Dulles Family Life Church

     I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and praying as to just what real intimacy with God is.  Psalm 37 tells us to “delight” ourselves in Him, but what does that really mean, or maybe I should ask, what does it mean to us?  How much of a delight is He really to you and I?  James 4:8 says, “Draw near to God, and God will draw near to you.”  How do we do that, and what is it that might be keeping us from doing it?
     Let’s look at Psalm 37 again.  Verse 4 reads, “Take delight in the Lord and He’ll give you your heart’s desire.”  Now, I know what that says, but how often do I, do you, read it to mean that our degree of delight has much more to do with getting our heart’s desire than it does with being with Him?  Sometime back, I was challenged in one of Larry Crabb’s books to think about when I most sensed His Presence in my life, and when I was most aware of His absence.  This is what I wrote in my notes.  “I most feel His Presence when I come to near to Him and give all of myself-hopes, dreams, cares, ambitions, and fears….I most feel His absence when I insist on clinging to those same things, and having some sense of control over it all.”  It’s hard to focus on anyone or anything else when your arms and hands are full, trying to make sure nothing is dropped.  It’s impossible to draw near to Him when this is the case.  Might this be the reason so much of our prayer life leaves us feeling frustrated, restless, burdened, and joyless?  Crabb asks, are we “graspers,” or “givers?”  These things that we hold, these desires, even deep desires that we have, do we bring them to Him, give them to Him, leave them with Him, or do we grasp them, cling to them, and keep them…..to ourselves?  More, do we want to come to a place with Him, a relationship place, where we enter into an enjoyment of Him, a joy and delight in Him, where even our deepest desires, though not forgotten, no longer hold us captive, because we’re immersed in Him, and not our desire for them?
     I have written before that Jesus satisfies, and my belief in that truth hasn’t changed, but my understanding of it has.  Maybe yours needs to as well.  If we are not careful, we can end up thinking the satisfaction He promises is all about this life, and can be fully found in this life, in the form of His blessings, His giving us our heart’s desire.  The truth of the matter is that the satisfaction He promises and gives can and will never be realized this side of eternity.  We’ll always have a yearning for more, a more we’ll one day realize in heaven.  He satisfies in part now, in full one day.  All of us are born with a yearning for that satisfaction that can only be found in His fullness…..in eternity, but if we think it may be found in all its fullness here, than we’ll make the great error of believing  it’s found in the blessings He gives, and getting the blessing, not getting Him, will be our heart’s greatest desire.
     So, when do you most feel His Presence, and when, His absence?  How are you responding with His call to draw near to Him, and if you do come, with what are you coming?  Do you come ready to give, or determined to grasp?  The satisfaction He offers has little to do with the good things of this life.  It has to do with the greatest part, HImself.  In what, and in who, are you seeking your satisfaction?

