Meet my friends Jack and Marian.

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(Be sure to read the postscript and the comments at the end.)

When Jack’s mother died, wife Marian realized that God finally had his attention.

Jack loved his mother, a godly woman whom he would never see again unless he changed his ways. Jack had no use for church and religion, but devoted all his weekends to hunting whatever was in season.

Marian asked a godly deacon in her church to pay Jack a visit. Dr. Norris Vest, dentist and devoted soulwinner, dropped in and led Jack to Christ.  That’s when Jack informed Marian he did not care to attend her church.  “Too big,” he said.

They’d heard me on the radio and decided to visit our church out at the edge of town.

I loved this little family from the start.  Jack and Marian had two small girls, Julie and Cindy, who fit right in with the children at our church.

Our friendship has now lasted over 45 years. Margaret and I saw Jack and Marian perhaps once or twice a decade, but we dropped the occasional note and always felt each other’s love.

But what I wanted to tell you is something very special God did with this couple. Well, one of the very special things.

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Forgiveness: Such a powerful concept

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“….accepting one another and forgiving one another if anyone has a complaint against another.  Just as the Lord has forgiven you, so also you must forgive” (Colossians 3:13).

For reasons I never fully understood the old gentleman carried around a load of bitterness, much of it directed toward me his pastor. In a business conference when we were discussing calling a young man as our youth director, the old man stood and poured out venom on the proceedings. He was clearly angry about something, all out of proportion to what we were discussing.

“I have no idea what it is between you and him,” said a man in his Sunday School class.  “Actually,” he continued, “he’s a good teacher. I like him.”

I knew a little of what had happened.  A year earlier, the gentleman was convinced that I had not spoken to him and his wife at a church function.  “You talked to everyone there except us.”  I was completely unaware of this and apologized, then drove across the city to his home and apologized to his wife. A sweet lady, she said it was nothing, that her husband was just being himself.

The man never turned it loose.  He now had a license to be angry at his preacher.

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Let the preacher not draw too much attention to himself

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“…that in all things He might have preeminence in everything” (Colossians 1:18).

Let not the messenger boy think this is all about him.

I had a suspicion confirmed the other evening.

Over the years, I have made a point of memorizing scripture.  At this moment, I can quote Psalms 1, 23, and 103, as well as Romans 8, and a number of shorter passages.  There is nothing boastful about that. I should have retained more of what I worked to memorize through the years (which included Psalm 139, half of Hebrews and most of I Peter), but because I did not work at keeping it, have lost it from memory.

Okay.  But here’s the thing.

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The pictures we made at the hospital and cemetery

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My daughter has been posting some photos which I would just as soon didn’t ever see the light of day.  It’s not that they’re bad pictures or that I don’t love the people in them.

They were shot either at the hospital where my wife lay on life support for six days or at the church in the luncheon following her funeral.  And they all have one terrible thing in common.

We’re all smiling.

I’ve noticed this in photographs our family has made in years past.  We would be at the funeral of my parents or a beloved aunt or uncle, and after the ceremonies have ended and people are milling around greeting one another or saying their farewells, someone breaks out a camera and begins grouping us.  And without fail, we do it.

We all smile.

I suppose it’s because we were taught from childhood if someone points a lens in our direction, we smile.  I certainly ask every person who sits before me to be sketched to smile.  Everyone looks better smiling, “including you,” I tell them.

But sometimes, it feels like a smile is out of place.

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“Get on with your work,” said the Lord.

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“Neither do these things move me,” said Paul. “Nor do I count my life dear to myself, so that I may finish my race with joy, and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify of the gospel of the grace of God” (Acts 20:24).

I enjoy telling of the last words–okay, “some” of the last–of Ty Cobb, the baseball great.  For 22 years, he played lights-out ball for the Detroit Tigers, setting records many of which are still on the books.  I was told he gave his life to Jesus Christ and was transformed sometime in the last weeks or months of his life.

He sent a message to the men he’d played ball with.

“Tell them, ‘fellows, I got in the bottom of the ninth.  I sure wish I’d come in the top of the first.'”

If we think of our lives like a nine-inning ball game, the final inning would be our last time to do anything before the “game was called” and the park was darkened.

What inning are you in?

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How to tell you have arrived as a big-shot preacher

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What we are attempting to do here is walk a fine line between the fun of humor and exaggeration and the conviction of truth and righteousness.  They do intersect, although it’s difficult not to veer too much to one side or the other.  I’ll try not to drive like a drunk….

