Dulles Family Life Church

     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

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     There are so many rich rewards to be found in being a pastor, but there are just as many, maybe even more, sorrows.  One of the greatest is watching people continue onward in cycles of selfdestructive behavior, behavior that destroys them, and others as well.  They continue to reap the consequences of their actions, choices, and behaviors.  “We reap what we sow,” is a reality, but there is a deeper truth to be found in that if we will only receive it.
     I have been listening to a powerful series by Beth Moore on how we can thrive in the midst of the Lord’s discipline.  Discipline is a dirty word in today’s culture, not only in the secular world, but in the “church world” as well.  The Bible talks a great deal about it, but strangely, we seem adept at passing over these truths and always to our own heartache.
     I listened the other evening to a mother speaking of the relationship of her father to she and her family, of how his actions and behaviors have so hurt and affected all of them.  At the same time, I have watched other individuals, couples, and families, continue on in totally destructive, or rebellious, or dysfunctional, or, all of the above behaviors, bringing consequences of sorrow, pain, and destruction to themselves and so many around them.  There is no doubt that God has sought to work through these behaviors and the painful consequences of them as well to bring about His purposes, but most often, the cycles just continue, and the consequences do as well, and even grow worse.  Why?  Could it be that we so hate His discipline because we have no understanding of what He is really seeking to do in the midst of it?
     Proverbs 3:12 says, “For the Lord corrects those He loves, just as a father corrects a child in whom he delights.”  Moore made this statement, “Consequences are a natural order of God as ‘boss,’ but chastisement is the supernatural order of God as Father.”  She goes on to say that God the Father, “….will take our consequences and use them as a teaching process for our good, and only allow consequences to come to pass that will teach us.”  The key here however is that this will only happen if we submit to Him in and for the process.  There is no doubt that while many are heartbroken by what they do or cause, they are not themselves broken, and therefore refuse to submit to what the Lord wants to do in and for them.  As a result we keep reaping, we keep getting consequences, and we keep sinking deeper into despair.  This isn’t the path or process He calls us to. 
     Hebrews 12 speaks of the Lord’s discipline with His people.  In verse 13, in conjunction with His discipline, the writer says, “Mark out a straight path for your feet.  Then those who follow you, though they are weak and lame, will not stumble and fall, but will become strong.”  One commentator writing on this verse says that God wants to take the “lame thing” that is turned wrong and cure it.  Moore says that, “The ultimate goal of all chastisement is healing.”  The only way out of our cycles of destruction is His healing, which He so often will bring through His discipline, but we continue to avoid it, run from it, refuse it, but we can’t run from the consequences, we can only from the healing.
     How much of your life, the lives of your loved ones, are caught up in these very cycles of destruction?  How much more heartbreak will come, is here?
There was once a very popular quiz show called “Truth or Consequences.”  Perhaps that’s an apt title for so many lives right now.  We know what consequences are, but do we really know what truth is, what it brings?  Truth brings freedom, life, healing.  Truth will break the cycle of destruction you may be living in.  Are you running from that?  You can’t escape the consequences, but you can embrace the truth, the healing.  Why not do that today, right now?  Yield to Him the “lame thing that is turned wrong,” that He may straighten it, heal it, make it, and you, whole.Blessings,
Pastor O

