An Almost Persuaded Generation

Acts 26:28 Then Agrippa said to Paul, “You almost persuade me to become a Christian.”

Agrippa was actually saying, you almost persuade me to become a follower and disciple of Jesus. That is what it means to be a Christian as we define the word “Christian” used here.  Yet, the key phrase here is “almost persuade me.”  Our challenge today is to see people around us in daily life transformed into true followers and disciples of Jesus.  It is happening!  I am grateful for that.  It is very encouraging to see a new generation rising up, that have left the past for a future of following the Lord in every area of life.  It is also troubling to see many in churches that show little signs of transformation.  “Transformation” is the fruit that we are looking to see produced in the life of the new Christian.  Transformation means a complete change.  Sometimes I am concerned that I may show more patience than Jesus might.  I know that sounds strange but it also sounds strange that Jesus allowed the rich young ruler to walk away.  I’m not sure many of us would have done that.  There is a place a person has to get to in order to be considered a Christian.  That place is transformation.  It takes confrontation to get to transformation.  A person can’t be transformed without discomfort and pain.  It is difficult for a comfort-centered church to let that happen. 

Now back to Agrippa: he came to a place of information but not transformation.  He was saying that your talking and lecturing is so interesting that it tempts me to follow your teaching and way of life…yet he didn’t.  Lectures and teaching won’t bring transformation.  It might attract crowds who love listening to our lectures and are even fascinated by them.  There is a generation the Scripture tells us that will have a form of godliness but who denies the power of God.  There has to be a power accompanying our words that impacts the heart of the hearer and brings them to a doorway of surrender leading to transformation.  Every true Christian has been there and felt that confrontation that led to transformation.  Let me share another verse with you to ponder.  1 Thess. 1:5 says, “For our gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Spirit and in much assurance, as you know what kind of men we were among you for your sake.”  Paul makes it clear that the gospel that the apostles of that day preached did not come only in a word being heard but it came in a word being felt!  It came in POWER!  Now I know that there were miracles accompanying the Word being preached but here it is clear that the primary power was life challenging and life changing.  That preaching also had the obvious presence of the Holy Spirit, which is the only ONE who can change a person.  The fruit of transformation was the wonderful assurance, the knowing in the heart.  May we be a loving and patient church seeking to win the lost to Jesus.  Yet, may we be Spirit-led enough that we will allow the Holy Spirit to wound those He must in order to become the true Comforter later.

A Word In Season

“The Lord God has given Me The tongue of the learned, That I should know how to speak A word in season to him who is weary."  Isa. 50:4 (NKJV)

How wonderful it is to hear a word when we are in crisis that lifts us up!  It is also more difficult than we might first think to bring that encouraging word.  Human nature is basically very negative and judgmental.  We see it throughout the Scripture as well.  It is very poignant in the life of Job when his so called friends come to him with words, not to lift him but to drive him deeper into distress. I have come to believe that those rare people who can lift and strengthen a person when they are in trouble have learned this art.  Oh, there are personality types that are naturally more positive but it seems to me that the real ability to lift a soul from despair and get them back on their feet is a cultivated skill.   

Notice in this verse the writer says "the Lord has given me the tongue of the learned".  The word "given" here means "assigned".  Then the word "learned" means a disciple or a learner.  We begin to get the picture that we aren't talking about a person that has a gift and they just go around giving encouraging words to people as a supernatural right.  It is a very deliberate and honed action of love and compassion.  Then the verse says, "that I should know how", here's that learned skill again.  Learned how to "speak a word in season to him who is weary."  In contrast to this, these people are not flatterers.  They are seeing this as a ministry of the Holy Spirit through them. Just as a surgeon uses his skills and experience to bring healing to a sick soul, may we give thought and reflection on honing our healing skills of delivering lifting words to those cast down.  Remember, sowing and reaping is an absolute principle of the Kingdom of God. You never know when you will need to reap some of those seeds for yourself.

Excuses

When confronted with Truth that is new to me I often find myself making excuses to why I haven't already obeyed. Notice I said, "Truth that is new to me", other than New Truth.  New Truth would speak of new revelation that hasn't been seen before.  After over 2,000 years of church life and deep searching of the Scripture I am very nervous about "New Truth".  Yet, it is a part of discipleship to be confronted with Truth that is new to me.  After over 40 years of seriously following Jesus and studying His Word, I still find new revelation even in the most familiar of verses.  The Bible is different from any other book in history because unlike, "War and Peace", it is a living book.  Some have read the Bible with a motive to find error or contradiction only to become converted by the life within it's pages.  

