Grief and Hope in the Face of Kobe’s Death

Posted on February 1, 2020 by salooper57
Photo by Fred Kearney on Unsplash

I watched a video clip of Shaquille O’Neal sitting with his sports show co-hosts, talking about the sudden, tragic loss of Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna, and seven others in a helicopter crash on Sunday, January 26. At several points in Shaq’s monologue, he was forced to pause, overcome with emotion.

Shaq’s grief is understandable: Kobe was a teammate, friend, and, in times past, an opponent in a very public feud. Shaq’s complicated friendship with Kobe would undoubtedly bring a deep and profound grief. But millions of people who never met Kobe, even people who never saw Kobe play, were deeply affected by the superstar’s death.

What accounts for this outpouring of grief? How is it that so many people experienced shock and disbelief when they learned that Kobe died? Most of us who have reached adulthood, certainly those who are middle-aged or older, are well acquainted with grief. We’ve all lost someone – perhaps many someones – we have loved. So why should the death of a celebrity we never met touch us so deeply?

Kobe’s passing brings the reality of death home to us. If a handsome, healthy young man like Kobe Bryant – a competitor, a victorious warrior – could be vanquished, then none of us is safe. Unlike other celebrities who died young, Kobe was not courting death. He wasn’t living a devil-may-care kind of life. If this could happen to him…

Kobe was not only relatively young; he was enormously valued. He was not a throw-away commodity. His ability amazed us and we couldn’t help but respect his indomitable spirit. Watching him, even if one was (like me) rooting against his Lakers, was just plain fun. His death, as John Donne put it, diminishes us all. We understand, with Donne, that when the bell tolled for Kobe, it tolled for us too.

Word of Kobe’s death left many people in despair. Thousands brought flowers and pinned notes to makeshift memorials all over Southern California. Some took off work to process their grief. Others could not get out of bed. The pain of loss was real.

Photo by Fred Kearney on Unsplash

Grief is like crossing a deep river on a swinging bridge. Anyone who has done it knows that when someone steps onto the bridge or advances toward you, everything shakes. Grief is like that. When we are in the midst of it, everything we encounter, even common things like meeting old friends or paying bills or going to church, can shake us. But a swinging bridge has two cables, one on each side, stretched across its entire length. If we grip one with each hand, we can maintain our balance as we cross. There’s something similar in grief, where the two supports are memory and hope.

Too many people make the mistake of holding on to memory but not to hope, lose their emotional balance, and fall into despair. But hold on to memory and hope, to the past and the future, and one can maintain balance in the present. We must grab the future with one hand – setting our hope, as St. Peter says, “firmly on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed” – and with the other hold the memories of the past.

If you are grieving Kobe’s death, take time to remember him. Review his highlights. (Bring popcorn and make it a big bowl – the highlight reel goes on and on.) Celebrate the love he had for his family. Don’t hide his sins – not even the devastating rape accusation or the vulgar abuse he showered on a referee, which earned him a $100,000 fine from the NBA. Remember also his confession of wrongdoing in both cases and the apologies he made.

Be encouraged by Kobe’s faith in Jesus Christ. He had returned to the church. In fact, it’s been reported that on the morning of the tragic accident, Kobe was at church to pray before early mass. While holding onto to those memories, reach out and take hold of hope: the hope that Kobe and his family will be reunited one day; that God’s love will triumph over his sins (and ours); and that the victorious warrior, “Jesus Christ, has abolished death and brought life and immortality to light.”

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Powerful Prayers: Colossians 1:9-12 (Part 2)

Posted on January 30, 2020 by salooper57

(Note: for the next few weeks , I will post the manuscript that goes with the audio (posted Tuesdays) from a sermon in the Powerful Prayers series. People have requested the sermon manuscripts many time, but I’ve always been reluctant to make it available for two principal reasons: 1) I never simply read a sermon, so what people read is not exactly what I spoke. The manuscript might be better or it may be worse but it will be different. And (2) because the sermon has not been edited for publication. With those caveats, here is Prayers God Love to Answer: Colossians 1:9-12, Part 2.)

