Author Archives: salooper57

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About salooper57

Husband, father, pastor, follower. I am a disciple of Jesus, learning how to do life from him. I read, write, walk, play a little guitar, enjoy my family.

You Need to Make a Choice: Here’s Why

Posted on January 25, 2020 by salooper57

In the biblical story of the first humans, Adam and Eve face a choice: obey their Maker’s directive or disobey and seek their own way. They chose the latter, at great cost to the race.

We might wonder why God would put them in a place where a choice of this magnitude, with such potentially catastrophic consequences, would be required. One reason seems to be this: if they were to have any hope of becoming the magnificent beings God intended, they would need to become volitional; that is, they would need to become choosing creatures.

The stakes would have been even higher had God waited until there were millions of humans before presenting such a choice. In terms of humanity’s prospects, the one thing worse than a wrong choice by Adam and Eve was a no-choice by Adam and Eve. God made them to be human, which is another way of saying, he made them choosing creatures.
Continue reading →

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Powerful Prayers

Posted on January 23, 2020 by salooper57

Imagine you find yourself unable to do something you want to do, should be able to do, and have done in the past – say, eat ice cream. You go to your doctor and she does all kinds of tests and discovers that you are missing an enzyme which is necessary for the digestion of ice cream. She then gives you the good news: your body can produce plenty of this enzyme just by eating mangos. But you dislike mangos; dislike them as much as you like ice cream. So what do you do? Do you learn to eat mangos (ugh!) or do you give up ice cream (aww!)?

Let’s pose the same type of question, only let’s change the issue from a physical one to a spiritual one. You find yourself unable to do something you want to do and should be able to do: recognize God’s will. You go to your pastor and he runs a variety of soul tests and comes to the conclusion that you’re missing a spiritual enzyme (of sorts) which is necessary to the recognition of God’s will. That spiritual enzyme is loving relationships with other Christ-followers.

What do you do? You are an introvert. You don’t like big groups. You just aren’t easy with people. Being in a fellowship group or a Bible study is work for you; you think of it with distaste. So do you learn to have loving relationships with other Christ-followers or do you give up on knowing God’s will? Continue reading →

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Powerful Prayers: Prayers God Loves to Answer

Posted on January 21, 2020 by salooper57

Colossians 1:9-12 http://lockwoodchurch.org/media (Listening time: 23:04) Most of us don’t see obvious answers to our prayers as often as the New Testament might lead us to expect. While the Bible offers insight into why prayers are sometimes not answered (without … Continue reading →

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Why Religious Conversion Is More Than Joining a Church

Posted on January 18, 2020 by salooper57

A Muslim man once confidently told me that everyone born in the United States is a Christian, unless his family is Muslim or Jewish. I did not ask him what that means for people from Buddhist, Hindu, Taoist, Sikh, or Baha’i families, nor did I ask what it meant for people who intentionally convert to one of these religions later in life.

A convert is, simply, a person who has been converted – that is, a person who has chosen to be altered or transformed. In religious conversion, a person who believed certain things about God and existence comes to believe other things and adjusts his or her life accordingly.

I know little about the way other religions view conversion or the expectations they consider appropriate for converts. If they are anything like those placed on Christian converts, they vary widely from group to group. Among the many groups that claim allegiance to Jesus, some require only a verbal profession of faith. Others expect regular church attendance, participation in instructional classes, and personal accountability in an ongoing relationship with a spiritual mentor.

Whether a simple confession or many months of intensive training, most Christian groups see the process of conversion culminating in the admission of the prospective convert into the church family, usually at baptism. This, I think, is a mistake, which does not serve the convert or the church, and does not align well with the biblical data on the nature of transformation. Continue reading →

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Was Shakespeare Right: Is Love Blind?

Posted on January 15, 2020 by salooper57

Okay, so someone is bound to tell me it wasn’t Shakespeare but Chaucer who coined the phrase that love is blind. I’ll give you that, but Shakespeare popularized the phrase by his repeated use of it: The Merchant of Venice, Two Gentlemen of Verona, and Henry V all include it.

Before someone has the chance to object that some Persian poet who predated Chaucer really composed the line, I’ll concede the point, but the question remains. Was Chaucer and Shakespeare (and whoever else) right? Is love blind?

The answer depends on what one means by love. Eros, I think, is often blind. Friends and family watch the lover as he ignores glaring signals and stands poised to fall into a deep ditch. Love has made him blind to his situation and deaf to his friends. Continue reading →

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I AM the Vine

Posted on January 14, 2020 by salooper57

But what is our part?

It can be stated in three words: Abide in Jesus. That’s job one. If we do that, we will be okay, no matter what else happens. We will produce abundant fruit. Christ’s life will be apparent in the fruit that grows from us. Our greatest danger doesn’t arise from trials but from failing to abide.

Jesus says in verse 4: “Remain” – that’s how the NIV translates the word the King James has as abide – “in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.”

To abide is to stay or remain or reside. According to Jesus, this is the key to being fruitful – that is, the key to experiencing fulfillment. Verse 5: “I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit…”

Is abiding something mystical? Not really. I abide in my home. When I go somewhere – whether to town or across the country – I come back to my home. My life is oriented around my home. That’s where I eat meals, where I sleep, where I work, where I communicate, where I relax. I know how long it takes to get from my home to most all the places I go. I know how long it takes to get back. I plan my life around my home.
To be homeless is an enormous trial. It disorients a person. It throws everything off. Some people are spiritually homeless. They are disoriented in their spirits. They are not abiding – not residing – in Christ and so everything for them is unsettled. Continue reading →

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I AM the Vine

Posted on January 6, 2020 by salooper57

Excerpt from I AM the Vine http://lockwoodchurch.org/media (Listening time: 21:00) An exceptionally popular pastor and writer came out with a book in which he criticized the church’s “incessant habit of reaching back into the old covenant concepts, teachings, sayings, and … Continue reading →

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Nostalgia and Faith: Can They Coexist?

