This past Sunday was our Fifth Sunday pulpit swap and below is the message Pastor Debbie shared with you. I pray you were blessed, felt the presence of the Holy Spirit, and experienced God as Pastor Debbie lead you in worship!
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Introduction
Blondin was a 19th century acrobat, famous for his tightrope act 160 feet above Niagra Falls on a rope which was over a thousand feet long. In 1860 a Royal party from Britain saw Blondin cross the tightrope on stilts, and again blindfolded. After that he stopped halfway and cooked and ate an omelette. Next he wheeled a wheelbarrow from one side to the other, and returned with a sack of potatoes in it. Then Blondin approached the Royal party. He asked the Duke of Newcastle, "do you believe I could take a man across the tightrope in this wheelbarrow?" "Yes, I do" , said the Duke. "Hop in, then" , replied Blondin. Well, the Duke declined Blondin's challenge. He might have believed Blondin could do it, but he wasn't about to trust him with his life.
The call on the Christian is to have the sort of trust that makes us prepared to get in the wheelbarrow – to put our entire lives into God's hands. That’s the theme I want to explore with you today. Simply believing in God is no good. We are to have faith, and trust is the practical outworking of faith. For it is when we trust God that we show that our faith in Him is real. So how can we make sure that our trust is in the right place, in the God who created us and loves us? Our first Scripture lesson from the morning tells us. There are three commands here followed by a promise and we’re going to go briefly through each of them this morning.
Trust In the Lord With All Your Heart
The first command is "Trust in the LORD with all you heart." What does it mean to trust in the Lord? At the root of the Hebrew word for trust is the idea of lying helplessly on the ground. We see animals doing that sometime – small dogs especially will often lay down in the face of bigger aggressive dogs that approach them.
We are to put our trust in the LORD. The God who is our Creator, who holds the whole world in his hands, who loves us through his son Jesus Christ. He’s never given us a reason not to trust him. This God has never given us a reason not to trust Him. He has never let us down. He has never disappointed us. He is unlike every other god. When we compare them to God we quickly realize none of them are worthy of trust:
-For only God sent his only son to die for me and stamped “pardon” on my soul to save me from hell
-For only God gives me a peace that passes all understanding.
-For only God provides my every need and gives meaning and direction to my life.
-For only God brings healing and restores health.
Search the Scriptures – God has proven time and time again that He can be trusted.
"Trust in the LORD with all your heart." Heart here does not mean the organ inside Sally's chest that needed a valve replacement. It means the inner person. It means the center of our intellect and emotion and will and conscience and personality. It means that everything in us and about us is to trust in God. Total trust – not holding back any area of our mind, will or feeling. Can’t be piecemeal. We are not to pick and choose - OK, Lord, I will trust you with my marriage, but not with my career—, we are to trust him with our whole hearts and put our whole lives in his hands. The Christian, who has put his or her faith in God has to get into that wheelbarrow when God challenges us. We are to trust in the Lord with every fibre of our being.
Do you trust in the LORD with all your heart? Have you thrown yourself at His feet? Are you helpless before Him? Do you depend on His mercy and His love?
Lean Not On Your Own Understanding
The second command is "lean not on your own understanding." We see the Hebrew word for "lean" when blind Samson leaned against the huge pillars supporting the Philistine temple (Judges 16:26). We see it again when King Saul leaned upon his spear for support (2 Sam 1:16). It represents the idea of resting one's weight upon something.
"Lean not on your own understanding." We cannot rest our weight upon what we think or feel or dream or imagine. We need to admit we don't know everything, we don't understand everything, and too often we are just plain wrong.
Our second Scripture lesson from Jeremiah reminds us that the trouble starts in our own heart - “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? I the LORD search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve." (Jer. 17:9-10).
We see this with Sarah. God told the elderly Sarah she would have a child and become the mother of many nations. What an incredible, beautiful promise! But Sarah's human understanding quickly rose up and said, "Me, a mother at 90? Why, my womb is dead. My husband is an old man. It is impossible!" She laughed at the thought! A lot of what God says to us in His Word is simply too wonderful, unbelievable and incredible for us to believe. So our human understanding begins to ask, "How can this be? It is impossible!" Suddenly, our human understanding builds a hedge against God!
But Jeremiah also reminds us of what happens when we learn to follow God and not lean on our own understanding: But blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is in him. He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit." (Jer. 17:7-8).
"Lean not on your own understanding." Have you learned to do that? Do you take God at His Word? Do you listen to what He says in His Word? Do you spend much time with Him in secret?
In All Your Ways Acknowledge Him
The third command is "in all your ways acknowledge him." The Hebrew word translated "acknowledge" literally means "to know." We are to demonstrate that we know God in all our ways. We do this by keeping His commandments, by doing things His way. So in everything you do, in everywhere you go, in everything you think, in everything you plan, at all times keep on confessing and recognizing God as the Lord of your life. Surrender yourself to Him so His plans becomes your plans, His will your will, and His desires your desires. He wants to rule supreme in your life.
"In all your ways acknowledge him." Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego acknowledged Him and were thrown into the furnace. Daniel acknowledged Him and was thrown into the lions' den. Paul and Silas acknowledged Him and were stripped and beaten and whipped and thrown into prison with stocks on their feet. Stephen acknowledged Him and was stoned to death. Joseph acknowledged Him and spent 2 miserable years in an Egyptian jail.
"In all your ways acknowledge him." Do you acknowledge Him? Have you surrendered to Him completely? Regardless of the cost? Regardless of what people say or think? Regardless of what you yourself might want?
And He Will Make Your Paths Straight
What is the promise that we find in our text? Verse 6 states the promise: "he will make your paths straight." The Hebrew term means "to make smooth, straight, right." Obstacles that are in the way are removed. Roads that curve back and forth are straightened out. Valleys are filled. Mountains are made low.
"He will make your paths straight." I think of Israel at the time of the Exodus. The Egyptians are behind them. The Red Sea is in front of them. And the Lord God divided the waters so the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground. That happened again at the Jordan River as the children of Israel entered the Promised Land.
In the Book of Daniel we read about Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They refused to bow before the golden image made by King Nebuchadnezzar. So they were thrown into a blazing hot furnace. But when the king looked, he saw four men walking around in the fire, unbound and unharmed. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego came out without a burn mark on them, and they didn't even smell of smoke.
We can think of the time Paul and Silas are in jail. They have been stripped and beaten and flogged. They are in an inner cell and their feet are fastened in stocks. But instead of feeling sorry for themselves they are praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners are listening to them. And God sent such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison are shaken and all the prison doors fly open and everybody's chains fall off.
If we do things our own way, we are responsible for the outcome. But when we do things God’s way, He takes responsibility for the outcome. The result is that “...He will make your paths straight.” Do you see what God does? He opens a path through the sea and across the river, He stands with His children in a fiery furnace, He breaks the chains of bondage and opens the doors of captivity.
Conclusion
Every time you handle a piece of money, the inscription reads “In God We Trust.” Do we really? Faith is believing without seeing. Trust is putting our faith into action. More than anything else, trust is the true reflection of our relationship with God. It’s not automatic – it needs to be nurtured and grow over time.
And the promise of God to you is this – that if you follow his commands to trust, lean and acknowledge you will end up with straight paths. The choice is ours. Either we can trust in ourselves or in others and be cursed, or we can put our full trust in God and be blessed in spite of the circumstances around us, or the obstacles in our path. Which way will you choose?
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Bible Challenge 1/30 - 2/5
Greetings All!I hope all is well and that you are enjoying reading through Acts. This week has a little more pace to it as we finish up Acts, move through Romans, and get into 1 Corinthians. Without any further adeiu...here is the schedule.
1/30, Sunday: Acts 28 - Romans 3
1/31, Monday: Romans 4-7
2/1, Tuesday: Romans 8-11
2/2, Wednesday: Romans 12-15
2/3, Thursday: Romans 16 - 1 Corinthians 3
2/4, Friday: 1 Corinthians 4-7
2/5, Saturday: 1 Corinthians 8-11
Be Blessed!
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Sunshine Herald February 2011
Read it before you can pick it up!! Here is February's Edition of the church newsletter. Enjoy!
FebNwsLtr11
FebNwsLtr11
Sunday, January 23, 2011
God's Will For My Life - Colossians 1:9-10 and Romans 12:1-2
Introduction
Doug Batchelor, in his book: Determining the Will of God, tells the story about a Farmer who was trying desperately to know God’s Will. Everyday he would go out in his fields and as he was working the fields he would pray, “God, what is your will for my life? What do you want me to do with my life? Please, show me your will?” One day, while he was praying, he looked up and he saw an interesting cloud formation, moving over the horizon towards where he was. He looked up just as it drifted overhead, it began to morph into what looked like the letters “P” and “C”. And he said, “PC … Is that a sign from God? What does that mean? God, what is it you are trying to tell me?” And all of the sudden it struck him, “Preach Christ! It was like an energy went through him. “God wants me to leave farming and preach Christ!” So he sold his farm equipment and he gave up the land and he went out to preach Christ. He sent letters to all the surrounding churches telling them “If you need somebody to preach, I'm you man. Please, God has called me to preach Christ.” So he went out and started preaching, with no training whatsoever. He just knew that God had called him to preach Christ. He preached his very first sermon and it was horrible. It was so bad and he was so embarrassed. So he started to read about how to preach and he tried to learn from others. Then he went to the second church that called him and it was even worse than the first time. This continued to happen each week. He would go out and give it the best shot he had and each week it was dreadful. Until finally, after several months, people stopped calling him to preach. Finally, he realized that he couldn’t survive this way. So, he went back to farming. He bought all of his old equipment back and took over the ground again and began planting. That Spring, some of his old farming buddies came by and they asked him, “What happened? We thought you quit farming and were going out to preach Christ.” He said, “Well, I finally realized what PC stood for. It stood for “plant corn.”
Sometimes, it’s hard to figure out God’s will for our lives. You know, we look for the signs, try and read the signs, but even then we are not really sure how specific God's will is for our lives. So those are the kinds of questions that we are going to be wrestling with today. Over the last three weeks, we’ve been pondering some really important faith questions. We started with the question of God and suffering by asking if suffering is God's will. And I begged you to rethink what we naturally tend to say when we see something terrible happen, that it must be God's plan or God's will. I tried to teach you through Scripture that there are a whole lot of things that happen that are not God's will and that we have to be careful about what we attribute to God. Last week, we talked about unanswered prayer, about how we pray and pray for something and when it doesn't come through we get disappointed with God and how part of that is because maybe we don't have clear expectations of how God works in the world or how prayer works. Today, we want to really focus on how can we know the will of God, how specific is the will of God, and what does it mean to act upon the will of God?
How Specific is God's Will?
Let’s begin by recognizing that there are typically three answers given by Christians when it comes to how specific God’s will is. The first one, sometimes associated with hyper-Calvinism, is called Determinism. In this case the believers answer that God predetermined everything that is going to happen in your life before it came to be because God is in control and we only have the illusion of free choice. Now, on one hand, this seems to make sense, and there are Scriptures that seem to support this idea. But on the other hand, it’s a paradox. I mean, is this how life really is? Under this scenario, God has pre-written the script for your life, every detail scripted out, Daryl Allen's Life Story – Scripted by God. Now, you probably know that most United Methodists do not subscribe to this idea of God’s sovereignty and control over the world, but some people do.
Another view, would say that God does have a perfect plan for your life and that God does have a will for everyday and every action of your life, but God gives you free will. God still has a script for your life, but God allows you to enter in the manuscript and say, via God's permissive will, “you know what? I don't like that part. I don't like that paragraph either.” When this happens we are straying from the path that God wants us to take, but in God’s grace and mercy, God adjusts the rest of the script. If we change this page, then God has to change all the rest of the pages. The problem is that tomorrow we change something else and God has to re-write the rest of the script again. And the day after that, the same thing happens. So every day, God is adjusting the script due to our free will.
Now, this makes more sense to me than the first idea of God predetermining everything, but here’s another idea to consider. If we are using this metaphor of God writing a script or a plan for our lives, I wonder if would make more sense to look at it more like a journal, where all the pages are blank. I wonder if God hasn’t said to us, “I've given you life. I've given you a genetic make-up with certain gifts and abilities. I've given you a family of origin that has shaped your life and values. I am going to come along side you and My Holy Spirit is going to work with you. You have the Scriptures to teach you how I want you to live. And together we're going to write the novel that is your life story.” God gives us the freedom to write it by ourselves if we choose to, but God gives us no guarantees that it will be any good. On the other hand, if we allow God to be a part of writing of the story of our lives, it will be a story of faith and courage in the face of doubt and danger. It will be a story of grace and mercy. It will be a story of perseverance that ends with hope and triumph. God says, “That‟s the story I want to write with your life, if you will let me write it with you.” Together, we write a story of great faith, hope, courage, and love.
