July 23, 2010

WHY THE WILDERNESS
by Andrew Strom

The 'wilderness' is not a concept that is understood too well in Christendom, despite the fact that it is all the way through the Bible. From the book of Genesis right through Revelation there are clear references to the 'wilderness' as being something God often employs in His dealings with men. The pattern is undeniable.

When we look through the Scriptures we see that the wilderness is often a place of spiritual "crisis" and also preparation. It is the place God sends us before the "real action" begins - before we enter into the full purposes of God in our lives. There must be 'death' before there can be resurrection. There must be a desert place before the "promised land".

The wilderness is a place of trial and testing, of brokenness and full surrender to God. The props and activities that have kept us continually striving to "make things happen" are stripped away.

Our self-reliance is shattered and replaced with a total reliance on God alone. Every "idol" in our lives (often including our own ministry) is brought under the piercing searchlight of God. Our selfish motives and ambitions are shown for what they are. This process may take years. Finally we emerge broken, chastened and purified. The process has matured and cleansed us in so many ways. We are now ready for the fulfillment of all that God originally called us to do. But our heart-motives are vastly different from what they were before.

We see this pattern all the way through Scripture. Many lessons can be learned from what we read there. Abraham, Joseph, Joshua, Moses, David, Elijah, John the Baptist, Paul the apostle - and even Jesus Himself - all had to go through this "wilderness" experience.

Very often it lasted for years and years. Why then should we be surprised if it happens to us?

Probably the best-known instance of a 'wilderness experience' in the Old Testament is the story of Moses and the children of Israel.

Moses had been raised and trained all his life in the palaces of Egypt. But when he came face-to-face with his heritage as an Israelite, he rose up "in his own strength" and killed an Egyptian slave-driver. He was then forced to flee into the desert, where he was to spend 40 YEARS as a simple shepherd in the wilderness.

What an enormous length of time! Imagine if every Christian leader had to spend that long in the wilderness before God would allow them to lead His people! It is almost impossible to imagine the depths of despair and "death" to all his dreams and hopes that Moses went through during this time. In fact, after 40 years it is hard to imagine anyone being "deader" to the usual ambitions and temptations of leadership than Moses would have been. And what PATIENCE these years of waiting must have produced in him!


We see here the lengths that God will go to in the "preparation"

of a leader "after His own heart." (-Though 40 years is unusually long). The isolation, the chafing, the crying out to God for deliverance

- all play their part. Such an experience is almost irreplaceable.

That is why God uses it so often. The hearts of driven men are so similar in so many ways, that God's "cure" becomes similar also!

He will even shut us up in a kind-of 'prison' for a time so we cannot escape the process. It is that important. He does not want 'self'- oriented leaders shepherding his precious sheep.

After his 40 years of preparation, Moses returned to Egypt at God's command to lead His people out of bondage. This was the beginning of the entire nation of Israels' wilderness experience. For when they left Egypt the only way to their "Promised Land" was through the desert. Some commentators say that in a straight line, their journey could have taken just a few weeks or less. But because of their disobedience and fear, the vast majority of those who left Egypt were destined to die in the desert, never reaching the Promised Land. In fact, their wilderness journey ended up taking 40 years!

Now we need to take special note of this fact:- Not everyone who entered the wilderness survived it. In fact, multitudes perished there.

The wilderness tried them and found them wanting. They went to the place of testing and failed the test. This is a pretty crucial fact to realize in our day also. Just because we are "called out" and enter a wilderness time, does not mean that we will embrace the dealings of God and respond appropriately. It is entirely possible to lose everything out there. These people lost out completely.

Only their children came through to inherit the promises of God.

How clearly we see this pattern over and over again - in both the Old Testament and the New:- That many whom God wants to one day use are sent into a place of aloneness and brokenness before being brought into their true destiny. We have not even mentioned heroes of God such as Noah, Jacob, Job and others who all had similar experiences. Part of this process lies in the "waiting" that takes place. Also, the fact that all the supporting 'props' are taken away. The "waiting" alone can be torture.

The wilderness also deals with any fear of man or 'systemized' way of looking at things. God often uses it to bring a whole fresh perspective, which is very important for leaders who are going to be representing a "new" approach or facing opposition because of the confrontational words that they are bringing. The lonely desert years give them backbone to stand up to the crowd or the powers- that-be, and declare God's truth without compromise. They now truly fear God rather than man. And they think differently from others. The wilderness is vital for anyone who is wanting to bring fresh manna to God's people.

Are you someone who has been going through such a "desert" experience, my friend? Be encouraged! Look up, for your deliverance draws nigh. God only ever sends His children through such experiences when there is a great purpose to it. Don't give up. Don't be cast down. On the other side lies a 'land of promise' if only you can hang on to Jesus. Be active, be praying, be prepared. Don't become "passive" and let the desert swallow you whole. Use this time to draw closer and closer to Jesus. Dig down and plant your feet firmly on the Rock. Humble yourself before the Lord and He will lift you up in due time - if only you can cling to Him.

July 22, 2010

Born-Again Christian Gavin Mcleod Stars in New Faith-Based Film

http://www.sperrymovie.com/

Macleod charts his religious conversion back to September 15, 1984, seven years into the popular TV series 'Love Boat'

As Murray Slaughter, he wrote for airhead anchor Ted Baxter on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" for seven years. As Merrill Stubing, he captained the "Love Boat" for nearly a decade after that. Today, iconic TV actor Gavin Macleod says "I know who my admiral is," referring to his faith in God.

Macleod, 78, is a born again Christian now piloting a career in the Christian film industry, and starring in the movie "The Secrets of Jonathan Perry," which opens this weekend.

"I've worked with some of the biggest names in Hollywood, Cary Grant, Tony Curtis, Gregory Peck, Mary Tyler Moore," he told FOX News in an exclusive interview. "[But] the biggest honor I have ever had was to play the role of Jonathan Sperry in this simple but special film."

The film is about three 12-year old boys who are best buddies in the summer of 1970. One of them mows the lawn for an elderly widower named Jonathan Sperry. The two develop a unique friendship as Sperry employs Biblical teachings to help the boy and his friends deal with a bully, a secret crush, and other life challenges.

"The film is about forgiveness," Macleod says. "Forgiveness is one of the greatest tools God has given us."

The movie was written by twins Dave and Rich Christiano; Rich also produced and directed. They're part of the new breed of grassroots Christian filmmakers that include the Kendrick brothers, makers of the surprise box office hit "Fireproof."

Instead of complaining to Hollywood about the films it produces, Rich Christiano says it's time for Christians to put their money where their mouths are. Sperry has no big-name distributor, so Christiano, who worked with Macleod on the 2002 film "Time Changer," is marketing directly to churches, a technique also adopted by the Kendrick brothers.

The film has a staggered release starting September 18, showing in 118 theaters. Openings are scheduled through November 2009 with a total of 240 theaters onboard so far. Each one is sponsored by a church or group of church members. They advance $2,000 to get the film into the theater. The church will make their investment back if the film grosses $4,500. The movie's web page www.sperrymovie.com links to a site about sponsorship.

Christiano is betting on success in targeted theaters bringing additional theaters into the fold. He says theater owners are already calling him because people who want to see the film are calling them, wondering why the film isn’t showing in their communities.

The key to getting churches on board is having a well-known actor to star. Like Kirk Cameron, who starred in "Fireproof," "Sperry’s" Gavin Macleod is a true believer. Christian audiences know the actor is saying lines he personally believes.

It brings "authenticity and validation" to the film, says Mark Dupre, associate pastor at Christ Community Church in Brockport, New York — one of the churches sponsoring a theater showing. Dupre, who also teaches film at Rochester Institute of Technology, says having a strong Christian like Gavin Macleod play the lead is a built in marketing hook, "the equivalent of having the acting genius of a Meryl Streep in secular movie. Captain Stubing is someone America just loved."

Macleod charts his religious conversion back to September 15, 1984, seven years into the popular TV series "Love Boat." His mother had a serious medical condition and was scheduled for surgery. That morning he woke up and prayed to Jesus to "give my mother more time."

Unknown to Macleod, his then ex-wife Patty, who he hadn’t seen in two years, had gotten involved in a Christian women’s prayer group. She’d been praying that her husband would come back to her. Right after Macleod said the prayer to save his mother, he called Patty and asked "can we see each other?" The two repaired their relationship and were remarried in 1985. Gavin’s mother lived several more years.

From the moment he said his prayer, Macleod says the change was immediate. "My castmates knew I was different. I was hearing with different ears and seeing with different eyes."

After "Love Boat" ended in 1987, Macleod became the spokesperson for Princess Cruises, a job he still holds today. He’s turned down several TV roles because he’s not interested in doing series work again. His passion now is for his faith and the lives he can touch. "The Secrets of Jonathan Sperry" allows him to be captain of his new calling.

July 21, 2010

The Best Sermon I Ever Heard. Remembering David Gentiles.

This evening hundreds of people gathered in a baseball field just outside Austin Texas to remember our friend David Gentiles. It was an honor to present the eulogy. Blue Like Jazz was dedicated to David Gentiles, because David is the reason I am a writer. He was a remarkable human being, and there will never be anybody else like him. For those who knew him, we were truly blessed. And for those who didn’t, may the stories we tell about him inspire you.

•••

I heard somebody say every life is a sermon, that every new day we preach a point. Maybe that’s true, I don’t know. It sounds like a lot of pressure to me. And the truth is I’ve been to a thousand or more church services and I can honestly remember the content of no more than three sermons.

But if it’s true a person’s life is a sermon, David Gentiles preached the best sermon I’ve ever heard. I’ll never forget him, or what he did with his life. David was a rock of a man and his sermon was love. His life and what it pointed toward will remain with me, and no doubt with many of you, as a foundation on which you will build your families, your friendships and your faith. It’s hard to imagine a sermon on love has ever been said better. I learned more about Jesus from David than any other person I know.

David was not a typical minister, though. I don’t think he liked preaching. He was my youth pastor when I was a kid and the only sermon I remember him giving was about the breastplate of righteousness and the shield of salvation. With each descriptive metaphor, David donned an article of baseball gear, and by the end of it he was dressed as a catcher for the Cleveland Indians, complete with a mitt and catchers mask. Then he asked us if we wanted to go outside and play baseball. I think he just wanted to play baseball.

