Faith: The most ubiquitous force in the universe

Though you have not seen Him, you love Him; and even though you do not see Him now, you believe in Him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls (I Peter 1:8-9).

A few years ago, a group of scientists were given the most prestigious award in the world, the Nobel Prize for science, for discovering that all around us, all around them, and throughout every cubic foot of the universe is reverberating tiny echoes of the original Big Bang, Creation itself. They called it something like a “humming,” which everyone heard to the point that they had quit questioning it.

You see the same wallpaper every day and eventually you quit noticing it. When the scientists decided to analyze the mysterious hum, they found echoes of the Beginning.

Faith is like that. It’s everywhere, everyone uses it, lives by it, orders their lives by it and around it, but rarely give it a thought.

The funny thing is how some dispute that they believe in faith or use it in any way. As they do so, they draw their breath by faith, stand on their spot of terrain by faith, and plan their next act by faith.

Defining faith is a little tricky. Everyone tries his hand at it.

The writer of Hebrews introduces the well-loved 11th chapter, the Faith Chapter in our New Testament, with a definition:

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see (Heb. 11:1 NIV).

Some kid said it’s believing what you know isn’t true.

Here’s my definition:

“Faith is a conviction that something is true, real and solid on the basis of genuine, verifiable evidence even though some of the evidence is still missing.”

In a sense we are all celestial Sherlock Holmeses––studying the evidence, coming to conclusions on the basis of that evidence and making decisions, but all the while wishing we had the missing parts of the puzzle. Divine sleuths.

The disciple of Jesus Christ goes forward by faith. The Jew, the Taoist, the Muslim all live by faith. The Hindu, the Buddhist, the animist, and the voodoo practitioner get up every morning and go forth by faith.

The atheist lives by faith. The skeptic and agnostic are faith practitioners, just as much as Oral Roberts, Jerry Falwell, Billy Graham or Mother Teresa ever were.

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How to tell you have lost the joy of your salvation

“Restore to me the joy of Thy salvation” –Psalm 51:12.

Just because salvation is for eternity, anchored forever in the faithfulness of God, does not mean you cannot lose the closeness and fellowship with our wonderful Lord.  A married couple can lose their joy and intimacy for a season, although the marriage is still valid and intact.

God’s faithfulness does not wax hot and cold depending on what we do or how we felt when we woke up this morning.  He does not undo our salvation when we weaken and falter.  The blessings upon us are conditional to our faithfulness and may dry up, but the relationship never varies.  Forever, we are His and He is ours.

My children may be in or out of my favor at given times, but they are always and forever my children.  God saves us forever.  And don’t we praise Him for that!!!

However. Just because the Lord brings us into His forever family (through faith in Christ, by His precious blood, as a result of His grace) and promises to “never leave thee nor forsake thee” (Hebrews 13:5) does not mean we cannot lose the joy of that relationship.

We can. And many have.

Try not to lose yours.

Jesus promises us His joy (John 15:11 and 17:13) and calls it fullness of joy (15:11 and 16:24).  He says it is permanent, promising that no one can steal our joy from us (John 16:22).

Jesus sees joy as one of the essential elements of the Christian’s walk.  C. S. Lewis said joy is the business of Heaven.  Psalm 16:11 assures us joy is the very atmosphere of Heaven.

King David sure lost his joy.

He did it by taking his eyes off the Lord and diving headlong into sin.

That deadly plunge cost him more than he would ever know.

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Playing these little games with Scripture

“John to the seven churches which are in Asia….” (Revelation 1:4).

Did you know if you take the seventh letter from the 7th chapter of each book of the Bible, it forms a secret message?  I didn’t either.  But it’s no weirder than some of the schemes people come up with to make Scripture say more than it was intended.

The cults are notorious for finding secret messages in Scripture.

God’s faithful children must be careful not to fall for such schemes and not to try to read hidden messages into God’s Word.

His Word is sufficient.

I’ve been studying the first three chapters of Revelation, for the umpteenth time in my life.  There is so much here.

This introduction to the entire book of Revelation opens with seven letters from the ascended reigning Lord Jesus to the seven churches of Asia Minor.  The cities were real, the churches were genuine, and the messages are solid.  And yet, over the years, that was not good enough for some of the Lord’s expositors.

