Performance-based Christianity

David Wayne (aka Jollyblogger) has the best post on his blog that I've read in a long time. It's a message and a challenge for the whole church. Go there and read it!

Unfair Grace

"Grace is inherently unfair."

I read this quote by K. W. Leslie as he commented on an IMonk post yesterday entitled, "http://www.internetmonk.com/archive/riffs-082007-the-white-horse-inn-on-dying-with-unconfessed-sin, and I've been chewing on it ever since.

Is grace fair? Chew on it, and let me know what you think.

carpal-metacarpal joint resection with tendon transplant

The arrow marks the spot!

After a delay of a month. I've finally had needed hand surgery (see blog title). The cartilage in above joint was shot, and the fancy name means that my learned hand guy cleaned out said joint and nipped out a piece of tendon from above my wrist. Then he inserted it in the

open joint, held it in place with some fancy plastic, sewed it up, stuffed it in plaster and elastic and charged a lot of money for the experience.

Surgery began at 8:30, took 1 1/4 hours, and I was home by noon.

I have the greatest respect for my doctor, and I trust him to do the job right. In fact, I have matching scars on my right hand and arm from the same procedure 5 years ago. It worked then, and I expect it to work now. He's been doing his job for years. If he tells me to do something...I do it. I have confidence in him because he's proven himself. and yet...he could fail.

Why do we so easily trust men, yet find it so hard to trust God....Who has never failed?

Christmas in June

Yesterday I finished up a project I've been thinking about for several weeks...setting up an "Everybody Directory" for the people who don't fit into my other directories. This one has everybody from missionaries to long-ago friends to people I may never want to contact, but...
In order to do that, I pulled out the stack of old Christmas cards, birthday greetings and unanswered letters that have been accumulating for a year or two while I knock off quick notes via email or post blogs.
It was a good time to get caught up again on other people's lives...
My friend Kay is a young widow, serving with Wycliffe. She made some really insightful observations in her Christmas letter that keep coming back to my mind. Maybe they will challenge you as they've challenged me.
She says:

• "I've been learning about loneliness as opposed to alone-ness; how to distinguish between the two and how to work through one while growing in the midst of the other."
• "When God is silent on a subject, He does have His reasons. My job is to keep on doing the last thing He gave me to do until He does speak."
• "It's ok to yell for help when things get to be too much."
• "Change is inevitable. How we react to it helps determine whether it is good or not."
• "'Fine' isn't an acceptable answer when you really aren't."
• "Procrastination isn't working for me and practicing it until I get really good at it probably won't, either."
• "It pains God when I give Him my leftovers."

Are you feeling challenged, too? Let me know, so I can let Kay know how she's spoken to all of us.

Treasures & Trials

Lately I’ve been listening a lot to an album by Keith and Kristyn Getty, entitled “In Christ Alone”. Great contemporary hymns with lots of meat on their bones, and I’m sure that many people are familiar with the title song. One of my favorites, though, is “Jesus, Draw Me Nearer”. The lyrics are by Margaret Becker. One phrase in the chorus is: “Let the treasures of the trial form within me as I go…”

I’ve been thinking about that all week…the treasures of the trial…

How often do I think of those hard times and trials as containing treasure? Suffering and pain are not just pointless, and they are not just part of the curse of sin. Nor do they just produce treasure at the end…they are bound up in the treasure itself. Just as they were in Job’s life and trial, they are actual road signs that point us to a deeper understanding of God’s grace and His love for me. Without them, I might miss some of His deepest blessings.

“Let the treasures of the trial

Form within me as I go

And at the end of this long passage

Let me leave them at Your throne”

“…form within me as I go…” Those are pregnant words, aren’t they? God is actively involved in both my treasure and my trial, just as He was in Job’s trial. Just as He was in Mary’s trial when she allowed Him to inhabit her body for 9 months, forming a Body for Himself. She certainly endured trial, ongoing trial, for the sake of that treasure.

“…at the end of this long passage, let me leave them at Your throne.”

