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Just finished reading Pastor Jeff Leake's blog entry titled "Questions about Miracles." It recounts the healing of a blind man during his recent trip to Namalu in Uganda. 6,000 people received Jesus as Savior and Lord during the event and 20 blind people regained their sight. Pastor Jeff's entry is a powerful reminder that the Holy Spirit is DEFINITELY still at work today! You'll definitely want to read it for yourself.
Yesterday was a great day at New Life! The new series "Living in the Spirit," is the fullest teaching on the Holy Spirit I have ever done in nearly 23 years as a pastor. If the initial week is any indicator, God is going to do some great things through it. After worship, people came to me with various words of encouragement, questions, and telling me they had a sense that God is going to do a deeper work in their lives through the series. Any of you who are pastors know what those kind of comments do. When someone says, "Nice message," or "I enjoyed that," it's hard to say what that means. When someone says, "I'm so looking forward to the rest of these messages, because God's been pushing me to go to the next level in my walk with Him, but I've been afraid to do that, and I think this series is going to help me take that next step," it challenges you to dig deeper yourself into prayer and the word. When someone walks up to you with a big smile on their face and says, "Something happened to me when I was a teenager, and I think this series is going to help me to understand it and move forward," that provides great motivation. I believe God is going to challenge all of us to a deeper and fuller understanding and experience of His presence and power in our lives over these next weeks and months. That means we're talking about more than a great day--it's going to be a great new season of life and ministry at New Life!
At the weekend marriage conference Nancy and I attended, Mel Blackaby made an important statement that has been rumbling around inside of me all weekend and into this morning, "If I have a church with 10,000 people, but lose my family, I am a failure." Blackaby noted something that I have often considered myself: some of the greatest leaders of the Bible lost their families. He mentioned King David and the prophet Samuel. I think of Eli, the priest who raised Samuel who became a great prophet and judge in Israel, but whose own sons made a mockery of the priesthood. Solomon, who was considered one of the wisest men of all time, raised a son, Rehoboam, whose foolishness caused the nation of Israel to divide. I was once discussing this with a friend in the ministry and he said, "Sometimes the price of honoring God is your family." I took immediate umbridge with that statement. Mel Blackaby would as well. In "winning" people into the Kingdom of God, we must remember that the "winning" starts at home. One of the amazing things about the Blackaby family is that Henry has four sons and a daughter, and all four sons are pastors, and the daughter is a missionary. The Blackaby's have fourteen grandchildren and the oldest two have indicated they have sensed a call to ministry. Henry pointed out that he wasn't home much during the childhood and teen years of his five children, because he was often out planting churches in the wilds of Canada. Yet, ALL of his children are faithful to the Lord. How did he "win" and "win"? That is how did he serve the Lord so extensively and influence his children so positively? He would say the answers are two: God is faithful, and Marilyn, his wife held up what he did with honor and a positive attitude. She gathered the children together to pray for their dad when he was away, and affirmed what he was doing as the work of God. When the family was together they spoke of what God was doing in each of their lives.
The Blackabys contend that such can be the norm--is intended to be the norm--in a household where God is in charge. Not that everyone ought to be pastors--but that everyone ought to be faithful, and the family ought to be seen as the first "mission unit" of the church. This flies in the face of much we see in the western world these days, but the ideas resonate deeply in my spirit. Nancy and I have invested a great deal of prayer, time and energy into seeing that our daughters mature into fully devoted followers of Jesus. Abby, our older daughter, will be off to college in the fall, and to this point has demonstrated a faithfulness to Jesus, and a desire to do HIs will. And although she thinks her dad is "weird," she loves me and her mom. Emmy, our younger daugther talks about a sense of calling to missions. She loves the people of Mexico and will be taking her seventh short-term trip there this summer. With each passing day, I become more aware of how important it is to show them through my life--actions and words--that God loves them and has a purpose for their lives, and that Nancy and I love them and are so thankful for the direction their lives are taking. In the end, we want to win and win. The Blackaby's are a great inspiration and example in seeing that such a goal is attainable by God's grace and power!
Nancy and I just got back from a great marriage seminar with Henry and Marilyn Blackaby (Henry's the author of Experiencing God and many other books), and their son, Mel, and daughter-in-law Gina. What a great time. The Blackaby's didn't give five easy steps to this or the latest on the communication front. They went straight to the Bible and guided us through "starting well," "running well," and "finishing well" in marriage and in life. Every time I hear Henry Blackaby I'm more impressed by his combination of genuine wisdom and humility. The biggest takeaway points for me were:
LIVING IN THE SPIRIT! That's the theme of the new series of messages we're kicking off in the morning at New Life! I hope you'll be there as we take an in depth look into who the Holy Spirit is and how He empowers us to live the life in Jesus daily. I believe this is the most important series of messages I've ever preached, and have been praying for God to use it to move all of us at New Life to the next level in faithfulness and obedience to Jesus. Hope to see you there!
