Some things you get over, some you love forever

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“Those that were gain to me I counted loss….” (Philippians 3:7)

First. 

As a young pastor serving a church in the bayou country, I noticed that pentecostal church down the highway.  I admired their reputation, and their publicity looked attractive.  They were growing while the small church I pastored was struggling.  So I visited their revival service one night.

Once was enough.

The preacher was delivering some shallow, hardly biblical at all, message and was whooping up the excitement to keep the people dancing in the aisles.  When the furor died down, he would step up to the microphone and continue his tirade.  When the people returned to the uproar, he casually walked over to the piano–the player had not slowed down the constant banging at any point–and carried on a conversation.

I quickly had enough of that and never envied that church or its pastor again.

From that moment on, whenever I hear of a church that is blowin’ and goin’, I’m not envious.  “Bless ’em, Lord,” I say and tend to my sheep.

Second.  

I discovered old radio programs.

Several decades ago, I was thrilled when I found a company selling vintage radio programs.  As a child of the 1940’s, I grew up in the golden age of radio.  I was the only one in our family who would sit by the radio drinking in the stories and comedies.  So, in the late 1970s when a company was selling eight-track tapes of those old programs, I ordered several and was in heaven….for a time.

In time, I discovered that Sirius XM has a classic radio station, so I subscribed.  I still listen occasionally, but I’ve long since gotten past 95 percent of the programming.  Most of those early radio shows were dumb, shallow, and pointless and the decades have not improved them.  Very few of the programs from that era hold up today.

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Prayer realities you may not know

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“Pray without ceasing.”  — I Thessalonians 5:17.

I’m not implying that I know more about prayer than you.  I hate to hear anyone celebrated as “an expert in prayer,” for the simple reason that no child should be called an expert in talking to his/her parent.  What’s so hard about that?

Granted, we make it harder than it should be, with our rules, our religions, our legalism, our opinions, our blindness, and our sinfulness.  But in its essence, prayer is talking to the Father through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.  Period.

What I do imply however (for this article) is that there are insights in Scripture on the subject of prayer many of us may have missed.  Here are a few……

One. Scripture says you do not know how to pray as you should.  That’s Romans 8:26. So, let’s not let that stop us.  God’s not looking for eloquence but faith. My book on prayer is called Pray Anyway.  That’s the idea.

Two.  Scripture says both the Holy Spirit and the Lord Jesus are interceding for us.  That is Romans 8:26 and 8:34. Now, personally, I have no idea how this works, particularly when Romans 8:31 adds that “God is for us!”  So, it appears that all of Heaven is on our side!

Three. Scripture says the best pray-ers were Moses and Samuel.  That’s Jeremiah 15:1.  So, we can learn about prayer by studying what they did.

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Taking care of our business

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Fred Harvey was a name almost every American knew in the late 1800s and early 1900s. This son of Britain had come to America and made his mark in the food industry. Working with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad, he built a chain of restaurants across the great Southwest which became legendary for their insistance on quality and their devotion to the customer.

In his book, “Appetite for America: How Visionary Businessman Fred Harvey Built a Railroad Hospitality Empire That Civilized the Wild West,” Stephen Fried says Harvey originated the first national chain of restaurants, of hotels, of newsstands, and of bookstores–“in fact, the first national chain of anything–in America.”

You may be familiar with the Judy Garland movie on the Harvey Girls, another innovation of Fred Harvey’s. He recruited single young women in the East, then sent them to work in his restaurants from Kansas City to California. In doing so, he inadvertently provided wives for countless westerners and helped to populate a great segment of the USA.

All of this is just so we can relate one story from the book.

Once, in the short period before women took over the serving duties for his restaurants, Harvey was fielding a complaint from one of his “eating house stewards” about a particularly demanding customer.

“There’s no pleasing that man,” said the steward. “He’s nothing but an out and out crank!”

Harvey responded, “Well, of course he’s a crank! It’s our business to please cranks. Anyone can please a gentleman.”

Pleasing cranks.

Anyone can please a gentleman.

It’s our business.

Why did that line sound familiar to me, I wondered as I read past that little story. I know. It sounds so much like the Lord Jesus.

Think of it.


“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you….for if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even taxgatherers do the same?” Continue reading →

Love a child and change the world

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This is the story of Dr. Joe Bailey of Tupelo, Mississippi.  He told it in 2004 as a tribute to his mentor, Dr. H. O. Leonard.  I hope you love it as much as I do.

His family were farmers, says Dr. Joe Bailey, but since his mother refused to live anywhere but in town, they lived in Coffeeville, population 600. That was precisely across the street from the town doctor.

As far back as Joe Bailey remembers, he wanted to be a medical doctor. In fact, when he was 10, his father suggested that it was time for him to begin helping out on the farm. Young Joe took a deep breath and told him that “if I was going to be a doctor, it would be better if I had a job that would teach me about people.”

