You'd Better say, "thank you!"

Two Christians I know work at ministry. Both are bright, talented, and show up to do what they do faithfully.  One serves the Lord for the pure joy of serving and it shows. She doesn't ask for thanks or seek glory. Many have no idea what she does for the Lord, but even more would miss the work should she stop doing it! The other is always fishing for compliments. He angles for attention, making sure that anyone who will listen knows just how much time and effort he puts into his ‘service.’ In a conversation I had with another Christian, she spoke at length about her long-time 'service' in the various churches she has attended over the years. She complained about how one church after another failed to recognize her abilities, about Pastors who didn't give her the place she thought her talents deserved. She's been a Christian longer than I've been alive, but, alas, seems to have missed out on maturing in faith. 

Ministry is never about 'me,' never about what service does for 'me.' True service in God's work is about giving ourselves away without thought of cost, recognition, or reward.  A Christian who seeks to use ‘ministry’ (be that teaching Sunday School, making meals, preaching, or giving) to gain affirmation, personal fulfillment, a sense of self-worth, or just to 'be somebody' in the big wide world will miss the true blessing of God’s reward. And, what is supposedly done “for the Lord”  will be tainted with pride. This will corrupt the service and rob the work of spiritual power.

A story in the book of Acts helps us to understand the importance of selfless service. Barnabas was a learned Christ-following Jew who was very influential in the early years of the development of Christianity. The Bible describes him with these glowing words... "a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and strong in faith. " (Acts 11:24, NLT) This leader heard about a man named Saul who once had been very hostile to Christians. Paul had been converted but was finding it hard to find acceptance by Christians who were still frightened by his reputation. So, Barnabas went and found Saul (later renamed Paul) and introduced him to the Church. For the next few years, when people spoke of the team, it was always "Barnabas and Paul." But, the mentor was soon eclipsed by the gifts of his student. People came to refer to "Paul and Barnabas." A few years later, Barnabas slipped into obscurity and Paul went on to be known throughout the Church!

Think about it!

What might Christianity be like today if Barnabas had gone to see Paul, recognized the man's greater gifts and tremendous abilities, and thought “if I help him, he will steal my position.”?
What if he saw Paul's potential to become greater and decided that he didn't want the 'competition?'

Thankfully, good ole' Barney didn't see his 'service' to the Church as a means of building his reputation, feeling good about himself, or gaining a place where he could be recognized in this world.

Jesus told a story about service that pierces prideful motives. Think deeply about it. If you realize that your service has even a grain of pride, of self-serving, of concern for reputation or reward, ask the Lord for forgiveness and for the Spirit's help in developing true humility.  “When a servant comes in from plowing or taking care of sheep, he doesn’t just sit down and eat. He must first prepare his master’s meal and serve him his supper before eating his own. And the servant is not even thanked, because he is merely doing what he is supposed to do. In the same way, when you obey me you should say, ‘We are not worthy of praise. We are servants who have simply done our duty.’ ” (Luke 17:7-10, NLT)

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Love Divine

Love divine, all loves excelling,

Joy of heav'n, to earth come down.

Fix in us Thy humble dwelling,

All Thy faithful mercies crown.

Jesus, Thou art all compassion;         

Pure unbounded love Thou art!

Visit us with Thy salvation,

Enter ev'ry trembling heart.

Breathe, oh breathe, Thy loving Spirit

Into ev'ry troubled breast.

Let us all in Thee inherit

Let us find that second rest.

Take away our bent to sinning

Alpha and Omega be!

End of faith as its beginning

Set our hearts at liberty.

Come Almighty to deliver,

Let us all Thy life receive.

Suddenly return and never,

Never more Thy temples leave.

Thee we would be always blessing

Serve Thee as Thy hosts above.

Pray and praise Thee without ceasing,

Glory in Thy perfect love.

Finish then Thy new creation,

Pure and spotless let us be.

Let us see Thy great salvation

Perfectly restored in Thee!

