Today Is Not The Day

Five years ago today I retired from Mayo Clinic. Retired! What a wonderful word! What a wonderful "goal" to reach! I retired, but I wasn't exactly retired.

I had worked at Mayo Clinic as an occupational therapist for 27 years. 27 good years in a career that was rewarding and where I worked with many great people, both patients and co-workers, along the way. But as July, 2013 came to an end it was time to move on. In 2011 I had finished a Masters of Divinity degree and for two years I had been seeking a church to serve as a pastor. In early July things fell into place, as I received and accepted a call to serve in Dulce, New Mexico as the pastor of the Jicarilla Apache Reformed Church. And so I retired.

In leaving one vocation for another my retirement was more a matter of semantics than fact. I was of an age and had accumulated sufficient years of employment at Mayo that I could "retire" rather than resign. The two benefits were being able to keep Mayo for my health insurance, and having Mayo host a party on my last day. I was still the primary breadwinner for my family, and we needed to eat. So late in August Robin, Kat and I moved to New Mexico to begin the next chapter of life.

One of the things that has become a habit of mine here is to have an eye set towards the ground as I walk around the church property. I am frequently finding nails and broken glass on the ground, even five years later. The picture on top is from when I set a lawn chair out yesterday to do a bit of reading. As I sat down I saw a nail right in front of the chair.  Robin has heard me say, more than once, that the day I don’t find nails or glass in the yard is the day it is time to leave the ministry in Dulce.  I found a nail yesterday, and for me that is close enough to know that today is not the day to start packing.

More seriously, there are a number of reasons that after five years in, it is not time to go. Not time as far as we can figure it out, that is. We trust in God and that whatever our ideas may be, in the end he will make it clear when that day comes.

When we came to Dulce it was with the understanding that we would be here about ten years. Five years in, we could be marking the half-way point. Could be, but we think we are still on the uphill slope, so to speak.

Five years ago the denomination we are a part of had a plan to provide financial support to the pastor's salary for ten years, hence the ten year timeline. That plan has proved unsustainable, and so we are working out other ways to fill the gap and cover my salary, and so that factor by itself is not enough for us to sense the end approaching.

But five years has also made clear some things that we didn’t understand when we arrived. We thought that we were coming to serve a small church in a small town, with the cross-cultural aspect of living on a reservation and among the Jicarilla Apache people. And while those things are all true we have come to see more clearly the "mission" aspect of this ministry, in that even though the church has been here 104 years this is still very much an unevangelized place. Many people may know the name of Jesus, but they are unaware of who he really is and why he lived and died the way he did.

For the past five years we have been doing the basic work that any small church might do in proclaiming the good news of Jesus, but perhaps of nearly equal importance we have been building relationships and growing in our understanding of the particular problems within this community.  To bring the hope of the gospel to people outside of the church proper they need to know that we care for them and for the things that they struggle with in life.

And so, five years in and at age where increasing numbers of my friends are moving to "greener pastures", I don’t feel all that old.  And, thankfully, neither does Robin. Our family has changed a bit in the last year, and we hope to be able to write about that a bit more freely soon. In a counter-cultural fashion during our last ten years together we have gone from an empty nest to a very full one.

"Real" retirement? If could be five years out but we are thinking that ten years are perhaps more likely.  Stray nails and glass or not, today is not the day. To God be the glory! Amen.

If you, or your church, would like to support the work of the ministry in Dulce, either through a single gift or ongoing support, please give me a call or send an email to: bradkautz@gmail.com

"You're Only Hurting Yourself"

"You're only hurting yourself."

What child hasn’t heard those words a time or two, or three?  What parent hasn't said them, over and over? And does the adult exist who hasn't come to the conclusion, at least once in their life, that the only person being hurt in a particular moment of anger was their own self?

While the idea that "you're only hurting yourself" may sound like common, practical wisdom, the other day I was surprised to learn it is also biblical wisdom.  I was reading Jeremiah 25, where the prophet Jeremiah is warning the people of Judah of the coming judgment of God. God's judgment is coming specifically because they have been repeatedly disobedient. They have engaged in evil ways, done evil deeds, and repeatedly committed the most serious of offense of pursuing false gods.  In verse 7 Jeremiah ends the first part of his warning by saying:

"Yet you have not listened to me, declares the Lord, that you might provoke me to anger with the work of your hands to your own harm." 

"…the work of your hands to your own harm" is Jeremiah's way of saying "you're only hurting yourself."  The people of Judah are ignoring God's words of warning, thereby provoking his anger towards them, an anger that finds its source in the ungodly ways they are choosing to live, which will end in being on the receiving end of God's punishment.  In choosing to sin against God they are choosing the suffering that will result. 

Jeremiah wrote those words about 2,600 years ago, and they still speak God's truth to us today.  We can think of the way that God outlines for his people to live as being rules, and sometimes as harsh rules. The Ten Commandments of Exodus 20 are perhaps the most basic rules. You shall not. You shall not. You shall not…  You get the idea.

