Category Archives: Faith

The Lord sees you. That could be encouraging, could be threatening.

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“God is Watching.”  –sign over the door of Gwen Williams’ home in Picayune, Mississippi.

Pastor John Ed Mathiston told his congregation in Montgomery, Alabama a story about kindness.

“Not long ago, a man from the Middle East walked into a new car showroom and asked to speak with a particular salesperson.  The receptionist called for him, the fellow walked to the front, and they greeted each other.

The foreigner said, “I’d like to buy some trucks.”

Some trucks. That caught the sales guy’s attention.

“What did you have in mind, sir?”

“I want to buy 750 heavy duty trucks and 250 pickups.”

The salesman is stunned.  Surely someone is pulling a prank.  This cannot be happening.

The Middle Easterner pulls out a letter of credit with a huge American bank.  It is legitimate. This is the real deal.

The salesman says, “Sir, you know you can go to Detroit and buy those trucks at a huge discount.”

The customer said, “Sir, ten years ago I was a college student in your city.  Being from the Middle East made it hard for Americans to befriend me.  I soon discovered you have to have a car in America, so I came to you.  I picked out a car.  You said to me, ‘I can sell you that car and I’ll make a nice commission. But you would not be happy with it.  It’s more car than you need.’ So you sold me a smaller car.  It was the nicest thing anyone in America had ever done for me.  And I decided I would repay you when I got a chance.  So, I want to buy one thousand trucks through you.”

Dr. Mathiston, who told that story, was pastor of Frazer Memorial UMC in Montgomery (until he retired in 2008).  I heard him tell the story, wrote it down, and then used it on the radio in New Orleans.  The story is found in my journal for that year, 1999.  No other details are given.  Nor did the pastor cite his source.  But it’s a great reminder that small acts of kindness may reap great rewards.  But whether they do or don’t, doing right is always the right thing to do.

Historians tell us that Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto studied and traveled in America in the 1920s.  He was once turned away from a San Francisco barber shop because he was Japanese.  And he never forgot the slight.  For the first half of World War II, he oversaw Japan’s attack on the USA.

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Once saved for always? Oh really?

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Imagine this scenario.

Suppose I bought a car on credit.  Each month, they deducted a certain amount from my checking account. And finally, I get it paid off.  And then…

At the end, I get a certified letter saying something like this:

“Dear Customer: It has been our pleasure to receive your bank draft for $428.51 each month over the past year and a half. We here in the corporate offices of Auto Financial Services have come to a decision and want to inform you that we wish to continue receiving this amount from you after the contract has expired.  We know that you are enjoying your new automobile and therefore will want to do your part to maintain this wonderful relationship.  However, our legal department informs us that we should alert you to the reality that if you discontinue making these monthly payments, we will be forced to repossess the car.  Have a nice day.”

So, even after the car is paid for, I must keep making the payments if I wish to continue owning their car.  Miss a payment and they take it back.

Yikes.

All right.  It’s just a little fantasy. Or perhaps a parable.  Now, imagine this.

What if the Lord in Heaven said to us, “I have given you salvation.  It is eternal. Salvation is a free gift.  You did nothing to deserve it. In fact, quite the opposite. After all, the wages of sin is death but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord. You no doubt have read that in Romans 6:23. Now, that’s all well and good, but there is something in the fine print which you might have missed.”

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The Lord felt so near

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I’ve been thinking on the nearness of the Lord.  Those special times when His presence was a living reality.  You felt you could almost reach out and touch Him.

This month’s issue of DECISION magazine, the evangelical publication from the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, has the story of Missionary John Paton until the title Alone in the Tanna tree: John Paton’s faith in the darkest hour.  Taken from his memoir, it’s about the time in the New Hebrides islands when a cannibal tribe was after him.  The chief was his friend, but a war chief was leading the search for Paton.

The chief had his son lead Missionary Paton to a large chestnut tree.  He was instructed to remain in the tree until nighttime.  Paton wrote: The hours I spent there live all before me as if it were but of yesterday.  I heard the frequent discharging of muskets, and the yells of the savages.  Yet I sat there among the branches, as safe in the arms of Jesus!

