pastorjohnb

Thoughts and musings on faith and our mighty God!

Monthly Archives: June 2017


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Doubt

Reading: Matthew 28: 16-20

Verse 17: When they saw Him, they worshipped Him; but some doubted.

The disciples had to be elated that Jesus had conquered the grave and was alive forevermore.  All that He said came true.  They followed Jesus’ instructions to the women and have gone to Galilee.  There they too meet the risen Lord.  Their first reaction was to worship Jesus.  It is the natural reaction to seeing someone that has been so meaningful and life-changing to the disciples.  It would be our reaction too if the risen Jesus appeared to us.

But Matthew goes on – “but some doubted”.  It is the same doubt I would have if someone rang the doorbell and said they were there to deliver the new car I had just won in the raffle.  Even if I could see it sitting in the driveway, there would be doubt in my mind.  Even if I could remember buying some raffle tickets, there would still be a feeling that it could not really be happening.

Yes, they had spent three years with Jesus and, yes, He said He would return to them and, yes, they could see Jesus standing right there in front of them.  But some doubted.  Yes, I can remember feeling Jesus’ presence when I accepted Him as Lord.  Yes, I can remember the presence of God in that hospital room that day.  Yes, I can recall time after time after time when the Holy Spirit has been active in my life.  But at times I too doubt.  At times I allow the cares and worries of the world to creep in and to win out.  At times I too doubt.

“And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age”.  Lord Jesus, be near to me, remove my doubt, fill me with your presence and love this day.  Allow me to walk boldly with you, bearing light to the world this day.  Amen.


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Good Advise

Reading: 2 Corinthians 13: 11-13

Verse 11: Aim for perfection… be of one mind… live in peace.

Paul writes to the church in Corinth to urge unity and cooperation and love in the church.  The church there is struggling with doing these things.  At times all churches, being filled with human beings with human egos and desires, can have some varied opinions and thoughts.  In Corinth, this has apparently gone beyond the typical disagreement over the carpet color.  Factions have been created and sides have been drawn up.  This can be an occurrence in today’s churches as well.

Paul’s words would have maybe drawn the same reactions​ today as I imagine they did back then.  First it was: who us?  We are getting along fine!  Then it was: get along with who?  Love who?  You’ve got to be kidding.  Paul clearly just did not understand how wrong “they” were.  Sometimes, and especially in the midst of conflict, it can be hard to give any ground or to begin to see the other side’s perspective.  But Paul is looking past the conflict to the bigger picture.  The church was not modeling the love of Christ to one another or to the people outside the church.  Worship as the one body of Christ was no longer occurring.  Times were tough.

Into this Paul writes, “aim for perfection”.  He does not mean for their opinion or argument to be perfect – he is calling them to be like Jesus Christ.  He was perfect in His love.  Paul is calling them to be like Christ.  He goes on to call them to “be of one mind”.  Take on the mind of Christ.  Love and see as Jesus loved and saw the world.  Lastly, also in verse 11, Paul calls on the church in Corinth to “live in peace”.  As Jesus was leaving this earth, He said to the disciples, “Peace be with you”.  In the midst of all they would face, Jesus offered them His peace – the peace that passes understanding.  This is the peace Paul is calling the church to live into.

Paul’s advice is good in conflict as well as in day to day life.  This day, may we each “aim for perfection… be of one mind… live in peace”.b


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Honor Creation

Reading: Psalm 8

Verse Six: You made him ruler over the world of your hands, You put everything under his feet.

Psalm 8 opens with praise for God.  It then shifts to acknowledge the glory and wonder found in the works of His hands.  Mankind enters the picture in verse four.  “What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?” reminds us that relative to the heavens, moon, and stars, mankind is a little less.  Yet we are still deeply loved by God.

Verses six through eight establishes the hierarchy here on earth.  Verse six reads, “You made him ruler over the world of your hands, You put everything under his feet”.  This verse clearly establishes mankind as the ruler of the earthly world.  The word “everything” is pretty inclusive.  The list that comes next covers it: flocks, herds, beasts, birds, fish.  Psalm 8 closes with its opening line of praise, but perhaps this time it has a slightly different tone.