Blessings,
Pastor O

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     The great beauty about the Word of God is that it’s alive, the living Word.  For that reason, it is always, if we’re willing, taking us deeper into its meaning.  That’s what happened to me as concerns the 4th verse of the Psalm 112, a verse that I’ve been thinking on over the last couple of weeks, “seeing” it, yet wanting to see more.  It reads, “When darkness overtakes the godly, light will come bursting in.”  Now, that’s beautiful in any kind of understanding, but in the past, I have tended to see it more as a God intervention kind of thing, where I find myself trapped in a dark place, but a place unable to hold back the rescuing, delivering light of Christ.  I think it does say that, but just how that may happen in my life or yours is what I want to share about today.  Just how may His light burst into our lives, and the threatening darkness that is all around us?
     I think it’s easy, on the surface, t see this verse as portrayng us as totally helpless, and God as our strong Deliverer.  For sure, there are times when that is our condition, but what about the times we are trapped in a less recognized, but just as deadly type of darkness?  What of those of us who find ourselves in very difficult, painful relationships.  Husbands, wives, or children, who do not love us as we feel we need to be loved, and who may even outright neglect and wound us?  How about job situations, where we are surrounded by difficult people, who ignore us, or are downright hostile?
What of ministry situations, where we have tried every means possible to reach someone, and been rejected on every level?  What about the daily hardships and desert places of life, each with it’s own kind of darkness?  Surely in all of them we long for His light to come bursting through, and I believe He means for that to be so, but maybe we’re missing the way in which He wants it to happen.
     What if, in all these places of darkness, we ceased looking for Him to either change the people or circumstances involved, or if not that, just removing us, or them, from the picture?  What if, instead, we began to throw ourselves completely into the life and love of Christ, that we began to bring the light of the Kingdom of heaven into our situations, into our darkness?  What if we began to relate to the people involved, in the situations involved, with the passion, energy, and love of Christ?  What if we chose the way of the Spirit over the way of the flesh, and truly began to reveal the character of Christ, letting His life flow towards those people, those situations, rather than trying to escape from them?  Wouldn’t that also be light that has “come bursting in?”
     It may well be that you and I have been praying for just that to happen in some, or many situations, but we want it to be all God.  God wants it to be all Him…and us….together.  His light shining to us, in us, and through us.  Light that burst into the darkness, breaks its power, and sets not only us, but others free as well.  Maybe that’s a new way, another way, to look at it.  What do you think?

Blessings,
Pastor O

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     You may well be familiar with, or even have memorized Hebrews 11:1’s defintion of faith.  It reads, “What is faith?  It is the confident assurance that what we hope for is going to happen.  It is the evidence of things we cannot yet see.”  Now that, friends, is a definition which inspires.  Yet, what remains for each of us is living out that definition in our day to day lives.  Especially when those days can turn into weeks, months, and even years.  Psalm 105 tells of a man who had to do just that.  Joseph.  Joseph, favored by his father, hated by his brothers, was given a dream, a promise from God.  He would be a ruler of his people, raised above all his brothers.  It was a promise, something to have faith in.  Shortly afterwards his own brothers sold him into slavery.  Thus began a journey of more than a dozen years, spent in the chains for first slavery, and then prison, all the while the promise unfulfilled.  Why?
     A great part of the answer is found in verse 19.  “Until the time came to fulfill His Word, the Lord tested Joseph’s character.”  Character, as we can see from the culture we live in, is not something highly valued by many, even many who would call themselves believers.  Yet it is greatly valued by the Father.  The promise, first given to Joseph when he was only a youth, could never have been entrusted to him then.  In his pride and arrogance, he would have been a curse to his family and people, not a blessing, and not what Psalm 132 would call an “agent of salvation” to them.  He wasn’t ready, and the fulfillment of the promise would have been all about him, and not at all about anyone else.  For Joseph, delay, fire, flood, and hardship lie ahead.  It was the only way for him.  Might it also be true that it’s the only way for us as well?
     Think about that definition from Hebrews 11 again.  “……the confident assurance that what we hope for is going to happen.”  How much of what we hope for is really all about us?  Others may be involved as well, but really, the fulfillment of our hopes final result will be good things for us.  This is very human, but it is not very God.  He has something much greater in mind for us.  He did for Joseph, and does for us as well.  The developing of not just our character, but of a Christlike character in us.  The complete fulfillment of God’s promise to mankind in Christ involved a cross, and seeing His promises to us come to pass in all their fullness involves one for us as well.  The path of promise will always take us to the cross, for the ultimate fulfillment of the promise is found in Him, and not in the blessing we seek.
     I doubt we can begin to understand all that Joseph felt as he lived out his own definition of faith.  Frustration, discouragement, anger, yes, all were present I’m sure, just as they would be for us.  What he did, I believe, is that in the midst of all those emotions and attitudes is that in coming to to understand the definition he did what 105:5 urges, “Search for the Lord and his strength, and keep on searching.”  It’s the way of Christ, of the cross.  It’s the way, the only way, to our real fulfillment in Him, which is far more than having our dreams come true.  It’s where we’ll find Jesus, and where He meets with us.  Few, if any, truly discover the the blessing of His life and intimate Presence in the sunny fields of good things.  We may find what we feel is heaven on earth there, but we’ll not really find Him.  No, I think we’re more apt to find Him in Joseph’s prison cell, in Paul’s, with Peter on his cross, and with John on the prison island of Patmos.  None of those are places our flesh would choose to go, but remember, none were places any of them remained.  It was not the final stop, and each knew their heaven would never be found here.  Yes, His blessings for us in this life are abundant, but many, maybe most, will require the testing of our character before they come to pass, but His greatest and best will never be found here, but we must, MUST never stop searching for Him as we wait.  We’ll find in Him, not only our fulfillment, in part now, completely one day, and we’ll know, just as the old hymn says, it really was worth it all.