Never in all my sorrows did my Lord draw nearer to me, and speak more soothingly in my soul, than when the moonlight flickered among those chestnut leaves, and the night air played on my throbbing brow, as I told all my heart to Jesus.  Alone, yet not alone! If it be to glorify my God, I will not grudge to spend many nights alone in such a tree, to feel again my Savior’s spiritual presence, to enjoy His consoling fellowship.

As I reflected on Mr. Paton’s experience, I thought of two things.

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The problem is with us: we were unwilling

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“…but you were unwilling” (Matthew 23:37).

Why doesn’t God do this, why doesn’t He do that, what’s wrong with God, where was God when this happened?

One would think, from our constant griping and questioning of the Almighty, that we have a handicapped Deity, one who suffers from a lack of information or some chronic disease which limits His ability  to come through for us as we have (ahem) ordered.

We certainly seem to be a dissatisfied bunch.

The problem is not with God. We are the problem.  He is more than willing to do “abundantly above what we ask or think” (Ephesians 3:20).

Scripture makes crystal clear that we have a willing Lord and the problem is not with Him….

–“I am willing,” said the Savior to a seeking leper, as He reached out and did the unthinkable and touched the untouchable and made him well (Mark 1:41).

–“How many times I would have gathered you together as a hen shelters her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing” (Matthew 23:37).

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What is a pastor to do when he becomes an atheist?

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Jerry Dewitt says he is the most disliked person in DeRidder, Louisiana.

All he did was to renounce his Christian faith–he’d been pastor of the First Community Church there–and become an apostle for atheism. That’s all.

This story is some years old now, and I dug it out of my files.  But here’s the gist of it…

The New Orleans newspaper carried the story. Jerry Dewitt was a Pentecostal preacher, he says. After struggling with his doubts for years, he went public with his unbelief and had now been unemployed for several months.

He described his journey to unfaith as “lonely and stressful.” For years, he said, he kept a phony public identity, preaching doctrines he no longer believed, practicing a faith that did not work for him.

The three doctrines he could not get past–

–One. He had trouble with hell. How could a loving God create such a place in His universe?

–Two. He doubted the authenticity of the gifts of the Spirit, which is a major emphasis in the Pentecostal churches.

–Three. He doubted the authority of the Scriptures.

The article says Dewitt is now out of the pulpit and public about his non-belief. He has begun to do a little speaking, telling his reverse-conversion story around the country before local humanist groups. More than that, he is the unpaid executive director of Recovering from Religion and works with the Clergy Project, a website that invites and privately counsels doubting pastors behind a password-protected firewall.

Promoting atheism is his new ministry. He calls himself a pastor still, in his role of counseling people struggling with faith issues.

These days, he said, he’s trying to “reinvent himself as a speaker on the atheist and humanists circuit, hoping to earn enough money to make a modest living.”

Any minister who reads this will have a host of reactions, and no doubt several questions. Here are my thoughts–

1) Sadness. I hate that this happens. Dewitt said there are other ex-ministers in his organization.

2) Understanding. Most of us have all wrestled with these same issues concerning heaven and hell, spiritual gifts, whether God answers prayer, His purpose in suffering, and the inspiration of Scriptures. None are simple; we are not asked to “live by faith” for no reason. It takes great faith to believe in and serve God.

3) Longing. That man needed a friend, someone to talk over these matters.  Apparently, he kept it to himself until the dam burst and he could not keep it in any longer.

4) Greater sadness. Dewitt was about to lose his home because he can’t meet the mortgage payments, and he said his marriage was in trouble.  Dewitt may have gone through the same struggles the rest of us did, but came out on the wrong side. That road is the way of despair, believe me.

5) No judgmentalism. I hope he is not “disliked” in DeRidder, a heavily evangelical section of southwest Louisiana. We Christians are to love everyone, even our enemies (see Luke 6:27ff).