In a culture where professional ministers are tempted to use people to build churches, David Gentiles used the church to get to people. The Churches where he worked were just buildings where he could bring us together. Sunday morning was a trick that got us in the room so we could share our lives. He didn’t care about buildings or salaries or status, he cared about us. That’s why hundreds of us have come today to fill this stadium, to say goodbye to a very simple man who never wrote a book or recorded an album, who never put his name on a marquee over a church, or sold his sermons on the internet. We are here because we have been loved personally by David Gentiles. For some of us, at some point in our lives, he may have been the only one.

A friend and I were talking last week and my friend said he didn’t know how David Gentiles could make so many people feel like they were his best friend. But I think the reason we all feel this way is because he was our best friend. He was the best friend we had. He was the most loving man we knew. He gave his entire life to us. How many times did he introduce you to somebody only to brag about you, to tell a story from your past that reflected the best of what you offer the world. This is who you were to David. You were his collection of baseball cards. You were his reason to celebrate life. He wanted everybody to see what it was he saw in you, a remarkable creature created by God, a reflection of God’s beauty.

It’s fitting then that we remember David here in a baseball stadium. If you knew him, you know how much he loved the game. It’s a complicated game where people work together to bring each other home, where teams strategize to usher individuals around lonely bases until they can be reunited with the people who are on their side.

Recently I was remembering with Jeff Luce the night we stopped by David’s house during the 1986 World Series. Jeff was visiting from Louisiana and a couple friends and I who had been playing tennis at a local park arrived, unannounced, as always, at David’s door. Little did we know we’d walked into the final innings of Game 6, perhaps one of the most well known game in the history of baseball. I’ll never forget what David said when the ball rolled under Bill Buckner’s glove and through his legs. While the rest of the country jumped onto their couches in frustration, no doubt unleashing the greatest collective utterance of profanity in the history of America, David sat down in his chair with his hands on the side of his cheeks and said “They’re so tired. They’re just so tired.”

His knee-jerk reaction was always compassion.

This love for the underdog, this belief in the marginalized was perhaps best symbolized in David’s love for the Cleveland Indians, a team he routed for both in their struggling seasons as well as in their struggling seasons. But David’s love for Cleveland was only a symbol of something deeper. It was a symbol of his love for the people of Haiti, South Korea, Mexico, Honduras and so many other countries where he was primarily interested in reaching the poor and hungry.

And his love for the underdog came to bless you and me, too. When David and I first met, I was going into Junior High. A friend and I would break into a house across the street from time to time, stealing change off a jar on our neighbor’s dresser. We were shoplifting fishing equipment from the local sporting-goods store. It was David that invited me to a book study at the church, early in the morning before school. We studied Calvin Millers The Singer, The Song and the Finale. Not too long after David asked me to write a guest column for the youth-group newsletter, a publication that went out to about fifty people, printed on the Xerox machine behind the church secretary’s desk. But it didn’t matter to me. I was published. David couldn’t have been more proud of me. When people ask today why I am a writer, I tell them about David Gentiles, about how if it weren’t for David, I doubt I would have ever been introduced to books, or started writing in the first place. I write today because when I was a kid it made David Gentiles proud.

When I found out David had passed, I grieved the fact I wouldn’t have him to turn to whenever I do something good. He’s the first person I want to tell, because he never reprimanded you for bragging, he only laughed and squinted his eyes and told you you did good. I never knew how much that meant to me until it was taken away.

And I’m not alone. If you look closely, you’ll find David thanked in innumerous books, you’ll see his name in the liner notes of CD’s. David didn’t like the spot light, Instead, he was a spolt-light that shone on the people around him. He lifted them up. He was their biggest fan. He believed in them when nobody else would or could.

I confess I often wondered why David never wrote a book of his own. He had enormous talent and a heart that networked effortlessly amongst the marginalized and the powerful alike. He could have sold a million books. I’d talk to him from time to time about these things and he’d smile and say he might have an idea or two, if he only had time to get around to it. And what was he doing with his time? He was showing up the concerts by The Daylights or Andy Davis, he was promoting the new Bob Bennet record or gathering up a group to go out to Billy Crockett’s ranch for a show. He was sending me Grace Pettis’ CD’s or telling us about Rick Diamond’s new book. He was too busy shining the spotlight on everybody else to bring any attention to himself. I don’t say this because David would want us to feel shame or guilt. I say this to say thank you. Thank you David for believing in us, cheering us on and even showing us the way. And thank you for giving us a perspective on love worth writing about, and a friendship worth dedicating our work to.

But all along, David was the one creating the great work of art. Perhaps he didn’t know he was doing it. All the great artists are hardly aware of what they are creating, or that they are creating at all. They lose themselves in their loves and passions. I confess I spent time wondering whether or not David was getting robbed. I watched him give his life away. I watched him live in rental houses, drive old cars, house people without charging them rent. I watched him wear the same work-boots day after day and I wondered why he didn’t use that incredible ability to make people comfortable to sell something. Who wouldn’t have bought a house from David Gentiles? He could have been a rich man.

I know now what I was secretly wondering was whether or not love could win. I was doubtful that a person who didn’t comodify his experiences to barter for status would leave this world with any status at all. But it’s obvious today that all along, David was right. His intuition was right.

The whole time David was building us. We are all he cared about. Us. Bringing us together, introducing us to each other, shining a spot light on our gifts and our talents, on our hurts and our needs so that this community of common humanity could find in each other the love for which we were bartering. I don’t know how David Gentiles saw through it all. There seemed to be little fog in his world, there seemed to be clarity.

It should be said, however, there was a hierarchy in David’s love. His girls were first. I remember visiting him here in Austin a couple years ago. We were at a Chuy’s restaurant not far from here, and he was asking questions trying to catch up on my life. We started talking about relationships, about marriage. I asked David, quite seriously, whether the hardships he’d encountered in his own marriage were worth it. David got very quiet and his eyes started to water. Tears rolled down his cheek and he brushed them away. He looked at me and spoke in a voice that neared an ultimatum. There is nothing I would change, He said, Nothing. There is nothing I wouldn’t go through to have the girls in my life.

Ariele, Hannah and Cala, it needs to be said publicly what you privately know to be true, that there may be no father who loved his children more than your father loved you. Only the God who mysteriously defines love and is love could keep him from your future, from your weddings, from the birth of your children. David has left for you a foundation upon which you will build your lives, and an army of men who, though even collectively could not account for your fathers affection, will continue his devotion.

Perhaps without knowing it, he was saying something central with his life. He’d found a home at Journey, another brother in Rick Diamond. He’d found a pulpit from which to preach a sermon with his life. His source text may have well been Galatians Chapter Five.

“But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control.”

I can’t think of a person through whom more love grew, more joy at your walking through the door, more peace with a simple life, more patience within the chaos that follows broken people, more kindness in the face of injustice in Haiti, more goodness as he cared for his daughters, more gentleness as he listened to your troubles, or more self control at the sometimes awkward and worldly institution of the church.

His sermon, then, was Christ. It’s clear now. Like Christ, he created the church to get to people. He never wrote a book. He leaves behind no home, and few possessions. His passing was untimely and seemingly unjust. He spent his life ushering people home, standing in as a father, a shepherd, a brother and a friend.

It’s our only comfort, then, that David and Christ are together now. They have everything in common.

David Gentiles, we love you. We are so grateful for you. We will see you soon. Thank you for pointing us home.

July 20, 2010

Born-again rebel Don Miller reveals 'best sermon I ever heard'
By John Blake, CNN

Donald Miller's "Blue like Jazz" catapulted him to fame

Pastor: Book answered "profound need for honesty"

Miller broke into homes and shoplifted during youth

Unusual man transformed Miller with an invitation

(CNN) -- Donald Miller sat alone in a hotel room and cried.

Words needed to be written, questions answered. But Miller struggled to absorb what he felt; he was still in shock.

Miller had inspired many with his words. His Christian memoir, "Blue like Jazz," sold a million copies. He was a sought-after speaker. He had been dubbed the voice of a new generation of evangelicals.

Before that, though, Miller was an angry teenager and petty thief who blamed himself for his father's absence. Then one day he met an unusual man.

"Within a few minutes, you knew deep in your heart that he's for you, and he wants you to succeed," Miller recalls.

Miller was crying because soon he would reveal what had taken him years to realize. He didn't start writing about God to help people. He wrote to make one man proud.

Miller's 'messy' life

Don Miller was having breakfast with a leader in a Christian evangelism group one day when a fan of "Blue Like Jazz" stopped by their table.

The fan breathlessly asked Miller what inspired him to write his book.

"I needed to pay the rent," Miller said.

It's that lack of pretense that draws young Christians to Miller, says Dan Hardaway, the Campus Crusade for Christ leader who was there that day.

"He's not your powerful preaching pastor. He's a storyteller who says this is something to think about."

The 38-year-old Miller is tall and soft-spoken, with broad shoulders. When he stops by a Georgia church for a lecture, he's wearing jeans and green cowboy boots. He has no entourage.

Though he's become a regular at Christian conferences, he tries to spend chunks of his time outside church.

"Sunday morning church service is not an enormous priority; spending time with other believers is," he says. "Some people associate Sunday morning with God. One of the things I associate with God is a sunrise. How many sunrises have you missed over the years, and God created that?"

When "Blue Like Jazz" was published in 2003, Miller was an unknown freelance writer living in Portland, Oregon. The book made him a Christian celebrity. It may soon make him a star. A movie is being made about the book with Miller in the central role.

Miller writes about growing up in a Southern Baptist church near Houston, Texas, before attending a liberal college in Oregon.

The book's tone is introspective, lyrical, irreverent and brutally honest (one reviewer compared it to "Anne Lamott with testosterone"). Miller writes about everything from wetting the bed until he was 10 to his difficulties dating.

Miller appeals to evangelicals because there is a "profound starvation for honesty," says Brian McLaren, author of "A New Kind of Christian."

Much of Christian contemporary writing is shaped by religious broadcasting.

"What sells radio and television time is sentimentality and promises of easy answers," McLaren says. "He is honest about his pain and his doubts and his life being messy. But he's also honest about his hope and faith."

Christians have been writing about their messy lives since St. Augustine's "Confessions" in the fourth century. But Miller adds another dimension: He writes about how growing up without his father left a psychological void.

"Right now I'm sitting in the back of a tour bus, on a 65-city bus tour where lots of people come out to hear whatever my new book is about," he writes in "Father Fiction," his latest book. "But in so many ways, I'm still that kid, not sure exactly how to be emotionally intimate with a girl without feeling weak, not sure my work is good enough, not sure if the people who are clapping would really like me if they got to know me."

Miller is not content to write about that void, though. He created "The Mentoring Project," a program that offers mentors to kids without fathers. He contends that men who grow up without fathers are more predisposed to prison and brutalizing women.