To me, this seems to make the most sense, especially when I think about some of the Biblical characters like Abraham. It doesn’t appear that Abraham was given a predetermined plan by God at the beginning of his life. The Bible doesn’t tell us anything about Abraham until he’s 75 years old. Presumably, he lived his life trying to walk with God. The ordinary stuff of life happened. He married. He had a career raising livestock. He moved to different places. It was just an ordinary life of walking with God and finally, at the age of 75, God says, “Now, here's the climatic ending.” God invites Abraham to join Him in an event that would change history forever. He said, “Abraham, I have blessed you all of your life, so that you might be a blessing to others. I'm going to ask you and Sara to leave your comfortable home in retirement and to travel to a land you've never been to before. I'm even going to give you a child in your old age. I'm going to bless you with descendants as numerous as the stars in the skies. And all the nations of the earth will be blessed through you.” Abraham had a choice. Abraham could have said, “Okay God, I'm on board. Let's go for the adventure!” Or he could have said, “I'm sorry, Lord, but I'm just too old for that. My knees ache and my back hurts. I'm just too tired for that.” But Abraham said yes and God started a new chapter in Abraham’s life. Part of what I love about this story, is that God didn’t begin his greatest work in Abraham until he was 75 years old. How cool is that! Moses was 80 years old when God called him to go to Pharaoh and set his people free! What this says to us, is that God is not finished with this book of the story of your life, until you breathe your last. C.S. Lewis says that everything that is written in your entire life is just the preface to the great adventure that God has for us after this life is over.
So, maybe God’s will is a process of God’s Holy Spirit working in our lives with each of us taking seriously what the Scriptures tell us about God's will, and we are writing the story with God each day. However it works, it is helpful for us to ponder about what God’s will typically looks like. No matter which answer you give to that question of “how specific God’s will is.” What we recognize is that most of the time, we’re not going to know the big, amazing plans that God has for us. We’re not going to know what’s going to happen in the future, so that we can prepare for it. What we have to do is to get up every day and try to live out God’s will for our lives in so far as we know it.
How Do We Know?
So the best way to know God's will is to read it in Scripture. Look for the basic principles outlined in it. Look for the truth this is applicable to our lives and through that allow God to speak to us. Now once we know the basic principles outlined in the Scriptures, when we come up against a situation where we want to know what God’s will is, we can say, “Well, the Scriptures say that I am to keep the Sabbath Day and keep it holy.” So, we take care of ourselves and don’t take a job that has us working 7 days a week. Or when we are being tempted to say things about another person that paints them in an unkind light, we remember the commandment: Do not bear false witness. You get the idea. But Jesus says that if you can’t remember all the commandments in the Bible … just remember two. These two will guide you in almost every situation and guide you to do God's will. They are: To love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and your neighbor as yourself.”
We look at the passage that we have before us today, from Paul’s letter to the Colossians, and we hear how we are to live in God’s will. Listen to these words again: “We have not ceased praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God‟s will. What is God's will? He continues, so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God.”
Sometimes, we think that God has this big, dramatic plan for our lives that we need to figure out. But, it’s important that you realize that most of the time, God’s plan for your life is not something big and dramatic. Often, it’s simply showing up and paying attention. Doing those things that are according to Scripture, those things we are prompted to do by the Holy Spirit, those things that God reveals to us in Scripture. You live this way 365 days a year for 80 or more years, you will be accomplishing something great with your life for God.
Two years ago Debbie and I were in the Holy Land. One day we stopped to see an oasis. We were quickly met by a group of Bedouin children. These children were very poor and you could look at them and tell they did not eat often. We had just finished lunch and Debbie and I did not eat our dessert or our fruit. We were saving it for later. We went back on the bus, got that food, and gave it to the kids. One little girl, through her tears said shoo-kran, thank you. You know sometimes doing the will of God is giving somebody else your bananna or your twinkie. I think that is what the will of God looks like.
We Need to Discern
Now, sometimes we have important decisions to make and we want to know God’s will in those situations. We want to know which college to attend, who we should marry, what career to take. How do we know God’s will then? Well, we pray about those things and we should pray. But it may be that God doesn’t really have a clear choice for us in those matters. I mean God may not care if you go to the University of Florida...God might even let you go to Florida State and maybe that would be okay. But the thing to remember is that whatever college you go to remember that God says, you know what? I'm okay with whatever choice you make. As long as when you go to college, you remember who you are and you love other people. You pray about what career or job you should take and God says, I don‟t really care which job you choose as long as you seek to bless others and love me. Sometimes, this is what God’s will looks like. But when we pray, there are ways that we can begin to discern God’s will and some of these are very simple.
How do we do that?
One way is to read and pray through the Scriptures. Sometimes, we discern God’s will through our conscience. God’s Holy Spirit nudges us through our conscience and we have to learn to listen for that. Sometimes, it’s being with other Christians in small groups or friendships and God speaks through them as we pray and share together. Coming to church is an important part of discerning God’s will for our lives. Every week, we pray that God will speak to you through some part of the worship service. So, God makes His will known to us in these ways and others. But the problem for most of us, is not that we don’t know God’s will. We just don’t want to do it. We pray and read the Scriptures, and we’re hearing the same thing over and over again, but we’re hoping that the next time we pray, God’s going to change His mind.
We need to recognize that part of where we come from when we’re trying to discern God’s will. We need to see that cultural value is often in conflict with God’s will. In our culture, what we’re supposed to strive for in life is ease, comfort, convenience, and safety. These have become our primary values in life. But when you read the Bible, you find that this is really not what God is after in His will for your life. Many times, God’s will is going to lead you to sacrifice; to discomfort; it’s going to stretch you and to challenge you and will make you risk certain things.
Jesus said it this way in the Sermon on the Mount. He said, “There are two roads in life. There is one that is broad and wide and it's downhill, easy, comfortable, and convenient. But it leads to destruction.” And then, “there‟s a narrow road that is hard and difficult, and it‟s uphill, but it leads to life.”
In the script that you are writing with God about your life’s story, there are things that God is inviting you to do. You hear this idea at church or from somewhere else and you feel that nudge from God to do this. But the moment you hear it, you say, oh, I don‟t want to do that. I mean imagine Abraham when God said, “I want you to go to the Promised Land.” Can you imagine all the excuses Abraham could have come up with? He’s 75 years old and being asked to uproot everything and go somewhere he’s never been to before. Or Joseph, Abraham's great-grandson, who ended up as a slave in Egypt and then in prison … do you think he wanted that? And yet, God was at work in the middle of all that. Or you think about Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, “Father, take this cup from me. Yet, not my will, but Thy will be done.” And, as he’s praying for God’s will to be done, he knows he’s praying to be nailed to a Cross.
When you go back and read the story of your life and you look at those places where you actually said yes instead of no even though you felt like saying no, you find that the best moments of your life were in those moments when you said yes to God, even though you didn’t want to do it at first. If you never say yes to those things that stretch you, that are hard, and challenging, and uncomfortable, you’re going to find that when you get to the end of the book you really missed out. God’s will is sometimes going to be the difficult, hard, challenging, and narrow way in life.
So, what we have to do is to learn to surrender our plans to God’s plans. It’s not that God has every detail of your life planned out, but God’s plan for your life looks something like this. Jesus said it at the end of Matthew 6: Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things that you worry about will be taken care of. Love God and love your neighbor as yourself. Do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God. So, we invite God to lay out the narrative for every day. Here I am again, God. Let's write today's page. God has a way of nudging, guiding, and leading us when we put ourselves in the center of God’s will. Then when you find yourself at the end of the novel, it was a great adventure after all.
Now we are all going to have chapters of pain, grief, uncertainty, and desolation. But the one thing we have learned in this series is that God doesn’t cause the bad things to happen to us. But when we entrust our lives to Him, God can redeem those moments and do great things through us. And today, what I hope you’ve heard is God saying to you that, if you trust me and don't let go, your darkest moments are an opportunity. They are an opportunity for My light to shine though you. An opportunity for things to happen in you you can't see. If you will trust me this chapter may have a few more pages before we are done with it. But it is not the end of the story for you. That is the promise of God, your story is not finished yet! Trust me and I will see you through.
Conclusion – The Preferred Ending
Now, I do believe that God has a preferred ending to the story of your life. Over the course of your life, there will be interesting twists and turns that God will work through with us, but I think that when we get to the end of the story, God has already written the last paragraph. And He’s hoping that you will allow this to stand.
It goes like this: She sought to live life worthy of the Lord and pleasing to Him. He bore fruit in every good work and throughout his life, he was growing deeper in his knowledge of God. And when she breathed her last, she heard God say, Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into your rest.
And that I think is God's will for your life.
Prayer:
Lord I offer my life to you
Lead me and guide me
Help me to do your will
To love you with all my heart
To love my neighbor
When I am scared Lord, help me to trust you
I invite you to write the story of my life with me
And when I come to the end,
I hope to meet You face to face
and hear You say...Well done. Amen.
Doug Batchelor, in his book: Determining the Will of God, tells the story about a Farmer who was trying desperately to know God’s Will. Everyday he would go out in his fields and as he was working the fields he would pray, “God, what is your will for my life? What do you want me to do with my life? Please, show me your will?” One day, while he was praying, he looked up and he saw an interesting cloud formation, moving over the horizon towards where he was. He looked up just as it drifted overhead, it began to morph into what looked like the letters “P” and “C”. And he said, “PC … Is that a sign from God? What does that mean? God, what is it you are trying to tell me?” And all of the sudden it struck him, “Preach Christ! It was like an energy went through him. “God wants me to leave farming and preach Christ!” So he sold his farm equipment and he gave up the land and he went out to preach Christ. He sent letters to all the surrounding churches telling them “If you need somebody to preach, I'm you man. Please, God has called me to preach Christ.” So he went out and started preaching, with no training whatsoever. He just knew that God had called him to preach Christ. He preached his very first sermon and it was horrible. It was so bad and he was so embarrassed. So he started to read about how to preach and he tried to learn from others. Then he went to the second church that called him and it was even worse than the first time. This continued to happen each week. He would go out and give it the best shot he had and each week it was dreadful. Until finally, after several months, people stopped calling him to preach. Finally, he realized that he couldn’t survive this way. So, he went back to farming. He bought all of his old equipment back and took over the ground again and began planting. That Spring, some of his old farming buddies came by and they asked him, “What happened? We thought you quit farming and were going out to preach Christ.” He said, “Well, I finally realized what PC stood for. It stood for “plant corn.”
Sometimes, it’s hard to figure out God’s will for our lives. You know, we look for the signs, try and read the signs, but even then we are not really sure how specific God's will is for our lives. So those are the kinds of questions that we are going to be wrestling with today. Over the last three weeks, we’ve been pondering some really important faith questions. We started with the question of God and suffering by asking if suffering is God's will. And I begged you to rethink what we naturally tend to say when we see something terrible happen, that it must be God's plan or God's will. I tried to teach you through Scripture that there are a whole lot of things that happen that are not God's will and that we have to be careful about what we attribute to God. Last week, we talked about unanswered prayer, about how we pray and pray for something and when it doesn't come through we get disappointed with God and how part of that is because maybe we don't have clear expectations of how God works in the world or how prayer works. Today, we want to really focus on how can we know the will of God, how specific is the will of God, and what does it mean to act upon the will of God?
How Specific is God's Will?
Let’s begin by recognizing that there are typically three answers given by Christians when it comes to how specific God’s will is. The first one, sometimes associated with hyper-Calvinism, is called Determinism. In this case the believers answer that God predetermined everything that is going to happen in your life before it came to be because God is in control and we only have the illusion of free choice. Now, on one hand, this seems to make sense, and there are Scriptures that seem to support this idea. But on the other hand, it’s a paradox. I mean, is this how life really is? Under this scenario, God has pre-written the script for your life, every detail scripted out, Daryl Allen's Life Story – Scripted by God. Now, you probably know that most United Methodists do not subscribe to this idea of God’s sovereignty and control over the world, but some people do.
Another view, would say that God does have a perfect plan for your life and that God does have a will for everyday and every action of your life, but God gives you free will. God still has a script for your life, but God allows you to enter in the manuscript and say, via God's permissive will, “you know what? I don't like that part. I don't like that paragraph either.” When this happens we are straying from the path that God wants us to take, but in God’s grace and mercy, God adjusts the rest of the script. If we change this page, then God has to change all the rest of the pages. The problem is that tomorrow we change something else and God has to re-write the rest of the script again. And the day after that, the same thing happens. So every day, God is adjusting the script due to our free will.
Now, this makes more sense to me than the first idea of God predetermining everything, but here’s another idea to consider. If we are using this metaphor of God writing a script or a plan for our lives, I wonder if would make more sense to look at it more like a journal, where all the pages are blank. I wonder if God hasn’t said to us, “I've given you life. I've given you a genetic make-up with certain gifts and abilities. I've given you a family of origin that has shaped your life and values. I am going to come along side you and My Holy Spirit is going to work with you. You have the Scriptures to teach you how I want you to live. And together we're going to write the novel that is your life story.” God gives us the freedom to write it by ourselves if we choose to, but God gives us no guarantees that it will be any good. On the other hand, if we allow God to be a part of writing of the story of our lives, it will be a story of faith and courage in the face of doubt and danger. It will be a story of grace and mercy. It will be a story of perseverance that ends with hope and triumph. God says, “That‟s the story I want to write with your life, if you will let me write it with you.” Together, we write a story of great faith, hope, courage, and love.