The truth is, I really enjoyed the farm, but at age 10 I went to work in the local grocery store for 25 cents an hour (in 1957). I kept the job until I finished high school in 1965. By then I was making $1 an hour and the experiences of dealing with people those eight years have proven invaluable to me.

In the middle of that vocational experience, however, little Joe Bailey began his medical training. Here’s how it happened.

When he was 11, young Joe climbed the steps to Dr. Leonard’s office and knocked at the door. “Yes, Joe, what can I do for you?” said the elderly physician.

“Sir,” Joe said, “I want to be a doctor, and I wondered if I could help you in your office after school. I won’t get in your way. I just want to learn what to do.”

Dr. Leonard smiled, “I think that would be fine, Joe. Why don’t you come by after school tomorrow?”

As he walked down those stairs, young Joe Bailey had the feeling that life had just changed for him forever.

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When discussing religion, here is the test of an honest person

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“In all things, love.”  –I Corinthians 16:14

That’s one test of a believer and a mighty important one it is.  Our Lord said it is the mark of a disciple.  (John 13:34-35)

Look for the love.  Otherwise, you know this one with whom you are discussing scriptures and doctrines is no follower of Jesus.

The cultist you’re talking religion to across the table or across the continent feels no need to love you since he/she has decided you are not a follower of Jesus since you disagree with their doctrine.  I’ve sat at a table with a Jehovah’s Witness who was brutal and mean-spirited and who may as well have thought of me as a child-molester by the scoffing and belittling he was dishing out.  (I was a younger pastor, and had not learned that there comes a time when it’s all right to say, “This meeting is over,” and walk out.)

But while love is the first mark of the believer, there’s another test for determining whether the person across the table is an honest seeker.

Ask them to cite a verse that troubles them because it seems to contradict a doctrine they believe.

Here is mine….

In an article about discussing (or debating) religion, I cited a verse that does not seem to agree with a doctrine I hold dearly.  Hebrews 6:4-6 says, “For in the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance, since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God and put Him to open shame.”

The passage says as clearly as possible that this individual has been born again and truly came in to the family of God, and yet if they fall away–and it definitely states it as a possibility–they cannot be saved a second time.  All of that is as clear as anything in the Word.  (I’ve read a dozen commentaries on this and know the arguments and explanations.  But none are satisfactory.  Sorry, if you do not agree.)

The reason that passage troubles me is because I believe John 10:28-29.  “I give unto them eternal life and they shall never perish; and no one shall snatch them out of My hand.  My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.”  This promise is consistent with the Lord’s teachings.  Over and over Jesus spoke of eternal life for believers, the saved becoming children of God, that we will never perish, etc etc.  Scripture says we are sealed by the Holy Spirit unto the day of redemption (Ephesians 4:30).  Our salvation is secure, eternal, and guaranteed.

So, what am I to do with Hebrews 6:4-6?  My answer is to leave it as an open question.  I have no answer for it, although the overwhelming testimony of the New Testament seems to say something otherwise.  And I’m fine with leaving this as an open-ended question, one for which I have no answer.

Only the immature and lazy among us cannot abide a mystery, that is, something he/she does not understand.  Which, if you stop and think about it, should be an amazing thing, since life is filled with mysteries and those who know their Scripture will always have questions for which they have no answers.  And it’s perfectly fine.  We walk by faith, not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7).

Now, let’s hear yours….

Here’s one for a particular group among us.

If I were a Mormon who truly and sincerely wanted to serve the Lord Jesus Christ and honor His word, I would have a huge problem with Galatians chapter 1.  In verse 8, we read: “Even though we or an angel from heaven bring any other gospel unto you than what I have brought to you, let him be accursed.”   The entire LDS religion goes back to an appearance of an angel to Joseph Smith.  Then…

The question for the sincere Mormon, based on Galatians 1:8, is: “Okay, then did the angel from heaven bring a different gospel from what Paul preached?”  The good news is we have the gospel which Paul preached.  It’s the book of Romans.  The Epistle to the Romans is the best explanation of the message which the Apostle Paul preached up and down the Roman Empire. We are not in the dark about that.  And no one who is honest can claim (as some groups are wont to do) that it was translated wrongly.  (That, incidentally, is a cop-out for any group that does not want to deal with the plain truth of Scripture.  By saying it was mistranslated, they can put their own spin upon it.  The Jehovah’s Witness people grew tired of claiming this, so they published their own translation of Scripture, one in which they made the Word say exactly what they wanted it to say.  No honest Greek scholar would pay a dime for a JW Bible.  It is a corruption.)

So, the “sincere Mormon,” one who wants to know the will of God and do it, is driven to read Romans and then compare with what he/she is taught by all the doctrines of the LDS church, few of which line up with the Gospel Paul preached.