The Mentoring Project has attracted so much attention that Miller was asked by the White House to join a presidential task force on fatherhood.

Miller accepted that invitation -- and another that was far more personal. He met his biological father.

Miller says his mother and father divorced when he was a kid and his mother never talked about his father. He blamed himself for his father's disappearance.

"I was afraid he'd rejected me for a reason, that he somehow knew I'd grown up and become fat."

He had his father's number for two months before he finally called him. When he drove to his house, a big man opened the door and hugged Miller.

"I'm sorry," he said as a tear rolled down his cheek. "Do you forgive me?"

Miller said he did.

"It was very easy because I had never really held anything against him in the first place," he said. "He left so early that he was just a stranger in my life."

But the son could see himself in his father's smile. A copy of one of his books was on the dining room table.

'Nobody had ever said I was good at anything'

Miller's meeting with his biological father might have gone better than anticipated for another reason -- another man had already stepped into the void.

That man was a pastor.

David Gentiles didn't look the part. He wore work boots, drove a creaky Ford pickup and wore a chewed-up Cleveland Indians baseball cap more than he wore pastor's robes.

A Cajun from Louisiana, Gentiles stood only 5-foot-5 but he loved big hugs, laughed loudly and cried openly.

Gentiles, Miller said, "taught me more about Jesus than anybody I knew."

When Gentiles was hired as a youth minister, Miller had just started junior high school and was filled with adolescent angst. He broke into people's homes, shoplifted and declared Christianity was for "the intellectually naive."

"I could have easily ended up in prison," Miller would write later.

He didn't like men in authority. He thought the senior pastor at his church was controlling.

Gentiles, though, didn't tell Miller what to do. He showed him what he could be.

Gentiles had a genius for seeing potential in people.

He once let a man who was unsure about pursuing the ministry stay at his home rent-free. He corralled groups to attend the concerts and book readings of Christian artists he befriended.

He was the kind of guy who showed up to help people move, always rooted for the underdog, and read his Bible so much that he could fold it like a magazine.

"Being friends with David was an uneven deal," Miller said. "You could not love him like he loved you."

When a friend was critically injured in a car crash, Gentiles drove 200 miles to stand at the man's hospital bed. He told him friends and family were praying for him.

"We will not let you die," Gentiles said.

When the man revived and recounted a vision of visiting heaven, Gentiles persuaded him to write about his experiences. That man, Don Piper, would write, "90 Minutes in Heaven," now an evangelical classic.

Gentiles did something similar with Miller: He convinced him he had something to say.

Gentiles wrote a column for the church newspaper, but asked Miller if he wanted to fill in for him.

Miller warned he wasn't going to be a "pawn of The Man" and write church propaganda.

"Would never ask you to compromise," Gentiles said.

Miller's first essay told the story of a girl who sung "His Eye is on the Sparrow" at a high school talent show and faced a chorus of boos. The girl may have been teased, he wrote, but the angels applauded, and their opinions matter more "because angels can fly."

The essay was a hit, with church leaders and Gentiles. The girl in the talent show cried when Miller showed her the column.

Miller felt like he had been given wings.

Gentiles asked Miller to write more. He fanned Miller's desire by calling to tell him when yet another person praised his writing.

"This," he would tell Miller as he held up another letter, "is a big deal." He told him he had a gift for writing about "the heart of our faith."

The impact was monumental.

"Nobody said I was good at anything. This was the first time tasting that. It was like water for thirst."

His fingerprints are all over Miller's life

Gentiles' did more than encourage Miller; he shaped his life. The fingerprints of his mentor are all over the pages of his books and his life.

"He was the biggest factor" in his decision to start The Mentoring Project, Miller said. "I realized that kids needed more than a book, they needed a friend. And in my life that friend was David Gentiles."

Gentiles also shaped Miller's theology.

Defining Miller as a conservative or progressive Christian is difficult. He's a bit of both.

Miller once ended an interview with a journalist by sharing the Gospel. And he once wrote that in all of his readings, "I don't find anyone more noble than Jesus."

But he also attended a Unitarian church where "they freely and openly accepted everybody the church didn't seem to accept," he wrote in "Blue Like Jazz."

Miller, in fact, has become something of an evangelical rebel. Critics have dismissed him for being too vague on issues like gay marriage and abortion.

Devotion to Jesus, not dogma, is what defines a Christian, Miller wrote in "Blue Like Jazz."

"The most important thing that happens within Christian spirituality is when a person falls in love with Jesus."

Gentiles, too, wasn't interested in theological jousting.

He left a Southern Baptist church and ultimately joined the Journey IFC (Imperfect Faith Community) church in Austin, Texas, where people sat on sofas instead of pews and the only church mission statement was love Jesus and love your neighbor as yourself.



"David would not be interested in a conversation about theology and neither would I," Miller said. "It seems like a distraction in a way if it's not about Jesus and it's not about people."

Saying goodbye

When Miller became a successful writer, Gentiles cheered him on as if he was still the uncertain teenager. He would tell friends to read Miller's books and take groups to readings.

"Oh my God, he talked about Miller all the time," said Rick Diamond, co-pastor of Journey church in Austin with Gentiles. "He talked about him like a proud dad."

Miller returned Gentiles' praise in an unusual way.

When he published "Blue Like Jazz," he dedicated the book to Gentiles. But he didn't tell him because he said it would have been an intimate moment "I didn't know to navigate."

Gentiles learned about the dedication from others. He was stunned, said Ariele Gentiles, the pastor's oldest daughter.

"He thought it was hilarious," Ariele said. "He didn't see himself as a mentor. He thought he was doing what he was supposed to be doing."

On December 14, 2009, Gentiles was lifting weights in Austin when he suffered a heart attack. He died four days later. He was 58.

Miller heard the news by phone at his home in Portland, Oregon. He paced every room as he digested the news and prayed for Gentiles.

The pastor's daughters asked him to deliver the eulogy.

He spent a week trying to write it. But he didn't finish until the night before the funeral. It was held at a baseball stadium because Gentiles' church wasn't big enough to accommodate the mourners, and Gentiles loved baseball.

Miller stepped before a microphone at home plate and looked at hundreds of Gentiles' friends in the bleachers.

"I write today," he said, "because when I was a kid, it made David Gentiles proud."

Gentiles never wrote a best-seller. He was not a sought-after speaker. No one called him the voice of a new generation of evangelicals.

"But if it's true a person's life is a sermon, David Gentiles preached the best sermon I've ever heard," Miller said.

Seven months after he said goodbye to his friend, Miller still talks about Gentiles in the present tense. He misses him the most when good fortune comes his way and he realizes he can no longer call Gentiles.

"I'm never going to hear him say I'm proud of you again."

No one could replace his father, but Gentiles came close.

"I'd love to have another hour with him."

July 19, 2010

DRASTIC RADICALS NEEDED
by A. W. Tozer

Great industrial concerns have in their employ men who are needed only when there is a breakdown somewhere. When something goes wrong with the machinery, these men spring into action to locate and remove the trouble and get the machinery rolling again.

For these men a smoothly operating system has no interest. They are specialists concerned with trouble and how to find and correct it.

In the Kingdom of God things are not too different. God has always had His specialists whose chief concern has been the moral breakdown, the decline in the spiritual health of the nation or the Church. Such men were Elijah, Jeremiah, Malachi, and others of their kind who appeared at critical moments in history to reprove, rebuke, and exhort in the name of God and righteousness.

A thousand or ten thousand ordinary priests or pastors or teachers could labor quietly on, almost unnoticed, while the spiritual life of Israel or the Church was normal. But let the people of God go astray from the paths of truth, and immediately the specialist appeared almost out of nowhere. His instinct for trouble brought him to the help of the Lord and of Israel.

Such a man was likely to be drastic, radical, possibly at times violent, and the curious crowd that gathered to watch him work soon branded him as extreme, fanatical, negative. And in a sense they were right. He was single-minded, severe, fearless, as these were the qualities the circumstances demanded. He shocked some, frightened others, and alienated not a few, but he knew Who had called him and what he was sent to do. His ministry was geared to the emergency, and that fact marked him out as different, a man apart.

To such men as this The Church owes a debt too heavy to pay.
The curious thing is She seldom tries to pay him while he lives, but the next generation builds his sepulcher and writes his biography, as if instinctively and awkwardly to discharge an obligation the previous generation to a large extent ignored.

Such a man as this is not an easy companion. The professional evangelist who leaves the wrought-up meeting as soon as it ends to hurry over to the most expensive restaurant to feast and crack jokes with his sponsors will find this man something of an embarrassment, for he cannot turn off the burden of the Holy Ghost as one would turn off a faucet. He insists upon being a Christian all the time, everywhere; and again, that marks him out as different.

Toward him it is impossible to be neutral. His acquaintances are divided pretty neatly into two classes, those who love him with all admiration, and those who hate him with perfect hatred!

July 16, 2010

When sharing the gospel in Israel, we have to deal with the question of whether we "keep the commandments." When religious Jews say, "commandments," they mix together the biblical commandments and the added rabbinic commandments. If we say "No," we have lost the authority of the scriptures. If we say "Yes," they ask about which "halacha" (rabbinic laws) we keep.

Our answer to this question has to be an unequivocal "Yes," but then we need to immediately explain that we have a different method of doing so. The first difference is that we accept biblical commandments as authoritative, but not rabbinic commandments. When I explained this on Israeli television, the interviewer readily understood our position. The discussion then opened up into many deeper issues. (He thought we were like the Karaites, an ancient sect of Judaism that receives scriptures as authoritative but not halacha.)

Original Context

Biblical commandments, which were given several thousand years ago, cannot be fulfilled in a vacuum. The commandments were given as part of a four-fold set:

1. The Angel of YHVH (who wrote the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai)
2. The commandments themselves (with different levels of importance Matthew 23:23)
3. The blood sacrifices (which provided forgiveness when laws were transgressed)
4. The Holy Spirit (to guide and empower the people to fulfill the Law Numbers 11:25-29, Romans 8:2-4)

As Messianic Jews we have come to understand that the Angel of the Lord is often Yeshua, that the commandments of love and morality take priority over those of ritual symbolism, that the crucifixion of Yeshua has given the full meaning to the sacrifices, and that the Holy Spirit has come to dwell inside us. This perspective gives balance to applying the commandments in our daily life of faith.

In the New Covenant the law has been written on our hearts (Jeremiah 31:31); therefore our method of keeping commandments is internally motivated, with emphasis on the "heart" meaning of the commandments, and much flexibility concerning external details of ritual.

