Posts Tagged ‘guidry’

Nisa Faith

Posted in Life and Ministry, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 31, 2012| 2 Comments »

                  (Nisa- Miracle)

Faith

Guidry

We have prayed for this day for 9 years.  We have ached for the losses and doubted our faith.  We refused to give up even when we were labeled as a “Chronic Miscarriage” case.  When the entire world (and even God himself from a purely worldly standpoint) seemed to be saying emphatically NO, the Holy Spirit whispered in our ears to leave it in the Father’s hands.  So we did.  Don’t get me wrong we cried, we wailed, we begged over and over again.  We wanted at times to throw in the towel and act out of our own understanding.  We still do not completely understand, but understand this:  We have a mighty heavenly Father who cares for us in ways that I cannot begin to fathom.  He loves us in a way that is so far beyond my understanding that I only touch the edges of what AGAPE really means!

Several weeks ago while in prayer God gave me the name Nisa Faith.  Indeed she is a miracle of faith, not the simple faith of a single prayer or even the cry for healing but the faith of a 9 year journey.  She represents to us the faith of Abraham as he led his entire family to Canaan.  She represents the faith of Joseph as he waited in slavery, in prison for God to act.  She is even now, yet in the womb that miracle, an incredible act of God.

The difficult part to grasp is that my statement about our Father’s love for us is not just true because Nisa is healthy and strong.  It is an eternal truth that is expressed in both the tragic and the joyful.  He does not love us more now than he did on the very days that we miscarried our other seven precious babies.  The reality is that our journey to the fulfillment of the call that He had placed on our lives led us directly through David’s “Valley of the Shadow of Death”.  While we might prefer a detour around the Valley, God does not promise that.  He does promise that he will be with us, standing by us with His rod and staff and even more importantly for New Testament believers dwelling in us.  Many times it is not until after we are through the Valley that we are able to look back and see that God wielded His rod and staff on our behalf as we walked that  difficult road.

Even more than she represents the miracle of life to us, she is the miracle of faith itself.  Perhaps a better way to say it is that she is an expression of miraculous faith.  Faith inspired by the ongoing presence of God in our lives.  It is the faith that kept Abraham going on his 400 mile journey.  It is the faith that kept him in relationship with God even when he arrived only to face famine.  It is the faith that saw the birth of Isaac and the substitution of a ram for his only child on the mountain before God.  It is not a faith of the perfect life or of perfect people. It is a faith that traverses pitfalls and carries us through our own mistakes; faith that originates not with us but in the very heart of God and comes to us as a gift from the hands of our heavenly Father.  It is Nisa Faith.

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.  He makes me to lied down in green pastures; He leads me beside quiet waters.  He restores my soul; He guides me in the paths of righteousness For His name’s sake.  Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.  You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You have anointed my head with oil; My cup overflows.  Surely goodness and lovingkindness will follow me all the days of my life, And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

PSALM 23

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Walk in Love

Posted in Bible Study, Life and Ministry, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 27, 2012| Leave a Comment »

She stood by her seat watching Allana lead the children in dancing to the praises of our savior.  Just her toes wriggled to the music.  She had already been asked several times if she would like to join the children up front and dance but had said,” N0.”  Still she stood there staring and wriggling.  I walked over and asked her again, “Would you like to go up and dance with the other kids?”  She shook her head no but kept staring and wriggling.  “You don’t have to belong or have to know the songs you can watch Miss Allana”, I tried.  Still no, but then I could see her gather her will together and she looked straight at me and said, “I’m afraid.”  Her face turned red with this moment of pure honesty.  “Tell you what, why don’t I walk up there with you and put you right between Miss Allana and Sami so you can follow right along with them.”  Her eyes got big and she slowly shook her head yes and whispered, “OK”.  I walked her up, placed her between Sami and Allana and then watched her blossom to life dancing with all her heart for the next 30 minutes.