A college student named Nick Lutz’s got a hand-written, four-page letter from his ex-girlfriend. She acknowledged the mistakes she made in their relationship and apologized. Nick responded by sending the letter back to her, marked up like a term paper graded by a nitpicking professor. He pointed out formatting errors she had made, noted the introduction was too long, and made critical comments in the margins. At the bottom of the last page, he wrote: “Strong hypothesis but nothing to back it up,” and gave her a D-.[1]

If you’ve ever tried to do something right and been criticized for it, you know how exasperating that can be. Oswald Chambers said, “A man who is continually criticized becomes good for nothing; the effect of criticism knocks all the gumption and power out of him.”[2]

Some of you have had all the gumption and power knocked out of you. Maybe it was your parents who knocked it out of you – if you are a parent, I beg you not to knock the gumption and power out of your own children – or maybe you married a professional critic.

Maybe you sat under the teaching of church leaders who led you to believe that God is the professional Critic in the Sky, our Faultfinder who art in heaven, harder to please than any parent or spouse or boss. You take for granted that God is displeased with you. If that’s the case, I have really good news: you can please God; you can be a real part of his ineffable joy. Pleasing God is totally possible – you can do it – and pleasing God will bring great pleasure to you.

So, what do you have to do please God? What’s first? Go to church – a lot? Read the Bible for hours each day? Stop watching TV and read books – mostly boring books that don’t hold your attention? Oh, and fast – twice a week would be a good start. (You can always work your way up from there.)

That’s where our mind goes when we think of pleasing God: what do I do? But what really pleases God is who you become. Doing has an important part to play in becoming but doing is not an end in itself. God doesn’t need us to do things for him because his hands are full. That’s not why he gives us things to do. He gives us things to do because doing them will help us become strong, loving, effective, joyful, thankful people—and that is what pleases God.

In Colossians 1:9-12, St. Paul gets specific about pleasing God and gives us four things that really delight him. Let’s read those verses: For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light. 

“…we pray this” – that you may be filled with the knowledge of God’s will – “in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way.” That translation makes it sound like knowing the will of God leads to two distinct results: living a life worthy of the Lord and pleasing him in every way, but those two things are closely linked. A more literal translation might go like this: “to walk worthy of the Lord unto” – that is, which leads to ­­– “being a complete pleasure to him.”

In other words, when we are trying to live in a way that is worthy of Jesus’s sacrifice, his love, and the high calling he’s placed on our lives, we will be pleasing to God. And it’s not just that we’ll try harder. If anything, we’ll feel less like we’re trying and more like we’re flowing.

There is a clarity in the original language which translations simply cannot match. There is one request – that God fill the Colossians with the knowledge of his will – along with a proposed means for granting that request: through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. Next is Paul’s reason for making the request: that the Colossians will live a life worthy of the Lord with the result that they will become completely pleasing to him.

All that is in verse 9 and in the first clause of verse 10. What follows in the rest of verses 10, 11, and the beginning of 12 is a description of what God finds pleasing. So not only does Paul tell us that we can please God, he tells us precisely what pleases God. He lists four things which, in the original language, jump off the page at us because each one is in the form of a Greek present participle. You can recognize those participles in English because they take the form of gerunds – those words that end in “ing.”

See if you can find them in the text. The first is “bearing fruit.” (In Greek, that is one word: fruitbearing.) Next is growing in the knowledge of God. Third is being strengthened. And fourth is giving thanks. If those words describe you, you are pleasing to God. He can’t look at you without a smile on his face.

Let’s look at those four traits, one at a time and, as we do, let’s look at ourselves. For that, we are going to need God’s help, so let’s take down our defenses and ask God to show us plainly where we stand.

The first characteristic that pleases God is fruitbearing. God wants his children to be productive. He loves to see us making a difference. Notice that this fruitbearing happens “in every good work.” That’s why the knowledge of God’s will is so critical: his will for us as individuals and us as a church includes doing certain good works. Paul has written elsewhere that “God has prepared beforehand good works for us to walk in” (Eph. 2:10, lit.).

Do you see how this plays out? God fills us with the knowledge of his will – makes us aware of the good works he’s prepared for us to do. As we go through our day (“walk” is Paul’s metaphor for that), we recognize the works God has prepared for us, engage in them, and produce fruit – things that advance God’s purpose in the world. You will never be as fruitful doing the things you think of to do as you will doing the things God thought of for you to do.

There used to be a character on TV who, nearly every episode, would say: “I love it when a plan comes together.” As we do the good works God prepared for us and start producing results, our heavenly Father’s plan comes together and he loves it – he is pleased.

Of course that means if you’re not doing good works, you’ll not be fruitful. Fruit grows and ripens as we do the good works the wise God prepared for us to do. But that’s not all: as we engage in those works, we also grow in our knowledge of God, and that pleases him too.

