Thoughts On Mission Trip 2009 (Indianapolis, IN)

Just a collection of thoughts from our recent sojurn to Indianapolis, where 54 teens and adults spent a week ministering through three organizations (Shepherd Community, inner city day camp for impoverished kids; Third Phase, a women's shelter and food/clothing pantry; Rebuilding the Wall, inner city construction):

• It was by far one of the hottest mission trip weeks we've ever experienced, and the work (especially at Rebuilding the Wall) was some of the toughest. And I never heard a complaint from any of the teenagers -- that's a miracle in and of itself!
• Ministry can be both physical and relational, and quite often both intertwine (construction teens met a number of new people, while Shepherd folks would find themselves doing some physical tasks to help out).
• For every one person who went on this trip to serve, at least three or four people were supporting them -- in prayer, financially, by preparing food, opening homes for showers, coordinating details, etc. Missions work is a HUGE chain of support, where everyone both serves and is served in turn.
• As I said weeks before, we had Plan A for the trip, and God had Plan B. I hope we rolled with God's Plan B when it happened (and I think we did!).
• Sleeping in a room with 26 teen boys can be scarier than any horror film.
• Sometimes the best trips and events don't have to have high production values to be a huge success, just high relationship values.
• I can honestly say this was the first mission trip that I enjoyed without hesitation from the beginning of planning unto the end. No depression, no major problems, and work that excited me instead of filling me with dread.
• It is not up to us to triage people to help, sorting between the ones with the best personalities and most potential -- God wants us to love and help them all equally.
• Even ministers can be ministered to!
• Letting the teens run an impromptu worship service was a joy to behold... two and a half hours of singing, sharing, testifying and bonding. I think God was quite pleased with it.
• This was easily worth four months of planning and details and last minute scrambles.
• I want to curl up into a ball and sleep for six days straight. Maybe seven.
• I had to throw out almost half of the ideas and programming I brought for the week, just due to a lack of time and being flexible with the schedule. It's frustrating that we didn't get around to all of it, but I'd rather be okay with cutting some than making everyone agitated by cramming it in when there wasn't room.
• Small things -- like putting on a band-aid with a prayer written on it by an anonymous member -- can be the some of the most affecting.
• I never expected it to be that hard to be apart from my son, even though I got to see him every other day or so. He really is part of my family.
• A cool little God thing -- I had the teens write a short essay on Luke 10:1-24 about Jesus sending his disciples out on a mission trip, and during the week two different people (not from our group) were talking to the teens and used verses from that passage.
• As the missionaries who came to speak to us on Friday said, you don't always have to know everything to know that God is calling you to the field and you just need to say "yes".
• I loved seeing some new friendships form among the teens, and older ones repaired.
• When it comes to our egos, there are two dangerous extremes: being too proud in your accomplishments without acknowledging God, and being too depressed in your failures without acknowledging God.

The 10 Commandments - Texted

My friend Stacy posted this, which I thought was amusing enough to pass along.

What if God texted the 10 Commandments? They'd probably look like this:

1. no1 b4 me. srsly.
2. dnt wrshp pix/idols
3. no omg’s
4. no wrk on w/end (sat 4 now; sun l8r)
5. pos ok - ur m&d r cool
6. dnt kill ppl
7. :-X only w/ m8
8. dnt steal
9. dnt lie re: bf
10. dnt ogle ur bf’s m8. or ox. or dnkey. myob.

M, pls rite on tabs & giv 2 ppl.

ttyl, YHWH

Father's Day

One of the most interesting things I've discovered in my walk with God is that He gives us relationships here on earth to teach us about our relationship with Him. The more we understand about friendship, marriage, leadership, subservience, etc. -- the more we learn about how God views us and relates to us.

