“WHEN I GROW UP, I WILL GO THERE”

In what is considered one of the best novels ever written, Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad tells the story of a man who goes up the Congo River on behalf of a trading company. As the story begins, Conrad relates that this man had a passion for maps as a child. He would look at a particularly inviting place, put his finger on it, and say, “When I grow up, I will go there.”

Perhaps you have said a similar thing when faced with Christ’s call to be his disciple. In a sermon, Dan Meyer puts our reaction this way: “When I grow up I’ll go there. When I have more faith, I’ll go to these places Jesus is talking about. When I’m a little more convinced I might go there. When I don’t have all of these obligations, distractions, and complications I might go then. “

When Jesus calls us to be his disciples, though, he does not give us the option of waiting until we think we are ready to follow him to the difficult places to which he calls us. Consider these penetrating and well known words in Matthew 16:24-25: “Jesus told his disciples, ‘If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

Jesus spoke those words after a pair of dramatic moments with Simon Peter. First Peter makes his confession of Jesus as God’s Son after Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” Then Jesus tells the apostles that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer and be killed and be raised on the third day. Peter challenges Jesus on this being his destiny and tells him, “Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you.” Peter was saying, I am not ready for that. Not until I grow up. Then I will go there. But Jesus responded, “Get behind me, Satan.”

Like Peter, we may not want to go to the places God has placed on the map in front of us. We think to ourselves, and may even say to God, “When I grow up, I might go there.” We fail to realize that it is only by going with God to those places on the map where we have never been that we actually grow up and live as his disciples.

In the Disney Pixar movie The Incredibles the middle-aged suburban dad has been living a routine life. He pulls into his driveway to find his neighborhood boy watching him. He asks the boy, “What are you waiting for?” The boy looks back at him, and says, “Something amazing.” The man responds wistfully, “Me too, kid, me too.”

Jesus calls us to something amazing when he says, “Come, follow me.” This is the most amazing invitation we will ever receive. We dare not wait until “we grow up,” but should say yes to it.

“Follow Me” or Follow Me?

The essence of discipleship, the theme we are considering as we explore the Gospel of Matthew in my current sermon series, is responding to Christ’s call when he says “Follow me.” Many people, though, would rather follow me. That is, they would rather follow their own view of who God is and how they want to live. Even Christians have to be careful of falling into that trap.

New York Times columnist, Ross Douthat wrote about such a woman. Elizabeth Gilbert, in 2001 at age 32, had a rewarding job, an apartment in Manhattan, a big new house in the Hudson Valley, and a devoted husband. Five years later at 3:00 AM one morning, she locked herself in her bathroom, weeping over a life she didn’t want anymore, and then fell on her knees in prayer.

Culturally she was a “Christian,” but she was not able to believe that Christ is the only way to God. On the night of her prayer, she addressed herself to “God,” but she had no idea who God is. Her prayer was simple, "I don't want to be married anymore. I don't want to be married anymore. I don't want to live in this big house.”

Gilbert would eventually hear someone speak back. She said, “It was merely my own voice, speaking from within my own self …. [And yet], this was my voice as I had never heard it before… How can I describe the warmth of affection in that voice, as it gave me the answer that would forever seal my faith in the divine?"

Fortified by this "religious conversation," she left the husband and the house and the plans for having kids behind and set out into the unknown. Then she started a globe-trotting "spiritual quest" that led to the publishing phenomenon known as Eat, Pray, Love—a book that spent an extraordinary 187 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and was turned into a movie starring Julia Roberts.

Gilbert’s story is just another account of a person who “found God” within herself, which is not finding God at all. This has become one of the notions of God that is prevalent in our culture, but it is a false understanding of God.

Those of us who have responded to Christ’s call to “Follow Me” have to be careful that we are not just responding to the god within ourselves (follow me) who is not God at all. Christ’s call to discipleship is a call to follow him on his terms, not our own. Matthew clearly shows us that in his gospel. Continue reading Matthew as we explore it together, and learn how Jesus calls us to follow him.

The Great Adventure

In his book, The Island of Lost Maps, author Miles Harvey shares a sentiment you might share:

In my 30s I spent a great deal of time at the Kopi [a travelers’ café in Chicago] whose walls were adorned with masks from Bali and shelves filled with guides to far-flung destinations. I was then the literary critic for Outside Magazine, a great job but one that was beginning to wear on my patience. You see, the books I read were about people who climbed Himalayan peaks, rode a bicycle all the way across Africa, sailed wooden boats across the Atlantic, or tracked into restricted areas of China. These tales of adventure filled my days and my imagination, and yet my own life was anything but adventurous. The interior of the Kopi coffee shop was ringed by clocks, each one showing the time in some distant locale, and as I watched the weeks ticking away in places like Timbuctu and Juno and Goa and Denpasar, I began to long for an adventure of my own.

Dan Meyer, minister in Oak Brook, IL, opens a sermon from Matthew 4:18-25 that he titled “The Great Adventure” quoting that passage. He then tells that Harvey felt he was acting like a character in a Joseph Conrad novel who said, “When I grow up I will go there.” Then Meyer states the idea of the sermon as: “When Jesus says, ‘Follow me’ it’s the most amazing invitation you will ever get. Say yes to it.”

The story of the four fishermen that Jesus called to follow him in Matthew 4 is about four men who went on a great adventure when Jesus said to them, “Come follow me. Matthew, the author of the Gospel of Matthew, also received the call to follow Jesus and joined that great adventure. Many others during the course of Jesus’ ministry on earth and since have also joined the adventure. Meyer says:

In other words, lots of people from all walks of life and places lay down their tools, get out of their vehicles, release some of their associations, and follow him…. These people from all these places were willing to get up and go after Jesus because they had seen with their own two eyes what Jesus could do with a life put into his hands. They had seen his transforming power.

