I've Got the Joy, Joy, Joy, Joy

I like David Letterman’s Top Ten Lists. I used to never go to bed without watching his monologue just to hear the Top Ten List. And that was back when he came on at 12:30 a.m. after "The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson" went off. How did I sit up so late back then? I had to "sit up late" last night to watch the season premier of CSI, which goes off at 10:00!) Anyway, some time go I ran across the Top Ten List of “Things You Seldom Hear in Church.”

• “Hey, it’s my turn to sit on the front pew!”
• “I didn’t notice the sermon ran 25 minutes over.”
• “What this church really needs is more announcements!”
• “Personally, I find witnessing much more enjoyable than golf.”
• “Let’s give the $500 a month we pay in country club fees to church.”
• “Who do I see to volunteer to teach the Junior High class.”
• “I just love it when we sing those new songs I’ve never heard before.”
• “Nothing inspires me more than another sermon on giving!”
• “Our list of volunteers is getting to long; we need to cut it down”
• “Nothing is more enjoyable or fun than coming to church.”

Do we often use the word “church” and “enjoy” in the same sentence? Or do we see church as being like medicine… it’s really is good for you, but it tastes bad... and it really isn't good for you unless it does taste bad! And maybe it’s not just church. Maybe we approach the entirety of our Christian lives like that. How many Christians look like they were weaned on a sour pickle? How many believers are joyless pessimists who see life like a glass a half-empty? How many church members are by nature critical of others and critical of things at church?

We act like we don’t understand that the Christian life to be a life of JOY. The noun "joy" (chara) appears 59 times in the New Testament; its verb form (chairo) is used another 72 times. So, there is a lot of joy in the New Testament! In fact, that was the standard Greek greeting. You met someone, you didn’t say, “How’s it going?” You said "Joy be with you." This is the greeting Paul uses, along with the Hebrew “shalom” (“peace”) to begin his letters. This is also the greeting used two other special occasions.

• The angel who told Mary she was with child said, “Joy” (Lk 1:28)
• Jesus met the women after Resurrection said, “Joy” (Matt 28:9)

Joy is mentioned at the beginning (birth of Jesus) and end (the resurrection) of the gospel story itself! The gospel begins and ends with joy. That doesn’t mean that life will always be a happy-go-lucky-pinch-me-I'm-so-excited expereince. But it does mean that our lives should always reflect the joy of the Lord. I think we need to consider our hole outlook on life. If our lives are not characterized by a deeper inner joy that expresses itself in some positive way, it is entirely possible we're not doing Christianity right.

Apocalyptically Speaking

Yogi Berra is a hall of fame Yankee catcher, former Yankee manger, successful TV pitch man and philosopher. Maybe philosopher is not quite right; Yogi has a famous grasp of the obvious that has resulted in sayings known as “Yogi-isms.”

• “A nickel ain’t worth a dime anymore.”
• “Why buy good luggage? You only use it when you travel.”
• “Nobody goes to New York anymore; it’s too crowded”
• “I wish I had an answer to that question because I’m tired of answering it.”

Maybe his most famous Yogism was made when the pennant race came down to Yankees and Red Socks just like it did the previous season. Yogi said, “Yeah, it’s spooky; it’s like deja vu all over again.”

Most of us have felt at some point that something was like “deja vu all over again.” You have a conversation with a child or your spouse and think, “Haven’t we had this talk before?” You sit down to pay bills or go out to mow the lawn and think, “Didn’t I just get finished doing this?”
As we talked about a bit in class last night, the Greeks had a “deja vu all over again” philosophy of history, a view that many still have today. They saw history is a circle, a cycle of repeating events that happen over and over. We say, “History repeats itself,” and sometimes it does seem that the human family makes the same mistakes over and over. It’s like deja vu all over again.
But take that “history repeats itself” view too literally, and pretty soon the point of history is that history really has no point. We are on a treadmill, and endless cycle, an unending “Circle of Life” to use the title of “The Lion King” theme song. Mufstafa dies, Simba becomes king, history repeats itself, and the cycle continues— with no real point, no real meaning and no real hope.