I'm only scratching the surface right now when it comes to fatherhood, and how my experiences with my son are teaching me about my heavenly Father and how he sees me, but I've had a few thoughts:

• I've often asked the question, "Why would God intentionally create a being that He knew would rebel, reject and scorn him?" And I now look at my son and know that, in all probability, he will rebel against me at some point, hate me and try to distance himself from me. But the answer to my question is revealed in this: we create because the potential for love reciprocated is far greater than the fear of eternal rebellion.
• Selfless love -- Jeremiah can't give anything back to me, at least not intentionally. He is incredibly self-centered ("gimme gimme, I need, I need"), and my role is to provide for him and love him unconditionally. God loves us too unconditionally, and provides for us even when we're too wrapped up in ourselves.
• Dependence -- Without his mother and I, Jeremiah would perish. He is literally unable to take care of himself, to strike out on his own and to be fulfilled. His very existence depends on us, and he clings to us because of it. We are his world entire. When he grows up, our role will shrink and shrink, but that's not the case with us and God -- we are always 100% dependent on Him, unable to provide for ourselves what we truly need.
• Patience - Every day I can't help but wonder what kind of man he's going to grow up to be... what he'll look like... whether he'll have my eyes or his mother's... what kind of personality he'll hold. And most importantly, whether he will accept Christ or not. I would breathe a lot easier if I could come back from the future to tell myself that everything, indeed, worked out okay. But instead, I must be patient, and trust in God and His plan -- just as He is patient with us, watching us develop and His plan unfold, step by step.
  

Our Cry

"My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the LORD; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God." (Psalm 84:2)

Crying is a topic that's been on my mind more often than not these days. When you have a newborn baby in the house, that comes with the territory.

Babies aren't born with any ability to communicate beyond crying. It's all they know how to do, and they do it prodigiously -- crying to signal hunger, or a messy diaper, or the need to be held, or even just over-stimulation. Everybody likes to laugh at new parents who tear their hair out trying to figure out what the squirt is crying over at any given point, until you are the new parents, and you gain a wholesale appreciation of what your mother and father went through.

My son came out of the womb with a Ph.D. in crying; he doesn't do it halfway, he takes it to a professional level. The cries start with grudging, half-hearted noises... sort of a car revving up the engine. Then there's the long, low wail... "pay attention to me!" This is followed by a symphony of shrieks and noises of extreme displeasure, one after another with only a quick breath in between. If he really gets worked up, he can turn his face red and rattle the ceiling with cries that are designed to reach into my spinal column and jar it severely.

So, I think about crying (not crying myself, although at times that is an attractive option), but the basic need behind a cry. We take for granted all of the times that the Bible tells us about so-and-so "crying out" to God: the Hebrews in Egypt crying out for freedom... the Israelites crying out for victory over the Philistines... Job crying out in agony... the Psalmist crying his heart out... unrepentant sinners crying out because of the consequences of their actions... the mother crying out to Jesus to save her daughter from demon possession... even Christ himself crying out on the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

They cry to God because of a strong need, a need to be heard, to be helped, to be saved, to be comforted. And if their hearts are repentant, God responds -- He hears us (Exodus 22:23), He brings justice (Luke 18:7), He consoles (Luke 7:13), He fulfills our purpose (Psalm 57:2), He grants us understanding (Proverbs 2:3)... and He delivers us (Isaiah 19:20).

There's something basically honest in a cry. It can't be faked, not when it comes from the heart. It says, "I need! I need!" But it also says, "Only you can give me this, and I put my trust in you for it!" When we cry out to Jesus, we are excluding other gods, other rescuers, other sources of hope. We put our chips all into one basket, belief without compromise. Only Jesus can hear our cry and answer it fully.

Right now, many desperate people in our country are crying out for rescue and deliverance, from finances and terrorism and whatnot. Like the Israelites once did, the country is looking to our own leaders to answer their cry, but that puts hope in a faulty proposition. God will leave us to our mistaken hope, if we choose it -- but if we ever get sick of disappointment, then we may fall to our knees, lift our heads up, and cry out, "Save me!" to the only one who truly can.

My son cries because he needs me and his mother -- he cannot have it any other way. Why should our attitude toward God be any different?