Our heavenly Father wants his children to know him. Growing up, I didn’t know my earthly dad as well as I could have. He was an enigma to me. I knew when he was angry but I didn’t know what made him angry. I knew when he was happy but I didn’t know what made him happy. I knew he valued courage and hard work but I didn’t know why. And, unlike my heavenly Father, my dad wasn’t particularly eager to reveal himself to me.

But that changed, especially after I had kids. I started “growing in my knowledge of him,” which I think pleased him and certainly improved our relationship. Most people want to be known – want to share themselves with others – and, in that, they are like God. He wants us to know him, not just because he wants to be known but because knowing him is life changing. More than that, knowing him is life giving. In speaking with his Father, Jesus prayed, “…this is eternal life: that they may know you…” (John 17:3).

Some Christians don’t know any more about God now than they did when they first believed. Some still think God doesn’t want them to have any fun, or doesn’t care about them, or has abandoned them. How sad it must be for God, when his children misunderstand him like that. He longs to be known by his children.

The knowledge of God that Paul had in mind is more than just knowing about him – the knowledge needed to recite the creeds or defend the doctrine of the Trinity. This knowledge is personal. People who are growing in this knowledge “get” God in a way they previously did not. They recognize what he’s after in various situations, like a husband and wife who “get” each other so well that one look, across a room, can communicate volumes.

As we grow in our knowledge of God, we grow in our likeness to God. And this happens, remember, as we are filled with the knowledge of his will and engage in the good works he has prepared for us to do. God not only gave us good works to do so that we could be fruitful but so that we could have the pleasure of getting to know him.

Those are the first two things that please God: bearing fruit and growing in our knowledge of him. The next thing that pleases him – that next participle – is “being strengthened.” God is delighted to see his children grow stronger, build muscle, become unbreakable.

God is a Father and no father ever said, “I sure hope my kid grows up to be a weakling.” No father wants a child who is always giving up, falling apart, and unable to handle the things life brings. God is a Father and he is pleased when he sees us growing strong.

This sentence is eye-catching in the original language. It goes something like this: “being empowered with all power according to his power” (where the final term for power is a different word in Greek). Power. Power. Power. God wants his children to be strong. He is pleased when his children are strong enough to handle what comes their way.

How does that strength manifest itself? Kevin was telling me recently about the kind of strength athletic scouts look for in potential recruits, which is described as explosive power. The best test to display this power is the standing vertical jump. But what test displays the power that God longs to see in his children? There are actually three of them.

First, the endurance test: “strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance.” Among God’s children, strength is measured by how long one can trust God when circumstances are difficult. When sickness comes and doesn’t leave; when promotions are denied; when the car was in the shop three months ago because the brakes went out, two months ago because the muffler rusted through, and this month because the transmission needs to be replaced; when life is harder today than it was yesterday, and will be even harder tomorrow, God wants his children to be strong enough to trust him and go the distance. The endurance Paul has in mind could be defined as faith in God over an extended period of time in the midst of difficult circumstances.

The second test of strength – we could call it second-level strength – is patience. Patience could be defined as love over an extended period of time in the presence of difficult people. Endurance puts up with difficult circumstances without giving up. Patience puts up with difficult people without breaking down. Of the two, patience reveals the greater strength.

This kind of strength can endure unfair criticism. It keeps treating people in a Jesus-like way, even when they are self-centered and difficult. People who develop this second-level strength can even bless those who curse them and pray for those who mistreat them (Luke 6:28). That’s strength!

When a spouse is thoughtless or unkind, they call on God’s strength, trust him, and do what’s right—regardless of what the other person does. And they are able to do that repeatedly, one act of forgiveness, followed by three reps, then five, then ten. Three reps of putting up with annoyance, then five, then ten. Three reps of overlooking a fault, then five, then ten. They are strong and they’re getting stronger.

But we’ll make a serious mistake if we think of it as our strength, a sign of our abilities and accomplishments. This strength comes to us from God. We are strengthened with strength according to his glorious power. Both the strength to endure trials and the strength to be patient with people come out of a connection to God. Disconnect from him, and your strength for these things immediately begins to diminish, just like the strength of your phone battery diminishes as soon as you disconnect it from the charger.