Surely there is more there, they said.  And proceeded to insert things never found in Scripture and I believe, never intended by the Author.

For reasons only the Spirit of God can discern, some enterprising teachers decided that these seven letters actually represented seven ages of the Church through the centuries. And yet, there is not a word in Scripture–not one–indicating God had this in mind.

According to this so-called pattern, it all began with the Ephesus age which had lost its first love, it continued with the Smyrna age which was a time of persecution, and so forth.  And guess what age we are in now?  That would be the Laodicean age, of course, since everyone knows that our generation is the culmination of everything the Lord had in mind, that we are the apex of His hopes and dreams and prophecies, that all the world has been waiting for you and me to arrive on the scene.

That, as much as anything, is what makes me reject this interpretation of those seven letters as seven ages of the church:  We are the final age.  We respond: “Oh yeah?  Who said?  What if the Lord has planned another thousand years before His return?  What will those poor people of the future do without a church age of their own?”  I can hear them now:  “Poor us! We had hoped to have a special term for the church in our time, but the church in the 20th-21st centuries fulfilled it.

Forgive my rant here. The more I read and study of Revelation, the more convinced I am that this final Book of the Bible has been the victim of a host of unhealthy teachers with their kooky interpretations.   I definitely do not want to encourage people who do not have patience with God’s Word the way it was given and who keep reading into it  their own thoughts.

The book Revelation: Four Views, Steve Gregg, editor, outlines this problematic interpretation for us…

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What Scripture says to young preachers still applies

“Let no man despise thy youth; but be thou an example of the believers, in word, in conduct, in love, in spirit, in faith, in purity” (I Timothy 4:11-12).

Most of us started preaching when we were young.

We automatically made a ton of mistakes.  it just goes with the territory, and no young minister should beat himself up over it.

Young preachers can  be shallow, silly, arrogant, sloppy, and most of all ignorant.   I’ve been a young preacher and at one time or the other, was all of those.

When I began preaching, as a college student, I filled my messages with slang and preached a lot of things I’d heard and thought about (but not thought through!), but very little from the Word.

I didn’t know enough of the Word to be able to preach it.

When I began preaching, I searched the Scripture for texts which would lend themselves to my shallow, superficial type of preaching.  I wanted catchy phrases, clear and picturesque sentences which would encourage me to venture out with creative ideas of my own, which I would then attempt to adapt to scripture (!).

I didn’t know any better.  I had never made an attempt to learn the Scriptures, but had heard messages from all over the place, many of them the very kind of preaching I was now attempting.  To say I’d not had exemplary role models is an understatement.

My college preparation had been for the classroom, not for the pulpit. I had not been to seminary.   And even after I got to seminary, I did not suddenly become mature and wise and smart.

I’m still working on that.

In the early days my preparation during the week consisted of trying to find a snappy text, worrying over a passage, fretting over it, trying to find two or three good points my mind would grasp and from which I might branch out with some haranguing and harassing of the congregation.  It’s what I’d been shown by example to do.

I feel like going back to my first two churches and apologizing.

Let no man despise thy youth.

I know what that means.  It takes very little imagination to conjure up images of seasoned adults entering churches where I would be preaching and leaving shaking their heads.  It wasn’t that I was preaching heresy or offending people by my pulpit mannerisms or style of dress.  And my language wasn’t terrible.

I just wasn’t doing much of anything.  Because I didn’t know any better.

So, we can share Paul’s concern about this young pastor sent to shepherd the Lord’s people in the city of Ephesus.

 

Here is how The Message rephrases Paul’s admonition to young Pastor Timothy—

Don’t let anyone put you down because you’re young.  Teach believers with your life:  by word, by demeanor, by love, by faith, by integrity.  Stay at your post reading Scripture, giving counsel, teaching.  And that special gift of ministry you were given when the leaders of the church laid hands on you and prayed–keep that dusted off and in use. Cultivate these things.  Immerse yourself in them. The people will all see you mature right before their eyes! Keep a firm grasp on both your character and your teaching. Don’t be diverted.  Just keep at it….

Young ministers need lots of reminders and many friends along the way who believe in them strongly enough to speak encouragement, truth, and discipline to them.

