A scripture I’ve read so many times spoke to me in a deeper way today, allowing me to see more clearly, something I already thought I’d seen.  And isn’t that the true beauty of the power of His living word?

Blessings,
Pastor O

I wonder, how many times have you and your church sung this verse from Matt Redman’s wonderful song?  “Better is one day in Your courts than a thousand elsewhere?”  It may well be one of yours and your fellowships favorite choruses.  It’s certainly one of mine.  The verse comes from verse 10 of the 84th Psalm, also a favorite to many.  Still, if I am willing to get past the surface good feelings the song(s) give me, and allow the still, small voice of His Spirit to ask, just how deeply in this truth do I, does our fellowship, really live?  How deeply do you and yours?
     In this day when “consultants” are hired to help us find every way possible to get people into our buildings, to help us come up with “new” ways to “market” our product, we still find that most of our folks, even when they come, have a hard time bearing with much more than an hour “in His courts.”  The thought of being there all day strikes us as very foolish, if not downright insane.  We live in a hectic, busy culture, and we in the church need to understand this and adapt to it.  That’s what we’re told.  I wonder, just how is that working for you?
    Don’t misunderstand.  I’m not championing long services that go on and on yet head nowhere.  This isn’t about the location of our bodies, but of our hearts.  This Psalm, written by the sons of Korah, starts out expressing a longing to be in the Presence of the Father.  “I long, yes I faint with longing to enter the courts of the Lord.”  Has anybody come through our doors of late with that type of expression on their face and heart?  Have you and I? The psalmist comes with his “whole being, body and soul.”  We may come with our bodies, but so often, our souls and being are someplace else, often, someplace very far from where our bodies sit.  The place the psalmist describes, is a place where even the sparrows and swallows find a home at.  A place near His altar.  Creatures that most everyone would see as insignificant and forgotten, desire to make their home there, and are welcome.  I doubt that anyone had to mount a campaign to tell them about it.  They were drawn there by a power and presence beyond description.  Neither they, or the psalmist merely came to that place, spent a few moments of their day and then left.  They lived there.  Abided there.  It was their home.  They lived in the presence and heart of the Father.  They would give up not only a thousand days, but all of their days for just one day with and in Him.  Is that you, me, us?
    I don’t seek to be critical, but doesn’t it seem like the majority of our people, even ourselves, are more in love with the thousand days than the one?  Aren’t they, we, more prone to live out our lives far from His altar, rather than near it, upon it?  I don’t see this changing by our trying to polish up our product, but rather by our being consumed with and by His life.  A life, a church, that has been consumed by Him draws even the sparrows and swallows.  It will surely draw those lost souls He loves so dearly to Himself as well.  In his book “Your Church Is Too Safe,” Mark Buchanantells of a woman, a prostitute who came to their fellowship seeking help.  Buchanan and another pastor on staff told her of the woman at the well with Jesus.  They told her of the Living Water He offered her, then asked if she would like to have that same Living Water in her.  She eagerly answered yes, and after a prayer of confession, repentance, and forgiveness, lifted her face with a look of newfound joy.  The other pastor then told her, meaning well, that when she came to church that Sunday, she needn’t feel like she had to fit in right away, that she could sit in back if she liked, could come late and leave early if she chose to.  She looked at him as if he were crazy.  Her response: “Why would I do that?  I’ve been waiting for this all my life.”  In places everywhere around us are people just like her.  They don’t need to come, and won’t, to the new thing we’re trying to do.  I believe they will come when they see and hear of the new thing He has done in us, in our fellowships.  The thousand days will mean nothing, and they will long for the one day with Him.  They will not seek to be elsewhere, but will seek to be with and in Him.  I want to be there, our fellowship to be there too.  How about you?  Just where do you want to spend your days?

Blessings,

Several years ago I was having dinner with a friend I’d recently met.  They were a regular attender at their church, and in all ways I could tell, considered themselves a follower of Christ.  We’d not spent a lot of time together, but enough that I think we were beginning to get an understanding of just where each of us were “coming from,” especially as concerns the Kingdom.  I remember their words to me on what turned out to be the last meeting we’d have.  They said to me, in a tone that could only be interpreted as concern, that I was “really intense about my faith.”  The unspoken was that there was a much easier, safer, more comfortable way to follow Christ.  One that didn’t get in the way of enjoying what they saw as “life.”  The life I saw as normal for one of His followers, they saw as abnormal.  What comes to mind are words that come from a forgotten source, but say in effect, “Those who seek to truly follow Christ appear out of their minds to everyone else.” 