Rabbinic Judaism endeavors to keep the commandments, but has taken them out of context. The Torah itself remains the same. However, halachic laws replace the leading of the Holy Spirit, the rabbis replace the Messiah, and blood atonement is generally missing.

One of my sons was recently sharing the gospel with a religious Jew, and when asked whether we keep the commandments, he said, "Yes, but we have a different way of applying them." He came home and reported, "Dad, this really worked to open a serious discussion on the true meaning of faith and the Messiah."

Sabbath Laws

The basis of all moral commandments is the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments are found in three places in the Torah: Exodus 20, Leviticus 19, and Deuteronomy 5 - all in slightly different forms. The commandment that causes the most argument is the Sabbath. Rabbinic Judaism can be obsessive at times regarding Sabbath laws. For example, there is a disagreement as to whether it is allowable to tear toilet paper on the Sabbath - and therefore some groups use toilet paper "pre-separated" into small sections for the Sabbath.

[Once Joe Shulam was teaching on Talmud and came across a passage which indicated that the sin of the golden calf took place on the Shabbat. An elderly religious Jewish woman in attendance called out, "No that couldn't be!" Joe asked her why. She replied, "They were Jews weren't they?" In recounting this story, Joe and I laughed so hard we cried. I guess you have to be Jewish to "get" the joke. Her point was: adultery, idolatry, occult, and rebellion - that's understandable; but breaking the Sabbath - God forbid!]

Yeshua's Law

There are thousands of pages of rabbinic literature about Sabbath laws. Yeshua summarized His halacha in three simple rules:

Mark 2:27 - The Sabbath was made for man.

Yeshua returns to the original purpose of the Sabbath. It was designed to be a weekly release from the curse of the sin of Adam. It was to be a taste of the millennial kingdom to come. It was a time to rest from the things of this world and turn our hearts to the Lord.

Mark 2:28 - The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.

Yeshua refers to Himself as the final authority of how to keep the Sabbath. It was He in the form of the Angel/YHVH who wrote the Sabbath commandment in the first place. The rabbis say that it is impossible to keep commandments without supervision. Everyone needs a rabbi to instruct them on how to fulfill the details. If you have a rabbi's instruction, then you will have no doubts of whether you have acted correctly. Yeshua is our rabbi, and we fulfill the Sabbath according to His instructions.

Mark 3:4 - It is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.

Yeshua reiterates that moral law overrides ritual law. He reminds us that correct interpretation of the law demands simple morality, logical discernment, and a healthy approach to human life.

I reject the position that traditional Jews keep the commandments and Messianic Jews do not. We do keep God's commandments, but seek to do so by restoring their original meaning in the light of the New Covenant. Much of Christianity has dismissed the commandments of God by theological excuses; much of Judaism has distorted the commandments of God by ritual traditions.

Let us walk in the balance of salvation by grace and the obedience of faith under the lordship of Yeshua.

By Asher Intrater

July 15, 2010

Superglue Your Marriage

Dennis Rainey


When two people get married, they have high expectations about their relationship. An unspoken assumption by each one is that the other will "meet me halfway."

When Barbara and I received premarital counseling from our friends and mentors Don and Sally Meredith, they warned us that we had been thoroughly indoctrinated in the world's plan for marriage. They called it the 50/50 Plan, which says, "You do your part, and I'll do mine." This concept sounds logical, but couples who use it are destined for disappointment and failure.

We spent the first year and a half of our marriage in Boulder, Colorado, where the winters are cold and electric blankets are standard equipment for survival. I can recall how both of us enjoyed sliding into those toasty-warm sheets after the electric blanket had thawed them. However, we couldn't always remember to turn off all the lights. We would snuggle in, and Barbara would say, "Sweetheart, did you remember to turn off all the lights?"

I would hop out of our comfy bed and run barefoot through the 55-degree apartment, turning off light after light. It didn't happen that often, so I didn't mind until one night when I dropped into bed totally exhausted. Just as I slipped into the third stage of anesthesia, Barbara gave me a poke and said, "Sweetheart, aren't you going to turn off the lights?"

I groaned, "Honey, why don't you turn off the lights tonight?"

Barbara replied, "I thought you would because my dad always turned off the lights."

Suddenly, I was wide awake. It dawned on me why I had been suffering occasional minor frostbite on my feet. I shot back, "But I'm not your dad!"

The expectations Barbara and I brought to marriage set us up to buy into the 50/50 Plan. Barbara was sure that I would do my part and meet her halfway by always getting up to turn off the lights. On the night I flatly refused, I was pushing her to do her part and meet me halfway.

Why the 50/50 Plan fails

Our disagreement revealed the biggest weakness of the 50/50 Plan: It is impossible to determine if your spouse has met you halfway. Because neither of you can agree on where halfway is, each is left to scrutinize the other's performance from a jaded, often selfish perspective.

Many times in a marriage, both partners are busy, overworked, and feel taken for granted. The real question isn't who faced the most pressure that day. The important issue is how do you build oneness and teamwork instead of keeping score and waiting for the other person to meet you halfway.

The 50/50 Plan is destined to fail for several reasons:

Acceptance is based on performance. Many people unknowingly base their acceptance of their spouses on performance. Performance becomes the glue that holds the relationship together, but it isn't really glue at all. It's more like Velcro. It seems to stick, but it comes apart when a little pressure is applied. What a marriage needs is superglue—but more on that later.
Giving is based on merit. With the "meet me halfway" approach, a husband would give affection to his wife only when he felt she had earned it. If she always cooked tasty meals and balanced the checkbook then he would drop her a few crumbs of praise and loving attention. She, in turn, would lavish affection and praise only when he vacuumed the carpet and always arrived home on time.
Motivation for action is based on how each partner feels. As a newlywed, it's easy to act sacrificially because the pounding heart and romantic feelings fuel the desire to please. But what happens when those feelings diminish? If you don't feel like doing the right thing, perhaps you won't do it at all. I didn't feel like turning off the lights that night at our apartment, so I didn't.
Each spouse has a tendency to focus on the weaknesses of the other. Ask a husband or wife to list his or her spouse's strengths in one column and the weaknesses in another, and the weaknesses will usually outnumber the strengths five to one.
Ultimately, the world's plan, the 50/50 performance relationship, is destined to fail because it is contrary to God's plan.

Apply the superglue

What a marriage needs is the superglue of Philippians 2:3: "Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind let each of you regard one another as more important than yourselves." It's what we refer to as the 100/100 Plan, which requires a 100 percent effort from each of you to serve your spouse.

The Bible describes this plan well in Matthew 22:39: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." There's no closer neighbor than the one you wake up to each morning! And since most of us love ourselves passionately, we are well on the way to implementing the 100/100 Plan if we take a similar approach to loving our spouses.

Start by stating the 100/100 Plan like this: "I will do what I can to love you without demanding an equal amount in return." In marriage you will hear a voice that says, Why are you making the bed this morning when she wouldn't bring you a soft drink last night? Or, Why should I not buy this outfit when he spent fifty dollars last weekend on golf? That voice has to be silenced if you are to live out the 100/100 Plan. Yes, there will be times when one person appears to get the advantage in the relationship. But love requires sacrifice. Stick with the 100/100 Plan and you will see increasing cooperation and intimacy in your marriage.

A bit of grace always helps too. Sometimes a couple can make issues out of things that really don't matter. Maybe we had parents who did that as we grew up, but that's not the type of person I want to be or one I'd enjoy living with. Barbara and I have learned over the years to let a lot slide; we don't take issue or talk about many minor disappointments.

Marriage is the union of two imperfect people who in their selfishness, sinfulness, and demands of each other will cause disappointment and hurt. You must lay aside those difficulties and hold fast to forgiveness, love, and Christ's command to love even those who don't at times appear to love you.

You will never have all of your expectations met in marriage on this fallen planet. But if you concentrate on implementing the 100/100 Plan, your life will be so full of satisfaction that you may not care.

Reprinted by permission. Starting Your Marriage Right by Dennis and Barbara Rainey, ©2000, Thomas Nelson, Inc. Nashville, Tennessee. All rights reserved.

Dennis Rainey is president of FamilyLife.

July 14, 2010

Your Most Important Conversation
Each week, debrief with yourself and God. Here's how.
Gordon McDonald

In the year 1801, William Wilberforce, a member of the English Parliament and leader of the anti-slavery forces in the British Empire, passed through a severe spiritual crisis.

The core issue? Political ambition. Had he mishandled the experience, it is possible that the history of 19th-century England would have been quite different.

Wilberforce's struggle began when a general election produced a new prime minister, Henry Addington. The banter in the streets was that Wilberforce was on Addington's A-list of possible cabinet members. Biographer Garth Lean writes that Wilberforce was sucked into the speculation and, for a while, could think of nothing else. Later, recounting those days, Wilberforce described himself as "intoxicated (with) risings of ambition."

Many of us who have experienced the privileges of leadership understand such "risings" well, and ambition is just one of them. You can put abuse of power on a "risings list" along with anger, competitiveness, integrity issues, and moral temptation. And that's just the beginning. When we leaders get enamored by a fantasy or an egregious attitude about someone or something, it's hard to stop them. They almost never stop by themselves.

For Wilberforce, the great seduction was ambition. Many leaders know what it is like to be mesmerized by the lure of something bigger, more influential. Usually it's followed by the temptation to manipulate people and processes to grasp for whatever it is that the ego desires.

It was on a Sunday when Wilberforce finally confronted his ambition. At the end of a day of worship and solitude, Wilberforce wrote, "Blessed be to God for the day of rest and religious occupation wherein earthly things assume their true size. Ambition is stunted." The crisis was addressed.

In this brief comment, William Wilberforce references one of the great secrets of his personal life: his commitment to weekly withdrawals from the wild scramble of public life so that he could engage in worship, connection with a small circle of close friends, and quiet reflection.

It's the third of these three activities—reflection—that fascinates me most about Wilberforce. Reflection is an inner conversation—discourse one generates with oneself and with God. During inner conversation, your engagement with other people is suspended. There's a time to love, to serve, to care for other people. But a time of inner conversation is personal and private.

Engaging in inner conversation

Withdrawal for inner conversation parallels the priority flight attendants express when passengers on a plane are told that, if the oxygen masks appear, they should put theirs on first before helping others. Counter-intuitive, especially for mothers, but thoroughly logical.

Writer Anthony Bloom described his father as a man who knew inner conversation well. When he felt the need to do his own soul-work, he would sometimes tack a sign to his front door: "Don't go to the trouble of knocking. I am at home, but I will not answer the door."

