Posts Tagged ‘Sam’

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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Loving the Haters

Posted in Life and Ministry, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 25, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Joe is one of the homeless guys that frequent TLH for a meal and a place to sit for a few minutes.  He is perhaps one of the most difficult of the people in our community to deal with and he just might be the most honest.  From the title you might think that Joe has been hateful, rude or mean to me or even destructive to TLH.  This could not be further from the truth.  Joe is appreciative of the meals we provide and the moments of rest and relaxation that he experiences in his otherwise very mobile day.  He has always been mostly polite, at least by his own standards (on occasion his colorful language and energetic demeanor has worried my immediate neighbors that he is being less than kind).  Even when he arrives less than sober he has always been respectful to me and the property.  So then why is Joe so difficult for me?  Joe hates God.

He clearly believes in God.  On more than one occasion he has acknowledged my relationship with God asking me to present to Him the long list of wrongs that plague Joe’s life.  He blames God for everything negative that has ever happened to him and sees only a cruel being who refuses to intervene in any kind of positive way in his life.  While this type of external locus of control is not unusual in today’s society, I have not run into too many people who so squarely place their animosity on God.

So then what do I do with this man?  What would I do with someone who hated my wife with a deep-seated passionate hatred?  This man literally hates the purpose of my entire life.  He hates the Spirit that indwells me and the savior to whom I owe everything.  It would perhaps be easier if my wife or myself or even my children were the object of his animosity.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’  But I tell you:  Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.  He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.  If you love those who love you, what reward will you get?  Are not even the tax collectors doing that?  And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others?  Do not even pagans do that?  Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  Matthew 5:43-48

I have often heard that last phrase pulled out of context and misused.  Jesus is specifically referring to love.  He is establishing a concept that John would later develop as a major theme of all his writings.  God is love.  The Greek word here for perfect is τελειος which carries the idea of completeness.  God’s love is complete, without gaps, without limitations and without exceptions and more importantly we are called to love in the same way.

So as Joe walked away and yelled @#$%% you God, even as my heart cringed and my pride bristled at this man’s arrogance  I was quietly corrected by the Holy Spirit, “Sam, forgive him, he does not know what he is doing.”  My pride deflated and my heart melted as the heart of God for this man flooded me.  “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

Thank you Lord for continuing to teach me, for continuing to bear with me.  Give me your love for all the “Joe’s” out there.  Develop in me Your heart and Your perfection at Loving the Haters.

If you can, add Joe to your daily prayer list.  He has a hard life and maybe it needs to get harder before he can see the truth.  Pray that his heart is softened and that whether it is through TLH or another godly place he receives the truth that will penetrate the fog of deception that he is surrounded by.

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Summer!

Posted in Life and Ministry, tagged , , , , , , on June 25, 2010| Leave a Comment »

I am so excited for what God has brought to myself and my family this summer.  Last week I had the privilege of sharing BLAST with a great group of leaders and junior highers at BCC.  This week Allana and the kids are having a blast at Sonquest Rainforest VBS.  The blessings have already started to rain down and the summer is barely started.

Monday we head to Toledo and The Lewis House (www.mylewishouse.com) .  We are ready for God to do great things and are excited to spend this time with our family in Christ there.  God has been amazing as he has opened the way for us to serve Him.  At the end of July we head out for our great western sweep.  It will be an exciting time of seeing friends and family but even more Allana and I believe it will be a time of ministry.  We are looking forward to sharing our faith and taking hold of ministry opportunities that God puts in our path.  I am sure after our month at The Lewis House we will be Spiritually pumped and overflowing with joy to share both with those who don’t know Him as Lord and Savior and with our brothers and sisters in Christ!  We are ready for all the “outrageous” things God has for us! (ok..so maybe with the help of the Holy Spirit I will be ready for all the OUTRAGEOUS things God has for us!)

AMEN

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Blogging

Posted in Life and Ministry, tagged , , , , on March 25, 2010| 1 Comment »

    I have experimented with blogging before and it has never lasted.  Encouraged by the example of some good Christian men in my life I am going to take another stab at it.  Perhaps along with the daily Bible study that has become a part of my life this will also take root and grow.  I chose the name of my blog from I Timothy 1:6.  It is perhaps my favorite verse in the Bible.  I live to use the gifts that God gives to create light in this dark world.  I am learning that “fanning into flame the gift of God” is not a piecemeal affair.  I cannot develop my gifts in their own separate compartments.  I recently was deeply touched by a piece of scripture that illustrated this point clearly to me. 

Exodus 21:5

5 “But if the servant declares, ‘I love my master and my wife and children and do not want to go free,’ 6 then his master must take him before the judges. He shall take him to the door or the doorpost and pierce his ear with an awl. Then he will be his servant for life

My service to God is a complete package.  I love my God!  I love my Wife!  I love my Children!  These cannot be separated.  And yes God did lead my get my ear pierced (that was a personal struggle I may deal with in a separate post!  I do not promote or encourage this.  It was an intensely personal decision spurred by my relationship with God.  No doctrine or spiritual panacea for the Christian walk is suggested or implied.) as a testament to my own stubborn tendencies.  Every day I look in the mirror and this passage rings in my ears.  It must be the order of my life!  Only then can the flames rise to be seen by all around.  Well I am going to keep this first post short if not sweet.  Hopefully I will do better this time than I have in the past.

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