Blessings,

 Many will be familiar with story told in Matthew 14, where Jesustook the five loaves and two fishes and used them to feed, miraculously, over 10,000 people.  We love that story, and it’s preached so many times as an example of His ability to take out “little,” and make it His “much.”  I’ve heard it and preached it that way, and you likely have done one or both as well.  The thing is, I think we’ve so “westernized” the story that we are missing the real power and truth in it.  We’ve made it more about material increase than anything else, using to encourage our faith in believing Him for more “stuff.” even if we mean for that stuff to be used for good and moral purposes.  In doing so, we have weakened the power and meaning of what Jesus taught and did here.
     In this passage of scripture, the disciples are painfully aware of the need of the crowds around them.  They’re hungry and need to be fed.  Their solution is for Jesus to send them away, Christ’s is much different.  He tells them, “You give themsomething to eat.”  Their reply was that they had nothng but five loaves and two fish, to which Christ replied, “Bring them here to Me.”  He then proceeds to take that little, and make it much, feeding the throngs, and with a lot left over.  We get that.  We bring things to the Lord, no matter how little, how few, and He takes it and makes it not only sufficient, but more than sufficient.  He does it with resources, congregations, and bank accounts.  All the “stuff” we bring Him, and we rejoice, yet somehow, we keep thinking He’s talking about things, while He’s really speaking of us.  There are four things Christ does with the loaves and fishes, and we’re on board with it so long as He keeps it to dealing with our loaves and fishes.  He won’t though, because it’s not about loaves and fishes at all.  He doesn’t want to take all of that, He wants to take all of us.
     There are four things Jesus did with what was brought to Him.  He took it, He blessed it, He broke it, and He gave it.  We don’t mind Him doing this with our loaves and fishes, but when He means to do it with us, well, that can be another matter.  Yet it’s what He means to do, will do, if we’ll truly bring ourselves to Him.  Loaves and fishes we can bring.  Ourselves can be another matter altogether.  Yet, what can happen in the life, in the lives, that will dare to come to Him in such a way, without reservation?  What will happen in our hearts, and through our lives if we give ourselves entirely into His hands?  What will take place in and through us if He fully takes us, fully blesses us, fully breaks us, and then fully gives us out to the starving world and culture that surrounds us?  Being completely taken by and blessed by Him sounds very good to us.  Being fully broken, and fully given out?  Not so much.  Yet for those dare, who will, miracles await.  They may not be of the kind anyone writes stories about, or crowds flock to behold, but they’ll be stories told in eternity, stories all of heaven beheld and beholds.  They will be lives, our lives, taken, blessed, broken and given.  Lives that were little in the eyes of the world, made much by the power of God.  Lives that looked like 5 loaves and two fish to everyone else, but were seen as the bounty of heaven by those He laid hold of through them.  Lives that were miraculously transformed, and used of Him to transform other lives, and the culture they were part of, that was all around them.  I want to live such a life.  Do you? 

Blessings,

A friend once passed along to me the title chapter of a book he’d read.  It was, “Is There Life Beyond Coping?”  It’s a great title, and an even greater question.  One that might well be asked of many of us.  How would we answer that?  How do we answer it?

 I’ve seen several articles over the last few days pointing out what makes for an unhealthy or healthy church.  I don’t find disagreement in what they say, but I can’t get away from the sense that somehow, they, we, are missing something.  Something that truly sets the church, His Body, apart from every other organization, and that is the reality that the church is not an organization.  That’s something manufactured by men.  The church is a living organism, something birthed and given life by the Father, in Christ, through the Holy Spirit. 

Blessings,
Pastor O

Theolgians and academics have come up with all kinds of labels when it comes to “faith”, or lack of it, in God.  Those who believe in Him are called theists.  Those who don’t are given the name “atheists.”  Those who would add Christ to this list, and I and many of you would be among them, would call themselves Christians.  The question that must be raised then is this: Would anyone else, especially those around us, call us Christians as well, and if they did, would it be a compliment?
     Mark Buchanan, in his book Your God Is Too Safe, uses a phrase you or I may have heard before, but it bears repeating.  He lists a group called “Apatheists.”  These are people who believe in God (and even Christ) but live as if they don’t care, hence the combining of the words theist, and apathy.  I wonder how often, outside of the Bible studies I attend, prayer groups I’m a part of, and weekly worship services I lead or particiapte in, that I am not an apatheist as well?  Might you have to ask the same question? 

