Always With Us

We can never know what is up the road just out of sight from where we walk.  It may be a bed of roses or some rocky hardship that measures not just our stamina, but our faith as well.   We cannot see what is up the road and neither can we see Who is up the road.  However, the One ahead whom we cannot see is One who has been with since before the first steps were taken.  In creation's moment of conception we came into being bearing the imprint of the Holy One who shaped and knew our unseen form.  We are from that moment never out of the sight and the care of the Holy God of Creation.  

When we cannot see what is ahead in our journey, we can know that the One who brought us into being has walked ahead and knows the way He is leading us.  A part of the holy mystery is that the One who ranges ahead is also the One who is with us.  He is ahead, but also beside. He is out there, but within us.  His promise is that it shall always be.  We hear that promise from Jesus as He said, "I am with you always, to the end of the age."  (Matthew 28:20)  Never alone and, certainly, not forgotten, or forsaken is who we are.  There has always been more to our lives than we could see.  It could always be characterized as unfolding before us.  

We may not have experienced life as such in the earlier days of our faith journey, but the more we walk the more we truly see what is behind us even as our faith enables us to see what and Who awaits us in the days still to come.  We have always gone with God.  He has always been present.  The promise proven by our past is the promise of all that is ahead.  He remains present and so He shall always be.

The Troubled Road

"How do you not be troubled, Lord,

   when your trouble goes down bone deep

     and your mind thinks of nothing else?

       How can You say, 'Don't be troubled?'

         Haven't You heard a Word I said?

Your wordy sedatives won't work.

 

Not any more.  I just feel guilty.

    Guilty, because I am troubled

       and all You say is not to be.

        It does not work that way for me.

          Say what You will about belief,

my trouble will not go away.

 

I hear what You are saying, Lord.

    'As surely as sparks fly upward'

      trouble is going to come my way.

        And I know You said it will come

           to all, the just and the unjust.

I see the dust of Your troubles.

 

The troubled road You have walked,

   the one that took You up a hill,

     to a hole prepared for Your cross,

       to a tomb readied for Your death,

         to a place made ready in glory.

I see Your walk, I hear Your words.

 

When You speak the believing Word,

    it does not take away trouble,

      it takes away its dark power.

        'I am the Way' is what You said.

          With You is still where I  will go.

Trouble comes and goes, but You stay."       

In Troubled Times

The first signs of trouble are up the road and mostly invisible.  The trouble itself is around some bend in the road and holds not only the dreaded trouble, but the trouble that is given birth in our spirit from what might be, or what could be.  In the beginning the trouble has little to do with what is, but mostly with what might be.  When some wind of adversity hits us in the face, we can only imagine that a harder wind is waiting to blow.  Bad become worse and worse becomes the worst.  Such is how trouble comes.   

As we anticipate and feel the headwinds of trouble, there comes to us this word of Jesus we have heard quoted a thousand times.  Not only have we heard it all those times, but we ourselves have repeated it when the pressure around us and in us begins to build.  The improbable words of Jesus are found in the first verse of the fourteenth chapter of John.  "Do not let your hearts be troubled.  (You) believe in God, believe also in me."  "Trust Me," is what He said.  "Take Me at my Word," is His Word to us.  Over and over through our journey toward Home, we are faced with the challenging question about Jesus.  We seldom voice it to others, but we often speak it to ourselves.  "Can this Jesus be taken seriously?  Is He really Who He says He is?"   

Our answer is going to make all the difference in how trouble affects us.  When we run into bone deep trouble, it is not just an academic exercise, but the difference between living and dying and dying and living again.  At the end of the journey, the faith with which we started is still what will sustain and deliver us.  Of course, the end of the journey faith is not the same as the one known at the beginning because He has led us through dark valleys and has enabled us to see the enduring and eternal power of faith in Him. 

Grace and Faith

We live with faith and trust, or we live in hopelessness and despair.  Everything about life points to grace and faith.  None of us have anything to say about how we got here.  We did not choose our parents.  Neither did we choose our homeland.  Some say we choose our friends, but we are born with our family.  It is true enough.  Such things are not ours to decide.  Those who declare we are the master of our fate need to look again at the moment of beginning.  While it is true our choices have some bearing on where we go with our life, our beginning is not ours to choose.   

Some live long years and others hardly have years enough to count.  As surely as those whose lives are short wonder why old age is denied them, those in the older years wonder why they lived so long when so many lived so much less.  Life is not really about us.  We might try to frame it inside our choices, our will power, our self care, and a host of survival tactics, but in the end, life is about grace.  Grace is not something we earn.  It is not something guaranteed by good and right living.  It is a gift.  More specifically, it is a gift from God.  Though we may have questions we would like to ask Him, our life comes from Him, is sustained by Him, and as the Word declares, He does know the number of our years.  We are here and we live here because of God's grace.  