What that implies – you may have already realized – is that if you aren’t able to endure difficult circumstance without giving up; if you aren’t able to be patient with difficult people without breaking down, your connection to God may not be solid. This kind of strength does not originate with you; you need to be recharged.

If the way I take this passage is correct (which is like the ESV but unlike the NIV), there is also a third level of strength. If faith over time in difficult circumstances is a sign of strength; if love over time with difficult people is a sign of even greater strength; then joy in the midst of difficult circumstances and the presence of difficult people is the sign of supreme strength.

In Greek, the word the NIV translates as “joyfully” is really a noun, “joy,” so I think what Paul is saying is this (verse 11): “being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance” (first sign of strength) “and patience,” (second sign) “with joy” (the ultimate sign). Joy in difficult circumstances and with difficult people is evidence of that explosive strength that comes from God alone. Kingdom people who have joy under such circumstances are like top-tier competitors at the Olympics. Their heavenly Father is in the stands, and every time they endure a trial or forgive an offender he jumps for joy.

God is pleased when his children are strong. That was the third thing that pleases him. There is one more. It is at the beginning of verse 12: “Giving thanks” (there’s the participle) “to God the Father…” Gratitude is an indicator – maybe even the indicator – of spiritual health and it pleases God. Most of us can be grateful when things go right, when the terrible thing doesn’t happen but the unlikely blessing does. But spiritually mature people are also grateful when things just go on: when the table is set for supper; when a favorite song comes on the radio; when the furnace works; the car runs; and telephone wait time is shorter than expected. They are even thankful when things go wrong. They regularly and genuinely thank their heavenly Father, whatever the circumstances (1 Thessalonians 5:18).

To recap: the four traits that please God are (1) fruitfulness; (2) a growing knowledge of God; (3) strength, manifested through endurance, patience, and joy; and (4) gratitude. With that in front of us, would you say you are pleasing to God? Are these traits evident in your life? If not, are you aware of something that is getting in the way? Do you need to reconnect to God, to be recharged? What is God saying to you right now?

[1] Emily Lund, PreachingToday.com; source: “Fla. Student Grades Ex’s Apology Letter, Sends It Back” NBC 5 Chicago (2-21-17)

[2] Oswald Chambers, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount. Christianity Today, Vol. 30, no. 4.

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Powerful Prayers: Prayers God Loves to Answer

Posted on January 28, 2020 by salooper57

http://lockwoodchurch.org/media Colossians 1:9-12 – Part 2 (Listening time 26:00)

How strong are you? How much weight can you bench press? How many miles can you run? (In my case, it might be better to measure in yards.) How high is your vertical jump?

But what about spiritual strength? What does it mean for a follower of Jesus to be strong? Are there tests to measure spiritual strength?

Yes, there are and we learn about them from the Apostle Paul’s description of his prayer for the Colossians. There are three principal tests for spiritual strength. Take the tests – see how you do.

Feel free to comment. Best to you!

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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.

One can think of the world and the entire universe, 46-billion light years across, as a gigantic choice-making factory. It is possible that God created a material universe for this very purpose: to provide humanity with the opportunity to make choices. Life on planet earth constantly creates choice-making situations. From childhood on, each person’s history provides countless opportunities to make choices, some of little, but some of enormous, consequence. People need such choices, sometimes tough choices, heartbreaking ones even, to become fully human – to become the glorious beings God intends and calls us to be.

(This, by the way, is one reason forcing religion on someone is counterproductive. It goes against the way God made us and frustrates the goal he is pursuing. In talking with others about God, there is no place for arm-twisting or manipulation.)

A Christian salesman once told me to frame questions in a way that the person I was talking to could say no, because it is psychologically easier than saying yes. So instead of asking, “Are you ready to trust yourself to the Lord and give your life to him?” which would require a yes answer before proceeding, he wanted me to ask, “Is there anything holding you back from making this decision?” In that case, a “no” or even an “I guess not” answer would suffice. But doing an end run on a person’s volitional responsibility will handicap that person from the very start. Making a choice, a clear, determined choice, is essential not because God needs us to do so but because we do.

When Jesus told his disciples not to cast their pearls before swine, this kind of thing was in mind. He did not want his students forcing their pearls of wisdom on others; didn’t want them pressuring people into decisions for which they were neither ready, nor willing. God knows humans will never be the strong, happy people he intends them to be unless they make choices: the choice to trust in Christ; the choice to give their life to God; to give their money; to deny themselves; to forgive those who have harmed them; to put others first; and much more.

