POLITICS AND PRAYER
I realize that God has given me but a small voice in the world and for that matter, the church. But with the voice He has given me I am compelled to speak. I have heard many folks talking about the upcoming election with frustration and confusion. They don't like either presidential candidate and making a godly decision in voting seems impossible to them. With these frustrated people in mind, I want to offer a few words that I pray may relieve a little tension.
I am a Christian, a 'little Christ.' Although we may seem to represent a minority in our country, we are a powerful force in the kingdom of God. So powerful in fact, that our prayers have significant impact on current events and situations as well as eternal impact in the presence of God. Revelation 5:8 says it this way, "And when he had taken it, the four living creatures and the twenty-four
elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp and they were
holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of God’s people."
My prayers make a difference. They are a fragrant incense before the God of the universe. My prayers have more influence than anything else I can do or say. In the book of Acts, a man named Cornelius, a high ranking Roman official, prayed regularly to God. He didn't fully understand the impact of those prayers until he received an angelic visitor who explained to him that his prayers had come up as an offering before God. That encounter resulted in the entire gentile world being invited into the church for the first time. Pretty big results for a few prayers from a faithful man, don't you think? Our prayers make a difference. Let's pray and see what God will do.
We see Christian leaders calling out both candidates for their faults and failures. Granted there are plenty of those to go around. But God has an eternal purpose in what he is doing. He makes it clear that he appoints kings and leaders for us. If you take a look at God's Word, you will find that he often appointed kings that were violent, hostile toward his people, and generally bad guys. He did this because he had a greater purpose than the people could fathom. The same is true right now. God can use people, no matter how evil they may look to us, to accomplish his will on earth. That is a fact supported by history. Although we don't understand, in the end it is His will, His purpose, and His plan.
It seems to me that we have a great privilege. We can pray and we can vote. If our prayers rise up as incense before God and if those prayers can change things, then a vote supported by the prayers of a righteous person can also change things. It is not about who you may support. It is about the God who will ultimately call the shot that leads our nation into the destiny he has already created for it. The upcoming election is not about a candidate, it's about God and his will for our nation and the world. Pray, cast your vote, and watch as God wills his kingdom into our nation.
God can use Donald Trump and he can use Hillary Clinton. I've decided which one I will support with my vote. I'm making that decision by spending time putting it before God. I trust Him to make the difference. These are unprecedented times and it is an unprecedented election. Rather than focusing on the negatives of the candidates, let's focus on the eternal God and watch him do it. So pray, vote, and believe God. This is true faith and God will respond.
Monday, October 10, 2016
Sunday, April 10, 2016
LOVE...Honestly
It's easy to talk about God from a safe place. You know, a place where you don't have to be really honest. You just talk about him and the things you know about him. It gets more difficult when you're forced to be perfectly honest about what he's doing in your heart. This is the place where I find myself right now.
I've been a Christian for forty years and in ministry for thirty five years. After all that time, I haven't stopped learning new things from God. Some of those things are stuff I should have learned a long time ago, but I found it difficult to change my way of thinking and my attitudes to really learn the basic lesson. I'm talking about a very basic Christian value taught by Jesus, in fact commanded by Him. I've had to come to grips with the fact that I'm not good at loving people.
Jesus told us to love one another so that those who are not believers will know that we are followers of Christ. The apostle John said "In this world, we are like Jesus." It is absolutely a foundation of the Christian faith to love one another. Yet I struggle with it. But God in his faithfulness comes to me, touches my heart, and shows me once again that I am in great need. My need is to love others as Jesus has loved me. After all my years of loving Jesus and doing his will, I must be honest and say that I don't understand how to love even my brothers and sisters in Christ, let alone my neighbors and my enemies.
I know that I am to love others by laying down my life as Christ has laid his life down for me. But it seems so difficult. Would I actually die for a friend? But when I really look at it, Jesus laid down his life for me in many ways. He taught the message of love and lived it all of his days on earth. Even when he wanted to be by himself, he was compelled to touch people with the love of the Father. On the day when he ended up miraculously feeding five thousand men along with their families, he was actually trying to get away to be alone. But when he saw the crowd, he loved them. Compelled by that love, he taught them, fed them, and showed them the personality of the Father.