Mary left her son, God’s Son, at the throne of His Cross, but the things she “treasured in her heart” went with her all the way to Heaven. Was her trial worth it? Can you feel the treasure forming? Can you appreciate it, even now, during the trial? My family and I are living in the midst of a number of personal trials right now, but I can see the treasure forming. And I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Happy Father's Day

During the early years of my growing up, I did not appreciate my father. He was often an angry, impatient and unpredictable person…not especially sensitive to his wife or children. The stresses of trying to make a 40-acre farm provide for a family of 7 did not help the situation, either, and although I desperately sought his approval, I never felt I measured up to his expectations.
My parents made sure that we children attended Sunday School, and we often attended our local church. There, I acquired a different view of fatherhood. I saw God as a Father…the father I was missing at home…and I desperately sought His approval, but I was pretty sure I didn’t have that, either.
Then, during the middle years of my growing up, that all changed. At the age of 24, married with a little daughter of my own, I finally met my Heavenly Father when I read that I was “accepted in the Beloved”…His own Son, who died for me! He forgave me and loved me in spite of all I had done to Him.
That changed my perspective on my own father…and the ways I had failed to respect and obey him. One of the hardest things I have ever done was to go to him and ask his forgiveness for my failure as a daughter.
Fast forward to the most recent years of my growing up…
Over the past 10? or 15? years, my Dad has been growing, too. My mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s…Dad has had hip replacements and major back surgery, his own health is precarious…and something wonderful has happened. He has met his Father, too, and I can see the resemblance more and more every day.
The impatient, unpredictable man I called “Dad” is now my mother’s chief caregiver. He cooks for her, helps her dress, monitors her medications, changes the dressings on the ulcers on her legs. He is patient, kind and gentle. He is committed to caring for her to the best of his ability. Tomorrow when our family celebrates Father’s Day, we will also celebrate my parents’ 65th wedding anniversary…and I will thank my Father in Heaven for giving me just the right father here on earth.

Is There an Atheist in Your Closet?

Geoff Baggett’s blog today referred to a news article about Congressman Pete Stark from California, who has just come out of the closet as the highest-ranking government official to admit that he is an atheist, or non-theist as they call themselves these days.
It’s true that Americans have a right and a responsibility to determine the values of the people they vote into office, so there is benefit in knowing the core beliefs of those who would be our leaders. At least, with Pete Stark, Californians know what they have endorsed as representing them.
On March 14, the San Francisco Chronicle ran the story about Congressman Stark and made some observations by a pollster about the importance of religious beliefs in the democratic process.
Pollster Ben Tulchin stated, “California…, is probably one of the most nonreligious states in the country -- maybe the most nonreligious state.'' He went on to say, that in polling in California "we rarely target voters by religion.''
That doesn't mean Californians "are not religious, don't believe in God, or don't go to services,'' he cautioned. For example, he said, "you have a fast-growing population in Latinos, and religion does matter to them, and religious issues matter to them. But on a day-to-day basis, religion doesn't play a significant role in most Californians' lives in a way that shapes their politics on a daily basis,'' he said.
In other words, people who have always voted for Stark will vote for him, anyway.
They may be “Christians” by profession…but atheists in practice.
It’s easy to criticize California voters, but I wonder how many Christians are doing the same thing. Every time we leave God out of the equation when we make choices in our own lives, we are practicing atheism…even while we profess Christ. Most of us really don’t let God play a significant role in our lives in a way that shapes our actions on a day to day basis. We live as though He does not exist.
Is there an atheist in your closet?