We must make choices. People are not machines to be managed, and we mustn’t treat them, including our own children, as if they were. Making intelligent choices, free of coercion, is crucial to our success.

Even though we raise a battle cry whenever someone tries to limit our freedom of choice, we frequently hesitate over even the simplest choices, because choice brings with it responsibility. Yet people must make choices, or they’ll never be fully human. This reality is apparent throughout the Bible. The drama of decision is played out from Genesis to Revelation.

I have talked with people (as has every pastor) who are anxious to discern God’s will not because they desire to do it but because they think knowing God’s will will help them avoid making a mistake. God is probably less concerned about us making mistakes than we are. He does not disclose his will so that people can avoid mistakes but so they can make informed choices. Either way, they must choose. God will have it no other way.

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Powerful Prayers

Posted on January 23, 2020 by salooper57

Prayers God Loves to Answer: Colossians 1:9-12

(Note: Each week for the next five weeks or so, I will post the manuscript that goes with the audio from a sermon in the Powerful Prayers series that was previously made available. I’ve been told by numerous people that they get more out of the sermon when they read it, so we’ll give it a try. I’ve been reluctant to post written sermons for two reasons: 1) I never simply read a sermon, so what people read is not exactly what I spoke. It may be better or it may be worse but it will be different. And (2) because the sermon has not been edited for publication. With those caveats, here is Prayers God Love to Answer: Colossians 1:9-12.)

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?

This is a real problem in our society generally and in the church in particular and it is getting worse. We are a ferociously independent, perilously individualistic people. Ironically, the advent of personal computers and especially mobile devices – supposedly communication devices – makes meaningful relationships with others seem optional.

A survey a few years ago revealed that millions fewer people attend church services than they did two decades earlier, yet more people claim to pray daily than they did then. What that means is that people are trying to do the Christian life in isolation, which violates God’s design and cannot be successful.

But like the digestive system in the human body, the recognition system for God’s will in the Body of Christ requires an enzyme of sorts: loving relationships. Humans are interdependent by design. God made us in such a way that we cannot reach our potential without others. It is a paradox, but you cannot fully be yourself by yourself. And you cannot fully perceive and understand God’s will when your Christian relationships are unhealthy.

In Colossians 1:9-12, we have a description of the Apostle Paul’s powerful prayer for the Colossian Christian. In it, he mentions a single request, but it is an important one. He prays the Colossians might be filled with the knowledge (or recognition, as the word is sometimes translated) of God’s will. Paul understood that the recognition of God’s will is critical to the church and to our lives.

(Colossians 1:9-12) For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light.  (NIV)

Before digging into the passage, we need to set it in context. When Paul wrote, “For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying,” what reason did he have in mind? What had he heard about the Colossians that jump-started his prayers for them? He’d heard (verse 8) about their love in the Spirit. He mentions something similar in verses 3 and 4: “We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all the saints.”

Paul immediately grasped what the Colossians love for the saints meant: their church had what it needed for recognizing God’s will. They had the essential equipment for receiving messages from God.

If I’m on my way to meet you at the coffee shop but you’re trying to call me to let me know you’re running late, I will not get that message because I do not have a cell phone. I don’t have a receiver capable of picking up your message. You can try calling me a dozen times, but I won’t hear your voice. Just so, when a church does not love each other, when they ignore or, worse, show contempt for each other, they will not have a receiver capable of hearing God’s voice. They will not know his will.

When Paul heard that the Colossians had love for all the saints, he knew they could hear from God and discern his will. That’s why he began praying for them to “be filled with the knowledge of God’s will,” which he knew is enormously important to their success. He asked God to convey the knowledge of his will, verse 9, “through all spiritual wisdom and understanding.” If love is the receiver needed to capture the signal, wisdom and understanding are the router and the computer that process it. Of the two words, wisdom and understanding, wisdom is the more general. The wise person grasps God’s ways. He understands God’s values and, as such, has the framework into which God’s specific will for churches and individuals fits.

(An aside: The Bible regards God as the source of wisdom, the fear of the Lord as the beginning of wisdom, the Scriptures as a means for gaining wisdom, and humility as the condition for maintaining wisdom.)[1]

The word translated as “understanding” could be, and frequently is, translated “insight.” This is the more specific of the two words. It has to do with seeing how the big truths fit into a particular situation. Paul says the knowledge of God’s will is delivered through spiritual wisdom and insight, which is to say, through wisdom and insight that are sourced in the Holy Spirit. Without the Spirit, we will not have wisdom and insight; and, without wisdom and insight, we will not understand God’s will.