Changed from glory into glory,

‘Til in heaven we take our place.

Till we cast our crowns before Thee

Lost in wonder love and praise.

Charles Wesley | John Zundel

Public Domain

Toxic Waste or Refreshing Rain?

Let me tell you two stories about words. 

A couple asked to meet with the church board to discuss a situation they blamed squarely on me.  They opened with a salvo of critical statements and then launched into a tirade of accusations about my character. Somehow a simple misunderstanding, a set of missed expectations, escalated into full-blown attack. Did they lay a hand on me? No.  Did they fire a bullet into my body? No.  But their words hurt worse than a beating!  Even the memory of that night still hurts.  (Their allegations, by the way, were found to be baseless.)

Many years ago a father-like figure found me in a hotel coffee shop early one morning. I was broken by failure and disappointment, ready to leave my calling as a Christian minister.  Events of the previous two months had convinced me that I was not the right kind of man to serve Christ’s church as a Pastor.  Joe sat down with me and the words he used that morning were a healing salve.  He expressed confidence that I could find my forward, that I could regain my confidence, that God was good and that He restored those who trusted in Him. I hung onto that affirmation for dear life, recovered my balance, and moved ahead.

Two conversations; two very different results. Some conversations leave me feeling refreshed, encouraged, saying – “I can do this!”  And some . . .  well, I feel like a need a bath.  James reminds us of the power of our words. "And a tiny rudder makes a huge ship turn wherever the pilot wants it to go, even though the winds are strong. So also, the tongue is a small thing, but what enormous damage it can do. A tiny spark can set a great forest on fire. And the tongue is a flame of fire. It is full of wickedness that can ruin your whole life. It can turn the entire course of your life into a blazing flame of destruction, for it is set on fire by hell itself." (James 3:4-7, NLT)

Reading that, you might determine to put a filter in place to clean up your speech.  It won’t work! That’s like trying to clean up a toxic waste dump by filtering the water that flows out of it.  Want to change the effect of your words? Want to change your speech?  It demands a heart transformation.  Jesus tells us that our words are the overflow of our heart.  (Matthew 15:18) What we say reveals what we think, what we believe, what we truly love and value.  God, the Holy Spirit, can and will change the source from which our words flow.  He can remove greed, pride, lust, hate, fear, greed; replacing those poisons with generosity, humility, real love, peace, and a desire to share.

What is our part? First, we must own our words. Don’t blame what you say on others.  Have a filthy mouth? Admit it. Don’t excuse it as ‘what everybody does.’   Do you gossip endlessly about the foibles and failures of others?  Tell yourself it’s a sin.  Do faithless words of fear constantly rain from your mouth, tearing others down, defeating their dreams before they’re even born?  Stop excusing it as just ‘telling the truth.’   Take your broken, sinful heart to the Savior and ask Him to make it new.  Pray that your words will be like a refreshing spring rain, producing life wherever they are heard.

Here’s a word from the Word.  "The fear of the LORD is pure, enduring forever. The ordinances of the LORD are sure and altogether righteous. … By them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward. Who can discern his errors? Forgive my hidden faults. Keep your servant also from willful sins; may they not rule over me. Then will I be blameless, innocent of great transgression. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer." (Psalm 19:8,11 NIV)

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Change My Heart Oh God

Change my heart, oh God,

Make it ever true.

Change my heart, oh God,

May I be like You!

You are the Potter,

I am the clay.

Mold me and make me;

This is what I pray.

Eddie Espinosa

© 1982 Mercy / Vineyard Publishing (Admin. by Music Services, Inc.)