How about you? Do you want to go on an adventure great than anything you can imagine? Do you want to say with Joseph Conrad “When I grow up I will go there?” Jesus can take you to the place on the map that will change your life.

You get there by following Jesus. That is what the New Testament calls discipleship. There is no better place to learn about it than in Matthew’s Gospel. So we will do just that in the coming months.

Christmas Letter 2014

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased” – Luke 2:13-14

One year has passed since Christine went to be with the Lord. How do I sum up a year that has been filled with heartbreak over losing her and joy over knowing she has gone home, to the home all of us who follow Christ long for – our home with God? I am not sure I can, but let me mention just a few highlights.

I have been blessed in the past year by loving family, friends, and a wonderful church, including each one who will read this letter and who also grieve Christine’s death. Longtime family relationships and friendships have deepened for me as a result of our common grief and hope. One longtime friend who has been an encouragement to me over this last year has said repeatedly, “We will get through this together.” Many of you have demonstrated that sentiment without stating it. All I can say is thank you.

I ended last year and began this year with a two month break from my preaching and leadership responsibilities at our church, for which I am grateful. During that time and other time afforded me away from church, I visited family, returned to the church where I held my first preaching ministry, the first ministry decision Christine and I made together after we were married and a church where we have continued to have deep friendships, and I reoriented my life. I returned to preaching on February 2, and continue to carry on my life’s calling.

I was able to travel to a church planting conference in Florida and to the North American Christian Convention where I reconnected personally with friends I had not seen since Christine’s death. I also had occasion to speak at two retreats for church leaders about my journey on the theme, “Leading When Your Heart is Breaking.” Much more has happened that I do not have space to write about.

In early November, our daughter, Nancy, and son-in-law, Dave made their third mission trip to Nairobi, Kenya with a group from their church in Cincinnati. They are both engaged in ongoing work with the mission in Kenya and Dave is extending that work into other parts of Africa through his new mission, Africa Fire Mission. I am looking forward to when I will have an opportunity to go to Kenya with them.

On December 6 and 7, one year after Christine’s accident and death, Nancy, Dave, and I hosted an open house for family, friends and church members, and we held a special worship service on Sunday. Several of our family traveled to Madison for the weekend, including my sisters Karen and Connie, Connie’s husband, Doug, my brother, Tom, and his wife and their two sons, Christine’s sister, Susan, and her husband, and one niece. Christine’s and my longtime friend, Bud Clapp, came to preach for us that Sunday.

Among the things that Christine had on our refrigerator when she died was a scripture quotation from Psalm 73:23-26 that reaffirms everything she lived for: “Nevertheless I am continually with you; you hold my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My heart and my flesh may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”

I trust you and your family will have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, and trust you will have a wonderful year in 2015.

Ken

Are You Ready For an Awesome Christmas

In the November issue of Christianity Today, Megan Hill asks “If Everything Is Awesome, Where Does That Leave God?” In her first three paragraphs, she writes the following:

I have never eaten an awesome meal. I’ve never driven an awesome car or taken an awesome vacation. I haven’t danced to an awesome song or streamed an awesome video. I do, however, know an awesome God.

My history with the word awesome goes back to my childhood, when my father—an amateur linguist and professional theologian—gently corrected my early attempts to apply that word indiscriminately. In our family, we reserved the adjective for the One whose name is great and awesome (Ps. 99:3).

My dad’s point was not that awesome itself was some sacred incantation only for the divine . He simply wanted me to acknowledge with my words that, in both character and magnitude, God is different from deep-dish pizza.

Hill goes on to describe that “we live in a culture of inflated language,” as illustrated by The Lego Movie in which they sing “Everything is awesome.” Then she says, “But if everything is awesome, then nothing is.”

After reading her column, I began thinking about Christmas, and it occurred to me that we can ready for Christmas — or we can be ready for an awesome Christmas.

So what is the difference. Well, I am glad you asked.

I began getting ready for Christmas early this year because Nancy, Dave, and I are holding a Christmas Open House on Saturday. I knew I would not have time to put the Christmas tree up and do some other decorating after Thanksgiving, so I decorated the tree and did some other Christmas decorating earlier than I ever have — before Thanksgiving. You can’t have a Christmas Open House, after all, without Christmas decorations. Now if I get a few more presents that I still need to buy, I will be ready for Christmas. It will be good to have all of that done for Christmas, but that will not make it an awesome Christmas.

You see, an awesome Christmas requires understanding and celebrating how Christmas began, and worshiping the one Christmas is all about.

So you will have an awesome Christmas when you reflect again on how the God who alone is awesome came into the world by being born of a virgin in the person of Jesus. Everything about the birth had been prophesied for centuries and occurred just as it had been prophesied. Nothing like that had happened before and has not happened since. God became a man. Angels announced the birth to shepherds who went to worship him. The world has not been the same since. Reflect on that and you will have an awesome Christmas

Reflections on “One Another”

The phrase “one another” is used at least six dozen times in the New Testament, both negatively and positively, to refer on the one hand to how Christians are not to treat one another and on the other hand to how Christians are to treat one another. I will only be able to deal with less than a dozen positive uses of the phrase in my current sermon series, so let me give you a glimpse at some of the other positive things Christians are to do for one another.

Greet one another — In Romans 16, Paul gives a long list of greetings to people in the church at Rome and instructions for them to greet specific people. Then, in Romans 16:16, he says, “Greet one another with a holy kiss.” One of the joys of watching people at Westwood on Sunday morning is how everyone greets one another. I have also experienced this kind of greeting in many church settings and Christian gatherings over the years. It is not only important in greeting one another that we say hello, but that we also keep our spiritual antenna up in listening to people and learning whether there are special joys or hurts that they are experiencing.

