My special guest this afternoon was Brently Owen, the youngest of my grandsons, who will turn three on March 3^rd. He had to be awakened from a nap and separated from his cousins, Sarah and Natalie, because they had an appointment with the Pediatrician. Bo, as we call him, was not happy and cried for quite awhile as we sat and rocked. As he cried I talked; telling him that he was safe and loved and that his mommy would pick him up as soon as she could.

After about 15 minutes the tears and pitiful little sobs came to an end. In silence we continued to rock and I expected Bo to go to sleep as he was very still and seemed to have his eyes closed. It’s wonderful to hold a child and think about all the promise and hope that life represents.

All morning my thoughts had been focused on Luke’s account of Mary and Joseph presenting Jesus at the Temple (Luke 2:21-40). These verses feature two of my favorite characters in the Christmas story: Simeon and Anna.

As I rocked Bo, I wondered what it must have been like for Simeon to catch a glimpse of a baby, and through the revelation of the Holy Spirit, instantly know this is the long awaited Messiah! Can we even begin to imagine the emotions Simeon must’ve experienced?

We don’t know if Joseph and Mary hesitated when Simeon reached out to take the baby in his arms, but we can hear the excitement in the words Luke records for us as this respected, righteous and devout man praises God. He recognizes the baby as the promised, anticipated salvation; a God-revealing Light for all people. He holds a child and understands potential.

We don’t know if Simeon spoke in hushed tones or in a loud voice; there is no record of people crowding around but we do know that Anna, when she showed up, started singing praise to God! That would be hard to ignore.

Imagine Joseph and Mary – they’ve already had angel visitors – taking this all in; wondering, believing, hoping, trusting, fearing . . .

Bo didn’t go to sleep and soon we were on the floor playing and laughing but part of my mind was still wondering about Simeon and Anna.

I want Bo, and all my grandchildren, to grow up knowing adults, including me, who are living in “prayerful expectancy” of Jesus. He has come to bring us salvation; His rule and authority in our lives should show in every detail. Our faithfulness and worship of the one and only God and our anticipation of His return should be obvious to all.

This Christmas I pray that we would be prayerfully expectant. Christ has come. The promise is fulfilled. The hope of the nations and all people is the God-revealing Light for the whole world.

An electric race car set! We found it at Sears and it was all my brother and I wanted for Christmas. Our parents made us agree to a long list of conditions but ultimately bought the large, colorful box containing race cars and track. Up to that point, in 1967, it was the most expensive gift they ever purchased.

There was no hiding it. I remember the box sitting on the back seat between me and Mark because the trunk of the Chevy Bel Air sedan was packed with groceries for the next two weeks. We lived in a very small two bedroom apartment next to the school where Dad & Mom taught on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota. Bismarck was the closest major city and we made the 250 mile round trip about every two weeks.

They made us wait until Christmas to actually open the box! There it was, under the tree, no gift wrapping. We studied the pictures, read everything printed on the outside of the box, made plans, and anxiously dreamed about what we would do on Christmas morning. There were multiple track layouts and we argued about which design to build first. The anticipation was so intense I can still remember when, after all the other gifts were opened, we were finally allowed to begin set-up. That race car set provided hours and hours of delight!

Now, forty-three years later, I wonder what life would’ve been like if we would’ve never opened the box? What if all we did was look at the outside and dream and make plans? What if we never snapped the track together and plugged in the transformer? What if all we ever did was study the outside of the box?

That’s how many people treat the greatest Gift of all. Jesus, God’s gift of His one and only Son, is a box we admire, maybe even read about, but fail to fully embrace, fail to enter into that eternally significant relationship.

Opening the Father’s present to us is daunting; it requires repentance, risk, and a re-ordering of priorities. The result is life-changing but the alternative is unthinkable because we miss all our Creator intends for us.

This Christmas, don’t let all the distractions keep you from experiencing the greatest Gift of all.

I tried to ignore it but found out that if someone knows and posts a note on Facebook there is no way to avoid it. I have received scores of notes wishing me a Happy Birthday. Thanks to all.

I was born 56 years ago today in Pasadena, California. I’ve always been amazed that my maternal grandparents sold their business and home in Orange City, Iowa and moved to California when I was born. They were significant people in my life and even though they died in 1984, I am forever marked by their life-changing encounter with Christ.

The most memorable quality of my grandfather was his commitment to God’s Word. I can remember celebrating many birthdays when, after we finished eating, Grandpa would say, “let me share something from the Word.”

