Category: Uncategorized (Page 9 of 35)

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”  Matthew 11:28-30

“Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. But all these things they will do to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me.”  John 15:20-21

The two verses above seem to be in conflict with each other, but how can that be?  How can we have restful persecution? Christ told his followers that they would be persecuted because of Him,  but also told them to take His yoke upon them because it was light.  Christ told His followers that they would find rest in Him, but that they would be harassed, beaten, and even killed.  That doesn’t seem like a very light yoke to carry!

It is sometimes very difficult to come to terms with these seemingly conflicting ideas. Paul expressed the same conflicts in all of the epistles. He talked about the safety and peace and freedom in Christ as he wrote from prison after experiencing beatings, shipwrecks, and stonings. His burdens seem far from easy and light. The amount he had to suffer was astonishing.  The amount the apostles had to suffer was equally difficult.  Yet they were still able to rejoice because they “knew Christ, the power of his resurrection and participated in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death” (Philippians 3:10)

When we are serving God there are times when we feel like the burden he has placed on us is more than we can bear. Like a runner we ‘hit the wall’ and feel we can’t carry on. But when we take a fresh look at what we are aiming for, and remember the finish line and the rewards that wait there, we somehow manage to push through. We may ‘feel the burn’ but we know we are gaining ground and the burden no longer seems as impossible as it first did.

Paul tells us, “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. All of us, then, who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you.” Philippians 3:12-15

The key is that in everything we do we need to focus on Jesus. Even the mundane daily tasks need to be seen as serving him. That is how His yoke becomes light.  If we are working for him instead of ourselves – if it is His burden we are bearing – then he will share it with us, and help us understand that the burden is actually “easy and light .“ It may not be easy and light as the world sees easy and light, but with God sharing the burden, nothing is too heavy.

If we have a heart for the Lord, and we put the Lord into all we do, then our hearts will be strengthened in our difficulties as well.  Like it says in Luke, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”   If our hearts are in Jesus the loads we carry will not seem such a burden. This is especially true when we realize the reward that awaits us in the end.

Robert Louis Stevenson tells of a storm that caught a vessel off a rocky coast and threatened to drive it and its passengers to destruction. In the midst of the terror, one daring man, contrary to orders, went to the deck, made a dangerous passage to the pilot house and saw the steer man, at his post holding the wheel unwaveringly, and inch by inch, turning the ship out, once more, to sea. The pilot saw the watcher and smiled. Then, the daring passenger went below and gave out a note of cheer: “I have seen the face of the pilot, and he smiled. All is well.”  If we find ourselves in a life storm but see the face of Jesus and His hand upon the wheel of our lives, we can say to ourselves and others “All is Well.”

So our burden is light, not because it is light, but because it is being borne by the same shoulders which took the sins of the world upon them, and nothing is heavy after that.  His smile on our lives tells us that “All is well.”

“Continue in prayer, and watch in the same with thanksgiving” Colossians 4:2

Two commands are given in this short directive from the apostle Paul: continue and watch. First, we are to continue in daily and fervent prayer to God.  In 1 Thessalonians Paul tells us to pray unceasingly and in every epistle he reminds us to devote ourselves to prayer.  Prayer was a key to Paul’s instructions to us.  Christ’s words and example were also  constant reminders of the importance of prayer.  But in this verse Paul reminds us that as we pray, we must be also be carefully “watching” for occasions of thanksgiving.

The word “watch” means to be vigilant, alert, attentive. We must be intentional in our watch.  It is not something that will come naturally.  It is hard to see good in difficult situations or peace in turmoil.  It seems Paul knew that we have a tendency to be forgetful of the Lord’s blessings in our lives. We tend to take even the greatest mercies and most undeserved gifts for granted. We forget to give thanks for God’s place in our lives.

As we pray, we should be watchful for opportunities to give thanks.  No matter what the situation, we should intentionally look for the ways that we have been blessed.  And how blessed we have been!!  There is an old saying that says, “I was complaining about not having shoes, until I saw a man who had no feet.”  Unless we “watch” for things to be thankful for, we will probably neglect to be thankful.  Our natural tendencies are to be selfish and ungrateful.  We need to ask ourselves, is there something in this request for which I could also be giving thanks? Is there a reason to be grateful, even in the midst of this trial?

