Dulles Family Life Church

     I  was speaking with a friend lately about someone very close to them who was once again reaping the consequences of an addictive lifestyle.  He shared with me something spoken to this loved one by a believer in the midst of the darkness.  They were told, “The only answer to relapse is an addiction to the cross.”  Those are powerful words and I thought on them quite a bit over the next few days.
     We live in an addictive culture, and these addictions abound because at root, there is some unhealed emptiness in the life and heart that we feel the object of our addiction can fill, but they never do.  In response, people flock to therapists, support groups, and yes, churches, in hopes of finding freedom, but so often, most often, ”relapse” is the result.  I’m not speaking against any of these things, but unless they are direct avenues that lead us to the cross, then people will either find themselves dependent, addicted to them, which is merely an exchange of ”habits,” or they’ll eventually slide back into the captivity of the original addiction.  They relapse.
     In Colossians 2:13-15, Paul writes, “Then God made you alive with Christ……He canceled the record that contained the charges against us.  He took it and destroyed it by nailing it to Christ’s cross.  In this way, God disarmed the evil rulers and authorities…..by His victory over them on the cross of Christ.”  Friends, we need to become ”addicted” to victory, the victory that is found at the cross, and only at the cross.  It’s there alone, that the unhealed wounds, the painful empty places of life will be healed and filled.  Instead of sliding back or into destuctive patterns of behavior, we are lifted up to freedom, deliverance, and victory.  So many people seem to think that identifying their problem is the victory.  The patterns don’t stop, but they feel they’ve broken through merely because they realize why they continue to do it.  Only an addiction to the cross will break the patterns, break the chains.
    There was something else I felt the Lord was showing me in this and it’s that we don’t have to be identified as an ”addict” to consistently fall victim to relapses in our own lives.  In fact, we can be “relapse addicts” ourselves.  We can have patterns of behavior that while no one would label us addicts over, nevertheless continue to hold us captive.  Anger, unforgiveness, lust, despair, bitterness, hopelessness, spiritual mediocrity, failure, the list is endless.  We long for freedom, and we vow to have freedom, but eventually, perhaps even daily, we “relapse” into the behavior, into the pattern.  All our efforts to break free fail, and will continue to fail.  Our relapses into them will only end with an addiction to the cross, by our not just looking to it, acknowledging it, but by our bringing every pattern to the cross, and nailing them to it….and leaving them there.  That, is lifestyle addiction to the cross.  It’s the lifestyle He calls us to….at the cross, His cross.  Have we come?  Will we come?

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I once heard Beth Moore say, “So many of us seem to think that God ‘grimaces’ when He sees us coming.”  In short, that the Father doesn’t enjoy our company, wants to make interaction with us as brief as possible in order to be done with us.  He is a distant, cold father, who though he may grudingly “love” us, doesn’t really like us.  These thoughts dominate all our interaction with Him, and so, taint the quality of our life in Him.  We may get “things” from Him, if we plead, beg, or show ourselves worthy of His attention, but we never get Him.  We never truly get His fullness and life.