Heirloom

A few months ago I read a neat article about this dad who decided he wanted to create an heirloom for his children. So when each of his four kids was born, he'd go out and buy a Bible, and then devote himself to reading it cover to cover over the next 18 years -- marking it up, taking notes, underlining good verses. Four kids, four Bibles. On their 18th birthday, he'd give them the Bible for their own, hopefully to continue the tradition and one day give to their own child.

I liked that idea, for more than one reason. Personally, I've never read the Bible cover-to-cover, although I have digested large chunks of it. A pastor should read the whole Bible, right? So there's that. And my desperate prayer to God over the past week is that Jeremiah grows up to be a man after God's own heart. A man who avoids the weaknesses and mistakes I've made and becomes something better. I want him to cling to God, to be a strong witness, to crave that relationship. I'm terrified I won't be up to the task of raising him right in that way, that my own faulty nature will be less-than-ideal as a role model for his spiritual life.

So I bought a Bible, started reading, started marking it up. God's a better role model in the end, after all. I want him to read it years from now and see my notes, connect with me in some way, and know that being a Christian for me isn't a hobby but who I am. I hope this heirloom will be complete for him on his 18th, and that he will take it eagerly instead of reluctantly.

Jeremiah: Sent By God

Back in August 2008 when my wife told me that she was pregnant with our first child, we had a rough couple of weeks where we fussed and debated and argued and contemplated and fought for our favorite names. She and I have very different tastes when it comes to what we think are cool names (hey, Oz *is* a cool name!), so we settled on the first name that pleased us both for a boy: Jeremiah.

It means "Sent by God", most famously in reference to the great prophet of the Old Testament. Our Jeremiah was sent by God to us yesterday, April 20, and he burst into this world quickly, loudly and triumphantly. I'm perhaps more sappy than my wife, so my tears couldn't stop coming -- this was my son, no small miracle that will take our life in a bold new direction. From his namesake's book, God says, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations." (Jer 1:5) That's what I told him this morning, that our Lord knew him from the beginning of time and before, and prepared him to come into this world at the right moment, for a specific purpose in his plan. I'm eager to discover what that purpose may be, and I gave my solemn promise to raise Jeremiah to know the Lord as well as he knows us.

One of my online friends said that they looked up Jeremiah 1:19 -- because he was born at 1:19pm -- and it gives this great testimonial: "'They will fight against you but will not overcome you, for I am with you and will rescue you,' declares the LORD." I know he's going to have hardships and trails and pain in his life, and while I'll try to help and protect in any way I can, ultimately I have to lift him up to God for the Almighty's protection and wisdom.

It's a good day to be blessed, for sure.

Inner Beauty

Susan Boyle rocked the world recently with an incredible performance on Britain's version of American Idol. A great singer is a dime a dozen on these shows, but what made this story electric is that, for lack of a better way to put it, Susan is not what most people would consider beautiful or attractive. Watch this clip and observe the reactions of everyone around her:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY

At first they patronize her, and you can literally see the "eckkk" on Simon's face as she comes out. She's ugly. This will just be sad. She's the poster child for anti-beauty, someone no one would typically look at twice.

And then she sings.

Watch the faces of everyone in the audience, the judges, the back stage guys. They are just floored. In a matter of seconds, their perception of beauty is turned on its ear as she fills the room with her amazing voice. She gets a standing ovation, including from one of the judges.

I got chills from this, because this is exactly how God operates through all history. He uses the weak things to shame the strong, the ugly to shame the beautiful. He places a higher worth on inner beauty, talent and giving than all of the surface vanity that we can boast. Everyone in his eyes has tremendous value, even those who are 47 and never been kissed.

This is why we reject the world and embrace Christ. The world says that ugly people can only do ugly things; that the fat, the losers, the geeks, the average are just useless. The world pants after an unrealistic, shallow definition of beauty without ever considering the whole picture. Christ always considers the entire person and loves them completely, fully, wholly. He made Susan, he made me, and he made you, and he gave each of us very beautiful aspects to share with the world.

