Saturday, December 27, 2008

A PROMISE FOR 2009

“For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” (Jeremiah 29:11).

When Jeremiah shared this prophetic promise, the Jews were in exile in Babylon. Being in exile did not mean you were sent away for a vacation. Exile was very much like going to prison and serving a hard sentence as a slave in a foreign and hostile nation.

The Jewish nation had become so corrupt and disobedient that God decided to bring an end to it. God decreed defeat and exile for the rebellious and corrupt nation, hoping to bring it back to its senses. Jeremiah prophesied to the Jews and told them exactly what would happen, and how long they would remain captives and be in exile. The drama unfolded precisely as he said it would.

The Jews were in a very discouraging and troubling time as the conditions of the exile unfolded. To make the situation more confused for the exiles, false prophets began to say that Jeremiah had God’s message wrong; that everything was going to be fine; that very shortly the Jews would be going back to Jerusalem.

It is into this confusion and discouragement that Jeremiah shares this powerful promise that has strong implications for us in the “tough times” in which our world has found itself.

Here are a few thoughts for your consideration:

“For I know” - The Hebrew word for know is yada. This is the word used in Genesis 4:1: “And Adam knew (yada) Eve.” This phrase speaks of the very intimate involvement of the Lord in our circumstances. The fulfillment of this promise is not just for the nation, but for you as an individual.

“The plans I have for you” - The picture here is of the thoughtful preparation and planning by a master craftsman as he begins to work on a piece of art. He carefully selects just the right materials, the right colors and the right tools to bring the work to perfection. The craftsman knows exactly how and where the finished work will be used and under what conditions, and his plan takes all that into account. God has personally laid out detailed plans for you for your future; no detail has missed His attention.

“To prosper you” - This encompasses all aspects of your life—your safety, health and well-being. The promise is that God will watch over and protect, provide for, and bring prosperity to those who return to Him. God’s plans for you are not only thorough but are thought-out with your best interests at heart. The word “prosper” is a bigger word than just the limited definition of financial blessing, for it includes all aspects of our physical, spiritual and emotional health.

“Hope” - This is an extremely interesting word. It speaks of an expectancy that God is going to do something great, but it also speaks of a rope (see Joshua 2:18, 21). Joshua tells us the story of the scarlet cord that Rahab the prostitute hung out her window that protected her during the Jewish invasion. The Hebrew word used in Joshua for cord/line is the same word that is used in Jeremiah 29 for hope. Hope, then, is a type of spiritual lifeline for us to hold onto when things around us are not going well at all. Hope is not inferior to faith; hope is the expectancy that as God has worked for us in the past, so He will again. We are literally to grab onto hope and not let go. God has thrown us a prophetic lifeline and it is hope; it is trust in Him and His eternal purposes and plans for our life.

Into the chaos of circumstance, with a laser-like sharpness, there comes a promise that the Holy Spirit quickens to our heart and we realize that we have not been forgotten, we have not been abandoned, we are not adrift on a sea of chaos—but God is still on the throne and is still guiding the affairs of our life.

Like all promises, this promise is conditional. We have to ask ourselves, “Will we accept it, will we embrace this truth?” Will we pursue the heart of God knowing that He has our best interests at heart or will we try to tell Him how He should do things? Are we ready to pray as Jesus did, “Thy will be done” (Matthew 26:42) or will we, through our actions, say, “My will be done, what I want is what counts”?

God’s will is that you will know Him in His fullness in 2009!

Saturday, December 20, 2008

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Christmas can be a frustrating time of the year for many Christians. We know it’s our time and yet it has become so commercialized that sometimes a feeling of guilt gets in the way of celebrating the birth of Christ. We struggle with how to celebrate the birth of our Savior and not let the commercial aspects of Christmas cheapen the whole season. If that describes the way you feel, please know that you are not alone.

Yes, Christmas is our time of the year but one almost feels that the Christmas of today was dreamed up in a smoke-filled room deep inside a Madison Avenue advertising agency for the benefit of “retail establishments and the economy.” Recently, on the national NBC evening news, there was a segment on the changing of the wording from Christmas to Holiday Day. Some cities no longer have Christmas trees in the city square; instead, they have Holiday trees. It will always be Christmas, not Xmas, not Holiday Day—it will always be Christ’s birthday for me and if that is offensive to anyone, I really don’t care!

The very fact that you feel the slightest discomfort with the commercialized and secularized aspects of Christmas means you are on the right track.

