Monthly Archives: March 2013

Lest We Forget

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“But He [Jesus] was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed.”1

Today is Good Friday, the day we remember with profound appreciation that it was for this day that Jesus came to earth … to die in our place on that cruel Roman cross to save us from the terrible consequences of sin—a disease far deadlier than AIDS or any other disease that is a physical death sentence.

Today, we also remember that Jesus Christ was not an ordinary man. True, he was a man but he was and is the Son of the Living God—the Great Creator who became our Savior—the one who laid aside his external garments of deity, stepped out of the Ivory Palaces of Heaven, clothed himself in a garment of human flesh and came to earth to pay the redemption price for our sin. He died on the cross in your place and mine. In so doing he provided the only cure for the deadly disease of sin whose sentence is spiritual and eternal death.

Today, we remember, too, that without Jesus as our Savior, we would be headed for hell from which there is no escape beyond the grave. Wherever and whatever hell is we can be sure of this, it is eternal disconnection from God the author of all love and life—cut off forever from all love and all loving relationships. Such consequences are unthinkable.

And today we need to remember that Jesus died for us because he loved us far more than we can even begin to understand. As another has said, Jesus would rather go to hell for us than to go to heaven without us! This he did when he died on the cross in your place and in mine.

Jesus gave his life that we might live. In thanksgiving to him for his unspeakable gift, may we give our life to live for him—to help spread the gospel so that others might also live. For without Jesus, people are lost forever!

If you have never thanked Jesus for dying on the cross to pay the price for your sins, I urge you to do this today, and accept Jesus as your Savior and receive God’s forgiveness and the assurance of a home in heaven forever. To help you be sure to read the article, “How to Be Sure You’re a Real Christian—without having to be religious at: www.actsweb.org/christian and/or “God’s Invitation” at: http://tinyurl.com/gods-invitation.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, how can I ever thank you enough for loving me enough to give your Son Jesus to die on the cross in my place to pay the penalty for all my sins? And dear Jesus I do thank you from the depths of my heart for what you did for me. Please help me to live a life of thanksgiving to you always in all ways. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Isaiah 53:5 (NKJV).

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Away With Christianity! Crucify It!

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“The angel said to the women, ‘Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples: “He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.”‘”1

“In about 1930, Nikolai Bukharin journeyed from Moscow to Kiev. His mission was to address a huge assembly; his subject, atheism. For a solid hour, he aimed his heavy artillery at Christianity, hurling every argument and ridicule he could think of. At last he was finished and viewed what seemed to be the smoldering ashes of men’s faith.

“‘Are there any questions?’ Bukharin demanded.

“A solitary man arose and asked permission to speak. He mounted the platform and moved close to the Bolshevik. The audience was breathlessly silent as the man surveyed them first to the right, then to the left.

“At last he shouted the ancient Orthodox greeting, ‘CHRIST IS RISEN!’

“The vast assembly arose as one man and the response came crashing like the sound of an avalanche, ‘HE IS RISEN INDEED!’”2

Today here in America at least it isn’t Communists who are screaming “Away with Christianity! Crucify it! Crucify it!” It is some of our radical fellow so-called progressive Americans. So let those of us who name the name of Christ—not just on Good Friday but every day of the year—by our life and testimony rise to the occasion and stand up as one to claim: “HE IS RISEN INDEED!”

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, how can I ever thank you enough for your great love sacrifice to the world in giving your Son, Jesus, to die in my place on the cross to pay the penalty for all my sins so that you could grant me forgiveness and give to me the gift of eternal life. Because you died for me please give me the courage to live always for you in all ways regardless of the circumstances. Please make my life a living testimony and powerful witness for all you have done for me. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Matthew 28:5-7 (NIV).