It is, of course, something which is not as provable as test tube experiments in a lab, but it is truth, nonetheless.  Not all things are visible in the present.  Actually, there may be more things invisible in our present moment than things which are visible.  Life is lived not in realm of the known, but in the realm of the unknown.  The writer of Hebrews wrote, "faith is the conviction of things not seen..."  (Hebrews 11:1).  Grace is what got us here.  Faith propels us forward.  It is the way which leads Home "to the better country."  (Hebrews 11:16) 

The Soft Sing-a-long

I have always been a fan of church choirs.  I have never had any minister of music invite me to join, or even do a sing-a-long.  Not sure why.  What some of them did not know is that I often sang along without permission.  As I sat in the pulpit chair listening to the choir right over my shoulder, I would often sing along with them.  True, I sang softly.  I made no big production out of my singing with them.  Sometimes I just could not help myself.  There have been many times when I thought the choral director should at the end turn around to face the congregation and invite everyone to sing it again with the choir.   

Church choirs, of course, come in different sizes and shapes, and have different degrees of musical skills.  Though there are some, none of the choirs in the churches I served required an audition, or offered payment to exceptional singers.  All the singers were volunteers who were exercising what I perceived to be a spiritual gift.  A few may have made the choral director cringe, but they were all offering praise to God which is what I saw myself doing from the pulpit chair.  

What I must confess is that I still do very soft sing-a-longs from the pew with choirs on some Sunday mornings.  The music and the singing just lifts my spirit in such a way, it is impossible not to offer my voice along with theirs in praise to God.  Some folks raise their hands, or say "Amen!"  I just sing softly hoping no one can really hear me, but God.  After all, He is why we gather to sing.  He is our real audience which is why on those rare moments when someone showed up at choir practice who could not carry a tune in a bucket and the choral director wanted to do something which might persuade them not to sing, I was always in their corner.  No one who wants to praise God with the voice God has given them should be denied the opportunity.  Even me!

Expressing Dependence

I cannot remember living without praying.  It is true enough to say that those first prayers were simple; perhaps, they could be thought of as primitive, but mostly they were about me.  In those early boyhood days of learning to pray by doing it, I became quite proficient at letting God know what I thought He needed to do.  Praying back then was mostly about God helping me stay out of trouble after I had gotten into trouble, or getting something I thought I needed in order to live.  Hopefully, praying has moved to a different level at this stage of my life, but as is always the case, old habits are hard to break.   

Our prayer lives surely have an evolving and growing dimension as we journey on the road of faith in Christ.  Even as our understanding of God changes, so does our praying.  Hopefully, as the years begin to add up, we cease seeing Him as some holy Santa Claus dressed in white instead of red who will give to us not according to our needs, but our wants.  The Scripture does encourage us to pray and to pray about any and everything, but I sometimes wonder if I am not wasting God's time by asking for a parking place close to the entrance to the grocery store when there are so many people suffering from hunger.  

In his book, "No Man is an Island," Thomas Merton wrote, "All true prayer somehow confesses our absolute dependence on the Lord of life and death...It is when we pray truly that we really are...When we cease to pray, we tend to fall back into nothingness."  Merton's words resonate as truth for many of us.  As we grow in our understanding of the nature of God and what prayer is all about, we begin to see ourselves praying not so much because there are things we need or want from God, but because we know that without Him in our life, life would amount to a huge ball of nothingness.  To say, "Our Father," is first of all an acknowledgement that we need Him and maybe that is indeed the most important thing to be expressed in the prayer of our heart.

The Our Table Folks

One of the great mysteries of the church has to do with the Sacrament we call the Lord's Supper, or Holy Communion. There are certainly some differences in the meaning of the bread and wine.  Some say it is actually the body and blood of Jesus.  Others say that it is a symbol of the body of Christ, or a means of grace.  There are denominations which offer the Sacrament every time there is a worship service and there are others where the infrequency requires announcing it ahead of time.  There is a lot to unwrap every time the church gathers around the Table.   

The great mystery; however, is not about what it means, but the way His Table becomes our Table.  His Table is open to everyone.  The invitation is to "whosoever."  His Table is uncluttered with restrictive guidelines.  Our Table is full of them.   Those places with an our Table mentality allow only the confirmed to approach the Table.  Some of the our Table folks say any participant must be a member of the church that has set the Table. Young children and sinners should stay away.  For the our Table folks, the Supper is only for the saints and saints is defined not by the Bible, but by the decrees of the church.   

When we prepare the Table, we do it for the Christ.  Some who are yesterday's lost sinners and today's sinners saved by grace may serve the Sacrament, but it is a moment when human hands become the hands of Jesus.  Anyone who serves must know that it His Table.  Turning people aside is something we never see Him doing in the Scripture.  It is not His nature.  His nature is to love, to forgive, and to accept.  One of the great mysteries of the church is why the our Table folks speak of Him being at the head of the Table.

Self Denial

When Jesus said to those who would follow him, ""If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me" (Luke 9:23), He spoke a hard word.  Anyone like me who has been to church for a life time has heard these words at least a few times.  Then again, sometimes I wonder if a life timer such as myself has ever really heard it at all.  Hearing the words is easy compared to allowing our spirit to soak in the word until repentance begins to undo the heart.  

