Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Are You Pumped?



Since this is being written on a Monday, that’s a dumb question. It was a great weekend. Lots of quality time with my wife. A sense of accomplishment in associational church work. Great time of worship and Bible study at one of my churches. An endearing evening with my younger son and daughter-in-law. Even Monday started out full of joy with my favorite group of senior adults in Bible study.

Then I got unpumped!

Why does God allow Mondays to do this? Now I could launch into the month’s greatest pity party and feel justified. That’s always easy when you feel you’ve been wronged, unappreciated, or not allowed the freedom to do what you want. After all it was God’s will!

What would happen if I decided to get repumped but not at someone else’s expense? What if I focused just on what I knew would be best in the long run for others all in the effort to be more Christlike? His nature and mindset would be both guide and judge instead of me choosing some other hard core sinner like me to try to outdo. (Philippians 2:3-11)

If Jesus is to be my source and example for getting repumped, then I need to imitate his attitude toward other people. To say that’s not easy is to make the understatement of the year. He was born innocent and free of all sin AND sinful tendencies. I was born a sinner and that stuff just comes naturally. Even to become a follower of Christ took an intentional decision and wasn’t just something everybody automatically did.

Jesus was in tune with his heavenly Father. He checked in regularly to know what the Father was doing and wanted him to do. His prayers were prayers of submission and intercession. (John 17) His prayers and with them his life reflected the relationship he had with his Father. If I am to be revitalized through an imitation of Jesus, my prayers must be offered in the same light.

Getting repumped means getting into the manual. With all the self-help books on the shelves, there remains only one true manual for life, the Bible. To get repumped is to know the written word. To get repumped is to get the written word into the head and into the heart. (Psalms 119:11) Transformation! Too many Bible scholars know the Book but live like the devil. Getting yourself repumped doesn’t work that way.

Serving others gets you repumped. It’s hard to focus on your own problems when you’re giving your best to help someone else deal with their headaches. That may be part of what the Apostle Paul meant when he said we should bear each other’s loads. (Galatians 6:1-3) Serving others makes our path in life a little, maybe a lot, easier to tolerate. Hardly anything gets you repumped like seeing someone else with a big smile on their face realizing it’s not the end of the world after all.

Love others like God loves me. I can’t. Not that I don’t want to love others like God loves me; it’s just impossible for this sinful mortal to do the divine! I can, however, make the effort. It makes you feel good, pumped up, closer to Christ, when you realize you are accepting those other individuals with all their sores, rough spots, social stigmas, and rejectable ways for one reason. Jesus loved you and you look just like that other person. If he can love you, then you can make the effort to love others in your same condition. (John 13:34-35)

The Church had better act the same way! The world is watching the Church, its image and its actions. The Church needs to get pumped, not because it’s looking so good in the eyes of the world, but because it’s walking up a path to a hilltop that Jesus has already traveled.

At the top of that hill is a cross. It’s got our name on it. Beyond that are an empty tomb and an eternity in the presence of our Father. If that doesn’t get you pumped, NOTHING WILL!

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Reflections on Father’s Day



When the young man came home, humbled and beaten down, he hoped to find a father who would just allow him to work as a servant and be given nothing more than a place to rest his head and enough food to stop the hunger pains. He sought a father who would see past his failures and accept him once more if only as a servant. He discovered more than he could have ever dreamed. (Luke 15)

The other side of the coin is found in a divine voice coming from the heavens that said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” (Matthew 3:17, RSV) A Father was made proud by his Son. It was a pride that found its fullest expression on a Sunday morning when divine power intervened and conquered death to bring that Son back to life in a resurrected body. (Luke 24)

Pride in a father goes two ways. You can be proud of your father and how he responds to your needs. You can also be proud to be a father because of the choices you see your children make. One looks to the generation that has gone before. The other perspective is a reflection on the generation to come. Blessed indeed is the family in which fatherhood is admired and draws forth pride across multiple generations.

Fatherhood that draws forth pride is marked both by vision and by example. To read the eleventh chapter of Hosea is to hear the heart of a Father grieving over his children. On one side his holy righteousness demands an accounting for rebellion and idolatry. On the other his holy love cannot allow his children to suffer any further regardless of what they may deserve.

A father sets the example for his children to follow by being the kind of son of which his own father would be proud. Some sons have never known their father. Some sons could never be honest and say they were ever proud of their fathers. That, however, does not keep them from living lives that exemplify the life of a son for whom a father could be proud.

Fathers must live in such a way as to make their children proud to have those men as their fathers. Fathers must also live in such a way as to leave that unmistakable example that a child would be proud to emulate. “I am proud that he is my father. I am proud to be like my father.”

You cannot be that kind of person one day a year. Fatherhood is limited neither to a biological act nor a one-day-each-year celebration. Fatherhood is a personal sense of relationship that is in the mind of a man twenty-four hours a day and in his actions whether he is with his children or not. This sense of relationship moves a man from being simply a progenitor into a unique role. As I have often been reminded, any healthy male can be a father. It takes a special man to be a daddy.

On my desk sits a hinged picture frame. On the right hand side is a photo now more than twenty-five years old of two little boys. On the left hand side is a statement. “A truly rich man is one whose children will run into his arms when his hands are empty.”

I am proud of the example my father set for me as I was growing up. I have sought to make my father proud of me. I have sought to make my sons proud of me as well. I know I am proud of them. They make Father’s Day for me out of every day of the year.

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Zombie Christians



I do not understand the fascination parts of our society have with zombies, vampires, and werewolves. The reality you have to face each day ought to be scary enough.