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     Unmet longings.  That’s the title of one of the entries in John Eldredge’s book, “Walking With God.”  I think it’s a phrase that speaks to every one of us, as, to some degree, we all have them.  Unrealized desires that have not come to pass.  The question for each of us is this: How do we live with them?  In the midst of the unmet desires, what becomes our focus?  Frustration?  Obsession?  Anger? Dreaming and longing for the life we wished we had?  Hating the life we do have?  As Eldredge writes, “You can’t go through your day continually pining for the life you don’t have.  You have to live the life you do have.”  Yet how many of us are willing to, let alone wanting to, do that?  How many of us sleepwalk through our lives, wishing we were living another?
     In response to Eldredge’s words, I wrote this in my notes.  “There’s a great difference between desiring the life we wish we had, and seeking the life we are meant to have.”  Hebrews 11 speaks of the hero’s of faith, and said of them “…….they were no more than foreigners and nomads here on earth.  And obviously people who talk like that are looking for a country they can call their own.”  They were seeking the country they were created for, and it would never be found here.  As verse 16 puts it, “But they were looking for a better place, a heavenly homeland.”  All of us desire that better country.  We’re born with that desire.  Our tragedy is that we think it’s to be found here.  We really do think “home” is here.  That better country is found in only one place.  In the heart of the Father.
     Few of us are willing to be nomads, following wherever He leads, enjoying all the blessing and bounty He may bestow on us through the journey, but the blessing and bounty do not make for our home.  Our home is in Him.  My friend, Pastor Bob Yarbrough, talks of wanting to live his life as Christ did, in the bosom of the Father.  For Jesus, that was home, and no place on earth could compare or bring like satisfaction.  Jesus was a nomad, calling to Himself a tribe of nomads.  Have you and I ever truly become a part of that tribe?
     So, does all this mean that we’re to deny our desires, or resign ourselves to the fact that He’s never going to meet them?  Not at all.  What He calls us to is to live in Him, completely in Him, in the midst of the desires.  Even the deepest, most pure of them.  Not allowing the desire to become a “need,” a “must have,” for when that happens we’ll never have peace, joy, or satisfaction in Him.  We’ll always feel we’re missing something, being deprived of something, something that we have a right to.  Something He’s holding back on, holding out on us with.  The object of our desire becomes out “better country,” our idol, and we no longer live in Him, but in pursuit of “it.”
     I have spent much of my life looking for the better country here, thinking it’s to be found in relationships, ministry success, and many other “good things.”  So many of my desires have been met, but not all, and what I have learned, know, is that whenever I allowed them to go from desire to must have, I no longer truly had my home in Him.  I’d lost it, and along with it, my peace, joy, and sense of wellbeing.  The better country will never be found “here,” no matter what beautiful dwelling places we may construct.  It will only be found in Him, going where He goes, receiving all that He gives.  Living the life we’re meant to live…..as nomads.  Nomads in the tribe of the Father.

Blessings,
Pastor O

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     Galatians 5:25 reads, “Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.”  That I would keep in step with the Holy Spirit is something I have ben praying for increasingly of late, because it seems so easy for me to get out of step with Him.  Maybe that’s so for you too.  To be walking in step with Him isn’t something that comes naturally, but as a result of our daily choices, even our moment to moment choices.  In John, Jesus said that, “I am the vine and you are the branches,” and that we are to “abide in Him.”  This too is a choice.  A moment to moment choice.  We can’t do this from a distance, which will always result in our embarking upon a series of “missteps,” leading us ever deeper into chaos and confusion, and eventually, into a lifestyle of unbelief.
     How do we so easily get out of step with Him?  I think a great deal of it comes from the fact that we tend to base everything on what we’re feeling or seeing, or what we’re experiencing at the moment, rather than on the truth of what He’s said and promised.  John Eldredge in Walking With God, puts it this way: “We don’t believe the scriptures because they don’t seem to align with what we’re feeling right now….people are clinging to their unbelief because that’s what they’re feeling in the moment.  We’re so stubborn in our unbelief because we aren’t at that moment experiencing whatever it is God says is true.”
     In our lives we’re going to be constantly faced with situations that will demand a choice by us.  The choice will be, Will we believe what God has said, is saying about this?  Or, Will we believe what the enemy is saying about this?  Either answer will involve agreement on our part.  We’ll either be agreeing with what the Father is saying, resulting in the increase of the power of His truth in our lives, or with what the enemy is whispering, which will bring about the increase of the power of his lie in our lives.  Which do you feel is happening in you right now?  Are the agreements you’re making drawing you ever closer to the steps of the Father and His Holy Spirit, or into the crooked, destructive pathway of the enemy and his lies?
     Both the Father and satan are constantly issuing invitations to you and I.  God invites us to agree with Him and believe.  The enemy invites us to agree with him, and be deceived.  The Lord’s invitation usually comes with no frills, quickly realized benefits, or emotional appeals.  Just a bold calling to believe and trust…..Him.  The enemy’s invitation will usually be accompanied by a bombardment upon our emotions, reasonings, and an appeal to “use our heads” and be realistic.  In the end, we’re going to agree with one or the other, and it will become a pattern in our lives.  What’s your life pattern in all this today?  Are you moving in step, in harmony, with the leading and Lordship of the Holy Spirit, or in the disharmony and missteps of the enemy?  Just who, and what have you been agreeing with?

