"To Him be glory forever": November 2020

Wednesday, November 25, 2020

Thanksgiving

As Thanksgiving comes this year the only tree I know of with any leaves on it is our family’s Thankfulness tree. At the end of October Robin cut the trunk and branches out of construction paper and taped them to the wall in our dining room. As part of our family devotions on the first day of November each member of the family took a paper leaf and wrote something on it that we were thankful for, taping the leaf to the tree. Then, as we ended our devotions in prayer, each person included whatever it was that they were thankful for in their part of the prayer. As I write this post there are 120 leaves on the tree, and six days left in November for us to add to it. The leaves on the trees outside have fallen and blown away, while the tree in our dining room continues to add new ones.

Here’s what happens. Each day after dinner I get out a Bible and a book we are using to teach our children the Heidelberg Catechism. I lead that portion of our devotions and then Robin leads the part around thankfulness. Each day she has a different suggestion for the leaf. Something we are thankful for about the person sitting on our right. Or something that we know how to do. Or something about living here on the reservation. While we have the same topic we have a wide variety of things each day, which we share with each other before we pray together. Robin and I agree that it has been a very good activity for our family.

One of the best parts of this activity is not the “being thankful for” but “being thankful to,” which happens as we pray. The Thankfulness tree has opened up our minds to be aware that even in the midst of the pandemic there are many things to be thankful for. But none of these things come at random, as if they were self-existent and we merely happened to stumble into them.

Each thing that I am thankful for, that we are thankful for, comes to us from God, in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. The opening of John’s Gospel includes these words:

“All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.”

If all things were made through Jesus then all things come through Jesus, and all thanks go to Jesus.

Thanksgiving 2020 will be very different from past years. Fewer large family gatherings and more small celebrations. Whatever the size of the gathering there will still be people who make it part of their celebration to share together what they may be thankful for.

The thought I want to leave you with for this Thanksgiving is to go beyond what you are thankful for and give thanks to the Lord Jesus, the one from whose hand all things come.

Tuesday, November 17, 2020

Living On A Spiral

A few weeks ago I wrote a blog post about one of the terms within Christianity that can be taken different ways. The term was “evangelical”, which some people understand negatively while others, myself included, consider it in a positive way. Today I want to dig, just a little, into a different term. One that also has its negative and positive understandings. That term is “born again.”

The basic idea underlying being born again comes from the Gospel of John, chapter 3, verses 1-8. Jesus is having a conversation with Nicodemus. In verse 3 John writes:

“Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.””

Jesus then teaches Nicodemus what he is getting at, which is that true children of God receive spiritual life through the power and work of the Holy Spirit. Jesus emphasizes the absolute necessity of this spiritual birth in verse 7, saying:

“You must be born again.”

According to Jesus, being born again is not optional for entrance to the kingdom of God.

Negatively, there are people who come from Christian traditions where, for any number of reasons, the language of “born again” is not used, and the idea itself is not considered to be a central part of Christian belief.

Another way that born again can seem negative is when someone undergoes this new birth and then acts accordingly, especially as they show great enthusiasm in sharing the good news of Jesus with nearly everyone who crosses their path.

And the last negative that comes to mind is the person who is born again while in the midst of some sort of mess in their life, such as the jailhouse conversion. We hear that they have religion and we are immediately skeptical.

But, despite the perceived negatives…the truth of Jesus’ words remains. Being born again is essential to entering the kingdom of God. What does it look like to be born again? Paul helps us out in 2 Corinthians 5:17, where he writes:

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”

I take this to mean that we are the same people, and yet also not the same people. There has been a fundamental change in the way we perceive and relate to both God and the world. In writing on the nature of being born again Stephen Charnock asked what was for me a thought-provoking question: “Can any man live the life of God that does not care for the presence of God, either speaking to him, or thinking of him?”[1]

Being born again is a one-time thing. The old passes and the new comes. But living as someone who is born again is a life-long task. Later on the same page Charnock writes: “The new nature, being made up of an inclination to God, the proper language of that is “It is good for me to draw near to God.””

Being born again is a bit like living on a spiral, moving from the outside and drawing closer and closer to the center. Caring for the presence of God. Speaking to him. Thinking of him. Drawing nearer and nearer.

May this experience of being and living as one who is born again be true for you and for me.

Photo credit: https://almondemotion.com/2019/06/17/spiral/

[1] The Works of Stephen Charnock, vol. 3, p.147.