They are rules, but they are often very clear rules, and they are rules given for our own good.  Seen from the point-of-view we have as sinners they look like ways to take away all the things that we enjoy.  But from the point-of-view of God they take away the things that bring us harm and give us lots of room to enjoy the good things God gives to his children.  Sometimes we look at them as being bare bones rules, without a lot of detail, but that is most often when we are looking for ways to make excuses to break them.  And when we do, at best, "we are only hurting ourselves."  At worst, we are bringing suffering onto others who are downstream of our sin.

So look at your life, look at the rules and the other wisdom throughout the Bible that God provides to shape your life, and look towards God to give you what you need to stay between the lines as you live in ways that bring him pleasure and shine his light into the world. Amen. 

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Extenuating Circumstances

Yesterday Kat and I spent the day in Durango. I needed to get some work done on the church car, aka "The Pastormobile," and she needed to get her braces off.  We knew the car appointment would take several hours, and also that the orthodontist involved a morning and afternoon visit, and so we left early and returned late.

If you are my friend on Facebook you may have seen some of the posts that gave a snapshot of our day. Unseen were the two hours of travel each way and several long periods of time with not a lot going on, such as the time we spent hanging out at the library before going to the orthodontist.

All-in-all it was a pretty good day for both of us, until we got home.  Then things got a bit complicated, for both the parents and the daughter. In a nutshell the problem involved the expectation that Kat gets in a certain amount of reading each weekday.  Suffice to say that the reading didn’t happen and as we "discussed" this our daughter presented many extenuating circumstances and side arguments.

The logic of her arguments was at times tortuous, and in some cases the relevance to the issue at hand was completely non-existent.  As parents we struggled in having her understand, and acknowledge one simple fact. That fact was that she knew she was supposed to read, and her failure to do so, in the presence of more than adequate amount of time, was entirely her fault.  "I'm sorry, I made a mistake."  It was as simple as that, or at least it should have been.

Eventually I came to see in our daughter's reasoning the same thing that we often try do to with our sin, which is to find and apply every possible attempt under the sun to evade our responsibility for it.

I didn't know. I thought no one was looking. Everyone else was doing it. The devil made me do it. 

The Bible shows a time of future judgment, when all people will come before God and the record of their life will be plainly visible. At that time there will be no end to the pleading of extenuating circumstances.

Unless…

Unless in this life on earth one has come to know Jesus as their Savior. To know Jesus as the one who took away their sin and gave them peace with God.

The Hebrews 7:25 the author writes this in speaking of the role of Jesus as the last high priest:

"Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them."

Judgment is coming and our choice, now, is to trust in our own ability to defend each sin we have committed against God, or to trust in Jesus, who will faithfully and with perfect effectiveness intercede on our behalf. 

I can’t make up enough excuses or fabricate enough extenuating circumstances to explain away even a single sin, but by faith in Jesus I won’t need to. In the great exchange of my sin for his righteousness the finding in my appearance at the final court will be "not guilty." May this be true for you too. Amen.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Dry Seasons

Five years ago next month we arrived in Dulce. During those first weeks we would look into the field south of the parsonage and see a dog moving about in the grass.  The dog was large and the grass was tall, and so often all that we could see of the dog would be glimpses of its back. To this day we still see the same dog, which we refer to as the "bear dog," because when we first saw it all that could be seen was bits of fur, and so we didn’t know if it was a large dog or a small bear. While bears are nice to watch from a safe distance we are glad that the bear dog is all dog.

This year the bear dog remains, but the grass is a different story. We had a dry winter, a dry spring and to this point it is a dry summer. There is hardly any grass.  A few patches of brush and weeds that could give cover to a Chihuahua, but not much else.  This is, by far, the driest it has been since we have been in Dulce. When I look at the south field, or the parsonage yard, or just about anywhere else in town that isn't being watered, I wonder if the grass can ever come back.

This past weekend Robin and I were talking about some of the people we know here who have been through, and in some case are in the midst right now, hard times of trial. One loss, one setback, one disappointment on top of another. How much suffering can a person, or a family bear?  How much drought can come into their lives until there is no life left?

Those are hard questions. Ones that I don’t have any answers for, at least not any that don’t ring hollow or sound trite.  What I do have is faith in a God who holds all things at all times, even when the evidence of that truth might be hard to see at the moment. 

When the weather is dry the remedy is water. Large areas may only be helped by rain, and I can’t force the rain. But a small area may be helped by something as simple as turning on a hose. For the dry seasons in a person's life the faucet is turned on by opening the pages of the Bible and beginning to read.

We begin to find life as we read God's word, and in particular the passages that tell us of the nature of God.  Yesterday someone asked me what to read for personal encouragement and I suggested Psalm 111.  Read it for yourself and see how the psalmist lifts up the character of God over and over. Psalm 111 is full of the wisdom that nourishes the soul.