This is not easy for those of us who are people-pleasers. We are suckers for knocks on our front door.

In the Scriptures, you get a sense of inner conversation when, in the Psalms, the writer quizzes his deeper self: "Why are you so downcast, O my soul?" Or when the writer invites God's attention: "Search me, O God, and examine my thoughts."

Sometimes inner conversation originates with God. You see it in the words God uses to caution Cain: "Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast?" You see it in the question God asks when Elijah flees to the wilderness in fear of Jezebel: "Elijah, what are you doing here?" Then saying, "Slow down, sleep, eat, drink. And then tell me again how you got here." What follows is a fascinating inner conversation in which Elijah's inaccurate perspective on things is repaired.

Paul is probably referring to inner conversation when he speaks of his "thorn in the flesh" and his frustration with it. "Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away." But God didn't.

During his many years a public servant, Wilberforce rarely deviated from his Sabbath commitment to this inner conversation. And on the particular Sunday when he dealt with his ambition, he demonstrated why this discipline of the calendar is so important. Had he used the day for other purposes, there is no telling how his life might have gone wrong.

Wilberforce not only set aside Sundays for inner conversation, but he usually began his working days in a similar but briefer way. Sometimes I call what he did on these mornings pushing the spiritual reset button or sweeping out the heart. Once Wilberforce said of these occasions, "In the calmness of the morning before the mind is heated and weary by the turmoil of the day, you have a season of unusual importance for communing with God and with yourself."

Garth Lean commentsnts, the day-to-day battle it was, more and more, these early morning hours … and his quiet Sundays that gave (Wilberforce) strength and perspective on himself and the world."

Wilberforce's habit of the heart has marked me greatly over the years. It has influenced my own commitment to early morning "Sabbaths" and the inner conversations I might otherwise ignore.

Why we neglect this Conversation

In my younger years as a pastor, I was often loaded with too much energy and too many ideas to actually believe that setting aside time for quiet inner conversation was useful. The newspaper, breakfast appointments, getting work done, seemed far more attractive. It was only as the evidence began to mount—fatigue, frustration, bad decisions, faulty wisdom—that I got the message. My priorities were out of alignment.

In my later years of Christian service, I've had the privilege of speaking to and teaching pastors from almost every denomination. I am usually not asked to talk about management or church growth or preaching. Rather, I'm most often asked to speak to the personal side of a leader's life, where the interior battles (like Wilberforce's) occur. Central to my presentation: the place of inner conversation and the question, "What's yours like?"

Did God Really Mean for Spiritual Leaders To Feel This Way?
At such conferences, in quiet encounters with men and women in leadership positions, I hear several recurrent themes, many of them alarming: "I am exhausted … I've run out of ideas … I don't know how much longer I can keep on doing this … It seems like everyone has a piece of me and there's nothing left for myself … I find myself running from people … My family is miserable … Porn (or sexual fantasy) is a problem … I am terribly disappointed in me … God seems a million miles away … It's not much fun anymore."

One day when I was at a New England conference center speaking on the ways in which we leaders order our private world, I found an old book describing the history of New England Baptists. In it I found a letter written in 1932 by a frustrated pastor to the executive ministry of his area:

"I have been in my present pastorate seven years. I need a change. My people want me to go, although they have not yet called on me and said so. Pretty soon they may get that blunt. Attendance is down; offerings are small. I'll candidate anywhere. Just get me the opportunity."

This man thinks the answer to his problems is a fresh start, perhaps a nicer home for his family, a board of elders or deacons who'll be nicer to him.

When I read a letter like this or have the kind of conversations I just described, I find myself asking, "Did God really mean for spiritual leaders to feel this way? I know that suffering is often a part of the call to ministry, but is this the way things are supposed to end up for so many? Or are these descriptions of pastoral life a result of neglecting the inner conversation?

Henri Nouwen admitted a similar disturbance about leaders when he wrote, "What prevents (leaders) from becoming dull, sullen, lukewarm bureaucrats, people who have many projects, plans, and appointments, but who have lost their heart somewhere in the midst of their activities?"

Admittedly, I may be the old guy—not unlike Nouwen in this sense—who worries too much. Perhaps I wrongly assume that most everyone is going to fall into some of the traps I occasionally fell into. But my worry increases when I see too many who have failed to take into account the indispensable need for a quiet dimension to the calendar in which inner conversation—with God, and, yes, with themselves—can happen. Lacking this, they lack resilience, sustainability, the capacity to continuously grow (or deepen) and provide spiritual leadership during the 50 or so years that God gives to most of us.

"The battle is won in the secret places of the will before God," wrote Oswald Chambers. "Never first in the external world. … Nothing has power over the (person) who has fought out the battle before God and won there."

This, of course, is what William Wilberforce was experiencing on those Sundays: an inner conversation in the secret places.

Among my most frequently-asked questions to men and women in leadership who are struggling with spiritual malaise is, "What does an ideal week look like for you? Describe for me the priority activities that fill your week." Usually, I hear a list of leader-like activities with which we are all familiar: staff meetings, sermon study, consultations with church leaders, training seminars, budget meetings, counseling appointments, long-range planning functions. Sometimes there is comment about physical exercise (that's good) and family functions (that's even "gooder"). But what is missing all too often? Any allusion to a personal Sabbath: those times for activities that enlarge and cleanse the soul, times for inner conversation.

"What do you do in Sabbath time?" I am sometimes asked. I disappoint, I suspect, when I evade the formulaic answer. I discarded the gimmicks a long time ago. They didn't work for me. What became more important was outcomes. What do I do? Simple: whatever it takes for a renewed sense of conversion to Christ, a deeper awareness of the biblical way, an assurance that God's grace and power remain with me.

When I ask many leaders if there is time in their calendars for the pursuit of such outcomes, I get these kinds of responses:

I'm just too busy.
I don't have the slightest idea what I'd do if I took the time.
My mind is too full of thought; I can't concentrate.
I'm an extravert. Being alone, being quiet, reflecting is not my thing.
I don't get any immediate result out of doing it.
It's boring.
Sometimes I've imagined Moses sitting in on a conversation when things like these were said. He was the leader who erected a tent called the Tent of Meeting at the edge of the camp where the Israelites stayed while Moses conferred with God on the mountain. When Moses went to that tent, we are told that "the Lord would speak to (him) face to face, as a man speaks with his friend." That sounds like inner conversation language to me

Although the God of the Bible is great and mysterious and cannot be described in human terms, here is an exceptional description of conversation between Moses and the God of Israel. It dares to describe God in intimate human language. But the purpose of the writer is not to make God seem like one of us, but to express the way of inner conversation in which Moses is able to recalibrate his life as a leader.

I find it interesting that the story of Moses' tent is preceded by his devastating experience of finding his people dancing around a golden calf, a reversion to Egyptian paganism. Surprised by their behavior, he lost it. I suspect that he wanted to quit, to walk away. But based on the way the writer lined up these stories, I think we are being told that in that tent, Moses was able to say what he thought, ask about things he needed to know, and hear God renew his mission and his courage.

Moses had his tent (a certain space) and Wilberforce had his Sabbaths (a certain time). And both men renewed their strength as a result. They exemplify Paul's thought to the Corinthians when he wrote—and I use Eugene Peterson's genius for paraphrase here—"Test yourselves to make sure you are solid in the faith. Don't drift along taking everything for granted. Give yourselves regular checkups."

I have found the best way to enhance such a check-up, the inner conversation, is through questions. Questions are the extension of one's curiosity, and they work beautifully as one examines his/her own soul in the presence of the Lord.

Questions for inner Conversation

The questions I like most search one's heart just as the Psalmist mentions when he writes, "Search me!" They are meant to test the inner space of one's life and prompt conversation that leads to light.

Inner conversation begins for me by looking back over the time since my last Sabbath experience and reviewing the events that have occurred. Is there meaning in any of those events? Are there lessons to be learned, wisdom to be extracted?

My own theory is that very event, every human transaction in life, offers an insight. But it's often buried like gold or oil. It has to be discovered. Perhaps that's why busy people are impressive but often shallow. No time to mine the gold and drill the oil.

Here are far more "inner conversation starters" than you need, but these are some of the questions that begin to excavate the hidden gold:

What have been the beautiful moments in which God may have been revealing himself to me? And what have been the evil moments when the worst in me or in the larger world showed itself?
What happened this week that needs to be remembered, perhaps recorded in a journal so I can return to it in the future and recall the blessing (or the rebuke) of God? Making such a record is like those monuments and altars God had the Israelites raise up when great things worth remembering had happened.
What have my prevailing feelings been (and what are they at the present)? Has there been a preponderance of sadness, of fear, of anger, of emptiness? Or has it been a time where joy and enthusiasm has been the dominant mood?
What have been the "blessings," those acts of grace that have come through others or—as I perceive it—directly from God himself? Can I express praise and appreciation (sometimes even written in a thank-you note or journal)?
Have things happened for which I need to accept responsibility, perhaps leading to repentance? Why did they happen? Were they avoidable and how can they be prevented in the future?
What have been the thoughts that have been dominating my leader think-time? Noble thoughts? Escapist thoughts that woo me away from more important or challenging issues? Superficial thoughts that lead to nowhere?
Is there a possibility that I am living in denial of certain realities? Painful criticism, sloppy work, habitual patterns that are hurting me and others?
Are there any resentments or ill feelings toward others that remain unaddressed, unforgiven?
As a leader visualizing myself in the company of spouse, children, friends, colleagues: am I a pleasant person to be around? Are people challenged, elevated, enthused when I enter the room? As someone has observed, "Some people bring joy wherever they go; others bring joy when they go." Which am I?
What is God trying to say into my life today? Through Scripture? Through other readings? What has he been saying through those in my inner circle of relationships? Through critics? What insights swirl up and out of the deepest parts of my soul? Which of them needs to be repudiated, and which needs to be cultivated?
What are the possibilities in the hours ahead? Where might there be ambushes that would challenge character, reputation, well-being?
What are the things I might do and say that would make the people in my inner circle feel more loved and appreciated?
Am I mindful of the socially awkward, the poor, the suffering, the oppressed in my local world and in the larger world? Am I in tune with appropriate current events in the world and perceiving them through the lens of biblical perspective?
What specific steps will I take today to enhance growth as a follower of Jesus?
I like to ask one more question as part of my personal inner conversation. What if today is the day I meet Jesus face to face … either because he returns or because I am unexpectedly called into his presence? For a people who say we believe in eternal life, this is a rather significant question and should not be avoided.