2. Chaplain’s Corner by Lt. Jon A. Rozema http://www.dcmilitary.com/

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The Impact of One Faithful Witness

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Jesus said, “You are to go into all the world and preach the Good News to everyone, everywhere.”1

You may have read about “layman Edward Kimball who gathered the nerve to witness and win the soul of a young shoe salesman named D.L. Moody to Christ. D.L. Moody went on to become one of the greatest evangelists of his day. But, do you know the rest of the story? D.L. Moody went to England and worked a profound change in the ministry of F.B. Meyer. F.B. Meyer, with his new evangelistic fervor, influenced J. Wilbur Chapman. Chapman helped in the ministry of converted baseball player Billy Sunday, who had a profound impact upon Mordacai Ham. And Mordacai Ham, holding a revival in North Carolina, led Billy Graham to Christ. And the man who started it all was a layman, Edward Kimball, who took seriously Christ’s commission to be a witness in his world.”2

And we all know the incredible way God has used Billy Graham to reach millions of people worldwide with the gospel.

You and I are not too likely to ever become a Billy Sunday or a Billy Graham, but every single one of us can be an “Edward Kimball” witness for Christ.

As the hymn writer so eloquently said, “When we all get to heaven what a day of rejoicing that will be, when we all see Jesus we’ll sing and shout the victory.” And how wonderful it will also be to meet the ones who are in heaven because of your and my witness for Jesus. Only heaven will reveal who these ones are.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, I’m available for you to use … please make me usable and use me today and every day to be an effective witness for you and to be ‘as Jesus’ in some way to every life I touch. And grant that they, seeing Jesus in me, will want you for themselves. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Mark 16:15 (TLB)(NLT).

2. Submitted by Deward Hurst. Cited on the Sermon Fodder list. To subscribe please send an e-mail to Sermon_Fodder-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.

P.S. I happened to graduate from Moody Bible Institute, the school that D.L. Moody founded.

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“Keeper of the Stars”

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“He who finds a wife finds what is good and receives favor from the LORD.”1

Many ask the question, does God choose our life partner or is it up to us to make our own choice? My answer is “yes” and “no” in that God will give us wisdom and guidance if we seek it, but we are responsible for choosing the one we marry—at least this is so in Western culture.

There are a few country and western songs that I really like, one of which is by Tracy Byrd. It’s “The Keeper of the Stars.” Tracy (in my mind at least) is referring to God even if his theological terminology doesn’t come out of a seminary course.

In his song Tracy says:

It was no accident me finding you

Someone had a hand in it

Long before we ever knew

Now I just can’t believe you’re in my life

Heaven’s smilin’ down on me

As I look at you tonight.

I tip my hat to the keeper of the stars

He sure knew what he was doin’

When he joined these two hearts

I hold everything

When I hold you in my arms

I’ve got all I’ll ever need

Thanks to the keeper of the stars.

It was no accident me finding you

Someone had a hand in it

Long before we ever knew.2

The someone Tracy is referring to, in his words, is the “Keeper of the stars.”

This is how I feel towards Joy, my wife—who has indeed helped make my life Joy-full. I also feel like “heaven’s smilin’ down on me.”

Some would argue that finding a wife or husband for them has not been a good experience. In fact, it’s been the opposite. What few fail to realize, however, is that no matter what kind of person we married, there were reasons in us why we were attracted to that person in the first place. And if we will take a long hard honest look at what we contributed to the failure of our marriage, God will use this to help us grow and become a much healthier person. And that’s a good thing. The fact is that only emotionally healthy happy people find healthy happy partners, and have healthy happy marriages.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, thank you that you want me to become whole in every area of life so that I can enjoy and appreciate the abundant life of love, joy and peace (you promised your followers), and to find loving relationships. Please help me so to grow and become whole. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Proverbs 18:22 (NIV).

2. Tracy Byrd, “Keeper of the Stars.” http://tracybyrd.musiccitynetworks.com/ Copyright. Used by permission.

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A Parent’s Influence

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“Listen, my son, to your father’s instruction and do not forsake your mother’s teaching. They will be a garland to grace your head and a chain to adorn your neck.”1

I took a piece of plastic clay

And idly fashioned it one day;

And as my fingers pressed it still,

It moved and yielded at my will.

I came again when days were past,

The form I gave it still it bore,

And as my fingers pressed it still,

I could change that form no more.

I took a piece of living clay,

And gently formed it day by day,

And molded with my power and art,

A young child’s soft and yielding heart.

