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Heart Thoughts 3/31/10

     Polls and survey’s seem to be a characteristic of our day, but I came across one recently that really shook me.  A recent survey of American’s found that 40% of us have no idea that Easter is a celebration of the resurrection of Christ.  They know that it is a time when kids get baskets of candy, eggs are colored, and bunnies abound.  They also know that it is a time when people, many for the only time that year, go to church, but they have no idea that it is a celebration of the Father’s greatest work of grace the world has ever known, the resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ the Lord.  My thought in this is, who do we see as deficient here, the 40% who don’t know, or we, His church, who haven’t told them?  Could it be that many of us do not know, and haven’t truly experienced the power of His resurrection ourselves?
I am not speaking in judgement, because I live in the same culture you do, and am part of the same Body of Christ that you are, but are we willing to take responsibility for answering this question?
    It was after encounters with the risen Christ, and the outpouring of His Holy Spirit upon them due to His rising, that the 1st century church was transformed from a small group of fearful believers, into a body filled with His power and might.  They, as Acts tells us, “turned the world upside down,” and it happened one encounter at a time.  Sometimes those encounters were on a grand scale, involving thousands, and at other times, as with Paul on the Damascus Road, they involved just one, but no matter how many were present, the encounters were still individual, for in the end, He seeks to meet with us one to one, and no one who truly has, can ever be the same again.
   In 1st Peter, he writes, “By His great mercy, we have been born anew to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and an inheritance which is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading……”  This is the message we are to bring our dying culture, living hope through the risen Christ. 
   Last week I attended a special time with other pastors in the area with Dr. Bob Broadbooks, and a lot of the talk centered on these same things, the state of our culture, and the state of the church.  I think there is great awareness of where the culture is at, and so many “plans”have been formulated to try and speak relevantly to it.  Again, I don’t speak in judgement, but it seems that maybe, in our well meaning attempts to be culturally relevant, we’ve become spiritually irrelevant.  Ann Graham Lotz, in her book Magnificent Obsession, speaking of the sin nature into which all of us are born writes, ” You can learn to manage it, educate it, drug it, but you can never transform it.  Nothing but a brand new nature will solve the human moral dilemma……which is why Jesus said, ‘You must be born again.’ “  Born again into the new and living hope Peter speaks of.  It’s the message His church has been entrusted with, yet nearly half of the immediate “world” you and I are living in, knows nothing of it.
  This week, whether you’re “dressing up” or “dressing down” in order to go and celebrate what many prefer to call “Resurrection Sunday,” what will those who are watching, who themselves won’t join us, but who know where we’re headed, be thinking?  That we’re going to a place called “church,” but with no idea of what we do once we get there?  They know it’s something we do with some regularity, and that this day seems a bit more special than others, but they’ve no idea why.  Do they know we gather to celebrate the risen Christ, to celebrate the new and living hope we say we’ve been born into?  A living hope that really has transformed us, and can transform them as well?  Or, will it be for us, a time of singing some songs, hearing a good message, getting together at a good restaurant afterwards, yet leaving the inheritance Peter speaks of, untouched, and our culture unchanged?  Will we be a temporary gathering of professing believers, or the unleashed risen body of Christ? 

Blessings,

Pastor O

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Heart Thoughts 3/25/10

      In my last Heart Thoughts I wrote of the various types of “cups” that we might be holding in our lives, and that our response to those cups was to be like Christ’s in Gethsemane, which was a willingness to drink it, even when doing so involved great pain and cost, but involved as well, total trust in the Father Who has allowed the cup in our lives.
     It occurred to me afterwards that I may have given the impression that every cup in life is a result of something we have done, or is something the Father has caused to come upon us.  While there are defintely painful places that He does lead us to, and heavy cups that He may place in our hands, we must never lose sight that we live in a fallen world, and being His children doesn’t exempt us from suffering.  Much, if not all of our suffering, will not be understood till seen in the light of eternity, but for sure, we can expect to hold that cup more than once in our lives.  We may well be holding it now, but as we hold it, if we’ll only believe and trust, He is holding us, regardless of what our emotions and senses are saying.
    Lately, I’ve been thinking of Israel’s Exodus experience as the Lord, through Moses, led the people through 40 years of wilderness wandering.  Granted, the majority of the people deserved to be in that wandering, but not all of them.  Not Moses.  Not Joshua.  Not Caleb.  Not their familes.  And not a great many others for sure.  Yet, they too had to wander all those years.  Yes, the Lord took care of them, met their needs, protected them, and fed them with manna.  But, could you look at this from the perspective of those who’d done nothing to deserve this wilderness, yet found themselves there anyway?  They awoke each day, knowing that it might well be just like the previous one.  The same barren landscape,