For instance, as we pray for a loved one to be healed, couldn’t we be grateful for having the loved one in our lives to begin with? As we pray for revival in our country, in our church, and in our homes, couldn’t we thank God for the promise that he will be found by those who seek him?  This morning as I sit here and the sun is just coming up, I see in just a glance a hundred things to be grateful for.  The sky is beautiful, my deck is sturdy, my home is solid, and family is safe. The birds are all around me filling the air with song. But could I sit here and not see any of these things, not hear any of these things, not be thankful for any of these things if I did not take the time to look for them. There is no way my difficulties can outnumber my blessings, but I must be alert to those blessings or I will miss them.

A man had a habit of grumbling at the food his wife placed before him at family meals. Then he would ask the blessing. One day after his usual combination complaint-prayer, his little girl asked, “Daddy, does God hear us when we pray?”

“Why, of course,” he replied. “He hears us every time we pray.”

She paused on this a moment, and asked, “Does He hear everything we say the rest of the time?”

“Yes, dear, every word,” he replied, encouraged that he had inspired his daughter to be curious about spiritual matters. However, his pride was quickly turned to humility at his daughter’s next question.

“Then, which does God believe?”

Our thankfulness to God in prayer should match our thankfulness to God in our daily lives. We must be careful to pray every day, and as we pray, we must be careful to give thanks to God for his abundant provision and marvelous promises. Even in the needs, even in the sorrows, even in the trials there are always reasons to be grateful.  There was once a preacher who did a sermon on thankfulness and at the end he passed his hat.  When it was returned to him, there was nothing in it, but he knew he needed to give thanks. He said, “Thank you God I got my hat back from this group.”  It was hard, but he found something to be grateful for!!

Sometimes it is good during our difficulties to make a “thankful sandwich” when we pray.  Our need should be placed between two slices of thankfulness.  Be thankful for something God has done, then present our need, then finish it off with something more else to be thankful for.  If we are twice as thankful as we are needy, it will hold our prayers together.

“You have turned my mourning into dancing; You have put off my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness, To the end that my glory may sing praise to You and not be silent. O Lord my God, I will give thanks to You forever.”  Psalms 30:11-12

What a great promise we have here.  God can turn our mourning into dancing.  He takes our sadness and can clothe us in gladness.  He is the transformer of emotions and the producer of joy. This is a wonderful truth to keep in mind when we go through those tough times that will always come.

I have known many who have had to stop  a bad habit.  That habit could be anything from smoking to over eating to inappropriate language.  It seems that in every case the habit must be replaced by something positive to really effect a change in behavior.  If we quit something, there is a void left and if we don’t fill it with something, it will get filled on its own, sometimes with something just as bad.  For instance, today many people try to quit smoking by us vaping. Recent studies show that vaping might be bringing a host of new problems itself.  It is one problem replaced by another.

When my dad quit smoking after 30 years, I saw him do something I had never seen him do before- he chewed gum.  Before he quit it that was hard for him to do because chewing gum with a cigarette in your mouth is pretty difficult, if not dangerous.  Even though he told me that he never craved a cigarette from the day he made the decision to quit, the habits of using his hands to hold something, having something in his mouth, feeling relaxed, and others still had to be filled.  The main thing he did was pray.  The day he quit he made the drive from Portland to Grants Pass and he said he prayed the whole way and had never done that before.  He replaced the bad with something good.

God knows that if we are in mourning, that mourning cannot be just taken away- it must be replaced with something.  The verses in Psalms tell us that God doesn’t simply remove our mourning and make it go away, He replaces it with something better. We won’t just stop mourning, but we will eventually start dancing.  That means that we will move beyond the pain and actually feel whole again.

I have a friend who lost his daughter to a sixteen year battle with cancer.  He is still grieves her loss a year later.  Understandably, because there may be no harder hurt than losing a child. How can such a tragedy be replaced with peace?  I think a story that FB Meyer’s tells might hold they key. One day he met a miserable-looking woman who shared that she had recently lost her crippled daughter who she had cared for for years. She was the joy of her life.  The mother was now alone and  home was not “home” anymore. Meyer gave her wise counsel. “When you get home and put the key in the door,” he said, “say aloud, ‘Jesus, I know You are here!’ and be ready to greet Him directly when you open the door. And as you light the fire tell Him what has happened during the day; if anybody has been kind, tell Him; if anybody has been unkind, tell Him, just as you would have told your daughter. At night stretch out your hand in the darkness and say, ‘Jesus, I know You are here!'” Months later, Meyer was back in that neighborhood and met the woman again, but he did not recognize her. Her face radiated joy instead of announcing misery. “I did as you told me,” she said, “and it has made all the difference in my life, and now I feel I know Him.”  This woman had replaced the loss of a daughter with the love of the Father.