6) Admiration. I appreciate his honesty in leaving the pulpit.  At least Dewitt had the integrity to admit his nonbelief and to walk away from the pastorate.

I have several questions for anyone struggling with these issues and considering renouncing his faith in Christ.

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How to detect a fake

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In the latter months of World War II, as the Allies were closing in on Germany, the Nazis developed a ruse that worked well for a while.

They would find German soldiers who spoke English well and dress them as Americans. They would arrange for them to be “lost” and to rejoin the Alllied forces as they moved forward. Their task: to infiltrate the American troops and assassinate Generals Eisenhower and Patton.

In time, the good guys developed some tests for exposing the fakes. One German was cut down by the Americans when they saw how he was walking. He was ramrod straight whereas all our troops slouched when they walked.

Another group learned to address the soldier using “pig Latin.” If he was stymied by that, he was exposed.

And they developed questions. Two, I recall, were: Who is Betty Grable? and What position did Lou Gehrig play?

The answers were: movie star/pinup girl and first base for the Yankees. It was understood that every GI in the world would know this.

If you have been in the warfare against the forces of righteousness and the enemies of all that is good and holy for any period of time, you have come up against counterfeits and pretenders, fakes and shams.

The question is, how do you tell? And what should we do about them?

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How a nobody can change the world

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I’m not anyone big or famous. I’m not an over-achiever. Not a Phi Beta Kappa, never voted “most likely to succeed,” and not even close to being a Fortune 500 CEO. No one is ever going to look my way and be impressed that they are in the presence of a mover and shaker.

Maybe so. Maybe not.

But if you are a serious follower of the Lord Jesus Christ, you can literally change the world and do it in a significant way. This is not unrealistic, not a dreamy preacher-type overstatement, and not out of the realm of possibilities.

Now, there are a few presuppositions we need to lay out before we name the three actions which you can do to change your world.

1) We’re talking about people who have genuinely received Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.

2) Okay, you’re a Christian in whom the Holy Spirit dwells. Next, we’re talking about you taking seriously Christ’s mandate to be salt of the earth (Matthew 5:13) and light of the world (Matthew 5:14).

3) And, finally, we’re talking about you being willing to obey the Lord in whatever He assigns to you. That is, you read something in the Word and sense in your heart a tugging (pushing?) from the indwelling Holy Spirit that this one has your name all over it, and you get up and obey.

If that’s you–if you have received Christ and you are serious about making a difference for His sake and you are willing to obey Him–then, here are three actions for you to take which will be used of God to change your world.


1. Start where you are.

That may sound a little obvious, but you’d be amazed how often I hear people say things like, “I do not like living in this city. If I lived in (fill in the blank), I could serve the Lord.” “I know I’m not much of a witness here, but if I were living in a foreign country, I could be a great missionary.” “If the Lord will only let me move to (wherever), I will serve Him.”

But it does not work that way. Not ever.

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Two books that changed my life as a young pastor

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I have a story for you, one I love to tell.

It’s the tale of a message God sent, of nagging doubt and how God is able to use that doubt to do something extraordinary in the life of the believer who will stay in class.

Don’t skip past that:  Stay in class.  Which simply means when the Lord allows a nagging doubt to come your way, don’t run from it.  He’s trying to build up your faith. So, stay with Him here.

Recently, I went back and re-read the 1927 Sinclair Lewis novel Elmer Gantry.

First, a side note about the movie on that book. Far more people have seen the Burt Lancaster movie Elmer Gantry, made in 1960, than have read the book. The problem is, the book is like a 6 hour movie, whereas the movie was necessarily much briefer. The movie covers only about 100 pages of the book.

I recommend the book to every preacher I know. It’s painful reading, I grant you. However, in many ways, Sinclair Lewis knew what he was talking about. The charlatan who was Elmer Gantry–the one in the novel is far worse than the on-screen version played by Burt Lancaster–exposes the scoundrel in each of us who would deign to speak for God and lead His flock.

In order to convey the full impact of the renegade preacher’s words, I’ll need to quote a long passage from the book.

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Those who have walked this ground before us

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(This is a reprint from January of 2014.)