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     I will never forget the feeling I had as a young boy of 10 over being selected to my Little League All-Star team.  I was not a good player then, not really from lack of ability, but a lack of confidence.  More, my older brothers were both good players, and had each been selected to teams.  They had trophies.  I had none.  To me, those trophies meant they “mattered.”  That I had none meant that I, to some degree, mattered less.  Getting that trophy meant everything, and though it ended up being just a small, cheap trinket, I kept it in my room for years.  That’s what we, especially young boys, do with trophies.  To some degree, we feel they tell us we matter, we’ve been recognized, we have value.  The world is big on trophies, and our pursuit and desire for them is just as strong, not only in the secular realm, but in the Kingdom world as well.  That this is so is a deeply sad truth.
     I’ve been reading a very challenging book by Marva Dawn titled, “A Sense Of The Call,” which speaks to the life of everyone who is called to minister for and with Him in the Kingdom.  One passage I just recently went through had to do with this very matter of trophies, and the example she used was one I had not before seen in such a way.  I doubt you have either.  She quoted scholar Eugene Peterson and his using of I Samuel 15, where King Saul has defeated the Amalekites, but in disobedience to God, brought Agag their king, and the best of their livestock, back to the Israelite camp.  Peterson calls this, “a bold exhibition of trophies.”  Saul, though he was already the Lord’s anointed and chosen king, didn’t feel this was enough.  He needed more.  He needed trophies.  He needed the recognition of men.  In Dawn’s words, “How easily we cuddle our accomplishments as a security blanket to remind us we matter, instead of trusting God’s assurance poured upon us in baptism that we are His beloved.” 
     I won’t speak for you, but I will for myself.  Though no longer 10 years old, I have far too often, most often, still yearned for “trophies” that somehow will impress the world, the church, and yes, Him.  In truth, how thin is the line between it being a yearning and a lusting?  The trophies we seek may take many shapes, whether it’s bigger homes, more “things”, excellent marriages, great, achievement oriented kids, the next rung up in the company, or, they be “Kingdom trophies.”  Growing, recognized ministries and churches.  The applause of denominational and church leaders, and especially of pastor, missionary, and teaching brethren.  We long to, as Dawn says, cuddle the accomplishments to ourselves.  Why is the truth that we are His beloved not enough?  I think, maybe, the only trophy He offers, indeed brings us to, is the cross of Christ we are called to carry, and to die upon, and to rise up from.  That’s the proof that we’re His beloved, and no trophy offered by this world, or the church in this world can match it, or even come near.
     I am not speaking against giving our all to what we do, and wanting to bear Kingdom fruit in the doing, but the yearning to add more Agag’s and livestock to our collection will cut us off from experiencing the joy of simply being His beloved, and if we go about our lives and calling, no matter where He has placed us, with or without the notice of others, it won’t matter, because we are truly secure in the knowledge that we are not only His, but that we are surely His beloved, and our faithfulness to Him is His trophy, and ours is the life He gives us and calls us to.  Now, and in the world to come.  With Him.  Always with Him.

Blessings,
Pastor O

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     In her book, “The Sense Of The Call,” writer and theologian Marva Dawn makes this statement about the 1st century church’s witness to the extrememly diverse world into which it was birthed, a world even more diverse than the one you and I find ourselves in today.  She says, “Amidst all the religions of the Mediterranean world after Christ….The first believers knew they were in the minority and simply offered what they knew about Christ as a gift.  Their message was not an inane ‘God loves you,’ but the powerful witness, ‘Jesus Christ has risen from the dead, and that…..changes everything.’  This was good news to people suffering from lack of meaning in their daily lives, economic hardship, imperial (government) oppression, or the fear of gods that could not be mollified (appeased).  It was the invitation of the Kingdom.”
     I have to wonder, as we seek to bring a message to a culture not really different from the one above, just what is our message?  Is it one of power, or just inane?  More, have we really received a message of power ourselves?  Have we really heard the Good News that Christ has risen, and if so, has it really changed everythng for us?  Do our lives, thought processes, attitudes and habits really reflect that?  The early church preached a message of total transformation to a culture that was desperate for it, and the good news was that the Father, in Christ, delivered on the promise of the message.
     Peter, in Acts 2:24, preaching to the crowds in Jerusalem on the death of Christ says, “However, God released Him from the horrors of death and raised Him back to life again, for death could not keep Him in its grip.”  That truth changed everything and it still changes everything.  Has it changed everything for you?  Through you, around you, in you?  Is it a message you not only have received, but are willing, anxious to take….take to a culture, to people, who are lost in the same kind of hopelessness and disillusionment that the world, Peter, Paul, and all the early church believers were surrounded by and lived among?
     It has been 30 years now since I was part of that culture, in the sense of being enslaved by it, but I have never forgotten how the Father drew me to Himself through the message of the cross and resurrection.  He didn’t sent to me a man who merely told me how much God loved me.  Please, don’t misunderstand, we desperately need to know that He does, but His love is not proven by words, but by the evidence of a life transformed.  Trapped in a life that was spinning more and more out of control, I needed to know that there was a different life, a real life, available.  In the messenger He used, I saw such a life, for I had known this young man to have been held in captivity even darker than mine, but I could not deny the reality of a life transformed, and he made it clear Who had given him that life.  Such a life was available, such a life is what I wanted, and such a life I received and entered into.
     Acts 2:28 says, “You have shown me the way of life.”  A resurrected life.  A transformed life.  Through a message that changes everything.  The social, economic, and political structure of the culture the early church found itself in was more, far more, restricted than ours, yet they were able to take a message to that culture, and as Acts later tells us, turned that culture upside down.  They transformed a culture because they themselves had been transformed by the miraculous power of God.  The cross and the resurrection had changed everything.  Has it for you?  More, has it through you?  He has shown us the way of life.  Has His way of life truly become ours?