We will experience times of sadness- we are surrounded by it, but God can remove that and replace it with something good. Probably not immediately, but it will happen. He might do that through His Word, an encouraging song from the radio, or even a phone call from a friend.  He knows our hurt and knows how much we can take.  He is watching and waiting for our call and is poised to have a replacement handy.

I had a friend once who had a real potty mouth.  After he was saved, he lost about 50% of his vocabulary.  He had to make some real changes, but it was hard because his old habit was right on the tip of his tongue.  He came up with a safe alternative to swearing.  Every time he felt a profanity raising its ugly head, he would clear his throat. This gave him time to think about what he was doing.  It was the equivalent of counting to ten before doing something.  Admittedly, at the beginning everyone thought he had a chronic cough.  But as he got more control of his tongue, the less he had to clear his throat.  He substituted something good (or at least neutral) for something bad. Pretty soon he had cleared out the inclination to swear and could stop clearing out his throat.

We need to think about what these verses mean to us. Our sorrows, disappointments, tragedies and failures are very real — but they are also “raw material” for a transformation that God will accomplish in us if we allow Him to.  And we WILL dance! God will do it. He has picked out the steps already.  When we dance, we will sing to Him and the circle of healing will be complete. Our part is simply to wait…believe…and cling tightly to this wonderful promise!

“But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” II Timothy 3:14-17

What if we were to be approached by God today and He were to ask us, “Well, how do you like my book,” what would we say?  Would we respond the same way we would about anything else that gives us enjoyment?  Would it be on par with golf, as big a hit as baseball, or as alluring as fishing? Would we be excited, would we go into tears, would we start talking about favorite verses, or would we just remain silent?  What do we think about the Word of God?  Do we know the Word of God?

A few summers ago, Elaine and I stopped by a Christian book store in Eugene. As is my custom, I ask the very nice manager of the store how business was and she said it was very good.  As we talked she mentioned that Bibles are still what keeps their business afloat. They make up 40% of their sales.  For some reason it got me teary-eyed to know that people are, in these changing times, still buying Bibles.  As I browsed the Bible area I realized how much things have changed from when I was young and there were just a handful of Bibles to choose from (no, we are not not talking the Guttenberg press edition).  Now they have Bibles for every interest, every theological slant, and every possible translation a person could want.  But the key still remains- having access to the Bible is not the same as reading the Bible.  As a friend said once, “It is better to have one worn Bible, than to have a hundred untouched.”

Verse 17 above reminds us that the Bible equips us for our daily lives. But even more than that, it equips us for the battles we face in life.  And our battles are many.  Paul tells us in Ephesians 6:17 that we should “Take the…sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.”  Paul is telling us that the Word of God is a weapon.  He knew that we would need it no matter how far in the future someone read his words.  The battle will continue until Christ comes again and we need to be prepared by being “equipped for every good work.”

We cannot use the Word of God if we do not know the Word of God.  Too often we rely on the teaching of others to expose us to God’s Word, but we need to study it ourselves to really become familiar with it- to be able wield it in times of need.  Can you imagine using a weapon in battle that we have seldom touched and our only knowledge about it comes from having heard someone else talk about it?  We would sorely lack the skills needed to fend off the enemy.   I love our Pastor, but he does not want us to take his word for everything.  He wants us to read the Word ourselves. There is no way he can give us enough sustenance in one day to last an entire week.  Even if I went to Sizzler’s Buffet every Sunday, I could not eat enough to last me until Saturday (I have tried).

Beloved evangelist Gipsy Smith once told a story of man who said he had received no inspiration from the Bible although he had “gone through it several times.”

“Let it go through you once,” replied Smith, “Then you will tell a different story!”  The Bible is not only changeless, it will change us. The Bible is not a book to just peruse, it a book to use.  The Bible is not for light reading, it is a book for life reading.  The Bible is not just a great book to read, it is the greatest book ever written.

One of my favorite groups of people in the New Testament are the Bereans.  When Paul went to Thessalonica to preach the word, he was not well received, but when he went to Berea, and they accepted him eagerly.  What was the difference?  Paul’s words were the same. The difference was the Bereans themselves. We are told that they examined the Scriptures daily to see if what Paul said was so. They made the Word their own. They checked out Paul, one of the greatest preachers of all time, to make sure he was teaching the truth. The Bereans were called “more noble” because they searched the scriptures on their own and became acquainted with the Word with their own eyes.