What has always been easy to do with the words of Jesus is to dilute them of their power, to allow our need for rationalization and compromise to altar the radical intention of His words, and to be content with whatever superficial sacrifices we have made and are prepared to make.  I would rather applaud myself on giving a tithe and maybe even more than to consider how much I keep for myself.  I hear the word about denying self while I cling to nurturing hurts and placing blame rather than embracing the hard work of forgiveness and unconditional love.  When our soul is allowed to soak in this hard word of Jesus, we began to see anew that the really hard things to let go are not the things accumulated in our hands, but the attitudes of the heart that give life to division and brokenness.  

This word of Jesus will not even allow me to cling to my self imposed righteousness which assures me that my understanding of what it means to live as a faithful disciple of Jesus is more pleasing to Him than the understanding of my neighbor who has obviously been led astray.  It often seems that what Jesus is calling us to do with this word about self denial is to come to Him with nothing.  Just maybe all He really wants of us is our self, not our stuff and not our opinions. 

Abandonment to the Mystery

In our journey toward God, we eventually come to the moment when we realize that He can only be defined by mystery.  It was mystery which Moses experienced when the bush was burning; yet, not consumed.  It was mystery which overwhelmed Isaiah in the Temple.  It was mystery which knocked Saul from the throne of personal arrogance into a blindness that could not be healed apart from the help of one he sought to kill.  How do we explain God?  How do we explain our encounters with the Holy One, the Mighty Lord of the Universe?  

Certainly, we try.  There are those who have come before us who have spent the wealth of their years seeking to speak of Him in such a way as to open ours eyes and mind to what cannot really be seen or understood.  Like them we have constructed our own system of understanding, defining, and knowing God.  It may be a system more simplistic than the brand name theologians whose books sit on seminary library shelves, but still it exists in our mind and by it we live out our relationship with the Creator who made us.  In the end it may be true that we all will come to the place of claiming mystery instead of knowledge.  

We may all come to the place of knowing that there will always be more we do not know than we could ever know about God.  We give up many things as we walk the journey which leads to home.  In some ways life can be defined as a process of letting go.  As we venture walking that road with Him, we began to realize that we must not only let go of the things we hold in our hands, but also all the things we have held dear in our heart.  To finally come to Him and to be enveloped in His holy presence will likely require us to let go of what we thought we knew about Him so that nothing holds us to here and we can be swept away to there as surely as Elijah was carried away in a fiery chariot.

A Greater Glory

On a recent trip out west, I spent an afternoon riding into the Rocky Mountains.  I had seen pictures that were awe inspiring, but what I saw with my own eyes went beyond any photographic resemblances.  I remember standing at an overlook thinking it was like being in church.  It was a thought which spoke of a a moment akin to standing midst the sacred.  To get to the Rocky Mountains required driving through the vast plains and prairies of the west.  At one point I stopped the car, got out, and stood beside the road to simply be a part of the majestic vastness of what was all around me.  It was a trip filled with glimpses of the majesty of mountains and the eternal unending land that stretched from horizon to horizon.  

The truth is I only saw a dot of the whole.  What filled my eyes was just a glimpse of what could be seen.  No matter how much my mind and heart was wrapped up by it, there was still more to know than could be possibly be experienced.  I saw and knew a part of the majesty and glory all around me, but surely only a part.  So it is with our glimpses of what God has prepared for us in the eternal place.  When what is only partially seen is fully seen,  it will be, if I may use human terms to describe the eternal, jaw dropping.  It will be not only be jaw dropping, but it will surely bring us to our knees to worship and praise not the place we call heaven, but the God whose hands have brought it into being.   

Until a few weeks ago, I had only heard folks talk about the majesty of those mountains and plains.  Having seen a part, I can only imagine what glory there must be in seeing the whole.  While I am overwhelmed by the beauty of every revelation of God in the creation around me, there is more, so much more.  One day according to His promise, we shall see the glory of the Christ as we have never seen Him, and not just for a moment, but for an eternity. Wow!

Before the Slithering Snake

It is to make us fully human that Christ has come.  At first glance such a thought runs a bit counter to what the church has taught us about ourselves.  Over the years we have been thoroughly indoctrinated with the idea that we are born sinners.   The 51st Psalm has shaped that view which has been with us since Augustine.  "Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me." (Psalm 51:5).  The Apostle Paul would much later write, "...all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God," (Romans 3:23) but being or becoming a sinner is a different thing than being conceived and born in iniquity.    

What we have tended to do as we develop our understanding of ourselves in relationship to God is to justify our sinful actions by declaring that we are only human. The implication of such a statement is that if we were not human we would not sin.  It is our humanity that does us in.  Yet, consider for a moment what Genesis tells us.  After every act of creation is complete, the Word concludes by saying, "God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good."  (Genesis 1:31). The comment about being very good is an amplification of the previous words about various acts of creation simply being good.  There is a contradiction here that we have so many times chosen to ignore due to our theological sell out to original sin.  

To embrace the tension of the contradiction means dismantling some of what has become the foundation of our understanding of what it means to be spiritual.  In contrast to being conceived and born in sin, Genesis speaks of our bearing the imprint of the Holy One and being seen by Him as being very good.  This does not negate the choices we make which obliterate our spiritual identity, but instead, it suggests to us that being fully human is what we were before the slithering snake spoke in the Garden.  To speak of ourselves as being fully human does not point to our sin, but to our beginning in the Creator's hands.