Blessings,
Pastor O

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     We’ve entered into another new year.  Each of us may be facing this new year with varying attitudes: Optimism.  Anxiety and fear.  Resignation.  Indifference.  A number of us would agree that only the first is an attitude that should be found in a believer, and there was a time I would agree with that, but not now.  Now, I would say the Lord’s people should face each year with an attitude of realism.  We need to be realistic about what life on earth is all about, and believe it or not, there’s no negativity in that at all.
     In his book, “Walking With God,” John Eldredge tells of running into a fellow believer he’d not seen in some time.  Life had gone very wrong for the man.  As Eldredge put it, “…….he had simply been eroded by a number of confusing years, strung together by disappointment.”  Eldredge felt that the man’s root problem had not been the devil, or the failure of the Father, but one of assumption.  As he writes, “This may be one of the most common, most unquestioned, and most naive assumptions people who believe in God share.  We assume because we believe in God, and because He is love, He’s going to give us a happy life…this man assumed the Christian life was basically about believing in God and doing good.  Be a good person.”  In this man’s life, and in the lives of so many of us who are just like him, there was no sense of need for deep intimacy with Him, to be in relationship with a God Who truly and regularly longs to and will speak with him….and with us.
     Through many years of my walk with Him, I was guilty of this very assumption.  Maybe you were too.  Maybe you still are.  When we do assume this belief we are ill prepared for the unexpected, most especially the unexpected pain and heartache that is most definitely a part of life….all life.  And when it comes, it will, as it did with man Eldredge wrote of, wear us down, erode our faith, our confidence in Him, and totally distort how we view life and what it holds for us.  This is not how it is to be, and it is never the intention or plan of the Father for us.
     I think most of us know the devil is real and he does attack us, but it’s how we meet that attack that makes all the difference.  When he does come against, and always at our weakest points, our response is to cry out to the Lord to deliver us, provide for us, encourage us, cleanse us, and so on.  These are not wrong requests, but they are also very general.  Wanting victory is a good thing, but we need to know just what it is we need victory over.  God desires not a temporary deliverance, but a total and complete one.
     James 4:7 tells us to “Resist the devil and he will flee from you.”  Resisting is more than just calling the devil names, or even quoting scripture.  It will also mean knowing a good deal about yourself, what your weaknesses are, what it is the enemy is attacking and why, and why he is able to consistently defeat you in this way.  To do this, it will require real, honest, and intimate conversation with the Lord.  As Eldredge puts it, “…….stop and ask God what you’re dealing with….be willing to have a look.”
     If we’ll be willing to live and walk with in such a way with God, with Jesus, it is unlikely we’ll fall prey to the type of spiritual malaise that was upon the man Eldredge spoke of, and that is upon so many who profess to follow Him.  It is foolish and naive to assume life will always go well.  Jesus promised us we’d have tribulation in this life…but He promised as well that He has overcome the power that brings the tribulation, and as we live in Him, we will too, but living in Him is far more than an assumption.  It’s a lifestyle of intimacy, and one that grows stronger and deeper each day, each week, each year.  Has this been the case with you?  Is it your “reality” right now?
     Yes, another new year is upon us, and we must expect that in it will hold challenges, trials, perhaps even setbacks, but if we walk through this year as He calls us to, in intimate, honest, relationship with Him, there will also be manifold blessing and joy.  Many, as Eldredge writes, think ”Life is about surviving–and getting a little pleasure.”  Joy seems to have little place, but as Eldredge says, “….it is essential to you life.  Something God insists on.”  Whatever comes our way this year, He means for our joy to be full in the midst of it.  As we walk with Him, talk with Him, meeting each and every challenge, not with naive optimism and assumption, but in full knowledge of who we are, and Who He is, our joy will be full, and so will our victory.

