What difference does it make to say "Fear not." I have told my kids not to be afraid many times but God thinks it should make a difference if he commands it? The difference is that this command is always followed by "I am/will be with you." That makes all the difference in the world, doesn't it? Psalm 124 is a marvelous remembrance of the blessing of God being on your side, beginning with a call and response format to recollect what would have happened if God hadn't been on Israel's side.
The reality of the command, however, is that there will be reason for fear to enter the picture but we are to focus on the truth of the promise of the presence and in that we can take comfort rather than fear. We aren't meant to be traveling companions with fear, wherever we go. We are meant to follow Him and know His presence with us, that there is nothing formed against us that is greater than the love of God towards us. Read Romans 8 and Psalm 23 today and rest in the presence of God no matter where you are in your life today, these truths are the antidote to fear, the promise of the presence of God and the love of God.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Monday, January 12, 2009
Fear Not
Fear not, the words that cause more fear than any other. Until I became a senior pastor I could never figure out why God had to tell Joshua, of all people, to be strong and courageous and not be afraid. Now I know why He has to do that, it is much easier, with far less to fear, to be the number 2 guy. Leadership brings responsibility and risk at a completely new level and requires a whole other level of courage. Joshua and Caleb had been the only two whose counsel was to enter the land but after Moses dies the Lord has to repeat the admonition to not fear multiple times in the first nine verses of the book of Joshua. Before that, in Deuteronomy, Moses' valedictory speech, Moses has said this to Joshua.
All through the Bible what we hear is God necessarily telling people who have agreed to follow Him not to be afraid. Abraham fears foreign rulers and pretends his wife is his sister, Jacob fears Esau and has the wrestling match with an angel, Moses fears both Pharaoh and the people and God has to send Aaron with him, Elijah fears Jezebel, Peter fears a slave girl in the courtyard of the high priest and denies Jesus.
Following God in obedience to His call brings us into some fearsome situations because He takes us out of our depth, over our head, into a place where only He can act. Situations where we can't solve or resolve something tend to cause fear in our lives and He specializes in taking us into those places. The Bible is a collection of such stories, God's faithful people brought to the places where He can reveal Himself through extraordinary means but that generally requires us to go further into faith than is comfortable for us, places where either faith or fear emerges. If we would see and know God, those places are necessary. If we would have greater faith, we must follow to those places.
All through the Bible what we hear is God necessarily telling people who have agreed to follow Him not to be afraid. Abraham fears foreign rulers and pretends his wife is his sister, Jacob fears Esau and has the wrestling match with an angel, Moses fears both Pharaoh and the people and God has to send Aaron with him, Elijah fears Jezebel, Peter fears a slave girl in the courtyard of the high priest and denies Jesus.
Following God in obedience to His call brings us into some fearsome situations because He takes us out of our depth, over our head, into a place where only He can act. Situations where we can't solve or resolve something tend to cause fear in our lives and He specializes in taking us into those places. The Bible is a collection of such stories, God's faithful people brought to the places where He can reveal Himself through extraordinary means but that generally requires us to go further into faith than is comfortable for us, places where either faith or fear emerges. If we would see and know God, those places are necessary. If we would have greater faith, we must follow to those places.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Hearing the voice of the Lord
One of our lessons for tomorrow is Psalm 29, one of my favorite passages. I was in Rwanda several years ago and a bishop told me at 3 in the afternoon on Saturday that I would be preaching the next morning in the cathedral church. I had no idea what to preach to a congregation of people who had lived through genocide and basically opened the Bible randomly and this Psalm caught my attention, all about the voice of the Lord and its power.
As I thought about that passage I was in the midst of trying to figure out what the Lord was saying to me as far as my future was concerned. I read that passage and just started wondering if the voice of the Lord could make the wilderness shake and the strip the forests bare why could I not hear Him tell me what to do. It's hard to know sometimes what He's saying although I got the short-term clarity I needed that time.
What I ended up preaching is that as far as I can tell there are four words we can always depend on as having come from Him, "Follow me" and "Fear not." They seem like a paradox in that if I agree to follow the Lord whose voice brought forth all that is and who can do the things I read about in Scripture why would He ever need to say "Fear not." It seems like that would be the safest place in the world, what is there to fear. It isn't a paradox though. Think about it and tomorrow I will say more about why.
