Quote of the day

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The Purpose Of An Open Mind---Is To Close It On Something

Saturday's cartoon

Sunrise or sunset?

Is it sunset or sunrise? Is the day beginning or ending? Is light coming or will it be darkness? What lies ahead?

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This was a topic of discussion in C.S. Lewis' book, The Great Divorce. Both in heaven and in hell it was twilight. In both places the residents anticipated the dawn, but it's clear from the story that in one place dawn is coming and in the other eternal darkness.

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For some the dusk between morning and night has them confused. The events of life have kept them in these dimly lit hours so long that they don't know if it's dawn on the way or dark. For some the approach of the dawn looks like the approach of darkness. It's hard for them to anticipate daylight when they have been in the gloom of dusk for so long.

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This morning I met with one of our guys who is really discouraged. He's anticipating the night when in fact the day is about to dawn, but he can't see it. He only sees his sun setting when all around the birds are singing as the day arrives. When we go through difficult experiences of life it seems that darkness is what awaits us. We lose vision, lose hope, lose our bearing of what God is doing. The dusk, our problems, anticipate either night or dawn and we don't know which awaits us, but there is this promise of the morning approaching as the author of scripture writes,

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2 Peter 1:19 And we have the word of the prophets made more certain, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.

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It's not the dark ahead, but morning. When you are discouraged, depressed, anticipating your dusk to soon turn to dark realize that God has promised morning for us. Light is coming, not fading away. Hope is rising, not disappearing. Life isn't over, it's just beginning. The dawn is on the way. The morning star will soon be here and darkness will disappear forever.

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I did my best this morning to encourage my friend and give him hope for the day ahead. I fear his dusk lingers. He is awaiting the night and not hoping for day, but listen carefully...the birds are chirping. The Son of righteousness is soon to come. Morning nears.

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Daniel

Tonight I start teaching through the book of Daniel. I've been preparing for this for a while. Daniel is an amazing man....a man taken into captivity as a young man...probably no older than the young Arab boy in this refugee camp. A teenager taken from his home during a war. Taken to another country. Given a new name. Forced to learn a new language. Educated under a system completely different from what he knew. And yet....he made the decision to be faithful to God. His decision made a big difference in his life and in the lives of those he touched. For the next 70 years Daniel was part of a foreign government working under the authority of pagan kings, walking with God the entire time. This is a young man who, like Joseph in Egypt, changed leaders and the course of governments by his faith. I pray that I can communicate these truths well and that we would be "Daniels" in our day.

A "two trip" project

I've noticed that doing home repairs is tedious and frustrating. At least it is for me. I can't finish a project with less that two trips to the hardware store. Part way through the work I find I need a bolt, a bracket, a wrench and off I go for that thing I need to finish what I started. Then, there is always the second trip for the other things I didn't know I needed. Yesterday afternoon I had to replace a faucet in our bathroom. It seemed an easy job (at least the directions said so), but of course that's not possible.....at least not for me. After much pain and contortion I got the new sink in, turned on the water to test it and IT LEAKED! Off to the hardware store...Teflon tape, silicon sealant and the ever faithful duct tape. More repairs, contortions and pain....one more time to turn on the water and it STILL leaked! Ok, what's going on? Where is this coming from? I know it's never where you think it is and so I was on a quest for the source. Then I find it. The leak is coming from the new faucet I just bought! My work was good. It was the new faucet that was leaking....and so....one more trip to the hardware store. After much pain and twice as much time as it should have taken we now have a beautiful new faucet. No one will ever know all it took to make it happen, but I know.

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My Christian life is like that. It's messy. Things don't always go well or easily. There's a lot of pain involved in getting things to work as I add new "fixtures" to my walk with God. There the frequent visits to his word for instructions on how it should work, what I need to do, what went wrong....and then I'm back at it working once more to see if I can get it right. It's often frustrating, often discouraging...there's the feeling that I'll never get it right. It will never work as advertised, but then, when I'm finished there are wonderful new fixtures to my Christian life that through much pain and suffering look really good. Even when a project turns into more than two trips to God's word to get it finished the results are worth the frustrations!

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Have a great labor day

Have a great labor day...when, contrary to the name...we do nothing at all. Enjoy.