Sometimes people will respond to tracts, tv shows, invitations to church services, revivals or even altar calls.  But sometimes they are waiting for someone to take that long walk to our Savior with them.  It seems like just a short and easy stroll to us but they are afraid.  They can see the joy, the fun but for whatever reason that walk is terrifying.  They are waiting for someone to walk with them, hand in hand; to introduce them personally to Jesus and then to tuck them in right between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Maybe they should grow up and get over it.  Maybe they should not be so stubborn and afraid.  Or just maybe we just need  to be ready to walk that walk with them.

There was a man who lived in Jericho, a wealthy and powerful man.  He could have easily summoned Jesus to him or approached Jesus through the crowd using his many servants to clear the way.  But he didn’t.  He ran ahead and climbed a tree.  I think that perhaps he had listened to the greatest lie that Satan ever came up with, “You are not the sort of person that Jesus could love.”  Still he wanted to see Jesus.  How surprised he must have been when Jesus stopped at that tree and said, ” ‘Zaccheus, hurry and come down, for today I must stay at your house.’ And he hurried and came down and received him gladly.  When they saw it, they all began to grumble, saying, ‘He has gone to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.’  Zaccheus stopped and said to the Lord, ‘Behold, Lord, half of my possessions I will give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will give back four times as much.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Today salvation has come to this house, because he, too, is a son of Abraham.  for the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”  (Luke 19:5b-10)

“Zaccheus stopped…”  After the invitation there was the long walk back to Zaccheus’ house.  For Zaccheus it was a walk of shame, a walk that reinforced the lie of Satan.  It is a walk that so many are unable to take alone.  Jesus took that walk with Zaccheus.  It was not in the safety of his home that Zaccheus found salvation.  It was not kneeling at the altar or standing in the revival.  It was walking with Jesus.  “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma.”  (Ephesians 5:1-2:  bold  lettering is mine)

Maybe it is time for all of us to take a little walk, to pray that the Holy Spirit will point out those Zaccheuses waiting up in a tree to walk with us;  those little girls wriggling their toes waiting by their chairs to dance, giving us the opportunity to be imitators of God Himself and walk in love.

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Bionic Christians

Posted in Bible Study, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 12, 2012| 1 Comment »

I recently participated in a discussion of Galatians 2. While the discussion narrowed in on 2:20, it was 2:18 that caught my eye.

15 We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners; 16 yet we know that a person is not justified[b] by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.17 But if, in our endeavor to be justified in Christ, we too were found to be sinners, is Christ then a servant of sin? Certainly not! 18 For if I rebuild what I tore down, I prove myself to be a transgressor. 19 For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. 20 I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. 21 I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness[c] were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.  

This chapter cycles through some of Paul’s relationship with the other Apostles and the leadership of the Jerusalem church.  It begins with their acceptance of the Gospel message that God had commissioned Paul to deliver but then moves into a point of contention between Paul and Peter.  As I read through the chapter and came to verse 18 I was reminded of a TV show that I watched as a child, The Six Million Dollar Man.  The main character had been physically destroyed in a horrible accident, those of you who are old enough will remember the tag line, “We can rebuild him, we have the technology.”

Paul called Peter out for being a bionic Christian.  When we commit our lives to Christ our human nature, our sinful nature is destroyed.  In this process we hand over everything that we are, will be and hope to be over to God.  But our nature strongly opposes this process.  Just as the scientists were driven to use their technology to rebuild Steve Austin physically, we are tempted to rely on our own abilities to justify ourselves before God.  The corollary is that we often believe that we have arrived and need to hold others accountable to this standard also.  Instead of allowing the Holy Spirit to transform us into the likeness of Christ we rely on ourselves to rebuild us; hoping to achieve an improved model.  We become bionic Christians and so end up mired in sin so subtle that we believe we are headed in the right direction.  When we rely on our own understanding and abilities we negate the very core of the Gospel. We rebuild the very thing that separated humanity from God in the first place, our will over His.

 

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How Far Will You Go?

Posted in Bible Study, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 19, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Mark 4:35-20

There are many aspects worth looking at in this wonderful story of just one of Jesus’ “goings” during His three years of ministry but I want to focus in on a couple of points that really jumped out at me.  Take a minute to read the whole story and then we are going to pull just a couple of things out for today.

