Moments

Today is the 1 year anniversary of the tragic death of Steven and Mary Beth Chapman’s baby girl, Maria Sue. Dr. Dobson for the past three days has aired the interview he conducted with Steven in lieu of this approaching event. The heart wrenching climax was Steven discussing his song, “Cinderella,” and then playing it. Rather than wincing at and from the sad moments in life, when God “turns his head the other way and they are ripped from us,” this song is about celebrating the precious moments that God in his sovereignty gives us to be with our loved ones.

His daughter is getting married in October. She wants her brother … Steven’s son (the guy who was behind the wheel of the vehicle that took Maria Sue’s life) … to sing “Cinderella” at the wedding. She wants her dad to be free to dance with her.

I was listening to this, while taking my little flower to her baby sitter’s house. Yes, I had a “moment.” As I’m writing this, especially the previous paragraph, I’m having a “moment.” If progression and trajectory in one’s life are any reliable predictors, I am totally off-course. I was on a trajectory from the middle of my teen-age years of landing in an institution, either in the penal system or the state hospital … or possibly in a suicidal noose. I should not have the family I do today. Nor should I be the man that I am today. God’s salvation-transformation is wonderful. I was holding the fruit in my arms, just before taking her into the baby-sitter’s house.

However, my wonderful flower sniffed an aroma. “What’s that smell?” she wondered several times. I had just returned from my daily run. This morning I ran 3.6 miles and walked 2.4 miles. “What’s that smell,” she wondered with a grimacing face. Yes, daddy was not exactly smelling like a rose.

My youngest baby girl has gotten cuter and more irresistibly-adorable over the last two months. Ever since she began walking (and is now sprinting … sort of) she has grown vastly more content and vastly less irritable. She, in all of her cuteness, will come around cooing and giggling and cackling … when I have food … open her mouth wide, receive the deposit, and float away … at least until that bite is gone. Then she returns for more.

Rather my kids are way too naively-observant or just plain scavengers, pawning smiles for easy food, I love them authentically. I don’t live in the air-brushed and edited world of Hollywood or Nashville … nor do the Chapmans … nor does God. He is the wildly-passionate God who lives in our muck and grime, walking alongside us, redeeming us and our situations, giving us “moments.”

May God truly bless the Chapmans, as they continue to cope with their tragic loss, and as they continue to inspire us with their authentic faith … in Jesus’s name, Amen.

A Prayer from the Heart

“Dear God, please help my friends to be patient, not say ‘butt,’ and not pee on the floor.”

                                                                                  —My 3-year-old daughter.

Too bad that her theology is more mature and sophisticated than some adults I know.

Logan, You’re Not an Animal

From time to time, if we’re honest, our baser nature oozes through our Armani suits and spills onto the hip floors installed by the crew from “HGTV.” The stains left behind in the hearts of those closest too us can be a mission-impossible for even ShamWow. For those of us who actually care about petty things like this, such experiences leave us saying, “Woe” … not “Wow,” every time. In the latest Comic Book flick, “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” this beastly struggle of classical Western literature prowls the cinematic screen.

I found connection.

I was tamed.

Logan, aka “the Wolverine,” is a man’s man, whose meekness holds his animal in check. He was a soldier, tapped for special duty (which saved his career and possibly his very life). Yet he leaves this behind, when the blood of innocent people rocked the cool, distant mountain of his heart. He returns “home” to become a logger. Yet the heaviest object he hauls around is his own heart, which carries the heart of his girl friend, Kayla. He carries it with the gentleness of a dove.

In one humorous and equally-tragic series of scenes, he is being tracked down and finds refuge in the bosom of an elderly couple. The couple happens upon him running nude into their barn. (No, there are no “bad” shots/scenes.) It’s a scene reminiscent of “Back to the Future.” The old man checks out his barn with his trusty shot gun. Little did the old man know, but Logan could have gutted him clean. Even if the old man got a shot in … no matter. Logan heals himself … and quickly. Logan plays the submissive hand, though he doesn’t have to do so. The couple takes him into their hospitable care, lending him their dead son’s clothes. Still getting used to his “make over,” he accidentally destroys the shelving. Coming to the dinner table he carries the shelving, with his head hung charmingly low, promising to pay for his damages. The trio bonds. The next morning, the old man show off his motorcycle in the barn, and his wife comes bringing breakfast. As the wife is talking, everyone see her get shot by an X-man with sniper powers. This particular dude dresses as sharply, as he shoots.