Notice the little big word “all.” The recognition of God’s will comes through all spiritual wisdom and understanding, which presents a problem. You have a little wisdom and understanding and so do I, but neither of us has all wisdom and understanding. That leaves us in need of … each other – and God designed it that way. He routinely sends the knowledge of his will to multiple people and not just one; to the Church and not just the individual. What’s more, he doesn’t usually send all of it to every person but some to one and some to another. That is why someone who is isolated from the church cannot expect to know very much of God’s will.

The way email works can serve as an illustration. Let’s say your childhood best friend is going to be in town tomorrow at noon and wants to meet you for lunch, so he sends you an email. He only has an hour, but he’d sure love to see you. When he clicks “send,” his email is broken down into packets of information, each with an IP address, which are sent separately, sometimes along different routes. When the packets arrive, they are reassembled into a meaningful message. (Well, not always, but you get the idea.)

Like email, God’s will is often broken down into packets, sent and then reassembled by a group of loving believers with Spirit-sourced wisdom and understanding. It’s not that God cannot send the knowledge of his will to one person, but frequently he does not. He intends us to relate to, and rely on, each other. If we insist on going it alone, we forfeit much of the knowledge we need to understand what God is doing in and around our lives.

A few years ago, Phil Vischer, the creator of VeggieTales was in Coldwater and he shared his story. Phil was on top of the world, wildly successful and full of big ideas for the future. In fact, he named his production company Big Ideas Productions. Because things were going so well, he concluded that God wanted to grow Big Ideas into a much larger company, so he spent millions of dollars, hired all kinds of staff, and got himself upside down financially. His cash flow couldn’t handle the skyrocketing bills, Big Ideas went bankrupt, and Phil was forced to sell all VeggieTales copyrights to another company. In a short time, his company and his life collapsed.

Phil looks back and says, “When things were doing so well, I thought that was God wanting us to expand, so we grew like crazy. Now I think it was more me having all these great ideas in my head and being so excited that I wanted to do them all at once.” He wasn’t humble, which he acknowledges. His wisdom wasn’t sourced in God and his word. And he was charting his course without counsel and flying solo. That is a recipe for misunderstanding God’s will.

How important is it for you and me and for our church to receive the knowledge of God’s will? Well, how important is it for an military unit to know whether Central Command is ordering them to attack or defend, to advance or retreat? It is critical. Look at verse 10: “And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way…” There is a reason behind Paul’s prayer: being filled with the knowledge of God’s will is not an end in itself. Such knowledge will help us (1) live a life worthy of the Lord and (2) please him in every way.

The word translated “worthy” is derived from the Greek axios, meaning “to have the weight of another thing.” The terminology developed around the use of ancient scales. Say you went to the market to buy five pounds of wheat flour. The merchant would place weighing stones on one side of the scale then fill the other side with wheat until the scale balanced or achieved “worthiness.”

Some merchants used inaccurate weighing stones or rigged the scale to their advantage, which is why Proverbs 11:1 says “The LORD abhors dishonest scales, but accurate weights are his delight.”

To live a life (literally, to walk) worthy of the Lord is to go through your day in a way that balances your lifestyle with your calling as a servant of the Lord of lords and savior of the world. Without the knowledge of God’s will, that can’t be done. And it can’t be done if we are using inaccurate weights – that is, ones that are calibrated for the non-Christian. If we try to balance our lives with the scale weights of house-size, car value, body mass index, and social media footprint, we’ll never balance out in a way that is worthy of the Lord.

Instead of using such things to measure ourselves, let’s weight the scale with: Jesus’s trust in, and obedience to, his Father; his sacrifice for his friends; his love for his enemies. Place on the scale the Lord’s patience, his care for the needy, his openness to strangers. Set our lives against those weights.

We will of course be light in such virtues, but we can at least use the right scale. God isn’t waiting for us to be just like Jesus in all these things before he’ll be pleased with us. The desire to be like Jesus already pleases him, as does every effort we make toward that end.

That brings us to the second reason behind Paul’s request for these Colossian Christians to be filled with the knowledge of God’s will: so that they can please the Lord in every way. We can please the Lord. The Lord can say of you, “Isn’t he something special!” Or, “I just love her; she’s such a delight.”