Being engaged in full-time ministry (especially here in the United States) tempts one to play the numbers game.  We want to maximize our resources and time and reach as many people as we can given that time and resource.  We commission broad studies and do detailed demographic surveys to find receptive populations and to direct our attention to them.  Here in Mark God reminds us that it is not all about the multitude.

“Now when they had left the multitude.”  (Mark 4:36a)

Not an earth shattering passage of revelation, yet it speaks volumes about the missional life.  Jesus spoke to the multitudes often through his years of ministry but this is balanced (and perhaps the scales are tipped more in this direction) by His ministry to the few, or even the one as is recorded here in Mark.

“And when He had come out of the boat, immediately there met Him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit who had his dwelling among the tombs; and no one could bind him, not even with chains, because he had been bound with shackles and chains.  And the chains had been pulled apart by him, and the shackles broken in pieces; neither could anyone tame him.  And always, night and day, he was in the mountains and in the tombs, crying out and cutting himself with stones.”  (Mark 5:2-5)

Luke 8:27 tells us the man was naked and Matthew adds the story of the second man also living in the tombs but the principle is the same.  Jesus leaves the multitudes, crosses the sea (through a storm) and lands in a new place to minister to a crazy, naked man living in a graveyard (and his friend).  So that sets up my question.  “How far will you go to minister to the crazy naked man living in the graveyard?”  One might think that this crazy man was the sideshow to a great ministry of revival.  Surely Jesus had a nobler and greater purpose in this trip across the sea.  With this demonstration there must have been a great outpouring of God’s Kingdom in the countryside.  Of course you have already read the story and know that this is not true.  Jesus did not get a chance to teach a “multitude” in fact the “multitude” did come to him but Matthew puts it rather succinctly, “And behold, the whole city came out to meet Jesus.  And when they saw Him, they begged Him to depart from their region.  So He got into the boat, crossed over, and came to His own city.”  (Matthew 8:34-9:1)

I cannot even begin to anticipate my reaction if I woke up one morning with the whole city at the doorstep of the Lewis House begging us to pack up and leave.  I have to wonder if the disciples were not a little bit grumbly about this little trip and its result.  Had Jesus made a mistake crossing the sea?  Maybe he missed His Father’s voice this one time.  Or maybe Jesus was teaching them all a very special lesson about His love for the lost, the oppressed, the crazy, the one and how far He was willing to go.  It is a lesson that continued and found its climax on a hill called Golgotha. It is a lesson that would find its fulfillment with an empty tomb.

So how far are we willing to go?  The one is out there waiting for a touch from God.

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Meeting Julius

Posted in Life and Ministry, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 7, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Perhaps the next time that someone asks me about what we do at The Lewis House I will say, “We meet Julius where he is at.”  I first met Julius on the sidewalk in front of TLH.  He asked me for $10.00 and then moved on when I said that we could supply food and personal items but that we did not deal in cash.  Several days later he stopped out front and asked again for money but this time did not decline the offer of a meal.  Since then he has become a regular visitor to the house.

There are many ways and places to meet people.  As I read the Bible I see a recurring theme.  While it is true that some followed Jesus everywhere, they followed Jesus as he went to meet them where they were at.  Whether it was on the hills of Judea, up in a tree, coming to a well in the heat of the day, across the sea naked in a graveyard or up on a rocky crag named Golgotha, Jesus was ready to meet them exactly where they were at.  He came to feed them, to eat with them, to speak truth to them, to free them and ultimately to die and rise again for them.  Then when it was time for him to return to the Father he passed the torch on to the disciples,  “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.  And surely I will be with you always, to the very end of the age.”  (Matthew 28:19-20) while still assuring them (and us) that he would always be here to meet them where they are at.  Being missional is just about that, meeting people where they are at.  While God has placed us here in Toledo at TLH, He has also placed every person reading this blog somewhere that has people who need God’s love and a little truth in their lives.  Once we live God’s love and speak God’s truth then it is up to the Holy Spirit.