Blessings,
Pastor O

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     Though it may not have been so for all of us, I think most can remember when, as children, we looked forward to Christmas with joyful excitement and anticipation.  It was, as the song says, “The most wonderful time of the year.”  For so many though, it has now become a time we just try to get through.  The reasons for this are many.  Losses, whether through divorce, death, a wayward child, a job, a home.  Or, merely the passing of the years, and the disappearance of our youth and vitality.  The coming of Christmas can be something we dread, even hate.  Maybe you find yourself somewhere in that spectrum today.  If so, I want to share something with you from my heart, and most of all, I think, from His.
     This will be my 30th Christmas in Him.  I have spent them in some very diverse places.  Physically, emotionally, and yes, spiritually.  I have been alone, and with others.  I have found myself in places where His joy and presence was so real and  full I didn’t think I could stand any more.  I have also been in places where my life seemed so bleak and grey that the very words joy and hope seemed to mock and laugh at me.  I have known what it is to be surrounded by family you love, children you adore, to truly feel as if you have everything.  I have also known what it is like to have it all gone in a seeming instant, to feel as if you have lost everything, and in the material sense, to actually have done so.  My emotions and spirit have been just as varied, from mountaintops of joy to valleys of deep sorrow and pain.  There have been times where I have been very strong, feeling like nothing could stop me, and times when I was so very weak, feeling I couldn’t take one more step.  Didn’t want to take one more step.
     I don’t write all this because I want to focus on me, but so I can focus on Him.  What I have found in all those places, no matter how I felt, what I had or didn’t have, no matter where I was, or wanted to be, was that He was with me.  The same Jesus who was with me when my life seemed like it couldn’t get any better, was so beautifully with me when it seemed it couldn’t get any worse.  He was with me in the laughter, and with me in the tears.  He was with me when I had all things, and when I had nothing.  He was with me when my heart felt so full, and when it felt completely empty.  He was with me……always,
     In Luke 2, the angel appears to shepherds outside the village of Bethlehem.  Shepherds were despised and forgotten people in Jewish society.  Yet it was to them that the Father first sent His Good News of the gift of His Son.  The Father’s message to them, is still His message to us.  “Don’t be afraid…I bring good news of great joy for everyone!  The Savior….
Yes the Messiah, has been born tonight in Bethlehem.”  Wherever you are, in whatever condition or circumstance, the Lord seeks to appear, will appear to you, bringing you anew, His Good News.  You, we, are not alone.  He has come.  He is here.  No, the circumstances, even the emotions and feelings may not magically change, but He announces to you the good news that neither can they destroy you.  No matter where the journey yet goes, He goes with us, and not just as our companion, but as Savior, Messiah, Lord of all…..and all along the way.  You may be facing this week with dread.  He speaks to your heart, our hearts, “Do not fear.”  The Savior has come…for you, for me, for us.

     For all of you who read this, no matter where your life journey finds you today, I wish and pray for you not only a blessed Christmas, but all the fullness of His joy, peace, and life that you and yours can possibly have.