Blessings,
Pastor O

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     I was struck by something I read in the 134th Psalm.  The writer says, “….you who serve as nightwatchmen in the house of the Lord.  Lift your hands in holiness and bless the Lord.  May the Lord, Who made heaven and earth, bless you from Jerusalem.”  Now, I can think of few jobs less rewarding than being a nightwatchman.  Hollywood has given us the stereotype of either the old codger who can’t stay awake, and thus is robbed blind, or of the “Barney Fife” type, who is so overzealous as to be downright dangerous, and always seems to end up destroying what he’s been assigned to protect.  Nobody wants to be nightwatchmen, little of note happens during that time, and we want to be where the action is, where the light is shining.  Yet, is all the light we “see” truly light, and if not, what is needed?  Perhaps nightwatchmen.
     The other evening I was talking with one of my men about 3 Filipino Christians recently killed by radical Islamics for refusing to renounce their faith in Christ. It is said that these men died seeking to lovingly (and passionately) share their Savior with the very men who were killing them.  The man relating the story told me that after reading the account, there were comments posted by others who’d read it as well.  One comment stated, “Why didn’t they just agree to accept Islam?  They didn’t have to mean it, and they would have lived.”  Now, we can say that such a statement would never come from a true believer in Christ, but can we really say that’s so, at least as far as how we define “true believer” here in the west?  Looking at the level of sacrificial love displayed by our average churchgoing and professing Christian, and the countless ways we deny Him in our day to day lives already, is such thinking really so rare?
     I just read a short article by a Charismatic evangelist named Matt Sorger.  He notes a very alarming trend in his meetings.  Many people, including pastors, are asking him to keep his sermons short, to not spend much time in the Word, and to concentrate on having God bring forth “signs and miracles.”  One pastor even told him that the “Time for hearing the Word was past, what people needed now was a display of signs and miracles from heaven….a time for something new.”  A need for something new seems to be a call from a great segment of the church, whether it calls itself evangelical, charismatic, or pentecostal, and whether the something new is called “signs and wonders,” “emergent postmodernism,” or what have you.  My friends, anything, and I mean ANYTHING that seeks to take the place, authority, and power of His Living Word as revealed in scripture, requires confrontation, loving, yes, but confrontation nonetheless, and exposing.
As His Word tells us, much that appears to be light is really darkness, and much that we think is new, is not new at all, just a rehashed version of something the enemy has tried to pollute us with before.
     Our culture is in darkness, and to a degree, that has been and always will be so, but how much more darkness is present because we, the church, have not truly been the light?  How much false light, and “new thought” has crept in simply because we have not been watching, but rather, sleeping?  No, I am not calling for a “witchhunt” or modern day inquisition, I am asking are we willing to be nightwatchmen in the house of the Lord, a house that begins in our hearts, carries over into our homes, and then into our fellowships?  Are we ready and willing to test the spirits in all that we are reading, hearing, seeing, and learning, taking them not to our own reasoning, but to His Holy Word?
     Students of history, particularly ancient history, will know that cities often fell in the night when those assigned to be vigilant were either sleeping or overc0me because they were so few.  No one wants to be a nightwatchman, but if you’ll not be one, over your heart, your home, your church, what will be the outcome?  What will fall, and how great will the fall be?