 Each of the gospels relates the story of the two Mary’s going to the tomb to anoint the body of Christ.  I’ve always centered my thinking on what happened when they got there, and the wonder they beheld.  Most likely all of us have done the same, but this morning, through the thoughts of Max Lucado, I saw another aspect of that morning, one that speaks to me, and I believe, speaks to all of us.

Blessings,

 Mark Buchanan tells a story passed on to him by a member of a church plant in the midst of a drug and crime infested section of a city.  Those who attended each week formed a wide spectrum of the neighborhoods residents; addicts, pimps, drug dealers and gang members.  As Buchanan describes them, “God chasers and God evaders.”  Each week in the church, communion is served because, “Every week “They needed the Bread of Life and Living Water.  They needed to know what Jesus did for them and they could never do for themselves.”

 Vance Havner tells the story of a grandfather who was in the habit of taking his young grandson everywhere he went.  One day he asked the boy to come with him.  The boy asked, “Where are you going to go?”  The old man replied, “Never mind, you just stay here.”  Later on, when he returned, he explained to his grandson why he’d left him behind.  “Because you didn’t want to go.  If you’d really wanted to be with me, you wouldn’t have asked where I was going.  That wouldn’t have made any difference.”
      I consider myself to be a follower of Jesus, and you likely do as well.  Still, I am humbled by how many times in my life my “going” with Jesus has been just like that of the boys going with his grandfather.  I, in my desire to know all the twists and turns of the road ahead, and to maintain some sense of control in my traveling of it, want to know just where it is we’re going?  This seems to me a reasonable request.  After all, one needs to be prepared, and more, one needs to be able to have some foreknowledge of the journey in case one would like to sit out this particular part of the “walk.”  As Havner says, “The Road becomes more important than the Guide.”  So often, that road, and its landscape have loomed larger, much larger, in the overall picture than has the One who leads me.  The joy and wonder of just being with Him isn’t enough.  We need to know what lies ahead, and whether the “risks” are not too risky.  We want the leading of the Spirit in our lives, but we want the itinerary and route of the journey to be of our choosing.  We say that we’ll follow Him anywhere, so long as “anywhere” is a destination that’s agreeable to us.  We’re convinced that where we feel its best for us to be and go is where it is He wants us to be and set out for.  We do want His fellowship, but we’d prefer it to happen in a comfortable RV, with Jesus in the passenger seat as we “drive” the vehicle.  That way we get to choose where all the rest stops will be, and how long we’ll stay there.
     There’s a story of an explorer who, in the immensity of the jungle all around them, said to his guide, “We’ve lost our way.”  To this his guide replied, “No, I am the way.”  As Havner puts it, “What does it matter if we travel uncharted country if we’re with The Way?”  Yet it does matter to so many of us, doesn’t it?  And so, we go on traveling in our comfortable, controlled means, and never really arrive anyplace, if we go at all.  Most often, we, like the boy, want to first know where it is our Jesus wants to go.  The road is more important than the Guide, and so we miss the joy of His presence, company, friendship, and deepest expressions of His love…..It brings to my mind a time when my daughter was a little girl.  She asked me to go with her into the nearby woods where she and her friends played each day, to show me what gave her such joy.  She wanted to, as she said, “Make memories,” with me.  I, in my busyness and attention to mapping out my road, promised we’d go another time, but never did.  I’ve always regretted what I missed that day.  How many such times have we missed in our lives with others, and most of all with Him, by not going with Him for just the sheer joy of being with Him, and through Him, with others?  What we want to know keeps us from the depths of Him who we so desperately need to know.
      In John 14:5-6, Thomas says, “We haven’t any idea where You’re going, so how can we know the way.”  Jesus told him, “I am the Way…..”I want to live in the depths of that Way.  I want to live so deeply in Him that where I am, good or bad, cannot rob me of the joy of the journey, because it is a journey with and in Him.  To live so deeply in Him that knowing where I’m going cannot compare with being with Him that I go with.  Resting in the reality that where I’m going, we’re going, will always result in my ultimate good, and His eternal glory.  That’s the way of it, as I travel in the Way.  That it’s enough.  Is it enough?

Blessings,