Can you imagine charging into battle and not even knowing how to get your sword it out of the scabbard?  We may have the best weapon on the battlefield, but it is useless if we are not familiar with it.  Paul said, “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.”  (II Tim. 2:15)  There is only one way to get to know something and that is through study.

A circuit riding preacher entered one church building with his young son, and dropped a coin into the offering box in the back. Not many came to church that Sunday, and those who did didn’t seem too excited about what the young preacher said. After the service, the preacher and son walked to the back, and he emptied the box. Out fell one coin. The young boy said, “Dad, if you’d have put more in, you’d have gotten more out!”   We can’t expect to get more out of something than what we put in.  God’s Word is the greatest book ever written, but words on a page only become real to us once we have made them our own.

“I had a bottle on my shelf, I saw it everyday.

The pills inside miraculously could take my aches away.

But when pain stayed in my bones, into the trash I threw

the bottle of those crummy pills, unopened and brand new.”

It is hard to complain that the Bible doesn’t work, if…. it’s “unopened and brand new.”

Have a blessed week. 

“So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, 2 complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. 3 Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. 4 Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. 5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant,[b] being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”      Philippians 2:1-11

Years and years ago (Sandi and Chris’ senior year) I told a story about Kevin Tommasini at the football banquet.  I said that Kevin was a pretty spiritual guy and before one game I went  by his locker and he was praying.  I heard him say, “Lord make me humble.”  Unfortunately, I said, God thought he said, “Lord, make me fumble,” and Kevin did, three times, and it made him humble. So God answered his prayer, but not in the way Kevin envisioned!

God has a way of bringing humility to our lives if we start to think a little too highly of ourselves.  Max Lucado says that it is hard to be filled with Christ if we are too full of ourselves and that is so very true.  Today’s verses give to us the greatest illustration of humility that the earth has ever known and explains to us how we can tap into the power of humility, as well.

I say the power of humility because it is power.  Many see humility as a weakness and that is their first mistake.  These verses show us that the most powerful man who has ever lived, lived in humility.  He could have destroyed those who hurt Him with just a wave of His hand, but instead He humbled Himself and died for those same people.  Had Christ not had humility, we would not have eternal life. If Christ would not have put us above Him, we would never rise above with Him.

In verses 3 and 4 Paul reminds us that we need to esteem others more significant than ourselves.  Many take this to mean that we need to think little of ourselves, but this cannot be.  We were formed in God’s own image; we are important, God said so in His Word.  What God really means is that we are to see ourselves as significant, but even in seeing that, treat others as more important. Christ did not have a self-image problem and because of that went to the cross. No, Christ knew He was the creator of the universe, but He chose to place man’s need over His own.  He knew the pain that was ahead of Him and yet went through with it for our sake- that is humility.

One way to keep ourselves in prospective is to remember that all we are and all we do are by the grace of God.  It is He who has made us and He who should get the credit.  We like to credit ourselves with our accomplishments, but that would be like the donkey taking credit for the raucous reception of adoration when he carried Christ into Jerusalem.  The palms and alleluias were not for the donkey any more than others praise of us is really for us.  When we reach that understanding, we will be able to put others in a  proper place.

George Washington Carver, the scientist who developed hundreds of useful products from the peanut once said, “When I was young, I said to God, ‘God, tell me the mystery of the universe.’ But God answered, ‘That knowledge is reserved for me alone.’ So I said, ‘God, tell me the mystery of the peanut.’ Then God said, ‘Well, George, that’s more nearly your size.’ And he told me.”    Anytime we begin to think too much of ourselves we should look a the universe around and look at a peanut and see what really matches who we are.

DL Moody was once approached by a man who said he had ceased to sin and had not sinned for ten years.  Moody said, “Really, you must be pretty proud of that.”

The man replied, “Yes, I am.”

Moody smiled and said, “That, apparently, is your first sin in ten years.”   He knew that as soon as we start to be proud of humility, humility is dissolved.  At the end of the day if we are not humble, we will stumble. That is a fact.  Pride led to satan’s fall and he wants to take us with him the same way.  Don’t be like the preacher who once said, “I am very humble and I am proud of that.”  Be like Christ who did not state humility but lived humility.  If every Christian did just that one thing, our world would be a different place.