Serve one another — This phrase appears in Galatians 5:13 when Paul says “serve one another in love.” Leo Tolstoy studied a young artist’s painting of the Lord’s Supper and, referring to the image of Jesus said, “If you loved him more, you would paint him better.” The same can be said of our service for Christ — ”If you loved him more, you would serve him better” — and of our service for one another — “If we loved one another more, we would serve one another better.”

Bear one another’s burdens — Galatians 6:2 says, “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” This verse comes immediately after Paul has told the Galatian church to restore those who have sinned with a spirit of gentleness. In the context in which Paul places this phrase — bear one other’s burdens — it is clear that we are to help fellow believers along the way who have fallen in some manner instead of condemning them. This often takes great effort, but has great rewards when a person is restored to his or her faith.

Bear with one another — Ephesians 4:2 says we are to “bear with one another in love.” It is important to recognize here how important love is in living out all of these one another instructions. Everyone of us will have relationships with other Christians who are hard to accept and love. Even as I write this, there are names and faces that come to my mind. However, we need to bear with these people and recognize the value they bring to the Kingdom of God and to the lives of others, recognizing that we too have our shortcomings and our own detractors.

Encourage one another — This phrase appears in 1 Thessalonians 5:11 alongside the phrase “build one another up.” Paul even says that his readers were already doing this. Everybody has a hard struggle of one kind or other and needs encouragement to keep on trusting and serving the Lord. There is no greater gift that you can give to others than encouragement.

Here’s an idea: search out the one another passages, make a list, and rate from 1 to 10 how you are doing with each one.

When We Are One With God and One Another...

Several years ago, I read a true missionary account of some unusual bickering that took place in a church in an isolated village in Thailand. There were sixteen Christian families in the village who became seriously divided over the use of their church property.

One of the younger Christian men, those father had owned the land on which the church building was built, decided to make the use of the land more productive. He fenced in the church property, dug up the ground, and planted corn. As the corn began to sprout, he began to dig the ground beneath the church building, which was constructed on stilts, and planted beans under the church building.

These actions caused the other Christians to suspend worship services. They were convinced the young man was laying a trap for them— that he would blame them if the bean crop failed. For many months the church did not meet, except for occasional meetings in individual’s homes. The church had lost its unity and purpose.

About a year later, a visit by two of the missionaries prompted a meeting of the church in the church building. The building was packed, and, then, as one of the missionaries preached, the entire length of floor on one side of the building collapsed and all the people on that side of the building tumbled to the ground. This shared experience helped reunite the Christians and inspired them to build a new building. This time the building was built on the ground with a dirt floor.

When the building was completed, the missionaries returned to the village for a building dedication. But two days before they left for the village, another young Christian man erected a small bamboo and grass house within fifteen feet of the new church, and by the time they arrived, the Christians were split again. Some accused the young man of deliberate disrespect for God and his fellow-Christians. Others were wisely urging patience and understanding. The young man himself pleaded ignorance of the fact that the church grounds were for church use only. In spite of the missionaries’ efforts to exhort both factions, they remained divided and unforgiving of one another. Of course, there was no dedication service.

On the one hand, we may find such division foolish or even laughable, but congregations in America have split over such small issues and Christians are often divided over issues of small consequence. So how do we maintain unity among Christians? Let me mention two things, one that we emphasized at this year’s Great Communion service and one that is the subject matter of my sermon series that starts this coming Sunday.

1. Become one with the Father and with his Son. Jesus prayed in John 17:20-23 for unity among believers: “...that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us.” We gain unity with the Father and the Son by experiencing the glory of Christ. Christ experienced his glory in his death, and we experience that glory when we die to self.
2. Become one with “one another.” When we learn how to treat one another, how to build up one another, how to be members of one another, how to honor one another, how to love another, then we develop a unity that keeps us from dividing. We will examine this theme through the “one another” passages in the New Testament in a sermon series that begins this coming Sunday and extends through November.

There will no doubt always be division between Christians, much of it over silly things, but we can and should work for the kind of unity between one another that the Father and the Son demonstrate.

God bless,

Ken

Building a Life of Faithfulness

The first home that Christine and I owned we had built. We bought a lot from a couple who became our neighbors and friends, hired a contractor who was recommended to us, chose a floor plan and then floor coverings and fixtures. Then we watched as the house was built.

The second home that we owned was also new when we moved in. We signed a contract to purchase it from the builder, a member of the congregation we had gone to Oklahoma to minister with, while the house was under construction. We made some alterations in the floor plan and again chose floor coverings and fixtures. The next time we saw the house, construction was complete and we moved in.

In both cases, we made decisions about the construction of the house and then it was built, or in the case of the second house, the building was completed. However, after moving in we still had to make each house a home by personalizing it with our own decorating and living in it everyday.

As we come to the second half of Nehemiah, he has completed the rebuilding of the walls. Now he and the people of Jerusalem have to turn the city into a place where they can live.

When Nehemiah 6 begins, the walls Nehemiah set out to rebuild have been completed, but the gates have not been set in place. When Nehemiah 7 begins, the gates have been set in place; the building project is complete. The chapter goes on to describe the heritage of the people who have returned to rebuild Jerusalem. It then sets the stage for the remaining chapters of the book which describe the spiritual development of the city. The pieces of that development include:

• A commitment to the Word of God—chapter 8. Ezra, the priest who had led a group of exiles back to Jerusalem fourteen years earlier, leads a public meeting at which he reads the law of Moses to the gathering, and the people commit to living by the law.
• A commitment to the greatness, goodness, and grace of God—chapter 9. After committing themselves to the law, the people of Jerusalem confess their sins for not having obeyed the law and recognize the God who has delivered their nation from trouble again and again.
• A commitment to obedience—chapter 10. The people then promise to obey even the hard parts of the law.