A Good Exchange

I think I am kin to a saint.  Really!  A sixth century saint named Kevin.  I know Kevin is not as well known as Peter, or Francis, or Patrick, but he was a real life saint, nonetheless.  How do I know?  Well, it is kinda like a little bird told me.  Really!  St. Kevin of Glendalough was a Celtic monk who went in his prayer cell at the beginning of Lent.  It was so small that when he extended his arms to praise God, one arm went out the window.  A blackbird landed in his hand and as the story goes, St. Kevin neither closed or moved his hand for the whole season of Lent while the blackbird built a nest, laid and hatched eggs, and the baby blackbirds flew away.   

My story is just a bit different.  I was sitting outside this afternoon under a pecan tree. I was sitting very still, so still that a bird landed on my arm.  It had a green hood, a reddish brown circle around its neck, and an light red breast.  It was much smaller than a blackbird and it stayed less than ten seconds before flying into the tree above.  For a moment we were together.  I looked closely at it.  I am not sure if it looked at me as I did it. As the bird lifted from my arm, I thought of St. Kevin and smiled.  

I wonder if God smiled at the moment of pleasure and praise afforded me this afternoon.  The Word does speak of Him seeing the sparrow so maybe I was seen by Him along with the bird which blessed me with its presence.  It was a holy and unexpected moment.  My arm provided the bird with a resting place and the bird provided me a blessing.  It was a good exchange.  I am grateful for it.

Re-setting the Climate

Re-setting the spiritual climate of a church so that its people can be more open to altar ministry is not always an easy thing. Both preachers and churches who are accustomed to life without an altar used for prayers will have to deal with fears that go with risking change to the status quo if the altar is going to be something more than a memorial to the way things used to be done.  In a church overcome by stagnant spiritual life, there is nothing quite like seeing people kneeling around the altar in prayer.  It is contagious, inspirational, and invitational.   

In one church I served the associate pastor and I would process down the aisle at the beginning of the service and pray at the altar during the prelude.  Some might have wanted to point out the passage in which Jesus warned against praying to be seen in public, but what we did was done as a way of inviting those in the pews to join us in prayer at the altar for the worship which was beginning.  Never did a huge crowd gather with us, but there were some.  In addition to the prayers offered for our worship, it was a means of using the altar for praying.  It was permission giving. It was a way of giving people permission to once again use the altar for praying.   

There was nothing extraordinary about this means of highlighting altar ministry.  It can be done in many different ways.  The important thing for the church is to find ways to help its people once again claim the altar within the sanctuary as a holy place where God's grace and power can intersect with human need.  When this divine intersection takes place,  God brings blessings to His people.  When the church begins to see this happening again, it will change its heart.  

Still Remembering

Once my "rememberer" started remembering, the names and images of pastors who have had a memorable influence on my journey of faith started spilling over the cup of memory.  Some of the earlier influencers were Joe Bridges who preached a message in which I heard God's call to preach, John Kay who gave steady encouragement during my college years and three pastors, Clark Pafford, Bill Dupree, and Virgil Lee who gave direction during my youth ministry years.  

In the years that followed, there were many more.  During my seminary days, John Brokhoff taught me how to preach and Claude Thompson taught me how to think about God.  Jim Rush and Don Sparks came to steady my course during troubling pastorates.  Frank Roughton Harvey, an evangelist and actor, first came to my churches as a servant of Christ and later as a friend.  During the course of the forty years of ministry there were young pastors who came to work with me and spoke of me a mentor, but I am sure I learned more from them than they from me:  Ben Martin, Bill Daniel, and Hank Perry. Like me, they have gotten older, but not as old.  

As I walk deeper into these retirement years I am also very appreciative of a few pastors who ceased being colleagues and have become friends who stayed with me for the journey.  Lowery Brantley is one.  Wayne Mosely is also one.   Jim Jackson is another.  There are also two who were college roommates.  The Asbury College roommate is Harold Lumley who became a Nazarene pastor and my Young Harris College roommate, Tom Daugherty who is the only Baptist on my list.  There were others that my memory has overlooked, but these are surely a few of those for whom I have great appreciation in these days of remembering.

Pastor Appreciation

The pastor at worship yesterday thanked his congregation for all the expressions of appreciation offered to him and the Associate pastor and then he did a surprising thing.  It was something I wished I had done back in the years when I was in his place.  There were three of us who were retired pastors out there in his pews and he took a moment to express appreciation for our years of ministry.  It was a surprise, not really necessary, but I must admit, it did feel kind of nice.  

It was a simple act of kindness which set me to thinking and remembering some of the pastors who have touched my life and for whom I have great appreciation.  The first one which came to mind was my Dad who died back in 2023.  He took on that role when he and my Mom married.  My first remembrance of him was being baptized by him at age nine.  Three years later we became family.  He was a good pastor who had a strong personal faith in Christ.  He was also a gentle man who modeled before me the life of one who loved the Lord.  He helped lay the foundational stones of my own faith and more than any others who helped shaped my faith, he is remembered with much gratitude and love.  None of us can really predict the trajectory of our life.  When we are overwhelmed with youthful enthusiasm, we often live with the illusion that life will be lived according to a personally conceived plan.  