Blessings,
Pastor O

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     Psalm 3 reads, “O Lord, how many are my foes!  How many rise up against me!  But You are a shield around me Lord, my glorious One Who lifts up my head.  To the Lord I cry aloud and He answers me from His holy hill. Selah“  David wrote this Psalm as he was fleeing for his life from his son Absalom, when his kingdom had seemingly been lost, when all was crumbling around him.  After he writes these words, he adds the word Selah.  The full meaning of this ancient Hebrew word is not known, but it appears to have been used as a musical interlude, a pause…a rest place.  David, in the midst of tremendous pressure, a time of deep crisis, chose, instead of giving into fear, panic, and despair, to…pause, to call on his God, to think on Who his God really is, and to rest in that great truth.  Author Marva Dawn, in her book, “The Sense Of The Call,” says, “The Selahs in Psalm 3 are a special treasure to me, for they make clear the reason for my frequent lack of restraint over my anxieties (fears).  Apprehensions get the better of me when I don’t pause enough to hear God whisper the Good News of the Kingdom.  I need to dwell in the refreshment of Selah periodically through the day to maintain self control.”
     There may be no Absalom’s rising up against you or I today, but I doubt we lack for “foes” coming against us, whether these foes be relational, emotional, physical, or spiritual in nature.  All of them are very capable of putting us “on the run.”  Might you be on the run from one or more of them yourself?  Might you not need, right now, a Selah time with Him?  A time to dwell upon the truth of Who He is, and most importantly, Who He is and promises to be to you?  After the Selah, David writes, “I lie down and sleep; I wake again because the Lord sustains me.  I will not fear the thousands drawn up against me on every side.  Arise O Lord!  Deliver me O my God!”
     In his Selah time, he was renewed by the knowledge and reality of the Father God who loved, cared for, and protected him at all times.  This God arose, and defeated all the hosts of the enemy who were rising up, together, against David.  He will do so for you and I as well….Nick Vujicic, the evangelist I wrote of recently, born without arms or legs said, “The greatest disability of all is fear.”  Are you being disabled by some type of fear today?  Instead of running from it, would you run to Him, have your Selah time in Him, and emerge, in Christ, victorious, and…at rest.  As another of the great Psalms says, God will arise, and the enemies, your enemies, will be scattered.  Selah

Blessings,
Pastor O

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     I was greatly impacted this week by hearing the testimony of a 26 year old man, Nick Vujcic, who was born without arms or legs.  Vujcic related how, as he entered his teen years, he had to come to terms with who he was, and who God had allowed him to be.  He said he went through the usual questions of “Why?”  Why had the Lord allowed him to be born that way?  Why had He not healed him, given him new arms and legs, because he knew that He had the power to do so?  He entered into his own dark night of the soul, even seriously contemplating suicide, but it was in that black shadowland that He truly met the Lord, and he emerged transformed.  He said, “Victory is not when your circumstances change, but when you admit you can’t do it on your own and surrender.”  Surrender to Him.  Today, Nick is a young evangelist greatly used by the Lord, especially among youth, and on several continents.  These words he spoke ring out with power and truth.  “If God can use a man without arms and legs to be His hands and feet…He can use anybody.”
     After hearing him, the scripture that came to mind was II Corinthians 12:9, where Paul has begged the Lord 3 times to remove an extremely painful and deeply unwanted “thorn in his flesh.”  Paul relates, “Each time He said, ‘My gracious favor (grace) is all you need.  My power works best in your weakness.’ “  I think so often we read this verse and have a picture of one who endures, who somehow makes it through in one piece.  A survivor.  I certainly have felt that way at times, and I think you have too.  It is not what Paul meant or discovered for himself.  It was not Nick Vujcic’s discovery either.  It for sure has never been what God intends for us to discover about His grace.  His grace is not about just getting through, about surviving, it is about taking us through to victory, and doing so in miraculous ways, and despite our many, and sometimes seemingly endless limitations.  It doesn’t matter whether the limitations are ours, others, or the circumstances we find ourselves in.
     So often, maybe most often, we look to escape unhappy situations.  We too ask “Why?”  Why are we here?  Why has He allowed it?  Why doesn’t He remove the situation, or us from the situation?  We, like Paul, may get the answer of II Corinthians 12:9, but it has no effect on us.  It has no effect because we aren’t willing to surrender to that truth.  We see victory as being taken out of the painful situation.  God sees victory as overcoming the situation while we’re still in it.  There is only one place and way to do that, at the cross of Christ.  We may ask, like Christ, that, “This cup be taken from me,” but our final words to Him must be, “Nevertheless, not my will but Thine be done.” 
     If we truly believe that God is Sovereign, fully in control, and we are really yielded, not partially, but completely, to that control, than no matter where find ourselves, and no matter what the circumstances may be, we’ll find out for ourselves that His power really does work best through our weakness.  God never explained to Paul why he had his thorn.  He just called him to trust not only Himself, but His gracious favor in the midst of it.  He calls you and I to do the same.  You, like Paul, like Nick Vujcic, may find yourself right now in a place your flesh doesn’t want to be, that you are desperate to escape from.  Your pleadings, your questions, seem to fall on deaf ears, but they aren’t.  Whatever we feel the limitations of the situation are, and whether the limitations are from within or without, they are most certainly real, but there are no limitations on Him, and on what He can do in and through us in spite of them.  Truly, His power works best in our weakness.  His grace really is sufficient, and for sure, if He can use, for His glory and Nick’s good, a man with no arms and legs to be His hands and feet, will He not, and what can He not, do in and through you and I?  His gracious favor is sufficient for…us, right now, this moment, and every moment to come.

