Humility: The Pause That Refreshes

Way back in January I took two of my sons to see Phil Keaggy in concert at a local church.  I love it when Phil comes to town because he always holds a free "guitar clinic" which sounds enough like an invitation to actually play your guitar in front of Phil that most folks are scared away and the event is very sparsely attended.  This serves to make the gathering very intimate and the following meet and greet personal and unhurried.

At the close of the afternoon's "clinic" I shook Phil's four-fingered hand (I always forget what a little guy he is) and gave him a copy of The World Tilting Gospel by Dan Phillips. 

Dan had actually found out that I'd be seeing Keaggy and since he himself is a long time fan (longer than me!), he asked me if I'd give a copy of TWTG to Phil.  Of course I had to, since Dan offered to reimburse me for the book at the next T4G conference! (wink wink, nudge nudge).  At any rate, Phil received the book graciously, I thanked him for being such a blessing, and then I headed to Texas Roadhouse with my boys to eat some beef and await the evening's concert. (For a whole bunch of concert photos, jump over to here)

We returned to the venue in plenty of time to be, for all intents and purposes, at the front of the line, and we snagged excellent seats with a good view of Phil's hands (Remember to always, always, sit on the left side of an auditorium if the guitar player is right handed, or vice versa).
 

The Keagster played what I think is a fairly typical set, including "Salvation Army Band", "True Believers", "Shades of Green", "Love Broke Through" and "Here Comes the Sun". I was grinning from the first note.  There was plenty of improvisation and prodigious use of the JamMan and much talk of Jesus.  It was all quite wonderful. 

For his final song, before the encore, Phil played "Let Everything Else Go."  There are so many things about this song that are beautiful, and I rarely can get past "Oh I can't wait to see You, Jesus, face to face" without some tears.   On this night (and maybe he does this regularly) Phil modified the lyrics to the chorus the last time through.  The words are:

Oh, I can't wait to see you, Jesus, face to face
Nothing in this world can take Your place
All the pride of man laid low and all his works of gold
Nothing can compare with what You are
Let everything else go

Phil changed that middle line to: "All the pride of man laid low, especially my own"

That, to me, was priceless - and refreshing.  Phil Keaggy can't go a single day without someone singing his praises.  And imagine touring and meeting countless people who congratulate, praise and honor you.  I would self-destruct.  Phil Keaggy is outwardly a lovely, gracious, humble, Christ honoring man, and I believe he is on the inside as well.  But what man among us doesn't struggle with pride?  And here is a guy, 45 years into an amazing career, still praying while he's singing, "Lord, take my pride.  It's ugly.  Nothing can compare to what You are."

Being Poor Doesn't Necessarily Make You Thrifty

I've attended three funerals in the past month, each one for an octogenarian.  In every service, it was mentioned that the departed had endured the Great Depression as a child. The impact on these people had been obvious: they had become thrifty, or generous, or "tough".  For these folks, whom I knew, it was absolutely the truth.  Tough times had built character.

I'll betcha, though, that there were folks who went through the Depression that turned out bitter, mean and tight-fisted.

The point is that suffering doesn't always make us sweet any more than being poor makes us thrifty.

Making the leap to Christian application, believers should be careful about becoming bitter during times of trial.  If we don't receive trials in the proper way, or learn in the midst of them how good they can actually be, we run the risk of missing blessings and weakening our faith and becoming morbidly depressed!  Trials, as Jesus' brother James tells us, are to be counted as joy (weird, huh!), because of what they produce in us, and because by them we as believers are made complete (pardon another set of parentheses, but WOW!).

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. James 1:2-4


George Mattheson, who in spite of going blind when he was 20, insisted on following the Lord's call into ministry.  He suffered in a very unique way, no doubt, and later penned these words in his hymn "O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go":

"O Joy that seekest me through the pain,

I cannot close my heart to thee;

I trace the rainbow through the rain,

and feel the promise is not in vain..."

Everything Is Amazing, Or, An Unlikely Hero

One week ago this morning (February 13th), my 73 year old father suffered a heart attack.  Today, he is back at home with new cardiac plumbing thanks to a quadruple bypass performed last Friday.  That is amazing.  Open heart surgery is a big deal, but does anybody remember when it was a REALLY. BIG. DEAL?  Again, amazing.  So today I'm thankful for modern medicine and I'm thankful for a cardiologist who is a fellow believer and I'm thankful my dad is home.

Last week I realized something.  I realized that my dad is one of my heroes, but that wasn't always the case.  Thinking back to when I was a teenager, he certainly wasn't my hero.  I was my hero back then.   Ahh, the ignorance and arrogance of youth. 