To me, this seems to make the most sense, especially when I think about some of the Biblical characters like Abraham. It doesn’t appear that Abraham was given a predetermined plan by God at the beginning of his life. The Bible doesn’t tell us anything about Abraham until he’s 75 years old. Presumably, he lived his life trying to walk with God. The ordinary stuff of life happened. He married. He had a career raising livestock. He moved to different places. It was just an ordinary life of walking with God and finally, at the age of 75, God says, “Now, here's the climatic ending.” God invites Abraham to join Him in an event that would change history forever. He said, “Abraham, I have blessed you all of your life, so that you might be a blessing to others. I'm going to ask you and Sara to leave your comfortable home in retirement and to travel to a land you've never been to before. I'm even going to give you a child in your old age. I'm going to bless you with descendants as numerous as the stars in the skies. And all the nations of the earth will be blessed through you.” Abraham had a choice. Abraham could have said, “Okay God, I'm on board. Let's go for the adventure!” Or he could have said, “I'm sorry, Lord, but I'm just too old for that. My knees ache and my back hurts. I'm just too tired for that.” But Abraham said yes and God started a new chapter in Abraham’s life. Part of what I love about this story, is that God didn’t begin his greatest work in Abraham until he was 75 years old. How cool is that! Moses was 80 years old when God called him to go to Pharaoh and set his people free! What this says to us, is that God is not finished with this book of the story of your life, until you breathe your last. C.S. Lewis says that everything that is written in your entire life is just the preface to the great adventure that God has for us after this life is over.
So, maybe God’s will is a process of God’s Holy Spirit working in our lives with each of us taking seriously what the Scriptures tell us about God's will, and we are writing the story with God each day. However it works, it is helpful for us to ponder about what God’s will typically looks like. No matter which answer you give to that question of “how specific God’s will is.” What we recognize is that most of the time, we’re not going to know the big, amazing plans that God has for us. We’re not going to know what’s going to happen in the future, so that we can prepare for it. What we have to do is to get up every day and try to live out God’s will for our lives in so far as we know it.
How Do We Know?
So the best way to know God's will is to read it in Scripture. Look for the basic principles outlined in it. Look for the truth this is applicable to our lives and through that allow God to speak to us. Now once we know the basic principles outlined in the Scriptures, when we come up against a situation where we want to know what God’s will is, we can say, “Well, the Scriptures say that I am to keep the Sabbath Day and keep it holy.” So, we take care of ourselves and don’t take a job that has us working 7 days a week. Or when we are being tempted to say things about another person that paints them in an unkind light, we remember the commandment: Do not bear false witness. You get the idea. But Jesus says that if you can’t remember all the commandments in the Bible … just remember two. These two will guide you in almost every situation and guide you to do God's will. They are: To love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and your neighbor as yourself.”
We look at the passage that we have before us today, from Paul’s letter to the Colossians, and we hear how we are to live in God’s will. Listen to these words again: “We have not ceased praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God‟s will. What is God's will? He continues, so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God.”
Sometimes, we think that God has this big, dramatic plan for our lives that we need to figure out. But, it’s important that you realize that most of the time, God’s plan for your life is not something big and dramatic. Often, it’s simply showing up and paying attention. Doing those things that are according to Scripture, those things we are prompted to do by the Holy Spirit, those things that God reveals to us in Scripture. You live this way 365 days a year for 80 or more years, you will be accomplishing something great with your life for God.
Two years ago Debbie and I were in the Holy Land. One day we stopped to see an oasis. We were quickly met by a group of Bedouin children. These children were very poor and you could look at them and tell they did not eat often. We had just finished lunch and Debbie and I did not eat our dessert or our fruit. We were saving it for later. We went back on the bus, got that food, and gave it to the kids. One little girl, through her tears said shoo-kran, thank you. You know sometimes doing the will of God is giving somebody else your bananna or your twinkie. I think that is what the will of God looks like.
We Need to Discern
Now, sometimes we have important decisions to make and we want to know God’s will in those situations. We want to know which college to attend, who we should marry, what career to take. How do we know God’s will then? Well, we pray about those things and we should pray. But it may be that God doesn’t really have a clear choice for us in those matters. I mean God may not care if you go to the University of Florida...God might even let you go to Florida State and maybe that would be okay. But the thing to remember is that whatever college you go to remember that God says, you know what? I'm okay with whatever choice you make. As long as when you go to college, you remember who you are and you love other people. You pray about what career or job you should take and God says, I don‟t really care which job you choose as long as you seek to bless others and love me. Sometimes, this is what God’s will looks like. But when we pray, there are ways that we can begin to discern God’s will and some of these are very simple.
How do we do that?
One way is to read and pray through the Scriptures. Sometimes, we discern God’s will through our conscience. God’s Holy Spirit nudges us through our conscience and we have to learn to listen for that. Sometimes, it’s being with other Christians in small groups or friendships and God speaks through them as we pray and share together. Coming to church is an important part of discerning God’s will for our lives. Every week, we pray that God will speak to you through some part of the worship service. So, God makes His will known to us in these ways and others. But the problem for most of us, is not that we don’t know God’s will. We just don’t want to do it. We pray and read the Scriptures, and we’re hearing the same thing over and over again, but we’re hoping that the next time we pray, God’s going to change His mind.
We need to recognize that part of where we come from when we’re trying to discern God’s will. We need to see that cultural value is often in conflict with God’s will. In our culture, what we’re supposed to strive for in life is ease, comfort, convenience, and safety. These have become our primary values in life. But when you read the Bible, you find that this is really not what God is after in His will for your life. Many times, God’s will is going to lead you to sacrifice; to discomfort; it’s going to stretch you and to challenge you and will make you risk certain things.
Jesus said it this way in the Sermon on the Mount. He said, “There are two roads in life. There is one that is broad and wide and it's downhill, easy, comfortable, and convenient. But it leads to destruction.” And then, “there‟s a narrow road that is hard and difficult, and it‟s uphill, but it leads to life.”
In the script that you are writing with God about your life’s story, there are things that God is inviting you to do. You hear this idea at church or from somewhere else and you feel that nudge from God to do this. But the moment you hear it, you say, oh, I don‟t want to do that. I mean imagine Abraham when God said, “I want you to go to the Promised Land.” Can you imagine all the excuses Abraham could have come up with? He’s 75 years old and being asked to uproot everything and go somewhere he’s never been to before. Or Joseph, Abraham's great-grandson, who ended up as a slave in Egypt and then in prison … do you think he wanted that? And yet, God was at work in the middle of all that. Or you think about Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, “Father, take this cup from me. Yet, not my will, but Thy will be done.” And, as he’s praying for God’s will to be done, he knows he’s praying to be nailed to a Cross.
When you go back and read the story of your life and you look at those places where you actually said yes instead of no even though you felt like saying no, you find that the best moments of your life were in those moments when you said yes to God, even though you didn’t want to do it at first. If you never say yes to those things that stretch you, that are hard, and challenging, and uncomfortable, you’re going to find that when you get to the end of the book you really missed out. God’s will is sometimes going to be the difficult, hard, challenging, and narrow way in life.
So, what we have to do is to learn to surrender our plans to God’s plans. It’s not that God has every detail of your life planned out, but God’s plan for your life looks something like this. Jesus said it at the end of Matthew 6: Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things that you worry about will be taken care of. Love God and love your neighbor as yourself. Do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God. So, we invite God to lay out the narrative for every day. Here I am again, God. Let's write today's page. God has a way of nudging, guiding, and leading us when we put ourselves in the center of God’s will. Then when you find yourself at the end of the novel, it was a great adventure after all.
Now we are all going to have chapters of pain, grief, uncertainty, and desolation. But the one thing we have learned in this series is that God doesn’t cause the bad things to happen to us. But when we entrust our lives to Him, God can redeem those moments and do great things through us. And today, what I hope you’ve heard is God saying to you that, if you trust me and don't let go, your darkest moments are an opportunity. They are an opportunity for My light to shine though you. An opportunity for things to happen in you you can't see. If you will trust me this chapter may have a few more pages before we are done with it. But it is not the end of the story for you. That is the promise of God, your story is not finished yet! Trust me and I will see you through.
Conclusion – The Preferred Ending
Now, I do believe that God has a preferred ending to the story of your life. Over the course of your life, there will be interesting twists and turns that God will work through with us, but I think that when we get to the end of the story, God has already written the last paragraph. And He’s hoping that you will allow this to stand.
It goes like this: She sought to live life worthy of the Lord and pleasing to Him. He bore fruit in every good work and throughout his life, he was growing deeper in his knowledge of God. And when she breathed her last, she heard God say, Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into your rest.
And that I think is God's will for your life.
Prayer:
Lord I offer my life to you
Lead me and guide me
Help me to do your will
To love you with all my heart
To love my neighbor
When I am scared Lord, help me to trust you
I invite you to write the story of my life with me
And when I come to the end,
I hope to meet You face to face
and hear You say...Well done. Amen.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Bible Challenge 1/23 - 1/29
Good Morning Fellow Bible Challenge Readers!
I hope you have enjoyed your time this year enveloped in God's Word. I love to go through the Gospels and read of the miracles Christ performed and the wisdom contained in His teachings. I also love to see how each of those authors see the same event. It is truly remarkable to see what each person thought was the most important and how they chose to record and mark these wonderful events, reactions, and witnesses.
This week we finish up John and move into the beginnings of the early church, Acts. I urge you to look at the early church and see what we here at Druid Hills might be able to adopt to help us emulate the passion of these early believers and take our worship and ministry to the next level!
Here is the schedule for this week:
1/23, Sunday: John 21 - Acts 3
1/24, Monday: Acts 4-7
1/25, Tuesday: Acts 8-11
1/26, Wednesday: Acts 12-15
1/27, Thursday: Acts 16-19
1/28, Friday: Acts 20-23
1/29, Saturday: Acts 24-27
Be Blessed!
I hope you have enjoyed your time this year enveloped in God's Word. I love to go through the Gospels and read of the miracles Christ performed and the wisdom contained in His teachings. I also love to see how each of those authors see the same event. It is truly remarkable to see what each person thought was the most important and how they chose to record and mark these wonderful events, reactions, and witnesses. This week we finish up John and move into the beginnings of the early church, Acts. I urge you to look at the early church and see what we here at Druid Hills might be able to adopt to help us emulate the passion of these early believers and take our worship and ministry to the next level!
Here is the schedule for this week:
1/23, Sunday: John 21 - Acts 3
1/24, Monday: Acts 4-7
1/25, Tuesday: Acts 8-11
1/26, Wednesday: Acts 12-15
1/27, Thursday: Acts 16-19
1/28, Friday: Acts 20-23
1/29, Saturday: Acts 24-27
Be Blessed!
Friday, January 21, 2011
Friday Fives
1. Preaching Series - This Sunday we will conclude our sermon series focusing on answering those difficult questions concerning God's role in the evil and suffering of this world, why some of our prayers go unanswered, and how we can best make sense of God's will for our life. This week we will look at discerning God's Will for our lives; specifically, how to know the will of God, how specific is the will of God, and what does it mean to act upon the will of God. Invite a friend and I hope to see all of you there!
2. Pulpit Swap - Next week, January 30th, Pastor Debbie and I will be swapping pulpits as part of our efforts to to engage with each others church. That means Pastor Debbie will here to lead worship. I encourage you to bring a friend and come and hear Pastor Debbie as she brings you her warmth and passion for God's Word that I know will bless you.
3. Bible Study – Next week we will continue our Bible Study called, When Christians Get It Wrong, by Adam Hamilton.
Have you ever wondered why people do not go or have stopped going to church? Have you ever considered that it may be because of the people inside? Please join me in this study as we examine those attitudes and beliefs that drive people away.
As followers of Christ our impact can be so much stronger when we get it right. To this point we have looked at when Christians get it wrong and how to speak about science and politics. Next week we will look at ways to talk about other religions. Please join me in learning how we can be advocates and rather than stumbling blocks in bring people to Christ.
This study meets every Thursday through February 17th. We will meet in the Fellowship Hall at 11AM and if that does not fit your schedule I will offer it again at 7PM as well. I hope you will come and join us in what is always a great time of learning and fun!
4. Salty Service - A few months back I asked everyone to consider joining up together in groups to venture out and visit some of the residents in the many assisted living and rehab facilities around our church. There are many people there that get no visitors, and we are so good with fellowship, I see a need and a spiritual gift that can easily be paired up. I wanted to give everyone an update on how this budding ministry is progressing. We have three members that have reached out and began weekly visits to three different facilities. We also have a group of people that have formed to begin visits with a fifth facility. We have several contacts at area facilities, all we need is volunteers. Many people make light work. If you are willing to spend just a few hours a month visiting with people and sharing the love of Christ please contact the office and we can help you get connected. Please consider reaching out to the people in our area and let them know we care and in the name of Jesus Christ that they are loved.
5. Wanna Help? – Have you been looking for a way to volunteer here at Druid Hills? Are you just not sure where to start or who to ask? This February we will host a Ministry Fair here at the church. We will open up all the volunteer ministries of the church and give all of you a chance to sign up and get connected. Watch this space for more information and details!
Have an incredible weekend and see you Sunday!
2. Pulpit Swap - Next week, January 30th, Pastor Debbie and I will be swapping pulpits as part of our efforts to to engage with each others church. That means Pastor Debbie will here to lead worship. I encourage you to bring a friend and come and hear Pastor Debbie as she brings you her warmth and passion for God's Word that I know will bless you.
3. Bible Study – Next week we will continue our Bible Study called, When Christians Get It Wrong, by Adam Hamilton.
Have you ever wondered why people do not go or have stopped going to church? Have you ever considered that it may be because of the people inside? Please join me in this study as we examine those attitudes and beliefs that drive people away.As followers of Christ our impact can be so much stronger when we get it right. To this point we have looked at when Christians get it wrong and how to speak about science and politics. Next week we will look at ways to talk about other religions. Please join me in learning how we can be advocates and rather than stumbling blocks in bring people to Christ.