As I thought about that passage I was in the midst of trying to figure out what the Lord was saying to me as far as my future was concerned. I read that passage and just started wondering if the voice of the Lord could make the wilderness shake and the strip the forests bare why could I not hear Him tell me what to do. It's hard to know sometimes what He's saying although I got the short-term clarity I needed that time.
What I ended up preaching is that as far as I can tell there are four words we can always depend on as having come from Him, "Follow me" and "Fear not." They seem like a paradox in that if I agree to follow the Lord whose voice brought forth all that is and who can do the things I read about in Scripture why would He ever need to say "Fear not." It seems like that would be the safest place in the world, what is there to fear. It isn't a paradox though. Think about it and tomorrow I will say more about why.
Friday, November 21, 2008
Grace then truth or truth then grace?
The answer to the question is, it depends when we are talking about sin. It depends on the person who has sinned. The difference is whether the person is a part of the believing community. When I consider the Gospels what I see is that if the person is outside the community grace leads the way and if they are inside then truth leads.
Matthew 5.38-42 tells us not to resist the one who is evil. That is where we get the idea of turning the other cheek. It is similar to killing someone with kindness. Similarly, Paul says in Romans 12.20, "if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head." Jesus deals with people differently when he meets them. The Samaritan woman at the well in John 4 is an outcast even from her community and Jesus leads with grace and then introduces the truth of her sin. With Zacchaeus, another outcast as a tax collector, grace leads. With the prostitute at the home of the Pharisee, grace is first, and on it goes.
Matthew 18.15-20 tells us how to deal with sin among believers, and truth, confronting sin, comes first. In 1 Corinthians 5.12 Paul says, "For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge?" When Jesus meets a self-righteous person like a Pharisee, he confronts their sin first. When the apostles preach to a primarily Jewish audience their message nearly always includes "but this Jesus, whom you crucified..."
We have tended to miss this distinction in the church in our day and tolerated all manner of bad behavior in the church by excusing it, "That's just how so and so is." Sanctification requires change and change doesn't happen by excusing sin. If Christians behaved better towards one another, the world might actually believe we weren't complete hypocrites.
Matthew 5.38-42 tells us not to resist the one who is evil. That is where we get the idea of turning the other cheek. It is similar to killing someone with kindness. Similarly, Paul says in Romans 12.20, "if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head." Jesus deals with people differently when he meets them. The Samaritan woman at the well in John 4 is an outcast even from her community and Jesus leads with grace and then introduces the truth of her sin. With Zacchaeus, another outcast as a tax collector, grace leads. With the prostitute at the home of the Pharisee, grace is first, and on it goes.
Matthew 18.15-20 tells us how to deal with sin among believers, and truth, confronting sin, comes first. In 1 Corinthians 5.12 Paul says, "For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge?" When Jesus meets a self-righteous person like a Pharisee, he confronts their sin first. When the apostles preach to a primarily Jewish audience their message nearly always includes "but this Jesus, whom you crucified..."
We have tended to miss this distinction in the church in our day and tolerated all manner of bad behavior in the church by excusing it, "That's just how so and so is." Sanctification requires change and change doesn't happen by excusing sin. If Christians behaved better towards one another, the world might actually believe we weren't complete hypocrites.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Do you want to be healed?
One of the things that you read in the Gospels is Jesus asking someone if they want to be healed. It seems a strange thing to ask a blind man, so pointless to ask a paralytic what he wants Jesus to do for him. The longer I am in ministry the more it makes sense to ask such things. The church should be a place where people get healed, therefore it should be a place for the sick in any way, the wounded, etc. What I experience is that often those people don't want to get healed and made whole, they are identified too deeply with the wounding to let it be healed, they are the guy wounded by the church or by ministers or whatever and they don't know how to live any other way.
In every church I have ever worked I have seen the same pattern, someone comes in who has been hurt by the church and people begin to reach out and offer sympathy and then the person gets influence at some level. Soon, they begin to share their expertise in how the church should really be operating and that this church doesn't really care about people. Along the way, they drive people away because no one wants to hear the constant complaint and criticism, wounded guy becomes lonely, isolated guy and it is now the fault of this church and the pattern continues at another church.