Scripture has a totally different view of history. It presents history as not as a circle but a straight line. History had beginning (“in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”), it has a middle (the coming of the Messiah), and history will also have a definite end (Jesus is coming back to end all things). The prayer of ancient believers continues to be the prayer of the church, “Maranatha.” Come, Lord Jesus (Revelation 22:20).

While I was working on my Wednesday lesson on 2 Peter 3, a thought struck me. It may not be precisely right; that’s the way it is with most of my flashes of insight.

First, some background. I have always had an “amillennial” view of the end time. I think the best way to understand what the scriptures say about the second coming is that Jesus will come back, end time, judge the world and take us to heaven. No literal rapture, Armageddon, or millennial reign. I believe that Revelation is a symbolic picture of the histroical struggle between Rome and the church, and by extension the eternal struggle between good and evil, God and Satan. (See Revelation 17:14). Reverse-engineering the geopolitical events of our day so that they seem to fit into scripture prophesy seems artificial and strained. In fact, every generation from the crusades to the present day have found ways to make Bible prophecy “fit” their day as “the end of days.” We suggested last night that Peter’s point about the end of days is that we be so convinced it is coming one day that we live holy lives today so that we are ready whenever it comes. Peter said, “Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives” ( Peter 3:11).

So here’s my flash of insight— right or wrong, good or bad. I think people who do accept and stress those premillennial ideas of rapture, Antichrist and Armageddon do seem to be more focused (maybe obsessed?) on the end time than those of us who take all that “figuratively.” I wonder if we need to a bit more millennial in our mindset! I wonder if we would be better off if we were a little more apocalyptic in our world view! Peter ties the certainty of the second coming to our focus on holy living. So maybe we need to be a bit more focused on the last day so we are a bit more focused on living for God today!

So, anyone have an old copy of Left Behind I can borrow?

God's Favor

It seems that these days I keep bumping into the modern American religious belief that God wants His people to prosper. The idea seems to be that our faithfulness to God will be rewarded by prosperity— material prosperity. God wants us to prosper, and He wants us to believe that we will prosper. Joel Osteen, one of the best known spokesman for this idea, says this—

I believe one of the main ways that we grow in favor is by declaring. It’s not enough to just read it. It’s not enough to just believe it. You’ve got to speak it out. Your words have creative power. One of the primary ways we release our faith is through our words. There is a divine connection between you declaring God’s favor and seeing God’s favor manifested in your life. And some of you are doing your best to please the Lord. You are living a holy consecrated life, but you’re not really experiencing God’s supernatural favor. And it’s simply because you’re not declaring it. You’ve got to give life to your faith by speaking it out.

This teaching is variously known as “the word of faith” or “name it and claim it.” One critic calls it “blab it and grab it.”

I’ve been reading Jeremiah a lot lately... Jeremiah as in "The Weeping Prophet." I don't believe Jeremiah subscribed to this health and wealth theology. Frankly, I think Jeremiah would have been offended by the quote above. Jeremiah faithfully declared the word of the Lord to a people that variously ignored him, made fun of him, accused him of treason and tired to have him killed. None of the things that Osteen would call “God’s favor” seemed to attach themselves to Jeremiah. What Jeremiah declared was "the word of the Lord," and it was not a word of favor or prosperity. In fact, a consistent idea throughout Jeremiah's book is that the prophets of prosperity in his own day are false prophets that deceive the people (see Jer. 5:13, 14:13-15, 23:16)

I mentioned in an earlier blog that I had my yearly (well, it should be yearly) physical this week. It would seems that I am as healthy as a horse. Blood pressure, cholesterol, etc. all on the low end of normal. That is truly a blessing from God, and He gets thanksgiving and praise. But it would be arrogant to think that I did something to deserve God’s favor. It would be more than arrogant to think that those who struggle with health concerns somehow did not do something right to declare God’s favor in their lives.