New music

Once in a while there is a new artist that stands out from the rest. Today I want to introduce you to Israel Houghton and his new album, Love God, Love People. Israel is a worship leader, song writer and producer. His new album reminds me of Andrae Crouch's album, Mercy. Mercy is one of the best worship albums of all times and Israel follows in that tradition of outstanding music, lyrics and unique styles. If you love music this is an album you should have. In fact, I'm enjoying it as I write these words. You'll thank me for telling you about it!

Signs

Nothing lasts....

"Nothing lasts. What a shame that is." --Benjamin Buttons

Tonight we are watching the movie, Benjamin Buttons. What an interesting story. I know I am late to the discussion on this movie, but just one line caught my attention, "Nothing lasts. What a shame that is." It caught my ear because in this world that's true. But wait.....there's more....that's not the end of the story. One of the sad results of sin is that things meant to be eternal now have become temporary. Death affected everything! What a shame that is. Now, for this time, nothing lasts, but there will be a day...what a day...when everything will last forever, just as God planned. What a glory that will be! I long for that day.

Saturday cartoon

"I just wasn't being fed"

My friend, James, wrote this wonderful post in June. I simply hadn't read it until we talked about it this morning over coffee and so I had to go back and read his thoughts after our visit. These are great insights from a good friend and shine a bright light on our need for maturity. Thanks, James.

balanced diet

Several times recently I have heard the comment, usually made to justify changing churches, "I just wasn't being fed." Considering the fact that I have said this in the past myself, my reaction to hearing it lately is interesting to me.

"I just wasn't being fed." By that do you mean that there was no [spiritual] food made available? Or was the portion set before you too meager to satisfy? Was it there, and you merely did not "eat?"

When I was an infant, I of course depended on my mother to feed me. As I grew, increasingly I fed myself but my mother still specified and provided the food that I ate. As time went on, I could choose more and more what I ate, but largely it was still provided by someone else. Finally, in maturity, I'm largely responsible for feeding myself, even though there is almost always someone else involved in the provision of food.

One might initially be drawn to a local church because of a hunger to know the Lord; by feeding on the Word, one can learn who God is, who man really is, what God has accomplished to reconcile man to Himself, etc. As a [spiritual] infant, a person does not know what or how to eat, and the church, through the preached word, Bible classes, etc. can feed such a person until that person begins to learn to feed directly on the Word. From passages of Scripture such as Hebrews 5:12-14, we see that there is an expectation for the Christian to grow to maturity, but not every one does, and as Theodore Epp said,

It is a shame for a person to have been a Christian for years but not to have advanced beyond the knowledge of his salvation.

That aside, is occupying a seat and listening to sermons the reason ultimately for church attendance? The passage in Hebrews, as well as many others, points at our maturing to love one another as Christ commanded and to serve one another as Christ demonstrated. This is not at all to diminish the value or importance of the preached word, but the church is a family where we each have a responsibility to one another, and "eating" once a week will obviously not sustain us in our love and service to each other, much less to a needy world. We must daily see to our spiritual sustenance by making our mind available to God's Word. Viewed in this way, "I just wasn't being fed" seems a pretty selfish cop-out.

Last weekend, my wife and I were visiting the town where I grew up. As we drove by the church where I went as a child, we noticed the sign out front which carried this stinging rebuke:

Christians often expect the world to respect the book which they neglect.

Ordinary people in the hands of an amazing God

My friend, Tony, posted this on his site. It's a great quote I wanted to repost here. Thanks, Tony.

Fabulous Quote!

"In any museum we will find quite ordinary things - clothes, a walking stick, a pen, pieces of furniture - which are only of value because they were possessed and used by some great person. It is the ownership which gives them worth. It is so with the Christian. The Christian may be a very ordinary person, but he acquires a new value and dignity and greatness because he belongs to God. The greatness of the Christian lies in the fact that he is God's."