Blessings,
Pastor O

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     The worst day of your life.  I expect all of us could share something about having one of those.  I think there’s even a book out having a title somewhat along those lines.  I guess each of us have a story concerning such a day, and though the details may be widely divergent, one thing would be common to all of them.  Pain.  Deep, heartwrenching pain.  Pain that seeks to bury and destroy us.  More, we have no guarantee that that day won’t be exceeded by one that’s even worse.  More painful, more overwhelming.  It would bring us to despair if it were not for one thing, really, one Person.  Jesus.  All else may be lost on that worst day.  All else but Him.  He’ll still be there, though likely we’ll not sense Him on any level, but it’s not our sense that we’re to rely on.  It’s upon Him, His Word, and His promised Presence.  “I will be with you.”  In the valley of the shadow of death, He will be with us, on the worst day, and on the one that follows, and the one that follows that, and the one that….
     I think writing this today flows out of something I preached in a message not long ago.  I was speaking of the deep need for us to really be grounded in truth, especially in this day of so much “non-truth,” and outright deception.  One of those truth’s is what Larry Crabb calls “Ressurection Truth.”  We need to know the hope we have because of the truth and victory of the resurrection of Christ.  It’s not a hope built upon a belief that we will never have a “worst day,” but on the truth that not even that worst day can defeat us, or more, keep us from Him Who is alive, and Who has conquered all that the enemy would like to accomplish against us in the midst of our worst day, even if there are many of them.  Our great hope in the midst of such a day is not that He will make it go away, or deliver us out of it.  Our hope is in the truth that in the grip of such a day, nothing can keep us from drawing near to Him, being “polished” through the pain of that day, into a person that more and more reflects the face of Jesus.  The enemy of our soul’s deep desire is to keep us from this hope, and therefore from Him.  Resurrection hope promises us that He can’t.  Not ever.  That, I think, is really the truth that sets us free.
     I’ll share just a few things about what has been my worst day.  It was the day my wife left, taking my daughter, and what felt to me, like my entire life.  As I watched her father load a truck with all the visible signs of our life together, I felt a despair so intense, that I just walked away from the home and up the street a ways.  Nearby was a graveyard, and I went in.  I expect I felt it an apt place to end up.  With tears streaming, and feeling crushing despair and pain, I cried out to Him.  I’ll not tell you that I heard any answer, or had any sense or feeling of Him.  Sometimes our pain is so great that we’re just not able to hear or sense anything but it.  What did come was a thought, more a choice.  A choice that I knew later was from Him.  It simply asked, “Would I choose to believe that even in this, even in this place, that He lives, that my life, no matter how it appears, is not over.  In that graveyard, in my soul pain, I chose to believe.
     That worst day was followed by many more.  In truth I have had a number of similar days since then.  You see, the Lord IS leading us to green pastures, just as Psalm 23 promises, but the fullness of that will not be realized here.  He never promised it would.  Here, there will be valleys and time spent in the shadow of death.  His promise, our hope, is that in the worst of life, we may have the best of Him.  Not according to what we feel or sense, but as to what He says, and what He invites us into in the midst of it.  He invites us to Himself.  Obviously, my life didn’t end in that graveyard, and there have been so many “good days of blessing” since then, but I know that as long as I live on this side of heaven, I’ll not be immune from another worst day.  Neither will you, but for all of us, freely given, is the best of Himself, all we’re able to have in this life, and it’s just a taste of what is to come.  Remember in your worst, is an invitation to His best, in part now, in whole one day.  As Romans 8 tells us, nothing can separate us from His love.  Nothing, including the worst day of our life.

Blessings,
Pastor O

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