So, what’s your verse?  The one that troubles you because it doesn’t seem to agree with what you believe the rest of Scripture teaches?

If you say there is none, then we know you are not honest and can end the discussion at that point.

Every group has its Achilles’ heel.  God set it up that way, in my opinion.  As we’ve stated elsewhere, instead of this being a weakness, it ends up being one of the strengths of the faith since it proves beyond all question that no little group of church leaders sat down and wrote or tweaked or whatever the Holy Scriptures.  Had they done so, they would have taken out the hard places.  But they’re still there.  And we can be eternally grateful for that.

If I were a member of the Church of Christ–the denomination which refuses to call itself a denomination; the group which teaches baptism is an essential part of the act of salvation–I would have a huge problem with I Corinthians 1:17. “For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel.”  This is from the same apostle who gave us Romans 1:16, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus, for it is the power of God unto salvation to all who believe….”  Baptism is a lot of things, but it is not a requirement for salvation.  (We believe it to be the first act of obedience following one’s profession of faith.)

If I were a member of the Seventh Day Adventist denomination, I would have a problem with Colossians 2:16-17. “Let no one act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day–things which are a mere shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ.”

And what are we to do when we find Scriptures that do not agree with what we believe the Bible teaches?

We are to stay on our knees and stay in the Word.

We should ask ourselves, “What is the overall and consistent teaching of Scripture?”

And we should leave room in our theology for questions for which we have yet to find answers.  Because they will always exist until the time comes when “we know even as also we are known” (I Corinthians 13:12).

Praying like a Pharisee in several easy lessons

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“And when you pray, you are not to be as the hypocrites… Therefore, do not be like them…” (Matthew 6:8).

All right, class, listen up.  If you expect to be the next generation of hypocrites, you need to give me your full attention.  The old Pharisees will be passing off the scene before long, and we’ll need a new class of the double-minded–you know, the play-actors–ready to step up and fill their ranks.

Tongue firmly planted in cheek now, everyone?  All right. Let us proceed….

It’s not easy being a hypocrite.  You’re always working on two levels, keeping things to yourself while presenting another image to the world.  And that’s hard.  It takes a pretty smart person to pull this off.  Shallow lazy people can be a lot of things, but not a successful Pharisee.

Scripture says “a double-minded person is unstable in all his ways;  he should not expect to receive anything from the Lord.” That’s James 1:7-8.  We cite it here for two reasons. First, to say how tough our calling is, and second, to remind ourselves that being hypocrites we’re not expecting to receive anything from the Lord for our prayers.  That’s not the point.

Okay? Got that? For a hypocritical Pharisee, prayer is about a lot of things, but touching the Heavenly Father with our actual needs is not one of them.

Now, that being said….

Your assignment as a hypocrite will cover a lot of areas–your home life where you say one thing and do another, your church life where you pretend to love the Lord while secretly maneuvering and conniving, your stewardship where you claim to give more than you do and look for ways to profit from your spirituality, and of course, your prayer life which will be groomed for public consumption but devoid of anything vital and sincere. But today, let’s zoom in.

For the moment, let’s focus on prayer.  Praying like a hypocrite–the Pharisaical model–is not for the weak of heart.  Only the top ten percent of the class will be able to meet the stringent requirements.  Consider, for example…

One. A Pharisee must be able to pray effectively in public.  (Matthew 6:5)

He does it in public because that’s the whole point: to impress people.

Those with stage fright who dread speaking in public will not be able to pull this off. A Pharisee can always be counted on to pray at public gatherings, in church settings, and at civic events.  A Pharisee will have worked up a set of great phrases and voice patterns which sound impressive to the public at large, and which, with a little practice, you will be able to whip off at a moment’s notice.

The end result–and this is always the point–is that people will come away impressed by your spirituality and ready to trust you with the crown jewels.

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Why the resurrection frightens some people

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“For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus” (I Thessalonians 4:14).

If Jesus really did rise from the dead as Scripture claims and Christians hold, then nothing is the same and everything has changed forever.

The reason Christians are positively giddy about the Easter Event–the resurrection of Jesus–is that in walking out of that tomb and leaving it forever empty,  He broke the stranglehold in which death had held humanity.

We are free.  We are free forever. We are free to live forever.

It doesn’t get any better than this.

Everything stands or falls on whether Jesus rose from the dead that first Easter Sunday morning.

The resurrection of Jesus was Heaven’s imprimatur on Jesus’s ministry, the Father’s validation of Jesus’ every claim, eternity’s “amen” to Jesus’ promises, and convincing evidence that Jesus Christ is everything He said He was.

Prove that He did not rise, that His body is still lying in some grave somewhere, and you will have put a stop to the entire Christian movement.  Thereafter, the few remaining followers of the Man of Galilee would form themselves into a Jesus Memorial Society. Not long before they stopped meeting altogether, they would quit writing “Man of Galilee” and “He” in all caps.