I don't know whether William Wilberforce approached his quiet Sabbath hours with these kinds of questions. Perhaps he had a different, a better, way. What I do know is that in 1801, when he arrived at a potential turning point in his life, his ways of inner conversations were such that he avoided a terrible mistake. Ambition was "stunted."

Pascal, the French philosopher and inventor, wrote in his Pensees: "All the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber." I'm sure I'm taking it a bit out of context, but these words fit the point I am trying to make. Leaders who do not take the time, who do not feel the need, who do not think they are capable of inner conversation put themselves in enormous danger. Unacquainted with the inner person, they set themselves up for possible disaster.

For many years William Wilberforce enjoyed a friendship with John Newton, former slave trader and later man of God. Wilberforce was the politician, Newton the pastor. What they had in common was their faith and their belief that spiritual power was derived, first, from the activities of quiet inner conversation a man had with God (to quote Pascal) in his own private chamber.

Newton had his own ideas of what an inner conversation was like. In his biography of Newton, Jonathan Aitken describes how Newton reduced the core of his spiritual life into five principles he believed would guide him in his leadership with people and his walk with God. He determined:

To begin and end every day with God.
To peruse Scriptures with a diligence and attention suited to the dignity of the subject.
To spend the Sabbath entirely with the Lord.
To choose for my companions only good people from whom I may derive some improvement.
To become all things to all men in order that I may save some.
That will work.

Gordon MacDonald is editor at large of Leadership and interim president of Denver Seminary.

Copyright © 2010 by the author or Christianity Today International/Leadership Journal.

July 13, 2010

When We're Wronged
by Sarah Jennings, Crosswalk.com Family Editor

For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight. Heb 4: 12-13

She was pretty, charming, and funny. She appeared to be everything you could want in a woman. And she was after my man. With full knowledge of our relationship, this young woman zeroed in on my special someone. All while acting sweet as pie towards me.

There are few things in life that can turn an otherwise sane, amiable woman into fire-breathing, green-eyed, insecure monster - and another woman moving in on your guy is definitely one of those things.

How. Dare. She.

It's by God's grace that in my hot-blooded state I - did nothing. Oh, I still had plans to dislike this woman for a very long time. I dreamt up all sorts of scenarios where I wittily drew back the curtain on her true intentions. Where I triumphantly shamed her. But of course, I was too "virtuous" to actually follow through on such things. So, I managed to exert enough self control to avoid a regretful exchange.

Thankfully, God took this situation one step deeper by expanding my limited sense of virtue. I'd read about forgiveness, but this was a moment in my life where God clearly set a choice before me: She was wrong. I was right. Now - was I going to forgive her? Or was I simply going to look like I'd forgiven her?

One of the key aspects of Jesus' earthly ministry was His focus on that which is unseen - our hearts. This took many of his contemporaries by surprise. They were expecting an earthly king to save them from external problems. Yet Christ made it clear He came to elevate the old law beyond its legal purposes, and transform us from the inside out to prepare us for a kingdom not of this world.

You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. (Mt 5: 43-45)

Love your enemies. It sounds downright impossible. Yet God impressed two courses of action on my heart during that time that transformed my anger into Christ-like love.

First, although there really wasn't a productive opportunity to speak with this woman, every time I mentally began hopping down the angry bunny trail, I said, "God, I forgive her." Verbally expressing forgiveness diffused my anger, and helped me focus on God and His grace.

Second, as Christ asks of us in the Scripture above, I began praying for her. At first, my prayers came through gritted teeth, and teetered dangerously close to sounding something like, "Lord, smite my foe…" But after praying for her almost every day for several months, the Lord transformed my heart. I began to see this woman as God sees her. Truly, whatever brokenness inside her that led her to act in such a manner saddened God more than it could ever anger me.

I also became acutely aware that I, in my brokenness, had saddened God too. Suddenly, this woman wasn't my opponent, but a fellow sinner in need of grace and transforming love. Ultimately, this situation worked out for the best, and I ended up liking this individual.

Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us…

Forgiveness doesn't usually come easily. People are capable of tremendous evil far beyond my petty situation above, and depending on the wrong done, we may never realistically like a person. But with God's grace, forgiveness on our end is not only possible, but necessary.

Intersecting Faith & Life: Forgiveness involves letting go and allowing God to bring good out of a situation in His timing. Do you have unresolved hurts inflicted by another person? Entrust your hurts to God, and then ask God for a heart of forgiveness. If you've harmed another, take action to make things right.

July 12, 2010

Why Memorize Scripture? Six Reasons.
John Piper

First, a few testimonies: I have it third hand, that Dr. Howard Hendricks (of Dallas Seminary) once made the statement (and I paraphrase) that if it were his decision, every student graduating from Dallas Theological Seminary would be required to learn one thousand verses word perfect before they graduated.

Dallas Willard, professor of Philosophy at the University of Southern California, wrote, "Bible memorization is absolutely fundamental to spiritual formation. If I had to choose between all the disciplines of the spiritual life, I would choose Bible memorization, because it is a fundamental way of filling our minds with what it needs. This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth. That's where you need it! How does it get in your mouth? Memorization" ("Spiritual Formation in Christ for the Whole Life and Whole Person" in Vocatio, Vol. 12, no. 2, Spring, 2001, p. 7).

Chuck Swindoll wrote, "I know of no other single practice in the Christian life more rewarding, practically speaking, than memorizing Scripture... No other single exercise pays greater spiritual dividends! Your prayer life will be strengthened. Your witnessing will be sharper and much more effective. Your attitudes and outlook will begin to change. Your mind will become alert and observant. Your confidence and assurance will be enhanced. Your faith will be solidified" (Growing Strong in the Seasons of Life [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994], p. 61).

One of the reasons Martin Luther came to his great discovery in the Bible of justification by faith alone was that in his early years in the Augustinian monastery he was influenced to love Scripture by Johann Staupitz. Luther devoured the Bible in a day when people earned doctorates in theology without even reading the Bible. Luther said that his fellow professor, Andreas Karlstadt, did not even own a Bible when he earned his doctor of theology degree, nor did he until many years later (www.orlutheran.com/html/luthbibl.html). Luther knew so much of the Bible from memory that when the Lord opened his eyes to see the truth of justification in Romans 1:17, he said, "Thereupon I ran through the Scriptures from memory," in order to confirm what he had found.

So here are a few reasons why so many have viewed Scripture memorization as so essential to the Christian life.

1. Conformity to Christ
Paul wrote that "we all... beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another." If we would be changed into Christ likeness we must steadily see him. This happens in the word. "The LORD revealed himself to Samuel at Shiloh by the word of the LORD" (1 Samuel 3:21). Bible memorization has the effect of making our gaze on Jesus to be steadier and clearer.

2. Daily Triumph over Sin
"How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word... I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you" (Psalm 119:9, 11). Paul said that we must "by the Spirit... put to death the [sinful] deeds of the body" (Romans 8:13). The one piece of armor used to kill is the "sword of the Spirit," which is the word of God (Ephesians 6:17). As sin lures the body into sinful action, we call to mind a Christ-revealing word of Scripture and slay the temptation with the superior worth and beauty of Christ over what sin offers.

3. Daily Triumph over Satan
When Jesus was tempted by Satan in the wilderness he recited Scripture from memory and put Satan to flight (Matthew 4:1-11).

4. Comfort and Counsel for People You Love The times when people need you to give them comfort and counsel do not always coincide with the times you have your Bible handy. Not only that, the very word of God spoken spontaneously from your heart has unusual power. Proverbs 25:11 says, "A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver." That is a beautiful way of saying, When the heart full of God's love can draw on the mind full of God's word, timely blessings flow from the mouth.

5. Communicating the Gospel to Unbelievers Opportunities to share the gospel come when we do not have the Bible in hand. Actual verses of the Bible have their own penetrating power. And when they come from our heart, as well as from the Book, the witness is given that they are precious enough to learn. We should all be able to sum up the gospel under four main headings (1) God's holiness/law/glory; 2) man's sin/rebellion/disobedience; 3) Christ's death for sinners; 4) the free gift of life by faith. Learn a verse or two relating to each of these, and be ready in season and out of season to share them.

6. Communion with God in the Enjoyment of His Person and Ways The way we commune with (that is, fellowship with) God is by meditating on his attributes and expressing to him our thanks and admiration and love, and seeking his help in living a life that reflects the value of these attributes. Therefore, storing texts in our minds about God helps us relate to him as he really is. For example, imagine being able to call this to mind through the day:

The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever. He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us. As a father shows compassion to his children, so the LORD shows compassion to those who fear him. For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust. (Psalm 103:8-14)

I used the word "enjoyment" intentionally when I said, "communion with God in the enjoyment of his person and ways." Most of us are emotionally crippled — all of us really. We do not experience God in the fullness of our emotional potential. How will that change? One way is to memorize the emotional expressions of the Bible and speak them to the Lord and to each other until they become part of who we are. For example, in Psalm 103:1, we say, "Bless the LORD, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name!" That is not a natural expression for many people. But if we memorize this and other emotional expressions from the Bible, and say them often, asking the Lord to make the emotion real in our hearts, we can actually grow into that emotion and expression. It will become part of who we are. We will be less crippled emotionally and more able to render proper praise and thanks to God.

There are other reasons for memorizing Scripture. I hope you find them in the actual practice.

Still learning with you,

Pastor John

July 9, 2010

The following article is located at: http://www.kyria.com/topics/marriagefamily/marriage/communication/8.50.html

Would Somebody Please Explain My Husband?
One guy's take on why men act the way they do.

Ron R. Lee | posted 7/01/2001

A well-known Christian author and his wife once summed up their relationship in 13 words: "Put us together, and we add up to a fairly decent human being."

I enjoyed their self-deprecating sense of humor, and only later realized they were rephrasing a profound biblical truth: "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh" (Genesis 2:24).

When two people become one, they compensate for each other's deficiencies. If I were left to my own devices, for instance, I'd turn into the Tom Hanks character in Cast Away. But team me up with my wife, Jeanette, the Queen of Sociability, and I turn into a reasonably presentable human being.

While we husbands benefit greatly from being married, we often don't communicate it well. Women are into relational nuances—the meaning behind the meaning behind the meaning. Men basically wonder if there are any more mashed potatoes.

One night, Jeanette and I sat quietly, enjoying ourselves in the corner of a candle-lit restaurant. Then, out of nowhere, she looked into my eyes and said, "Let's talk about our relationship." It always makes me nervous when she says that.

Relationships are usually complex, and guys are pretty basic. A husband tends to think in concrete terms. Instead of pondering his marriage, he'll picture the woman he comes home to at night, the woman with whom he has children, the woman with whom he shares his bed. Call that a relationship if you want, but you'll just confuse your husband.