I also made some hospital calls yesterday, reading Psalm 23 with two different people. It is another place where the author tells of how clearly God is present with him in all things, ending with words of everlasting hope,

"…and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever."

Those are just two examples of true hope to be found in God's word. There are, literally, hundreds of places where a person can find encouragement and true life.

One day, and maybe soon, rain will certainly come to Dulce, and our dry season will end. We just don't know when that day will arrive. But for the dry seasons in life, true Living Water is as near as the pages of your Bible.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Costly Joy

Joy!  What a delightful thing to see in others, and to experience ourselves. To be so filled with pleasure and happiness that they seem to overflow, to gush out, from a person. Like an open fire hydrant spraying on a hot summer day, joy is something that flows out from a person and soaks everyone who is near.

I got to thinking about joy when I saw something on Facebook from a friend of mine who is a pastor.  At his church there was going to be a series of sermons based on the fruits of the Spirit listed in Galatians 5:22-23, where Paul writes:

"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law."

When I saw that list, and went to read those verses, I was struck by something about them.  They are all really good things that can be present within the life of the believer in Jesus. They are the kinds of things we would both like to see present in our lives, as well as being things that we want to grow in. 

For example, I want to be loving towards others, and to grow as a loving person. I want to experience joy, and to grow in knowing more joy in daily life.  I want to know peace in my life, I want to have more peace in my life, and I want the peace of Christ to be present within people whom I love. 

But back to joy.

Paul is writing specifically about fruits, or benefits, that come as a consequence of having faith in Jesus. Faith in Jesus means believing that Jesus is both the Savior and Lord of a person's life.  And to know Jesus as Savior means knowing that a person is a sinner, in need of salvation, or rescue, and believing that their rescue comes only by faith in Jesus as their rescuer.  Jesus, only Jesus, and no one or thing else.

So what does all this have to do with joy, and particularly the title of this post, Costly Joy?

The point is that the joy a Christian knows in their Savior comes at a great price to God the Father. Last week I preached from John 3:16-18, where verse 16 says:

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life."

Within those words is the idea that God the Father freely gave his only Son to suffer the greatest injustice in all of history so that those who would believe in the finished work of that Son could rest, forever, in the love of God.

Human language can only give us limited and imperfect ways of understanding God as God truly is.  How painful was it for the Father to see the trial and execution of the Son? How hard did the Spirit have to work to sustain the Son in being faithful as he completed the task that no other person could even attempt?

We can know joy as we follow Jesus, but let us not forget that our joy came at great cost, not only to the Son who gave his life, but also to the Father who gave his Son, and to the Spirit, who works the will of God in all things.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Read it. Write it. Pray it. Share it.

While I was in Michigan in June I heard a pastor talk about something that his church was doing that was leading them to grow as disciples of Jesus.  First of all he said that people in the congregation were committing themselves to reading a chapter of the Bible each day.  They weren't all reading the same chapter, and some of them were reading much more than that, but at a minimum many people were reading one chapter from their Bible every day.  It's what they did with that chapter that was making the difference.

As they read the chapter they would settle on one verse from that chapter and do four things with it. They would read it, write it, pray it and share it. Reading it was the easy part, as they were reading a chapter to begin with.  Next they would take one verse and write it down. As they wrote the words the verse and its meaning would penetrate a bit more deeply into their minds and their hearts.  Then they would pray that verse back to God.  As they would lift to God his very own words the people would find more ways, and stronger ways, in which that verse had relevance to their lives and the world. Lastly, they would share that verse with someone else.  Sometimes they would share the verse with people they knew, but as they grew as disciples and began sharing their verse with people outside of their church they began to see God work more powerfully in their community. 

I've been trying this method since I came home. The verse I chose today is Psalm 119:9, which says:

"How can a young man keep his way pure?

 By guarding it according to your word."

As I read it, and then wrote it, it was easy to see that its truth isn't merely for young men, and young women, but for all who love and follow God. There are so many places in God's word that he gives us guidance as to how to live, both with him and with each other. He doesn't give us this guidance to oppress us and keep us away from what we might think of as fun in the moment, but to protect us as his dearly loved children.

And so then my prayer became one of thanks for his giving of his word.  I asked that I might receive it in the manner desired, that is as something for my good, even if in a particular moment I would rather break his rules than follow them.  I prayed that as temptation arose throughout the day I would seek refuge in him and the wisdom of his word.  I haven't shared it, yet, but I'm trusting that God will bring me the opportunity to do so.

The pastor who told me of this serves in inner-city Los Angeles, in a neighborhood that recently saw a drop in murders from 300/year to 20/year.  Twenty murders is still a lot, but the drop is staggering. To this pastor it is evidence that as his congregation digs into God's word and leads to growth as disciples, that word is making a very real impact on the place they live.

Dulce is not inner-city LA, but very real pain is present in our community as a whole, and in the lives of so many people.  May we be people of God who dig into his word and live by it, bringing peace and true hope to the people of Dulce. 

God's word: Lets read it, write it, pray it and share it. Amen

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.