the same lack of color, the same trudging journey that no matter how far they walked, seemed to lead them to the same place each evening.  Monotony.  Each day was just “another day in the desert.”  I’ve been walking there.  Maybe you have too.  If so, there is great hope for us all.
   Earlier in the book of Exodus, in chapter 3, Moses has his burning bush experience with the Father.
In the midst of it, in verse 5, God tells him “Take off your sandals, for you are standing on holy ground.”
Mark Batterson, in “Wild Goose Chase,” commented on this saying, “Wherever we are at the moment standing, is holy ground.”  It’s holy because wherever we’re currently standing, if we are really following Him, He stands with us, and that makes it holy.  It may well be the wilderness, and it may well be a place our flesh doesn’t want to be, but as Batterson says, “We do well to treat it as holy.”  Moses was on the backside of the desert, as far from where he wanted to be as possible, but the Father was not coming to Him where Moses wanted to be, but where he was, and that made it holy ground.  My desert place, and yours, is the same.  Treating it as such is true worship.  In the monotony and sameness of yours and my desert, have we been seeing it as just another day in the desert, or as holy ground.  Maybe our neglect of the latter is what is prolonging our time there?
   I’ve learned a lot about deserts through the years as the Lord has seemed to want to take me through so many.  That’s not a complaint to you, though I confess I have complained to Him at times.  Yet, I’m determined, by His grace, to treat it as holy ground.  It may well be another day in the desert, but it is a day to be shared with Him.  All may look the same around me, but if I will worship Him here, all will not look the same within me.  I may be in a dry and waterless place, but that won’t be the reality within me.  Not if I truly treat this place as holy ground.  And……one day, the desert time will end, the cup will be taken away, the promise will come to pass……..and by His grace, I, and you too, will still be standing on holy ground.
 
Blessings,
Pastor O

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Heart Thoughts 3/23/10

     Mark Batterson, in his book, “Wild Goose Chase,” says, “When we come to a Bible verse we want to read real fast, we probably need to read it REAL slow…..We pick and choose the truths we want to accept.”  I read that just today, and in my prayer time that followed, the Lord brought to mind a passage of scripture, and something another writer had spoken about it.  It’s definitely one of those passages that I, and maybe you as well, would like to read over real fast.