Over the years, mankind has indeed ruled the earth.  How well the collective “we” had ruled is debatable.  At times we have practiced things that were bad for the earth.  While at times “we” have harmed the earth, the general trend has been to care for it.  I do not think anyone could argue that we have we cared for it as well as we could have.  Certainly we could have been more diligent in our forethought.  There are things we should have avoided doing but failed to.  This is revealed in our long history of harming the earth and then trying to fix or at least mediate what we did.  Too often progress and the profit margin have led the way and we have done great harms to our waters, land, sky, and the populations of many plants and animals.  The extinction list, for example, has way too many names on it.

If we do indeed praise God and bring honor to the creation of His hands, how do we reflect that in our choices and decisions?  As Christians, we can make choices and decisions that help the earth or do it less harm.  As followers of Christ, we can stand up to protect the earth when we should.  As those in charge of the creation, we can love it as God loves us – caring well for the earth.  It is a monumental task to care for the earth, but it is well within our abilities.  May we love and care for this amazing creation well as we honor God’s work.


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Majestic

Reading: Psalm 8

Verse 1b: You have set your glory above the heavens.

Today’s Psalm makes me think of the beauty of the night sky.  To look up into the vastness and see all that God has created stirs up praise inside of me.  I too want to shout out, “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth”!  Yes, we can begin to get the feeling of God’s majesty when we take time to think of all the plant and animal species that He created.  But to me, God’s majesty is most evident in the night sky.  In one moment, I can see millions and millions of stars plus planets and moons, all created uniquely and individually by our Lord.

Each winter for many years I would go winter camping with a friend.  Often we were the only people in the remote campground.  We were far away from the city lights that wash out some of the night sky.  Late at night, on those coldest nights with the crisp, clear air, the sky came alive to me.  The lack of earthly, human light allows you to see so many more stars…  It is not that they were not there before; it was that I just couldn’t see the because of all of the light pollution.  Then, in the stillness and solitude of that campground, “You have set your glory above the heavens” really comes alive.  How majestic is Your name!

In verse three the psalmist acknowledges the majesty we see in the heavens, the work of God’s hands.  But then he quickly turns to us – mankind.  The psalmist writes, “What is man that you are mindful of him…”.  Just as God created each of those billions of heavenly bodies, He created you and me as well.  It is a humbling thought.  To recall the power and majesty of the night sky in all of its glory and brilliance and then to think that God created me – it is very humbling.  Verse four goes on, “that you care for him?”. Created by and loved by our majestic God.  Wow. 


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Rest

Reading: Genesis 1:31 – 2:4a

Verse Three: God blessed the seventh day and made it holy because on it He rested.

As human beings and as children of God, we are created in the image of God.  We are to model the patterns that God sets in the Bible.  We try to follow the examples that Jesus, God in the flesh, set for us in the Gospels.  In our day to day lives we try to love as Jesus loved as we seek to follow His example of ministry.  Hard as it may be to live as Jesus lived, often times we are better at this than we are at following today’s model for our lives.

After spending six days creating the world, God looks over His “very good” work.  He is pleased with what He has created.  We are pretty good at modeling these two parts of today’s passage.  We are good at working and producing and making.  At times we can even be pleased with our labors and can take pride in what we have accomplished.  Clearly we can see in this passage, and throughout the Bible, that we are created to work, to use our bodies and minds in labor.  We are also called throughout Scripture to give our very best in all we do, so our labors should produce things, ideas, … that are also “very good”.

“God blessed the seventh day and made it holy because on it He rested”.  The Sabbath, or seventh day, is holy because on this day God rested.  This is the model we find hard to follow.  We often are just as bad at taking rest as we are good at always working.  To work and work and work some more is how we respond to our culture of ‘more’ and how we try to attain ‘success’ as defined by the secular world.  It is a sad treadmill that​ we too easily climb onto.  The treadmill never leads to a destination but simply keeps on churning.  The world is happy to allow us to work and work and work.  But we are created in God’s image.  On the seventh day God made it holy and He rested.  In rest we are renewed and refreshed and recharged.  In rest we are drawn closer to God.  May we each find our Sabbath this week – our time and place of rest where God can minister to us.