Thought for the Day

"In truth you cannot read too much in Scriptures;
and what you read you cannot read too carefully,
and what you read carefully you cannot understand too well,
and what you understand well you cannot teach too well,
and what you teach well you cannot live too well."

--Martin Luther

He Is Risen Indeed

Next Sunday I've been asked to do the post-Easter sermon at our church, on the topic of "joy". It is the logical conclusion to the subject of the resurrection of Christ that we celebrate today -- the influx of complete joy that could only be caused by our God forgiving our sins, defeating death, giving us true hope, providing us with a real future, and paving the way for reunification between God and man.

It always boggles my mind to see people who put in their two token visits to church -- Easter and Christmas Eve -- yet are never enticed beyond that. In those two holidays, so much joy bursts out that it really can't be contained, but more often than not the real reason isn't examined. It's attributed to goodwill and the happiness of the holidays, yet Christians know that it goes much further than that. We cannot be the producers of complete joy, just the recipients of it.

I look around and see a world in need of some serious joy these days. The economy, wars, politics, injustices, suicides, abortions, family separations, rebellions, untrust, racism, evening news -- these don't spark the excitement of joy in our hearts, just terror at being trapped in the same world as all of this. It's not a basically good world populated by basically good people; it's a corrupt world given over to the devil populated by fallen, broken souls. It's a world in bad need of joy, so bad in fact that it can hardly recognize that joy when it sees it.

Without the resurrection, there is no joy for us, only hopelessness. Without it, we are indeed lost and quite damned. Without it, we face a future as hollow and meaningless as anything else we might make under our own power. Without it, we live a lie when we trundle off to church on Easter morning singing "Up from the grave he arose!" And yet people spend their whole lives striving to deny the resurrection, fighting it, arguing against it. The image of small children being offered the best candy in the world by parents, only for them to kick and scream and bite their way out of accepting it comes to mind.

But with the resurrection... with it there is joy. Ours is not a God of mere words, who said some common-sense things about human decency and then left us to our own means. He is a God of action, who put his life where his mouth was, who came to earth to live as one of us, who offered a second chance to all around him, and who freely gave his life up as a sacrifice so that the wrath of God may not fall upon those who believe, because our sins are washed clean.

On Easter morning, we are emerging from the tomb with Jesus himself, blinking as we step into the sunlight for the first time, feeling the webs of darkness and despair fall away. We shout "He is risen!" because we are risen too, in him. Our joy is made complete, it overflows, it seeks out the dark pain of our life and overwhelms it. Our joy is not a mere fairy tale, but the simple truth. Our joy cannot be denied, even when people shout in our faces to give it up, to grow up, to be as they are. But, like Jesus, we cannot go back into the tomb -- it holds nothing for us.

He is risen. He is risen indeed.

God is Good, All the Time

One of the most frustrating, universal aspects of ministry is that it's a long-term process in which you rarely, if ever, see the fruits of your labor. Therefore, it's a tremendous blessing when God opens the curtains a little bit to show you how He's been working through you, how His plan has progressed.

Yesterday I received a nice e-mail from a past youth group student who's now married with a kid. Heh. In it he mentioned how he was now going to Liberty University to become a youth pastor -- the first teen I know of from our youth group to go into the ministry. I had been praying for this day for a long time, and it's just so overwhelming to think about it, and to think how way back in 2001, he and I were talking at an amusement park and he mentioned offhand that he might want to be a firefighter or youth pastor. It's amazing how God takes those little seeds and grows something mighty.

Anticipation of Glory

I was doing some thinking today about anticipation -- of upcoming video games I look forward to, of our baby who's less than a month away from being born, of the summer, what have you. People are separate from the rest of the animal kingdom in that we don't just live in the now, we live for the future as well. We look at the horizon and hope.

Paul's statement that "To live is Christ and to die is gain" goes against the grain of secular thought -- why should he look forward to dying? To die means the end, the final act, the forever separation from all that you knew and had and did. And yet, to the Christian, death is but a graduation to a much better life, a severing of the pain of this world and the glory of the next. He looks forward to the future and revels in the hope of what is to come.