Let no man despise thy youth.  

John MacArthur says Timothy was in his thirties, “still young by the standards of that culture.”  Both Hebrew and Greek culture placed a premium on age and experience.

It’s interesting watching the various ways churches relate to young preachers.  One of my pastor friends went to the biggest church in his state when he was 31.  I became pastor of the First Baptist Church of Columbus MS at 33.  And yet, I have known churches not running a hundred to reject a preacher in his thirties as “too young.”

Then, at the same time, we see churches rejecting prospective pastors in their 50s and 60s as too old.  It’s ridiculous, of course.  I’m 84 years old and loving preaching the Word as much as I ever have in all these years.

Dr. Mac Brunson made the news a few years back when he moved from the mega-FBC of Jacksonville Florida to Birmingham’s Valleydale Baptist Church.  I think he was 60 years old.  Good for him and good for them.  I hope he stays 20 years.  And I hope some churches looking for preachers take a lesson from Valleydale and quit demanding a shepherd who is 35 years old with 40 years of experience.

I know pastors who are wise and mature at 30 and some who are immature and shallow at 60.  Age is irrelevant.  When will God’s churches ever learn that?

Be thou an example… 

–Be an example of believers in word.  In speech.  Every generation of young people seems to develop its own speech to define it and differentiate itself from the oldsters.  Young pastors, try not to sound like a kid.  Be mature.

Be an example of believers in conduct.  Righteous living.  Young pastor, show the congregation what righteous behavior looks like.

Be an example of believers in love.  Caring for others, valuing them highly.  Young pastor, show the congregation what it means to love one another.  Embody the verses of John 13:34-35.

Be an example of believers in faith.  In faithfulness and steadfastness.  Immature people can be flighty and quick to discouragement.  Young pastor, show the congregation–and other young people–how to remain steady even when things aren’t going to suit them.

Be an example of believers in purity.  Purity in thought, righteousness in speech, godliness in action.  Youth is a time of great adjustments, development, and raging hormones.  Young pastor, demonstrate settled maturity and godliness in spirit and personal life.

Practice these things. Be committed to them.  Be conscientious about yourself and your teaching.  Persevere in these things…. (2 Timothy 4:15-16).

Stay with the plan, young pastor.  Do not try to be an overnight sensation.  Work at becoming what God has intended you to be.  Steady as she goes, as they say.

Work at it.

Sometimes when I’m sketching, almost invariably someone standing nearby will ask, “Are you self-taught or have you had training?”  Actually, there is no simple answer to that.

—Yes, I’m self-taught.  And yes, I’ve had training.  And yes, I’m still working at learning to draw, even though I’ve been doing this in one way or the other for nearly eight decades.

–In a sense, anyone who learns a skill is self-taught.  You can sit in a classroom or workshop under the instruction of a gifted teacher, but you’re still going to have to do it yourself. You are the one who decides whether you will learn.

Let the young minister determine to apply himself, to focus, to learn his Bible, to learn how to craft a sermon and how to deliver it.  Let him learn how to deal with difficult church members because no pastor gets a pass on that.  They’re in every church, and they predominate in several.

