Category Archives: humility

Bludgeon thy neighbor. Oh really?

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Pastor John Hewett, a friend from some years back, once attended the Carolina Panthers-Minnesota Vikings football game in Charlotte. Just outside the gates, two stern-faced men stood holding up huge signs.

“JESUS CANNOT BE YOUR SAVIOR UNLESS HE IS YOUR LORD.”

Noticing the expression on John’s face, one of the men said, “Jesus can save you.”

John said, “He already has.”

The fellow said, “You sure don’t act like it.”

Fascinating the way some Christians find one single aspect of the Christian faith and turn it into the end-all of salvation and righteousness and go to seed on it.

Thereafter, it becomes the theme of their sermons and the thrust of their conversations. If they’re Facebook friends with you, that’s all you ever read from them.

For some, it’s the KJV Bible. If you’re using anything else, you are a compromised liberal and naive to boot. Either you have been taken in by the con men in the faith or you are a scam artist yourself.

For some it’s Calvinism. Unless you cross every ‘t’ and dot every ‘i’ as they do–or Brother John himself did–you’re shallow, don’t know your Bible, and a blind leader of the blind.

I once had a deacon who had come to Christ at the age of 43 after a life of ungodly living. His conversion was dramatic and total. He went from blind to perfect vision overnight and became a zealot for the Lord.

As a new believer, he looked around the church and saw complacent, dozing members and came to the conclusion they had probably never been saved. The aspect of salvation they had missed out on, he decided, was repentance. They had never truly repented of their sin, otherwise they would be changed, transformed, made new, and on fire for the Lord.

Thereafter, repentance became his theme.

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Things most pastors simply cannot do

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“One can’t believe impossible things,” said Alice to the White Queen.

“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

–From Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.

I write this mostly tongue in cheek.  But not completely.

Having pastored six churches over 42 years and having preached for over 55 years, I know that my fears, my failures, my successes, and my accomplishments all tend to work themselves into what I am preaching.

It seems to require the strength of Samson to keep these things out of our sermons….

–If a pastor jogs or works out, it is impossible for him not to work that into a sermon at least monthly.  “As I was jogging yesterday morning, I’d just completed my third mile….”

–If a pastor’s child has excelled in athletics or the band or in the classroom, he will find a way to allude to that in a sermon.  It’s what a proud dad does.  “My wife and I are so proud of Jayson who has just received ‘student of the month’ award for the third time.  We were telling our daughter who is working on her Master’s at Johns Hopkins…”

–If the pastor once took a course in Greek and can find his way around a Greek lexicon, he will find it impossible not to drop that into the occasional sermon. “When I was studying Greek” or “My Greek Bible says…”  I say this to our embarrassment.  If a real Greek scholar ever entered the service and challenged us, we would be mortified.

–If a pastor reads through the Bible annually–or has just done it the first time–not saying so in a sermon is asking more than he is able to give.  He just has to say so. “As you know, I read through the Bible annually–and have done so for the last 13 years.”

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Sarcasm has no place in the life of a believer

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“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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Courage in God’s children is in short supply these days. Be strong, Christian!

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What man is there who is fearful and fainthearted? Let him go and return to his house, lest the heart of his brethren faint like his heart. (Deuteronomy 20:8)

Cowards have no place in the Lord’s army.

Faintheartedness seems to spread from one person to another like a bad disease. Better to go forward with a small fighting force made up of champions than with a massive one infiltrated by cowards.

Fear and courage are brothers, we are told. They show up at the same time, often hand in hand. But, like many brothers, the competition between them is fierce. They struggle to see which will rule the day.

Fear and courage are both contagious.

Let someone start the conversation by pointing out how strong the enemy is and how weak our side is and how foolish we would be to go forward, and soon, his solo is drowned out by a chorus of like-minded fearmongers.

They had been waiting for an excuse to go home.

Let someone stand up and speak faith and courage, and often–not always, alas–others will step out of the crowd to stand with him. Ten warriors with courage–strong of heart and dead-set on victory–can do more than a thousand who are ruled by fear.

