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.