-- William Barclay

Speak Lord, your servant is listening

This morning I'm reading 1 Samuel 3 and I read these words,

1 Samuel 3

1 The boy Samuel ministered before the LORD under Eli. In those days the word of the LORD was rare; there were not many visions.
2 One night Eli, whose eyes were becoming so weak that he could barely see, was lying down in his usual place.
3 The lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the LORD, where the ark of God was.
4 Then the LORD called Samuel. Samuel answered, "Here I am."
5 And he ran to Eli and said, "Here I am; you called me." But Eli said, "I did not call; go back and lie down." So he went and lay down.
6 Again the LORD called, "Samuel!" And Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, "Here I am; you called me." "My son," Eli said, "I did not call; go back and lie down."
7 Now Samuel did not yet know the LORD: The word of the LORD had not yet been revealed to him.
8 The LORD called Samuel a third time, and Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, "Here I am; you called me." Then Eli realized that the LORD was calling the boy.
9 So Eli told Samuel, "Go and lie down, and if he calls you, say, 'Speak, LORD, for your servant is listening.' " So Samuel went and lay down in his place.
10 The LORD came and stood there, calling as at the other times, "Samuel! Samuel!" Then Samuel said, "Speak, for your servant is listening."

I've read this passage many times and thought about the message. It's humorous to see Samuel's response as he learns to listen to God. Clearly, as the passage indicates, "Samuel did not yet know the LORD." He still did not know who was speaking and so assumed it was Eli calling him. God patiently waits for him to figure it out and his response to God is one I want in my own life, "Speak, for your servant is listening." These are profound words on several points, 1. There has to be a desire to hear from God to begin with. A desire to know what he says, what he wants. 2. There must be a heart that is ready to hear....a servant's heart...a heart and ear ready to respond. Many in our day would frame it this way, "Ok, God, what do you want? If I like it I'll do it." I'm sorry, he won't be talking to that person! For the ear to hear the heart must be bowed. A servant ready to go. And, 3. from this position of knowing who is talking, being ready to serve comes ears that can hear. "Your servant is listening" is an amazing invitation to God's word. It should be our prayer each time we read his word, "Speak, for your servant is listening." What a great way to spend time with him. What a great way to be ready to respond to what he says. There are times when the word of God is rare, but a humble heart ready to hear will always hear God speak.

There he goes again....

Well, he's at it again! First it was aliens, then "escape for your life" and now this:

(I can't help adding my thoughts after you read his.)

2 September 2010 Last updatated 18:25 ETStephen Hawking: God did not create the Universe

There is no place for God in theories on the creation of the Universe, Professor Stephen Hawking has said.

He had previously argued belief in a creator was not incompatible with science but in a new book, he concludes the Big Bang was an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics.

The Grand Design, part serialised in the Times, says there is no need to invoke God to set the Universe going.

"Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something," he concluded.

'Planetary conditions'

In his new book, an extract of which appears in the Times, Britain's most famous physicist sets out to contest Sir Isaac Newton's belief that the universe must have been designed by God as it could not have sprung out of chaos.

Citing the 1992 discovery of a planet orbiting a star other than our Sun, he said: "That makes the coincidences of our planetary conditions - the single Sun, the lucky combination of Earth-Sun distance and solar mass - far less remarkable, and far less compelling as evidence that the Earth was carefully designed just to please us human beings."

He adds: "Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.

"Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist.

"It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going."

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Ok, my turn. Obviously Stephen Hawking is a very learned man. But education does not give wisdom. Brilliance does not generate simple common sense. Stephen said, "Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something." My response- How does he know that? With a figurative wave of the hand he dismisses God and claims that an intricate and amazing creation "just happened." There is too much information that he must overlook to make the statement he makes and yet he does. I'm beginning to wonder if we shouldn't dismiss Stephen's thoughts entirely, "hide from the aliens, flee to the planets, the universe just happened." When do we honestly ask a really important question, "How does he know that?" It's time to smile and dismiss him as you would the prophet of doom on the corner proclaiming the end of the world. There's far too much evidence that declares there is a creator to turn our backs and pretend he isn't there.

Lost in space?

This is a photo from the robotic spaceship MESSENGER. This is the view from the planet Mercury as the camera looks back at earth with the moon beside it. As our spaceships have gone out further and further into space it seems we are a most insignificant planet, almost lost in space, but one thing sets this little spot of light apart from the stars around it- this little planet is inhabited by people that God loves. In fact the most familiar verse in the bible comes to mind as I thought about this photo, "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him will not perish, but will have everlasting life." In one short verse this little spot of light takes on eternal significance. The God of creation visited this tiny spot of light and invested himself eternally in our lives. We are not lost in space, but are wonderfully found and loved by the God who made us. When things seem so big and I feel so insignificant I go back to a little manger in Israel where God declared with a simple birth that he cares about the race that inhabits this little spot of light.