Blessings,
Pastor O 

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     Several years ago the group “Casting Crowns” recorded a wonderful song titled “Lifesong,” where they asked that their lives would sing a song of glory and praise to HIm.  That should be, must be, the deep desire of all of us, but alongside that, our lives need to tell a story, and it should not be our story, but His.  The Father should be able to tell His “story” through lives, just as He did, and does, through Christ.  As you and I live out our lifestories today, what is the message we are communicating about Him?  Is God able to tell His story through yours and my daily living?
     Psalm 119:114 says, You (God) are my hiding place (refuge) and my shield.”  This is a beautiful truth and promise to all of us, to know the Father, in Christ, will be exactly that to all who come to Him, but, what of those who don’t come to Him, whether through ignorance, fear, shame, or some other reason?  How can He be that to them?  I heard Beth Moore comment on this recently and it challenged me deeply.  She said she believes God has called us, herself, you, me, to be a hiding place and a refuge to people who desperately need that place.  That is challenging because it is one thing to know He is always available to be such for us, and quite another to be willing to always be available to be such to someone else.  It’s hard for God to tell that part of His story, any of His story, through lives that make themselves only partially available to Him.
     I recently heard evangelist James Robison talk about his new book.  It’s entitled “Racing Jesus.”  He said his central idea in it is that God’s people should live in such a way that when we see hurting, suffering people, we should “race Jesus” in order to be the first one to their side.  That Christ comes near to the brokenhearted is a message the church seems to preach well, and we may have been effective in saying that He often does so through His people, but really friend, when was the last time we really did so?  More, is coming alongside the pattern that truly marks our lives?  We may serve meals to the homeless on Thanksgiving, and have special times our outreach, or works of care, but are they really any more than that, “special times?”  In our day to day lives, are we really racing Him to the side of the broken and lost?  Or, are we more wrapped up in adding on to our own lives, getting more blessings, seeing to our own households, perhaps praying for the needs of the broken, but trusting Him, or someone else, to be at their side?
     I wrote down in my prayernotes recently and am asking Him to cause me to be willing to be open to ANYONE at ANYTIME.  Not just at a convenient time, but to have a willingness to be available to Him, to be able, as I heard someone put it, to discern the situations, needs, that God considers an emergency, and go to them.  Friends, I want to tell you, my flesh will never have such a willingness, for it will always look out for, and jealousy guard its time, resources, and abilities.  So will yours.  It can only be done through the infilling and empowering of His Holy Spirit.
     I just finished reading Isaiah, and 26:18 leaped out at me.  It was the prophets confession on behalf of the people of Israel to the Father.  I think its scope extends to you and I today.  He said to God, “We have done nothing to rescue the world.”  To what degree might you and I be guilty of that as well?  We have done an excellent job of looking after our own “world,” but what of all the lives and needs that are there in the world around us?  How close to nothing has been our response?
     Philippians 2:15 says, “In a dark world full of crooked, perverse people, let your light shine brightly before them.”  On this Moore said, “We’re to stick our like stars in the blackness of the universe.”  I don’t think either the apostle Paul, or Moore meant that we do so by shutting ourselves off from them, living moral, clean lives, but by being actively among them, with Is light, His story, shining though our lives, our stories.  The Father, in Christ, has a story to tell that will not only rescue, but transform.  Has He yet been able to tell it through you and I?  Will we race with Jesus?  Will we be a refuge and hiding place to those who desperately need it?  How will our story unfold?  How will it end?

Blessings,
Pastor O

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