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     Not long ago I listened as a friend talked of someone they knew, a person who seemed to have led a reckless, painfilled, paingiving life, leaving a string of broken relationships, and deep wounds to themselves and so many others, yet my friend concluded the discussion with, “But they love the Lord like crazy.”  Now, I say this with no judgement towards my friend, for I know them to live a devoted life to Him, but their words drove home to me a very real truth about how easily we separate our relationship with Him from our relationships with others, indeed our relationships with the world we live in.  We do this in personal relationships, business relationships, and to our shame, in our inter and intrachurch relationships.  We do things distinctly unloving, and yet at the same time, sing and testify of our deep love for the Lord, and all the while we wonder why a lost and dying world looks upon it all with a very cynical eye, and shows no desire to be a part of it all.  Why would they?  It’s the way of the world they already live in.  Why would they desire to enter into what appears to be the way of the church?
     If the testimony of the world is one of broken relationships, broken marriages, broken families, then how much different would be the testimony of much of the church?  Professing believers leave and walk away from husbands, wives, children, friends, and fellowships, and all of these would be people, ministries, that they at one time professed love for, yet their actions and behavior spoke of something far different.  In many cases, the ones taking these steps would still say “they loved the Lord like crazy.”
     I think somehow we have come to accept that this is just the way it is.  The church is made up of people, and people are human, humans make mistakes, humans, fail, and we need to understand that.  We do, but I think that in “understanding” we have settled for something far below what He came to give us, what He died to give us, that we might, in Him, give to others.  His love.  We talk much of it, sing much of it, preach and teach much upon it.  Yet we seem to live out so little of it, and I think we see the fact of this not so much in the hurtful words and actions of people, though we certainly don’t lack for those, but in the daily indifference and apathy we live in concerning the needs, hurts, and condition of so many of those around us.  In our fellowships sit people who quietly suffer, who are lonely, who desperately need a friend.  They hear us sing or say that we have a wonderful friend in Jesus, and we think that should be enough for them.  Why would they need a friend in us?  These people are also at our workplace, next door to us in our neighborhood.  Mother Teresa said that she was able to spend a lifetime ministering to the unloved and unwanted in India because she had learned to see the face of Christ in each of them.  For so many of us, it seems the only face we see, or want to see, is our own.
     In the Psalms, David called God his Refuge and Hiding Place.  I heard Beth Moore talk of this some months back.  She said that the Father has called those who are His to be a refuge and hiding place for others.  A place of safety, acceptance, and unconditional love.  A place that is more than a hug or handshake, or a promise to pray for them, but a place where they find Jesus and His love.   A place where they may see the face of Jesus.  It’s a place He has called you to be in, to live in.  Are we?  Will we?
     Paul prefaces I Corinthians 13, his great chapter on God’s love with these words at the end of chapter 12, “And I show you a more excellent way.”  The world is dying to be shown that more excellent way.  Even more, the church is dying to be shown as well.  Who among us will show it?  Will you?  Will I?

Blessings,
Pastor O

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     A few months ago, I heard gospel singer Kirk Franklin speak about his long running battle with the sin of and addiction to pornography.  He had sought help from many people and many quarters of the church, but never found it.  It was not until he met Texas pastor Dr. Tony Evans, who ministered to him not only in love, but in accountable love, that He found his pathway to freedom.  I wrote something down that Franklin said, because I thought it was powerful.  He said freedom did not begin for him until he “began to see his sin through the eyes of the Father.”  When he realized what his behaviors were doing to himself, the ones he said he loved, and above all, to the heart of the God he claimed to follow, he was broken, and in his brokenness, the healing, deliverance, and freedom began.  Pastor Evans committed to love Kirk Franklin.  To not give up on him or turn away from him.  Franklin, in turn, committed to respond to that love, founded on the love of the Father, that brought, and still brings victory.  I believe it is the lack of that same covenant love that is crippling our lives, marriages, families, relationships and churches.
     I have been following Him now for 30 years, and pastoring for 26.  As a result, most of the people I have known best have identified themselves as “Christians.”  Yet, through all these years I have either experienced directly, or watched as others did, the terrible pain of broken relationships.  Marriages end, families are torn asunder, children and parents speak and see each other rarely, if at all.  Friends walk away, and congregations are split, and the fallout of the pain continues onward for months and years.  In many cases, it never ends, and everybody seems to feel that it’s just the way it is.  Regrettable of course, but we must understand, we’re only human.
     I think it is then we need to have our eyes opened to what we have been doing, participating in, or merely standing by and watching.  We need, as Kirk Franklin needed, to see our sin through the eyes of the Father.  As we “believers” float from relationship to relationship, leaving deep wounds and pain behind, as we move from one church to another, simply because something was said or done, or wasn’t being said or done, and leaving terrible, bleeding ruptures behind, we need to see what our actions are doing to the heart of the Father, for when we see that, we will begin to see what they do to those we have claimed to “love.”  And we need to see something else.  We needn’t physically move away to leave someone, or leave many.  Marriages are still together, but the love has died.  Families are together, but the warmth of His love is absent.  Churches come together, but the supernatural power of His love is missing.  If we recognize a problem, we usually see it as being someone else’s, not ours.   Again,we need to see it all through the eyes of the Father.
     Perhaps you’ve heard it said that all sin is a sin against the love of God.  If we fail to see how the coldness and selfishness of our hearts and lives affect others, how could we ever see how it affects Him?  I John 2:7 says, “Dear friends, I am not writing a new commandment, for it is an old one you have always had, right from the beginning.  This commandment-to love one another-is the same message you heard before.”  Hearing of the love of God is nothing new.  Knowing we are to love one another is nothing new either.  We’ve heard it all before, but never I think, as He intended, as He spoke it, as it came from His heart.  I am weary of all the lost loves, the lost relationships, broken marriages and families, torn apart churches.  I need, we need, to hear again, to truly respond to His command to love one another.  A popular song of the 60’s was, “What The World Needs Now Is Love, Sweet Love.”  Though the words were true, the love it spoke of was merely human, imperfect, and as we have all learned, very temporary.  The world still needs love, but it is His love, and it is to emanate from the heart of His church…..you and I.  We need to see what our lack of love has done to one another, and to ourselves, and most of all, to Him.  We need, as the old song said, “Our Father’s Eyes,” to see others, ourselves, and Him….with and in love.  Then the healing, deliverance, and freedom will come.  As we love one another.