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God Kept the Dark

Reading: Genesis 1: 1-30

Verse Two: … darkness was over the surface… the Spirit of God was hovering.

The creation narrative begins with the world being formless and empty.  There was darkness over the surface and “the Spirit of God was hovering”.  Sometimes we feel as if life were a bit formless or out of control and sometimes we feel a tad empty.  Life would not be the same if the world were void of these times.  God’s first act of creation is to form the light.  God chooses to separate light from dark instead of simply eliminating the darkness.

As Christians we often look at light as good and at dark as evil.  We reference Jesus as being light and we pursue “walking in the light” as a way to represent following Jesus.  We use the phrase “shine the light” to describe living out our faith as we seek to share our faith with others.  The implication here is that our ‘light’ drives away or at least exposes darkness.  And it does.  In the end, we know that light will triumph over the dark because only light can drive away darkness.  Darkness simply cannot drive away light.

Although we prefer to walk in the light, at times we​ do struggle with the dark.  On one level, sin and temptation are always near, lurking right around the edges as Satan is always at work.  On another level, life itself sometimes brings darkness.  In this sense, it is not necessarily evil.  It comes in a loss we experience or maybe it is caused by the actions of another person.  Sometimes we find ourselves in darkness as a result of our sins.  In any case, being here is uncomfortable and maybe painful.  We do not like being here.  But God kept the dark for a reason.  It is here, in the dark of the valleys, that we must trust and hold onto God the most.  It is here that we learn how much we need God.  It is often here that our faith grows the most.

We love the light.  This is our preference.  It is where we are called to live as here we reflect God’s love back out into the world.  The light is also our hope in times of darkness.  For God’s presence in both the light and the dark, we say thanks be to God.


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New Life

Reading: Acts 2: 1-21

Verse Four: All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit.

The believers were gathered together in one place.  The city was full of Jews from all over, coming to celebrate Pentecost – the giving of the Law.  When all was just right, God sent a mighty wind to unite these two disparate groups for one purpose: to grow the church.  For each of the believers there is a physical sign of God’s presence: tongues of fire appear and come to rest on each of the believers.  All are to be used in the building of the church.  It is not just the job of the disciples.  It is the commission of all believers to spread the good news of Jesus Christ.

Next, all of the believers experience a spiritual sign of God’s new presence in them.  Through the power of the Holy Spirit that now dwells in each of them, they begin to “declare the wonders of God” in many different languages.  Each speaks fluidly in a language they do not know.  Talk about an affirmation that “all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit”.  Between these two signs there is no doubt that they have been forever changed by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.  They each have new life through the Spirit.

The process of new life through the profession of Jesus as Lord continues to this day.  Entering into a personal relationship with Jesus begins the process.  It initiates the coming of the Holy Spirit to live in our hearts and it creates in us a new person – born of the Spirit.  We too feel a physical change accompanied by a spiritual change.  We are transformed into a new creation.  It is through this process that each follower of Jesus Christ is joined with the one body, the church universal.  As this body we join together in the commission to share the good news of Jesus Christ to transform the world.  Blessings today as we live out our faith.


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Go Out

Reading: Acts 2: 1-21

Verses 17 and 21: I will pour out my Spirit… And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

Come, stand in the disciples’ shoes for a few minutes.  You have gone from grief and despair to joy and courage in quick order.  Jesus has breathed the Holy Spirit into you and you are told once again to go out into the world to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ.  You are being asked to trust your life to this Holy Spirit that you just met for the first time.  And then Pentecost comes and you experience the power of the Holy Spirit as God pours it out on all the believers gathered there that day.  It would have been like seeing Jesus perform His first miracle.  Back then you thought something like, ‘Now we’ve got something here’!  The scene of all the believers being filled with the Holy Spirit and speaking in a wide variety of languages reveals to you the power of this Holy Spirit.