This study meets every Thursday through February 17th. We will meet in the Fellowship Hall at 11AM and if that does not fit your schedule I will offer it again at 7PM as well. I hope you will come and join us in what is always a great time of learning and fun!
4. Salty Service - A few months back I asked everyone to consider joining up together in groups to venture out and visit some of the residents in the many assisted living and rehab facilities around our church. There are many people there that get no visitors, and we are so good with fellowship, I see a need and a spiritual gift that can easily be paired up. I wanted to give everyone an update on how this budding ministry is progressing. We have three members that have reached out and began weekly visits to three different facilities. We also have a group of people that have formed to begin visits with a fifth facility. We have several contacts at area facilities, all we need is volunteers. Many people make light work. If you are willing to spend just a few hours a month visiting with people and sharing the love of Christ please contact the office and we can help you get connected. Please consider reaching out to the people in our area and let them know we care and in the name of Jesus Christ that they are loved.
5. Wanna Help? – Have you been looking for a way to volunteer here at Druid Hills? Are you just not sure where to start or who to ask? This February we will host a Ministry Fair here at the church. We will open up all the volunteer ministries of the church and give all of you a chance to sign up and get connected. Watch this space for more information and details!
Have an incredible weekend and see you Sunday!
Sunday, January 16, 2011
When Prayers Go Unanswered – Psalm 22:2 and Luke 22:42
Introduction
Today we are going to continue our series aimed at how God's will can be at work in a world with suffering, evil, and unanswered prayers, and where can we find God in all of this. Today we are going to concentrate on the aspect of unanswered prayer. Specifically why this happens, what it means, and what our response should be.
Unanswered Prayer Can Be Devastating
There was woman that wrote her pastor because she was struggling with the question of unanswered prayer. She and her husband had been trying to have a baby for a long time. For years they had both been praying and praying that God would bless them with a baby. They went through fertility treatments and kept trying and kept praying and finally they were pregnant. It was wonderful! God had finally blessed them with a baby. But almost from the start of the pregnancy she was very sick. This lasted for several months and finally by the fifth month she was so deathly sick the doctors said you have two choices. You can either continue to carry this baby and both you and the baby will die or you can end the pregnancy now. But you cannot continue in the hope that both you and your baby are gonna live. She prayed about this and thought about this and her response was that she would rather die than end the pregnancy. Her family, her father, her mother, and her husband, talked about this and decided that they were not going to let her die. That was not going to happen. The pregnancy was terminated. The mother spent the next two weeks in intensive care in the hospital and it was touch a go at times for the mother whether she would survive. Finally after three months of bed rest at home she was able to go back to work and to begin resuming an ordinary life. But it was not an ordinary life. She said for the first time in her life she really began to struggle with her faith. She had always been raised in the church and always been a faithful follower of Jesus Christ. She wrote in her email, “I had never wrestled with the will of God. Now my life and faith depended upon it. I had always thought God could and would do anything if enough people prayed. But people had and God didn't. Who was God? What good is God?” These were the questions that she asked. She finally found herself so troubled by what had happened that she turned away from God and stopped believing in God. Now that may lead you to be a bit surprised when you find out that this woman had been to seminary and was the senior pastor at a church when this happened. She stopped believing in God because she could not understand how this could happen when all these people had been praying and yet her baby still died.
This is a serious question, the question of unanswered prayer. Especially when we see others experiencing no problems at all and we are stuck in the mire. Especially when we have no job, can't pay the bills, and see no end to this misery. We do the best we can to understand why. We even go straight to Christ, straight to the red words of the New Testament for answers. Now, I don't know about you but I sometimes struggle and get confused by Christ's words. For example, take Matthew 21:21-22, “Jesus replied, truly I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt...you can say to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and it will be done. If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.” Really, move a mountain? Have you tried that lately? Did it work? Do you see the struggle that people have with this?
How many of you have experienced unanswered prayer? I sure have! So in my research I did what I sometimes do when I have a question, I Goodsearched it, you know that alternative to Google that we use here to help fund our ministries, and I came up with 823,000 results. And the kicker was that most of them tried to tell me that it was my fault. One website listed 11 reasons why prayers are not answered and here are a few of them. You are not seeking to praise the Lord. You have unconfessed sin in your life. You pray with improper motives. You lack faith. Why do we take someone that is walking through hell on earth and try to blame them for their hell on earth and for God's silence.
I think back to Mark chapter 9. For those of you participating in my Bible Challenge, you read this passage this past Monday. A father brings his son to Jesus. A son that is possessed by evil spirits that cause this young man to convulse violently and at times has even tried to harm the boy. The father asks Jesus, “if you can do anything to help.” Jesus replied, “if I can?” Everything is possible for one who believes” (Mark 9:21b-23). Do you remember the father's response? “I believe; help my unbelief.” That is my prayer each and every day. God help my unbelief. None of us have perfect faith. Jesus did not ask for perfect faith. Just faith the size of a mustard seed. To blame someone for the tragedy in their life and say they did not have enough faith is obscene. But then what do we make of this? Jesus said to ask for whatever you want and if you have faith and do not doubt, it will be done for you.
There are two ways to look at this. One is that Jesus was speaking to a specific group of people at a specific period of time about a specific type of issue. The other is to say that Jesus spoke in what we call prophetic hyperbole. Prophetic means that you say something bold without worrying about how it will hold up in all situations. The point is to shock people into listening. Hyperbole means to exaggerate to make a point. Jesus almost always speaks in this way. If you do not understand that then Jesus' words can often be confusing.
Today we still speak in hyperbole. Parker is beginning to dream about what he wants to be when he grows up. So I tell him, just as my parents did for me, son, you can be anything you want to be. Am I lying to Parker when I tell him that he can be anything he wants to be, knowing some things will be out of his reach or ability? No! I am trying to say to him don't settle. Don't have small dreams. You have such potential and I am so proud of you. You can be anything! Not literally...but yes. This is hyperbole. It is not lying; it is trying to make a point. Jesus does this all the time. So if your hand causes you to sin, Jesus says to cut it off. If your eye causes you sin, Jesus says to gouge it out. Now does Jesus want us to really cut off our hands and gouge out our eyes? No, Jesus wants us to recognize that sin is serious business.
Even Jesus Had Unanswered Prayer
I want us to consider one important example in the New Testament of unanswered prayer. Did you know Jesus had unanswered prayer? It is the night before Jesus is to be crucified. Hours before He is to arrested he goes to His favorite prayer place, the Garden of Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives. He takes a few of the disciples with him and begins to pray. I love the power of this passage in Luke. Jesus prays, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me.” What is this cup? It is the cup of suffering. It is being arrested. It is being tried by the Sanhedrin. It is being spit upon and beaten. It is His back being ripped apart by the whips of the Roman guards. It is being tortured and crucified for six hours, hanging their naked and dying in pain. Father, please take this from me. I know there is redemptive power and purpose in this but please do not make me do this. But Jesus also prays, “...yet not my will, but thy will be done”. It is important for us to recognize that unanswered prayer is not always bad. Unanswered prayer can be redemptive, as it was with Jesus. It can draw us closer to God, to each other, and transform us so that we can be more God-like.
What is Prayer?
So that leaves us with the question, if some prayers go unanswered then what do we pray for and how does this whole thing work if God is not always going to give us what we want, when we want, and when we ask for it. Based upon my experience and the experience of other people I have spoken with I want to pass along a few ideas.
One, God typically works within the ordinary things rather than working a miracle. God created this world and the physical laws within it so God works within them. God created humanity to govern this Earth so God works within us. Which means that in all likelihood you are daily called to be the answer to someone elses prayer! When God is going to answer the prayer of someone God is going to send a doctor or a nurse or a caring soul to be their companion. When people are hungry God is going to call on churches to help supply that food like we do with Interfaith and picking at Joe's.
One day I was walking Wesley to school I noticed one of the teachers that worked there outside the building crying. I took Wesley in and then when over to see if I could help her. She began to explain to me that her divorce had just been finalized a month ago and her ex-husband was not keeping up his end of the financial agreement. She was $300 behind on a utility bill that he never paid but it was in her name. Her power was going to be turned off at 5pm and her and her two children were going to be without heat. She had been to several churches and agencies over the last two weeks and no one could help. She asked for an advance at work and was told it was not possible. She was lost and hopeless. Her prayers had gone unanswered. I was able to help her from our benevolence fund. I do not know if it was coincidence or a God-incidence that I saw her and walked over. But we got it worked out and she was able to keep her power on. I have heard stories from a lot of you how you have filled that same role for another. We have to be willing to show up and pay attention and God will use us to answer prayer.
Another thing I have learned is that God will not suspend the free will of another to answer my prayers. I have one prayer for my boys. That they will grow up and have a vibrant active relationship with Jesus Christ. After all you would think with both parents being preachers that would be a given right? I pray for that, Debbie and I encourage that, but I understand that no matter what I do God will not force either of them into that relationship. God will beckon to them, God will woo them, God will seek them out and put people in their path to talk them about their faith But ultimately it is their decision.
Finally, God doesn't usually remove us from the evil but will walk through it with us. When the economy goes under and unemployment goes up or when we are faced with death and uncertainty, God generally does not pull us out of it, but walks through it with us as our constant companion. This is what we find promised in Isaiah when God says, when you walk through the flood waters I will be with you. When you pass through the flames I will be with you. The Psalmist got it right when they said, “even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil. For you are with me.” We have never been promised a perfect life, just a connected one.
Now this is not to say that God does not work miracles. I have witnessed them, I pray for them, many of you have seen them too. It is just that they do not happen all of the time. But what does happen all of the time is that God walks with us, sustains us, and carries us.
Conclusion
Remember the young mother and pastor we talked about earlier that lost her baby? There was more to her email. She wrote, “I went through a very dark place. I was in this pit where I turned away from God and I had no hope. And in the midst of the darkness I realized that only hope I had was God. The bottom held in the midst of that pit and my friends came along side me and they carried me and they encouraged me and they allowed me room and space to ask questions and to be angry with God and they still loved me. And I began to realize that was God's love. I stopped asking the question 'why' and I began to ask the question 'what now'. God sustained me and healed me and strengthened me. Some time when by and she received word that there were two little girls in Russia who where praying for a mommy. And out of her pain she traveled to Russia and answered their prayers. Unanswered prayer can and always will be tough. But when we recognize that it happens, that it can be a opportunity to be transformed, and that God is with us through it, there is hope. When we realize that we can be the answer to another's prayer, there is God. On the front of your bulletin today is a poem entitled “Unanswered Prayers”. It reads “I asked God for strength that I might achieve. I was made weak that I might learn humbly to obey. I asked for health that I might do greater things. I was given infirmity that I might do better things. I asked for riches that I might be happy. I was given poverty that I might be wise. I asked for power that I might have the praise of men. I was given weakness that I might feel the need of God. I asked for all things that I might enjoy life. I was given life that I might enjoy all things. I got nothing that I asked for, but everything I hoped for. Almost despite myself, my unspoken prayers were answered. I am, among all men, most richly blessed.”
I think that is how prayer works...so let's pray.
Prayer:
God, thank you for loving me.
Hold me tight and don't let me go.
Lord, take the painful things of the past and bring good from them.
Lead me and guide me each day and help me remember you walk with me.
Open my eyes to see how I can be the answer to someone else's prayer
Hold me Lord, do not let me go.
Amen.
Today we are going to continue our series aimed at how God's will can be at work in a world with suffering, evil, and unanswered prayers, and where can we find God in all of this. Today we are going to concentrate on the aspect of unanswered prayer. Specifically why this happens, what it means, and what our response should be.
Unanswered Prayer Can Be Devastating
There was woman that wrote her pastor because she was struggling with the question of unanswered prayer. She and her husband had been trying to have a baby for a long time. For years they had both been praying and praying that God would bless them with a baby. They went through fertility treatments and kept trying and kept praying and finally they were pregnant. It was wonderful! God had finally blessed them with a baby. But almost from the start of the pregnancy she was very sick. This lasted for several months and finally by the fifth month she was so deathly sick the doctors said you have two choices. You can either continue to carry this baby and both you and the baby will die or you can end the pregnancy now. But you cannot continue in the hope that both you and your baby are gonna live. She prayed about this and thought about this and her response was that she would rather die than end the pregnancy. Her family, her father, her mother, and her husband, talked about this and decided that they were not going to let her die. That was not going to happen. The pregnancy was terminated. The mother spent the next two weeks in intensive care in the hospital and it was touch a go at times for the mother whether she would survive. Finally after three months of bed rest at home she was able to go back to work and to begin resuming an ordinary life. But it was not an ordinary life. She said for the first time in her life she really began to struggle with her faith. She had always been raised in the church and always been a faithful follower of Jesus Christ. She wrote in her email, “I had never wrestled with the will of God. Now my life and faith depended upon it. I had always thought God could and would do anything if enough people prayed. But people had and God didn't. Who was God? What good is God?” These were the questions that she asked. She finally found herself so troubled by what had happened that she turned away from God and stopped believing in God. Now that may lead you to be a bit surprised when you find out that this woman had been to seminary and was the senior pastor at a church when this happened. She stopped believing in God because she could not understand how this could happen when all these people had been praying and yet her baby still died.
This is a serious question, the question of unanswered prayer. Especially when we see others experiencing no problems at all and we are stuck in the mire. Especially when we have no job, can't pay the bills, and see no end to this misery. We do the best we can to understand why. We even go straight to Christ, straight to the red words of the New Testament for answers. Now, I don't know about you but I sometimes struggle and get confused by Christ's words. For example, take Matthew 21:21-22, “Jesus replied, truly I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt...you can say to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and it will be done. If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.” Really, move a mountain? Have you tried that lately? Did it work? Do you see the struggle that people have with this?