It seems to me that the idea that what we do somehow earns or engages God’s favor in material things (health and wealth) is really not that different from suggesting that we do religiously deserves salvation. God gives grace to who God gives grace. God gives the gifts of wealth, success and prosperity to some. Some (like Jeremiah) receive the gifts of struggle, hardship and
difficulty. To all who seek him and live our their faithfulness, God gives the gift of Himself. That is the ultimate favor of God!

The Dance of the God-Struck

As the ark of the covenant of the Lord was entering the City of David, Michal daughter of Saul watched from a window. And when she saw King David dancing and celebrating, she despised him in her heart. (1 Chronicles 15:29)

It is not hard to imagine David dancing before the Ark. In fact, we see David’s heart dancing before God all through the Psalms. So, I guess it makes sense that we would see the rest of him dancing for joy as the ark is brought home to Jerusalem. And David's dance here was not some highly-stylized liturgical choreography; it was rather an expression of celebration and thanksgiving. It was not the dance of the stage but rather the dance in the end zone. David’s dance was where worship meets pure joy. (OK, that sounds a little too much like Max Lucado; I must have read that somewhere, but I don’t remember where).

But David’s wife Michal is right there to throw the flag on David for "excessive celebration." As she watched David’s dance from a distance, there was nothing but coldness and criticism in her heart. The word here “despised” means “to hold in contempt.” It is the same word for used to describe how Goliath dismissed David in 1 Samuel 17: 42. David was lost in joy and thanksgiving before the Lord; Michal was lost in her own critical spirit.

What is the point of this story? It’s not that we need more dancing in church. But maybe what we do need is less criticism of the worship of others. This story is about David’s heart. Worship, ministry and piety must come from a heart that overflows with God. Michal saw a lack of protocol and propriety; David just saw God. The heart that finds it easy to be judgmental and dismissive based on external appearances is a heart that will not see God. In an article entitled “The Dance of the God-Struck,” Mark Buchanan puts his finger on the essence of this story--

Occasionally we get glimpses of Deepest Reality, intimations of what remains after all else has been shaken out and burned up. This is the reality that earthy things sometimes hint at and sometimes hide… Glimpsing it, that Deepest Reality, can make you do funny things. You can become stony still. Or giddily happy. Or chokingly afraid. It can calm you with uncanny peace, or disrupt you with implacable dread. It can make you, simultaneously, not yourself and fully yourself. It can make kings dance.

Suing God

A Nebraska state senator is suing God, seeking a permanent injunction ordering God to cease all harmful activities. The suit charges God with causing, “fearsome floods, egregious earthquakes, horrendous hurricanes, terrifying tornadoes, pestilential plagues, ferocious famines, devastating droughts, genocidal wars, birth defects, and the like.” Chambers also says God “has manifested neither compassion nor remorse.” He asks for the court to grant him a summary judgment and enter a permanent injunction enjoining God from engaging in the types of deleterious actions described in the lawsuit. State Senator Ernie Chambers has filed this lawsuit to prove a point about frivolous lawsuits. He says, "Anybody can file a lawsuit against anybody- even God." So he decided to prove his point by suing God.

Who is to blame for “fearsome floods, egregious earthquakes, horrendous hurricanes” and the other things mentioned in the lawsuit? Obviously, the blame for much (most?) of what is wrong with the world today can be laid directly at the feet of human beings. Much of human misery comes from things like war and crime, which are purely human constructs. Even much of the suffering from things called “acts of God” can be traced to human rather than divine fingerprints. Many famines have been created or made worse because of human greed; the suffering following hurricane and tsunami is often made worse because of a failure to properly allocate needed supplies. The lion’s share of blame for the state of our world rests solidly on the shoulders of mankind.