Just as Nehemiah had to build a nation that committed themselves to our great God and his Word and to obeying him, we need to do the same. When we have rebuilt our lives after being broken, we then need to build a life of faithfulness.

While the rebuilding is hard—as we have seen with Nehemiah and the opposition and problems he faced–so is building a life of faithfulness. There will always be constant temptation trying to pull us away from God, but we have resources available to us to help us maintain our commitment to him. The final chapters of Nehemiah will help us understand these resources.

If A Person Dies, Will He or She Live Again?

On Friday, August 1, I held Bev Kenworthy’s funeral at Westwood. Many of you who are reading this know Bev as well or better and longer than I do. Bev is an extraordinary woman. She is one of those rare saints that if you are privileged to get to know will bless your life in the most amazing ways. Let me share with you in printed form some of the thoughts that I will share at her funeral.

She was already on the top side of 70 when I first met her in 1996. During all the time that I have known her and much if not all of the time that some of you have known her, her eyesight was failing. During those first years that I knew her, someone would print word sheets in large letters every week for her of the songs we sang in church that Sunday because whether we were using hymnbooks or projecting the words she could not read them. Yet she wanted to participate in the worship service.

Bev very seldom missed church, and she read her Bible and devotional books and prayed with diligence. When she could no longer read, she had the Bible and her devotions read to her. As her health began to fail, she could not get to church any longer, but as long as she was at home and able to do so, she would still get dressed for church and watch church on TV. She told me the last time I took communion to her that on those Sundays she would squeeze the juice out of grapes and use crackers to prepare communion for herself. She asked that day if that was okay.

When you live like that, you can face up to the question that Job asked: If a person dies, will he or she live again? That may be the oldest recorded question. If you fail to ask Job’s question, you miss one of the greatest blessings of life. Understanding the answer to that question will enable you to understand three great things that God wants us to understand.

Understand the Gospel. The Apostle Paul summarizes the Gospel as the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. The Gospel is the action God took through Jesus to restore us to the life he created us for that we lost when Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden. Through Jesus’ death, the penalty for our sins has been paid. Through Jesus’ resurrection, death has been defeated, and we receive the gift of eternal life. So even, Job could say, “I know that my Redeemer lives…”

Understand Your Reward. After suffering a life of persecution for Christ, Paul was at the end of his life when he wrote 2 Timothy, and said, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” Therefore the Lord will give me the crown of righteousness. Bev had marked in one of her devotional books this statement: “Because Christ lives, death is not a tragedy but triumph.”

Understand Grief. We will still grieve Bev’s death; her family will grieve her death. We, however, do not grieve as the rest of the world does who have no hope (1 Thessalonians 4:13). We will experience, grief, pain, loss when a loved one dies, when a special person dies. But we grieve in hope and look forward to eternal life.

Helping Others Rebuild Their Brokenness

The premise for my current sermon series through Nehemiah is that we can rebuild our broken world if we walk with God as Nehemiah did. However, we can go even further in rebuilding our broken worlds by helping others rebuilt theirs. While we will deal with that in the sermon series, I want to emphasis that even further in this space. Helping people rebuild their broken worlds is after all a part of the church’s mission.

Al Sherrill, pastor of a church in Manhattan, New York, gives an example, in the current issue of Leadership of a lady in his church who did just that. Her name is Ellen. She works in the fashion industry and was placed on a team in her company with a woman whose presence she had begun to dread. Then her coworker was handed a two week notice of termination. She was a single mother of a teenage girl and was already $5,000 behind on rent and was receiving repeated eviction threats posted on her door.

The woman had long since given up any faith that she had. So Ellen sent an email with the subject “Urgent” to fellow believers. She concluded the email by writing, "Would you prayerfully consider joining me in raising $5,000 for this woman over the next 48 hours? I think that showing radical generosity in the name of Jesus will be a powerful display of God's heart towards her in this time. May God's mercy be released over her life through this."

In response to Ellen's plea for a few people to join in resolving her coworker's plight, within two days she arrived to work carrying a sealed envelope. Laying it on her coworker's desk, Ellen informed the woman that there were a few folks at church who believed in her comeback. Later that day Ellen sent an email to those who supported the cause. It read:

"So thankful to share the story of today with you. I wrote a letter to her this morning, and put the full amount in the envelope. I wrote of grace being a free gift, that she is indebted to no one, and that all who gave did so out of the belief that they've received that same but infinitely greater gift of grace from God. When she came in and read the letter, she called me to her office and embraced me weeping. She said she'd never received unconditional help before, and that it was the most profound thing she's experienced. 'Thank God, thank God,' she kept saying. She is now able to stay in her apartment. She has a promising job interview next week.

"Later in the day, another coworker came to me with tears in her eyes and hugged me. The woman had told her what transpired, and said, 'Not only have you changed her life, but you've revived my faith as well.' Just last night she had told her husband that she felt her faith in Jesus was dead. She said that in all her life she had never seen such a thing, and it reminded her of truth."

All stories may not be that dramatic, but, as Sherrill tells it, this was the first time Ellen had seen her job as a place to live out her faith. It was the first time she stepped to help someone else rebuild their brokenness.

The rebuilding of our own brokenness is a result of God pouring his grace into our lives through Jesus Christ. Our mission is to help others rebuild their lives by offering them God’s grace.

Everything Is Broken, But It Can Be Fixed

All you have to do is read or listen to the news to know that our world is broken. From the flood of immigrants on our southern border to the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas to a NFL draftee receiving an award for courage because he announced publicly that he is gay — and those are just three things in the news on the day I write this — we live in a broken world.

