The Mercy of God

After worship today I stopped by the home of a friend and neighbor whose older brother's death was reported at church.   A heart broken man told me his 91 year brother who had been sick for a long time took his own life when he was released from the hospital.  The last words he spoke were from behind a closed bedroom door.  His daughter heard him praying aloud, "God, forgive me" and then he was gone.  My friend was heart broken over the death of his brother, but his broken heart was bleeding even more because of Christian friends who spoke of their sorrow that his brother was dead and was in hell.     

I cannot think of any moment that made me so angry at others who see themselves as Christians.  How someone could say such a word to a man grieving over his brother is beyond comprehension.  With a voice broken by tears and anguish, he asked me what I thought.  I told him not to listen to those folks and to know that God's heart had enough mercy and grace and love to take his brother into the arms of the One to whom he breathed his last words in prayer.   

I long ago came to a place of not judging others.  I have enough stuff in my own life which disqualifies me from that role.  None of us can walk in another's shoes and none of us can know the hurt, or the heart of another.  What we can know is that God knows and that God looks at us with a merciful heart and not a judgemental spirit.  In that moment I wanted to shake some sense into some people who see themselves as saints, but instead, I asked my brother if I could pray for him as we stood there together weeping in his backyard.  

The Power of Calling

Given the salvation which took place in the Nile River when he was a baby in a basket, Moses should have figured that God had something in mind.  No doubt he heard the story from his birth mother, his sister, and the Egyptian woman who adopted him as her own.  But, sometimes stories told become stories forgotten.  Though raised with a silver spoon in his mouth and all the advantages of being an Egyptian instead of a Hebrew, he ended up in the wilderness a murderer and a fugitive from the justice of Pharoah.  He must have breathed a sigh of relief after a few years of safely tending the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro.     

His sigh of relief was a short one because the Lord came and spoke to him from a burning bush that burned but which was not consumed.  When he put his sandals back on and left that holy place, he knew the road was going to take him back to Egypt and a confrontation with Pharoah.  It was a word Moses surely did not want to hear and he did everything he could to get out from under this word of God, but the God who called was also an unrelenting God.     

There may be some who are born with a desire to stand as a spiritual leader for the people of God, but most of the ones known over the years did their best to persuade God to get someone else.  When I knew that God was calling me to ministry, I also knew it was the last thing in the world that I wanted to do with my life.  It took God six months of speaking to me from the shadows of my experiences to bring me to a  point of relenting and saying "Yes."  It was not something I remember wanting to do as much as something I remember as something I was compelled to do.  If I was to live in obedience to Jesus, I realized there was no choice.  After much running the other way, I finally came around to the calling of God.  It is not something I have ever regretted and has always been something for which I have been grateful.   

Spiritual Leadership

Most of us have read the Exodus story so many times we take for granted the task before Moses.  It was quite a feat to move so many people such a long distance, to keep them together, to provide food and water for them and all the livestock, and to remain the leader of a people who never seemed to be satisfied with anything.  Few spiritual leaders of today's church could have handled the many tasks given to Moses and retained their whole hearted commitment to God.   

Of course, the Scripture makes it clear that there is no one like Moses.  Aside from the Christ who showed up in Bethlehem, no spiritual leader stands taller than this man who would have rather tended sheep in the wilderness for his father-in-law than going toe-to-toe with Pharoah.  He managed to keep his face facing God and was confident enough in who he was to receive guidance from Jethro, his father-in-law (Exodus 18).  The story of Moses reminds us that a spiritual leader is one who practices a listening kind of leadership.    Too many times our spiritual leaders in the local church as well as leaders such as Bishops and Superintendents practice an autocratic type of leadership which gives lip service to servant leadership.  

Those of us who have been entrusted at one time or another with spiritual leadership know how easy and desirable it is to surround ourselves with those whose counsel will always speak the "Yes" we want to hear.  Spiritual leaders have a tough role to hoe.  Like Moses the people who claim to be supporters often wander, the way forward seems to be filled with needs greater than resources, and when things go crazy, the faithful disappear.  No spiritual leader can hope for success and inner peace if he or she tries to go it alone  Prayer and truth speaking people are often the only thing which keeps the spiritual leader on the course God has set in place out there in the distance at the beginning of the journey.  

Persuasive Preaching

Good preaching is persuasive.  It is not just a lecture about some aspect of God's character, or a lesson on church history.  Those things have their place in the life of the church, but not as a steady diet offered from the pulpit.  Good preaching enables people to connect with Jesus Christ.  The church seems to have lost the urgency of calling people to a first encounter with the living risen Jesus Christ.  Those in the pulpit appear to preach with the assumption that everyone in the church has already chosen to walk in a personal relationship with Jesus, or that such a relationship is not really necessary.  Either way it is a tragic assumption.   