Wednesday, November 11, 2020

Faithfulness In Prayer

Ever since we were dating Robin and I have had the habit of ending our day by reading from the Bible and praying together. Right now we are in the New Testament and last night we started reading 1 Thessalonians. In the second verse of the first chapter Paul writes:

“We give thanks to God always for all of you, constantly mentioning you in our prayers”

Paul goes on to say why it is that he prays for the Thessalonian Christians but those words, “all of you, constantly” stuck in my head. They reminded me of the people we pray for together, by name, nearly every day. They include:

Our children
Our grandchildren
Our parents
People from our community living in care facilities.
People from our community who struggle with addiction.

A number of people we either know, or are aware of, who are dealing with hard situations that we know will last for a very, very long time.

Other people and situations come and go from our prayer together, but these are people we feel led to lift to the Lord over and over and over.

Sometimes the ways in which we pray for them are specific, such as for things in the lives of our children still living at home. Other times we are just naming them before God, trusting that he knows the best way to be involved in that person’s life. And Robin and I do trust that in all things God knows what is best, and that if he acts it will be to advance his purposes. Our prayers may align with his purposes, but they may not. God always knows best and acts according to his perfect knowledge.

There are times when we know that prayer has been answered, and we thank God for what he has done. But other times, many times, we are waiting for the answers. While we wait we continue to pray.

It is our part to be faithful in prayer. It is God’s part to bring the answers.

Tuesday, November 3, 2020

The Day of Salvation

Now is the day of salvation.

If you are reading those words and thinking along the lines of “Yeah, today my candidate is going to win and all will work out just fine” that is not quite the direction I'm headed in this post. But keep reading, for I have a much better destination in mind.

It has been a turbulent election cycle. So many contentious words. So many accusations. So much turmoil. Today the ballots are being cast and soon we all hope to know the outcome. My last blog post had to do with the fallacy of lifting politics to the place of religion. For people of that mindset to have their candidate win today it will certainly feel like the day of salvation. And if theirs is the candidate on the losing side, then I imagine it will feel like the beginning of a disaster. Such are the near polar opposites as the election has approached.

Tomorrow. What of tomorrow? Or what if November 4^th never comes? Or what if it comes for everyone else except for you and me? Where you will stand in terms of eternity?

I’m a pastor within the Reformed branch of Protestant Christianity and so there are a number of things I believe to be true as I read the Bible. Among those beliefs are that time will not just run on forever. Human history, as we know it, will come to an end and the definitive marker of its end will be the return of the Lord Jesus Christ in power and glory. He will gather all of those people who are his, both those living at the time of his return and all of those who had faith in him while they lived but died before that glorious day. He will gather all of his own and they will be with him forever. Human history, as we know it, will come to an end but God operates on a timeline that has no beginning or ending, and all those who have faith in Jesus will spend eternity in his very presence. I don’t have to know any of the particular details to know that at the very least it will be amazing!

But there is a catch. That future is only for those with faith in Jesus. There is another eternal destination for those without faith. The Bible gives us some clues about that as well. Suffice to say that I believe it will be very, very bad. It will be bad, even horrible, in ways that will be worse than anything we can imagine.

Two possible paths in eternity. Which will yours be?

In Daniel 5 we read the story of a man who seemed to have it all. Power, money, friends…everything he could possibly want. But at a big party it gets revealed to him that time is short and from God’s point-of-view his life has been found wanting. Confronted with the truth and an opportunity to repent, he does nothing. Daniel 5:30 says:

“That very night Belshazzar the Chaldean king was killed.”

That very night. As important as our election might be, there is an infinitely more important choice before each and every person. That is the choice of what to do about the person of Jesus. Believe in him as Savior and live with him as Lord? Or not? These are the only two options God gives us. There is no wide area in the middle where we might hang out before making the final decision. Paul urges us to see the time to decide in this way:

“Working together with him, then, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain. For he says,

“In a favorable time I listened to you,
and in a day of salvation I have helped you.”

Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.”

Later today, maybe tonight, or perhaps tomorrow we will have an idea of who will sit in the White House as President for the next four years. At the extremes of their supporters will be either great rejoicing or great anguish. No matter which of the candidates it is the Bible's truth is that the Lord Jesus sits on his throne, right now, and he will never be moved. What will you make of him?

May today be the day of your salvation.

Photo credit: BBC.com