Category Archives: Faithfulness

You and I are running this race. It’s most unusual.

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“I have finished the course” (2 Timothy 4:7).

“But flee youthful lusts and pursue righteousness….” (2 Timothy 2:22)

If you think of life on earth as a race, the Christian life is the strangest one ever.

Okay, let’s think of life as a race.

And we don’t mean ‘rat race.

I conducted the funeral of a 53-year-old man whose death was sudden and completely unexpected.  Weeks later, the coroner had still not figured out why he died.

This gentleman was a runner and a longtime member of a local track club which oversees dozens of races of all kinds every year.  Several members of the club eulogized him during our service.

While they were speaking, something occurred to me.

Imagine a race where you have no idea how long it is or when it will end.  You don’t know whether it’s a sprint or a marathon.  It could be short, it could be long.  You would not be so foolish as to save your energy for that final burst at the end, that sprint to the finish line, the way so many runners do. 

In life, we do not know where the finish line is located. This is simply another way of saying with God’s Word, “Boast not thyself of tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring forth” (Proverbs 27:1). Or, the statement in James 4:13-14 which emphasizes, “You do not know what your life will be like tomorrow.”  Life’s race may end at any time.

For that good gentleman, the race ended at 53 years, 2 months, and 6 days.

Life is like that: a starting line here, obstacles up and down the course, a pothole here and a detour there, and eventually the finish line, however unseen and completely unknown until you hit it.

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Holy sandpaper, pastor!!

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This is a reprint of an article from August 2010.  The only changes are the names.  It’s been sixteen years and these people are in Heaven and it’s probably permissible to use their names.  Some members of that church in metro New Orleans are still with us, are active on social media and will read this.  I want them to. (It’s all good.) They were agents for our Heavenly Father in this pastor’s life.  

A pastor friend sent me a note just now reporting on his church. He has baptized several this year and had twice that number to join in other ways. I replied that God is using him to turn around that old church and, “Good for you, friend!”

He came back: “The curmudgeons are still there, though, still lurking.”

I answered, “They always will be. But let me tell you what I’ve finally learned about that. These detractors are doing you a favor. They motivate you to greater faithfulness, to do your best work, to keep the focus on the Lord.”

He said, “I call them ‘Holy Sandpaper.’”

The Lord uses them to get the rough edges off His servant.

Interesting how the notes I get from pastors–some are questions regarding ministry–turn out to be the very thing the Lord was talking with me about earlier.

Case in point. Yesterday, I was going through some old correspondence files, trying to decide what could be discarded. I ran across the most critical (as in life-changing) exchange of letters I ever had with a church member in nearly a half-century of ministry.

Here’s the story and our letters….

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When preachers say really dumb things and why

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“Remind them of these things, charging them before the Lord not to strive about words to no profit, to the ruin of the hearers” (II Timothy 2:14).

The desire to be clever has tainted many a good minister, sabotaged many an excellent sermon, and probably messed up a few marriages along the way.

On the way home from somewhere, I was listening to a radio preacher. He was local, sounded “live,” and was clearly a biblical conservative, meaning I liked most of what he had to say.  Then, he spoiled it all.

He mentioned a well-known Southern Baptist evangelist who once preached in his church. “I asked him, ‘Brother, how long does it take you Baptists to disciple a new believer?’”

“He answered, ‘I don’t know. We’ve never done it.’”

Then he, the radio preacher, said, “Shameful!”

From that launching pad, he proceeded to disparage churches for not discipling people while telling how it ought to be done.

I found myself wondering two things.

Why would the evangelist say such a patently dumb thing–that Baptists have never discipled anyone!–and then, why would the radio pastor repeat it?  Both are foolish statements, and reflect poorly on everyone involved–the speakers, the churches, and even the Lord Jesus Christ.

I suspect I know why the evangelist said it and the radio preacher quoted it.

The evangelist said it for shock value.  He got the reaction he wanted by making an absurd statement.