Then he would begin from memory. Specifically I can recall that he memorized the whole Gospel of John and all of Hebrews, 1 Peter, and James. It was all in King James and in my mind I can still hear him reciting Psalm 139. Birthdays are a great occasion to read and pray Psalm 139. I’ve included my favorite lines from the NIV:

¹ You have searched me, LORD,
   and you know me.
² You know when I sit and when I rise;
   you perceive my thoughts from afar.
³ You discern my going out and my lying down;
   you are familiar with all my ways.
⁴ Before a word is on my tongue
   you, LORD, know it completely.
⁵ You hem me in behind and before,
   and you lay your hand upon me.
⁶ Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
   too lofty for me to attain.

¹³ For you created my inmost being;
   you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
¹⁴ I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
   your works are wonderful,
   I know that full well.
¹⁵ My frame was not hidden from you
   when I was made in the secret place,
   when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
¹⁶ Your eyes saw my unformed body;
   all the days ordained for me were written in your book
   before one of them came to be.
²³ Search me, God, and know my heart;
   test me and know my anxious thoughts.
²⁴ See if there is any offensive way in me,
   and lead me in the way everlasting.

I recently received this note from a young lady:

“I’m slowly beginning to give up on God; he never fails to make me mad every day!

Yesterday, a WONDERFUL family lost their 2 year old little girl. Her mom was putting vegetables in the back of the truck while the little girl played inside the truck. The little girl must have put it in neutral; the truck took off down the hill, went into the pond, and she drowned. The mom dove in the pond after her like any mother would do but couldn’t find her in time.

Why does stuff like that happen? If there is a God he is doing a poor job and I hate him!

Just like that family this summer where the mom, dad and kids were in the car and they crashed and the car seat, with the baby strapped in went through the windshield killing the child.

Why would God just take them away like that? I have never met either of these children, but to think that God would snatch my child at any time makes me sick.

I have never been so angry in my life; he has let me down. Out of ALL the people God could remove from this earth he takes helpless children in the most awful and painful ways. I really don’t think I can ever go back to him; he is no god in my eyes.”

This is my response:

I care. You’re obviously hurting right now and I wish I could be there to let you know how important you are. The words you are about to read are written with love – the kind of love which should let you know that nothing you could ever do would make God love you less.

Bad things happen to good people.

We live in a broken world. It all started in a perfect Garden, thousands of years ago when the first humans were unable to obey a simple command and sin began to multiply in this world. Since that time, sin, which is at work in all of Adam and Eve’s descendants, compels us to be in charge of our own lives; to live without God. Living in a sinful world means we deal with accidents and sickness and all kinds of tragedies that happen to good and bad people alike.

If it were not for God’s mercy (when He withholds what we really deserve for our sinfulness) and grace (when He generously gives us what we could never deserve) our lives would be filled with the horror of constant tragedy, pain, and separation from all that is good. At this very instant, God’s goodness is being poured out all over the world because He loves us in spite of our rejection of His only Son, Jesus as the Master, King and leader of our lives.

Is God powerful enough to stop tragedies like the death of the two children you heard about? Yes, absolutely! And He does prevent accidents all the time – but not every time. That’s what we find so difficult to understand and accept.

Why doesn’t God stop all the bad things from happening? Because He loves us. God understands how foolish it would be to let us have our own way all the time. If I got my way and what I want every time, I would soon think of myself as god.

We have finite minds and that makes it difficult to understand an infinite God. Every day we grapple with the limitations of being human but God is not limited. We can only guess what might happen tomorrow but God knows every detail.

Don’t reject God because He doesn’t measure up to your standard. My measuring stick and your standard is broken and faulty. God is trustworthy because He is all-powerful, always present, and knows everything. Even when everything seems to be going wrong, God is still in charge.

Trust God.

“I” Trouble

I took the test and failed.

Several months ago I was challenged to try going a whole day without using a personal pronoun; I, my, me, mine, etc. I failed. In fact, I failed within the first hour! It’s very difficult to have any conversation without “I” or “me.” (Maybe you should try this exercise?)

I now openly admit: I have “I” trouble. New glasses or contacts will not correct this type of “I” trouble. This condition is a great concern because the life of a fully devoted follower of Christ should have God the Father, Jesus his Son, and the Holy Spirit at the center – not the little trinity of “me, myself, and I.”

But there is a response to “I” trouble: Humility.