In one of John Ortberg's books, he describes the difference between "trying" and "training." Trying is making an attempt to do something without any real intentionality. For example, you and I could "try" to run a marathon (a race of 26 miles 380 yards), but most of us would run out of gas somewhere between miles 2-10. Or we could "train" to run a marathon, a process that takes an intentional effort, with daily runs, increasing over time, and including intentional long runs of increasing distances. Depending on the program. a person may have already run a marathon BEFORE the actual race. The point is simple: if we want to accomplish anything of value in the spiritual or physical realms we must TRAIN. I mentioned earlier in the week that I was "back on the road" again, that I'd started running again. I'm possibly in training for another marathon. That means that I'm INTENTIONALLY increasing the mileage on an incremental basis. Since I have trained for a marathon, and was in relatively good condition before taking the 4 month hiatus from running to build our house, I assumed that it would be easy to get the mileage back up to where it was last fall. Well, I've gone from "0" not running at all, to "3" (miles) over the first 5 days. My training program right now is NOT a marathon training program, just a gradual building up of mileage so I'll be ready to train for a marathon if I decide that's what I need to do. I'm going to do an "LSD" run (runner's slang for Long Slow Day!) tomorrow of 5 miles, which to many folks seems like quite an accomplishment, but for a trained runner, it's just a warm up.
What are you training for in life? Do you have a spiritual "training" process in place? What kind of training are you doing to take care of your health? What about your training process for your relationships--family, friends, etc??? Remember, trying doesnt' accomplish much. It takes training to succeed. Do you have any friendships that used to be close, but just aren't healthy these days? How intentional have you been about keeping them strong? Some folks think that important matters like friendships and spiritual growth will happen "naturally," without any attention or intentionality. Nothing could be farther from the truth. All things in life "naturally" tend toward a state of higher order to a state of lower order, and a state of higher energy to a state of lower energy. (It's called the Law of Entropy.). That means if it's important we must TRAIN rather than try to keep it strong and healthy. Within a few weeks I'll be running 4-5 miles each day easily, and have LSD runs of 8-10 miles---if I keep training. The same is true of everything in life. With intentional training over a long time growth is a given!
We have been praying for God to provide $2 million for SEAPC's ongoing ministry "Touching Hearts" in Tibet. The money is for a heart catheterization lab, which will be used to make it possible for more Tibetan children to be "touched"--have congenital heart problems surgically (or spiritually) healed. The deadline for the first $600,000 to be received by Phillips, the provider of the equipment, is April 30. Today, Pastor Mark from SEAPC has e-mailed that more than $600,000 WILL be in hand by that date! Praise God! This has been a major prayer focus for those of us involved, and while we have had our hopes raised by a number of folks through the process who promised to provide the funds, we can now rejoice that they are being provided. Always remember that God is never early or late. He's always right on time! (For more about SEAPC click the link!)
Last May I ran in the Cleveland Marathon--really! That means I did a lot of "road work" in the 20 weeks leading up to it. The good thing about the road work was it afforded extended times for concentrated prayer. (Granted that some of the prayers were -- "Lord, just let me survive this run!) Anyway, after the marathon, I took "a couple of weeks" off to recover. Then as I was working my way back into running there was a summer mission trip, selling the house, and finally in October starting to build the house. The end result of all that is that I stopped my daily running schedule, and my prayer times suffered, too. For me it's so much easier to stay focused on the Lord when I'm out for a long run, than if I'm sitting or kneeling at home. Yesterday, I got back to it. 2.4 miles yesterday morning, 2.5 miles this morning. More importantly, including the warm up and cool down time and taking Champ out for his morning "constitutional" it has meant 45 minutes each morning of uninterrupted prayer time. I've been reminded immediately why Jesus got up "early in the morning while it was still dark" to invest time in prayer with His Heavenly Father. My body has made it quite clear that I haven't been in training for some time, and it'll be a while before any long runs go back on the schedule, but even my body is saying, "Thank you!" for re-establishing the first thing in the morning run and prayer time as the first priority of the day. Our daughter Abby always says that the physiological benefits of walking are just as good as those of running, so if you've been feeling a little sluggish--physically and/or spiritually why not get back on the road, too!
Have you noticed that at the memorial services, whether spontaneous or planned, for the victims of the VT shootings that the hymn "Amazing Grace" seems to always be part of the mix? In a culture that is so set on separating "religion" from everyday life, it's interesting that when tragedy strikes God and His grace is remembered. What a hopeful sign that when the going gets tough God's grace is the anchor that keeps people going. May we who bear the name of Jesus live out that grace in the good times as well as the bad, so that the culture will not be able to avoid it. Grace prevails over sin and death--and deep down all of us know that!
Noted that yesterday was "Game Day." Well, the girls went 1-1 on the day, came in third place in the tournament, and won the Bronze Medal for their efforts. It was their first medal as basketball players. You could tell it meant a lot to most of them. You could tell it won't be the last medal for most of them, too. You could see it in their eyes. Having tasted a hint of victory, they're not going to settle for defeat in the future. That's the way it is with God, too. He gives us the taste of victory through Jesus. In fact, the Apostle Paul tells us that we are MORE than victors through Christ Jesus who loves us. (See Romans 8)
Today's message at New Life is about our victory as followers of Jesus as well. The take home point is simple, "When God's people do things God's way; He gets the glory and we get the victory!" We don't have to settle for bronze medals when we do things God's way. Our victories may not look like what the world would call victory, but when we DO things God's way, we always win---not only here and now, but for eternity, too. Join us today at 10:00 a.m.!