I came again when days were gone;

It was a man I looked upon,

He still that early impress bore,

And I could change it never more.

– The Bible Friend

Basically, we raise not necessarily the children we want, but more so the children that we the parents are. Therefore, one of the greatest gifts that we parents can give to our children, after showing them the way to Jesus, is to model the kind of person that God wants us to be so that they, seeing that in us, will want the same for themselves.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please help me to model for my children the kind of person you want me to be so that my children will see you in me and want the same for themselves. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Proverbs 1:8-9 (NIV).

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God Is Not Co-Dependent

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“Faith without deeds [action] is dead.”1

It is amazing how many email messages I receive from people who can’t understand why God allows certain things to happen—many of which are things that the individuals themselves caused to happen. One lady was convinced that God chose her “terrible husband” as she put it. An unmarried couple couldn’t understand why God allowed them to fall pregnant! Amazing.

The reality is that God isn’t co-dependent. He won’t short-circuit the consequences of our choices and actions, nor will he deliver us from the effects of our destructive behaviors. Neither will God do anything for us that we can and need to do for ourselves.

Ron Clarke from Tasmania wrote, “I know that the expression ‘God helps those who help themselves’ is not biblical but it is not that far removed from God’s Word that says, “Faith without deeds is dead.” I have always admired the statement by Sophocles (496-406 B.C.), considered one of the greatest of all Greek dramatists, that said, “Heaven ne’er helps the man who will not help himself.”

As John Powell put it, “Some people treat God as if he were a giant Bayer’s aspirin. ‘Take God three times a day and you won’t feel any pain!’”

Faith doesn’t work that way. We are all responsible for the choices we make and the actions we take. True, we are saved by faith and not by works/deeds. However, our deeds/actions prove whether or not our faith is valid. Whatever we are capable of doing for ourselves we need to do—and be willing to help those who cannot help themselves.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please help me always to be responsible and act in a mature manner. And please show me if there are any areas in my life where I am not acting in this way. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. James 2:26 (NIV).

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Come and Dine

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“Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them slip from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them. Remember the day you stood before the LORD your God at Horeb, when he said to me, ‘Assemble the people before me to hear my words so that they may learn to revere me as long as they live in the land and may teach them to their children.’”1

Mark Early in BreakPoint shares “why Miriam Weinstein’s new book, The Surprising Power of Family Meals, is so valuable” for family health and quality living—especially for the children.

“As other authors have done, Weinstein tells us fewer and fewer families are taking the time to eat dinner together. Then she delves into the reasons why we should eat with our families, looking at various studies on the benefits of family dinners. Believe it or not, researchers have carefully studied dinnertime—from the kind of conversation that goes on around the table, to the lifelong effect that regular mealtimes have on children’s eating habits.

“The research indicates that many young adults with eating disorders never had a regular dinnertime when they were growing up. They literally never learned how to eat a proper meal.

“Weinstein tells us that when the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse studied ways to keep kids from destructive behaviors, family dinners were ‘more important than church attendance, more important even than grades at school.’ The Center has repeated that study several times since then, ‘and every year, eating supper [dinner] together regularly as a family tops the list of variables that are within our control.’

“The point is family meals aren’t just about food. As Weinstein puts it, ‘Supper is about nourishment of all kinds.’ That includes physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual nourishment.”2

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please help us to make eating time in our home a time that will always produce warm memories for all our children, and by all who dine with us. Please help us to make our home a house of blessing to all who enter therein. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Deuteronomy 4:9-10 (NIV).

2. Mark Earley in BreakPoint, November 22, 2005. www.BreakPoint.org.

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Leading By Example

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“Be shepherds of God’s flock that is under your care, serving as overseers—not because you must, but because you are willing, as God wants you to be; not greedy for money, but eager to serve; not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock.”1

General Eisenhower would demonstrate the art of leadership with a piece of string. He’d put it on a table and say: “PULL it and it will follow wherever you wish. PUSH it and it will go nowhere at all. It’s just that way when it comes to leading people. They need to follow a person who is leading by example.”2

People who lord it over others are control freaks. They are insecure people who only feel secure when they are controlling others—or think they are. And whether they are seeking to lead a church, a class, a team, their family, or just one other person—or as a politician—they are not being effective leaders but pushers. Secure people will want to avoid this type of person. The only way to be an effective leader is to be a “puller.” That is, to lead by example.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please help me to be a true follower of Jesus and to lead others to you by my example; that is, by modeling the person you want me to be, so that others seeing your direction of my life will also want to be a follower of Jesus. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. 1 Peter 5:2-3 (NIV).