    In Matthew 26, Jesus is in Gethsemane, facing the ordeal of the cross.  In prayer, He cries out to the Father, “Abba, Father, if this cup cannot be taken away until I drink it, Your will be done.”  Commenting on this, James Bryan Smith, in “The Good and Beautiful God,” wrote, “What is the cup we have been given to drink, and have we been willing to drink it?…..When we pray, are we able to say, ‘Abba, Father?”
    It is so often hard to reconcile the good an beautiful God Smith writes about, with the God who sometimes, even many times,  asks us to drink from a very bitter cup.  Life, so often, hurts.  The places we end up in, especially when those places come about as a direct result of following Him, can be frightening, painful, emotionally spiritually draining, and potentially, even experientally, devastating.  It is easy to ”drink a toast” to Him so to speak, in the midst of blessing, well being and safety.  It is something else entirely to do so when all visible means of help are gone, when danger and need are pressing us on every side.  When we’re in a place we don’t want to be, surrounded by circumstances we don’t want to be in.  That’s very human, and it was the humanity of our Lord Christ that led Him to the Gethsemane prayer, but it was the Divine life that was His that allowed Him to not only drink the cup, but to still see His Father as “Abba, Daddy,” while doing so.  In the midst of drinking the horrible cup of crucifixion, He was able to rest and trust in the perfect love of His Father.
   If you are truly one who is following Christ today, at some point, the Father will ask you to drink of the same cup as He did His Son.  It may not involve a literal death on a cross, but we can be sure, it will involve a dying.  In His leading you and I, He may have brought us to the place where we must die to our need to control things, or to be controlled.  He may have led us to the place where long buried “issues” in our life have sprung up all around us, and are causing us great pain and heartache.  He may have allowed a previously tranquil and carefree life to become one of chaos and disorder.  He may simply have led us to the place where, once more, He calls us to say to Him, yet again, “not my will, but Yours be done O Lord.”  Yet, how will we drink it?  In sullen resignation, or, despite the pain and all the unknown that comes with it, we drink it in trust, knowing our heavenly Father really is our “good and beautiful God, and we know that somehow, He will turn that bitter ”cup” into glory for Him, and good for us?  He is the good and beautiful God and He cannot be anything or anyone else.  If the cup is before you, He bids you to drink.  Will you drink?
 
Blessings,
Pastor O
    

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Pastor’s Devotional Video

Heart Thoughts Video 3/21/10trong>

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Heart Thoughts

     In her book, “Magnificent Obsession,” Ann Graham Lotz shares about an encounter she had with the Father during prayer.  She had been going through a very dark time in her life, with a mutltitude of personal, family, and ministry burdens.  During her devotional time, she “accidentally” opened her Bible to Exodus 20:21, where, as the people stood back in fear and dread, God called Moses to Himself.  Verse 21 reads, “As the people stood in the distance, Moses entered into the deep darkness, where God was.”  As she read, Lotz heard the Lord speak into her heart saying, “Ann, most people remain at a distance from Me when they think drawing near will involve crises, problems, challenges, demands, hurts, and confusion….tests.  All things you’ve been going through.  They are afraid of the “cloud”……of the darkness of confusion and lack of vision for the next step.  But I want you to be like Moses and embrace the cloud and thick darkness-because that’s where I am.”  She then turned to where she had meant to first go in her Bible, Exodus 16, and read, “They looked toward the desert and there was the glory of the Lord appearing in the cloud.”  Lotz writes, “The passage assured me I would glimpse His glory in the midst of all that I was going through….and I did.”

     I wonder, in our lives, just how often we are like Moses, and how often we are like the people who stand back?  When we look upon our own days of darkness, lack of vision and understanding, how do we respond?  As believers, we have been “taught” that God is in all things.”  Jesus said, “I am with you always.”  Paul wrote that “Nothing can separate us from the love of God.”  Yet, when we’re faced with our own cloud of darkness and unknown, and know that the Lord calls us to walk on, walk into it, all the while continuing to trust Him, do we?  Will we?  Or, do we shrink back, hold back, run back….and, why do we do so?
    As humans, we seem almost born to fear the darkness.  As children, we often needed nightlights.
While most of us “grew” out of that need, we have never really lost the fear.  We merely found other kinds of “nightlights”.  Especially in the spiritual realm.  A realm we often know so little of, and possibly because we know so little of Him.  As I read this passage, what comes to mind is our great trust in our own “light,” our own understanding, and our own sense of control and trust in ourselves.  We trust what we can “see,” and what our emotions and mind can understand.  We feel secure only in what we are in control of.  The God Who so often covers Himself in darkness, cannot be controlled, and He calls us to draw near to HIm in it….if we dare.  And dare we must, because our light that we so rely on, is not light at all.  In truth, the true light we so desperately need to have in order to walk through this life in victory, is only to be found in the midst of His, at times, seeming darkness.  The “light” that we think allows us to be in control, is not light at all, and in the darkness that God calls us to trust Him in, we will find true light.  It makes no sense to our human understanding, but it’s the only way we’ll ever truly behold His glory.
   A lady in our fellowship recently testified as to how the Lord had been working in her life.  Events had unfolded in her life that were, as she said, “forcing her” to dig more deeply into God than she had ever done before.  The result was a knowledge of and relationship with Him beyond anything she had previously known.  She had been faced with the cloud of darkness, had been invited to enter…..and found that God really was there.  She found, as Exodus 16:10 says, “Within the guiding cloud, they could see the awesome glory of the Lord.”
   If you’re not now standing before your own cloud of darkness, very likely you will in the near future, for out times are filled with them.  How will you respond?  Will you move away, fearing and dreading what you might find within?  Fearing having your weak and ineffective “light” extinguished?”  Such a choice will only keep you in darkness.  If you, if I, will, as Lotz was bid by Him to do, “embrace the cloud and thick darkness,” we really will find He is there.  He promises it to be so.  We can move into it.  Where God, and His light, and glory, really are.