I remember the years when Baptism of the Lord Sunday was preached with an invitation for people to come forward for baptism and a personal moment of professing faith in Christ.  In the beginning I was surprised that someone always came forward and then later on I came to expect it.  It seemed that whenever that invitation was given on that Sunday, someone who had not planned on it happening got up from their pew to be touched by baptismal waters.    

It would be a different church today if we could once again begin to live within that expectation.  In my Methodist tradition it would mean that the baptismal font hidden in the back corners of the sanctuary would be given a prominent place once again.  It would mean that there would always be water in the font.  It would mean that an invitation to receive Christ would be the norm instead of the exception.  It would mean that preachers would have no reason to be ashamed that a year or two or three had passed since someone said "Yes" to Jesus at the altar of the church.  It would mean living in the excitement of new beginnings for such is what happens when a single soul hears the call to accept Christ and begins the walk of faith toward Home.  

Fire in the Belly

My spiritual journey in these days has taken me from a "Big Tent Revival Meeting" as contemporary as today to a evangelistic service at a campground I was told was two hundred years old.  The singing at both was spirited and each preacher had fire in his belly.  In some ways it seemed like I had stepped back into what I often call the good old days.  They are definitely old although they may not have actually been as good as I remember them.  But, I will humor the old man that is in me and declare that the good old days were as good, if not better, than I remember.    

What I do know about these last few nights is that the worship brought a renewed spirit to this old preacher.  The first preacher sounded a theme which contrasted the difference in doing the religious things as a substitute for a personal relationship with Jesus.  And the second one used the third verse of Jude as a text.  "I...appeal to you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints."  It was a word which kept calling us to forget what people said about the Scripture for the sake of reading it ourselves.   Both preachers seemed to know about my heart.    

I will be the first to confess I needed these powerfully evangelistic messages.  I left my place in the pew renewed and wondering why I do not hear more sermons that are filled not with fire and brimstone, but the fire of the Spirit and a fervor that makes for passionate preaching.  Listening to these young guys almost made me want to get back to preaching!  Almost.  I did leave grateful that God was raising up some young preachers who could preach persuasively and with passion in these days when such is so desperately needed in the church.

The Big Tent Revival Meeting

This past Sunday night I went to what was billed a "Big Tent Revival Meeting" at a local community church.  It lived up to the advertising.  It was a really big tent set up on the church grounds.  The singing was all about old gospel songs most folks knew by heart.  The preaching was strong and evangelistic. There were words of repentance spoken at the end of the service.  It was indeed a revival meeting.  Folks left looking forward to meeting the next night.   

After the service I walked up front to speak to the preacher and saw something I could not see from my lawn chair seat at the edge of the tent's canopy.  A big metal cow trough. It was like the ones I have for the cows on the farm.  It was big enough for use in the pasture and certainly big enough to use for baptisms which was why it was up front full of water.  One person had been baptized at the morning service and the preacher was expecting more to come.  I imagine their expectations of more baptisms will become reality.  

I remember one Sunday long years ago when someone came forward unexpectedly for baptism at the end of a service and the baptismal font was empty.  We had to wait for someone to go get some water.  After that embarrassing moment, I made sure of two things.  I made sure the baptismal font was in a very visible and prominent place for everyone to see and I made sure it always had water in it.  In too many of our Methodist churches the baptismal font is all but hidden in a corner and empty of water.  My Baptist friend at the "Big Tent Revival" modeled greater expectations than is usually seen in most Methodist Churches.  Just maybe the cow trough is speaking a message about expectations to the church.  It would be a good thing to listen.

Faith and Love

Over forty plus years of ministry, I have come to know personally a number of different churches.  And, if anything is certain about churches, it is that they are all different.  One is remembered as a church where prayer prevailed.  Another is known in my heart as a church that had a heart for missions.  And one other is remembered as a church that sent a legion of its young into full time ministry.  When the Apostle Paul wrote his letter to the church at Colossae, he knew its people as those who had strong faith in Christ Jesus and a love for all the saints.  (Colossians 1:4).    

Would that more of today's churches were known for their faith and love!  Too many of the folks outside of the church look at its political battles, its overspending on building bigger buildings, and its catering of the affluent and then decide that they want no part of it.  Part of the reason the church fails to draw people on the outside has to do with its appearance of being just like any other organization in the community.  When folks look toward the church, they expect it to model a higher standard for its operation than some for profit business.  They expect the church to be different.

The Apostle Paul hit on two distinctive things which the church is called to model for the world.  It was put in place long ago to be a spiritual community where the power of faith in Christ Jesus would be evident and where people would live with one another in love.  People may show up at a church known for its youth ministry, or its choir, or its preaching, but what will hold them is that witness for Christ which not only changes personal lives, but also is a force for changing the world around it with love.