Our Ultimate Objective

The October 19, 2006 Wall Street Journal had an interesting article by Emily Parker on Zaha Hadid, an Iraqi architect. Apparently, Ms. Hadid has a very original outlook regarding the relationship between design and function in architecture…in fact, she designed the BMW Central Building in Germany with conveyer belts carrying cars in production directly over the heads of employees. The article goes on to explain the reason for this novel approach: “Having the presence of your ultimate objective within view helps remind you of why you are there.”
We who are Christians would do well to remind ourselves of that fact.
If we are predestined to be conformed to the image of Christ, as Romans 8:29 tells us, should we not “keep the presence of our ultimate objective within view”?
When we lose sight of Christ as we work, as we play, as we worship, we forget why we are here on this earth. Ephesians 2:10 tells us that we are “his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God has before ordained that we should walk in them.”
Maybe so many of us are so ineffective in doing God’s work because we have lost sight of our ultimate objective…Jesus Christ, Himself. This is an area where I need to be reminded again and again to look at Jesus. It is so easy to focus on the work at hand…on plans for the future…on past failures…and not to focus on the One Who is both past and future.

Learning to Lean

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding” Just a couple of weeks ago, I did an object lesson for the kids at Living Hope to teach them Proverbs 3:5. Trusting...Fully Relying On God...Little green frogs...Leaning on the Lord instead of myself... It’s easy to teach, but hard to learn.

It seems that no sooner than God teaches me some new thing (so that I can teach others, I think), than He expects me to put it into practice in my own life! About ten minutes after I had finished writing out the lesson, I got an email that really rocked me. Discouragement hit like a avalanche. Then depression came as an aftershock, and it was a couple of days before I realized that God had already given me the weapon I needed to overcome it. He had never left me defenseless, even when I felt forsaken.

Trust is a conscious act of the will, a deliberate choice, realizing that my own understanding is flawed and placing myself in the hands of One who has perfect understanding. As I’d told the children, our reliance is not to be in ourselves, in other people, in money, in “stuff”. God wants us to rely fully on Him...and sometimes the only way He can get us to do that is to take away some of the props we are leaning on.

Then He reminded me of that as I was leaving the Walmart parking lot a few days later...and the license plate on the car in front of me said PROV3 6. In the entire state of Wisconsin, there is only one license plate with that verse, and I followed it for miles.

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding, In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your path.”

Do you really think God doesn’t know what you’re leaning on?

Good Bye Again

In a little more than 24 hours, we will say good bye to our oldest daughter and her family and, unless the Lord intervenes, we will not see them for another four years. By then, our five grandchildren will have lived most of their lives on the other side of the world—Little Hannah will not even know us. Perhaps we will not see any of them this side of Heaven.
I hate good bye’s.
Every separation is a kind of “little death”, and all death is unnatural in God’s view. We were created to live in union with Him and with each other. Harmony and union ruled until sin entered the world, and with it death and separation. Adam and Eve experienced “dis-union” immediately after they disobeyed God. Their relationship with Him was broken and so was their relationship with each other. Ever since they were expelled from the perfection that was Eden, they lived with the imperfection of ruptured relationships and physical separation and death. They lived with death of the spirit, too, because they no longer had unrestricted access to their Creator, and all of their descendants have inherited their curse. Sin is bound into our spiritual genes, and it affects all people of all colors and nationalities.
God hates good byes, too.
He hates them so much that He endured separation from His own Son so that we could be reunited with Him. Jesus left the perfection of Heaven and lived in a human body in a sinful world for 33 years. He lived a perfect life that was not marred by the sin around Him, and He took the curse of sin on Himself when He died on the cross. He said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life—no man comes to the Father but by Me.” He said, “I am the door. By me if any man enter in, he shall be saved.”
Only through Jesus Christ can we become what God has intended us to be. By trusting in Him and His saving death and resurrection on our behalf, we will never again be separated from God. There will be no eternal good bye for believers, and God has entrusted His people with the good news that Christ has died to make that relationship available to all people—not just here in America, but to the ends of the earth.
And that is the reason why Gail and John and their children are leaving again.
They are serving God in the Philippines so that people in remote mountain tribes will have the opportunity to come to know the God who made them for His pleasure. When they enter that plane and the doors close, we will say good bye. When tribal people are introduced to the Door of Heaven and come to trust the One who has saved them, it will be worth it.