Humility is seriously maligned in our culture but it’s because it is so misunderstood. Humility is not weakness, or timidity, or an attitude of worthlessness. Humility is not an attitude of “poor me; nobody loves me, everybody hates me; I’m going to go eat worms.” That is not humility as portrayed in God’s Word.

In Philippians 2, beginning at verse 5 we find a description of humility: “Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. He had equal status with God but didn’t think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn’t claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death . . .” (from The Message)

The best way to summarize what Scripture teaches us is: “Biblical humility is being able to look at myself and see what God sees.”

What does God see when He looks at a follower of Christ? Someone who is forgiven, restored, and adopted into the family of God; one whose brother is Jesus and who will share in the inheritance of the Son. Can you see yourself from God’s perspective?

Humility is the ONLY response to “I” trouble.

The variety and intensity of emotion for various causes can be found in my email in-box. Politics, world affairs, the economy, even doctrinal disputes are argued and advertised with fervor.

Much of today’s Christian activism is wrong-headed – it reflects hearts that get caught up in activity which ultimately does not reflect Biblical thinking. It subjects the Christian life to fits and spurts, bursts of zeal without wisdom, activism barren of biblical insight, high-tech evangelism wanting for body-life, and spiritual hype insensitive to the complexity of evil. Christians are running out of energy just getting from one activity to the next without any thought for the disciplines of true discipleship. They’re burning out and dropping out. They’re caught in a performance trap that leaves them wasted. Those who are rushing around are no longer certain of what they want out of life. They are unable to distinguish between willing obedience and willfulness, between false guilt and Spirit-led action, between self-expression and self-denial.

Real faith in God is essentially practical not promotional. It requires humility not publicity. “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world” (James 1:27). Thoughtful Biblical living understands humble service, inner strength, quiet resolve, disciplined growth, and the sacrifice of praise. It’s in the routine of life, at the center of our daily existence with all its tensions and tedium that the heart that seeks after God pulsates with grace and truth.

(Thanks to Doug Webster for stimulating my thinking and providing most of the above text.)

Ken and Marla (pseudonyms) were five years into their marriage when they called asking to meet. I’d known them for the past four years and to an outsider they seemed to have a “fairy tale” family. It didn’t take long to learn that beneath the façade of great looks, fancy cars, and a huge house in the best location, both of them were ready to call divorce lawyers.

Several weeks ago I received two calls on the same day from First CU Church of Dunkerville (pseudonym). The first call was from the pastor and the other from one of the elders. The pastor was angry and ready to leave because he felt the expectations for his time were unreasonable. The elders were frustrated because the pastor wasn’t helping enough with the church remodeling project.

Yesterday I spoke to a church leader who is trying to navigate through some very heated decisions on where to spend a chunk of money received from an estate. He explained, “It wouldn’t be so difficult if there were only two sides but everyone has an opinion and is claiming their idea to be the most spiritual.”

All three of these situations resulted in one question: “Where are your priorities?”

Worshipping and serving God as a team in a covenant marriage? Or the selfishness of relationships that says, “What’s in it for me?”

Is the advancement of the Kingdom of God the number 1 priority? Or has the church facility become an idol?

What’s more important? Personal preferences and private agendas or the recognition that investing resources in people is what reaches other people for the Kingdom of God?

What is your priority?

We purchased it at Sears. It wasn’t the cheapest model nor was it the most expensive. We loaded two boxes in our new station wagon: one was very heavy; the other lighter, but bulky. No time was wasted when we got home: Lois was eight months pregnant and the crib needed to be assembled – now! I distinctly recall wading through the confusing instructions and almost indecipherable diagrams and watching Lois, out of the corner of my eye, standing at the bedroom door bewildered that it could take so long to put together a crib.

Finally, hours later, it was complete.

Lois was leaning over the adjustable rail to put the freshly washed sheets on the mattress when there was a pop and the rail fell into the crib. Holding on to the rail so it wouldn’t fall on her toes, Lois turned and looked at me, burst into tears saying, “This crib is supposed to protect our baby!”

Cribs are designed to protect. (Yes, we did get the crib assembled correctly and used it with all three of our children before giving it away to another young family.) There is something comforting about putting a baby in a crib; knowing the child will be safe. But as the child begins to grow, parents trade the crib for a toddler bed with a rail and then for a full-size bed. Bunk beds may even be included in the process. Parents teach children how to get in and out of bed, how to make the bed, how to change the sheets; it’s all part of growing up.

