Rebirthing

Skillet is a powerful band, and I love their music. So does my wife. So do my sons! Below is "Rebirthing". Caution - if you're older than I am, you may not enjoy this (of course, age is relative: this 38 year old moshed like a teenager at the concert...)

No Flung Prayers, Please

(Please accept my apologies for the tongue-twisting nature of the title for this post. Try it!)

A quote hanging my office:

"We cannot possibly flatter the Almighty by hurrying into His presence, flinging a song and a prayer at Him, and hurrying out of church back into our hassled lifestyles. God is never flattered by our sanctified exhaustion." ~Calvin Miller in Into the Depths of God

When we gather with the Body of Christ for Sunday service, we ought to be bringing with us what we've gained from our week of walking with God. A gathering of God's people should be a culmination of shared experiences with the Savior. Our joy in corporate worship should swell and fill the air! We should eagerly receive from the Word of God as it is delivered and earnestly respond to its message.

It is shameful the way God is treated as merely something penciled in to our weekly planner. If all you need is a Sunday pick-me-up, then stay home and drink an extra latte. A true faith is defined by a daily walk. We should follow Christ through rigors of our day to day life, not just plan on meeting up with Him Sunday morning.

And speaking of our daily lives, it's rather unChristian to run around hurried, harried, stressed out and stretched thin (some people really are, some just like to fake it for sympathy). Where is the Prince of Peace in a lifestyle that keeps us overworked, overfed, under-rested and spiritually undernourished?

If anything is worth spending ourselves completely for, it's the Gospel of Jesus Christ, but even then wisdom would recommend a balance. One must rest and recoup enough to work most effectively.

A lifestyle that is wearing us down physically, emotionally and spiritually when chosen and not forced upon us by extenuating circumstances is, well, wrong. Boundaries must be set in our lives and the excess trimmed off, if for no other reason than to make richer our relationship with Christ.

Bring On The Disaster!

And here is today's word of encouragement:

The Lord did not hesitate to bring the disaster upon us, for the Lord our God is righteous in everything He does. Daniel 9:14

Doesn't that just make you feel all warm and fuzzy? Yeah, me too.

This sentence is part of a lengthy prayer of repentance offered by Daniel while in Babylon during the rule of King Darius. The reason Daniel was there in the first place was that decades earlier, King Nebuchadnezzar tore through Judah like a firestorm and in a series of deportations moved many of the people of that land to Babylon as captives. Scripture teaches us that Nebuchadnezzar was used by the Lord to bring judgement on his people for their disobedience and rebellion.

So many folks, even "church" folks, think of God incorrectly; they don't understand the Truth about how He operates. Somewhere they missed that little life lesson that since God is a perfect Father, He disciplines us when necessary.

If God only did nice things for us, what would that produce but a bunch of spoiled brats: selfish, incorrigible and intolerable! We all know children that are out of control and haven't been brought up properly. These are the coddled and spoiled who should be experiencing more cuddling and spanking. :)

Like a good father, our Father disciplines those He loves. That's what that rod and staff in Psalm 23 are for! Sheep, I understand, are not the smartest critters on earth. The shepherd makes good use of his rod and staff to yank a sheep from danger or give them a quick rap to keep them in line.

If necessary, our God will allow us to experience exile as did the people of Israel and Judah, or to roam the "badlands", where we learn once again to thirst for Him.

One thing that brings me great assurance in life is God's faithfulness, and His faithfulness to discipline me. I have experienced it, and I love Him for it.

Welcome Home

The music video below was produced by some good 'ol Kansas boys. I saw it today and loved the simplicity and comfort of its message. The Almighty God is such a perfect Father. :)

Home is where we (if we follow Christ) belong, and home is safely in the Father's arms and under His roof.

To quote someone whose name I no longer remember: "There is a trend today that would put a new robe on the prodigal son while he is still feeding hogs. Some would put the ring on his finger while he is still in the pigsty. Others would paint the pigsty and advocate bigger and better hog pens."

Call it liberalism, the Emergent church, spiritual welfare or whatever, this kind of thinking is patently wrong. The prodigal doesn't need the new clothes, the ring or paint on the pigsty - the prodigal needs to be home, and that is where (and I'll just pick two camps here) political liberalism and Emergent "theology" miss the mark. They would forego the need for repentance and rescue and move right to the showering of affection, all in the name of "love" and "compassion." Well, that is not love, my friend.