We love to give gifts in our family and we do, in moderation, every year. But we have also chosen to keep Christ as the focus of Christmas and to give gifts and do things for people less fortunate than we are. One year, when our daughters were younger and we were living in Los Angeles, we spent Christmas Eve at the Fred Jordan Mission in downtown Los Angeles. Several of our friends and their families also went and together we spent the evening out in the streets with the homeless, giving out blankets (it was cold in L.A.) and hot food. It was a memorable evening for all of us from the suburbs as we got to share with people and distribute gifts, food and a brief witness for Christ. My wife and I still remember it and so do our children. Every year we give to others we have never met and probably never will; we try to “send portions to those for whom nothing is prepared!” (Nehemiah 8:10).

The apostle Paul never seemed to be at a loss for words about anything. He was, by far, the most prolific of the New Testament writers. Paul was well educated and in a wonderful freedom with words, he seemed to enjoy being able to describe the great doctrines of the faith in writing.

One of the absolute gems of Paul’s writings almost seems to be an afterthought, like it is in the wrong place. In 2 Corinthians 9, Paul spends the first 14 verses commending the Corinthians and encouraging and teaching them about giving. Then comes verse 15 and Paul drops into the teaching this absolute diamond: “Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!”

Paul, of course, is describing the Father’s gift of love in sending His Son to earth. The Apostle goes on to say that the magnitude of the gift is not just breathtaking in scope but it leaves him speechless, incapable of adequately describing the meaning of “the gift.” The original word here translated “indescribable” means that words fail him, it is “unspeakable,” a gift beyond the description of mere words.

Two thousand years later the meaning of “the gift” is still being revealed in hundreds of millions of lives worldwide. It was as though by the eye of faith Paul saw that “the gift” would bring the touch of grace upon millions and millions of people over several thousand of years and the sheer magnitude and beauty of what would happen left him…speechless with gratitude. And then there was the understanding that “the gift” would be freely available to all who would receive it, and that makes it “priceless” and far beyond the capacity of human conversation to describe it.

Recipients of “the gift,” we wish you a Merry Christmas!

Sunday, December 14, 2008

HUNGRY AND THIRSTY!

A blazing hot sun, no shade for miles, empty canteen, dry mouth—and no water anywhere near! You think this is trouble? Hang on, there’s more! On top of everything else, you are hungry. It’s now midday, and you haven’t eaten for about eighteen hours. You are miles from anywhere on what was supposed to be a fun day of hiking.

It’s one thing to be hungry or thirsty but to be both at the same time is a painfully uncomfortable situation and has potentially dangerous consequences. And yet, that’s the level of intensity that Jesus was describing as He sat on the mountainside near Galilee and verbalized what has become known as The Beatitudes. Jesus said that those who are painfully, intensely hungry and thirsty for righteousness would be filled to overflowing. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled” (Matthew 5:6).

This verse is truly one of the great keys to personal revival and personal growth in Him. The key to all spiritual growth is hunger: hunger for more of Him and more of His Word; hunger that causes us to shut the door on some of the noise and demands of life and get up close and personal with Him. The concept is not complicated but often is overlooked, perhaps because we think it’s just too simple.

Let’s look at the verse for a moment:

Blessed means “to experience the fullness of all that God is, to be happy and spiritually prosperous.” Happiness is a by-product of righteousness. This is not a smiley-face type of happiness; it is the joy, the peace, the contentment that comes from a life that has been made right with God. The only happiness that has enduring value comes from being in right relationship with Him.

Food and water are physical necessities and when we find them difficult to get, we can become rather intense in our desire to satisfy our needs. Righteousness (to be in right standing with God) is shown here to be a spiritual necessity. Just as it is not wrong to desire food and water in the natural, so it is fully natural to desire righteousness in our spiritual life.

In Luke 15 we see an illustration of a believer who goes astray in his pursuit of righteousness. The prodigal son thought that pleasure, possessions, and popularity would bring him the satisfaction he craved and so he wandered away from a correct relationship with his father. As he came to the end of his empty pursuit, he made this telling statement: “How many of my father’s hired servants have bread enough to spare, and I perish with hunger!” (Luke 15:17). The prodigal was intensely hungry and there was no answer for him in the direction his path was taking him.

Could the story of the prodigal be a parable about the contemporary church? Is it possible that much of the discontent in the church today is because the focus has shifted from righteousness to substitutionary things? Twenty million believers have left the church in the last few years. Many of them are now experimenting with or attending a home church, some have left the faith, and some are just wandering in a spiritual vacuum.

I know that this kind of teaching about hunger and righteousness is not the popular fare of the moment. Some of the biggest churches in our land are teaching people how they can have the best life now. Many contemporary churches are teaching people how to manage their time, their money, their businesses, and their families but are not teaching them how to attain and continue in right standing with God. “I perish with hunger!”

Jesus teaches people how they can have the best life ever, how they can be really happy now and for all eternity.