All you have to do is listen to people’s personal stories, and you realize our lives are broken. From divorce to child and sexual abuse to alcohol and drug abuse to dealing with issues related to aging, either your own or your parents, to facing death — just to name a few — we live in our own broken worlds.

All of this brokenness is not new, though. The entire history of the world, ever since the sin of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, has been one of brokenness. When we enter the world of Nehemiah, as we will do this week in a new sermon series, we enter a world that had been broken for centuries:

• First the nation of Israel was divided into two nations after the reign of Solomon.
• Then the Assyrians invaded the Northern Kingdom, which thereafter ceased to exist.
• Next, 130 years later, the Babylonians invaded the Southern Kingdom and took the people into captivity. The Babylonians destroyed the temple and broke down the protective walls of Jerusalem.
• Fifty years later, the first wave of Israelites returned to their homeland to find it in ruins. After some delays, they rebuilt the temple, but much of the city was still left broken and in ruins.
• After another fifty-seven years, another group of Jews returned home only to find that people had lost their spiritual edge and intermarried with pagan peoples.
• Fourteen years later, 140 years following the exile of the southern kingdom, Nehemiah heard about the condition and Jerusalem and went there to rebuild its broken walls.

That is where we will pick up the story— with Nehemiah. He shows us that the brokenness can be fixed by rebuilding the broken walls of Jerusalem, the city of his heritage. In doing so, he brings protection from the brokenness that had controlled his people’s lives for so long.

Nehemiah’s story has often been preached and written as a story of leadership, giving us lessons in leadership that can still be relied on today. It is certainly that, but his story also shows us how God can fix the brokenness in our lives. That is the viewpoint from which we will examine Nehemiah. Our brokenness can be fixed, but only as we follow God’s prompting for our lives as Nehemiah did for his. Those are lessons we need, lessons I hope you will learn with me over the coming weeks.

Rebuilding Your Broken World

Beginning on July 20, I will begin to introduce our congregation to a Biblical character who may not be as familiar to you as others. Yet he played a very significant role in one of the lesser known periods of Biblical history.

The character is Nehemiah. The period of history is that of the exile. This was the time when the nation of Israel, the nation of God’s people, had been taken captive. After Solomon’s reign as king of Israel, the nation was divided and began to decline as the kings of both kingdoms led the people away from God. We probably avoid this period of Israel’s history for two reasons:

· First, we do not have as much biblical information about this period. We only get some brief glimpses into this time through the prophets who wrote during the exile and through the three history books from the period: Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther.

· Second, the nation and the people of Israel are broken during this period. The messages of the prophets during the exile are filled with messages and images of judgment. We would rather read of the great exploits of those who trusted God, not depressing stories of people God is punishing.

So Nehemiah came onto the scene about 140 years after the southern kingdom of Judah had been taken captive by Babylon. In the intervening years, the Persians had defeated Babylon and were now the world’s leading power. Israel was a broken nation. Its capital, Jerusalem, was broken. The temple had been destroyed and efforts to rebuild it had gone nowhere. Nehemiah discovered that there was no security in the city for the few Israelites who lived there. The lives of the Israelites were broken. They must have asked, how can we ever rebuild this? How can God rebuild our nation, our city, our people?

Have you ever felt that way about your life? Have you ever felt like your life, your family, everything and everyone you care about is broken? Have you ever wondered how you, how God can rebuild your broken world?

If you haven’t asked those questions, you should because we are all broken, everyone of us. Some may be broken into more pieces than others — and perhaps you do not seek to have your life rebuilt because you see others who are more broken than you — but sin has its grip on all of us. We all have broken pieces, and none of us can be used by God the way he wants to use us until we let him fix us.

Nehemiah had probably never been to Jerusalem, the city of his people, but when he discovered how broken it was, he determined to go there and fix it. His story is one of seeking the Lord’s guidance and then going about the business of repairing a broken city. While he faced hardship, difficulty, and opposition along the way, he helped to repair a broken city and a broken people.

Our brokenness is different than what Nehemiah set out to repair. We do not have walls and buildings and physical infrastructure that needs repair. We have hearts that need repair and some of us have our whole world that needs repair. Yet we can learn from Nehemiah how to repair our brokenness. Read the book of Nehemiah. Take a look at this life. Let his story help you rebuild your brokenness.

Remembering

Over this past weekend and the beginning of this week, I have been remembering. I have known these days were coming, but as I remembered, the days took on more significance than I had previously thought that they would. Let me explain.

Saturday, June 7, was six months from when I last saw my dear wife, Christine. That occurred when I said good by to her in our kitchen as she left for Marquette, MI, to represent WCMA, the church planting ministry that I lead, at Lake Superior Christian Church. The next day, Sunday, June 8, was six months from the day of the accident on her return trip from Marquette that would take her life on earth. I spent the day after her accident at the hospital in Green Bay where she had been taken and remained unconscious until her death early the next morning.

As I remembered these things, I realized that there is an interesting anomaly to these events. Each of those four days six months later were the same day of the week and the same date of the month as they were six months earlier. Her accident was on Sunday, December 8; six months later was Sunday, June 8. She died in the early morning on Tuesday, December 10; six months later was Tuesday, June 10.

Exactly six months prior to the time that I last saw Christine, she and I were with a group of seventy-six other people in the ancient city of Ephesus on June 7, 2013. It was Sunday as we walked through Ephesus. We left the ruins of the old city that day from the area in front of the theater of Ephesus where the apostle Paul narrowly averted being the object of a riot. We walked up a slight incline to the ruins of the second century Church of Mary where we held a communion service that I was privileged to lead.

This weekend I remembered the events of six months ago and my forty years with Christine, just as six months before her death she and I, along with our fellow travelers, remembered, in the city where Paul walked, the death of our Savior. On the Sunday six months after Christine’s accident and one year after our communion service in Ephesus, I preached on the Lord’s Supper from 1 Corinthians 11. That sermon and text had been planned, without any thought of the connection to the events I have described, as part of a series in 1 Corinthians.

