctification, and plenty of other long words, we say – obviously, my initial thoughts were right on target! This is no fun.

So we occasionally hear people say things like, “I don’t have any use for theology.”

“I love flowers, but I hate botany; I love Jesus, but I hate theology.”

Certainly, when we think of theology as an unnecessarily tedious study of something beautiful, we can “feel” that there is not much value in it. But that just isn’t true.

I think about my own experience with learning History in school. I hated it because my teachers were boring, the textbooks were dry, and I was forced to memorize dates and facts that I never could connect back to my life. But later on, when I read the “right” historians who knew how to share history with creativity and excitement, I realized the truth – that history is not only interesting, but that there is value in knowing history. Certainly at least in the fact of “Those who don’t remember the past are doomed to repeat it.”

Theology is similar. It can be miserable if presented poorly. But it is so very important, useful, and exciting as we learn more about our amazing God.

We all have our own beliefs about God. The study of God is to help us better understand Him so that we aren’t just relying on our own beliefs, which have the potential to get extremely clouded. By refusing to think deeply about God, we can find that we easily slip into bad theology.

“Theology can be dull, or much worse, it can be ruthless. In Christianity, however, the answer to bad theology can never be no theology. It must be good theology. God gave us minds, and he surely expects us to use them in thinking about his truth” (Bruce Shelley).

You’ve said to someone before, “We were just talking about you,” and you’ve probably heard this reply – “Well then you had a good subject!” And when we are thinking about God, we are thinking about the greatest subject.

Let’s learn to enjoy thinking deeply about our great God as He is the best subject we could possibly think about.

He tells us – whatever is true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, of good repute, excellence and if anything worthy of praise, think on these things. He is the pinnacle of all of these things; theology is the study of who He is. Let’s study Him – we’ll find He is ANYTHING BUT dull!

As an example in closing, here is a great quote that is a statement of theology, and the more I think about it, the more I am amazed by it…

“Christianity is the only major religion to have as its central event the humiliation of God” (Bruce Shelley).

Categories
Serving Others

Your Mission, If You Choose To Accept It…

“It is the duty of all men to repent and believe the gospel, therefore it is also the duty of those entrusted with the gospel to carry it to the whole world.” (William Carey)

Have you completed the first duty? How about the second?

(Begin humming the Mission Impossible Theme Song)

Over 200 years ago, William Carey wrote about five main objections that people had regarding missions to the “heathen” lands (today we might call them “foreign” lands). The five main objections people had were:

1. The long distance that must be traveled,
2. The barbaric nature of the native peoples,
3. The danger that would be incurred by those going,
4. The difficulties of raising and maintaining support, and
5. The unintelligible languages the native people would speak.

We might still want to raise some of these same objections as to why we are unwilling to fulfill this second duty or mission of ours. Carey’s general answer to all of the objections: the merchants of his day were willing to take these same risks in the hopes of making money. He said: “It only requires that we should have as much love for the souls of our fellow-man, and fellow sinners, as the merchants have for the profits arising from the sale of a few otter skins, and all these difficulties could be easily surmounted.”

Wow. Exactly.

Many people (including some of us) have been more serious about the mission to make money than we have been about the mission to take the gospel message to those different than us. Willing to face more risks. Willing to tackle difficult obstacles.

God, forgive us for being so willing to overcome many difficulties for our finances (and for our pleasures), while being so quick to give You insignificant excuses for why we won’t obediently take Your message to others.

Help us choose to accept our Mission.