One of Christ's greatest gifts to us was to take away the "sting" of death, the worry that it is the end of everything. As the ugliness of the cross was turned into a symbol of victory, so is the fear of death turned into the promise of life for his followers.

There are things I want to accomplish in this world, time that I want to spend with my family, and hope that I might one day rise up to the challenges of the ministry that I've thus far failed to fully reach. Whether or not God gives me the time for this is up to Him, but I can rest assured that His timing of my death will be perfect and serve purpose, and that on that day, I will gain everything and lose nothing.

If I was the one to design the official Christian flag, I think I'd put that verse smack in the middle.

Defining God

I had a professor back in college who once said that we are always struggling to put God into a nice, neat, tidy box. We want him to fit in there, to be able to handle him, understand him -- and limit him. But God's never in the box, no matter how much we try to fool ourselves.

Yesterday at my parents' church, the youth pastor talked about our tendency to attempt to define God according to our own wishes and comfort level. It's kind of a funny reversal on the creation process -- God created us in His own image, and we try to define him according to our own. Yet no matter what we may choose to believe about God, what we accept as comfortable and understandable, God is who God is. We only limit ourselves by trying to confine him to whatever we deem acceptable. You can't pick and choose aspects and qualities of the Almighty and discard the rest because they strike holy fear in you, or challenge your established patterns of sin, or cause you in any way to tremble before his majesty.

It reminds me of that one scene in Talladega Nights, when the characters are having dinner and praying to Jesus, and then talking about which "type" of Jesus they like best. Baby Jesus, party Jesus, what have you. It's funny because that's how many people truly engage in a relationship with God -- by picking just one aspect to fixate upon (such as Jesus being my friend, or Jesus being my protector) and ignoring the rest (Jesus as my King, Jesus as my judge, Jesus as my teacher). God is the whole package when you commit your life to him -- He doesn't limit himself to you, and doesn't allow you to define him in any way that would lessen the perfection and power that he contains.

Walking With Jesus: Prayer Warriors

“Prayer Warriors” is a term that I don’t hear very much these days, at least not around here. That’s a shame – it’s a title that bestows a great compliment on a guy or gal who has a strong, visible, effective prayer life. They are warriors, because they fight evil, sin and Satan in this world with the most devastating weapon at their disposal. They bring everything to God in prayer: their daily life, thanking God for blessings, problems that friends and family have, their country, even strangers around them. One of the reasons that Prayer Warriors get noticed is that their prayers are “powerful and effective” (James 5:16). Their prayers seem to get stuff done – as if they have a special inside to God that the rest of us lack.

C. H. Spurgeon once said, "Prayer pulls the rope down below and the great bell rings above in the ears of God. Some scarcely stir the bell, for they pray so languidly; others give only an occasional jerk at the rope. But he who communicates with heaven is the man who grasps the rope boldly and pulls continuously with all his might."

Jesus was the ultimate Prayer Warrior – in the gospels we see him spending almost as much time praying with God as we see him be with people. Everyone, including his disciples, saw that Jesus’ prayers produced powerful effects. One of his most gut-wrenching prayers was the night before his crucifixion, when he prayed for believers and also for God’s will to be done in that situation. Before he died for you, he prayed for you.

The truth is that Prayer Warriors don’t have any special connection; they just take advantage of what the scriptures tell us so plainly: God acts on prayers. He not only commands us to pray, but He wants us to, is eager to hear from us, and eager to show us what awesome things He can do if we just “pray big”. Realize that prayer isn’t natural for a sinful person – it’s a skill that has to be learned, practiced and honed, just like any other you have in your life. You have to keep doing it often enough to build up “prayer muscles”.

So how can you become a powerful and effective Prayer Warrior? Here are God’s instructions, straight from the Bible and into your life:

• "This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us - whatever we ask - we know that we have what we asked of him" (1 John 5:14-15).
• "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 4:6-7).
• "…The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective" (James 5:16).
• "And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints" (Ephesians 6:18).
• "In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express" (Romans 8:26).
• "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9).
• "Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus" (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18).
• "When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures" (James 4:3).