You may think it is impossible for someone like us – with all our problems and shortcomings – to please God. Only people who have it all together, famous people like Mother Theresa and Billy Graham, can please God.

It is not so. In fact, if that is what we think, our thinking is precisely backwards. It is impossible to please some people; no matter what we do, they will never be pleased. If you grew up with a mom or dad like that, you know what I mean. It is also impossible to please ourselves, at least for any length of time. We don’t stay pleased.

But it is not impossible to please God. He loves to see his children succeed. He delights in them. He sings over them. He is easy to please – but hard to satisfy. He is delighted by every honest effort his children make, but he always wants more. Not because he is a slave driver but because he knows what we can be and longs for us to experience it. He made us for glory, for perfection, for all joy, and, for our sakes, he will not be satisfied with less.

Recently my grandson Phinehas colored a picture for me and then, in his five-year-old, just-learning-to-make-letters handwriting, signed his name: PHIN. I was pleased with the picture but even more with the signature. I expect that, when he is older, his handwriting will be firmer, clearer, and flow more easily. (Then again, he could be like his dad … or grandpa.) Still, I expect his handwriting will only get better and I want that for him, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t thoroughly pleased with his accomplishment.

So with God. He isn’t hard to please. We, with all our problems and shortcomings, can be a real source of pleasure to God, a joy within the fountain of joy. He even tells us, through the apostle, what pleases him. That is what we’ll look at next week, when we continue with the four things that bring pleasure to God our Father.

In closing, I remind you that bringing pleasure to God and walking worthy of the Lord Christ happens to people and churches who are filled with the knowledge of his will. And that knowledge comes to us like email: in packets (if you will), which often follow different routes and must be put together. This means you need other people in the church, people who are loving God and each other. I repeat what was said earlier: you cannot fully be yourself by yourself. And you cannot fully perceive and understand God’s will when your relationships with others are unhealthy.

So ask God to lead you into healthy relationships with others and to heal those that are unhealthy. Don’t be a loner.

One of my favorite authors, Wendell Berry, was walking with his friend Wes Jackson past a plot of Maximilian Sunflowers, which can grow to nearly ten feet. Jackson pointed to a plant that stood alone, disconnected from the rest.

Wendell Berry saw that this loner plant was taller than most and had bigger flowers. But it wasn’t healthy. Its blossoms were so heavy that the branches were starting to break under their weight. In one sense, the plant had “succeeded”: it was unusually tall and its flowers were impressive. It stood out from the crowd. But Maximilian Sunflowers only thrive and as they grow in community, not in isolation.[2]

That’s true of people too, especially of the followers of Jesus. Enter into the life of the church. Be involved with Jesus’s people. Don’t stand alone.

[1] Prov. 9:10; Eccl. 2:26 and Daniel 2:20; 2 Tim. 3:15; James 3:13

[2] Matt Woodley, managing editor, PreachingToday.com; source: Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace (Counterpoint, 2002), pp. 139-143

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Powerful Prayers: Prayers God Loves to Answer

Posted on January 21, 2020 by salooper57

Colossians 1:9-12

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 ever making prayer into something mechanical), it also gives us examples of prayers God loves to answer.

One of those great examples comes in Paul’s description of his prayer for the Colossians – a church group he had heard about but most of whose members he did not know. I’ve used this powerful prayer many times to pray for our church, other churches, and for individuals.

Listen and enjoy. If you have comments, I’d love to hear from you.

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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.

To communicate to prospective converts, even unintentionally, that membership in a church body is an end in itself is like communicating to an 18-year-old recruit that getting through basic training is all there is to being a Marine. He didn’t sign up just to wear the uniform but to serve his country. Likewise, the person entering the church didn’t convert just to get her name on the church membership roll.

To think that conversion abruptly ends when one is received into fellowship in a church is to misunderstand conversion. People sometimes talk about “the moment of conversion,” as if conversion is accomplished at a single point in time. Perhaps, from God’s point of view, it is. From our point of view, it isn’t even close.

It is helpful to think of conversion as a process, much as moving to a new home is a process. One investigates the house, the neighborhood, and considers the price. Next, a decision is made: we will move to the new home. Then the papers are signed. It’s official: this is now our new home. But the process is hardly complete.

Next comes the move. It is determined what stuff will go and what stuff will stay, since not everything will have a place in the new home. What will go is packed. What will stay is disposed of or left behind.