Even the most notorious atheist, adamantly opposed even to the idea that Jesus could have risen from the dead, would concede that if indeed it did happen, it was a game-changer from that moment on.

The ultimate game-changer.  Nothing would ever be the same.

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Finding the balance between the old and the new

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I stood at the front of the church and watched as the congregation was led in a full slate of old hymns and familiar gospel songs. Nothing rising from us that morning had been composed since the 1950s. My grandparents would have been right at home there.

It was the menu we are told grey-haired people (like myself) say they want from a worship leader.

Personally, I thought it was one boring service.

I grew up on those hymns, and like most veteran church-goers in that church, knew them “by heart.” I sang as lustily as I could manage while endeavoring to save voice enough to preach. But in no way did I find that song service meaningful, worshipful, or enjoyable.

The problem was the familiarity of it all. I could sing those hymns in my sleep (and probably have). My mind went on vacation while my mouth sang them. And that is precisely why singing them regularly is a bad idea.

“O, sing unto the Lord a new song!”

Anyone who has read his Bible much has run across that line before. To make sure we could not miss it, the Lord sprinkled throughout His Word. It can be found in Psalms 33:3, 96:1, 98:1, 144:9, 149:1, and in Isaiah 42:10.

In Psalm 40:3, David testifies that after the Lord lifted him from the miry clay and gave him firm footing, “He put a new song in my mouth.”

We’re told in the last book of the Bible, that in Heaven “they sang a new song” (Revelation 5:9 and 14:3).

Anyone see a pattern here?

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Changing how I pray

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(This is a reprint of an article from 2011.  Rather than tweak and update it–my usual practice–I decided it works very well as is.) 

Tonight, a realization threw me out of the bed and drove me to my note pad. I was lying there in the post-midnight hour doing what we preachers do, going over my sermon for later this morning.

The sermon is a beginning message for a four-day revival meeting I’ll be preaching for the First Baptist Church of Crowville, Louisiana. This congregation runs 80 to 100 in attendance and is made up largely of farmers and their families. The pastor, Dr. Keith Dowden, and I had dinner tonight and prayed for the Lord to give me the messages and do something special in the hearts and lives of his people.

My text is the parable of the mustard seed, Matthew 13:31-32. It’s a strong insight that a lot of the people in our pews need to hear, that God loves to use small, ordinary things and churches and people and acts and offerings. The mustard seed is a reminder that what God begins to do may be unimpressive on the outside, ordinary to the human eye, and not big by any means. However, being God, He can do amazing things with small beginnings.

I love to encourage small congregations with the assurance Jonathan gave his armorbearer just before the two of them took on a nest of Philistine warriors. “It matters little to the Lord whether He saves by the few or the many.” (I Samuel 14:6)

I like the question the prophet Zechariah raised as he spoke of the rebuilding of an economical version of the Temple and the coming of a Messiah who would ride in on a colt and be pierced for our transgressions: “Who has despised the day of small things?” (Zech. 4:10)

The answer to that is: “We do.” We like big things, dramatic results, impressive crowds, celebrity guests.

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God has been planning on you and me for some time now

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“…the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Matthew 25:34).

We don’t begin to have a clue.

God is doing a zillion things He has not deigned to mention to us mortals.

It’s not our business to know, for one thing.  He has reserved most of what goes on in the universe for Himself.  “The secret things belong to the Lord our God…”  (Deuteronomy 29:29).

All that we know about the operation of the created world is a sliver of the full story.

How can it be that before the world as we know it was formed, the Heavenly Father was already at work making plans for us to arrive and dwell with Him forever?

I do not know. Neither do you.

What unimaginable reality may we expect to find when we get to Heaven if Father has had all these eons to make it?

What does this say about pre-history, the story of what God was doing before the Big Bang of Creation.

We hang our heads in humility.  We read the final verses of Romans 11 and say, “Yes, yes. This is how it is!”

O the depth both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out!  For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has become His counselor? Or, who has first given to Him and it shall be repaid to Him? For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things; to whom be glory forever. Amen.”

And so we humbly say…

–there is so much we do not know.  Humility.

–the overwhelming evidence is that we are loved and wanted and planned for.  Love.

–when we leave earth, we will have just begun to live.  The future is literally out of this world, beyond anything imagined or dreamed, hoped or expected.  Excitement.

–it all comes down to the character of the Lord Jesus Christ and the integrity of the Word of God, whether He can be trusted.  Faith.

–all the evidence we have–and there is plenty!–says Jesus is real, His word is good, and His promises are dependable.  Foundation.

–this is the day the Lord hath made. I will rejoice and be glad in it, and will serve the Lord with gladness.

Praise Him from whom all blessings flow.  For He hath prepared for us a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God. (Hebrews 11:10).