Had we said to him, “Do you mean to tell me no one in any Baptist church has ever become a disciple of Jesus Christ?” I’m confident he would have back-tracked and said that was not what he meant, then turned it into something other than the moronic statement it was.

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Lord, my sin is such a little thing, right?

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A pastor in Haiti tells about a fellow he knew who wanted to sell his house for $2,000. And, in time, he found a buyer.  When the fellow could scrape together only half the asking price, the owner came up with an interesting solution.

He would agree to sell for that amount but with one reservation: he would continue to own one nail above the front door.

Just a little thing, right?

A couple of years later, the first fellow decided he wanted to repurchase the house. The new owner declined, saying, “I like this house; I don’t want to sell.”

The previous owner found the carcass of a dead dog on the street and hung it from the nail he still owned above the front door. Soon the stench became so strong no one could go in or out of the house, and the family had to leave. They sold the house to the former owner.

The Haitian pastor said, “If we leave the devil with even one small peg in our life, he will return to hang his rotting garbage on it, making our lives unfit for Christ’s habitation.”

—I sure am enjoying my new life in Christ. Bible study is great, my new friends at church are wonderful, and I’m loving the new relationships. I wish I’d done this years ago. Some nights I’m down at the church til 10 o’clock with my friends there. Sometimes we are praying, studying the Bible, or working on various projects. I hope no one finds out what I’m watching on the internet at home. I know it’s called pornography, but it’s such a little thing and as long as no one knows, what can be wrong with it?

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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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Lily, a senior lady in my church who blessed my life

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Lily has been in Heaven for some 15 years or more. She left no children, so there’s no one left of her family to read this and no good reason not to tell it.

Lily was a classy lady, about the age of my father and the widow of an executive who left her fairly well off, although not rich. Before retiring, she had put in a full career as a public school librarian.  Because she had no children she was generous with her two nieces, with her church, her college, and her pastors.

When I announced I was leaving and would no longer be her pastor, she invited me to lunch and handed me a check for $1,000. “I want you to come back and do my funeral.”  I forget my exact promise to her, but it was probably along the lines of “If I possibly can, I will be here.”  Pastors are unable to make long-range open-ended promises because of the nature of their responsibilities. (Complicating the matter was that I had taken a leave of absence from that church with no knowledge of where the Lord would be sending me next. Distance could be an issue on returning for her funeral, as well as unforeseeable circumstances.)

Over the next few years, she would repeat the “agreement” we had, that I was expected to do her funeral.

Lily was one of those members who refuses to let go of the former preacher. She stayed in touch through an occasional letter or phone call. When a relative drove her to Baton Rouge to visit a friend, they detoured down to New Orleans to see us.

One day I received a letter from her with a check for $10,000. She made it out to my church to use any way we pleased.  It allowed us to do something I had long wanted to do, a morning radio program (a live two-minute Phone Call from the Pastor) over the seminary’s Christian station.  Lily’s gift funded it for several years.

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Preparing for your moment. It could come at any time.

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Be sure of this, that if the home owner had known what hour of the night the thief was coming, he would have been on the alert and would not have allowed his house to be broken into.  Therefore, you must be ready…. (Matthew 24:43-44)

A few years back, a young woman in a North Georgia town was suddenly thrust into the spotlight. An escaped criminal burst into her apartment and held her and her child captive. When the episode ended, the woman told her story to the world. During that nightmarish ordeal, she had talked to the man about the Lord and read to him from one of Rick Warren’s “purpose-driven” books.

Every media person in the country reacted the same. Here was an attractive single woman frightened out of her wits doing something truly courageous. What kind of person is she?

So, they delved into her background.

The reporters found she had a checkered past. But at some point she had come to know the Lord and would tell anyone who listened how Jesus had changed her life.