There has been no radical change, no epiphany for Julius, but his stories seem a little truer and he keeps coming back.  He listens a little longer and is just a little softer with each visit.  That brings me to the other important part of meeting them where they are at, prayer.  The Holy Spirit can meet Julius wherever he is at, at any time and won’t you join me in praying that He does?!

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Celebrating-Commemorating-Impacting-Forgetting

Posted in Life and Ministry, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 4, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Memorial Day just passed.  So many posts on Facebook of, “I will not forget”.  Yet as I think about our many holidays and the way that we celebrate them I wonder.  Chilly Chilton recently posted in a group that I belong to about Pentecost Sunday:

We have one Sunday each year that we call “Pentecost Sunday” … Question: what do we call (and live) the other 51 weeks??

The impact of any given holiday and the memory that it is intended to convey is not indicated by what we do on that day or in that season but by what we do in the “other 51 weeks”.

It would seem that as a race (the human race) we establish holidays more to forget an event than to remember it.  My first inclination was to see this as a recent phenomenon but as I consider the Old Testament and Israel I find that this is probably not the case.  Consider Amos 5:21

“I hate, I despise your religious feasts; I cannot stand your assemblies.”

These feasts and assemblies were ordained by God to commemorate his intervention in the history of Israel, but somewhere along the line Israel lost the meaning of  the feasts and followed only the senseless observance.  As the popular song puts it they missed “the heart of worship”.  The book of Amos is essentially a call to Israel by God to return to the heart of worship.  It is about what they do the other 51 weeks out of the year. “You who turn justice into bitterness and cast righteousness to the ground.”  (Amos 5:7). Yet Isaiah makes it clear that while injustice, bitterness and unrighteousness are the fruit, the core of the matter is in the heart, “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is made up only of rules taught by men.”  Isaiah 29:13

Jesus boils it all down to two commands that seem so simple but for fallen humanity are only possible to follow through the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”  Matthew 22:37-40

I will take the liberty to expand Jesus’ words to include all the feasts and all the Holidays;  all the Sabbaths and all the forms of worship we may have.  If they do not point to and express our love for God and our love for our neighbors they are as Paul put it in the famous love chapter of 1 Corinthians 13, “a resounding gong or clanging cymbal”  If they do not impact what we do “the other 51 weeks of the year” to be obedient to the great commandments then they are worse than useless, they are despised by God.  The great truth in all of this is that it is really not about the form, the holiday, the season, the tradition…It is about the heart and our personal relationships with our Lord Jesus Christ being expressed in all that we do.

This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. 1 John 4:9-12

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Point of Conflict

Posted in Bible Study, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 28, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Over time and through hundreds of conversations we came to recognize that change does not happen without conflict. As we reviewed the biblical patterns, every time-without exception-the people of God began to make adjustments to join God in his activity, conflict emerged. Blackaby and King (1990) call it “the crisis of belief.”

Jim Herrington;Mike Bonem;James H. Furr. Leading Congregational Change: A Practical Guide for the Transformational Journey (Jossey-Bass Leadership Network Series)

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God.”

Matt. 5:9

I think that too often we equate peace strictly with the absence of conflict.  The church is supposed to be a peaceful place, right?  The people of God are supposed to be a shining example of peace in the world.  As the quote above indicates this is not the biblical standard.  With all change comes conflict and change is one of the hallmark qualities of our relationship with Christ.  We are all on a pathway of change from the moment we accept Christ into our hearts.  We are all changing, individually into the mind of Christ and corporately into the body of Christ.  Consider the words of the Prince of Peace:

“Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.”

Matthew 10:34

“For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”

Hebrews 4:12

Much of Scripture is born out of conflict.  Jesus taught out of his conflict with the Pharisees and Sadducees.  Paul addresses points of conflict in almost every one of his epistles.  The Old Testament is replete with conflict as Israel moves in and out of proper relationship with God.  So where is the peace?