How does a young minister learn to pastor a church? Here are some answers…

  1. Observe those who are doing it well.  In my younger years, the Lord called me to the staff of one of the largest churches in our state where I was able to watch seasoned ministers visit the hospitals, work with a huge body of deacons, preach before congregations of many hundreds with television cameras broadcasting their every word to the corners of the state.  I saw the pastor tackle huge problems and deal with strong laymen, saw it up close, but without having to make any of the decisions myself.  Then, when the Father sent me to pastor a medium sized church three hours away, I was ready.
  2. Just do it.  We learn by our successes and by our failures. Especially our failures.  There is something about the human animal that wants to think if a program went well we must be good at what we are doing.  But if it was a disaster, we need to go back and study what we did and improve on it.  Therefore, we learn more from our losses than our gains.
  3. Read, read, read.
  4. Ask questions of those who are doing it well.  You can learn from other ministers, no matter the size of their congregations. I urge pastors to join the local ministerial association and befriend each person.  Each one has something to teach you, if you pay attention.
  5. Study the Word and stay on your knees in prayer.
  6. Keep a journal.  At the end of each day, record what happened, who visited you, what was said, the challenges you dealt with.  In time, this will be one of the most valuable treasuries of leadership-lessons you possess.
  7. When you bring an outstanding minister or professor to your congregation, ask him to remain an additional day so you can sit in your office with him, picking his brain, tossing out your questions.  You’re taking notes all the time, and after the session ends, you write down everything you learned and want to remember. (And of course, you will pay the guest well for doing this.)
  8. When you are secluded with an outstanding lay leader/businessman-type in your church for an hour or more, interview him.  I was in my 40s and pastoring in North Carolina.  One of my deacons had been appointed by President Reagan to a high office in the federal government.  Once, when his wife had surgery in Winston Salem, three hours away, I sat in the waiting room with him all morning while he told me his story, how he had gone from being an unknown banker in Charlotte to president of the American Bankers Association.  I never forgot those stories and insights and have benefited immensely.
  9. Never stop learning. No one knows it all.  You never reach a point of saturation.
  10. Find ways of teaching what you have learned to other young ministers. There is something about the teaching process that forces you to get clear on what had been fuzzy and then fixes forever in your mind the lessons you are sharing.

 

 

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Something surprising we will do in Heaven

A friend reminded me of something we will experience in Heaven.

I was having lunch with Pastor Michael and Jane Perry after the morning services in the First Baptist Church of Moss Point, Mississippi, where they were serving at the time.  (He has since retired and they live near Butler, Alabama.) Anyway…

We got started talking about families or football or something, and they said Jane’s father–now in Heaven–was the biggest Alabama fan on the planet.

“He had Bear Bryant pictures all over the house,” she said. “He’s gone but they’re still there.”

Coach Bryant led the Alabama Crimson Tide football team to prominence from the late 1950’s into the early 1980’s.

That’s when I related my little tale of the 1980 game between Bama and Mississippi State. As I began, Michael started smiling. I stopped.  “Have I told you this story?”

He said, “No, but I remember the game. Go ahead, and I’ll tell you when you finish.”

My story went like this. We had driven from our home in Columbus, MS, to Jackson for the game. Alabama had a 17-game winning streak going and State was a perennial doormat for the Southeastern Conference. Even though we liked both teams–we were located between both universities on U.S. 82 which adjoins them–we were rooting for Bama that day. (As a native Alabamian, I grew up a Tide fan.)

When that game ended, the score was State 6, Bama 3.

Devastating.  Not what anyone had expected.

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FAITH: elusive, exclusive, conclusive!

Though you have not seen Him, you love Him; and even though you do not see Him now, you believe in Him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls (I Peter 1:8-9).

A few years ago, a group of scientists were given the most prestigious award in the world, the Nobel Prize for science, for discovering that all around us, all around them, and throughout every cubic foot of the universe is reverberating tiny echoes of the original Big Bang, Creation itself. They called it something like a “humming,” which everyone heard to the point that they had quit questioning it.

You see the same wallpaper every day and eventually you quit noticing it. When the scientists decided to analyze the mysterious hum, they found echoes of the Beginning.

Faith is like that. It’s everywhere, everyone uses it, lives by it, orders their lives by it and around it, but rarely give it a thought.

The funny thing is how some dispute that they believe in faith or use it in any way. As they do so, they draw their breath by faith, stand on their spot of terrain by faith, and plan their next act by faith.

Defining faith is a little tricky. Everyone tries his hand at it.

The writer of Hebrews introduces the well-beloved 11th chapter, the Faith Chapter in our New Testament, with a definition:

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see (Hebrews 11:1 NIV)

Some kid said it’s believing what you know isn’t true.

Here’s my definition:

“Faith is a conviction that a certain thing is true and real and solid on the basis of solid evidence even though some important evidence is still missing.”

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Why is it so easy to mislead God’s people?

“See to it that no one misleads you….. Many false prophets will arise and will mislead many” (Matthew 24:4,11).

Our Lord knew His people.  He knew that there was something about their makeup which would make them susceptible to being misled.  By “being misled,” we mean being conned, scammed, hoodwinked, deceived, tricked, lied to, fooled, and abused.

In Old Testament days false prophets came through the land, preaching half-truths and whole lies and filling God’s people with false expectations and pagan ways.  The New Testament church, just beginning to find its way and choose its methods, quickly became the target of these scammers and con-artists.