What else about your husband do you wish you understood? Let me toss out seven things that might help explain a few of your husband's odd behaviors.

1 A man does more talking—and listening—when he's unaware it's happening. Most guys don't overwhelm their wife with deep inner feelings! However, there's a way to get your husband to share what's going on inside. It involves talking to him the same way his buddies do—while doing something else. Men go fishing, watch a ball game, or help each other move a pool table down to the basement. And of course, they talk a lot while they're doing these things.

For Jeanette and me, all it took was building a wood rack together. I got out the lumber and power tools; Jeanette gathered the nails, screws, and tape measure. Amid the noise and sawdust, she told me she was struggling over whether we should make a long-distance road trip to visit her parents. I'd already told her I'd do whatever she decided, but Jeanette needed to talk out the options. While we built a rack to hold our firewood, we discussed the pros and cons. What else could I do? I had to hang around until we finished the wood rack.

Take it from me. If you start doing more stuff with your husband, you'll find he actually has a lot to say. And he'll listen a lot better, too.

2 If a man pauses before answering a question, that doesn't mean he's losing interest in the conversation. Guys really get into it when they're verbally sparring with their buddies, so you might wonder why your husband can't invest that kind of passion in sharing with you.

When a guy "shares" with his wife, he knows his every utterance carries a meaning even he doesn't realize. So he's extra careful about what he says. That explains the frequent pauses.

One night after dinner, Jeanette came back to the table and sat down as I was reading the newspaper. Jeanette wanted to talk about how I was dealing with our recent move. In the months since we'd left the Midwest, I'd been saying how thrilled I was to be living in Colorado. This was beginning to wear on Jeanette, who wondered if I still had a beating heart in my chest.

Finally, I laid the newspaper aside. "I don't miss the weather or the traffic," I told her. "But I do really miss Ed and Joann. We always had a great time when we got together. I hope they'll come visit us."

Jeanette tells me I revealed this sense of loss amid several pauses. She resisted the urge to hurry the conversation by guessing what I missed most. She told me later her patience paid off when I finally indicated I was hurting about some of the people we'd left behind.

(Note to any husband reading this article: If your wife sits down at the dinner table after the meal, lay down the newspaper. That's one of those silent signals we're supposed to pick up on.)

3 If your husband likes to hang around the house, he's actually paying you a compliment. Here's one way to tell if your husband thinks your marriage is going well. He won't work late unless he absolutely has to, and he won't overload his schedule with meetings and golf dates with his buddies. The reason? He'd rather be home with you.

Sounds good so far, right? But let's say you've had a terrible week, and as Friday approaches, all you can think about is getting out of the house for a quiet dinner and maybe even a movie. You can picture the restaurant, taste the appetizer, even smell the popcorn at the theater. But your husband gets home from work on Friday and all he wants to do is stay put. Before you take it personally, remember that if he wants to hang out at home, it doesn't mean he doesn't want to do something with you. It just means he wants to do something with you at home. I realize a steady diet of staying home eventually will drive you up the wall. But for now, take it as a compliment. Maybe next Friday he'll have more ambition.

4 When your husband's a little short with you, 9 times out of 10 it has nothing to do with you. Some things that really bug your husband are taxes, bills, his boss, and the ever-present threat of male pattern baldness. For me, the most frequent low-level life stress is automobile-related. Our cars break down with unnerving regularity.

One afternoon, Jeanette called me from work to say that when she pulled into her office parking lot, steam poured out from under our van's hood. I picked up some antifreeze, several jugs of water, and headed off to her office. Sitting at a red light, I made a mental list of what causes coolant to leak: a cracked radiator or heater hose, a bad water pump, or the worst possibility—a blown head gasket.

By the time I arrived at Jeanette's office, I'd worked myself into a lather over the likelihood this repair would drain us financially. That means I wasn't all smiles and affectionate greetings when Jeanette walked out to meet me. As I poured antifreeze into the radiator and watched a new green pool form on the ground, I asked Jeanette to follow me to the repair shop. Then I took off down the street.

Here's the significant thing about this story: Jeanette didn't take my fit of pique personally. She understood I was angry at the situation, not at her. (Now to any guy reading this: It was the head gasket. It set us back $1,800.)

So if your husband acts less than chummy and you wonder if it's something you said, think about what else has happened in his life. He probably had some huge, last-minute project dumped on his desk that afternoon. Or maybe he just opened the mail and looked at the VISA bill. You, he loves. The credit card bill he'd gladly burn at the stake.

5 The words husband and hint don't belong in the same sentence. I maintain there's a perfectly good explanation for why guys are clueless. It's because wives like to hint around at what they mean; then they wonder why their husbands aren't responding.

Take last Thanksgiving, for instance. Jeanette and I had a houseful of guests, some of whom were watching football in the family room. Being a good host, I figured I'd watch it with them. Just then, from the kitchen, Jeanette said, and I quote, "Ron." She used that tone that means I'd messed up—without specifying the infraction.

"Should I feed the fire?" I asked. That wasn't it. "Do you want me to help you get the dishes out?" Not that, either. "Is it time for me to take drink orders?" Wrong again. Finally, I hit on it. "You don't want me to watch football while other guests visit in the living room, do you?" Bingo! At last I'd guessed correctly. But it would have been less frustrating if Jeanette had just said, "I don't think you should watch football while the other guests entertain themselves in another room." If she'd uttered those words, I would have caught on. Honest.

6 Many men are clothing challenged. Forget those immaculately attired GQ guys; a chimpanzee would look great if he had a team of trained professionals picking out his clothes, too. Assuming you're married to a regular guy, chances are your husband suffers from a combination of fashion blindness and ensemble dyslexia. Sometimes we freeze up. Does this tie go with this jacket? Are these socks black or navy blue? If I wear the pink polo shirt, will other guys start asking me out?

I have a friend who had to make a big presentation at work, and he wanted to make a good impression. That morning, he noticed a new sweater hanging on his side of the closet and was overcome by a wave of gratitude. His wife, realizing the importance of this presentation, had been thoughtful enough to buy him a really nice sweater.

He wore the stylish garment to work, gave the presentation, and came home to tell his wife about it. She listened attentively, then asked, "But why did you wear my sweater?"

I'm not saying guys are clothing idiots; I'm just saying we can use a little help. If it weren't for our wives, we'd be giving people the fashion willies every time we left the house.

7 A guy likes to put disagreements behind him. Most guys think there's only one proven method of making up after an argument, and that involves getting physically close. My friend Michael speaks for a multitude of husbands when he says that as soon as the fight's over, physical contact with his wife helps him feel things are once again okay.

"I don't carry grudges," he says. "But Susan's different. When we strongly disagree about something, or when I've hurt her in some way, she feels distant from me, and it takes more time than I'd like to get close again. As for me, I can get close within minutes of a fight, even if it really hurt my feelings."

Michael's prescription for reconnecting after an argument: "Sex at a time like this? Sure!" To that, the men of the husband brotherhood add: "Why not?"

In the immortal words of Phil Callaway, author of I Used to Have Answers, Now I Have Kids (Harvest House): "We husbands have three desires in life: food, sex, and. … we can't think of the third thing. Seriously, a happy guy makes a great husband. And it doesn't take much to make us happy."

I can't speak for Phil, but I remember the third thing that keeps me happy. Every few weeks, I need Jeanette to tell me whether my brown loafers go with the khaki trousers or the navy blue pants. Every time she clarifies this for me, I'm a really happy man.

Ron R. Lee, a book editor, lives in Colorado with his wife, Jeanette, and their daughter, Jessi.

Copyright © 2001 by the author or Christianity Today International/Today's Christian Woman magazine.
Click here for reprint information on Today's Christian Woman.

July 8, 2010

Controlling Your Anger

by Crawford Loritts

It happened many years ago, but I still remember the lesson I learned from the near disaster in the Loritts home.

My wife, Karen, and I were arguing, and I had become very angry. I felt that she wasn't understanding what I was trying to tell her. We weren't shouting at each other, but the intensity level of the conversation had taken a decidedly upward turn.

I wanted to get out of our apartment to cool off, so I turned to walk out the door. As I did, I passed by our first child, Bryan, a toddler at the time, who was sitting in the middle of the living room floor. I walked out the door and slammed it behind me, and when I did the glass in the door shattered and sprayed around the living room floor.

When I heard the sound of the breaking glass, I felt a wave of panic as I remembered that Bryan was sitting close to the door. I spun around to see that my son was surrounded by shards of glass but that he miraculously was not injured. I can still see him sitting there, jagged pieces of glass mere inches from him.

Crawford, your outburst of anger could have hurt your son very badly, I thought.

I was so grateful that Bryan wasn't hurt by my tantrum. And I was grateful for the lesson this incident taught me. To this day, whenever I am tempted to engage in an outburst of anger, God brings that scene back to my mind.

We need to make sure we have control over our anger. Although some Bible teachers and preachers might assert that anger itself is a sin, it is a God-given emotion that has its place in a godly life, as long as it is kept under control. Anger becomes sin when we lose control of it—when it controls us.

This kind of anger—anger that is based on human emotion and not on godly wisdom—is poison to relationships of all kinds. Marriages, friendships, business partnerships, and parent-child relationships suffer and even die when uncontrolled anger is allowed to enter the picture. The apostle James had this to say about anger:

This you know, my beloved brethren. But everyone must be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger, for the anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God (James 1:19-20).
In other words, you can save yourself a lot of trouble if you keep your ears open, your mouth closed, and your temper under control.

We will keep our anger under control when we learn to lend an ear to a situation, then respond appropriately. When we keep quiet and patiently listen to the facts, we keep ourselves from flying off the handle, or reacting in unwarranted and ungodly anger. In short, we must make sure we respond to the facts and avoid reacting emotionally to what we see.

Before you allow yourself to get angry, take a deep breath, count the cost of the anger, submit your anger to the ruling of the Holy Spirit, then respond as He would have you respond. When you do these things, you'll find yourself wasting a lot less valuable time and emotion on useless anger.

July 7, 2010

World Challenge Pulpit Series
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Satan Is Out to
Destroy Your Faith!

A Message for Those Whose Faith is Being Tested

by David Wilkerson

June 7, 2010

Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompense of reward" (Hebrews 10:35). If you are a Christian, you are in a fierce war. In fact, you're in a lifeanddeath battle for your faith. Satan is determined to shipwreck and destroy the faith of all of God's elect. And the stronger your faith, the greater will be his attack against it.