Jesus finishes his poignant statement in Matthew 5:6 by saying, “They shall be filled.” This is a promise of spiritual fulfillment, a promise to the spiritually famished: “Your hunger and thirst will be satisfied!” The word “filled” speaks of being completely satisfied, of being fed to the point that you are “stuffed.” “Filled” is saying that God will make us happy and satisfied in Him. This “filling” that Jesus speaks of has a double fulfillment; there is an initial filling that takes place when the hungry heart reaches out to God, and a continual refilling that takes place as the relationship proceeds. Notice that I said “as the relationship proceeds.” We are to grow in our relationship with Him just as a husband and wife do in a successful marriage.

There is no spiritual disappointment for the hungry heart that is reaching to Him!

Psalm 107:9: “For he satisfieth the longing soul, and filleth the hungry soul with goodness.”

Sunday, December 7, 2008

SHAKEN, NOT STIRRED!

“That the things which cannot be shaken may remain” (Hebrews 12:27, NKJV).

There is a certain surreal quality to what is happening as I write this. Our nation is deeply divided over the recent Presidential election. The world’s economy appears to be falling apart and technology lets us see the meltdown in real time. Terrorists continue to thumb their noses at the U.S, Israel and the rest of the civilized world. Remnants of the old Soviet Empire are again rattling their swords. Natural disasters continue to occur worldwide…we even had a small earthquake in Dallas. And now, just when you think, “What else could possibly happen?” we have pirates! Yes, I said pirates, plundering ships on the high seas. Are we living in a cartoon world or what?

Chaos is also striking the church world. A few weeks ago we were all shocked to hear that a very well-known Christian recording artist had come out of the closet and announced that he was gay and was leaving his wife and family. And then another well-known worship and recording artist left his wife and ran off with one of the women in his travelling group. A few days ago it was announced that several mega-churches were either on the verge of bankruptcy or being forced to close their doors because of financial insolvency. Government continues to look at the financial sleight of hand of several televangelists. In the last few years, over 20 million evangelicals have abandoned the traditional church. In one city here in Texas, at least one “Christian” church is closing its doors every week. Nationally, more and more pastors are leaving the ministry for good!

“That which can be shaken is being shaken.”

I’m kind of slow at times but when the Lord awakens me at midnight and my first conscious thought is a Scripture, I know I had better pay attention. So it was a few nights ago, and I awakened to Hebrews 10:39.

The writer to the Hebrews (I think it was Paul but since that is a controversial subject and you know how I try to avoid controversy, forget that I said Paul was the author, okay?) takes quite a bit of time in chapter 10:19-39 to exhort the Jewish believers to remain steadfast no matter what circumstances they are facing.
Some of the highlights of this wonderful teaching passage for believers in “tough times” are:

• Let’s be bold in our prayers (10:19-22). We cannot let persecution or stress cause us to become timid or sissy (that’s not Greek) pray-ers!

• We are to hold tight to our confession of faith because God is faithful and will show Himself faithful to His people that stay strong in adversity (v. 23).

• Stay close to your brothers and sisters in the Lord; stay in church; stay in fellowship! This is more vital than ever as the end of the age approaches and it is one of the keys to “tough times” survival (v. 25).

• Verses 26 -36 give a strong exhortation about living by faith and not by sight. Our confidence must be in the eternal qualities of God’s work and not on what we can see with our physical eyes. Living by sight means we have our attention fixed on the temporal; living by faith means we have our spiritual eyes on the eternal truths of God and His kingdom, on the things that cannot be shaken!

In verse 39, as the writer gets ready to launch into the next chapter and his classic teaching on faith, he makes this unusual statement:
We are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who believe and are saved.” (NIV)

In the King James Version this reads “turn back to perdition” and immediately visions of going to hell leap into our mind. That is not what the writer is attempting to emphasize here. The writer is saying, “We are not the kind that back away from difficulties and return to the destructive patterns of the carnal life, the life that we knew before we embraced Christ as Savior. It doesn’t matter what the circumstances of our life are, what the problems and pain are that we are confronted with…it doesn’t matter! We will not turn back but we will continue to believe, we will stand fast in our faith, and we will see the salvation of the Lord!”

I have been saying in my blog for months that I believed we were going to enter into a time of “stormy weather.” I still believe that! I didn’t know that it was going to come this fast but here it is and while there will be brief periods of rest, the storm will not be over for a long time.

Is God behind the shaking? Certainly He is allowing it and in some cases He is doing the shaking! (See Hebrews 12:26.)

During stormy weather everything that is not tied down and secured gets blown away, so don’t be surprised when that happens. Whole ministries will just disappear like what just happened to the over-hyped "Lakeland revival"! When stress and pressure come, they force impurities to the surface. Issues that have been ignored (sometimes because people are unwilling to face them) will be dealt with and don’t be surprised when that happens, either! (Remember Ted Haggard.)

We are of those who stand fast in faith and will see the salvation of the Lord!