In Matthew 24, our Lord cautions His people to keep their guard up concerning prophecies about end times: His return, signs of the end, fulfilment of certain prophecies, apostasies, portents and omens.

And yet, the false teachers keep arising and God’s people go right on swallowing their poison. Now, I have little confidence in those who build their ministries around interpretations of prophecy.  Generations of these teachers have published their books, drawn their charts, persuaded entire segments of the church, and taken no prisoners from those who disagreed with them, only to be shown by time as false teachers (that is, when their interpretations proved wrong). And then, a few minutes later a new generation of prophecy experts steps up to fill the gap left by the departure of the last group.

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Sarcasm has no place in the life of a believer

“Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned as it were, with salt, so that you may know how you should respond to each person” (Colossians 4:6). “Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification, according to the need of the moment, that it may give grace to those who hear” (Ephesians 4:29).

Mary Todd Lincoln was gifted in the dark art of sarcasm. Her sister Elizabeth said of her, “She was also impulsive and made no attempt to conceal her feelings;  indeed, it would have been an impossibility had she desired to do so, for her face was an index to  every passing emotion.  Without desiring to wound, she occasionally indulged in sarcastic, witty remarks, that cut like a Damascus blade, but there was no malice behind them.”  Lincoln’s biographer notes, “A young woman who could wound by words without intending to was presumably even more dangerous when angry or aroused.”  (Honor’s Voice: The Transformation of Abraham Lincoln by Douglas L. Wilson).

Woe to anyone bound in marriage to one gifted in sarcasm.  Lincoln bore many a scar from the blade his wife wielded.

Pity the church member who sits under the teachings of a sarcastic pastor week after week.  Such a pastor’s ministry will bear bitter fruit.

These days, Christian leaders are finding themselves apologizing for public pronouncements–in the media, on cyberspace, in print, on radio or TV–in which they were sarcastic toward someone who criticized them or opposed them or questioned them.

We even have websites given to satire and sarcasm. And some claim to be Christian.

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My wish for every pastor

“Brethren, do not be children in your thinking…..but in your thinking be mature” (I Corinthians 14:20).

I could wish that every pastor would use discernment. That he would “be smart.”

To put it another way, I wish every pastor would determine that in the new year, he is going to do nothing impulsively, out of fear, or motivated by false guilt.

The “un-smart” pastor–to coin a term–does things that are unwise and unhealthy and in the long run, not beneficial to the Kingdom nor to his people.

Here is my take what an unsmart pastor does about his preaching–

1) The unsmart pastor skips the hard work of sermon preparation. He is lazy.

The smart pastor knows this is his most important work and is always thinking about the next sermons, even to the point of rising from the bed and looking up something that occurred to him.

Pastors would do well to use this time just after Christmas and early in January when nothing much is going on to make long-range plans for his preaching.

2) The unsmart pastor refuses to do long-range planning for sermons, but decides this week what to preach next Sunday.  He is shallow–and will work himself into an early grave.

The best sermons are not microwaved but marinated.

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The Trinity: A man-made doctrine?

“The Word was God…..The Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:1,14).

“No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and who the Father is except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him” (Matthew 11:27 and Luke 10:22.)

Try explaining God.

We’ll wait.  Let us know when you’re ready.

Oh, when you’re done with that, tell us how Jesus is both fully man and fully God.  And how God is One, but is also Father, Son, and Spirit.

If you decide to punt–and simply dismiss the entire discussion as man’s futile attempt to define an unknowable God–then the discussion ends there.  God’s people who love the Word and believe it want to know how it all fits together, what each piece is saying about our Lord, and thus to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord (2 Peter 3:18).

We believe that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.  That’s Romans 10:17.

We never go wrong trying to understand God’s Word.  And the best commentary on the Word of God is the rest of the Word of God.

If you find all this too difficult, then let me propose an easier assignment.  Start by telling us how you yourself are composed of body, soul, and spirit. Where does one start and the other begin and how do they interwork?

I’m thinking that unless you can figure out yourself it’s a lead-pipe cinch you’re going to have difficulty figuring out the God of the universe.

That’s why this is such a difficult assignment.

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