Accessibility Accentuates Everything

Who remembers libraries? How about phonebooks? Yeah me neither.

Actually, that's not true. In spite of the powerful technology I carry around in my back pocket, I still utilize these quaint resources from time to time to look something up. Which kind of brings me to the intended topic: the effects of accessibility.

There's no need to do a lot of explaining. If you're reading this blog post you most likely own a smart phone or have a blog of your own or have a very active Facebook account - or all three. You're fairly savvy, cyber-speaking, and you are more than well aware of what it now means to have the world at your fingertips. You're probably also aware of how this accessibility to EVERYTHING seems to only accentuate the influence of everything. It's culture gone hyperbolic.

Take your pick: politics, pornography, shopping, music, social interaction, preaching, teaching, complaining & gaming. All of these and millions more topics, broad-spectrum to niche-like, are brought front and center with a simple search.

It's old news, but nevertheless, my point is this: If you're blogging or posting or Facebooking or tweeting or Skyping or publishing, or whatever you're doing online, be a force for good and for God (Hmmm...sounds familiar). Never before has influence this extraordinary been handed to so many ordinary people. It's a big world, made small by technology, so get out there and start influencing.

A Voice With A Love For Words

Preacher, teacher, Bible study leader - when you read aloud from God's Word, don't read it as if it were a newspaper or a set of assembly instructions. Break free from the constraints of margins and hard returns and the fear of hearing your own voice! Scripture is living and active - please, try to sound as if you yourself are living and active when you read aloud!

This summer a friend of mine gave me the book "Cry, The Beloved Country". It really is a beautiful book. The story is set in mid-20th century South Africa and hovers in general around the social struggles in that part of the world as apartheid was beginning to emerge, but specifically around the conflict of a devout man as he seeks to be reconciled to his lost son in Johannesburg.

Sitting in a church service, the main character Kumalo listens as his new-found friend and fellow priest Msimangu begins to deliver his message:

"Misimangu opened the book, and read to them first from the book. And Kumalo had not known that his friend had such a voice. For the voice was of gold, and the voice had love for the words it was reading. The voice shook and beat and trembled, not as the voice of an old man shakes and beats and trembles, nor as a leaf shakes and beats and trembles, but as deep bell when it is struck. For it was not only a voice of gold, but it was the voice of a man whose heart was golden, reading from a book of golden words. And the people were silent, and Kumalo was silent, for when are three such things found in one place together?

'I the Lord have called thee in righteousness
and will hold thine hand and will keep thee
and give thee for a covenant of the people
for a light of the Gentiles
To open the blind eyes
to bring out the prisoners from the prison
And them that sit in darkness
out of the prison house.'" (Isaiah 42:6-7)

Have we not all heard before, at least once, someone reading the Holy Scriptures with such love and passion? Was it not something that stirred us up as the inspired Word was honored and elevated in such a way? When you have the opportunity to address others and read from the Bible, love the words you're reading.

Imitation, Flattery, and All That

If imitation is flattery, these pieces are some pretty superlative compliments (and hasn't God inspired some amazing music???):

Earth Beneath Your Shoe

Phil Keaggy sings, "There's a road I like to walk, when the morning is brand new, and the only sound you hear is the earth beneath your shoe..."

There actually is a place I like perambulate of a morning. It happens to be an old abandoned highway that used to lead down into a river valley and run through a little town named after a Delaware Indian chief. In 1966 the river was dammed, the valley flooded, and a lake created. (The town was relocated before this, of course.) That town is the place where I now live, and the old highway leading to its ghost is still there, but now it's shrouded in trees and overgrown with brush and it trails off into the lake in lumps of broken asphalt.


As I walk along that road, I often try to imagine it when it was still being used (I see my dad driving his old Chevy down that road). In places you can still discern the yellow lines down the center. I'm sure the folks that used that road never imagined it would one day lay among the trees, hidden and deteriorating like a lost bit of rope.

And that's just the thing with us humans, isn't it? We tend to imagine that the way things are is the way they'll always be. Our highways, our homes, even our nations. But a quick look around should tell us plainly that this is just not so. Every grey, aging and abandoned home I see sitting in the middle of a Kansas field used to be a place where people lived, loved, ate and slept. It was their reality. And I'll bet they thought it would last forever.