The twelve spies had returned from their forty days in Canaan. Israel’s multitude gathered around, eager for their report. There was good news a-plenty: the fields were fertile, the crops abundant, the orchards loaded, and the barns filled. But there was another side to the report: the land was well-populated, the cities were walled and protected by standing armies equipped with the latest technology. And if that wasn’t enough, there were giants in the land.

This could go either way.

It all came down to leadership.

Immediately after the report, faithful Caleb spoke up. “Let us go up at once and take possession, for we are well able to overcome it.”

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Never-ending: The struggle to remain humble

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Humble yourself. 

I know precious little about humility. However, I do know two important things about the subject:  a) Humility is a most attractive feature in high achievers and b) God requires it in all of His people.

Scripture is filled with teachings, examples, violations, commands, and encouragements regarding humility. Even our Lord Jesus Christ was humble and became our example. (Try these passages for starters: Matthew 11:29; John 13:14-15; Philippians 2:5-8.)

Scripture tells believers to put on humility (Colossians 3:12), to be clothed with humility (I Peter 5:5), and to walk with humility (Ephesians 4:1-2).

The Lord wants His children to be humble so much that He has given us seven aids to accomplish this and thereafter, to keep us that way.

1. Common sense.  Perspective. 

Look around at the billions of people. You’re just one of them. Look above at the zillions of stars. You’re sitting on one small planet circling one humble star. They’ve been around for eons, while you have only a few more years of life here. If that doesn’t humble you, you’re not paying attention.  (See Psalm 8)

2. The Holy Spirit. Power. 

The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, humility…. (Galatians 5:22-23).

3. Our family. Intimates. 

I heard the wife of a well-known preacher say on television once–and probably shocking her audience–“I tell my husband, ‘Don’t start that big shot thing with me. I saw you in your shorts this morning.’”  (My wife thought the woman spoke out of turn, that she should not have said that publicly.)

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A lesson about worship from Arnold the pig and Tom Lester

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This is from a conversation with a friend back in the year 2007.

Tom Lester played “Eb” on the wonderful old Green Acres television series. At the time of our conversation, Tom was semi-retired and living on his family farm in Laurel, Mississippi. He and I were sharing the program for First Baptist Church of Covington, Louisiana’s annual senior adult fling.  Over lunch he told me this story about another star of Green Acres, Arnold the pig.

“Pigs are smart,” Tom said, “but not like dogs. A dog can learn all sorts of tricks because they want to please you. But a pig is like a cat. It’s selfish. It thinks only of itself. So, people who work with pigs in movies and television have figured out that the way to get them to obey you is with food. First, they let them get hungry, and only then can they get them to obey.”

“But,” he continued, “as soon as the pig gets his belly full, he’s not good for anything the rest of the day. So, they bring in another pig that looks like the first one and use him.”

At any given time, Arnold was a half-dozen pigs.

We laughed about that, thinking how like humans pigs are. We see it in church a lot. People go to this church or that one because, “I get fed there.” Not: “I can serve the Lord there” or “God led me there.”

And how many times have we heard people remark after church that “I didn’t get fed.”

It would be funny if it weren’t so sad.

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My candidate for hypocrite of the year

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“Evil people and imposters will become worse (in the last days), deceiving and being deceived” (2 Timothy 3:13).

Can we talk about imposters?

Specifically church-dropouts who say they love the Lord.

Nothing of what follows is intended to be mean-spirited. I will labor to make certain it doesn’t come across that way.

I’m not angry, just perturbed. I don’t want to banish anyone from heaven, from church, from “the island,” or even from this room.

I just want to say to certain ones, “C’mon, people. Get real.  You don’t mean that, so why do you keep saying it?”

I was in a group which was having a lively discussion about church leadership and whether divorced people–specifically someone with a whole cluster of divorces!–should be considered as deacon.

Most in the room were sweet-spirited, godly, well-informed scripturally and solid doctrinally.  But some were angry for reasons I doubt if even they know.  They want to banish all divorced people from anything.  But they are not the hypocrites I had in mind. It’s another group.

People like you are the reason I no longer go to church.

That’s what they say.

And they are my candidate for “hypocrites of the year.”

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7 laws of service in God’s kingdom

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“I am among you as one who serves” (Luke 22:27).   “A disciple is not above his teacher or a slave above his master” (Luke 6:24). 