What father worth his salt would see his son wallowing in destructive sinfulness and be satisfied? So satisfied that he gives him a new set of clothes and leaves him there? A real father longs to see his son (or daughter - excuse me) rescued from the things that harm them. A real father prays for, calls out to and waits for his stray children to come home.

The prodigal would have been content and relieved to just be home again - he didn't need the cloak, the ring and the welcome back party. Those were just gifts of grace. The Scriptural formula is repentance and then rest, not the other way around. Any "theology" or philosophy that handicaps people (souls) with welfare, spiritual or otherwise, opposes the Gospel.

Now, this is not to say that salvation is worked for; it has always been by grace alone, through faith alone in Christ alone as proscribed in Scripture alone for the glory of God alone. It is God's pursuit of us and His quickening of our darkened hearts that births faith in us and brings us "home" to Him. No amount of "goodies" showered on the sinner will make things right with his or her soul.

Wow! How did this little post end up so long? If you've read this far, congratulations!

Last October

Ahhhh October. My favorite month of the year. It's the time when the mornings are brisk and refreshing, the night sky is sparkling and fireplaces are lit once again. These signs of October are a harbinger of the quiet season that is coming: Winter, when we huddle indoors behind lit windows or venture out bundled into the crackling cold. I absolutely love it. :)

God established the seasons, and each one is beautiful in its diversity.

Well, enough waxing that elephant. Several years ago I wrote a poem one night after spending a few minutes staring at a sparkling starlit sky . . . so here it is:

There was a night, last October,

the starlight pierced - do you remember?

The air was clear and cool and still.

It made the music of the stars more delicate and fragile:

the crystal sound of a string plucked,

the sweet tremor of a stellar chord struck.

And, oh, the moon was the descant

high and beautiful and distant

that made me want to sing along

but my voice was not that strong.

So I just stood and listened with my eyes,

longingly gazing at that

shimmering sky.

Especially for Parents

I often read the writings of Charles Spurgeon and so I catch myself quoting him an awful lot, too. Well, I'm just gonna do a whopping cut and paste job here today. The following is from Spurgeon's "Morning by Morning" devotional readings and is rich wisdom for parents:

Mark 9:19 "Bring him unto Me."
Despairingly the poor disappointed father turned away from the disciples to their Master. His son was in the worst possible condition, and all means had failed, but the miserable child was soon delivered from the evil one when the parent in faith obeyed the Lord Jesus’ word, “Bring him unto me.” Children are a precious gift from God, but much anxiety comes with them. They may be a great joy or a great bitterness to their parents; they may be filled with the Spirit of God, or possessed with the spirit of evil. In all cases, the Word of God gives us one receipt for the curing of all their ills, “Bring him unto me.” O for more agonizing prayer on their behalf while they are yet babes! Sin is there, let our prayers begin to attack it. Our cries for our offspring should precede those cries which betoken their actual advent into a world of sin. In the days of their youth we shall see sad tokens of that dumb and deaf spirit which will neither pray aright, nor hear the voice of God in the soul, but Jesus still commands, “Bring them unto me.” When they are grown up they may wallow in sin and foam with enmity against God; then when our hearts are breaking we should remember the great Physician’s words, “Bring them unto me.” Never must we cease to pray until they cease to breathe. No case is hopeless while Jesus lives.

The Lord sometimes suffers his people to be driven into a corner that they may experimentally know how necessary he is to them. Ungodly children, when they show us our own powerlessness against the depravity of their hearts, drive us to flee to the strong for strength, and this is a great blessing to us. Whatever our morning’s need may be, let it like a strong current bear us to the ocean of divine love. Jesus can soon remove our sorrow. He delights to comfort us. Let us hasten to him while he waits to meet us.

Grain Elevators, Water Towers and Church Steeples

Every time I drive across western Kansas and look out across the rolling seas of bluestem, beans, corn, wheat and milo, I remember something I once heard. Sometimes all you can see out on the prairie are three things marking the existence of some dusty little town: a grain elevator, a water tower and a church steeple. Each one of these structures contains something that mankind needs. I like that. I like how out in the vastness of the Great Plains, men have made their priorites known (quite unintentionally I'm sure) by the structures they have built, and revealed a great truth: to live, we need food, water and faith. Most of all, we need faith because it feeds the soul.

I really like how uncluttered the prairie is, and these little towns and their essential structures make me want to have an uncluttered kind of faith. I want to grow a simple faith in the simple Gospel that stands out and offers to people just exactly what they need.