The date finally arrives for spending our first night in the new home and with it comes all kinds of adjustments. We learn which noises mean something and which do not. We learn how long it takes to get places, like work or the store. We do maintenance. We develop routines. We discover the best places in our new home for solitude and for entertaining, for getting work done and for relaxing. We orient our lives and our schedules around our new home.

Something akin to this orientation takes place in religious conversion. A person moves to a new spiritual home and begins orienting his or her life to it. In the case of Christian conversion, a person orients his life around Christ himself: his teaching, his ways, and his stated desire for people. Christ becomes their new home.

This is the kind of thing Jesus had in mind when he told his disciples to: “abide in me.” He expected them to move their lives into his: to take up permanent residence in an ongoing relationship with him and orient their lives around him.

This is more than taking catechism classes, though they may be helpful in making the move. It is even more than being baptized. It is starting a new life; so new, in fact, that Jesus once spoke of it as being born again.

First published by Gatehouse Media

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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.

Agape love, the kind supremely illustrated by Jesus, is anything but blind. The Apostle Paul understood that it is only love that truly sees. In his prayer for the Philippian Church, he asks God to cause their love to “abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best…”

The word translated as “depth of insight” is used only here in the New Testament in its noun form. A good translation would be discernment. The word implies the ability to distinguish between things, especially between what is good and what is bad.

My wife Karen and I once spent a couple of hours at the Dolphin Research Center in the Florida Keys, where we saw a quote attributed to a Senegalese poet named Baba Dioum: “In the end, we will conserve only what we love, and we love only what we understand.” Paul, I think, would turn that around: “We understand only what we truly love.”

People who try to understand God when they don’t love him never succeed. But the same is true on a more domestic level: we will never understand a husband or wife; we will never understand our children or parents, until we love them. When our kids do something that threatens to embarrass us or cause us harm, and our focus is entirely on ourselves, we won’t really understand why they did what they did. But when we are able to love them, to seek the best for them, then our understanding of them and their actions will grow. The depth of our understanding will always be limited by the extent of our love.

Every pastor has had people come to them, full of confusion and anxiety, and asking: “What should I do?” They need to discern what is best regarding a relationship, a job, a move, and the weight of the world is on their shoulders. They are so afraid of making a mistake. But if they are not loving God and others, they are already making a mistake. If we are not loving God and loving people, we cannot make a right choice. That’s not what people want to hear. They want a formula for discerning the will of God. It doesn’t work that way. We don’t need a formula; we need love.

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I AM the Vine

Posted on January 14, 2020 by salooper57

Jesus says, “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5 ESV). Since abiding in Jesus is the condition on which fruifulness depends, it is imperative that we have some understanding of what is involved in abiding.

Is it 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.

You begin to abide in Christ when you join him by faith. People sometimes refer to that as the moment of conversion, as if conversion only takes a moment. The truth is: conversion is like moving to a new home. The decision to move happens at some particular moment in time; the move does not.

When we make that move, we take lots of things with us and leave others behind. They were part and parcel of our life before but we know they are not right for our new home – for Christ. Better to leave things like selfishness, deceit, gossip, malice, rage, in the dumpster when you move. Even then, you’ll often find yourself reaching for those things – it’s a habit – but moving to our new home in Christ is a time for developing new habits.

(Listen to all of this sermon by clicking the link above.)

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I AM the Vine

Posted on January 6, 2020 by salooper57

Excerpt from I AM the Vine

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 narratives.” Later in the same book, he asked readers, “Would you consider unhitching your teaching of what it means to follow Jesus from all things old covenant?”

I haven’t read the book, which may have a lot to offer, and I realize his words may have been taken out of context. I certainly do not want to be unfair to him. But, that said, it seems to me the church has made precisely the opposite mistake. We have not reached back into the old covenant concepts, teaching, sayings, and narratives nearly enough. We’ve reached back into Reformation concepts, teaching, and sayings. And the great leaders of the Reformation were reaching back into the concepts, teaching, and sayings of the Scholastic period before them. But Jesus did reach back into the concepts, teaching, sayings, and narratives of the Old Testament, so we must do the same.

We will not understand Jesus by forcing his words into a conceptual frame he did not use. His frame was the Old Testament. If we try to understand Jesus without reaching back into old covenant concepts, teaching, sayings, and narratives, we will simply substitute our concerns for God’s and transform Jesus into a 21st century American rather than a first century Jew.

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