Peace is not in the absence of conflict (this does not exist on earth).  Peace is in the resolution of conflict.  The Bible is a story of conflict resolution.  Adam and Eve brought conflict between man and God.  Jesus brings resolution, the only resolution.  That resolution is  both a process here on earth as we follow Him and an instantaneous reality.  This resolution process is a process of change and as the quote above notes, change brings conflict.  It brings internal conflict as God moves us repeatedly out of our comfort zones.  It brings external conflict as he calls the Body of Christ in its many manifestations to greater maturity.  “Rather speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ…” Ephesians 4:15

But praise the Lord he doesn’t wait for us.  The resolution is also an instantaneous reality.  “But now in Christ you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.  For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility”  Ephesians 2:14-15

So here perhaps we find the crux of the matter.  Conflict is the result of change.  It can be healthy and in conflict we can have the peace promised by God.  Christ did not come to eliminate conflict.  Christ came to destroy hostility which extends not from change but from division.  When the dividing wall between man and God is destroyed, peace naturally occurs regardless of the level of conflict around us.  Romans 8:7 tells us that the sinful mind is hostile to God and the chapter goes on to tell us that the Holy Spirit by living in us transforms us from enemies of God into His children.  We become worthy to call him “Daddy”!  When we come to him as Daddy with our prayers, petitions, requests and thanksgiving then we are able to experience the peace of God which is already an eternal truth for His children.  William H. Willimon put it this way, “The issue becomes:  Which side are you on?  In doing so, we eliminate the human and personal side of a conflict, with all its modifying elements.”  (Leadership Handbook of Management & Administration)  When we abandon the godly purpose of the conflicts in our lives conflict moves into division (which side are you on?) and division moves into hostility.  This is ambrosia to Satan and the destroyer of churches.  More importantly it breaks the heart of God to see his people engaging in the very thing that Christ came  and destroyed.

So as the children of God we engage conflict and change with the guidance of Scripture and the empowerment of the Holy Spirit; knowing that our peace lies not in the shifting sands circumstance but on the solid rock of our God.  It is division, first between ourselves and God and then between each other that destroys our ability to grasp the peace that is already there.

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Do You Feel Safe?

Posted in Bible Study, Life and Ministry, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 22, 2012| Leave a Comment »

I was asked an interesting question today, “Do you feel safe?” It was in relation to the fact that we are urban missionaries and live in an area prone to crime but it really got me thinking.  I live in probably the worst neighborhood that I have ever lived in.  Yet I can honestly say that I feel safer than perhaps I ever have before.  When I look back at times in my life when I felt unsafe and insecure I see that it was really a matter of self-doubt.  It was when things were out of my control or beyond my control that I would feel unsafe.  The reality was that while I believed in God, I trusted in my own abilities.  Yet I understood the limitations of those abilities.  So then my feelings of personal safety were a function of my surroundings and how equipped I felt to handle them.

“He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.  I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress, My God , in whom I trust.”  Surely hew will save you from the fowler’s snare and from the deadly pestilence.  He will cover you with his feathers, and under His wings you will find refuge; His faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.”

It is only when I move the trust and responsibility for my safety into the hands of  God that I can truly feel safe.  It is the feeling of safety that accompanied Daniel to the lion’s den in Babylon.  (Daniel 6)  But it is also the feeling of safety that shone on the face of Stephen as he was stoned to death on the outskirts of Jerusalem. (Acts 7) When our trust is truly in God then our feeling of safety is no longer dependent on our circumstances, skills or even our faithfulness.  As the Psalmist states “His faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.”

Just as our salvation is not based on anything that comes from us (Ephesians 2:8) so too is our safety, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” (Psalm 23:4)  It is our personal relationship with Jesus Christ which is the basis for our safety.  The writer of Hebrews beautifully expresses this relationship, “We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.  It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, where Jesus, who went before us, has entered on our behalf.  He has become a high priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.” (Hebrews 6:19-20)  He is a high priest who has been assailed in every way just as we are and held firm (Hebrews 4:15) in a way that is completely beyond the ability of our fallen nature.  So then it is by His intervention that we may “approach the throne of grace with confidence” (Hebrews 4:16) It is this confidence in  God’s faithfulness expressed in the person of Jesus Christ that is at the base of the safety that we enjoy as His children.