How many of you have experienced unanswered prayer? I sure have! So in my research I did what I sometimes do when I have a question, I Goodsearched it, you know that alternative to Google that we use here to help fund our ministries, and I came up with 823,000 results. And the kicker was that most of them tried to tell me that it was my fault. One website listed 11 reasons why prayers are not answered and here are a few of them. You are not seeking to praise the Lord. You have unconfessed sin in your life. You pray with improper motives. You lack faith. Why do we take someone that is walking through hell on earth and try to blame them for their hell on earth and for God's silence.
I think back to Mark chapter 9. For those of you participating in my Bible Challenge, you read this passage this past Monday. A father brings his son to Jesus. A son that is possessed by evil spirits that cause this young man to convulse violently and at times has even tried to harm the boy. The father asks Jesus, “if you can do anything to help.” Jesus replied, “if I can?” Everything is possible for one who believes” (Mark 9:21b-23). Do you remember the father's response? “I believe; help my unbelief.” That is my prayer each and every day. God help my unbelief. None of us have perfect faith. Jesus did not ask for perfect faith. Just faith the size of a mustard seed. To blame someone for the tragedy in their life and say they did not have enough faith is obscene. But then what do we make of this? Jesus said to ask for whatever you want and if you have faith and do not doubt, it will be done for you.
There are two ways to look at this. One is that Jesus was speaking to a specific group of people at a specific period of time about a specific type of issue. The other is to say that Jesus spoke in what we call prophetic hyperbole. Prophetic means that you say something bold without worrying about how it will hold up in all situations. The point is to shock people into listening. Hyperbole means to exaggerate to make a point. Jesus almost always speaks in this way. If you do not understand that then Jesus' words can often be confusing.
Today we still speak in hyperbole. Parker is beginning to dream about what he wants to be when he grows up. So I tell him, just as my parents did for me, son, you can be anything you want to be. Am I lying to Parker when I tell him that he can be anything he wants to be, knowing some things will be out of his reach or ability? No! I am trying to say to him don't settle. Don't have small dreams. You have such potential and I am so proud of you. You can be anything! Not literally...but yes. This is hyperbole. It is not lying; it is trying to make a point. Jesus does this all the time. So if your hand causes you to sin, Jesus says to cut it off. If your eye causes you sin, Jesus says to gouge it out. Now does Jesus want us to really cut off our hands and gouge out our eyes? No, Jesus wants us to recognize that sin is serious business.
Even Jesus Had Unanswered Prayer
I want us to consider one important example in the New Testament of unanswered prayer. Did you know Jesus had unanswered prayer? It is the night before Jesus is to be crucified. Hours before He is to arrested he goes to His favorite prayer place, the Garden of Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives. He takes a few of the disciples with him and begins to pray. I love the power of this passage in Luke. Jesus prays, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me.” What is this cup? It is the cup of suffering. It is being arrested. It is being tried by the Sanhedrin. It is being spit upon and beaten. It is His back being ripped apart by the whips of the Roman guards. It is being tortured and crucified for six hours, hanging their naked and dying in pain. Father, please take this from me. I know there is redemptive power and purpose in this but please do not make me do this. But Jesus also prays, “...yet not my will, but thy will be done”. It is important for us to recognize that unanswered prayer is not always bad. Unanswered prayer can be redemptive, as it was with Jesus. It can draw us closer to God, to each other, and transform us so that we can be more God-like.
What is Prayer?
So that leaves us with the question, if some prayers go unanswered then what do we pray for and how does this whole thing work if God is not always going to give us what we want, when we want, and when we ask for it. Based upon my experience and the experience of other people I have spoken with I want to pass along a few ideas.
One, God typically works within the ordinary things rather than working a miracle. God created this world and the physical laws within it so God works within them. God created humanity to govern this Earth so God works within us. Which means that in all likelihood you are daily called to be the answer to someone elses prayer! When God is going to answer the prayer of someone God is going to send a doctor or a nurse or a caring soul to be their companion. When people are hungry God is going to call on churches to help supply that food like we do with Interfaith and picking at Joe's.
One day I was walking Wesley to school I noticed one of the teachers that worked there outside the building crying. I took Wesley in and then when over to see if I could help her. She began to explain to me that her divorce had just been finalized a month ago and her ex-husband was not keeping up his end of the financial agreement. She was $300 behind on a utility bill that he never paid but it was in her name. Her power was going to be turned off at 5pm and her and her two children were going to be without heat. She had been to several churches and agencies over the last two weeks and no one could help. She asked for an advance at work and was told it was not possible. She was lost and hopeless. Her prayers had gone unanswered. I was able to help her from our benevolence fund. I do not know if it was coincidence or a God-incidence that I saw her and walked over. But we got it worked out and she was able to keep her power on. I have heard stories from a lot of you how you have filled that same role for another. We have to be willing to show up and pay attention and God will use us to answer prayer.
Another thing I have learned is that God will not suspend the free will of another to answer my prayers. I have one prayer for my boys. That they will grow up and have a vibrant active relationship with Jesus Christ. After all you would think with both parents being preachers that would be a given right? I pray for that, Debbie and I encourage that, but I understand that no matter what I do God will not force either of them into that relationship. God will beckon to them, God will woo them, God will seek them out and put people in their path to talk them about their faith But ultimately it is their decision.
Finally, God doesn't usually remove us from the evil but will walk through it with us. When the economy goes under and unemployment goes up or when we are faced with death and uncertainty, God generally does not pull us out of it, but walks through it with us as our constant companion. This is what we find promised in Isaiah when God says, when you walk through the flood waters I will be with you. When you pass through the flames I will be with you. The Psalmist got it right when they said, “even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil. For you are with me.” We have never been promised a perfect life, just a connected one.
Now this is not to say that God does not work miracles. I have witnessed them, I pray for them, many of you have seen them too. It is just that they do not happen all of the time. But what does happen all of the time is that God walks with us, sustains us, and carries us.
Conclusion
Remember the young mother and pastor we talked about earlier that lost her baby? There was more to her email. She wrote, “I went through a very dark place. I was in this pit where I turned away from God and I had no hope. And in the midst of the darkness I realized that only hope I had was God. The bottom held in the midst of that pit and my friends came along side me and they carried me and they encouraged me and they allowed me room and space to ask questions and to be angry with God and they still loved me. And I began to realize that was God's love. I stopped asking the question 'why' and I began to ask the question 'what now'. God sustained me and healed me and strengthened me. Some time when by and she received word that there were two little girls in Russia who where praying for a mommy. And out of her pain she traveled to Russia and answered their prayers. Unanswered prayer can and always will be tough. But when we recognize that it happens, that it can be a opportunity to be transformed, and that God is with us through it, there is hope. When we realize that we can be the answer to another's prayer, there is God. On the front of your bulletin today is a poem entitled “Unanswered Prayers”. It reads “I asked God for strength that I might achieve. I was made weak that I might learn humbly to obey. I asked for health that I might do greater things. I was given infirmity that I might do better things. I asked for riches that I might be happy. I was given poverty that I might be wise. I asked for power that I might have the praise of men. I was given weakness that I might feel the need of God. I asked for all things that I might enjoy life. I was given life that I might enjoy all things. I got nothing that I asked for, but everything I hoped for. Almost despite myself, my unspoken prayers were answered. I am, among all men, most richly blessed.”
I think that is how prayer works...so let's pray.
Prayer:
God, thank you for loving me.
Hold me tight and don't let me go.
Lord, take the painful things of the past and bring good from them.
Lead me and guide me each day and help me remember you walk with me.
Open my eyes to see how I can be the answer to someone else's prayer
Hold me Lord, do not let me go.
Amen.
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Bible Challenge 1/16 - 1/22
Hello Fellow Bible Readers!
I hope your week has been a blessed one! This upcoming week are finishing up Luke and getting into John. We are almost done with the Gospels so I hope you have found it interesting to see the same story from different points of view. Also, if you think someone you know might enjoy this challenge please pass it along! Here is the schedule for this week.
1/16, Sunday: Luke 17-20
1/17, Monday: Luke 21-24
1/18, Tuesday: John 1-4
1/19, Wednesday: John 5-8
1/20, Thursday: John 9-12
1/21, Friday: John 13-16
1/22, Saturday: John 17-20
Have a safe and blessed week!
I hope your week has been a blessed one! This upcoming week are finishing up Luke and getting into John. We are almost done with the Gospels so I hope you have found it interesting to see the same story from different points of view. Also, if you think someone you know might enjoy this challenge please pass it along! Here is the schedule for this week.1/16, Sunday: Luke 17-20
1/17, Monday: Luke 21-24
1/18, Tuesday: John 1-4
1/19, Wednesday: John 5-8
1/20, Thursday: John 9-12
1/21, Friday: John 13-16
1/22, Saturday: John 17-20
Have a safe and blessed week!
Friday, January 14, 2011
Friday Fives
1. Preaching Series - This Sunday we will continue our sermon series focusing on answering those difficult questions concerning God's role in the evil and suffering of this world, why some of our prayers go unanswered, and how we can best make sense of God's will for our life. This week we will look at unanswered prayer, why it happens, how Jesus experienced it, and how we can work though it with God. Invite a friend and I hope to see all of you there!
2. New Member Class - This Sunday, January 16th at 12:45PM I will host a new member class in my office. If you have been attending Druid Hills for several months and would like to take that next step and become a member of the church please come to this class. We will discuss what it means to be a United Methodist, what it means to be a member of Druid Hills, and get a little background on history of this church. If this of interest to you I hope you will make plans to attend.
3. New Bible Study – Next week will continue our Bible Study called, When Christians Get It Wrong, by Adam Hamilton.
This study will run every Thursday through February 17th. We will meet in the Fellowship Hall at 11AM and if that does not fit your schedule I will offer it again at 7PM as well. I hope you will come and join us in what is always a great time of learning and fun!
4. Salty Service - A few months back I asked everyone to consider joining up together in groups to venture out and visit some of the residents in the many assisted living and rehab facilities around our church. There are many people there that get no visitors, and we are so good with fellowship, I see a need and a spiritual gift that can easily be paired up. I wanted to give everyone an update on how this budding ministry is progressing. We have three members that have reached out and began weekly visits to three different facilities. We also have a group of people that have formed to begin visits with a fifth facility. We have several contacts at area facilities, all we need is volunteers. Many people make light work. If you are willing to spend just a few hours a month visiting with people and sharing the love of Christ please contact the office and we can help you get connected. Please consider reaching out to the people in our area and let them know we care and in the name of Jesus Christ that they are loved.
5. Wanna Help? – Have you been looking for a way to volunteer here at Druid Hills? Are you just not sure where to start or who to ask? This February we will host a Ministry Fair here at the church. We will open up all the volunteer ministries of the church and give all of you a chance to sign up and get connected. Watch this space for more information and details!
Have an incredible weekend and see you Sunday!
2. New Member Class - This Sunday, January 16th at 12:45PM I will host a new member class in my office. If you have been attending Druid Hills for several months and would like to take that next step and become a member of the church please come to this class. We will discuss what it means to be a United Methodist, what it means to be a member of Druid Hills, and get a little background on history of this church. If this of interest to you I hope you will make plans to attend.
3. New Bible Study – Next week will continue our Bible Study called, When Christians Get It Wrong, by Adam Hamilton.
Have you ever wondered why people do not go or have stopped going to church? Have you ever considered that it may be because of the people inside? Please join me in this study as we examine those attitudes and beliefs that drive people away.
As followers of Christ our impact can be so much stronger when we get it right. In this study we will look at six areas that we can focus on to help us attract those people looking for Christ. Join me in learning how we can be advocates and rather than stumbling blocks.
4. Salty Service - A few months back I asked everyone to consider joining up together in groups to venture out and visit some of the residents in the many assisted living and rehab facilities around our church. There are many people there that get no visitors, and we are so good with fellowship, I see a need and a spiritual gift that can easily be paired up. I wanted to give everyone an update on how this budding ministry is progressing. We have three members that have reached out and began weekly visits to three different facilities. We also have a group of people that have formed to begin visits with a fifth facility. We have several contacts at area facilities, all we need is volunteers. Many people make light work. If you are willing to spend just a few hours a month visiting with people and sharing the love of Christ please contact the office and we can help you get connected. Please consider reaching out to the people in our area and let them know we care and in the name of Jesus Christ that they are loved.
5. Wanna Help? – Have you been looking for a way to volunteer here at Druid Hills? Are you just not sure where to start or who to ask? This February we will host a Ministry Fair here at the church. We will open up all the volunteer ministries of the church and give all of you a chance to sign up and get connected. Watch this space for more information and details!
Have an incredible weekend and see you Sunday!
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Why Do We Suffer? – Matthew 27:45-46 and Luke 23:44-46
Introduction
Today we are going to begin a new series aimed at how God's will can be at work in a world with suffering, evil, unanswered prayers, and where can we find God in all of this. Today we are going to concentrate on the aspect of God's relationship to evil and suffering. Specifically how thoughtful people might think about God's involvement in the world, the problem of suffering, and then our response.
How Can God do That?
Last summer during our Vacation Bible School we presented the children with a challenge. We placed a basket up front for each class and as the children arrived they would place whatever spare change they found into their class's basket. The incentive for them was that the class that raised the most money would be given the chance to throw a pie at me on the last night. Well, it worked because we raised over $100 to send to Heifer International. Heifer works to battle the issue of starvation because, are you ready for this, an estimated 30,000 children die a day of malnutrition and starvation related illnesses.