Somebody shot a bunch of somebodies in California. A bunch of somebodies shot a bunch of somebodies in Chicago. Three women were kept hostage for ten years somewhere. Why fill your entertainment time with imaginary creatures bent on destruction while living in that kind of reality?

Even scarier than these undead things walking around us are zombie Christians. No, they don’t have rotted flesh hanging off their bones, but I am amazed how much they pay for ragged clothes hanging off their bodies! They don’t normally speak in monotones. In fact they can be very animated and energetic. Their animation and energy just don’t produce spiritual fruit.

Jesus spoke with three of these zombie believers in one encounter. (Luke 9:57-62) They were willing to become his disciples, but it would have to be on their terms. They needed to fulfill family priorities first and offer the family the proper farewell. They wanted to follow Jesus, but they needed to be socially and politically correct.

In politically incorrect terms, Jesus told them they couldn’t have life if they kept holding on to death. A follower of Jesus could not be filled with the gift of life he offered and still cling to a superficial, pseudo-spiritual lifestyle. The three seemed to disappear from the story.

Zombie Christians will tell you how many spiritual conferences they have attended but can’t tell you the last time they shared the gospel with someone. They will tell you the words to all the latest praise choruses, but they can’t tell you the names of their neighbors or their spiritual condition. They act alive, but they are dead.

The zombie church in the book of Revelation shows this is not just an individual thing. “You have the reputation of being alive but you are dead.” (Revelation 3:1-6) The brief review Sardis gets in Revelation offers little in the way of positive reinforcement. The threat is much greater than the compliment.

A dead church can keep its doors open for generations. It maintains a calendar filled with lots of varied activities. It has a budget the envy of every small business in town. The morning service is led by professional musicians on pipe organ and a thirty-five piece orchestra. The sermon includes quotes in Hebrew and Greek with references to ten different commentators. The church is still dead.

Almost every activity on the calendar is geared toward church members. Only five percent of the budget leaves the church campus, and that goes to some safe place in India. The music makes the listeners feel good without casting a vision for missions, and the sermon rarely calls for transformational life change. The church looks alive but is dead.

Then there is Lazarus, the close friend of Jesus who came back to life. (John 11) His resuscitation was so dangerous to the Jewish leaders they wanted to kill him again! (John 12:9-11) Here the dead came back to life, but instead of being scary, for some people he was too much alive and a real threat to worldly power.

When a seeker finds new life in Christ, the old passes away and all becomes new. (II Corinthians 5:17) That is not someone becoming a zombie. That’s a rebirth! That is why Jesus came. That is the eternal result of his resurrection and his life in every believer. (Galatians 2:20)

Zombies fake life and never enjoy it.
Zombies take life and never offer it.
Zombies destroy life and never renew it.
Zombies exist for the moment and not for the future.

Zombie Christians have claimed a name without surrendering a heart. Zombie churches have claimed a position without surrendering to a mission. Zombies may be fictitious, but their spiritual counterparts running around carrying the name Christian are all too real and need to be told to get a life that counts with God.

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Surrounded by Mountaintops (or Valleys)



My prayer as my wife and I left the mountain retreat after two days was “Please, God, go with me back into the valley!” For forty-eight glorious hours there had been no television, no internet, and only one cell phone call concerning a handicap ramp construction project.

Deer grazed on the lower mountain side. Bluebirds graced the nesting box near the one bedroom house in which we stayed. Both nights we were there, we watched the sun set beneath a thin layer of clouds that scattered its colors across the western sky. We were on a mountaintop in more ways than one. We left Sunday morning.

Then came Monday.

Summer attendance numbers in the churches were reported. All were down. A young pastor was forced to resign. Associational leaders found roadblocks interrupting plans. It rained all day.

What happened to the mountaintop?

Tucson is a beautiful city. It is not quite as hot as Phoenix, but it is still surrounded by the seemingly endless desert landscape. And mountains. Set in a long valley, the city is surrounded by four separate mountain ranges. Look in any of four different directions from the middle of the valley, and your eyes are drawn upward.

Each of the mountain ranges is surrounded by the valley plain. Find that ideal point, look in every direction, and you are looking across another valley. You can’t get to another mountain range without crossing a valley.

Valleys don’t last forever. Eventually they hit a mountain range or a plateau. You leave the bottom and head for the top. The same is true of mountains. They don’t last forever. Leave the mountaintop and you eventually come to the valley. In fact you cannot get from one mountaintop to another without going through a valley of some kind.

Jesus took three of his closest disciples to join him in a mountaintop experience. (Matthew 17) They were in awe of what they saw. Peter was so dumbfounded he was left only with the idea of trying to build some form of permanent memorial to commemorate the event. Jesus refused to even acknowledge the suggestion.

Then they headed down the mountain right into Monday.

You can’t live on a mountaintop. There comes a moment when you have to leave and take only memories with you. Going through a mountaintop experience is like being at the North Pole. The only way you can go from there is south. The only way you can go from a mountaintop is down. The only way you can go from a mountaintop experience with God is back into the valley of life where Mondays often come more than once a week.

We have the promise God came down the mountain with us. (Matthew 28:20) We have the assurance that he will never leave us alone. (John 14) He tells us we can have the confidence we will never face anything he cannot handle through us. (Philippians 4:13; I John 4:4)

If you stand in the middle of Tucson and its valley and then pick a straight line and move forward, the overwhelming odds are that you will soon be climbing a mountain and heading for the top. You won’t stay in the valley forever. Another mountaintop experience is waiting for you.

It is a physical impossibility to move from one mountaintop to another without going through a valley. What you do in the valley, however, is up to you. Mondays don’t last forever. Even Mondays can be made into a foundation for a great week when you walk through the valley with the Lord.