There is Truth that we have seen intellectually and spiritually to a certain level.  Then there comes a day when the Holy Spirit releases an explosion of illumination within our heart and soul.  This revelation is a living adjustment in that process of conforming us into the image of Jesus.  As a preacher I can tell you that I have walked in Truth and preached that same understanding of Truth.  Then I to come to a day when Heaven's plow penetrates deeper into the shallow, crusty abode of former Truth.  It reveals the lack maturity in my former habitation of Truth. It brings embarrassment! Yet, that feeling is not from any condemnation of God.  It is like youth discovering that some of their childhood beliefs were incomplete.  Parents only told them what they could comprehend at the time.  The same is true with our loving heavenly Father who releases Truth as we are ready to apply it.  Yet, even when it comes in the timing of God, it is still difficult to embrace immediately.  It feels like shame and we try to avoid admitting that we have missed the deeper Truth by dismissing it.  However, Heavenly Truth cannot be dismissed by the earthly.  Truth, once it knocks on the door of the heart continues to knock until the heart opens the door with the intent to embrace and obey.  

I'm not certain that there are three steps to help you with this lesson.  I believe simply knowing that this process exists will help us all get to the point of embracing and obeying quicker.  We all have a new plow in our future.

Veteran’s Day:  Remembrance, Honor and Humble Gratitude

There are wars that must be fought.  History tells us that when tyranny arises it can only be quieted with force.  There have been righteous wars where the oppressed have been set free and satanic regimes have been defeated to stop their domination of the helpless.  Yes, there are wars that are inescapable. As unavoidable as they are, no one wants to send their sons and daughters into battle.  Yet, it seems that every generation requires it.  

War should never be glorified.  It reveals the lowest nature of humanity usually on the part of friend and foe.  I have spent time among those just returning from combat.  At the time I was in uniform as well, and so there was an atmosphere of safety and transparency among comrades, among brothers.  Talk of their experiences flowed freely.  I have heard of great bravery, valor and honor.  I have also heard stories that made me ashamed and sickened.  Yet, they were all experiences of our own soldiers during the terrible stress of war.  The civilian world is not without their shame either.  I have known people who became rich because of war and I have known those who buried their young son just weeks after sending him off to the same war.  War is a horrible, horrible thing.  It is evidence of the failure mankind.  If fighting is thrust upon us, then fight we must, but let us never celebrate it or glamorize events that still cause nightmares and trauma decades after the last shot was fired.  

On this Veteran's Day rather than celebrate, may be pause and honor those who have served and may we be thankful.  On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, an armistice, or temporary cessation of hostilities, was declared between the Allied nations and Germany in the First World War, then known as "the Great War." Commemorated as Armistice Day beginning the following year, November 11th became a legal federal holiday in the United States in 1938. In the aftermath of World War II and the Korean War, Armistice Day became Veterans Day, a holiday dedicated to American veterans of all wars.

I join you in saluting and thanking our veterans for their service.  Above all, we thank those that have lost family members to war.  We are greatly indebted to their sacrifice.  

The Need For The Teacher

 The ministry gift of the teacher is probably undervalued in the Kingdom of God.  In the contemporary church we magnify, almost glorify other spiritual gifts more.  We hold entire conferences around apostles and prophets.  If a person is truly gifted as an evangelist, their calendar is always full.  Yet, the teacher often remains in relative obscurity.  Some connect the teacher with the pastor and they only see 4 ascension gifts as apostle, prophet, evangelist and pastor/teacher.  Certainly a pastor must be a teacher because most of their job involves teaching in the pulpit and one on one.  However, not all teachers are pastors.  The teacher who is not a pastor may be the loneliest of all.  They are often relegated to occasional opportunities to teach Sunday School or possibly now and then in a home group.  Yet, they are store houses of information and life giving impartation.  When we think of discipleship, and we need to think about it daily, we must see the need for the teacher in the process of making disciples. Paul wrote to Timothy and said in 2 
Timothy 2:2, "2And the things that you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also."  Paul was obviously teaching people principles that he called upon to teach others who might teach others also.  As a matter of fact it seems to me that there is a mandate that those we choose to teach must agree that they are going to teach those learned truths to others.  Let me share a very interesting insight from  the New Living Translation regarding Titus 1:1-2. 
 1"This letter is from Paul, a slave of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ. I have been sent to proclaim faith to those God has chosen and to teach them to know the truth that shows them how to live godly lives. 2This truth gives them confidence that they have eternal life, which God—who does not lie—promised them before the world began. 
I love this translation.  Paul says first that he was called by God to "teach" them to know the truth that shows them how to live Godly lives".  Teaching Bible Truth to teach them how to live Godly lives.  Nice lessons from natural experience or practical methods of life may all be good.  However, it is only the living TRUTH of the Word of God that will enable those who hear it and apply it to "live Godly lives".  
It also, more than teaching them "how" to live Godly lives, gives them an internal HOPE or CONFIDENCE that they are saved and have eternal life.  That is a mooring of steadfastness.  Teachers who are allowed to teach the principles of TRUTH from Scripture impact the hearers by teaching them how to live the Christian life as God intends and also reinforces their very foundation of knowing they are saved!
May we rethink the value and place of the gifted and called teachers among us and work to make a place for them at the table.