These children do not deserve this, they have done nothing to warrant a punishment like this. And so many people begin asking where is God in all of this. How can God sit back and watch this happen? I think about this a lot, and I know many of you do as well. I try to get a bead on how all of this works and as I watch life happening I think I get how God's involvement intersects with this world and then something bad happens and I ask myself wait, how did that work again? This does not feel like there is a good and loving God out there. So today I want us to spend our time together looking at God's involvement in the world, the problem of suffering, and then our response.
Suffering is Biblical
First, let us begin with a brief word about the Bible. Many people have this idea that the Bible and the Christian faith have this Pollyanna worldview of an idyllic life that everything goes well and everyone is happy and if something does not go well then they say, “See, that does not line up with what is in the Bible”. If that is what you think, then you have not read the Bible. The Bible is cover to cover about persecution, oppression, enslavement, and for 400 years it recounts the people crying out “how long O God...will you forget us forever.”
The longest book in the Bible is Psalms. In it are a 150 psalms with the largest category being labeled complaint psalms. An entire book of the OT is called complaints, or you may know it better as Lamentations. One of the biggest books in the Bible, Job, is also the longest epic poem. It is about a man that has everything taken away and is trying to wrestle with how he will make sense of it all. The prophets are constantly saying something terrible is about to happen or something terrible has already happened.
In the New Testament, the story really is not that much brighter. It is the story of Jesus Christ, who we celebrate as the Savior of the world, and at the end of his life, rather than being celebrated, is executed. Then from the the cross Jesus cries out, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?; My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” quoting one of the complaint Psalms, Psalm 22. Then we read further and discover that of His twelve apostles, one committed suicide, one lived out his life in prison and had boiling oil poured over his body and the rest died as a result of their faith. Does that sound idyllic to you? Does that sound like everything went well and everyone was happy?
But what we do find in the Bible are people, that in the face of terrible suffering, hold onto their faith with white knuckles and say, “I refuse to not believe”. Job says, “though he slay me, yet will I trust in Him” (Job 15:15). The complaint Psalms cry out “How long O Lord; will you forget me forever. But where else where I go for hope?”. And the dominant message of the Gospels is that God when He walked in human flesh on this planet experienced the same kind, if not worse, suffering than you and I will ever experience; torturing and crucifixion. But it does not end with His crucifixion or His burial in the grave because on the third day Christ rose from the dead. The Gospels are a story of both people that endured suffering in this world, but also trusted in God in the face of that suffering, so that ultimately the suffering did not have the final word. God used that suffering and redeemed it for good. Paul tells us in Romans 8:28, “that all things work together for good to those who love God, that in all things God works together with those who love him to bring about what is good.” Folks, that is the message of the Bible.
The Trap
Now as we turn our attention to how to answer the issue of God's relationship to suffering I want to begin by asking you all a question. How many of you have heard the term, “Folk Theology”? That is the theology, or beliefs, that we have and hold onto that have no basis in Scripture. Beliefs that no one has stopped to ask questions about or critically examine. Because when put under examination we discover that while these beliefs may provide some sort of temporary comfort or may seem to magnify God, in the long run actually diminish God and sometimes turn God into a monster. God has blessed you with a wonderful gift, your intellect. An intellect that we are all expected to use.
One phrase I have heard time and time again, and I am sure you have as well, is “everything happens for a reason”. This is meant to have us believe that there is reason for crummy things that happen to us and we just have to be patient to see the good. Another phrase that gets used with great regularity is, “it must have been the will of God”. Those phrases are intended to bring us comfort but we are really talking about cause and effect and we are saying that God willed this crummy thing to happen in order to bring about some greater objective. Because that might sound OK most of the time we do not critique it or give it too much thought until you read something like this. This was an email a woman wrote to her pastor after a horrific tragedy...
These phrases, everything happens for a reason and it must have been the will of God, did not bring her any comfort. In fact they drove her away from the God that would have been able to bring her comfort by offering her a picture of God that kills babies. I do not believe God kills babies. How can we say that a God of hope, peace, mercy, justice, and love can do something like this? But we say there was some higher purpose. Those type of ethics, the ends justify the means, have been rejected by many as unacceptable. The ends do not justify the means. So why would we claim this of God? Look, pick up any newspaper or visit any website about current events and they are full of horrible, tragic, heart breaking stories. I do not believe that God puts evil thoughts in the hearts of people to cause these things or purposefully creates those horrific events to fulfill some better plan. But what God does do in these situations is take the mess and force it to accomplish something good and beautiful. That is the redemptive word of the Gospel. God can and does make good from tragedy but that is different from saying God put evil in the heart of another to make them do it so that good could come about. That is why this folk theology can be so dangerous. We have to be careful because when we say this is part of God's plan or everything happens for a reason we are saying God willed it to happen...God made sure it happened.
Conversely, when you do read this book (the Bible), what you find is a whole bunch of stuff that God did not want to happen that did and God continually coming in to clean up the mess and save us from it. That is the love story that you hear me talk about so much. God loves us so much that God's presence is constant.
God's Role
So now that we know what God does not do, what does God do?
We describe our belief in God through Scripture and the Creeds by saying, “We believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.” And Heaven is everything, what we call the universe now. So when all of this came into existence God created it.
God is the source of all life, wrote laws that govern our existence on the planet, physical laws that govern it, gave us a soul, and gave us dominion over the earth. God also gave us everything we would need to have dominion; a conscience, a brain, natural resources, His spirit to nudge us, the prophets, the law – 10 commandments. God even came in the flesh as the definitive Word to show us by word and deed what it means to be authentically Christian, to love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you. We were all created to be a blessing to other people. To show mercy and grace through our thoughts and actions. All of this was given to us to help us rule and govern over this planet.
If that is not enough we were also sent the Holy Spirit as the Advocate to show us how to be the church so that all of us could surround each other in love and care. God created everything. Every atom is held together by the presence and power of God and we are told in Acts 17, “in him we live and move and have our being.”
But God gave us one more thing, freedom. Freedom to make choices and decisions. Good and bad.
Three areas of suffering
Now that we understand what God does do let us look at a few of the major areas of suffering that we as humanity deal with.
Natural disaster and widespread human suffering
Many of you know about the devastation in Haiti when that earthquake left 200,000 dead and millions living in tents. How do we make sense of a God who sends all of this?
Well let us look at the scientific explanation of a earthquake. Is it God sends a disaster such as this because He is angry and we need to be punished? 2000 years we might have believed this. But now, through science, we have learned about plate tectonics and how they shift due to heat to relieve pressure and how at points they move into each other and create mountains and new land masses. You know those places where some of us find peace, beauty, and splendor and we feel God's presence in those places. All of this is done to help sustain life. However, the energy created from those plates colliding eventually has to be released and there is an earthquake. Unfortunately, humanity gets caught in the places where that release happens. Now is that a device God uses to punish humanity or is it the result of the system needed to help sustain life on this planet? Do we get angry at God for this or do we understand that these are natural occurrences caused by the environmental system needed for us to live?
Well what about malnutrition and the 30,000 children that die everyday because of it? Do we have enough food on this planet to feed its 6.2 billion inhabitants? The answer is yes. The problem is not quantity or capacity, but distribution. And who is responsible for distribution? We are...humanity is.
In Africa, there is a village that has one collective wish, clean drinking water. Water is the essence of life and without clean water people get sick and die. In this village all the clean drinking water they could ever need is 100 ft below them, pure and cleaned by the rocks in the aquifer. But it costs $8000 for a well. They simply do not have the tools to reach it much less the $8000 to drill the boar hole for it.
So I ask you rather than shaking our fists that God is allowing all this happen, who has dominion here? God...or us? God calls us to go and help when these things happen. When those natural disasters happen, as a result of the systems needed to sustain and give us life, God calls us to be His hands, His voice, His love. And when we help those that don't have, you are not only doing God's work but you are transformed. You find joy, meaning, and passion. While they receive something from us, we are finding things for ourselves. This is God's design for us.
Suffering caused by human decisions
Another area of suffering is suffering caused by human decisions. Earlier I said we all have freedom to make decisions, good and bad. That power to make decisions can and does bring pain into our life and we have to understand that we can either have this freedom or God can control everything and regulate us to puppets. But please understand that just as we can make decisions to hurt ourselves, others can make decisions that hurt us and vice versa.
Now look at how this process when carried out by whole societies and groups can cause horrible things to happen. Think of the Holocaust. Who is responsible when those things happen? God? Or is it us, humanity? So I wonder how often does God weep when God sees what we do with this freedom. I can only imagine how I am going to feel the first time Parker or Wesley leave the house alone. When they go somewhere where I will not be and that sense of control and protection that I have now is gone. The people that I talk with that share with me tales of how that freedom allowed them to fall into despair and how they made bad choices that led to unimaginable tragedy, my heart breaks. I can only imagine the sorrow and anguish God our Creator feels. However, God is there. God tries to teach us the way to be and act and when we pull away and do differently, God does not abandon us. When things go bad God pulls us out the pit and saves us and redeems us from the mess that we make. God does not cause those tragedies made from our decisions and the decisions of others, so why do we blame God for the result?
Suffering caused by sickness
A final area I want to cover is suffering caused by sickness. Many of you know about the cholera epidemic going on in Haiti. A pastor down there writes of an encounter he has with a man whose daughter just died from the disease. The pastor writes that as they are talking and he is helping this man to deal with the death of his daughter, at the end of the conversation the man says her death must have been the will of God. The pastor asks the grieving father, “what would you say if I told you a man snuck into your daughter's room one night with a cloth bathed in the cholera germ and placed it over her mouth so she would breath it in and become infected.” The father said that he would think of that man as a monster. That he should be thrown in jail and executed. The pastor then asked the father is that not what you just said God did by declaring your daughter's death God's will?
When situations arise like death from cholera or children who by genetic makeup or because of bacterial influence are born with a birth abnormality that threatens their life or quality of life do we view God as the one that entered the womb and caused these things to be? Science has helped us to understand that these things happen as a result of living, of combining our DNA with each other, not because of God. But in these situations what we do not find is a God that creates these situations for His children, but rather a God that walks with His children through these situations, through these heart breaks, through the valley of the shadow of death. A God that promises us that death will not win that Jesus has guaranteed us life after death.
But in the midst of the pain we have feelings of anger and betrayal that we have to deal with. A man after two years of watching his wife die from cancer talks about how he would go to the cemetery and yell at God. Did you know that yelling at God is an act of faith? You have to believe in God to yell at God, right? God is big enough to handle our yelling and crying out. The Psalmists did it all the time, “how long O God...will you forget us forever.”
God is Here!
Now I do not presume to stand here and have you think that at 37 years old I know all there is about suffering. This message is the result of consulting with people that have much more wisdom and experience than I do. This message is the compilation of my speaking with them, reading about them, listening to them. I do this because I want you to know something. When we face these situations, and all of us will at some point, I encourage you to turn to God. God will take over the suffering and joy will eventually return. We have opportunity after opportunity to turn from God..injustice, unfairness. But when we do that the injustice and unfairness are still there. The only thing missing is the One that will help you through it. The One that will restore your hope. So my challenge to you is to turn to God in all things. God is here!
Prayer:
God help me to believe.
Help me to trust you.
When I see suffering in others help me to respond as your hands and voice.
God take the painful things in my life and bring something good from them.
Lord I offer my life to you.
Help me believe...help me to trust.
In Jesus Name...Amen
Today we are going to begin a new series aimed at how God's will can be at work in a world with suffering, evil, unanswered prayers, and where can we find God in all of this. Today we are going to concentrate on the aspect of God's relationship to evil and suffering. Specifically how thoughtful people might think about God's involvement in the world, the problem of suffering, and then our response.
How Can God do That?
Last summer during our Vacation Bible School we presented the children with a challenge. We placed a basket up front for each class and as the children arrived they would place whatever spare change they found into their class's basket. The incentive for them was that the class that raised the most money would be given the chance to throw a pie at me on the last night. Well, it worked because we raised over $100 to send to Heifer International. Heifer works to battle the issue of starvation because, are you ready for this, an estimated 30,000 children die a day of malnutrition and starvation related illnesses.
These children do not deserve this, they have done nothing to warrant a punishment like this. And so many people begin asking where is God in all of this. How can God sit back and watch this happen? I think about this a lot, and I know many of you do as well. I try to get a bead on how all of this works and as I watch life happening I think I get how God's involvement intersects with this world and then something bad happens and I ask myself wait, how did that work again? This does not feel like there is a good and loving God out there. So today I want us to spend our time together looking at God's involvement in the world, the problem of suffering, and then our response.
Suffering is Biblical
First, let us begin with a brief word about the Bible. Many people have this idea that the Bible and the Christian faith have this Pollyanna worldview of an idyllic life that everything goes well and everyone is happy and if something does not go well then they say, “See, that does not line up with what is in the Bible”. If that is what you think, then you have not read the Bible. The Bible is cover to cover about persecution, oppression, enslavement, and for 400 years it recounts the people crying out “how long O God...will you forget us forever.”
The longest book in the Bible is Psalms. In it are a 150 psalms with the largest category being labeled complaint psalms. An entire book of the OT is called complaints, or you may know it better as Lamentations. One of the biggest books in the Bible, Job, is also the longest epic poem. It is about a man that has everything taken away and is trying to wrestle with how he will make sense of it all. The prophets are constantly saying something terrible is about to happen or something terrible has already happened.