Blessings,
Pastor O
  

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Heart Thoughts

     In his book, “Unlimiting God,” Richard Blackaby shares a story from his life.  As a seminary president and much in demand speaker, he led a life centered around a great deal of kingdom “business.”  However, he had begun to become very convicted about how he was neglecting his family in the midst of carrying out all the business.  As he was preparing to depart for yet another conference, he scheduled a coffee date with his wife before leaving for the airport.  However, unexpected “business” broke into things, and he ended up sharing nothing more than a quick kiss and goodbye with his wife before boarding the plane.

      At the conference, as he listened to various speakers, the Holy Spirit began to speak to him about what he needed to do to rectify the neglect of his family.  He began to write down a list of “changes” he needed to make, ending up with a full page, along with a deep resolve to carry out all the contents of that page.  However, when he arrived back home, he found a mountain of demands awaiting him.  He immediately fell back into the same old routine, and the same old patterns of neglect.
      Several months went by, and in the course of them, he acquired a new Bible, which he began to use.  One day however, he wanted to look up something in his old Bible, and pulled it from the shelf where he’d placed it.  As he opened it, the list he’d made at that conference fell from the pages where he’d put……and forgotten it.  These are his words, “There in my hands was the list of actions I knew without question almighty God had given me.  I had forgotten.  I carefully read each item and remembered how powerfully God had spoken to me during that service.  It became painfully clear to me why I hadn’t experienced God’s anointing on my life since that time.  I had filed God’s instructions instead of following them.”
     How often have you and I been guilty of doing the same?  How many times have we sat under teaching, under a multitude of “voices,” all the while hearing His voice through them, whether they be actual speakers or writers, and meticulously wrote down what we heard, all the while vowing, as Blackaby did, to make changes, and yet, soon after, even immediately, filed what we have received away, instead of following His voice, His heart, and His instruction?  How many lists are gathering dust somewhere, whether on a shelf, or in our hearts?  How many words from our Almighty God have we heard, been impacted by, and then…..forgotten?  How many more times will it happen?  How long do we think it can go on without His holding us accountable?
    Somehow, we have fallen into the trap, the deception, of thinking that being convicted about something, becoming aware of it, is the breakthrough?  We’re now aware of the problem, and that is victory.  We may spend a great deal of time talking about our “problem” even making lists, as did Blackaby, of how we may come out of it, but somehow, the lists always end up on the shelf, and the problem remains, and our lives are unchanged, and the Father is OK with all of it.
    As Mark Batterson says in his book “Wild Goose Chase,” it’s not what we’re thinking, saying or intending in response to what He speaks to us, it is what we DO.  In Matthew 25, Jesus tells the faithful stewards of what they’d been given, “Well DONE good and faithful servant.”  He had no such words for the one who hadn’t.  Which words might He have for us?
    What is the last thing that the Holy Spirit spoke into your life concerning behaviors, attitudes, habits, that He made clear to you had to change?  Did they?  What did you do with His words?  Did you jot them faithfully down, then file them away under “forgotten?”  Or, did you follow them?  Are you following them now?  With His Holy Spirit conviction, comes Holy Spirit power.  Power to turn away, power to change, power to be transformed.  Power to be made new.  Has such happened to you and I?  Or, has the light dimmed, the behaviors, actions, habits and attitudes continued on, while His words gather dust on the shelves of our hearts and minds?  While the power of His presence in our lives becomes weaker and weaker?  Will the last thing we heard from Him, now be the first thing we hear, and do, today?
 