Adjusting The Future Today

It is amazing for someone like me to take in all the changes that have occurred in my lifetime.  I remember when folks first started getting TV's in their homes.  Honestly, I can remember some who didn't have indoor bathrooms.  I remember sitting on my front porch in town with a dirt road for a street and watching as an old man named "Will"  rode slowly down the street in his wagon powered by a mule with a big plow sticking up out of the wagon.  He was trying to find someone who might hire him to plow their garden.  I remember life in the hot muggy South without air conditioning in their homes much less their cars.  I remember picking up the phone and a living person would ask, "number please?"  I remember how I felt our family had arrived when we bought a car that didn't have a clutch to change gears.  I remember the race to the moon and then watching with the rest of the world as man stepped out of his safe space craft and touched the mysterious lunar surface for the first time.  Yes, I remember when computers were talked about as something that would change our world one day!  It was also a day of order and decorum.  There were things that were right and things that were wrong.  If you stepped outside the lines you were corrected.  I remember a world where neighbors loved you like Grandparents.  They might invite you on the porch for some homemade "tea cakes".  If they saw you doing something really wrong, they also might spank you and tell your parents later!  I know that sounds crazy but it happened.  In the middle of this perfect sounding world, which it wasn't, there was a penalty for our wrongs.  It was a time when the Bible set the standard for living.  Everyone knew it, even those who didn't confess to being a believer.  There was a atmosphere of right and wrong.  We all knew the difference.  Of course we still did wrong but when we were caught we knew we were getting what we needed in the form of punishment.  It made things, well, righteous.

Today it is hard to find order, right and wrong and a culture of righteousness.  It is frustrating to one who was shaped by an imperfect but yet  righteous order of things.  We don't like the lines being moved.  That may be why the Bible talks about "not moving the ancient boundary markers of your forefathers."  It is easy to loose your moorings for someone like me if we don't really remain focused.  But then I think, "what about those who never knew a solid mooring in the first place?" Thank God we still have the steadfastness of the Church!  That grand old institution established by Jesus to be remain forever a place of Refuge from the storms and shifting sands of decaying cultures.  It is a place where right will always be right and wrong will always be wrong and while God is all loving, His Word promises correction and discipline.  REALLY?!  REALLY?!  There has never been a time in history when so many were comfortable destroying foundations and moving around the boundary stones of thousands of years without an apparent twinge of guilt.  How is this possible?  They don't know they are doing wrong.  They have eaten at the tables of purveyors of the artificial.  It is a diet so close to Truth that it challenges even the most serious disciple.  The problem is not that it is not truth but it is not a balanced truth.  It cries out of the mercy, love and grace of God without a shred of the confrontation over wrong or punishment.  Yes, there is a place for correction in the pulpit.  As a matter of fact if confrontation and correction is absent from our pulpits, where will it be found?

I will end with this story of my Father taking me to my room with an oak switch in his hand.  He sat me down and explained what I had done wrong and then uttered those words, "this is going to hurt me more than it will hurt you."  Was that moment with the "rod of correction"wrong or bad for me?  Absolutely not!  It is impossible to assay the full value of such a confrontation of right and wrong.  In most homes this ancient practice is now obsolete.  Let's not let the Church, the last bastion of righteousness become powerless by our lack of the practice of righteousness.  May we go back to The Book for a fresh look at the balanced view of God and then preach and practice those principles revealed.

Put The Fish In The Boat!(Preacher)

While visiting a church, the preacher was doing a series of messages on being "fishers of men."  I listened to his message waiting to see how he would bring it home to the people.  He never did.  It was simply an informational message but not instructional and certainly not activating the individual to become fishers of men.  There is such cowardice today in all sectors of society regarding making things challenging and personal.  Recently I was listening to an interview by the great singer Linda Ronstadt.  She was asked the difference between a great singer and a great performer.  She said that there were many of her back up singers who were much better singers than she.  She went on to say, "you have to have a story.  Your story might be heartache, loss of some sort or failure.  You have to relate your story to the audience with passion and then all great entertainers at some point make the transfer from themselves to the audience."  Wow, I thought, that is exactly what good preaching should be!  I went back and look at Peter's message on the day of Pentecost.  He told a story to a gathered crowd and he told it with personal passion.  Then at just the right moment he turned the story on the crowd.  Hundreds became converted to the God of his message that day!  Preachers must understand that we are not simply lecturers or instructors.  We must tell the Story, tell it with a personal experiential passion and at just the right moment we must make the hearers take possession of it in their souls.  If we never get from "me to them", we will never be successful.  If we fail to cause the hearer to experience the message then we are not accomplishing New Testament preaching.