Remembrance is a necessary and important part of our experiences in life – both the joyful and agonizing ones. In the past six months, I have rejoiced at the life Christine and I have had together and the eternal life that is now hers, while also agonizing over how much I miss her. I have agonized over the events that led to her death, while rejoicing over the things that God is doing in my life and the lives of so many others who have been touched by her life and death. It is an irony of the highest magnitude, but memory brings both joy and agony.

Yet, such memories of our lives with the ones we love should be superseded by remembering the death of our Lord. Those memories, too, bring both joy and agony to our hearts: joy because Jesus gave himself for us, and agony because of the terrible suffering he endured to bring us forgiveness. Every time, we come around the table of the Lord and eat the bread, the body of Christ given for us, and drink from the cup, the new covenant of Christ’s blood, our memories should draw us to our Savior.

Jerry Sittser in his book, A Grace Disguised, describes how he received communion after the tragedy in his life of losing his mother, wife, and one of four children in a tragic accident in 1991:

“For three years now I have cried at every communion service I have attended. I have not only brought my pain to God but also felt as never before the pain God suffered for me. I have mourned before God because I know that God has mourned, too. God understands suffering because God suffered.”

Do You Have Unused or Unclaimed Gifts?

Last year Harvard Business Review published a book titled Harvard Business Review, Stats & Curiosities. Among the statistics that it cites are these:

• 39.2 percent of shoppers will purchase a department store gift card for friends and family.
• 33.4 percent of shoppers will purchase a restaurant gift card for friends and family.
• According to estimates reported in the Journal of State Taxation, the typical American home has an average of $300 in unused or "unredeemed" gift cards. These cards are often misplaced, accidentally thrown out, or only partially redeemed.
• Between 2005 and 2011, $41 billion in gift cards went unused.

I have never had $300 in unused gift cards at home. There have been times, however, when I have forgotten I had a gift card and it took me a few months to use all of it. I do understand how people could forget to use a gift card.

Some people, however, refuse to use or even claim the gifts that God has given us. There are two primary references to those gifts in 1 Corinthians.

First, there is the gift of grace. In 1 Corinthians 1:4, Paul says, “I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus.” The word grace itself refers to an “undeserved gift” or “undeserved merit” that God gives us. Receiving the gift of God’s grace results, of course, in our salvation. Yet many people decide not to receive God’s gift and thus never experience eternal life. Of all the gifts you can decide not to claim, this is one you do not want to miss out on.

Second, there are spiritual gifts that God gives to believers. These gifts are given to us as a part of God’s grace. It is important that we understand and use our gifts, because it is through our gifts that God ministers to the church and the world. Yet many Christians either do not use their gifts or seek to know what gifts God has given them.

It is important that every follower of Christ exercise their spiritual gifts, that you exercise your spiritual gifts. Paul said, “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone.” Our gifts come from God, and God does his work through us when we use our gifts.

Be sure you do not refuse the gift of grace or your spiritual gifts.

Temptation and Testing

 

One of the great promises of the Bible is one I have drawn on many times. Perhaps you have too. The passage, however, offers us even greater hope than many of us have drawn from it. Let me explain.

1 Corinthians 10:12-13 gives us this great promise: “Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall. No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” The promise is given after Paul references a series of failures by Israel to trust God during their wanderings in the wilderness. He says that their failures were meant as examples to us.

We need to take heed so that we do not fall as the Israelites did. We can do so because God will not let us be tempted beyond our ability, but will always provide a way of escape. We have taken Paul’s description of temptation as a temptation to sin. It is that, but what we have missed in the passage is that it is much more.

The word temptation that Paul uses, has no negative connotation. It simply means to test or prove. Whether it becomes a proof of righteousness, of trusting God, or an inducement to sin and evil depends on our response;.

Satan, you see, will use inducements to sin to draw us away from God, but he will also try to draw us away from God when we face the hard things in life. These things are also tests for us, tests of whether we will be faithful to God.

Now let me be clear. I am not talking about tests that God sends us. The hard things in life come from Satan and are the result of the presence of sin in the world. So hard things do come to us just as temptations to sin come to us, and Satan tries to use them all to draw us away from God.

The promise of God, however, is that God will provide us a way of escape no matter how difficult the test is, no matter how great the temptation. The question for us is always whether we will remain faithful to God when the test comes.

Since Christine’s accident on December 8 and death on December 10, I have been experiencing the kind of test that comes to us. As I told my daughter on the phone one night about two months after Christine’s death, Satan would like nothing better than to lure us away from faith in Christ as a result of what happened. He would like us to give up on the ministries God has called us to. We have determined that we will not let him do so, but that struggle is certainly hard. How, then, does God provide a way of escape?

Let me illustrate with the experience of a minister I met at at conference last month. As we talked, he told me that his wife had died five years earlier in the midst of what would become a thirty-seven year ministry. When I shared with him about Christine’s death, we discussed our two experiences and he prayed for me. In the midst of our discussion, he told me how God had opened up an entirely new ministry to him that led him to Florida.

God provides a path to a new adventure. I do not know what God will open up to you or me when we face temptation and trials, but he does promise he will provide us a way of escape. My “way of escape” may be different than my new friend’s and yours may be different than mine, but whether it is temptation or testing, God will show us the way out.

We are engaged in a great spiritual battle — we have been ever since the sin of Adam and Eve. Satan wants us to walk away from God. God will, however, always provide us a way out if we trust him. The way out may not be easy, but the promise is still true. Trust God when life becomes hard.

