Category Archives: Suffering

The scripture half of the Lord’s pastors tend to overlook

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“Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves…. (Men) will deliver you up to councils and scourge you in their synagogues.  You will be brought before governors and kings for my sake….  Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul…. Do not think that I am come to bring peace on earth…” (Matthew 10:16ff)

(Note: Invariably, when I write something in support of the Lord’s servants who have been mistreated by the Lord’s congregations, someone will reply calling my attention to the sins of preachers.  As if I did not know.  I will readily admit there are some men in the ministry who need to be out, who are bringing reproach on the name of Christ and shame to His church.  But most of the pastors I’m acquainted with who have been driven from their pulpits were guilty only of crossing the wrong people.)

Suddenly, that great church which the pastor was enjoying and had been bragging about to his colleagues turned on him and wanted him gone.

Without warning it seems, those precious people who had welcomed him so warmly just a couple of years back have now joined the vicious mob clamoring for the pastor’s head.

That wonderful deacon fellowship which had devoted themselves to serving God’s people and ministering to the needy suddenly arose and announced their intention to oust the pastor.

That sweet family to whom the pastor ministered again and again misinterpreted something he did (or believed something they heard) and began to devote themselves to seeing that he was fired.

Why, Lord?  Pastors and their families wonder that.

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Humor and grief in ministry…hand in hand

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“There is….a time to weep and a time to laugh” (Ecclesiastes 3:4).

The doctors at Houston’s M. D. Anderson Medical Center confirmed to Ted that the lung cancer had indeed metasticized to his brain.  “Perhaps six months, more or less,” said the doctor when Ted asked how long he had.  The worst news imaginable.

However, that night the doctor called his room.

“I’ve been studying the brain scans,” he said. “And I believe yours is Primary Lung Cancer which has moved to the brain.”  He went on to say that Primary Brain Cancer is not treatable, but a metasticized Primary Lung Cancer behaves differently in the brain and is often treatable.

There was hope, after all.

When he got off the phone, Ted explained this to his family. He was quiet a minute, then said, “Well, you know it’s your basic bad situation when you’re praying for lung cancer!”

And they laughed.

Can you weep and laugh at the same time?

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Be patient; you never know what that one has been through

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Not long ago, while attending a conference on the campus of a Christian college, I sat in the auditorium with several hundred other ministers and their families.  The pre-session music was provided by a man playing a violin, and doing it rather poorly, I felt.

I am not a musician nor the son of a musician, but I can usually tell when a violin is being played well, and particularly when it isn’t.

As the music ended, our host stepped to the microphone. “We want to thank Mr. Hoskins for playing the violin for us tonight. One month ago, he was in an automobile accident in which his car was totaled. In fact, for a while it appeared that he had lost the use of his hands. So, the music tonight was special for a lot of reasons.”

As the congregation applauded, I slumped down in my seat and felt a sense of shame.

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My single biggest problem in crisis ministry

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Take last evening for instance.

A friend who is on the staff of a large church in the northern part of our state emailed about a family basically living in the ICU ward of a local hospital in our city. Doctors have told the parents nothing more can be done for the daughter. So they are standing by, waiting for God to take her.

My friend had planned to drive down to see them, but because of a cold decided it was best if he canceled and asked me to call on them.

An hour later, I was in the hospital room with the family.

The patient was either sleeping or heavily sedated and several family members and friends were seated around the room, talking softly.  They greeted me warmly, having already been informed that I was coming.

Now, two things about this family I found amazing.  They have lived in the intensive care units of their hospital back home and the one here for over 40 days.  And yet, they have such a steady peace and beautiful joy about them.

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10 reasons I believe in Jesus Christ (the second 5)

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(To see the first 5 reasons, please visit our website www.joemckeever.com and scroll to the article for September 16, 2014. Permission is given to anyone wishing to reprint these or pass them along in any Christ-honoring way.)

I believe in Jesus Christ–to my mind that is synonymous with “I believe in God”–for so many reasons, these among them….

6) THIS WORLD. Planet earth is uniquely adapted for life, unlike any other place our greatest scientists have yet discovered in the universe.  Factors that make earth different from any other place ever found include….