In the New Testament, the story really is not that much brighter. It is the story of Jesus Christ, who we celebrate as the Savior of the world, and at the end of his life, rather than being celebrated, is executed. Then from the the cross Jesus cries out, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?; My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” quoting one of the complaint Psalms, Psalm 22. Then we read further and discover that of His twelve apostles, one committed suicide, one lived out his life in prison and had boiling oil poured over his body and the rest died as a result of their faith. Does that sound idyllic to you? Does that sound like everything went well and everyone was happy?
But what we do find in the Bible are people, that in the face of terrible suffering, hold onto their faith with white knuckles and say, “I refuse to not believe”. Job says, “though he slay me, yet will I trust in Him” (Job 15:15). The complaint Psalms cry out “How long O Lord; will you forget me forever. But where else where I go for hope?”. And the dominant message of the Gospels is that God when He walked in human flesh on this planet experienced the same kind, if not worse, suffering than you and I will ever experience; torturing and crucifixion. But it does not end with His crucifixion or His burial in the grave because on the third day Christ rose from the dead. The Gospels are a story of both people that endured suffering in this world, but also trusted in God in the face of that suffering, so that ultimately the suffering did not have the final word. God used that suffering and redeemed it for good. Paul tells us in Romans 8:28, “that all things work together for good to those who love God, that in all things God works together with those who love him to bring about what is good.” Folks, that is the message of the Bible.
The Trap
Now as we turn our attention to how to answer the issue of God's relationship to suffering I want to begin by asking you all a question. How many of you have heard the term, “Folk Theology”? That is the theology, or beliefs, that we have and hold onto that have no basis in Scripture. Beliefs that no one has stopped to ask questions about or critically examine. Because when put under examination we discover that while these beliefs may provide some sort of temporary comfort or may seem to magnify God, in the long run actually diminish God and sometimes turn God into a monster. God has blessed you with a wonderful gift, your intellect. An intellect that we are all expected to use.
One phrase I have heard time and time again, and I am sure you have as well, is “everything happens for a reason”. This is meant to have us believe that there is reason for crummy things that happen to us and we just have to be patient to see the good. Another phrase that gets used with great regularity is, “it must have been the will of God”. Those phrases are intended to bring us comfort but we are really talking about cause and effect and we are saying that God willed this crummy thing to happen in order to bring about some greater objective. Because that might sound OK most of the time we do not critique it or give it too much thought until you read something like this. This was an email a woman wrote to her pastor after a horrific tragedy...
Our baby died this past spring when he was six weeks old. So many Christians that we have encountered since then tells us that this was God's plan. Before this tragic event I guess I thought that was how life worked too. But there is no way the death of an innocent six week old could be a part of the intentional plan of a God of love. And if it is, then I am simply not interested in that God.
These phrases, everything happens for a reason and it must have been the will of God, did not bring her any comfort. In fact they drove her away from the God that would have been able to bring her comfort by offering her a picture of God that kills babies. I do not believe God kills babies. How can we say that a God of hope, peace, mercy, justice, and love can do something like this? But we say there was some higher purpose. Those type of ethics, the ends justify the means, have been rejected by many as unacceptable. The ends do not justify the means. So why would we claim this of God? Look, pick up any newspaper or visit any website about current events and they are full of horrible, tragic, heart breaking stories. I do not believe that God puts evil thoughts in the hearts of people to cause these things or purposefully creates those horrific events to fulfill some better plan. But what God does do in these situations is take the mess and force it to accomplish something good and beautiful. That is the redemptive word of the Gospel. God can and does make good from tragedy but that is different from saying God put evil in the heart of another to make them do it so that good could come about. That is why this folk theology can be so dangerous. We have to be careful because when we say this is part of God's plan or everything happens for a reason we are saying God willed it to happen...God made sure it happened.
Conversely, when you do read this book (the Bible), what you find is a whole bunch of stuff that God did not want to happen that did and God continually coming in to clean up the mess and save us from it. That is the love story that you hear me talk about so much. God loves us so much that God's presence is constant.
God's Role
So now that we know what God does not do, what does God do?
We describe our belief in God through Scripture and the Creeds by saying, “We believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.” And Heaven is everything, what we call the universe now. So when all of this came into existence God created it.
God is the source of all life, wrote laws that govern our existence on the planet, physical laws that govern it, gave us a soul, and gave us dominion over the earth. God also gave us everything we would need to have dominion; a conscience, a brain, natural resources, His spirit to nudge us, the prophets, the law – 10 commandments. God even came in the flesh as the definitive Word to show us by word and deed what it means to be authentically Christian, to love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you. We were all created to be a blessing to other people. To show mercy and grace through our thoughts and actions. All of this was given to us to help us rule and govern over this planet.
If that is not enough we were also sent the Holy Spirit as the Advocate to show us how to be the church so that all of us could surround each other in love and care. God created everything. Every atom is held together by the presence and power of God and we are told in Acts 17, “in him we live and move and have our being.”
But God gave us one more thing, freedom. Freedom to make choices and decisions. Good and bad.
Three areas of suffering
Now that we understand what God does do let us look at a few of the major areas of suffering that we as humanity deal with.
Natural disaster and widespread human suffering
Many of you know about the devastation in Haiti when that earthquake left 200,000 dead and millions living in tents. How do we make sense of a God who sends all of this?
Well let us look at the scientific explanation of a earthquake. Is it God sends a disaster such as this because He is angry and we need to be punished? 2000 years we might have believed this. But now, through science, we have learned about plate tectonics and how they shift due to heat to relieve pressure and how at points they move into each other and create mountains and new land masses. You know those places where some of us find peace, beauty, and splendor and we feel God's presence in those places. All of this is done to help sustain life. However, the energy created from those plates colliding eventually has to be released and there is an earthquake. Unfortunately, humanity gets caught in the places where that release happens. Now is that a device God uses to punish humanity or is it the result of the system needed to help sustain life on this planet? Do we get angry at God for this or do we understand that these are natural occurrences caused by the environmental system needed for us to live?
Well what about malnutrition and the 30,000 children that die everyday because of it? Do we have enough food on this planet to feed its 6.2 billion inhabitants? The answer is yes. The problem is not quantity or capacity, but distribution. And who is responsible for distribution? We are...humanity is.
In Africa, there is a village that has one collective wish, clean drinking water. Water is the essence of life and without clean water people get sick and die. In this village all the clean drinking water they could ever need is 100 ft below them, pure and cleaned by the rocks in the aquifer. But it costs $8000 for a well. They simply do not have the tools to reach it much less the $8000 to drill the boar hole for it.
So I ask you rather than shaking our fists that God is allowing all this happen, who has dominion here? God...or us? God calls us to go and help when these things happen. When those natural disasters happen, as a result of the systems needed to sustain and give us life, God calls us to be His hands, His voice, His love. And when we help those that don't have, you are not only doing God's work but you are transformed. You find joy, meaning, and passion. While they receive something from us, we are finding things for ourselves. This is God's design for us.
Suffering caused by human decisions
Another area of suffering is suffering caused by human decisions. Earlier I said we all have freedom to make decisions, good and bad. That power to make decisions can and does bring pain into our life and we have to understand that we can either have this freedom or God can control everything and regulate us to puppets. But please understand that just as we can make decisions to hurt ourselves, others can make decisions that hurt us and vice versa.
Now look at how this process when carried out by whole societies and groups can cause horrible things to happen. Think of the Holocaust. Who is responsible when those things happen? God? Or is it us, humanity? So I wonder how often does God weep when God sees what we do with this freedom. I can only imagine how I am going to feel the first time Parker or Wesley leave the house alone. When they go somewhere where I will not be and that sense of control and protection that I have now is gone. The people that I talk with that share with me tales of how that freedom allowed them to fall into despair and how they made bad choices that led to unimaginable tragedy, my heart breaks. I can only imagine the sorrow and anguish God our Creator feels. However, God is there. God tries to teach us the way to be and act and when we pull away and do differently, God does not abandon us. When things go bad God pulls us out the pit and saves us and redeems us from the mess that we make. God does not cause those tragedies made from our decisions and the decisions of others, so why do we blame God for the result?
Suffering caused by sickness
A final area I want to cover is suffering caused by sickness. Many of you know about the cholera epidemic going on in Haiti. A pastor down there writes of an encounter he has with a man whose daughter just died from the disease. The pastor writes that as they are talking and he is helping this man to deal with the death of his daughter, at the end of the conversation the man says her death must have been the will of God. The pastor asks the grieving father, “what would you say if I told you a man snuck into your daughter's room one night with a cloth bathed in the cholera germ and placed it over her mouth so she would breath it in and become infected.” The father said that he would think of that man as a monster. That he should be thrown in jail and executed. The pastor then asked the father is that not what you just said God did by declaring your daughter's death God's will?
When situations arise like death from cholera or children who by genetic makeup or because of bacterial influence are born with a birth abnormality that threatens their life or quality of life do we view God as the one that entered the womb and caused these things to be? Science has helped us to understand that these things happen as a result of living, of combining our DNA with each other, not because of God. But in these situations what we do not find is a God that creates these situations for His children, but rather a God that walks with His children through these situations, through these heart breaks, through the valley of the shadow of death. A God that promises us that death will not win that Jesus has guaranteed us life after death.
But in the midst of the pain we have feelings of anger and betrayal that we have to deal with. A man after two years of watching his wife die from cancer talks about how he would go to the cemetery and yell at God. Did you know that yelling at God is an act of faith? You have to believe in God to yell at God, right? God is big enough to handle our yelling and crying out. The Psalmists did it all the time, “how long O God...will you forget us forever.”
God is Here!
Now I do not presume to stand here and have you think that at 37 years old I know all there is about suffering. This message is the result of consulting with people that have much more wisdom and experience than I do. This message is the compilation of my speaking with them, reading about them, listening to them. I do this because I want you to know something. When we face these situations, and all of us will at some point, I encourage you to turn to God. God will take over the suffering and joy will eventually return. We have opportunity after opportunity to turn from God..injustice, unfairness. But when we do that the injustice and unfairness are still there. The only thing missing is the One that will help you through it. The One that will restore your hope. So my challenge to you is to turn to God in all things. God is here!
Prayer:
God help me to believe.
Help me to trust you.
When I see suffering in others help me to respond as your hands and voice.
God take the painful things in my life and bring something good from them.
Lord I offer my life to you.
Help me believe...help me to trust.
In Jesus Name...Amen
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Bible Challenge 1/9 - 1/15
Now on to the schedule. This week we will finish up Mark and begin Luke. Are you enjoying the differences and the alternate points of view about Jesus' life? It is so interesting to me to see what each author deemed important.
1/9, Sunday: Mark 5-8
1/10, Monday: Mark 9-12
1/11, Tuesday: Mark 13-16
1/12, Wednesday: Luke 1-4
1/13, Thursday: Luke 5-8
1/14, Friday: Luke 9-12
1/15, Saturday: Luke 13-16
That is it. Stay safe and be blessed!
Friday, January 7, 2011
Friday Fives
1. Preaching Series - This Sunday we will begin a new sermon series focusing on answering those difficult questions concerning God's role in the evil and suffering of this world, why some of our prayers go unanswered, and how we can best make sense of God's will for our life. This week we will look at how thoughtful people might think about God's involvement in the world, the problem of suffering, and what our response as a people of faith should be. Invite a friend and I hope to see all of you there!
2. New Member Class - On January 16th at 12:45PM I will host a new member class in my office. If you have been attending Druid Hills for several months and would like to take that next step and become a member of the church please call or email the church office to sign up. We will discuss what it means to be a United Methodist, what it means to be a member of Druid Hills, and get a little background on history of this church. If this of interest to you I hope you will make plans to attend.
3. New Bible Study – Next week will begin a new six week Bible Study called, When Christians Get It Wrong, by Adam Hamilton.
This study will run every Thursday beginning January 13th and go through February 17th. We will meet in the Fellowship Hall at 11AM and if that does not fit your schedule I will offer it again at 7PM as well. I hope you will come and join us in what is always a great time of learning and fun!
4. Salty Service - A few months back I asked everyone to consider joining up together in groups to venture out and visit some of the residents in the many assisted living and rehab facilities around our church. There are many people there that get no visitors, and we are so good with fellowship, I see a need and a spiritual gift that can easily be paired up. I wanted to give everyone an update on how this budding ministry is progressing. We have three members that have reached out and began weekly visits to three different facilities. We also have a group of people that have formed to begin visits with a fifth facility. We have several contacts at area facilities, all we need is volunteers. Many people make light work. If you are willing to spend just a few hours a month visiting with people and sharing the love of Christ please contact the office and we can help you get connected. Please consider reaching out to the people in our area and let them know we care and in the name of Jesus Christ that they are loved.
5. Wanna Help? – Have you been looking for a way to volunteer here at Druid Hills? Are you just not sure where to start or who to ask? This February we will host a Ministry Fair here at the church. We will open up all the volunteer ministries of the church and give all of you a chance to sign up and get connected. Watch this space for more information and details!
Many blessings to you and your families!
2. New Member Class - On January 16th at 12:45PM I will host a new member class in my office. If you have been attending Druid Hills for several months and would like to take that next step and become a member of the church please call or email the church office to sign up. We will discuss what it means to be a United Methodist, what it means to be a member of Druid Hills, and get a little background on history of this church. If this of interest to you I hope you will make plans to attend.