Not everybody has a good dad.  Nobody has a perfect dad.  I have a good dad who isn't perfect. When I pause long enough to take a steady look at my dad's life and the years that I've been a part of it, I see plenty of failure.  No, let's call it: humanness.  My dad has truly always done the best he could by me,  and now that I realize what kind of stresses a grown man deals with, I'm starting to get it.

Dad is as hard working a man as there ever was.  He's got more energy than me or my older brother. 

Dad's faith has grown deep over the years, and it's so obvious that even a self-interested baby-of-the-family like me can notice it.

Dad cries when he talks about the Lord.

Dad sends out text messages like this the day after heart surgery (the part in yellow):

These are just a few of the reasons my dad is one of my heroes.  Knowing my own heart like I do, I'm honestly not sure I'll ever match him, but if the Lord wills, I've got plenty of years left to try.

His Love Endures Forever, From A 9 Year Old

And now, for a feel good story.

Last night I was leading 25 Jesus-loving teenagers in a brief devotion using Psalm 136.  This Psalm is a ready-made responsive reading, with each phrase followed by the statement "His love endures forever."

Going around the room, each student would read one line of the Psalm and then the whole group would respond with an energetic "His love endures forever!" and so on until the last verse.

After finishing this exercise, I simply emphasized the point that in back of everything, is the fact that His love endures forever.  Then, everyone was given a blank sheet of paper with the phrase "His love endures forever" printed on it several times.  I told the kids that this was their opportunity to write Psalm 136 version 2.0.  It wouldn't be Scripture, of course, but it would be their response to and interaction with the Word and an opportunity for them to realize that in the warp and woof of their lives, it is evident that God's love endures forever. 

As it happened, my 9 year old son was in the room with us and was listening in.  He grabbed a sheet and filled out his own list.  (As a preface for what's to come, this little boy of mine, our fifth son, has had numerous physical challenges from his in utero days to the present due to ARPKD and severe asthma.  He's been on the brink more than once.)

Here is my boy's Psalm 136 version 2.0:

Helped me when I was a baby

His love endures forever

gave me a church

His love endures forever

gave me a Family

His love endures forever

gave me Friends

His love endures forever

gave me a sun

His love endures forever

gave me his Son

His love endures forever

gave me a school

His love endures forever

That kid gets it.

Love That Will Not Let Me Go

Steve Camp is a composer, theologian, and a minister of God's truth.  The beauty of this song never fails to bolster my faltering faith with its strong scriptural message:

Love That Will Not Let Me Go

Certainties

Confession time.  I am a person given to cyclical episodes of depression and occasional anxiety.  And I don't mean having "the blues" or getting stressed about a busy schedule.  I mean the clinical, mostly inexplicable, sometimes terrifying, why-do-I-feel-this-way variety.  How I've treated these besetting mental maladies in the past and present might make good material for a future post, but for today, let it be sufficient to say that the best medicine I've found so far is a healthy dose of certainty.

I know, by God's grace, through His Word and the working of the Holy Spirit in my heart, that certain things are True.  I know:  that God loved me before the world began (Ephesians 1:4-5).  I know: that God saved me with purposeful intention (Ephesians 2:4-5) when I was a child.  I know: that God has proven Himself faithful (Psalm 77:10-12).  I know: that what God started, He will finish (Philippians 1:6).  I know: that one day these vagaries of my mind and body will be cured completely (1 Corinthians 15:53).

Those are the heavy duty nuts and bolts that hold my life together.

Welcome Home, Ralph

This is why you should never give up.

Ralph Mitchell taught Sunday school to elementary aged children and led Royal Rangers (A/G Boy Scouts) at our church for the past two and a half decades.  That was after he had been involved in ministry elsewhere, and after he started coming to our church, and after he was already retired.  Ralph was short, feisty, funny, and sincere.  He loved NASCAR and was retired from the Navy.  Ralph's body gave out and he left us to be with the Lord last week.  He was 80.

When all of us around here stopped and thought about all the kids Ralph had influenced over the past many years, it kind of blew us away.  He was the favorite teacher of so many children, including my own.  At the funeral, my senior in high school cried, and so did the 14 year old, the 13 year old and the 9 year old.  Oh, and me, the 42 year old.

Ralph was the guy who wouldn't give up in his service to the church.  People find a lot of reasons to teach Sunday school for just a quarter, or back out on a commitment to children's church, or beg off coming to the prayer meeting, or whatever.  It's nice to have guys (and gals) like Ralph around. 

Ralph's longevity in our local body gave him a far reaching influence.  No flash in the pan was he.  He probably wouldn't have won any awards for his methods, and he was not a perfect man, but he was faithful, and that counts for a lot.  It's hard telling how many little ones he told about Jesus over the years, but he was still doing it just a couple weeks before he died.  That's how I wanna do it.  Right up to the end.

Welcome home, Ralph.