It takes some of us more than a few years and some lessons from the school of hard knocks to realize that life is not lived according to what is planned but according to the way it unfolds.  The only One who really has the plan is God and He is also the One who does the unfolding,  I do not know what shape my life would have had if it had gone according to a different trajectory, but what I know is that God used this one pastor to give me gentle nudges, unconditional love, and a model of faith in Christ.  I will always be in my Dad's debt and I will always be grateful.

Changing the Climate

In some churches inviting people to come forward to the altar to give their life to Jesus may seem as strange as inviting them to come forward and pet an invisible elephant.  The preacher may figure that such an invitation will cause people to look at him as if he is someone who has lost their mind.  If such was not the response, then surely a score or so would shake their heads and wonder if the preacher has forgotten that the noon dinner alarm just sounded.  In some churches an invitation to use the altar at the end of the service would seem strange.  

If such is true, then what needs to happen is a change in the spiritual climate.  It may involve a slow process of inviting people to start using the altar for a variety of reasons.  An invitation can be given for folks to come and pray for someone they know who is in need, or there could be an invitation to come and pray for a mission work team.  In churches where people have never seen the altar used, it may be necessary to start using it by giving invitations that do not lift up the need of certain individuals, but to offer an invitation that would be seen as having a broad appeal.  In addition to the benefit of the praying, such moments begin to re-set the climate so that people do not perceive using the altar for praying to be a strange and unusual thing.  

None of this is to say that prayer cannot take place from the pews.  Neither is it to say that people must go to the altar to begin their faith journey with Jesus.  Instead it is a way of acknowledging that people need the prayers of others.  It is to say that people want to know there is a safe place to kneel and open the needs of the heart to the Father in heaven.  It is also to say that at times people feel a need to respond to the work God is doing in their heart.  The altar can be a meeting place with God where lives are changes and re-directed.  Whatever time and effort it might take to change the spiritual climate of the church so that such is possible will be more than worth it.

A Place for Praying

As the summer was bringing the dog days of August to an end, I went somewhere I had never been.  Of course, there are a lot of places I have not yet seen, but this was one not of one of the seven wonders of the world, but a genuine megachurch.  By mega, I mean huge, really huge, high tech, polished, and choreographed.  What I also experienced was one of the most powerful moments of intercessory prayer I have ever witnessed.   

What is true is that the morning prayer during Sunday morning worship can be one of the most predictable and uninspiring moments of worship.  The mega church moment for prayer was totally different.  Instead of one person praying, the pastor invited the prayer team members to come forward or to stand at assigned places in the worship center.  For ten or fifteen minutes people poured out their pews to receive personal prayers from a team member.  As I watched people leaving with tears pouring down their faces, I found my own tears flowing as well.  It was truly one of the most powerful moments of intercessory praying that I have ever experienced in a worship service.  

What happened in this huge gathering was that someone figured out a way to actually pray for people.  What happened was that someone declared praying was important enough to dedicate ample time for it.  What happened was a powerful altar ministry though there was no altar.  What happened was that the church made a decision to make prayer for its people a priority.  People need people praying for them.  Surely, the church is the first place this should be happening.  

Nocturnal Mystery

Does God come to us in our dreams?  Does He speak to us while we sleep?  While everything around and within us is still in the silence?  The question of the night takes us to Jacob who dreamed at Betheel of a ladder reaching from earth to heaven (Genesis 28:10) and later as the journey away from home took him toward home, he wrestled all night with God at Peniel?  It causes us to remember Moses, the man who dared to wrestle with the dreams of others.  And, of course, there is Joseph, the dreamer, who conversed with an angel sent from God in the dark sub-consciousness of the soul.   

As we learn what the Word teaches us and consider the gifts of grace which God has given us while we sleep, we know He is not just the Visitor in our dreams, but the Maker of them.  While some of our dreams are so bizarre that any meaning is hidden deep in mystery, others seem to stir our resting souls in ways that cause us to awake saying those words of Jacob, "Surely the Lord is in this place..." (Genesis 28:16)    

Why does He choose to come in such a way?  Sometimes, we awake knowing.  The Word is as clear as if written in the clouds.  Sometimes there is nothing to know except God was in the dreaming, the source of the dream, and the One who alone knows exactly what Word He has shrouded in the holy mystery.  It is not always for us to know what we would like to know, but even in those moments of nocturnal mystery, we know He has been present in the deep places of our spirit and such awareness is more than enough.  With the ancient dreamer we can only say, "How awesome is this place."  (Genesis 28:17)

The Right Place and Time

Over the years I have heard many a preacher giving an impassioned invitation to meet Jesus as the funeral service was coming to a close.  Always it was the wrong place and time.  It is important to invite people to come to Jesus, but not at a moment when a grieving family needs to hear words of holy comfort.  Offering an invitation at such a time seems like selling a fire insurance policy!  I suppose there are some who gave their life to Jesus at such a time, but I am still waiting on someone to show up with such a witness.   