And just as the crowd begins to question what is happening here, Peter stands up to address the crowd.  You’re one of the eleven so you stand up too.  But as Peter speaks you find that he isn’t just talking to the crowd that day – he’s talking right to you.  Through the power of the Holy Spirit at work in him, Peter quotes from the prophet Joel.  You recognize the words, “I will pour out my Spirit…”.  You know that Joel was speaking of you.  You experienced Jesus pouring out the Spirit upon you as He breathed it into you.  You will prophesy and dream dreams and have visions.  You will see and feel God at work as the Holy Spirit leads and guides you.  But most of all you find a peace that passes understanding in the last line from Joel: “And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved”.  That’s you.  No matter what comes in this earthly life, the power of the Holy Spirit resides in you and your salvation is secure.  You are ready to go out and bring the gospel to the ends of the earth.

Now, come back to June 3, 2017.  The great commission remains in effect.  God still reigns.  The Holy Spirit dwells within you.  Go out and bring the gospel to the world!


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Lead and Guide and Protec

Reading: John 20: 19-23

Verse 22: …He breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit”.

The disciples have been taught about the Holy Spirit.  Now, today in our passage, they receive the Holy Spirit themselves as Jesus breathed it into them.  Just as God breathes human life into each of us at birth, here Jesus breathes new life into His followers.  The disciples transition from living with Jesus to having Him live IN them in the person of the Holy Spirit.  This gift of constant presence within comes with the charge to go out into the world to continue Jesus’ work.  To do so, the disciples must first overcome their own fears and doubts and, second, must trust fully in the Spirit.

Jesus does little more than give them the basic charge.  He says, “I am sending you” and then ‘He breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit”‘.  Although the scope and range of the assignment is huge and vast, it does not come with detailed instructions or a handbook or a manual.  Any of this would have led to a trust in human things instead of the power of the Holy Spirit to lead and guide and protect.  And after all, the disciples have spent three solid years receiving on-the-job training from the Master.  From the results of their work going forward, we can see that they did indeed go out and preach the good news of Jesus Christ.

We too bear the same charge and we too have the presence of the same Spirit with us as we go forth.  And we have the Bible.  Within His word we can read and review and study how Jesus and His followers lived out their love of God in the world.  We can glean out how to pray and how to fully trust in God’s care and provision.  Through the witness and testimony we find in the Word we can come to see and understand the power of the Holy Spirit and can then trust in the Holy Spirit to lead and guide and protect us as well.  Filled with this knowledge and trust, may we also go out to share the good news of Jesus Christ.


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Forever with Them

Reading: John 20: 19-23

Verse 19: As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.

It has been quite a week for the disciples.  There was the big splash of the triumphal entry on what we call Palm Sunday.  It seemed as if everyone in Jerusalem was out there supporting Jesus.  But right after the parade Jesus again speaks of His coming death – but it oddly seems closer now.  Jesus teaches through the week and clashes with the Jewish authorities – seemed like a pretty ordinary week.  Until Thursday night.  They set up to celebrate the Passover and Jesus washes the disciples’ feet.  He speaks of them becoming like servants too.  Among other words, Jesus again promises them the Holy Spirit and explains some of what the ‘Counselor’ will do for them.  Then, in a whirlwind of activity, Jesus is arrested, tried, and crucified.  Suddenly their world is turned upside down.  Their leader is gone and they fear for their lives.  Hope died on that cross.  They have seen the empty tomb and have heard Mary Magdalene tell of seeing the risen Lord.

But this night the disciples remain huddled together, hidden behind locked doors “for fear of the Jews”.  Doubt and fear and grief and confusion had to be swirling in their heads.  And then Jesus comes to them.  He opens with, “Peace be with you”.  He shows them His hands and His side.  In mere seconds, the disciples’ mindset changes drastically.  Again Jesus offers them peace then says,  “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you”.  More than one probably thought back to the cross and wondered about being sent out into the world.  Next Jesus breathes the Holy Spirit into and into them.  In His presence, with His breathe covering them, they must have physically felt the Holy Spirit enter them.  Doubt and fear and… must have vanished in an instant.

These disciples will go out and spread the good news of Jesus Christ far and wide.  They will speak with power and authority.  All will give their lives for their faith.  The Holy Spirit allowed the disciples to live out their faith without any fear of this world and without any fear of death.  They knew that Jesus Christ was forever with them.  May we follow their example as we live out our faith today and every day.