Logan has a rough exterior but is meek. The sharp-shooter has an equally sharp exterior, but a pungent heart. Logan wrestles against the beast inside throughout the film. The bad guys, led by a full-blooded human, hunt down other human beings as animals, showing they’re lower than the animals.

As Christians we can crash our theological vehicles in one of two very wide ditches. On one side of the road is a violent ditch, red in tooth and claw. Believers being trapped in this ditch walk on egg shells fearing for their very lives. They constantly live in the hands of an angry God. No matter what Jesus has done for them, they will never feel as though they can ever do enough to appease the divine savage beast. These believers will always be primarily known as sinners. God’s power only pretends to make them clean.

The other ditch is one that is far more seductive. It is easy on the eyes and especially wooing of the appetite. In this ditch lives a myriad of sirens. Once trapped inside this ditch (though the driver believes he’s anywhere but about to be eaten by the sirens) the sirens dress up as God and reassure the driver that he is saved by grace. Since he is saved by grace, little “sins” won’t matter. After all they will make sure he gets to heaven. The driver can live and do as he pleases because he is under grace and not law. As a sign that he is in the right place, he sees the drivers stuck in the other ditch. They are in a living hell. He’s happy and carefree. He must be in the gateway to heaven.

Paul teaches us a middle way, one that will keep our theological vehicles driving securely on the road and away from either ditch. In Romans 7 Paul describes the death-struggle between his flesh and his spirit. His inner-man, his heart of hearts, wants to follow the way of God. His flesh, his body, is trained to serve Sin. He poignantly asks,

Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? (7:24; ESV)

Paul is asking a real, not a hypothetical, question. He answers, “Thanks to be God though Jesus Christ our Lord!” (7:25; ESV). Now we might expect Paul to drift off into a discussion of pearly gates and golden-bricked roads, where there is no longer any pain or suffering. or temptation to sin. Yet, he goes in a radically different direction. In 8:1 he mixes no words: “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus!” He picks up this discussion of the struggle between flesh and Spirit, making the audacious claim, “Those who are in the flesh cannot please God” (8:8; ESV). This was to have been expected given the discussion of chapter 7. Yet the promise of “no condemnation” makes this sound odd here. The next verse is the balance: “You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you” (8:9; ESV).

Is Paul really suggesting that it might be possible to live free of servitude to that old flesh? Listen to his stark promise in 8:11:

If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you (ESV).

The promise is this, if we belong to Jesus and the Holy Spirit lives in us, this same Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead will “give life your mortal bodies….” Paul boldly claims that it is possible to be delivered in the here and now from our bodies of death, through the Spirit of Life transforming even our physical bodies. Real, not hypothetical, victory over Sin is possible. This victory will not come about by dolling up the external. Nor will this victory come about by false humility. This victory will certainly not come about by ignoring the necessary struggle.

This victory will come about over time as we continually make the choices to fellowship and know God, live in his word, and love his people and his potential people. As we choose daily … hourly even … to travel the Way of Jesus, transformation will be wrought in our souls … and bodies … by the Spirit of God. As the inner is transformed, the outer will eventually follow. Rarely does the inner follow the outer.

The good news for us is that we don’t have to be animals.

Sinners in the Hands of Angry Christians

On the way home from dropping my wife off at the airport, I stopped in at the Billy Graham Library. Having a bit of an aesthetic-tooth, I was quite impressed with quality and design of the property. Evidently Dr. Graham grew up in a family of dairy farmers, as this theme is milked for all its worth. My creative-heart drank heartily from it.

Yet, I was more struck by the pictures of various occasions throughout his life scattered about. He was a man of significant godly influence. Though he has appeared on television numerous times, giving an altar call, rarely has he ever been refered to as a “TV Evangelist.” His character of godly wisdom and holiness filled his “preacher” suits. His wife’s gravestone has carved into it the Chinese character for righteousness. She loved the Chinese people, and the world loves her husband for his character of true but humble righteousness. It is sad to see such a godly giant limping about in the twilight of his life.