Walking With Jesus: The All-Or-Nothing God

About ten years ago, Stephen Curtis Chapman wrote a song that I very much liked called "Dive", in which he sang: But we will never know the awesome power / Of the grace of God / Until we let ourselves get swept away / Into this holy flood / So if you’ll take my hand / We’ll close our eyes and count to three / And take the leap of faith / Come on let’s go!

I've always loved the imagery of "diving" into a relationship with God -- when you dive into a pool, there's none of this toeing the water nonsense to see if the temperature is to your liking. You jump in, and it's all-encompassing. It's everywhere around you, and there's no going back.

One of my college friends posted a great quote that from C.S. Lewis about our All-Or-Nothing God: "Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important." Or, in the words of Miyagi in Karate Kid, "Walk on road, hm? Walk left side, safe. Walk right side, safe. Walk middle, sooner or later get squish just like grape. Here, karate, same thing. Either you karate do 'yes' or karate do 'no.' You karate do 'guess so,' *squish* just like grape. Understand?"

Many faiths and religions try to straddle the middle line in an effort to lure more people in -- make it accessible, don't make it too offensive, and certainly don't stress that this is an all-encompassing way of life. It's just a fashion accessory, to slip on and off when you feel like it.

God is a self-described "jealous" God (Exodus 20:5) -- He wants ALL of your life, not just a bit, not just part, and not even most. He's willing to give you everything for free -- eternal life, purpose, rewards, forgiveness, guidance -- but He's not willing to compromise on what He wants from you either. He doesn't want to share you with the world, to be "another" god in your life; He wants to be your All-Or-Nothing.

A great example of this is in Matthew 19:16-30. A rich man who was also pretty religious comes up to Jesus and asks what he has to do to get eternal life. Jesus knows that this man's love of money is competing with God for importance in his life, so Jesus tells him to give all of his riches away -- a test, to see if this man could give it all up to dive into God without any distractions. Yet the man couldn't -- he walked away sadly. God was important to him, but not as important as other things.

Diving into the All-Or-Nothing God is absolutely terrifying to consider. It's a huge risk. It demands everything from us. It certainly will change our lives. It might force us to get rid of things we love that distract us from our walk with Jesus. It might make some people like us a lot less. It might cost us dearly.

And yet, as C.S. Lewis said, it is of "infinite importance" -- nothing is more important than whether we surrender ourselves fully to God or not. There really is no middle ground, no matter what you may like to believe.

A Disposable Life

As yesterday was the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, we're once again reminded that civilization is a paper-thin covering for the horrors that we can and do still perpetrate on others and our own people. As President Obama moves to open up stem cell research on human embryos and reduce restrictions on abortion, thousands have prayed for this country to not be hypocritical on its stance toward life -- that all human life, whether inside the womb or outside, is precious and sacred, to be protected and cherished.

It is only in the fiction that a human being doesn't actually start "being" until near the end of a pregnancy or the first second outside of its mother that enables people to live with the decision of legalizing and endorsing abortion under the banner of "choice". Just because we can't physically see something does not mean it doesn't exist or have the right to exist. Because, of course, the second you acknowledge that a baby is a person and not a fetus without feelings, a soul or a mind, that's the point where it becomes murder. And we don't murder -- we just relabel the term to make it more palpable.

In 2005, the number of abortions since Roe vs. Wade was passed exceeded a heartbreaking 46 million children. 46 millions lives ended before they had the chance to grow, to experience, to fulfill their potential in our world. 46 million that we as a civilization looked at and declared "non-human" and disposable.

Abortion in our country is one of the sorest points in the framework that links us all together -- one side seeing it as murder, the other as the denial of a woman's choice and control over her body. "Greater love has no man than this: that he lay down his life for his friends," Jesus said. He did not ask us to demand other's lives to ease our own, however. He wept over death because life was precious.