I think laying down my life for others may be a simple matter. Maybe, like Jesus did, if I could allow myself to be inconvenienced and interrupted by people, I could actually show love to them like Jesus did. I'm always focused on the task, dead set on following my agenda. What if I just let myself get interrupted? What if I allowed people to be more important than my plan? Maybe then I would actually be like Jesus, laying down my life in my community and my church.
When the folks in the world look at the church, I think they wonder what this is all about. They see factions, arguments, holier than thou attitudes, hypocrisy, and general weirdness. What if we came together and just loved each other? What if we served one another out of the love that God has placed in our hearts? Do you think others might notice and think that it's good? I do! When we strip away all the stuff that we think is Christianity, it boils down to this simple truth; Love each other. I think it's the truth for me anyway...honestly.
It's easy to talk about God from a safe place. You know, a place where you don't have to be really honest. You just talk about him and the things you know about him. It gets more difficult when you're forced to be perfectly honest about what he's doing in your heart. This is the place where I find myself right now.
I've been a Christian for forty years and in ministry for thirty five years. After all that time, I haven't stopped learning new things from God. Some of those things are stuff I should have learned a long time ago, but I found it difficult to change my way of thinking and my attitudes to really learn the basic lesson. I'm talking about a very basic Christian value taught by Jesus, in fact commanded by Him. I've had to come to grips with the fact that I'm not good at loving people.
Jesus told us to love one another so that those who are not believers will know that we are followers of Christ. The apostle John said "In this world, we are like Jesus." It is absolutely a foundation of the Christian faith to love one another. Yet I struggle with it. But God in his faithfulness comes to me, touches my heart, and shows me once again that I am in great need. My need is to love others as Jesus has loved me. After all my years of loving Jesus and doing his will, I must be honest and say that I don't understand how to love even my brothers and sisters in Christ, let alone my neighbors and my enemies.
I know that I am to love others by laying down my life as Christ has laid his life down for me. But it seems so difficult. Would I actually die for a friend? But when I really look at it, Jesus laid down his life for me in many ways. He taught the message of love and lived it all of his days on earth. Even when he wanted to be by himself, he was compelled to touch people with the love of the Father. On the day when he ended up miraculously feeding five thousand men along with their families, he was actually trying to get away to be alone. But when he saw the crowd, he loved them. Compelled by that love, he taught them, fed them, and showed them the personality of the Father.
I think laying down my life for others may be a simple matter. Maybe, like Jesus did, if I could allow myself to be inconvenienced and interrupted by people, I could actually show love to them like Jesus did. I'm always focused on the task, dead set on following my agenda. What if I just let myself get interrupted? What if I allowed people to be more important than my plan? Maybe then I would actually be like Jesus, laying down my life in my community and my church.
When the folks in the world look at the church, I think they wonder what this is all about. They see factions, arguments, holier than thou attitudes, hypocrisy, and general weirdness. What if we came together and just loved each other? What if we served one another out of the love that God has placed in our hearts? Do you think others might notice and think that it's good? I do! When we strip away all the stuff that we think is Christianity, it boils down to this simple truth; Love each other. I think it's the truth for me anyway...honestly.
Friday, February 26, 2016
LEARNING HOW TO FEAR GOD
One of my favorite passages in the Bible is from the profit Malachi. Just before the transition to the New Testament, these short four chapters are packed with good news-and possibly some not so great-for us to take in and digest. I learned something recently from there that speaks to me about my own life and my need to learn to fear God in a genuine way.
When I was in my early twenties, I had only known Jesus for a few short years. But I was diving into the Word and learning as much as I could. It was my passion and I couldn't get enough. I remember the day. It was a moment I will never forget. I had just finished studying when I leaned back in my chair and said out loud, "I think I'm getting this all figured out!" Immediately the thought came to me: That wasn't good. Watch out! I now know this was the voice of the Holy Spirit, but in those days, I hadn't really learned to distinguish the voices. What followed were months of spiritual struggle like I had never experienced before.