3. New Bible Study – Next week will begin a new six week Bible Study called, When Christians Get It Wrong, by Adam Hamilton.
Have you ever wondered why people do not go or have stopped going to church? Have you ever considered that it may be because of the people inside? Please join me in this study as we examine those attitudes and beliefs that drive people away.
As followers of Christ our impact can be so much stronger when we get it right. In this study we will look at six areas that we can focus on to help us attract those people looking for Christ. Join me in learning how we can be advocates and rather than stumbling blocks.
4. Salty Service - A few months back I asked everyone to consider joining up together in groups to venture out and visit some of the residents in the many assisted living and rehab facilities around our church. There are many people there that get no visitors, and we are so good with fellowship, I see a need and a spiritual gift that can easily be paired up. I wanted to give everyone an update on how this budding ministry is progressing. We have three members that have reached out and began weekly visits to three different facilities. We also have a group of people that have formed to begin visits with a fifth facility. We have several contacts at area facilities, all we need is volunteers. Many people make light work. If you are willing to spend just a few hours a month visiting with people and sharing the love of Christ please contact the office and we can help you get connected. Please consider reaching out to the people in our area and let them know we care and in the name of Jesus Christ that they are loved.
5. Wanna Help? – Have you been looking for a way to volunteer here at Druid Hills? Are you just not sure where to start or who to ask? This February we will host a Ministry Fair here at the church. We will open up all the volunteer ministries of the church and give all of you a chance to sign up and get connected. Watch this space for more information and details!
Many blessings to you and your families!
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Are You Willing? - Jeremiah 31:31-34
Introduction
Today we are going to relive something we started last year, the covenant service. I want us to to take some time to look at the nature of a covenant, look at the importance of making this covenant, and then enter into our covenant together for the coming year.
A New Start?
I was out somewhere the other day and on a church sign I saw an interesting message: MAY YOUR TROUBLES LAST AS LONG AS YOUR NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS. May your troubles last as long as your New Year’s Resolutions. In other words, not long. Doesn’t say much for our willpower in sticking to those resolutions, does it?
The idea behind New Year’s Resolutions is certainly a good one. Because a New Year is a great time to reflect on the past and decide what we would like to change in the future. A new year is a new start – a chance to wipe the slate clean and start fresh. While New Year’s Resolutions typically include decisions to eat less and exercise more, or keep that hall closet clean, they certainly do not have to be limited to that. As Christians we have the opportunity to examine our hearts as well and resolve to deepen our relationship with Jesus Christ as well. A little later on we are going to participate in a covenant service that John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, wrote in 1755 to help people commit themselves to God for the coming year.
The Example of Josiah
Since we’re talking about covenants today, I want us to first gain some background. The Book of the Law that God had given to Moses on Mount Sinai was a covenant between God and Israel. God would be faithful to fulfill the promises he made to them about a Promised Land and becoming a great nation, as the Israelites were faithful to follow God and his laws. But throughout the Old Testament, what we find is that the Israelites wavered back and forth in their support of God over the years after they entered the Promised Land. They even set up temples to other gods and made sacrifices in front of them.
Now let us move to the book of 2 Kings and look at how the people of Israel treated their covenant with God. Enter Josiah the king of Judah. He ruled for 31 years and Scripture speaks of him as a good king. “He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and walked in all the ways of his (ancestor) David, not turning aside to the right or to the left.” (2 Kings 22:2) It’s interesting to me that Josiah followed God, because Scripture tells us that both his grandfather and his father did “evil in the eyes of the Lord.” They encouraged the people’s idol worship.
Josiah became king at the age of 8 years old, after his father was assassinated. By then, the people of Judah had strayed so far from their covenant with God that they had even lost it. The priests in the temple did not even know where the Book of the Law was. It certainly was not something they were very concerned about finding because they did not bother to follow it. Consequently, the temple itself had fallen into great disrepair.
Eighteen years into Josiah’s reign as king, he ordered an audit of the finances of the temple because he wanted to make some repairs. And during that audit, as the high priest Hilkiah was cleaning out the temple, what do you think he found? Hidden in a corner, pushed aside behind other stuff, Hilkiah found the scrolls containing the Book of the Law that Moses had received from God. The priest decided to pass it along to King Josiah. When Josiah heard the words that were contained in the book he became very upset. Scripture tells us that he even “tore his robes,” which was a sign of great mourning. Josiah was scared because he knew his people had not been following God’s law and he had heard the punishments clearly laid out in the book for those who failed to follow God.
So King Josiah called together all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem and read all the words of the Book of the Law. He renewed the covenant in the presence of the Lord and all the people pledged themselves to the covenant. It helped for a while. All the years that Josiah was alive the people were faithful to follow God. But after he died, Josiah’s son took the throne, and he did “evil in the eyes of the Lord.” The people began to revert back to their old ways. They continued on in this pattern for many more years. They would follow God’s laws and covenant for so long and then they would forget and turn away. Follow, forget, follow, forget.
Written on the Heart
It could have all ended there. The Israelites had broken their part of the covenant with God, time and time again. But God never broke his part of the covenant with them; God remained faithful. At times the Israelites had to pay the consequences for their actions, but God never turned his back on them.
In fact, he came up with a better way. God changed the covenant when Jesus came into the world. It was no longer written on tablets of stone, or scrolls of paper. And this was foretold in Jeremiah 31: “The time is coming, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers, when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant… this is the covenant I will make… I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God and they will be my people.”
Now the covenant with God is no longer an outward one about keeping favor with God by doing his commandments. Rather, the covenant made now is an inward one, reflecting the state of one’s heart. Our personal relationship with God is now the issue and the intentions of one’s actions rather than just the actions themselves become important.
Will You Do It?
Whether or not you make a list of resolutions to keep in the New Year, now is the time for us to reflect upon our personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Now is the time to remember God’s faithfulness to us and commit our hearts and lives to him again.
We need a reminder of the covenant that we make with God. When the Israelites were crossing the Jordan River into the Promised Land, Joshua had the people pickup 12 large stones, one for each tribe of Israel, and built an altar in the middle of the riverbed as a reminder of God’s faithfulness and how God had helped them in their crossing. Years later the prophet Samuel set up a stone between Mizpah and Shen and named it Ebenezer, meaning “Thus far has the Lord helped us.” It was a sign to remind all the people of Israel of God’s faithfulness to deliver from the hands of the Philistines. (I Samuel 7)
That’s what today is about. We may not be building or setting up large stones, but by participating in a covenant service we are remembering God’s faithfulness in the past, committing our present situation to him, and trusting in God for our future in the year ahead.
As we now enter into the Covenant, you are advised to make this covenant not only in word but also to “write it upon your heart.” With all reverence, lay the service before God as your act and deed of worship. And afterwards, sign the Covenant prayer insert in the bulletin and keep it as a reminder of the holy agreement between you and God to remember in the coming year when doubts and temptations arise.
Today we are going to relive something we started last year, the covenant service. I want us to to take some time to look at the nature of a covenant, look at the importance of making this covenant, and then enter into our covenant together for the coming year.
A New Start?
I was out somewhere the other day and on a church sign I saw an interesting message: MAY YOUR TROUBLES LAST AS LONG AS YOUR NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS. May your troubles last as long as your New Year’s Resolutions. In other words, not long. Doesn’t say much for our willpower in sticking to those resolutions, does it?
The idea behind New Year’s Resolutions is certainly a good one. Because a New Year is a great time to reflect on the past and decide what we would like to change in the future. A new year is a new start – a chance to wipe the slate clean and start fresh. While New Year’s Resolutions typically include decisions to eat less and exercise more, or keep that hall closet clean, they certainly do not have to be limited to that. As Christians we have the opportunity to examine our hearts as well and resolve to deepen our relationship with Jesus Christ as well. A little later on we are going to participate in a covenant service that John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, wrote in 1755 to help people commit themselves to God for the coming year.
The Example of Josiah
Since we’re talking about covenants today, I want us to first gain some background. The Book of the Law that God had given to Moses on Mount Sinai was a covenant between God and Israel. God would be faithful to fulfill the promises he made to them about a Promised Land and becoming a great nation, as the Israelites were faithful to follow God and his laws. But throughout the Old Testament, what we find is that the Israelites wavered back and forth in their support of God over the years after they entered the Promised Land. They even set up temples to other gods and made sacrifices in front of them.
Now let us move to the book of 2 Kings and look at how the people of Israel treated their covenant with God. Enter Josiah the king of Judah. He ruled for 31 years and Scripture speaks of him as a good king. “He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and walked in all the ways of his (ancestor) David, not turning aside to the right or to the left.” (2 Kings 22:2) It’s interesting to me that Josiah followed God, because Scripture tells us that both his grandfather and his father did “evil in the eyes of the Lord.” They encouraged the people’s idol worship.
Josiah became king at the age of 8 years old, after his father was assassinated. By then, the people of Judah had strayed so far from their covenant with God that they had even lost it. The priests in the temple did not even know where the Book of the Law was. It certainly was not something they were very concerned about finding because they did not bother to follow it. Consequently, the temple itself had fallen into great disrepair.
Eighteen years into Josiah’s reign as king, he ordered an audit of the finances of the temple because he wanted to make some repairs. And during that audit, as the high priest Hilkiah was cleaning out the temple, what do you think he found? Hidden in a corner, pushed aside behind other stuff, Hilkiah found the scrolls containing the Book of the Law that Moses had received from God. The priest decided to pass it along to King Josiah. When Josiah heard the words that were contained in the book he became very upset. Scripture tells us that he even “tore his robes,” which was a sign of great mourning. Josiah was scared because he knew his people had not been following God’s law and he had heard the punishments clearly laid out in the book for those who failed to follow God.
So King Josiah called together all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem and read all the words of the Book of the Law. He renewed the covenant in the presence of the Lord and all the people pledged themselves to the covenant. It helped for a while. All the years that Josiah was alive the people were faithful to follow God. But after he died, Josiah’s son took the throne, and he did “evil in the eyes of the Lord.” The people began to revert back to their old ways. They continued on in this pattern for many more years. They would follow God’s laws and covenant for so long and then they would forget and turn away. Follow, forget, follow, forget.
Written on the Heart
It could have all ended there. The Israelites had broken their part of the covenant with God, time and time again. But God never broke his part of the covenant with them; God remained faithful. At times the Israelites had to pay the consequences for their actions, but God never turned his back on them.
In fact, he came up with a better way. God changed the covenant when Jesus came into the world. It was no longer written on tablets of stone, or scrolls of paper. And this was foretold in Jeremiah 31: “The time is coming, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers, when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant… this is the covenant I will make… I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God and they will be my people.”
Now the covenant with God is no longer an outward one about keeping favor with God by doing his commandments. Rather, the covenant made now is an inward one, reflecting the state of one’s heart. Our personal relationship with God is now the issue and the intentions of one’s actions rather than just the actions themselves become important.
Will You Do It?
Whether or not you make a list of resolutions to keep in the New Year, now is the time for us to reflect upon our personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Now is the time to remember God’s faithfulness to us and commit our hearts and lives to him again.
We need a reminder of the covenant that we make with God. When the Israelites were crossing the Jordan River into the Promised Land, Joshua had the people pickup 12 large stones, one for each tribe of Israel, and built an altar in the middle of the riverbed as a reminder of God’s faithfulness and how God had helped them in their crossing. Years later the prophet Samuel set up a stone between Mizpah and Shen and named it Ebenezer, meaning “Thus far has the Lord helped us.” It was a sign to remind all the people of Israel of God’s faithfulness to deliver from the hands of the Philistines. (I Samuel 7)
That’s what today is about. We may not be building or setting up large stones, but by participating in a covenant service we are remembering God’s faithfulness in the past, committing our present situation to him, and trusting in God for our future in the year ahead.
As we now enter into the Covenant, you are advised to make this covenant not only in word but also to “write it upon your heart.” With all reverence, lay the service before God as your act and deed of worship. And afterwards, sign the Covenant prayer insert in the bulletin and keep it as a reminder of the holy agreement between you and God to remember in the coming year when doubts and temptations arise.
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Bible Challenge 1/2 - 1/8
Here you go everyone...a new year, a new time for the Bible Challenge. I invite all of you to join me on this journey of reading Scripture. We will read four chapters a day and in the course of a year we will read the New Testament twice and the Old Testament once. This will require dedication and perseverance but I believe you will be truly blessed by this endeavor. A bit of advice for you: If you begin and miss a day do not worry, just pick up the next day and keep going. Do not feel as if you have to backtrack.
I pray you will accept this invitation and join me in spending daily time with God. The first week's schedule will keep us in Matthew most of the week, finishing up with the beginning of Mark.
1/2, Sunday: Matthew 5-8
1/3, Monday: Matthew 9-12
1/4, Tuesday: Matthew 13-16
1/5, Wednesday: Matthew 17-20
1/6, Thursday: Matthew 21-24
1/7, Friday: Matthew 25-28
1/8, Saturday: Mark 1-4
Be Blessed!
I pray you will accept this invitation and join me in spending daily time with God. The first week's schedule will keep us in Matthew most of the week, finishing up with the beginning of Mark.
1/2, Sunday: Matthew 5-8
1/3, Monday: Matthew 9-12
1/4, Tuesday: Matthew 13-16
1/5, Wednesday: Matthew 17-20
1/6, Thursday: Matthew 21-24
1/7, Friday: Matthew 25-28
1/8, Saturday: Mark 1-4
Be Blessed!
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