What is even more disturbing is the way some preachers and churches seem to be embarrassed to invite people to give their lives to Jesus during a worship service.  Some preachers have even said that Sunday morning worship is not the time or place for such a thing to happen.  When I am confronted with such logic, I wonder what time and place is right.  What seems to be the case is the false conviction that everyone who shows up in worship is there because he or she is already one who believes in Jesus.  In Jesus' day there were a lot of folks who wore the robes of righteousness as they clamored for the death of the Son of God.   

Inviting people to encounter Jesus is important.  It is the mandate of every believer.  This is what we hear Jesus saying in those last verses of Matthew as He said to go and make disciples.  If it is the mandate of the individual disciples, it is surely part of the business of the church.  Actually, it is not just a  part of the business of the church.  It is the business of the church.  If the church is not serious about inviting people to meet Jesus and following Him, the doors should be shut and locked for regardless of the good which might be done in Jesus' name, the most important part has been forgotten. 

Encounter and Encouraging

One of the words which shaped my preaching from the beginning is persuasive.  I was told that good preaching was persuasive.  Preaching was not simply a matter of sharing doctrine and making sure that people understood the beliefs of the church.  Preaching was not an opportunity to inform people what "I think," but what the Word of God says.  Over and over my preaching professor would say, "People do not come to hear what you think.  They want to hear the Word of God."  One other remembered word was that we should not strive to impress people with our sermons.   

After over forty years of preaching I still hold tightly to the belief that good preaching should be at its core, persuasive.  It should go after two things.  One, it should bring people to a moment of encountering Jesus, and secondly, it should encourage them to respond to Him.  Compared to the time when I started preaching, the church has become very timid about encouraging any kind of public response.  Too many times it seems that the assumption is that everyone inside its walls is rightly related to Jesus.  Too many times it seems that the church is afraid it might embarrass someone by putting them in a position where a public response is suggested.    

While it is true that someone within the hour of worship can quietly make a life changing decision for Christ, it is also true that making known what has happened in the heart is like applying cement to hold it together.  There was a time when I was a teenager that I thought I could walk as a Christian without anyone knowing about it, but we are not called to live in isolation, but in community.  We are not called to live holding the hand of Jesus, but to also hold the hands of the suffering ones around us.  When Jesus said, "Follow me," it meant a radical and visible break with the past and so must it be in our own day.

Altar Ministry

One of the ministries which is disappearing from the church today is the altar ministry.  Perhaps, pat of the reason for its disappearance has to do with the disappearance of anything which resembles an altar.  In my years of growing up, I spent a lot of time at various altars.  The churches in which I received must of my spiritual formation usually ended Sunday night worship with invitations for people to come forward for prayer at the altar.  Of course, there is another thing which has disappeared: Sunday night worship.   

I always seemed to have something to pray about during those Sunday night prayer moments.  Others did, too.  Nowadays, the only time folks are invited to kneel in the churches which still have altars is when Holy Communion is offered, but even then, more and more services are featuring "walk by" Communion since kneeling might take too long to satisfy hurried worshipers. Something important is being lost in our movement toward a more sophisticated style of worship.  The Scripture does not speak of kneeling before the Lord to remind us of an ancient outdated religious custom, but of an importance practice in our spiritual life.   

Where else in our world are we given an invitation to acknowledge that there is someone before Whom it is good and appropriate to kneel?  To be honest is to admit kneeling is not something we even consider necessary in our spiritual practice.  My mother taught me to kneel beside my bed at night to say evening prayers and while it was a habit I carried with me into my early adult years, it has long ago been abandoned.  I learned to pray while laying in bed before going to sleep and then I just learned to go to sleep.  My hurrying to bed without kneeling as I was taught to do is my loss. When the church encourages its people to abandon the posture of kneeling, it, too, brings loss to what could be gain.

Expository Preaching

Most preachers today shun expository preaching.  It used to be a more regular fare in the pulpit, but it is not an easy kind of preaching for the preacher and it is difficult for the people in the pew if it is not done well.  A lot of preaching today is more topical, meaning that the preacher chooses a topic and finds some Scripture to sprinkle in the sermon so it comes across as Biblical preaching.  What is often missed is that Biblical preaching starts with the Scripture instead of using it for window dressing.  

When we hear good Biblical preaching we know it.  No one has to point it out to us.   This past Sunday's  worship service was outstanding in so many ways.  Though it was liturgical, it never seemed heavy.  The worship space was alive acoustically and the music by the congregation and choir was full of blessing.  The preacher was a young woman not too many years out of seminary who preached what was an expository sermon on the story of Lazarus.  She showed no fear of using a big chunk of Scripture and kept all of us engaged with her as she proclaimed the Word of the Lord.  She was the kind of preacher who restored and renewed my faith in the new generation of preachers.   

The sermon she preached was clear.  It was not a sermon designed to impress, but one crafted to inspire.  She allowed the Scripture to preach the sermon.  It was the kind of sermon which caused those of us who did not carry a Bible to worship to wish for one.  There was no Bible thumping, but it was clear that the Bible was the authority for what was being preached. When the sermon ended, there was a strong invitation to encounter Jesus in a personal way.  It was a good day of worship and I left grateful that I was one of those who shared the hour with the gathered people of God.