And properly understood, the rest of the blame is ours as well. When Adam and Eve rebelled against God and introduced sin into the world, something shifted in the order of things. The world fell. Not just Adam and Eve— something shifted on its axis in the entire created order. Paul describes a creation that groans under the curse of the fall—

19 For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are. 20 Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse. But with eager hope, 21 the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay. 22 For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. (Romans 8:19-22, NLT).

When Adam and Eve rebelled again God, there was something fundamentally broken. Not broken just in humans; broken in all creation. We should not be surprised by the seemingly random and unfair suffering that happens in our world. The world is broken; we broke it! Senator Chambers may be making a statement against frivolous lawsuits, but he has the wrong defendant. He should be suing us!

A Trip Down Memory Lane

I just got back from the doctor’s office, and my yearly check-up (which I have without fail ever 2-3 years) reveals that I’m in excellent health. The nurse wanted make sure that I was awake when my blood pressure came back 102/68. But then, it’s Monday; I’m lucky to have a blood pressure on Monday! People that don’t preach have no idea how much a Sunday takes out of the preacher. I don’t get a 30 minute nap on Sunday morning like everyone else!

It took a bit longer than usual to out-process me after my visit. So I’m standing there by the window to the office when I notice a very familiar (and very strong) smell. It was a smell that took me back to my childhood— Fedron. I knew instantly it was Fedron. I looked around the corner and sure enough, there was a repairman working on one of the two office typewriters that they still use to type labels and fill out forms (how quaint). The repairman was using Fedron, and the distinctive smell took me on a trip down memory lane. (Sniff that stuff long enough and it will take you on another kind of trip!)

My Dad was in the office equipment business for years. Fedron was the industrial strength solvent that he used to clean and restore typewriter platens and dissolve the “gunk” (technical jargon) on the typewriter keys. According to a supplier who will sell you a 4 ounce bottle for $10, Fedron is “a clear liquid, blended of highly refined pure chemicals, specially formulated for cleaning rubber, metal, Teflon, silicon, and similar materials.” What they don’t tell you is that it will eat through almost anything else!

Dad bought it in 10 gallon drums or something, and he used it for many different applications. When we bought our first house, the floors were saturated with the smell of the 6 or so adult dogs that the previous occupant kept inside… without ever letting go outside. I mopped the floors with a bucket of Fedron that Dad gave me, and it killed the smell of the dogs. It would have also killed the dogs had they been around! This was strong stuff.

I never thought I would grow nostalgic over the smell of a commercial solvent, but I did. As I stood there smelling the Fedron, I was taken back to summers working for Dad hunched over an Adler 21-C electric typewriter at Bethel High School cleaning the gunk off the keys and getting paid 75 cents an hour… and getting a headache from smelling Fedron. I have a headache now from smelling it in the doctor’s office, but somehow I don’t mind.

Enjoy every day that God gives you. You never know which day you will look back upon as “the good old days!”

Where Were You When...

Where were you when… There have been three events in my lifetime that were so monumental that everyone remembers where they were then they heard that the event had taken place. Oh, there are many personal monumental events that I will always remember— when I was married, when my children were born, when Arkansas beat Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl. But three events are so universal that most who were alive then remember where they werewhen they heard

First, “Where were you when you heard President Kennedy had been shot?” I was in Miss Riddle’s first grade class at deer Park Elementary. They closed school early and sent us home. I remember being really upset when I learned that the president had died. I remember Mom saying, “That’s really a bad thing, but it won’t affect little boys in Virginia.” That made sense, so I went outside to play.

Second, “Where were you when you heard that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin had landed on the moon?” I was in the first bottom bunk on the left side of Cabin #2 at Idlewild Christian Camp listening to the radio. (Later it would be against rules to have a radio, but we had a radio that day.) That when we heard that “The Eagle has landed.” I thought that was cool, but I thought it was even more cool that I were getting ready to play softball.