The Lord called you to preach the gospel and you answered. You went off to a Bible college or theological seminary of one kind or the other, and you got yourself some degrees which you now display prominently on your wall. You finally got past those tiny churches which many consider boot camp for the pastoral ministry and now you are uptown in a fine facility with your name boldly plastered on the sign out front as the (ahem) senior pastor. 

Have you “arrived” in the ministry?  Well sir, here’s some of the ways you can tell….

1) You have a Bible published with your very own commentary notes.  “The Official Jerry Bigshot Bible.”

It still has the basic 66 books of the Holy Scripture of course, but no one is buying it for that. They purchasing it for the wonderful, scintillating, incisive–and insert a lot of other dynamic adjectives here!–notes at the bottom of each page.

How in the world Martin Luther pulled off the Reformation without your assistance is anybody’s guess.

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Pastors of the larger churches and the other preachers in their community

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“We then who are strong ought to bear with…the weak, and not to please ourselves.  Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, leading to edification.  For even Christ did not please Himself….” (Romans 15:1-3)

Outside observers are often surprised to learn that in many cities after churches grow to a certain size, they cut off fellowship with all the other congregations in their area.

Pastors of those mega-churches pull away from the ministers of the small congregations in the same city, as though they now live in different worlds.  They give the impression that they have been elevated to such a higher plane that the only ones who now speak their language lead churches of similar or greater size.

The truth, I sometimes suspect, is that they feel more comfortable with peers of similar status who also make the big bucks and do not feel guilty that their income is ten times that of the part-time preacher sitting next to them.

It’s utterly foolish, if you ask me. It’s prideful, egotistical, and completely counter-productive to the work of the Kingdom.

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“I delight in Thy Word” (6th segment) Nos. 26-30.

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(We are posting these ‘small, unforgettable scriptures’ in sections of five each. This is the sixth.  The first was posted on February 22, 2015.  To find it, go to www.joemckeever.com and scroll back to that date. Scroll forward for subsequent segments. Eventually, we intend to have 20 segments for a total of 100 “scriptural delights.”)

26)  No generation gap in our worship.  Ezra 3:10-13.

Pastors find such wonderful preaching values (i.e., texts that speak to God’s people) in Ezra and Nehemiah that there is little point in my calling attention to anything. However, here are a couple of small insights that may be overlooked.

The remnant who have returned from exile in Babylon are working to rebuild the Temple which Nebuchadnezzar had destroyed.  The work is backbreaking and slow, the resources slim, and the enemies and critics plentiful.  So, at the point when they had completed rebuilding the foundation–perhaps nothing more than clearing it off and hosing it down!–they paused for a celebration.  This was the holiest ground in the entire nation and now it was available once more for worship.

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Adjusting to the new reality

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“If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

I had to rewrite my resume’ today for our blog and for a program where I’ll be speaking soon.  That’s when I realized that somewhere the material should state that I was recently widowed.

How exactly does one do this? And what’s the best way? And is it absolutely necessary? And why does it hurt so badly to type in those words?

One of the decisions I find myself making daily is whether or not to tell the person I’m talking with that everything has changed in my life.  Does the lady at the dry cleaners need to know? Margaret never came in, so they didn’t know one another.

I told a complete stranger at Walmart today.

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“I Delight in Thy Word!” — Vignettes 21-25

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(This is the fifth segment of five brief Bible studies, on our way to 20 segments containing one hundred mini-studies.  The idea is to select very brief but poignant biblical texts, those we tend to rush past, and pull us back for more spiritual nourishment. To check out the previous segments, go to www.joemckeever.com and scroll back into January, 2015.)

21)  There’s something in Exodus 20 we must not miss. And it’s not the Ten Commandments!

“An altar of earth you shall make for me, and you shall sacrifice on it your burnt offerings….. If you make me an altar of stone, you shall not build it of hewn stone; for if you use your tool on it, you have profaned it” (Exodus 20:24-25).

I find this stunning. In the same chapter where God gives Israel the Ten Commandments, He makes provisions for an altar. Altars are places of death, where animals are slaughtered as sin-substitutes.  According to this text, the altar could be made of dirt or rock, either one.

So much for the way of salvation being to “just keep the commandments.”  (The next time you hear someone say that is their religion, ask them why God included provisions for an altar in the same chapter.  They will not have an answer, believe me.)

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