The young woman was an incredible witness. And she had done nothing–absolutely nothing–to prepare for her moment on the world’s stage. She was authentically Christian and the Holy Spirit did in her exactly what Jesus had promised. “Do not worry about what to say or how to say it. At that time you will be given what to say.” (Matthew 10:19)

Her testimony quickly catapulted Pastor Rick Warren into the spotlight, a place he had already grown accustomed to. And because he always seemed to stay prepared for whatever the Lord had in store for him that day, Rick was ready and seized the moment.

Hundreds of people will be in Heaven as a direct result of that woman’s ordeal and her amazing testimony.  And, to no one’s surprise, Rick Warren’s book The Purpose Driven Life, sold an additional hundred thousand copies.  Heaven alone knows the fruit all of this bore.

On ill-fated September 11, 2001, when Islamic terrorists took down the World Trade Towers and the four ill-fated airliners crashed, within hours the media was interviewing every person related to each aspect of this world-shaking event: the families of the victims, the first-responders, architects, politicians, and anyone who had seen anything. No one had time to prepare for the cameras and microphones and the print reporters.

Okay.  Pause and reflect on that a moment.

No one knew this day was coming.  No one prepared.  It was the ultimate happening.

When we know in advance the world’s attention is about to focus on us, when we know in advance the media is coming–even the Christian media which will be considerate and responsible in its reporting–we are given a gift. We have time to prepare our thoughts on what we want to communicate and time to ask the Father to clear our minds and use our words.

Bottom line: We have no way of knowing when we rise in the morning what the Father has awaiting us later in the day. That’s the joy of the Christian life, of course.

And, let’s be honest–it’s the frightening aspect of the Christian life too!

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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. 6 “The tyranny of the urgent”

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“Now, in the morning, having risen a long time before daylight, He went out and departed to a solitary place, and there He prayed.  And Simon and those who were with Him searched for Him. When they found Him, they said to Him, ‘Everyone is looking for you.’  But He said to them, ‘Let us go into the next towns, that I may preach there also, because for this purpose I have come forth’” (Mark 1:35-38).

“I’m late! I’m late! For a very important date! No time to say hello, goodbye! I’m late! I’m late!” So said the white rabbit as he plunged into the hole.–  From the Walt Disney movie “Alice in Wonderland.” 

I have a hard time turning off my inner engine.

A typical situation looks like this:  I’m packing the car in order to leave as soon as possible for a long drive to a preaching assignment.  Do I have everything? Have I canceled the newspaper for the days I’ll be gone? Do my children know where I’ll be? Am I taking my laptop? Do I have the phone charger? My extra dress shoes?  Enough shirts?

All the while, I’m keeping an eye on the clock. I know how long the drive will take and when I’m expected. The first meeting is tonight. I’d sure like to get there in time to check into the hotel and rest for an hour.

Hurry. Hurry, and hurry some more.

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Pastor, those scars on your soul are blessed of God

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I bear in my body the brand-marks of Jesus.  Galatians 6:17.

We all do.

I suppose it’s a vocational hazard.

We preachers walk through the valley of the shadow with people in the church and out of it. We give them our best, weep with them, tell what we know, and offer all the encouragement we can. Then, we go on to the next thing. Someone else is needing us.

That family we ministered to, however, does not go on to anything. They are forever saddled with the loss of that child or parent. They still carry the hole in their heart and return to the empty house or sad playroom. However, there is one positive thing they will always carry with them.

They never forget how the pastor ministered to them.

He forgets.

Not because he meant to, but because after them, he was called to more hospital rooms, more funeral homes, and more counseling situations. He walked away from that family knowing he had a choice: he could leave a piece of himself with them–his heart, his soul, something–or he could close the door on that sad room in his inner sanctum in order to be able to give of himself to the next crisis.

If he leaves a piece of himself with every broken-hearted family he works with, pretty soon there’s nothing left.

So he turns it off when he walks away. He goes on to the next thing.

He hates doing that. But it’s a survival thing. It’s the only way to last in this kind of tear-your-heart-out-and-stomp-that-sucker ministry.

Case in point.

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