Someday my own home will be in ruins, my address forgotten, my existence a faintly whispered memory. But, thank God, the changes I and every believer look forward to have a far better prospect than that!

"How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure." ~ 1 John 3:1-3

A Wise German Preacher

Of late my schedule has been erratic, my life hectic and my writing sporadic. Ergo, this repost from one year ago today.

So you preach a sermon or teach a lesson and nobody blinks. It's a weird feeling - of amazement, astonishment, disappointment and frustration. Delivering a timely, Biblical, powerful message and having little or no response from the hearers is sort of like standing near the check out lines at Wal Mart with a sack full of 20 dollar bills, offering them to anyone who wanted one (or five, or six), and having people ignore you. It doesn't make sense, and it can really mess with the mind of the preacher!

Well, having experienced this phenomenon several times through the years, I've come to realize that as one fulfilling the teacher/preacher role, response isn't up to me, although it would be easier if that were my only responsibility. I mean, I could preach pure fluffy nonsense and then whip people into an emotional frenzy and feel like they responded to the message. Speakers - even preachers - do that all the time.

As it turns out, I have an even tougher job: to rightly divide the Word of truth, and to proclaim it as if I were speaking the very oracles of God. Oh, and don't forget that little word of encouragement from James 3:1.

All of this is a bit reminiscent of John MacArthur's Theology of Sleep. It's really a great piece of wisdom to grasp. While reading a biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer lately, it seems he had learned it early on as a pastor and preacher:

"He took the idea of preaching the Word of God extremely seriously and wouldn't have dared to speak his mere opinions from the pulpit. He also knew that a word might be delivered that had come straight from heaven and be rejected, just as the messages of the Old Testament prophets had been rejected and just as Jesus had been rejected. The prophet's role was simply and obediently to speak what God wished to say. Whether or not the message was received was between God and His people. And yet to preach such a burning message, and to know that it was God's Word for the faithful, who rejected it, was painful. But this was the pain of the prophetic office, and to be chosen by God as his prophet always meant, in part, that the prophet would share in God's sufferings."

He Shatters And Cuts

What heavy thoughts have you had lately?

"My child is wayward; what did I do wrong?"

"My bills are mounting, my income is decreasing."

"I've prayed for them so long, my passion has drained away."

"My marriage is unexpectedly difficult."

"My health issues are an affliction, they destroy my joy."

"I'm struggling so much with my sin, will it ever end?"

Today I am thankful that my God, my Redeemer, shatters doors of bronze as if they were kindling and cuts iron bars as if they were match sticks. The impossible, suffocating situation you may find yourself in today cannot defeat the saving purpose of the Almighty.

"For He shatters the doors of bronze and cuts in two the bars of iron...Whoever is wise, let him attend to these things; let them consider the steadfast love of the LORD." Psalm 107:16, 43

Severely Merciful

Moreover, the light of the moon will be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun will be sevenfold, as the light of seven days, in the day when the LORD binds up the brokenness of his people, and heals the wounds inflicted by his blow. Isaiah 30:26

It is a fact that our heavenly Father disciplines us when we sinfully stray. At times I've been aware that it was happening in my life, but I'm sure there have been other instances in my life when His blows have gone unnoticed, either because I've been to dull or He was working mysteriously, behind the scenes, to bring me back around.

The great thing is that the blows He deals out are the wounds He binds up. See, this is like the loving and attentive earthly father who chastises the disobedient child, yet faithfully tucks him safely into bed the same night. Sometimes the earthly father withdraws his affections for a time so that the child knows for sure his displeasure. But withdrawal is not equal to abandonment.

Yes, sometimes God is distant, but He is distant in order to ignite our hearts to passion once again. He has yet to throw up his hands in disgust to say, "What am I going to do with this kid?" He continues steadily, faithfully forming us.

I think if preachers (including me) would preach these lessons on the folly of sin and the faithful wounds of the Father more often, we might spark an earnest love for and willing obedience to Jesus. It's humbling, and even a little bit frightening, to ponder such things: that our Father is strong and stern and zealous regarding what is right. But He is equally earnest about raising up His dearly loved children in the likeness of Christ.