Worshiping Idols and Practicing Paganism Today

Worshiping Idols and Practicing Paganism Today

The worship of idols and pagan gods were clearly issues for the church at Corinth when Paul wrote 1 Corinthians. Most of the young believers in the Corinthian church had participated in idol worship. These practices were entrenched in that entire region of the world. Friendships were built in the pagan temples and business was conducted around their religious practices.

We do not have the same kind of idols and pagan worship that they did, but we do have practices in our own culture that lead many people away from God, and our practices are just as pagan.

Consider the TV show Hoarders which aired on the A&E network from 2009 through 2013. The show depicted the real-life struggles and treatment of people who suffer from compulsive hoarding. They people’s compulsions are so strong that they cannot let go of their “stuff.” On the show, loved ones, psychologists, and organizational experts were brought in to try to help the hoarders stop hoarding.

One episode focused on a middle aged hoarder named Phyllis. Her house was so cluttered with dolls and other belongings that she had to crawl over mounds of garbage in order to reach the recliner where she ate and slept. Her compulsions were so strong that she chose to live without running water and heat and to huddle under blankets to stay warm. Another episode told the story about a man who had collected such a large stash of games, action figures, books, and novelties that it was nearly impossible to move through his home.

Most people who watched the show had the same reaction: they could not believe that people just would not let go of all the stuff that was slowly sabotaging important relationships and harming themselves. They treated these things as gods. While many people do not hoard as those on the TV show, we can treat possessions as if they are our “gods.”

In 1 Corinthians 10, Paul warns against not trusting God. He discusses how the Israelites in the wilderness received “spiritual food” and “spiritual drink” and that they drank from the “spiritual Rock,” who was Christ. Yet they put Christ to the test by not trusting him and by grumbling about God’s provision for them, so Paul tells us to learn from them. If you think you can continue in the ways of the world and not fall from Christ, you should “take heed lest you fall.” No temptation is too great, no idol or pagan practice or possession is so great but that God can provide a way of escape for us. God is faithful, so always put your faith in him.

Come and See

The theme for the Exponential Conference — a conference on church planting — that I attended this week was “Seek and Save—Rethinking Evangelism.” One of the speakers, Larry Osborne, pastor of North Coast Church in Oceanside, California, spoke about how their congregation has reached people for Christ by implementing a “Come and See” approach to evangelism. In short, their philosophy is to encourage their people to invite friends and family to come to church with them to see who Jesus is. They make every effort as a congregation, then, to make sure people see Jesus when they visit the church.

Some Christians, of course, go to much greater lengths to take the Gospel to people. Beginning in 1992, Dr. Bill Becknell of Manchester, Kentucky, for instance, has been recruiting other doctors to go with him to Russia’s far north country. In those isolated villages near the North Pole, where the nearest medical clinic is a three-day trip over rut-filled roads, they treat Nenet Eskimo children who have never seen a doctor or heard about Jesus.

Every trip is a story. On one expedition, Becknell flew from Moscow to Siberia and traveled 10 hours on a rickety bus to a Siberian outpost of about 3,000 people. Leaders asked if he would travel to another village about eight hours away to see people who had never seen a doctor.

In the six to seven hours in a jeep loaded with medicine, Becknell never saw a human being, car or house. At a tent in the middle of nowhere, he met a young shepherd about 25 to 30 years old. “All my life, I have sat on these mountains and looked at the stars at night and wondered if there was a God and if He knew me. I can’t believe He sent you here to tell me about Him,” the young shepherd said as he committed his life to Jesus.

In 2012, 13 expeditions cared for 2,610 people. Currently, there are more than 400 written invitations to come and serve in different parts of Russia.

God doesn’t ask all of us to go to such lengths to witness for Christ. A friend from New Mexico whose wife died in her 70’s in February from cancer told me over lunch this week of all the women his wife had influenced for Christ. Four of them spoke at the celebration service for her life.

For most of us, sharing Christ can be as simple as saying to friends and family, “Come and see.” All of us know people who do not believe and people who do not attend church. We just need to look around us, and we will notice them. Some of them may not respond at first, but as we demonstrate a life that has different values than most people and they begin to see Christ in us, some will come and see. Who do you know to whom you can say, “Come and see”?

Reflections on Good Friday – The Truth About Everything

Tonight many from our church, along with guests, will gather for our annual Good Friday service at 6:00 PM. If you had not planned to come or have forgotten about it, I encourage to join us for this service that reflects on the death of our Savior.

For the last few years, Christine has planned our Good Friday service. In preparing this year’s service, I have been reminded that this year she is no longer here to do so. However the plan that we will use for this year's service is one she found a few years ago and implemented. It takes us through the stations of the cross — those events Jesus endured on his way to the cross and on the cross itself.

My worship on this Good Friday will be richer this year as I reflect on the eternal reward that Christine has now received as a result of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. We only have hope for eternal life because Jesus did endure the cruelty and suffering of the cross, and because of Christ’s resurrection, which we will celebrate on Sunday. However, as Charles Colson wrote a few years ago, we must not “rush the celebration before coming face-to-face with the paradoxes that are at the heart of the Christian faith” — paradoxes which are seen most clearly in the c ross.

Richard John Neuhaus wrote about this a few years ago in his book, Death on a Friday Afternoon: Meditations on the Last Words of Jesus. Neuhaus writes, “If what Christians say about Good Friday is true, then it is, quite simply, the truth about everything.” What is that truth? It begins with the truth about the human condition, namely that we are sinners and our sins keep us from God. So what does God do? He paradoxically punishes the offended party — his Son — instead of the guilty party — us.

Colson reflected on the cross, in his meditation on Good Friday, this way: “Our unwillingness to see our sins as they really are—that is, as God sees them—leads us to embrace another falsehood: that is, that we can make things right. Even though our culture is, in many respects, post-Christian, it still clings to the idea of redemption. However, just as with our ideas about sin and guilt, our ideas about redemption are pitiful and impoverished.