If Mary happened to live today instead of back then and became pregnant as a teenager, how many would urge her to abort? Having that child, making the decision to bear it to term, had to be terrifically difficult on her -- either back then or in the hypothetical now. If she had the choice to be rid of it, would she?

Look at her response in Luke 1: she is fearful but trusts in God, that He has a plan for all things, including this child. She is excited over this blessing that she would be the mother of the Messiah. She praises God and affirms her role as His servant. The baby Jesus, still in her womb, had tremendous worth to her, an indisposable life.

Now, receiving the news that your baby is going to be the Son of God isn't the same as finding out you're pregnant and not ready to have a child today -- but what if God could open the curtain for all expectant mothers to show them just what potential and purpose that baby would have if it just got the chance to be born and nurtured? What if more pregnant mothers were impressed that they do have a choice -- to keep their child or put them up for adoption to one of the millions of adults that desperately want (but can't have) children of their own?

What if we, as a civilization, said that all human life is precious and not subject to being disposed of just because it is an inconvenience to another? Would we finally be growing up at that point?

Awesome God

“Awesome” is a word that I toss around far too often, too casually, to the point where it has little meaning. It’s a filler word that could easily be substituted with “terrific” or “great” or “huh” in many cases. And yet its use in the Bible is anything but mundane – something that is awesome is literally “worthy of awe”.

Have you ever been so full of awe that you just stop, unable to fully develop a thought as an experience, or a vision, or a thought washes over you? Perhaps it was a vista at the top of a mountain, or the innocence of a newborn’s face, or the first time that you ever heard someone truly special say “I love you.” Awe works in quiet, still moments of supreme importance – something our society has too little time for these days. No wonder that it’s hard to look at God with anything approaching awe, even as our mouths sing “Our God is an awesome God” on Sundays.

The Bible uses the word “awe” or “awesome” 51 times, and never in a flippant, casual manner. “Worship God acceptably with reverence and awe” Hebrews 12:28 instructs; David can only stammer that “I stand in awe of your laws” in Psalm 119:120; the crowds in Matthew 9:8 were filled with awe of Jesus when he healed the paralytic; the early church in Acts 2 was “filled with awe” as miracles and wonders happened around them daily; God’s name, His creation, His acts and His decisions are constantly coupled with the simple description of “awesome”. In fact, only once does the Bible deem anything a person does as awesome – when King Solomon, bestowed with wisdom from God, hands down a judgment in 1 Kings 3:28.

Job testified about God in Job 37:22 when he said, “Out of the north he comes in golden splendor; God comes in awesome majesty!” In Job’s mind, there was no alternative to standing in overwhelmed humility as the mighty, sovereign, awesome majesty of God approached.

Very few things in our life really deserve the term “awesome”, even though we use it and hear it constantly. God, however, does deserve it, and we should give it to Him freely.

Daily Bread

One of the things I always want to make more time for in my life is daily time with God -- in prayer, in reading the scriptures, in writing, and in reading of other articles. Something I vaguely remembered from my childhood is leafing through little devotionals that our church always had laid out on a table called Our Daily Bread. Recently I found another copy and started using that for my early morning devotions -- I put it right on my computer desk and make sure it's the first thing I do in the morning before starting in on a day's work.

Our Daily Bread is basically a little booklet that contains three months' worth of devotionals. Each devotional has a scripture verse, a message for the day, suggested reading and a prayer -- all packed into a tiny page. From start to end, it takes me about 45 seconds to read it, then a few more minutes to think and pray about it. I've been loving it because I haven't really forced myself to do this -- it's something I want to do.

If you're interested, Our Daily Bread is a free ministry, so you can sign up to get these in the mail for no cost whatsoever (of course, they take donations to keep the ministry going for you and others, but that's between you and your conscience and budget). If you want to save a tree, you can go on their website and read it there or get it e-mailed to you: http://www.rbc.org/odb/odb.shtml

For me, having a physical copy helps me to remember to read it, because it isn't competing for my time internet surfing or writing, but exists outside of all that. Anyway, thought I'd pass that along.