Posted on January 4, 2020 by salooper57

No one needs faith for something that has already happened. Faith, by its nature, requires a future component, a measure of uncertainty. In situations where there is no uncertainty – the package has already arrived, as promised, the test has been scored – faith is superfluous.

Does this imply that people of faith, like myself, will not be nostalgic, since nostalgia is about the settled past and faith is about the unsettled future? I hope not, because I sometimes wax nostalgic, particularly around the holidays. I remember winter mornings when my brother and I would run out on the front porch in our bare feet to retrieve the foil-topped bottles the milkman had left. We’d pour ourselves a glass, then chew the frozen milk crystals that collected on the top.

Such memories are pleasant to me. Nostalgia is not about times of loneliness and sorrow, but about times of peace and camaraderie. The past I remember seems simpler, gentler, and more manageable. Unlike the future, the past never incites fear.

When the term “nostalgia” first came into use in the 17th century, it denoted a kind of mental illness. The doctor who coined the term described it as a “neurological disease of essentially demonic cause.” It was thought to be a type of home-sickness – the term coming from the Greek roots for “returning home” and for “pain.”

In recent years, however, social scientists have discovered various benefits that accompany nostalgia. Continue reading →

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Extraordinary Savior

Posted on December 25, 2019 by salooper57

“Extraordinary Savior.” “Extraordinary” is, of course, a term of comparison: If there were no ordinary people, there would be no extraordinary ones. That got me to thinking: in order to appreciate the extraordinary savior, I need to understand what an ordinary one is like.

Is there such a thing as an ordinary savior? There is, and (sadly) Jesus is often presented as one. If you spend any time at all on religious broadcasting, you’ll run into the ordinary savior. He saves people from their circumstances – poor health, insufficient income, and troubling emotions. That’s one way of identifying an ordinary savior: he only saves people from, while the extraordinary Savior – the real one – saves people for. Let me give you a few examples.

An ordinary savior saves people from a religionless, churchless existence. He pities those unfortunates who sleep in on Sunday mornings, go out to eat, and travel. He wants to save them from their laziness, gluttony, and wanderlust, though they aren’t looking to be saved. I suspect most people who don’t really know Jesus – they’ve heard about him, of course, but have never joined themselves to him – think of Jesus as this kind of savior: one who loves organ music, 18th century hymns, and those rousing 19th century gospel songs. He doesn’t want people missing out on these good things.

An ordinary savior also saves people from hell; that’s why he came. People were going to hell in a handbasket (or maybe a shopping cart) and he stepped in to save them. The extraordinary savior does that too, but he does more: He saves people for heaven; he saves people for service in his kingdom. It is the repeated promise of the New Testament that Christ is saving us for something important. He has a role in mind for us. He intends for us to reign with him. The ordinary savior just saves from. The extraordinary savior saves for.
Continue reading →

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What Just Happened? (A Christmas Meditation)

Posted on December 24, 2019 by salooper57

A few months ago, I jumped out of an airplane. After three weeks of weather delays, our group (Jeanette Dembski, Traci Disbro, Brian Ellis, and I) had to wait another four hours for all the other people who, like us, had waited three weeks but, unlike us, didn’t attend church that morning and got to the airfield before we did. I appreciate all of you who came to watch and who waited through the afternoon. I don’t so much appreciate those of you who were taking odds on how likely I was to chicken out.

Finally, after waiting and waiting, Jeanette Dembski and I were aboard the plane. We ascended 14,000 feet in just seven minutes. The door opened. One skydiver after another, including Jeanette, hurled out and into the blue. Then it was my turn. I stuck my feet outside the plane, my heels resting on a four-inch ledge. As we rocked back and forth, my instructor said in my ear, “One…two…three,” and then we were out.

I looked around me and could see for miles. The instructor tapped my shoulders, which meant I could release my grip on the halter and raise my arms. Below me I could see farm fields and roads. There were lakes, lots of lakes, which surprised me. (I hadn’t seen them from the road.) Some had dozens of boats on them, a few leaving white lines, like writing, on the surface of the water. I could see that one of the lakes was too shallow for boating and there were no houses around it. On the roads were Matchbox-like cars that hardly seemed to be moving.

My instructor signaled to me and I looked up – I had been looking down – and there was a photographer, fifteen feet away from me, as if perched in mid-air, taking video. Then he zoomed away, and I went back to surveying the landscape and trying to find the airfield, where we would land. Once again, the photographer flew up, signaled for me to smile, then zipped away. There was so much to take in that the passing of time didn’t really register. Whether a few seconds or a few minutes had passed, it was hard to tell.

As I was taking in the scenery, something suddenly happened – boom! – and I felt like I had been snapped back into the sky. I was shocked by the force of it and didn’t understand what was going on. In the midst of about a thousand visual, audio, and tactile stimuli, a sort of thought emerged: “What just happened?” I really didn’t know.

What happened, of course, was that my chute opened… Continue reading →

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