CCLI License # 810055

Required, More Than Optimism

"The sun’ll come out tomorrow, bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow there'll be sun." sings Annie.   In spite of her sorrows, she hopes for a better day.  She is the prime optimist who sees the silver lining on every cloud. People like that are a gift to the rest of us!  But, when I talked with Bob last night, the limits of optimism were evident.  The body of this young husband and father broke down. The surgeons botched the correction, leaving him worse off. He lost his business, and is in constant pain. There is no way he can just sing a happy song to overcome the real problems.  Mere optimism cannot change the realities he faces today.  A sunny outlook may help Bob weather the storms a little better than others. It might help him hang onto more friends.  But, it’s just not enough as he live with real disappointment. Optimism is built around the potential of human will. “I can do this. I will overcome.”  It’s admirable! But, faith is better.

Faith rests squarely on the Person and Promise of God.   Faith always trusts in a purposeful God. At first glance, faith looks like optimism.  Go deeper and you’ll find a different source. Faith says, “He is working in all things to accomplish something for the good of those who love Him!”   (Romans 8:28)  We might think we are expressing faith when we make bold assertions about what we think God will do about situations we want changed.   "God will heal me, I am sure of it," a person claims.    Is that an optimistic statement or a declaration of faith?   One cannot tell just from the words.  If it just an expression of general hope, it is mere optimism.   If it an expression of what that person believes the Spirit has whispered into his soul, it is a statement of faith!   Christians must never think that if they say enough positive things, or if they force themselves to 'believe' what they say with conviction, that they can obligate God to do what they want.  They are sadly mistaken, headed for a collision with reality.  Faith understands that “God is God, I am not.”

Are you wondering, "Jerry, don't you believe that prayer changes people's lives?"  I do! Both my understanding of the Bible and my personal experience cause me to pray with faith.  I experience miraculous healing, provision for financial needs, forgiveness of my sins, and opening of closed doors- when I  pray! However,  faith-filled prayers are not those that demand that God act in a specific way.   We are urged in the Scripture to pray boldly, to pray about anything and everything, to ask our Father for His favor. Real faith always involves large quantities of humility, remembering that God sees what we can’t even begin to imagine!    

·         Did Job suffer as he did because he did not pray with faith?   No!   He suffered according to the will of God for purposes that he did not know and could not grasp, and yet that faithful man did not turn on the Lord.   Yes, he questioned.  Yes, he even challenged God to explain Himself, but he quickly became humble and confessed that God was Lord of all saying, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him." (Job 13:15, NKJV)   

·         Did Paul go through hard times because he lacked faith?  To suggest that is absurd.   He reminds us that the sufferings he endured actually served to bring him to greater dependence on God!  “ It was so bad we didn’t think we were going to make it. We felt like we’d been sent to death row, that it was all over for us. As it turned out, it was the best thing that could have happened. Instead of trusting in our own strength or wits to get out of it, we were forced to trust God totally—not a bad idea since he’s the God who raises the dead!" (2 Corinthians 1:8-9, The Message)

·         Peter tells us "those who suffer according to God’s will should commit themselves to their faithful Creator and continue to do good." (1 Peter 4:19, NIV)

Do not settle for mere optimism.  Build great faith!   How?   Get to know God - in prayer, through meditation, from the pages of the Scripture, in worship.   Go beyond having a god (small 'g' intended!) that you keep around like a good luck charm, a deity you bring out to ward off 'bad luck.'   That's the stuff of religion, the empty tradition of human based 'worship.'     Give your life over to Him.   Tell Him that you are delighted simply to belong to Him, to be used by Him, to serve His purposes.   Does that sound frightening?  It should, for He is an awesome (in the sense of 'fear and trembling') God!   But He is also a good God.   Faith allows us to go from good to great in His service.  Faith lets us abandon our plans and demands to discover the adventure of being part of what God is doing.  There, in His will, is supreme joy that supersedes our situations.

Our word from the Word reflects the very heart of faith, a totally God-focused, surrendered, trusting life.  As you read these inspired words, ask the Spirit to breathe faith in your soul.  With real faith, you can move mountains.  "I fall to my knees and pray to the Father, the Creator of everything in heaven and on earth. I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is.  May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God. Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think. Glory to him in the church and in Christ Jesus through all generations forever and ever! Amen."  (Ephesians 3:14-21, NLT)

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Great Is Thy Faithfulness

Great is Thy faithfulness,

O God, my Father,

There is no shadow

Of turning with Thee,

Thou changest not,

Thy compassions, they fail not;

As Thou hast been,

Thou forever wilt be.