Jesus didn't waste time with people who didn't want to be healed. Maybe we should start asking the question in churches.
In every church I have ever worked I have seen the same pattern, someone comes in who has been hurt by the church and people begin to reach out and offer sympathy and then the person gets influence at some level. Soon, they begin to share their expertise in how the church should really be operating and that this church doesn't really care about people. Along the way, they drive people away because no one wants to hear the constant complaint and criticism, wounded guy becomes lonely, isolated guy and it is now the fault of this church and the pattern continues at another church.
Jesus didn't waste time with people who didn't want to be healed. Maybe we should start asking the question in churches.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Be good for goodness sake
The British Humanist Association is placing ads on Washington, DC buses this season that ask, "Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness sake." My answer to that question, posed in that particular form, is that it is actually easier to believe in God than to work out how to be good for goodness sake. To accomplish the command there first requires that we identify and objectify "Good." Many have tried, including Plato and other philosophers, and none have ultimately succeeded in determining what is "good." Good requires more knowledge of reality than any of us possess. I have experienced many things in my life that I perceived as good that later I found to be something else.
What is good for me may not be good for someone else. When I was in consulting, I thought it was good when my firm got a contract, but when someone else got a contract we were bidding on, I didn't think it was good that they got the contract. I suspect they felt the same about my good. To be good is even harder and to do it for the sake of some principle of goodness that we can't really define is even harder, I have no reason to commit to something as ethereal as "Goodness."
No, what I need is what I have, not an ethereal god who is out there compelling me to be good, but God the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen, who has all the information necessary to know good and evil and who has, in the form of Jesus of Nazareth, come and enfleshed for us what is truly "good" and who died for us and for our salvation, and who has also given us His Spirit to dwell within us to lead us into truth which is goodness. Why believe in a god, because being good for goodness sake is too hard for even philosophers.
What is good for me may not be good for someone else. When I was in consulting, I thought it was good when my firm got a contract, but when someone else got a contract we were bidding on, I didn't think it was good that they got the contract. I suspect they felt the same about my good. To be good is even harder and to do it for the sake of some principle of goodness that we can't really define is even harder, I have no reason to commit to something as ethereal as "Goodness."
No, what I need is what I have, not an ethereal god who is out there compelling me to be good, but God the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen, who has all the information necessary to know good and evil and who has, in the form of Jesus of Nazareth, come and enfleshed for us what is truly "good" and who died for us and for our salvation, and who has also given us His Spirit to dwell within us to lead us into truth which is goodness. Why believe in a god, because being good for goodness sake is too hard for even philosophers.
Saturday, November 1, 2008
God and guns?
I heard a radio ad this week by Hank Williams Jr for John McCain that really troubled me. I am not, in any shape form or fashion, opposed to gun ownership but "We love our God and we love our guns" is a bizarre juxtaposition of images. It certainly caught my attention and made me wonder who in the world decided that was a good idea.
I am certain the message was geared toward gun owners who either hunt or collect but in our violence-ridden world I believe that the words are wrong. I know it has to do with an election but I am uncomfortable as a Christian with the words and in particular the linkage between God and guns. Is that really the Christian message or does it reinforce the worst stereotypes imaginable?
I believe we as Christians have a different message for the world about who we are and what our values may be. For me, this ad clearly demonstrated the reasons I dropped out of the political world in seminary. I believe we need to be more careful about our political engagements and we need to be more clear about ethics and morals and we need to be on the side of the vulnerable in our society, whether they are the unborn who have no voice but ours or those who are falling through the cracks in society in other ways. God and guns isn't the right message.
I am certain the message was geared toward gun owners who either hunt or collect but in our violence-ridden world I believe that the words are wrong. I know it has to do with an election but I am uncomfortable as a Christian with the words and in particular the linkage between God and guns. Is that really the Christian message or does it reinforce the worst stereotypes imaginable?
I believe we as Christians have a different message for the world about who we are and what our values may be. For me, this ad clearly demonstrated the reasons I dropped out of the political world in seminary. I believe we need to be more careful about our political engagements and we need to be more clear about ethics and morals and we need to be on the side of the vulnerable in our society, whether they are the unborn who have no voice but ours or those who are falling through the cracks in society in other ways. God and guns isn't the right message.
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