The  life-giving atmosphere…the abundance of water….the distance of the earth from the sun…the rotation of the earth…the tilt on its axis…the symbiotic balance of plants and animals…the riches in the soil…the seasons. These and hundreds more factors, known mostly to the scientifically minded, have combined to pull off the greatest miracle of the universe so far discovered: Earth.

To date, scientists have seen nothing in the vast heavens which even remotely approaches this wonderful planet on which we live.  Earth is a miracle.  As it zooms around our sun at 67,000 mph–while our solar system moves throughout our galaxy and the galaxy itself spins across the heavens at supersonic speeds–my coffee cup sits steadily beside my laptop with nary a ripple in the liquid.  No turbulence.  How does the Almighty God manage this?  I am in awe.

If you can believe in earth, Heaven should be a cinch for you!  I believe in God because of earth.

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Sorry. I do not feel your pain.

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President Bill Clinton popularized the line: “I feel your pain.”  He could say it with such pathos in his voice, you felt–at first, anyway–that he just might do that.

“I feel your pain.”  I suspect that is said too easily much of the time. And I can almost guarantee that hearing the words does not give comfort to the one hurting.

For the last forty years of his life, my coal-miner dad had silicosis, “black lung” it’s called, the result of breathing coal dust for decades in the depths of the pits.  He started working inside the mines when he was 14–that would be 1926–when child-labor laws were in their infancy and safety for the workers was an afterthought.  As a result, he often had trouble breathing.

There were times when he would look at me with pained eyes and say, “I can’t get my breath. You have no idea how it hurts.”

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Depressed Christians is not an oxymoron.

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“Out of the depths I have cried to Thee, O Lord.  Lord, hear my voice!” (Psalm 130:1-2)

“We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body” (2 Corinthians 4:8-10).

“You call yourself a Christian and you are depressed.  What’s wrong with you?”

Sound familiar? If some actual person has not said that to you, perhaps that little voice inside you–the one that loves to call attention to your failures and pretenses–has beaten you over the head with those words.

Surely we who are the redeemed in Christ and thus more than conquerors should live on top of circumstances at all times and radiate joy 24/7, right?

Why then,  are we sometimes depressed?

Does it help to know we have lots of company?

Some of the finest people who have ever trod the Christian path have dealt with depression on a regular basis. Whether we call it the blues, the dumps, melancholy, or, as Winston Churchill referred to it, his “black dog,” God’s people can be depressed also.

The grandma said to the teenager, “Trials and suffering are not par for the course, honey. They are the course.”

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What if we believed Jesus really did abolish death?

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“Who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (2 Timothy 1:10).

You are going to love this.

If death has been abolished, then to most of us, what we have seems to be a “dead man walking.”  The corpse appears to be very much alive and well, this grim reaper who persists in continuing to mow down a fair to middlin’ number of victims every day.

“The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death,” said Paul in I Corinthians 15:26.

So, has death been abolished or not?

I’m indebted to a couple of old books for some insights worth their weight in gold. One is a biography of J. B. Phillips and the other is a quote from a book Mr. Phillips wrote.

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Who has walked this ground before us

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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.

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Thank you, Father, for the pain

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“No suffering for the present time seems joyful but grievous; nevertheless, afterward….it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness” (Hebrews 12:11).

“And indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (II Timothy 3:12).

I hated the pain at the time, Lord.

It’s no fun hurting, lying awake at night hoping for sleep that will not come, wishing for relief and seeing none on the horizon.  At those times I knew why some turn to drink or drugs or worse, but that issue was settled decades ago, Lord, that I would not be bypassing, shortcutting, or tranquilizing whatever you send me in this life.

Remember that time back in the 1960s when a few unhappy people were stirring up matters in your church, saying that I was pushing integration and was going to destroy their church?  Remember that?  I do too.  Oh, how I do.  That was no fun.

As though it were their church. That’s a laugh.  They’re long off the scene and Your church is still there. And integrated, too, I imagine. (smiley-face goes here)

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