May we as preachers review our sermons and honestly ask ourselves if we are making a transfer of ownership to the people?

The Light That Irritates

One of our guest bedrooms doubles as my office.  Upon my desk is a printer, internet connection, wireless router and a cordless phone.  All these devices have small lights of some kind to let you know they are working and standing by awaiting your command or use.  While one of our adult children was staying there on a visit I entered the room to grab something.  There were all kinds of things piled on all my "electronic toys."  I wondered what is that about?  Then they told me later, "oh yeah Dad, I covered all the lights in your office so I could sleep.  It looks like Nasa down there at night!"

Light usually is a wonderful thing and especially when you are trying to see your way in the dark.  Yet, if you are enjoying the darkness like when you are trying to sleep or maybe you don't want to be seen, light can be very irritating.  John 1:5 in the NLT is a very powerful verse.  It says, "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it."  I love that last part, "the darkness can never extinguish it."  The King James version says, " and the darkness comprehended it not."  Both translation are true to the original language but the NLT sheds "new light" on the subject.  More than just saying that the lost or those choosing to live in darkness can't comprehend or understand the light, this translation says that "they cannot extinguish it."  That is like trying to sleep in my office but not being able to cover up all the lights.  That is what it is like once you have been exposed to "The Light" and now you try to shut it off in your heart and head.  

I remember what it was like when I had seen the light but before I fully surrendered to Jesus.  I was living an ungodly life in darkness.  I had two challenges.  One was to plan my little schemes of activities in the darkness while trying to block out the light.  What had been enjoyable when I was totally in darkness was no longer enjoyable.  Why?  That irritating light wouldn't stop shining!  "The darkness can never extinguish it!"  Never!!!

The next time you find yourself sharing your faith with someone who seems to be totally rejecting it or even worse, not listening, remember this.  Bringing light to darkness starts an eternal flame.  They may not acknowledge it or they may not even recognize it but Truth lights the flame.  That may be all you are required to do.  Someone else may make the harvest at another time.  Just be faithful to "let your light shine!"

Community

Community is a basic human need. One of the most dreaded punishments in prison life is solitary confinement. Some may think it would be a welcomed relief but many have found it maddening. From the beginning of time man has formed community. Within community there is safety in numbers as well as sharing of resources and expenses.

To live in community takes a willingness to live, work and sacrifice for the common good. Many of those in prison are individuals often were unwilling to sacrifice for and live with the guidelines of community.

 There are many communities and sub-communities. They all have common characteristics. They all have a distinct culture. Within a culture there is usually a similar dress, a familiar communication and a code of conduct.  In our society today there are fishing cultures, golfing cultures, biker cultures just to name a few. They have their own dress, language and conduct according to what is acceptable within that group.

The Church is a community. It would serve us well to understand that and seek to embrace and build community within the Church. Attending meetings alone does not constitute Community. Quality time must be spent together to form true community. In reality real community in the Church is a sharing of life that impacts and changes us for our own improvement and good. Much of that meshing is pleasant and some is not, but a part of the Lord's building process none the less.

A few years ago there was an emphasis in the church to stop being "religious" in an effort to reach more people.  Religious sounding language was discouraged. The message was to reach them where they were and not to make them feel uncomfortable.  Certainly the motivation was good.  The result in many places was very little life and lifestyle change. I was reminded of the time I embraced the Lordship of Jesus and that relationship brought me from a world centered culture to the Community of Believers, the Church. They acted differently and they certainly talked differently. I was only recently discharged form the U. S. Navy. We had a culture, a dress and a language but not one you would want used around your children. Coming into the Church was one that I welcomed. I wanted something different from where I had been. I was pleased and challenged to learn a new community language, culture and yes, even dress to a certain degree.

Today there is a strong emphasis on doing whatever is necessary to bring new people into our buildings.  Again, the motivation is a good one but when we live inside a culture and decide what we need to do to reach into a different culture our perspective may be skewed.  Along these lines, one word you don't hear much today is disciple.  That is a cultural word, a community word.  Oh, it is used but does our efforts truly make disciples to a new Kingdom?  Is there a culture shift in the life of the disciple?  Let's make sure we are doing all we can to get them incorporated into a life changing revolutionary Kingdom Community.