There have been many years since then and many new and wonderful things have happened. But there have been some bad times as well. I learned a lot about myself and my relationship with God, but I'm not sure I've ever understood what it means to fear him. In the third chapter God says through the profit Malachi, "You have spoken arrogantly against me." As I look back at that time years ago, I get it. That's exactly what I did that day. This arrogance has to do with elevating myself above my dependence on God. I think I can do it on my own and for most of my life that is exactly what I did.
Arrogance against God can be a number of things. Maybe I give up on my Christian life and think it just really isn't worth the struggle. Maybe I look at people who don't know God at all and see that they are doing just fine. In fact they are doing great. This serves to push me off-track in my pursuit of the kingdom of God. In the end, it is futile to look anywhere else but to God for my strength, health, hope, joy, and love. Malachi spoke God's word and it hit me right between the eyes.
But there is a redemption from my struggle. Malachi 3:16 says this: "Then those who feared the Lord met together and talked, and the Lord listened and heard." (NIV) There is a value that can only be given us through times of meeting together. When we sit down together and talk about life with one another, it is prayer. It brings a unique fellowship with each other and the Holy Spirit that is life-giving. This helps me to understand why the writer of Hebrews cautions us to never forsake meeting together.
What I've learned is this: The opposite of arrogance is humility. Therefore living in the fear of the Lord is living in humility. I find myself praying regularly asking God to help me be humble before him. Really it's my own choice, but God is interested in removing everything that hinders my love relationship with him. I won't get closer to him by being arrogant. I will learn to love him, serve him, and be his kid through being humble and always acknowledging him as MY Lord. He draws near to the humble, but resists the arrogant. I want to be humble.
One of my favorite passages in the Bible is from the profit Malachi. Just before the transition to the New Testament, these short four chapters are packed with good news-and possibly some not so great-for us to take in and digest. I learned something recently from there that speaks to me about my own life and my need to learn to fear God in a genuine way.
When I was in my early twenties, I had only known Jesus for a few short years. But I was diving into the Word and learning as much as I could. It was my passion and I couldn't get enough. I remember the day. It was a moment I will never forget. I had just finished studying when I leaned back in my chair and said out loud, "I think I'm getting this all figured out!" Immediately the thought came to me: That wasn't good. Watch out! I now know this was the voice of the Holy Spirit, but in those days, I hadn't really learned to distinguish the voices. What followed were months of spiritual struggle like I had never experienced before.
There have been many years since then and many new and wonderful things have happened. But there have been some bad times as well. I learned a lot about myself and my relationship with God, but I'm not sure I've ever understood what it means to fear him. In the third chapter God says through the profit Malachi, "You have spoken arrogantly against me." As I look back at that time years ago, I get it. That's exactly what I did that day. This arrogance has to do with elevating myself above my dependence on God. I think I can do it on my own and for most of my life that is exactly what I did.
Arrogance against God can be a number of things. Maybe I give up on my Christian life and think it just really isn't worth the struggle. Maybe I look at people who don't know God at all and see that they are doing just fine. In fact they are doing great. This serves to push me off-track in my pursuit of the kingdom of God. In the end, it is futile to look anywhere else but to God for my strength, health, hope, joy, and love. Malachi spoke God's word and it hit me right between the eyes.
But there is a redemption from my struggle. Malachi 3:16 says this: "Then those who feared the Lord met together and talked, and the Lord listened and heard." (NIV) There is a value that can only be given us through times of meeting together. When we sit down together and talk about life with one another, it is prayer. It brings a unique fellowship with each other and the Holy Spirit that is life-giving. This helps me to understand why the writer of Hebrews cautions us to never forsake meeting together.
What I've learned is this: The opposite of arrogance is humility. Therefore living in the fear of the Lord is living in humility. I find myself praying regularly asking God to help me be humble before him. Really it's my own choice, but God is interested in removing everything that hinders my love relationship with him. I won't get closer to him by being arrogant. I will learn to love him, serve him, and be his kid through being humble and always acknowledging him as MY Lord. He draws near to the humble, but resists the arrogant. I want to be humble.
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