In the days following Hurricane Katrina, Rudy and Rose traveled to New Orleans to help.  Unable to find a place to plug in, Rudy walked into the kitchen of Williams Boulevard Baptist Church and volunteered.  That church was strategically situated next to the Highway Patrol headquarters which was hosting hundreds of troopers from the nation, as they protected the darkened city. The church had become a hotel for the troopers and the women of the congregation were serving three meals a day.  They welcomed Rudy and assigned him to the garbage detail.

Not exactly what he had in mind.

Rudy had been pastoring a church in southern Canada.  When he saw the suffering of our people on television–entire neighborhoods flooded, thousands homeless, people being rescued off rooftops–he resigned his church, sold his gun collection to fund the move, and he and Rose came to help.

Now, he ends up emptying garbage cans.  By his own admission, Rudy was developing an attitude problem.

One day he was lifting a large bag of garbage into the dumpster.  The kitchen workers had been told not to put liquid garbage into the bags, but evidently they didn’t get the message. Suddenly, as Rudy was hoisting it up, the bag ripped and all kinds of kitchen leftovers poured down over him–gumbo, red beans and rice, gravy, grease, whatever.  

Drenched in garbage from head to foot, Rudy stood there crying like a baby.

“That’s when the Lord broke me,” he said later.  “I told the Lord, ‘If you just want me to empty garbage cans for Jesus, I’ll do it.’”  

That was a Thursday.  That Saturday night late, a minister from that church woke him up.  “Rudy, our pastor is sick. They tell me you are a preacher.  Can you preach for us tomorrow morning?”

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When the pastor’s pride shows, it ain’t a pretty sight

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“I alone am left” (I Kings 19:10,14)   

“I have 7,000 who have not bowed the knee to Baal” (I Kings 19:18).

Lord, I’m the only one out here in the field doing anything worthwhile.

I’m your best hope, Lord. Mine is the best church. Our denomination is the last of the faithful.

Sheesh!

How does the Lord put up with the likes of us?

Usually I let it go, but this time I felt the pastor of that church–we’ll call him Silas–and I had sufficient history to withstand my telling him that his advertising slogan–his “church’s identity–was offensive.

“We’re going to reach Atlanta and the world for Jesus!”

In my email, I said, “I appreciate a challenging goal for your people, and it’s great to keep the mission of world evangelism before them. But imagine if you are pastoring a smaller church in your city (most churches in your city are smaller!) and you read that statement. It implies your church is going to do it all without any help from anyone else, and feels a little like a putdown.”

I suggested a more faithful slogan might say “We’re going to reach Atlanta and the world for Jesus by working with God’s people everywhere.”  Not as catchy or pithy, to be sure. But truer and far more responsible.

Silas was not gentle in his reply. “McKeever,” he began, always a clue that niceties are out the window. “Most of the churches around us are worshiping the status quo or struggling to keep their doors open. It does feel like we’ve got the task alone.”  He ended with a gentle reminder that I should take care of my own assignment before telling a brother how to do his.

No argument there.

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A good story doeth good like a medicine

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First story.  Humility.

Toward the end of the Civil War, President Lincoln decided to visit Richmond to see what it had been like. A tugboat was found to carry him and his small party — including son Tad — up the river. Soon, they ran into barriers and obstructions placed to impede traffic, so they transferred to a smaller boat. Before long, a message arrived saying the army needed that boat. This time, the presidential party transferred to a rowboat. Lincoln uncomplainingly got into the rowboat and they slowly made their way toward Richmond.

“You know,” Lincoln said, “this reminds me of a little story.”

Everything reminded him of a story; one more reason we adore him.

“When I first came into office, there was a man who came to me applying for office from Illinois, I believe it was. He said, ‘I want to be secretary of state; won’t you appoint me?’ And I said, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t do that, I’ve already appointed Secretary Seward.’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘well, can’t you appoint me consul general to Paris?’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘that post is already filled.’ ‘Well, could you appoint me collector of customs in Austin?’ ‘No, that post is already filled.’ ‘Well,’ said the man, ‘at least, at least could you give me an old pair of pants?’” Lincoln added, “It pays to be humble, and I’m not upset by coming to Richmond in a rowboat.”

President Lincoln must have known our Lord’s teaching in Luke 14.

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