Third, “Where were you when you on September 11, 2001 when you heard about the attack on the World Trade Center.” I was at the church building. We had just started a program where Elaine Denman came to the building once a week to do Christian counseling. Someone called, and we set the TV up just in time to see the second plane hit. It was the most surreal morning that I can remember. Seeing the second crash… hearing of the Pentagon… watching the Twin Towers fall. Unlike the shooting of JFK, we knew that this was going to directly affect us for the rest of our lives. Terrorism came home. It got real.

God has blessed us with many things in the world, but what He does not ever promise is a world without hardship, tragedy and death. What God gave us is a world in which we are free to make our own moral decisions. That freedom allowed a handful of evil men to turn airplanes into bombs and turn the murder of 3000 innocent people into a political statement. But that freedom also allowed those brave fire fighters and police to rush into the burning Twin Towers and military personnel to climb through the flames at the Pentagon in a valiant effort to save others.

Lisa Beamer became probably the most visible face of 911 in the weeks and months following the disaster. Her husband Todd died during the battle to take back the plane that crashed in a Pennsylvania field but was supposed to crash into the Capital. She became a source of inspiration and strength with her book and many appearances. Todd’s final words “Let’s roll!” became our unofficial national motto. Lisa shared how it was that she was able to roll on after Todd’s death—

If I were trying to hold my life together based on my human strength, I wouldn't get out of bed. I am so thankful to have my God-given strength and courage. Every day seems like such a dichotomy, because I'm human, with emotions of sadness and grieving. But on the other hand, my perspective is much bigger than just the things that happen in this world.

Today we seek that divine perspective as we remember one of our darkest days as a nation. The courage and sacrifice of those at Ground Zero and the response and resolve of millions across the country help us to see that through the darkness the light still shines brightly. May we always remember those who died that day. May we live daily top bring the light of God into our dark world.

The Dark Night of the Soul

The cover of the September 3, 2007 edition of Time has the picture of Mother Teresa with the provocative title “The Secret Life of Mother Teresa.” (Did they select that title hoping that people would assume something lurid, like she ran a dog-fighting ring or something?) The “secret life” of this the most recognizable nun of history was her constant struggle for faith. In 1946, she heard what she believed to be the voice of God calling her to minister to the poor. Though the voice of God grew quiet, she devoted her life to serving the poor. She lived in what appeared to be cheerful faith to those around her, and that made the publication of her letters expressing doubt that much more jarring. In those letters she felt abandonment; the vividness of her memory of God’s love and voice made His silence that much more unbearable. She writes—

Lord, my God, who am I that You should forsake me? The child of your love— and now become as the most hated one— the one You have thrown away as unwanted, unloved. I call, I cling, I want, and there is no One to answer

Sunday’s Daily Press paper carried an editorial by Michael Gerson, an op-ed columnist for the Washington Post and a former speechwriter for President Bush. He discusses Mother Teresa’s faith-struggle and asks what it might mean for our faith. All believers go through what St. John of the Cross called “the dark night of the Soul.” Perhaps what Mother Teresa reminds us of here is that faith and doubt, struggle and service, questioning and faithfulness can all take place in the same soul at the same time. Gerson says this—

There are lessons in this complicated spiritual life-- that holiness has more to do with obedience than spiritual feelings; that faith can coexist with suffering and doubt; that sainthood can be harsher and more difficult than we imagine… There is no easy answer here, but the question is central to the Christian faith. Other noble religious traditions promise serenity, detachment from striving and release from the suffering of the world. Christianity, in contrast, teaches that grace is found in the worst of that suffering, and through a figure who despairs of God's presence in his parting words. This anguish is not convenient -- "Why hast Thou forsaken me?" is hardly the best religious marketing slogan. But for millennia this abandonment has offered hope that God might somehow be present even in shame, loneliness and betrayal, even on the descending path of depression, even in the soul's hardness and doubt, even in the silence of God himself -- and that all these things may be the preface to glory.