Oh how necessary it is for us to recognize that growing up in Christ also means leaving the safety and comfort of the crib! Just as we move from Birth to Benediction and from Formula to Faithfulness, we are compelled to move from the calm and security of our holy huddles into the crucible of the world.

A crucible is where precious metals are purified. It is the graphite container in which gold, for instance, is melted down in order to make an exquisite piece of jewelry.

Our crucible is living in the world where bankruptcy, divorce, accidents, unplanned pregnancy, violence, cancer, and heart attacks assail Christ followers along with everyone else. And we live in and through those circumstances without complaint, smiling through our tears because we know Jesus said to expect all this trouble. (John 16:33)

Jesus says, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” (Luke 9:23) “Jesus would say to us, ‘Get a life. Mix it up. Put yourself in the company of the needy. Keep your eyes peeled for widows. Don’t divert your eyes from the lame. Pay attention to them. Let’s not make ministry into a mystery. Get in the game. Just do it!’” (Webster in Text Messaging, p 123.)

We learn to resist the expectation that following Jesus will be safe and comfortable and confidently live with the assurance that God will be us. “Don’t let your hearts be troubled.” (John 14:1) Our hearts are not anxious even though our circumstances might include pain, loneliness, frustration and conflict.

We have hope. That assurance allows us to fully embrace this life while we anticipate eternity. Hope – which gives us the courage to leave the crib and live in the crucible.

The vitality of our Christianity is proven in the crucible of living in such a way that we choose to be uncomfortable, unknown, and unpretentious. Instead, we fully embrace living outside the crib so that others, who are already experiencing the crucible, will see Christ in us.

“Father in Heaven, I pray for confident strength to move from the crib I find so comforting and safe to the crucible where I can learn to be like Jesus. Amen.”

I have a particular memory of Broc, my second oldest grandson, when he was about 8 months old. He was able to hold the bottle himself and was sitting on my lap and I was talking to someone else in the room. With an incredibly accurate aim, in a split second, he popped the bottle out of his mouth, squeezed and shot a stream of formula right in my mouth! Yuck!

Fortunately, Broc set aside the bottle for a covered cup and progressed to a regular glass. At seven years old, he can eat as well as most adults; if we’re grilling steaks he needs a full-size one just like Dad.

But let’s be honest: there are lots of people who call themselves Christians who are still satisfied with formula; they’ve still not matured to a life of faithfulness.

Some people live under the assumption that faithfulness is attained by more and more study of the Bible. While Bible study is an important component of faithfulness, we have to be careful to hear James, who says, “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.” (James 1:22) We have become proficient at gaining considerable Bible knowledge but putting very little into practice.

Faithfulness actually combines knowledge, obedience and service.

Faithfulness is a result of obedience. We’ve heard it many times: To believe is to obey and to obey is to believe. That’s the bottom line. But is it possible that we’ve succumbed to cultures’ message that fulfillment is found in getting to do whatever we want, whenever we want? Jesus calls us to follow him and following Jesus means I’m not in charge. (Matthew 16:24-28)

The life of obedience begins at the cross – my cross, your cross – the cross where we put to death our selfish ways and submit to the leadership of Christ. (Galatians 5:24) It’s a cross we may have to come back to often; to submit our will to His will; to learn how to obey. Faithfulness demands it.

Faithfulness does not mean living a perfect life. Not one of us learned how to obey without failure. Parents patiently teach children how to obey and often allow us to experience the consequences of faulty behavior. God, our Heavenly Father, has never required perfection. He is infinitely patient with us because he knows our weaknesses. He is prepared for the times when we take the wrong path or make the wrong choice or even blatantly disobey.

In those instances our faithfulness is proven we when confess and repent. Confession is simply acknowledging that we have sinned against God. Repentance is turning away from the patterns, behaviors and attitudes that lead to sin. People still dependent on formula seem to be trapped in cycles of confession and sin and more confession without inserting the vital step of repentance. Moving from formula to faithfulness requires genuine repentance and that always results in change.

Faithfulness is revealed and proven in real life. How we apply Scripture to various circumstances and situations is important but letting Scripture penetrate to the very core of our being is critical. I will never forget the scathing verbal barb from a teenager. She said, “At home, my parents are no different from my friend’s parents who never go to church.” The statistics support her charge.

In all the areas where faithfulness should be illustrated by lifestyle there is no statistical difference between people who attend church and those who don’t. Divorce, infidelity, pornography, substance abuse, and financial miss-management are epidemic in the church and outside.

The way we live is a stark reminder of our need to move from formula to faithfulness!