Pardon for sin

And a peace that endureth,

Thy own dear presence

To cheer and to guide!

Strength for today

And bright hope for tomorrow.

Blessings all mine

With ten thousand beside.

Great is Thy faithfulness!

Great is Thy faithfulness!

Morning by morning,

New mercies I see.

All I have needed

Thy hand hath provided,

Great is Thy faithfulness,

Lord, unto me!

Thomas Obediah Chisholm | William Marion Runyan

© 1923. Renewed 1951 Hope Publishing Company

CCLI License # 810055

Despite the best of intentions?

Despite the best of intentions!

“Not today, I won’t give pride any place in my thoughts,” I tell myself only to find at day’s end I missed that mark by a mile!  “I won’t let discouragement overtake faith,” I promise myself only to hear complaints spilling from my lips again.  The world, the flesh, and the Devil are ever present, aren’t they?  People, problems, and pre-occupation with ourselves conspire together to keep us from the high and holy calling given to us in Christ Jesus.  Too many times, I must join with Paul in exclaiming: "O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? " (Romans 7:24, KJV)

Do you find yourself torn between two worlds – one of the Spirit, one of the old sinful nature? 

Knowing ourselves, especially if we refuse to hide behind excuses or blame others for our own choices, can be painful.  It is so much easier to pretend that our sins are not so bad, that our temper is ‘their’ fault, that our failure to trust God is not a real problem;  than it is to admit that what we do is sin, period. Freedom is found in looking into the mirror and admitting, "It seems to be a fact of life that when I want to do what is right, I inevitably do what is wrong. I love God’s law with all my heart. But there is another law at work within me that is at war with my mind. This law wins the fight and makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me." (Romans 7:21-23, NLT)

So, do we make a truce with that disobedience? Should we choose to stay as we are,  full of good intentions, but falling far short of them? Is this passage I’ve quoted giving us a pass from growing into the beauty of Christ?  Some seem to think so. They ‘sin and grin.’ They remain infantile in faith and practice, slaves to the sinful nature. Christ, our Lord, calls us to grow up in Him, to live in a way that reflects the transformational power of His Spirit, Who lives in us. 

How do we do that? Guilt does not work. Rigid self-regulation will not work, either. The Bible says that "These are all destined to perish with use, because they are based on human commands and teachings. Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence." (Colossians 2:22-24, NIV)  Religion’s wreckage surrounds us!  If we attempt to become godly using human techniques  we will most likely either slip into hypocrisy (out of touch with our own reality) or just give up and walk away.

The paradox is that holiness is found in authenticity. Yes, we see our sins without excuse, own them with profound sorrow.  But we also see, in faith, beyond our sin to Christ, Who loves us even as He knows every what, why, and where of our lives.  Romans 7, full of the misery of failure, is not the last word.  "There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit." (Romans 8:1-4, NIV)

Guilt is real and serves a purpose.  It is not to drive us to better resolve or deeper self-hatred.  It is to bring us to the end of our own attempts to please God, to declare spiritual bankruptcy, and to live in the amazing, undeserved, yet freely granted, grace of God.  We can never exhaust His grace which is deeper than the pit we dig for ourselves, wider than the gap between our intention and our practice, greater than our guilt.  God’s grace really is amazing. "For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation." (Romans 5:6-11, NKJV)

Today, when you fail, don’t pretend, excuse, or blame.  Confess!  But, make it a full confession – of your sinfulness and of His gift of holiness.  Take what He offers freely to you though at great cost to Himself.  You will find victory over sin precisely at the intersection of your failure and His grace. 

I love this passage and hope you do, too. "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding." (Ephesians 1:3-8, NIV)