Jesus quotes David from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Both David and Jesus absolutely feel forsaken when they speak these words. But I have to wonder that they also speak those words because we so desperately need to hear them. The act of crying out to God is an act of faith, a desperate faith certainly, but an act of faith. We may read in Mother Teresa’s letters a sense of her feeling of abandonment, but what we see in her life is her absolute abandonment to absolute obedience to the voice of God... even when for her that voice had gone silent.

Only a Step

On December 30, an Arizona driver in a 1991 GMC pick-up was traveling east on State Route 59 just outside of Hurricane, Utah. (Hurricane? I’m sure they get a lot of those in Utah). The driver told police that he was traveling 55 mph (though skid marks indicate he was going closer to 83 mph) when the truck left the roadway. The truck left the road onto the right shoulder when the driver overcorrected and shot back across both lanes and hit and broke through a cement barricade that separated the road from a roughly 200-foot drop down the canyon. The truck finally came to rest and the driver was fine.

Well, he was fine until he looked down! This second pictures adds a little perspective to things, doesn't it? The truck evidently went through the guard rail so fast that it was propelled through the air, spinning it 180 degrees along the guardrail clearing the concrete drainage culvert and coming to rest on a small ledge over looking the 200 foot drop to the bottom of the canyon. There has been a lot of debate if this is real or Photoshop, but the police evidently say that it is real. One Web site ran these photos under the headline, “I bet this guy will be in church Sunday!”

This was an especially close call, But then our lives are really nothing but a series of close calls. Even if you obey all the traffic laws, you are still hurtling down the interstate at nearly a mile minute sitting in a contraption of metal and plastic surrounded by other people doing the same thing. Our hold on life is always very tenuous, is it not? David told Jonathan, "Yet as surely as the Lord lives and as you live, there is only a step between me and death" (1 Samuel 20:3). Maybe you don't have Saul breathing down your neck trying to skewer you with a spear. May all you are doing is driving to work... while the driver above is driving on the same road in a new truck! Only a step.

The only way to be ready when your appointment with death comes is to live ready at all times. And obey the speed limit.

I Have Hidden Your Word in My Heart

So, need any more good reasons to keep your Bible close to your heart? How about the case of Pfc. Brendon Schweigart from Andover, Maryland. Schweigart was serving in Iraq when he was hit by a sniper's bullet. The bullet injured him, but not nearly as severely (or as fatally) as it could have because it lodged in the Bible he carried in his shirt pocket. Schweigart says that the Bible “definitely prevented more serious injury, because if it wouldn't have been there, it would have ricocheted off my bullet-proof plate and more than likely would have gone back into my chest, causing more damage.”

Several things came to mind when I read this— “Just think how effective his Bible would have been had it been a hardback study Bible with a concordance, maps and study notes!” Or maybe “The bullet probably stopped in Leviticus; a lot of people stop in Leviticus when reading through the Bible.”

God intended his word to be a protective shield. David said, “I seek you with all my heart; do not let me stray from your commands. I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you” (Psalm 119:10-11). When Jesus confronted Satan in the desert temptations, He resisted by quoting scripture. The Bible says, “The word of the LORD is flawless. He is a shield for all who take refuge in him.” In fact, it says that three times (2 Sam. 22:31, Psa 18:30, Prov 30:5).

On one of our mission trips to Ukraine, Tom Gilliam, became separated from the group when he got off the trolly bus at the wrong stop alone… and the buss pulled away before he realized his mistake. So Tom was alone in the middle of a strange city in the middle of the night… and none of us even missed him! We had been traveling across the city to hand out Bibles, and Tom was carrying several heavy bundles of Ukrainian Bibles. When we found him later, he later told us that he had decided that if anyone attacked him, he would have just hit them with his Bibles! God’s word does come in handy, doesn’t it? Ask Brendon Schweigart. Ask Tom Gilliam.