“On Good Friday, God made it clear ‘that we are incapable of setting things right.’ He made it clear by taking our place. On the Cross, ‘the Judge of the guilty is Himself judged guilty.’ This is, of course, the great scandal, one that paradoxically points to the great truth at the heart of Good Friday. We are powerless to set things right, and only God, the offended party, could undo the mess we created.

“The Cross—God’s way of bearing witness to the truth about our condition—is as offensive today as it was 2,000 years ago. Now, as then, we insist on misinterpreting the events of that Friday afternoon, but to no avail. Our sin has been judged, and God Himself bore the punishment. And that is the truth about everything.”

So reflect on the cross today. It is the most important reflecting you will ever do.

April 4-6 – An Amazing Weekend

Jerry Kizzire, senior minister at Lake Superior Christian Church (LSCC) in Marquette, MI — who preached at Westwood on April 6 — called it a “God weekend.” He could not have been more right. Our two congregations have been inextricably intertwined since Christine represented WCMA at LSCC on December 8 and then died on December 10 after her accident, and God did some amazing things at both congregations through the events of last weekend.

The weekend events began on Thursday when Jerry and his wife, Natalie, left Marquette to begin their trip to Madison and I left Madison to travel to Marquette so that we could each preach for the other’s congregation. Ryan Gilroy, who has begun plans to plant a church in Manistique, MI, traveled with me so that we could meet with LSCC leadership about the church plant. We all traveled on Thursday because forecasts called for a winter snow storm in the U.P. on Friday, but even an all-day snow storm could not stop what God was about to do.

The actual events of the weekend began with the Madison Christian Women’s Retreat on Friday evening. Although the attendance was smaller than the planners would have preferred, all the ladies were blessed by the retreat events and by this year’s speaker, Shelly Larson. I spoke with Shelly on Monday, and she was thrilled with how well the retreat went.

On Saturday, Ryan and I attended LSCC’s monthly men’s breakfast and shared information about WCMA and the two current church plants in Menomonee Falls and Muskego and plans for the Manistique church plant. Then we met with some of the elders and missions team from LSCC for a broad ranging discussion about the church plant. There is growing momentum and enthusiasm for the church plant project in Manistique that will result in Ryan, WCMA, and LSCC all working together to see another church planted in the U.P.

On Sunday, I preached in both services at LSCC. I preached the sermon I preached at Westwood on February 2 when I returned to preaching after Christine’s death, “When Life Tumbles In, What Then?” Quite a few people at LSCC, shared with me conversations they had with Christine when she was at LSCC on December 8. Jerry preached at Westwood from the parable of the ten virgins in Matthew 25 and asked, “Are You Ready?” He told about his interaction with Christine on December 8 and then told the adult class about Christine’s presentation at LSCC on December 8 and how their congregation had learned about her accident and death and how they then prayed for me, my family, and Westwood in their worship service on December 15.

All through the weekend God was at work, healing our hearts, strengthening bonds of friendship and creating new ones, and prodding us for how God will work in the future through another church plant, the very thing for which Christine had gone to LSCC on December 8 with which to challenge them.

Videos of Christine’s presentation at LSCC on December 8 and of the prayer time there on December 15 are available on LSCC’s website at this link. If you just want to see the applicable parts of the videos, fast forward to 51:37 on the December 8 video and to 13:10 on the December 15 video. Also, the audio of Jerry’s sermon and his adult class presentation are available on Westwood’s web site: www.westwoodchristian.com. The audio of my message at LSCC is also available at this link and the video of the worship service from last Sunday at LSCC is available at this link or either may be accessed through the sermon page on our church website.

Doubting the Resurrection

A few weeks ago, I received a small book in the mail — it is just over 100 pages — that the publisher was marketing in preparation for Resurrection Sunday. The book, written by two pastors, has an intriguing title: Raised? Finding Jesus By Doubting the Resurrection. The title piques your interest — which I am sure is intentional — because it begs the question, how can you find Jesus by doubting the resurrection?

Chapter 1, “Doubting the Resurrection,” goes immediately to the heart of the matter. They say at the outset that “One out of every five Americans does not believe in a deity. The ‘none’ category in religious polls has doubled over the past ten years, and less than half of the population attends religious services on a regular basis.”

This is not new, however. Matthew 28:17 even says about the disciples of Jesus after the resurrection that “when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted.” Indeed why wouldn’t some people doubt him? After all, the Christian faith makes some audacious claims.

As Raised? unfolds, the authors answer the doubters questions as they discuss the evidence for the resurrection and why you should want the resurrection be true. They spend a chapter showing “How the Resurrection Reshapes History.”

In chapter 3, “Stepping into the Resurrection,” the authors of Raised? come to the heart of the matter when discussing the resurrection — as does the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15. Paul maintains that the heart of the Gospel — what “I delivered to you as of first importance”— is “that Christ died for our sins…, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day….”

Raised? lifts one verse out of 1 Corinthians 15 to get us to the crux of the matter in regard to the resurrection. Verse 17 says, “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in sins.” The authors say,

“Here Paul puts it all on the line. If Christ hasn’t been raised, the Christian faith is fiction and we are stranded in the fall of humanity, trapped in our imperfections. In others words, there is no hope, no purpose, no plan for the future. This is all there is. But if the resurrection is true, it means there is hope; there is purpose and a plan for the future.”

Churches will return to the theme of the crucifixion and resurrection with services on Palm Sunday, Good Friday, Resurrection Sunday, and at other times. No matters are more important to our faith, to resolving our doubts, to empowering our walk with Christ. The resurrection is indeed our greatest hope.