40 Years

One of the first sermon I preached was back in my college days at Young Harris.  I went to Young Harris knowing I had been called to preach, but not really very excited about it.  It took me nearly six months to come around to saying "Yes"  after an ongoing argument with God.  The pastor who doubled as a religion professor at the College and the pastor of the campus church, Sharp Memorial UMC, gave those of us who were inclined toward the ministry an opportunity to preach at Sharp. It was one of my first sermons.  I remember it was entitled "A Double Minded Faith" and the text was James 1:6-8.  It was by no one's standards a great sermon, but I wore it out preaching it over the next few years.  I preached it everywhere I went in youth ministry, in every church that dared give me an invitation to preach, and numerous times in the church's I served in those early years.  

I have no idea how many sermons I preached in the forty plus years I preached.  I started trying to figure it up on one occasion, but got worn out with it.  A handful were really good, a few were better than average, and the most of them probably should not have been preached.  My first sermons seemed like forever long when I was preaching them.  I was always surprised that I often had put all the water in the trough I could in less than ten minutes; however, no one ever complained.  The serious complaining started when I got to the point I could preach a ten minute sermon in thirty minutes.  

I came to love preaching and the getting ready to preach even though I wrestled with God about getting started.  I always believed and still do that preaching is one of the most important things those of us who are ordained can do.  On Sunday morning the preacher is given what my children used to call a "captive audience," but it was always more.  It was an opportunity to proclaim the Word of God for the people of God.  I am humbled that God gave me forty years to preach and still amazed that He did.

Reading the Word

I do not remember when I received it and neither do I remember the occasion that it came to me.  It was more like one day I did not have it and the next day I remember carrying it with me to the Hebardville Methodist Church.  I must have been every bit of eight or nine years old when that first Bible came to me.  It was a King James Version with colorful pictures of significant Biblical moments and all the words of Jesus in red letters.  Even today in my late seventies I can remember reading those exciting stories of Abraham, Moses, David, and of course, Jesus.    

I sometimes wish I could go back to those days and read it all again for the first time.  Back then I was not bothered by some of the things taught in seminary which suggested that maybe not all the books were written by the person whose name appears at the beginning, or how history and geography interacted with the Scripture. Back then there was no challenge to what was being read on the page.  It was just the story of God and His people.  

Despite all my learning, I still read the Bible.  I have worn out more than a few.  It is not that I have worn them out by reading so much, but things just get worn out by the years and I have had quite a few years.  I am thankful, too, for this Word which has given both a foundation and direction to my life.  As far as I am concerned, it is the inspired written word of God.  Such is what it is, such is what it always has been, and such is what it will always be.

The Better Land

We are not home until we get there.  Until we get there, we live as strangers in a land others call our home, but our heart will not let us settle, for the eyes of the heart are set on a distant land not yet seen.  We keep looking ahead down a road never traveled with only the hope that the unseen One who leads is there with us and that He knows the way.  We go with Him only according to His promise.  He said He knows the way. 

Actually, He said, "I am the way."  (John 14:6).  We go, taking Him at His word.  We go with Him assured that what we hope for and cannot be seen is truly up ahead where He is taking us. (Hebrews 11:1)   To put it in a more profane vernacular, we go toward that Home knowing we cannot go if we hedge our bets.  It is all or nothing on this journey.  We can take nothing with us.  There is no backpack full of supplies to carry.  There can be no map in our hip pocket to pull out in case the way becomes more like an overgrown mountain trail instead of some well lighted expressway with signs that give both direction and assurance.  The One leading said long ago that those who follow must live a life of radical self denial even to the point of selling all and giving to the poor before starting the journey.  (Matthew 16:24. Mark 10:21).  We come with nothing.  We travel with nothing.  We arrive with nothing.  It is the way Home.

Although we may not arrive at Home today, we could.  What is certain is that we shall.  It is what He has planned.     It is what we seek.  It is not that we are not content to be where we are.  Instead, it is that we live with a longing for another country to which our heart truly belongs.  It is as the One who created us and set us forth has spoke of our heart desiring and longing for a better country, a heavenly one (Hebrews 11:7-8).  The road may be a hard one, but we have seen it by faith and our heart longs for it. (Hebrews 11:1).

Not the Grandiose

We never know exactly when God is going to make use of us to do some of His work in the place where he has put us.  Of course, it is possible we may not be open to His prodding of our Spirit, or deaf to the gentle voice with which He speaks  It is also true that those who are looking only for the grandiose adventure may miss the real adventure He is putting in our path.  Actually, if God were to suddenly say to us that He wants us to drop everything we are doing and sign up for a mission work in a third world country, we would likely turn into a Moses and say, "Send someone else."   

Maybe we only look for the grandiose because we know that God is more likely to call us to serve in some way that is more mundane and ordinary and those things are below our spiritual radar.  Those who do not believe that God has something He wants us to do for Him today are really missing out on what is not only an exciting adventure, but also a very fulfilling part of our daily walk with Him.  It is a mistake to think that God calls us to be become a living Christian monument.  