It has been said that he was able to present a complex Gospel in a simple, heartfelt way to a world hurting with complex problems. While not all have responded to his pleas for accepting eternal life, all who heard him knew clearly that a holy God demands justice that we sinners can’t pay. And all who have heard him know this potentially abrasive message comes from a man of sincere love for sinners. Righteousness is atop his wife’s gravestone, and righteousness clothed in humility is atop his large heart. We trust him because we trust his character, though many may have rejected his message.

I have been spending a couple of weeks preparing teachings on Sunday mornings, dealing with the Judgment Jesus will bring in his Second and Final Advent, one of final victory. I thought it appropriate to pick up a copy of Johnathon Edwards’s sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” today, while at the BG Library. It is sure to be an interesting read.

This past week I’ve taught during a church’s revival services. Tonight, being the last night, I felt it appropriate to celebrate Communion. Taking a cue from Ray Vander Laan, I added a feature: Elijah’s Cup. The sacred rite of Holy Communion is an innovation from the Jewish celebration, Passover. There are four cups of wine consumed during Passover: The Cups of Sanctification, Deliverance, Redemption, and Restoration; all based on phrases of Exodus 6:6-7. Many add a fifth cup: The Cup of Elijah, based on Exodus 6:8. Elijah will precede Messiah, who will completely restore Israel. This cup is not touched, but is left for Elijah, himself. During the time of Jesus, this cup, signified the wrath God had stored up for the nations. Jesus goes to the Garden of Gethsemane and, beginning to take the weight of the Sin of the world on his shoulders, asks the Father to take “this cup” from him. Yet, he accepts the Father’s will for him to drink … Elijah’s cup: The Cup of God’s Wrath stored up for the nations. Before coming to the altar, each person passed by Elijah’s cup, turned it over, saying, “No Condemnation.”

Yes, I understand that anger is a necessary tool in God’s disciplining tool box, if God is truly a God of justice that hates evil. What I find a bit more difficult to grasp is believers who live in the Grace of the Jesus, who drank Elijah’s cup for them, and yet feel free to pass the cup from Jesus to other people. They attempt to take onto themselves the mantle of a typical Old Testament prophet. These fellows appear on both sides of the “aisle.”

The difference between these modern day Elijah’s and Billy seems to be found in the suit-stuffing. Billy’s preacher suit is stuffed with a character of gold and love worth its weight in platinum. Many of these reincarnation-attempts at Elijah are stuffed with an inflated ego that needs to “feel” like a preacher.

Isaiah prophesies, “Behold, the LORD will empty the earth and make it desolate, and he will twist its surface and scatter its inhabitants” (Isaiah 24:1; ESV). Yet Isaiah questions, “How long, O Lord?” (ESV) His heart was consumed by his love for God. Yet, his heart bled with undying love for his people.

Holy Communion is the celebration of freedom from the wrath of God … and … the promise of transformation, as we fellowship/commune with Jesus (and one another) in his sufferings and pathos for the world. Why do so many of us demand that people clean themselves up before being enabled to flee from God’s wrath? Sinners make us uncomfortable. They are the ones that must change … without our help … because they make us uncomfortable. Yet, we are comfortable, grasping them with angry hands, and strangling the life right out of them. Never mind that prior to a bath in Jesus’s blood and the indwelling of the Spirit, sinners are unable to change.

What does change over time for these Elijah-reincarnation-attempts is they begin to hold their own brothers and sisters in the Lord in their noose-like grasp. Fear drives our little Elijahs into cultural isolation. God came in the still, small voice to the first Elijah. Our little Elijahs lurch out in the thunder, lightning, and hurricanes. Anger is merely a tool for God, meant to prevent a stubborn peole from falling off a cliff. Anger for our little Elijahs oozes from their very hearts with a horrendous stentch.

Yes, God’s wrath hangs over Sinners and his discipline trains believers for yielding peaceful fruit of the holy righteousness of God. Yes, we are called to call Sinners to repentence and slipping believers to accountability. I merely wish we would learn to conjure up as great of a passionate, brotherly love for them, as the Elijah-passion poured out on Jesus during his Passion.