You see, unshakable faith in the Lord causes hell to rage.
Nothing poses a greater threat to Satan's kingdom than a Christian who is unmovable in faith. Why? It is by faith and its released power that Satan's kingdom is subdued. By faith, righteousness is born and demonic fires are quenched.
God's promises are obtained and the mouths of lions are shut.

By faith, God's faithful escape the edge of the sword. Out of weakness they are made strong. They become brave in battle, turning the devil's army to flight. They endure mockery, beatings, stonings. If they are locked in jail they sing. Simply put, faith sustains those who possess it!

Paul warned Timothy that in times of trial some would cast aside their faith: "Some having put away concerning faith have made shipwreck" (1 Timothy 1:19). He added that Satan would attempt to "overthrow the faith of some" (2 Timothy 2:18). Therefore Paul charged Timothy to fight a determined warfare, "holding faith, and a good conscience" (1 Timothy 1:19).

The apostle Peter came under a ferocious attack against his faith. His trust in Jesus so enraged hell that Satan asked permission to sift him to see if he would stand. "Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren" (Luke 22:31-32).

Some reading this message
are in the storm of your life.

Jesus' disciples endured pounding waves in a stormtossed boat, while their Master lay fast asleep. Finally, as the storm threatened to overwhelm the boat, they cried out to Jesus, accusing him of not caring about their fate. "Master, careth thou not that we perish?" (Mark 4:38). Jesus calmed the storm but was incredulous at his disciples' lack of faith. He asked, "Why are ye so fearful? How is it that ye have no faith?" (4:40).

Maybe right now you are facing a terrible storm in life.
Your troubles seem only to accelerate: money problems, marriage problems, job troubles, enemies coming at you like pounding waves to sink you. A sea of trouble rages inside you, but the Lord seems to be sleeping through it all. Tell me, has your faith been sapped? Is it ebbing slowly away with each new disappointment? Do you say in your heart, "God, don't you care? Will you let me go down in this storm?"

It is for just such a time that Jesus spoke these awesome
words: "Shall not God avenge [protect] his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them? I tell you that he will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?" (Luke 18:78).

Note Jesus' question here: Will he find faith in his people as they endure days of darkness and oppression? In recent years I've wondered whether Jesus would ask such a question today. For decades multitudes flocked to churches. But what Jesus is really asking is, "Will the faith of these hold out when the shaking storms come?" Our troubles can be heaped so high, and the shaking of nations can come so swiftly, that some will lose hope and give up. I ask you: Will Jesus find faithfulness in your troubling hour?

God has given us a powerful
weapon to use against Satan's
attacks on our faith.

Here is our weapon: We are not to try to figure everything out. Rather, we are to set our eyes on "the great cloud of witnesses" already in glory who have made it through with their faith intact. "Wherefore seeing we also are encompassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us" (Hebrews 12:1).

What a picture. This verse depicts an army of victorious saints from every era, beholding us watchfully like a crowd in the bleachers. They're wearing crowns of righteousness and waving palms as they cheer us on in our race: "Run with patience! We fought to the death and didn't fall. God kept us, our faith prevailed. The truth works: We won! We are overcomers. So you keep on. You can overcome in hard times."

Noah is among this great cloud of witnesses. Think of how long his battle lasted. His testimony tells us, "I held on for 120 years in spite of violence, rampant sin and mockery.
You can overcome, too."

To hold onto faith in these present times, I believe we must be alert to three lies the enemy brings against us.

1. Satan misrepresents the
Lord's refining process.

All the prophets foretold of God's people going into the refiner's fire. "I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried" (Zechariah 13:9). "He is like a refiner's fire, and like fullers' soap: and he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness"
(Malachi 3:23).

When silver or gold is refined by fire, all dross comes to the surface. This includes all impurities, alloys, lesser metals, dirt, little spots and speckles of waste.

Likewise, as we sit under God's Word and let its light shine on our hearts, all impurities are brought to the surface.
Throughout this process, unbelief is being separated from us by the Lord's refining fire. Yet it is during such times, when God is purifying us, that Satan brings his worst lies to accuse us. He tries to place our focus on our impurities rather than on the Lord's unconditional love.

2. Satan tries to shipwreck
our faith by distorting these
loving chastenings of the Lord.

The devil will try to convince you that your present chastening is from God's displeasure at you. He wants you to believe it's all happening because of God's anger. But the New Testament speaks of chastisement as a kind of "educational correction." Consider this famous passage from
Hebrews:

"Despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him: for whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then ye are bastards, and not sons.

"Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live? For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness.

"Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but
grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby. Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees; and make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way; but let it rather be healed" (Hebrews 12:5-13).

Jesus spoke of chastisement when he declared to the apostle John, "As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent" (Revelation 3:19).

Likewise, the writer of Proverbs says, "My son, despise not the chastening of the Lord; neither be weary of his
correction: for whom the Lord loveth he correcteth; even as a father the son in whom he delighteth" (Proverbs 3:11-12).
Indeed, when the author of Hebrews says God "scourgeth every son he receiveth," the meaning suggests a "rod of correction."

Finally, Paul adds this important word: "When we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world" (1 Corinthians 11:32).

Right now, what you are going through as a child of God is no accident. It is not some isolated calamity or trial.
Every test and fiery trial is under your Father's careful scrutiny. And there is a purpose in it all, "for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness."

Chastisement never feels joyful. It is grievous, as if a strange thing is happening to us. But afterward it produces in us the peaceable fruit of righteousness. Yet this happens only for those who allow themselves to be trained by chastisement.

3. Satan will lie to you when
chastening includes suffering
that continues with seemingly
no answer.

Your ongoing trial may involve physical suffering, unemployment, children who rebel, faithless friends, mental distress, turmoil or pain. As you endure day after day, Satan will whisper to you as he did to Job: "The righteous don't suffer. If God heard you ­ if he saved you and his promises are true ­ you should have been rescued immediately. Where is your God? Is this what faith gets you?"

Beloved, do not cast your faith aside! Satan is a liar. You are suffering because God loves you, because he cares. Think about it: You asked the Lord to make you more like him. Only he knows what that will require. He knows your suffering, and he won't let you be destroyed by it. In fact, he knows just when to make a way of escape for you. He won't act until that appointed time, and "will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it"
(1 Corinthians 10:13).

Be assured, God has everything under control. The pain, the lingering sickness, the prayer that seems to go unanswered ­ he knows all about them. And he knows why he hasn't lifted your trial before now. As happened with Paul, he is using the "thorn" in your flesh to work toward your blessing.
Indeed, the very thing you want so much ­ the answer you believe is so necessary ­ might be something God knows isn't best for you. If he ultimately says, "No," you must yield, knowing he is preserving your soul and answering you in a much better way unknown to you.

Through it all, the great cloud of witnesses urges you, "Continue fighting the battle with faith. Your hands hang down, but he will provide the faith to lift them up. Your knees are feeble, but he will strengthen them. Don't turn aside. Stay in the race!"



Multitudes fall for the devil's lies when they are chastened. They allow a root of bitterness to enter their heart and soon are nurturing an anger toward God: "Why did the Lord allow this? I tried so hard to please him, trusting him so much. Why is he letting me down?" God has warned us about such times: "Don't let this happen. Instead, be diligent, be careful, holding onto your confidence. It has great recompense of reward."

The Lord desires a people who
will hold onto faith even if they
suffer the loss of all things.

Consider this powerful word from the author of Hebrews:

"Call to remembrance the former days, in which, after ye were illuminated, ye endured a great fight of afflictions; partly, whilst ye were made a gazingstock both by reproaches and afflictions; and partly, whilst ye became companions of them that were so used. For ye had compassion of me in my bonds, and took joyfully the spoiling of your goods, knowing in yourselves that ye have in heaven a better and an enduring substance.

"Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompense of reward. For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise. For yet a little while, and he that shall come will come, and will not tarry.

"Now the just shall live by faith: but if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him. But we are not of them who draw back unto perdition; but of them that believe to the saving of the soul" (Hebrews 10:32-39).

Here is a description of a people greatly afflicted after they were born again. They lost all their goods and possessions because of their testimony. Yet their faith kept them joyful.

I have been told of a Christian multimillionaire ­ one of Texas's most successful businessmen ­ who lost it all. When hard times hit he struggled just to put food on the table.
But God put his heart at rest, and the man learned to see the Lord as his sole provider. He and his family have not gone hungry.

Sometimes I wonder if the days of our American lifestyle are numbered. If that day comes, all of us will be affected, all of us feeling pain. And such a day will reveal much about God's people. You see, it's easy to talk about faith when all is well. It's a different matter when we feel prolonged pain. That is when we are called to take the spoiling of our goods joyfully.

Paul kept his faith through good times and bad.

In his final days Paul could boast, "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith" (2 Timothy 4:7). Think about Paul's testimony at that point. He could say, "Satan sent messengers to fight me in Jerusalem, Damascus, Asia, Ephesus, Antioch, Corinth. But I kept the faith.

"He tried to sink me in the stormtossed Mediterranean. Three times I was shipwrecked, bobbing in the deep night and day.
But I kept the faith.

"Four times the Jews beat me with thirtynine stripes. I have been cast into prison, three times beaten with rods, stoned and left for dead. But I kept the faith.

"I've faced peril in the country and the city, in the wilderness and the sea. I've been robbed by my own countrymen. I've been placed in peril by false brethren. But I kept the faith.

"I've been so weary at times, full of bodily pains, enduring sleepless nights. I've been hungry and thirsty, cold and naked, heavily laden with cares of all kinds. Yet I kept the faith.

"I've been troubled, perplexed on every side, distressed and persecuted, but never cast down. I've never been shaken in my faith. Through it all, my trust in the Lord has never been destroyed."

I leave you with words spoken
to sustain us in the days ahead.

"Unto the upright there ariseth light in the darkness: he is gracious, and full of compassion, and righteous. Surely he shall not be moved forever: the righteous shall be in everlasting remembrance. He shall not be afraid of evil
tidings: his heart is fixed, trusting in the Lord. His heart is established, he shall not be afraid, until he see his desire upon his enemies.

"He hath dispersed, he hath given to the poor; his righteousness endureth forever; his horn shall be exalted with honor. The wicked shall see it, and be grieved" (Psalm 112:4, 6-10).

"The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul. The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore"
(121:78).

"In the time of trouble he shall hide me in his pavilion: in the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me; he shall set me up upon a rock" (27:5).

The Lord says to all his children: "Call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me"
(50:15). May you remain faithful to call on him in your trial. Cast your cares on him always!
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