2. Michael P. Green, Illustrations for Biblical Preaching, Grand Rapids: Baker, 1989, p. 216.

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The God-Shaped Vacuum

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“His [God's] purpose in all of this was that the nations should seek after God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him—though he is not far from any one of us. For in him we live and move and exist.”1

Years ago Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) insightfully said, “What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself.”

This is true and vital but I would dare to suggest that it doesn’t present the entire picture for, as Pascal also said, “There is a God-shaped vacuum [or cup, as I like to put it] in the heart” of all of us, there is also a people-shaped cup. And while our God-shaped cup needs to be filled with the love of God, our people-shaped cup needs to be filled with the love of people.

If either one of these cups is empty, life can feel void and meaningless. And then we seek to fill the void within and deaden the pain of our empty lives with things, endless activities, seeking approval, super-busyness, illicit sex, alcohol, drugs and stuff, stuff, and more stuff and, at least here in the West, we are left longing in the midst of a land of plenty.

The fact is that God has created us for relationships both with himself and each other. It has been rightfully said that 80 percent of life’s satisfaction comes from the quality of our relationships. Without loving relationships we limp along in the shadows of life and will most likely die long before our time. While it may not be desirable, we can live without romantic love but we cannot live healthily without healthy loving relationships with at least one or two—and preferably more—other persons.

Furthermore, without a meaningful relationship with God, there is a deep sense of spiritual emptiness of the soul. When God created mankind, he created us with the capacity to communicate with him, to be connected to him in spirit. The tragedy is that when sin entered the human race, we were separated or disconnected from God. But because God loved us he sent his Son, Jesus, to die on the cross in our place to pay the penalty for all our sins so we could be fully forgiven and be reconnected to God and then, through Jesus, get our God-cup or god-shaped vacuum filled.

Note: To begin a spiritual connection/relationship with God, be sure to read the article, “How to Know God and be sure you’re a real Christian without having to be religious” online at: www.actsweb.org/christian.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please help me to develop healthy, loving relationships both with you and with others. And please reveal to me if there are any barriers in my life that might be hindering either one of these relationships. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Acts 17:27-28 (TLB)(NLT).

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The Positive Side of Negative Experiences

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“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.”1

As a young man Demosthenes, the famous Greek orator, had a speech impediment that made him feel shy and insecure. His father left him a wealthy estate, but according to Greek law at the time, to claim his estate he had to establish his right of ownership through public debate. Because of his inability to speak clearly and prove his ownership he lost his inheritance.

Motivated by his loss and through dogged determination Demosthenes overcame his speech impediment to become one of the great orators of ancient times. Nobody remembers who got his inheritance but the story of Demosthenes has been told to countless numbers for centuries.

Back in college days I recall one of my professors saying that it takes twenty years to make a preacher and that the most effective ministers are those whose lives are tempered by suffering. “Nonsense,” I said to myself at the time. I was wrong.

Pain, disappointment, sorrow, suffering, and sadness, and not success, are what can make a person more understanding, gentle, kind, understanding, accepting, loving, and real—if we allow this to happen and not become bitter.

The prophet Ezekiel understood the suffering of the Israelites in exile because he sat where they sat for seven days—and was overwhelmed.2 It’s only when we sit where others sit that we can fully understand their suffering, without which we will be limited in our effectiveness as witnesses for Christ and as communicators of the gospel.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please help me not to avoid my pain but to face it, embrace it, own it, and bring it to you for your healing touch and use it to make me more sensitive to the suffering of others and minister to them in their pain. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. 2 Corinthians 1:3-4 (NIV).

2. Ezekiel 3:15.

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