Recently, while giving some Atlanta friends a brief tour of New Orleans, I asked the teenagers in the back seat, “Did you know Abraham Lincoln came to our city?”  They didn’t.

Most people don’t.

The teacher in me kicked into overdrive.  I love telling people things about our city they didn’t know. And if it involves a celebrity–modern or ancient–so much the better.

Lincoln came twice, once in 1828 when he was 19 and again in 1831, at the age of 22.

In those days, people would built flatboats upriver and float down the Mississippi bringing crafts or produce to our city.  Once here, they would peddle their cargo, tear up the boat and sell it for firewood, then walk around for a couple of days and “see the elephant,” as they called it. Eventually, people from Illinois would book passage back to St. Louis on a paddlewheeler and walk the rest of the distance back home.

The first time, Lincoln came as a helper for his boss’ son, and the second time he may have been in charge himself.

Professor Richard Campanella of Tulane University has written Lincoln in New Orleans, published in 2010 by the University of Louisiana at Lafayette Press.  It’s the best and most complete thing ever written on the subject, I feel confident in saying.  Subtitle: The 1828-1831 flatboat voyages and their place in history.

This is not a review of the book, even though I’m fascinated by it.  (In truth, the book is so dense, with tons of interesting insights on every page, reading it is a slow process.)  What I find most fascinating, however, is that Campanella tells us where the flatboat probably docked, where Lincoln and his friend may have stayed, which slave auction they may have watched.

I walked today where Lincoln walked.  Sort of.

You know where Canal Street hits the Mississippi River. That would have been “city center.”  However, flatboats were not allowed to come in that close, but had to tie up a mile or so upriver.  Close in were the steamboats, with two or three new ones arriving daily, according to Professor Campanella.  Further downriver you found the larger, ocean-going masted ships.  This was one busy place.

Slaves were auctioned at numerous places in what we now call the French Quarter. Hewlett’s Exchange on Chartres Street, being the biggest, was the one most likely to have drawn in out-of-towners wishing to see this cruel spectacle.  Campanella thinks Lincoln and his friends would have gone there.

I’ve walked the French Quarter, from one side to the other. Back in the 1960s, we seminary students preached on Decatur Street, right in the middle of what is now the grandest tourist section of the area but which back then was run down, seedy, and scary.

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Overlooked Scripture No. 4 “Second-hand faith.”

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“And many of the Samaritans of that city believed in Him because of the word of the woman who testified, ‘He told me all that I ever did.’ So when the Samaritans had come to Him, they urged Him to stay with them, and He stayed there two days.  And many more believed because of His own word. Then, they said to the woman, ‘Now we believe, not because of what you said, for we ourselves have heard Him and we know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world’” (John 4:39-42).

Paul Harvey used to call this “the rest of the story.”

We preachers dearly love the Lord’s encounter with the woman at the well, from the first half of John 4.  It’s insights and teachings, its power and pathos, make it one for the ages.  But the story does not end the way we generally conclude it, with her rushing back into the town to tell her friends about the Man she had met. There is more.

As the townspeople flowed out to meet the Lord, they begged Him to stay, which He did. Then, two days later, when He departed, Jesus left behind a lot of new believers.  That’s when some of them gave us the memorable statement which I’m calling “overlooked scripture.”

Now we believe…not just because of your testimony that He told you everything you ever did…but because we have met Him for ourselves, and we know that He is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world.

That’s strong stuff.

Second hand faith can be a good thing.

At first, the speaker said to the woman, we had a second hand faith.  We believed because of what you said.

There is not a thing in the world wrong with second-hand faith in Jesus.  In fact, it’s an essential step toward getting the real thing.  Someone tells you of Jesus and you see the change that has come about in their lives, and you believe in Him because of them.

However, you do not know Him yet.

You know about Him.

Now, if you proceed no further, you have a remote faith in Jesus but you do not know Him personally. This is not saving faith.  This is a hearsay faith, a second-hand religion.

To believe in Jesus because Mama did or because Grandma believed is not good enough.

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