Blessings,
Pastor O

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Heart Thoughts

     I recently read an article by pastor and writer Francis Frangiapane where he shared an experience from the early years of his ministry.  He was a part of a group with which he was beginning to have serious questions about not only the doctrinal direction, but the behavior of some of the leaders.  He met with the leadership to discuss the issues and with hopes of reaching a mutual reconciliation of it all.  Instead, he was forced to resign his pastorate.  He found himself without not only a ministry, but a home and income as well.  He began what became a 3 year journey of going from what he felt were meaningless, unsatisfying, as well as low paying jobs.  More, he was unable to carry out what he was sure was a call upon his life for full time service to the Lord.  Pain, frustration, and misery were what marked his life.

      In it, he constantly sought the Father for guidance, asking Him what he should do, what were the steps he needed to take to get back into ministry, back into a fulfilling life, back where he felt he belonged.  Back to where he believed his only joy and well being could be found.  God seemed to be silent on all of that, and though He worked in Frangiapane’s life to supply needs, and take care of he and his family, Frangiapane’s misery and frustration continued.  He hated where he was at, and what he was doing.  He felt like a second class child of God because of it all.  He not only wanted out of it, but wanted to know what God wanted of him in all of this.  One night, as he was at his altar of prayer before the Lord, God answered and said simply, “I want you to love Me where you’re at.”  Simple yet profoundly powerful words.  Words that I myself have struggled so many times to hear.  Maybe you have as well.  Maybe you are right now.
    In our journey with Him, we can, very likely will, end up in places we don’t want to be.  For me it was Charlottesville, Virginia back in 1989.  I had left the ministry with the disintegration of my marriage, and ministry was what gave me my identity.  If I wasn’t a pastor, just what was I?  I had to get work, and that search led me to Charlottesville, working on a Coca-Cola truck as a deliveryman.  It was the first job opportunity I had, and I had to take it.  On the first day of work, at 6 am in the morning, I sat in the truck, in the dark, the sun not yet having risen, and cried out to God, “How did I get here?”  Like Frangiapane, I hated where I was at, and what I was doing.  Like Frangiapane, I stayed in that place for a long time.
   God’s words to Frangiapane are His words to you and I as well.  No matter where we are, no matter how far it is from where we want to be, He calls us to love Him from there, even when “there” is a place we would never have chosen to be.  Love Him with not just an intellectual agreement, but with a wholehearted love that impacts and permeates our minds, emotions, and spirit.  Love that fills us with the light of His joy even in the darkest of prisons.  Love that instead of constantly seeking a way out, seeks instead a way to Him.  Ever deeper into Him.
   Frangiapane said that what he discovered was that God wasn’t interested in what he did for Him, but in what he was becoming in Him.  He found that the Lord wanted him to love Him right where he was at, and know that He loved him for who he was, and was becoming, and not for what he did.  Even in the seemingly most insignificant place, he mattered greatly to God.  Though I didn’t know it, so did I in Charlottesville, and so do you, right now, regardless of where you are, and what you do.  What we’re doing is not what matters most.  It is what we’re becoming that does.
   Jesus told Peter in John 21:18 that when he was old, “….others will direct you and take you where you don’t want to go.”  It will be no different for us, as life will definitely take us places we don’t want to be.  In all of it, He is there, working, molding…..loving us.  We belong to Him, and not the circumstances around us.  Where we are, or what we’re doing is not the final reality.  It is what we’re becoming in Him….as we love Him….right where we are.
 
Blessings,
Pastor O
   

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