Blessings,
Pastor O

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     I was going to begin today by saying that both our greatest need and lack  is prayer, but I’m not quite sure that is so.  I think there is much “prayer” going up to the Father these days, but the great question is, is it, as the book of James puts it, “The effective prayer of righteous men (and women)?  A scripture I have often taken to Him is 2 Chronicles 20:12.  The armies of 3 strong nations are coming against King Jehoshaphat and the people of Judah.  Jehoshaphat cried out to God, “Won’t you stop them?  We are powerless against this mighty army that is about to attack us.  We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on You.”  Now, this is a powerful prayer, but if we’ve prayed it, or something akin to it, has its power truly worked in and for us?  If not, what might be missing?
     I think what we often, maybe even most often do, is cry out to the Father for help against impossible odds, but in our crying out, see Him as Option A, our best option, but just in case Option A doesn’t work or come through, well, we have an Option B, and C, or D, or….well, you get the picture.  We seem always to feel we need other options when it comes to trusting God.  We want to trust Him, we say we trust Him, but we always have a “just in case” clause.  Arrayed against us, our marriages, children, finances, our very lives, are many great enemies, and though we do go to Him for needed help, we can’t resist working on, putting together our other “options” just in case the Lord can’t come through.  In this passage we’re told that “All the men of Judah stood before the Lord, with their little ones, wives and children.”  They didn’t come to Him with one eye on Him, and the other on other helps.  Their eyes, hearts, and hopes were set on Him alone.  Their prayer was not only of desperation, but of a surrendered desperation.  For them, the Father was the only hope, and they would not put their hope, or the hopes of their families upon anyone or anything else.  Their trust was fully in Him, and in whatever He would tell them to do.  I remember seeing a war movie once where the leader told his men just before a battle that he made sure he prayed to every diety he knew of, figuring one of them might actually help him.  Could it be that we’ve fallen victim to the same attitude, seeking His aid, but all the while having our eyes on other “dieties”, whether it be ourselves and own efforts, or to someone else’s, to bring about our desired end?  We may pray, and in desperation, but is it with surrender?  Somehow, we can never believe that the surest route to victory to and in Him, is surrender.
     Marva Dawn, in her book, “A Sense Of The Call,” says, “Jesus of course overcame the world with the constancy of His conversation with, and obedience to, His Father by the power of Their Spirit.  Ardent and unflagging prayer are also our most important weapon against all the forces and functionings of the powers.”  Jesus said in John 10 that the thief seeks to break in, and to kill and destroy.  I think most of us know this, fear this, but seem to employ every type of lock and bolt we can find to use against him.  Every one but the right one, the only one that will keep him out.  Dawn quotes a German pastor, Karl Buchsel, writing 150 years ago, who said, “Watching and praying are the only bolts this thief fears.”  Keeping our eyes on Him, and then seeing things going on around us, and in us, through His eyes, recognizing not only who the enemy really is, but how he may be overcome, defeated, crushed.  By prayer.  Not just desperate, but surrendered, obedient.  Prayer that has no other option but Him, and knows it needs none.  Prayer that goes to Him, hears Him, obeys Him, fights for and with Him, and as Jehoshaphat and the people of Judah did, puts all the armies of hell to flight.  Can you and I come to this place of prayer, or, will we continue to look for other “options”?