So, do YOU feel safe?

“What then shall we say in response to this?  If God is for us, who can be against us?… Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?  Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?…No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.”  Romans 8:31, 35, 37

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Some Thoughts on Ordination

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on May 11, 2012| Leave a Comment »

“1. To invest officially (as by the laying on of hands) with ministerial or priestly authority.”  (Merriam Webster online)

Ordination is so much more than I ever though it would be.  As our ordination approaches God has been speaking to me, driving me to explore this idea of an official investiture in ministerial authority and responsibility.  The priests of the Old Testament were ordained to serve before God.  Leviticus 16:32  talks of the hereditary nature of the Old Testament priesthood yet still he had to be anointed and ordained.

The New Testament is perhaps  less explicit yet we cannot but envision ordination in Acts 13 when the elders of the Church of Antioch laid hands on Paul and Barnabas investing them with the authority of the nascent church to carry the gospel message to new lands.  I love the next verse, “The two of them, sent on their way by the Holy Spirit…”  Ordination then is not a symbol of The Lewis House but it is a call to the Holy Spirit by our peers, friends and colleagues.  It is a call for Him to send us on our way empowered by spiritual gifts which as Paul expressed to Timothy, we must fan into flame in the performance of the ministry that He has for us.

For Allana and I it is an acceptance of the responsibilities that are inextricably attached to the empowerment and authority that is represented by our ordination.  I would venture to say that if the past year has been our “engagement” to full-time ministry in service of the Gospel that the ordination is the marriage ceremony.  We commit ourselves to His service and recognize His call on our lives.  We trust that he will bring to completion the work that he has begun in us.

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They Sure Look Pretty!

Posted in Bible Study, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 30, 2012| Leave a Comment »

TLH Steps and Walkway

They sure look pretty!

I hope many of you have had a chance to see the new steps put in by Bill H. and Stevenson Building and Supply.  We are so very grateful for them.  Of course I have had more than just an opportunity to look at them.  I have walked up and down on them.  I have sat on them.  I have even dropped things on them and I can tell you that they are solid.

However the pretty white color that makes them look so new and beautiful is deceiving.  While it is great to spray the new concrete with this beautiful sealer, it is not the sealer that gives the stairs their strength and makes them sturdy and safe.  If the concrete under the white sealer is bad, the stairs are going to crumble.  It is the quality of the concrete that determines whether the steps and walkways will endure the tests of time, weather and abuse that is sure to come.

Our Christian lives are like those steps.  We can apply all of the sealer that we want but if it is not being applied over the solid rock of faith in Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior then eventually our lives will crumble because the sealer will not be enough to hold us together.  We can attend every church service there is, serve our community and behave in every way like the ideal christian man or woman but without the rock of Jesus and power of the Holy Spirit underpinning all of those “do’s” it is like a foolish man building his house on a pile of sand (Matthew 7:24-29).  Matthew ends Jesus’  illustration with this statement:

When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law. (Matthew 7:28-29)

It is Jesus that gives our Christian lives authority.  This is the authority that gives substance to all the things that we do.  Without it all the doings collapse under the weight of eternity just as our steps and walkways would collapse if the concrete was faulty, or if say we tried to build the steps from sand or clay.

However there is a reason that Bill sprayed a 5 gallon bucket of concrete sealer on his work.  I don’t want you to think that all the things that we are called to do as followers of Christ are meaningless.  If we do not take care to seal our relationship with Christ, over time we will be worn down.  This is perhaps more insidious and destructive than the collapse of poorly constructed steps. It begins with the best intentions and then is slowly worn away because we accepted Christ into our lives and made him the base of our steps but then we don’t follow his guidance.  We do not apply the sealing works of His Word, of prayer, of fellowship with other believers, of love, of discipline.  Without these we will soon succumb to the lies of the enemy and he will destroy our effectiveness as children of God.

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power.  Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.  For our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything to stand.  (Galatians 6:10-13)

If we lay steps of the Solid Rock and then apply the seals of the Word, prayer and obedience then I am confident “that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 1:6)

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