Instead, the call He places upon us is twofold.  One it is surely His intention to work that work of grace in us that creates in us something new.  No one who truly hears the call of God can ever be the same.  The second part of that call is that there is something God has planned for us to do in His Kingdom's work.  It may be a life time of some particular service or ministry, but it may also be one act after another of modeling His love, of offering forgiveness and grace, or helping some broken individual make it to tomorrow.  God does not call us to minister to the millions, or to the thousands, but to the one He has placed in the pathway of our life.  That moment alone can be the reason for our calling.

Different Shoes

One of the things we all bring to the table in the big room where we gather is our differences. No two of us are the same.  Not even twins.  Everyone brings to the table some distinguishing feature, some unique expression of their soul, something which says, "I am me and not you."  We were created in such a way.  It is truly an amazing moment to sit at some busy crossroad of life and sees hordes of people walking in front of us, yet nary a one the same.  

I once read a bumper sticker which said, "God don't make no junk" and it is true, but we could also use another slogan which says, "God don't make no copies."   Given the reality of our uniqueness, it is strange that we often get caught up in comparing ourselves to others, or even in modeling ourselves after someone else. Our worth or value is not determined in our becoming like someone else, but in becoming the person whom God has created us to be.  It is easy to make it through this world without a sense of being connected to a Creator God who has made us as we are to fulfill a purpose, but it is one of the foundational stones that enables us to build a life that makes sense.  Living disconnected from the Creator means that all our living is out of sync with everything else about the creation and, thus, we live without the peace that comes from being whole.  

We all live in the same world, but then again, none of us live in the same world.  We are alike, but we are different.  Each of us knows a different spot on the globe as home, each of us has a different set of relationships, each one of us has lived through and in a totally different set of circumstances, and each of us has been shaped by our life experience and the holy hand which created us.  Though we bear in common the hand print of the holy, we are all different.  None of us can walk in another's shoes, but it ok,  We each need a different size of shoes to fit where we walk.     

The One Thing

A rich young man came to Jesus asking questions about eternal life and Jesus told him, "You lack one thing..."  (Mark 10:21).  The one thing was not the fact that the man was rich, or that he had many possessions although such was true, but the way his heart was defined and shaped by what he could hold in his hands.  It was not the money that was the problem, but how it affected his life.  Was he one who could never say enough?  Was he afflicted with greed?  Was his money and the security it provided him the real focus of his trust?  Did he love the status it provided him in the community?  

Though we may not know for certain the one thing he would not give up to follow Jesus, we do know it was more of the heart than just the coins in the purse.  Most of us would rather think of the one thing as some external thing.  What can be held in the hand is always easier to handle than the things of the heart.  We often hold onto the things of the heart so long that we forget we are holding them, or at least we lose sight of the way they are more important to us than letting them go to follow Jesus.  How many of us have not nursed a grudge too long?  How many of us have gotten caught up thinking about how important we are?  How many of us have not looked at the homeless man at the street corner and thought less than charitable thoughts? How many of us know that our level of generosity is really determined by keeping up with the folks in the neighborhood?  

What is the one thing Jesus might ask us to let go if we encountered Him on the road as did the rich young man?  Would we walk away shaking our head muttering that Jesus does not understand?  Would there be for us such a regret that we would actually feel sorrow, or are we so accustomed to the one thing being in our heart giving shape to our life that we would just walk away thinking He lives in a fantasy world?

The Look-a-like

I have been watching it off and on now for near about an hour.  I cannot seem to help myself.  The book is a good read, the chair by a sunny window is most comfortable, but it's presence on the window ledge is compelling.  I read a bit and watch a bit.  It looks like a pecan weevil, but there are no pecan trees near here, or in the library where I am perched for a spell. I have battled them among the pecan trees at the farm for years so I know them.  Maybe this one is not hunting pecans, but it is at least worthy of being called weevil.  

This look-a-like friend of mine is in a hopeless situation.  He must be wondering how it came to be.  Instead of being outside which is home, he is inside which must seem like the distant country mentioned in the parable of the prodigal son.  As I watch he keeps bumping up against the warm glass of the sunny window as if it is going to somehow set him free to go home.  Again and again he butts his head with it.  He crawls off a piece and tries again with the same results.  It does not seem that he is going to get out of his predicament without some help.  Hopeless is where he is.   

My look-a-like friend reminds me of me.  Actually, he speaks to me about the gospel message which has so changed my life.  So many of us have had the experience of knowing we were lost, in a hopeless situation, and unable to find our way to the Home where we belonged.  Like a great warm sunny window, the wrong choices that pulled us away from being who we were created to be formed a barrier between the distant country we were choosing and the Home we were no longer able to see or know.  As my weevil friend needs someone to pick him up gently and carry him outside, so do we need the Christ to do much the same for us.  We need Him to deliver us and put us back where we belong. This weevil cannot live in here. He was made for out there.  We were not made for the hopelessness of the distant country, but for the Home of grace made for us by Jesus.