Blessings,
Pastor O

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     I was watching a missions DVD sent out quarterly from the headquarters of the group of which I’m a part.  There’s most always something of value on them, but this one contained a piece that really pierced my heart.  A small, frail lady from Nepal was being interviewed through an interpreter, about her conversion to Christianity from Hinduism.  She spoke of the joy she had found in Christ, even in the midst of abject poverty.  That was beautiful, but what she said next was not only moreso, but deeply convicting as well.  She said, “If I don’t eat for 2 or 3 days, that’s fine, but if I don’t get to attend Bible study, I feel so unsatisfied.”  I had to stop the DVD right there and replay it….several times.  I needed to really hear what she was saying, and contrast it to what is heard so often, much too often, from the mouths of those who profess to be followers of the King of Life.
     Here, even in the midst of an economic downturn, few, if any of us are going hungry.  Sadly, tragically, too many are more concerned with missing a meal than missing His Word over the course of the day.  But I speak of more than just our craving for food and drink, but of our craving of all those things which we believe bring real satisfaction, all the “junk food” of our lives.  This young woman lives in a culture where the lack of food is a daily reality, one of her lifes overwhelming needs, yet to her, was really nothing in comparison with being with, and hearing from Him.  She had discovered that food was a means to life, but only Christ was life.  Has that discovery been made by you and I yet?  Think a moment before you answer.
     Author Marva Dawn says the expectation of both the churched and unchurched today is that the church should “administer therapy” to those it seeks to serve.  In her words, “We can see the effects of this societal expectation in those who complain that a worship service did not ‘uplift them.’  Wouldn’t it surprise them to be reminded that its purpose is to kill them so they can be resurrected into an entirely new creation?”  Therapy may please us but it will never transform us.  I believe in the need for small groups, home groups, prayer groups and so on, but my experience is that most of them are centered on what the problem is, and end up, for all the good intentions, therapy centered.  What is needed is what was found in the cottage groups of John Wesley, where the problem was recognized, but the focus was on the solution, Christ the Transformer.
     Going back to the young woman of Nepal.  As I heard her speak, the verse that came into my mind was from John 4:31, where the disciples are urging Jesus to eat the food they had brought Him.  His reply, “I have food to eat of which you do not know.”  The tiny, frail woman from Nepal knows of that food.  Do we?  I close with a story I remember the late Dr. Charles Strickland tell long ago.  He was in Africa to minister when he came into contact with an elderly believer, a man dressed in threadbare clothes, who was obviously underfed.  With compassion and concern, Dr. Strickland asked him how he coped with daily hunger, and the answered him, with joy on his face and the with the words of Christ, “Oh my brother, I have food to eat you do not know of.”  I remember the Doctor saying how the words of that old believer pierced his heart with their power.  That old man had found a life that we, in our blessing centered, prosperity obsessed culture seem to know little of.   Words that offer little or nothing in the way of therapy, and everything in the way of transformation.  My hunger for those words is growing each day.  How about yours?

Blessings,
Pastor O

Tags: Heart Thoughts by oshell
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