Agendas

 

Last week I went to a meeting of leaders in our denomination from churches scattered from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. We started with lunch on Wednesday, met all afternoon and into the evening, and then continued our meeting Thursday morning before we all headed back home at noon.

After the Wednesday evening session several of us gathered to just talk about whatever. Four of us were pastors and we had all met each other at least once before and as the time together progressed we all got to know each other better. It turned out that all four of us had gone to the same seminary, two graduating in 2008, myself in 2011 and the other man in 2020. As a required part of our education we had all taken part in a cultural immersion trip and three of us, myself included, and done our trip with the same ministry agency.

As we talked about our experiences on the immersion trip I let on that I was less-than-crazy for the trip I had taken, and in particular, the mission agency hosting us. When pressed for more information about my opinion I hemmed and hawed a bit, eventually saying, “They had an agenda, and I wasn’t really on board with it.” We decided to change the subject of our conversation.

Afterwards I though things over a bit. Agendas aren’t necessarily bad, and in fact they are quite useful. The picture is from my laptop as I was working on the agenda for a meeting I am leading this week. They can help us understand what our goals are and keep our group, whatever it may be, on track as those goals are pursued.

But agendas aren’t merely for groups, for as I thought about things it didn’t take me long to arrive at the fact that in my ministry I operate very much with an agenda, one that, for better or worse, shapes what I invest my time and effort into and what I push off to the side as being of lesser importance.

And that agenda is to build the Kingdom of God. There are two points of emphasis, one being to share the good news of Jesus in such a way that people come to trust Him as their Savior. The other is to nurture and guide people with faith in Jesus to live in ways that, more and more, show His Lordship. The primary tools for these tasks are the Bible and prayer. The power source, without which nothing will happen, is the Holy Spirit.

It's a pretty good agenda, in my opinion at least, and it applies not just to the ministry itself, but also as I serve the Lord in my family and seek for Christ to shape me as a person. 

May the agenda of my life, of this ministry, and of your life too, be one that, at the end of the day, is pleasing in the sight of the Lord.

Strangers

One part of the ministry here in Dulce that has really grown in the past year or so has been providing a meal to people who stop at the house. I don’t know for certain but I think that for most of the time we’ve been here we’ve fed people, but I believe in the early years it was something that was very occasional, maybe just a few times a month. In the last year it has been several times a week, and sometimes several times a day. Yesterday was probably the all-time high, with six people coming by and asking for a sandwich or “a sack.”

We have been blessed by the support of some of our mission partners in giving specifically to support this work. In the past it came out of our family’s food budget but now we are able to keep things on hand specifically for this purpose. We give people either a sandwich or some leftovers, depending on what we had for dinner that day and the appetites of our children, Gatorade, fruit, chips and another snack. Dessert if we have something on hand that is easy to place into a bag.

I often know the people who stop by for a meal. As a matter of fact after I wrote the last sentence of the previous paragraph the door bell rang and two of the men I fed yesterday were at the door. Their presence has changed what I was intending to write in this post. They were already carrying a meal that they had picked up at the Senior Center and today they stopped so that they could pray for me and that I could pray for them.

Yesterday I read the Old Testament book of Joel. As a prophet of the time before Jesus Joel is somewhat typical as he calls on God’s people to return to God lest they feel His wrath, as he notes that God will avenge the enemies of His children, and as he ends with words that point to the grace God has for His children. In the closing of his short book Joel writes this:

“So you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who dwells in Zion, my holy mountain. And Jerusalem shall be holy, and strangers shall never again pass through it.”

I think that Joel is looking forward to what the New Testament refers to as the New Jerusalem, where God will gather all of His children to be with Him forever. In referring to “strangers” I believe that Joel’s point is that the only people who will be there will be God’s children, a people fully known to Him and all equal members in His family.

The people who stop at our door often know about God and ask us to pray with them, but I wonder, do they know God? When the day that Joel looks forward to comes, will they be members of the family, or strangers, unknown and left outside? I don’t really know.

But I do know that God has called us to answer the doorbell, to feed, to listen, and to pray. The outcome is entirely in His hands but my hope is that on that great and glorious day we’ll be joined together as family to praise our glorious King.

 

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.

A Better Choice

About ten days ago I stumbled across an article online with the interesting title of The Five Most Common Life Regrets (As Told By People Who Are Dying). Being a pastor a title like that just catches my attention. I’ve been on three trips away from home this month and so I set that article aside until I had some time to read it. Now having done so I want to share a few thoughts on the regret that was identified as the top one, “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, and not the life others expected of me.”

First, I get the basic idea that is expressed in this regret. It is the idea of coming to the end of one’s life and seeing what perhaps could have been, had it not been for setting those desires aside in order to pursue what others felt one’s life should be. Desiring “A” but turning from it to pursue “B”.

Second, the regret notes that the primary reason the “true life” was not pursued was a lack of courage to challenge or refuse the idea that the life desired by others was the way to go. I may be reading something into this that isn’t present but I expect that the reason a person desires one life but pursues a different one has a great variety of things involved besides simply the courage to say “no” or to step out on one’s own path. Courage, yes, but also determination, desire, aptitude, and judgement, to name a few other factors.

Third, the stated regret is framed as if there were only two choices, a life true to oneself or the life expected by others. I want to suggest a third choice. A better choice. A life pleasing to God.

The problem with being true to oneself is that we humans are, by nature, rabidly in pursuit of the wrong things, all of the time. The Old Testament prophet Jeremiah wrote:

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; Who can understand it?”

John Calvin’s spin on the same basic human weakness is this: “…man’s nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols.”[1]

Ouch!

There was a time in my life when I would have thought the sentiments of Jeremiah and Calvin were nonsense. Now, praise God, I understand the truth of their words a bit more clearly everyday.

So what does my proposed third way look like? How does one live a life pleasing to God? For that I don’t think there is any more clear and concise answer than the one given in the first question-and-answer of the Westminster Shorter Catechism:

Q.1. What is the chief end of man?

A. Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him for ever.

If I make the purpose of my life to glorify God then it will be hard to go wrong in the details, and as I see the end draw near I won’t be looking back at what could have been nearly as much as I’ll be looking forward at what is yet to come. To enjoy God in His glory, forever. 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.

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[1] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, I.11.8.

Photo credit: File:Diagram of the human heart (cropped).svg - Wikimedia Commons

Short and To The Point

 

I am at the point in my calling as a pastor when the end of my calling is much closer than the beginning. This isn’t to say I’m planning to retire soon but merely a recognition that at age 65 the number of years that, at this point, I see myself continuing to pastor a church can likely be counted on one hand.

One consequence of that truth is that I am not really trying to actively build my personal library anymore. I was talking about this with my mom this afternoon and mentioned to her I have a list of five books that I was hoping would be published soon and added to my library. Given what I already have, both read and unread, I plan to think long and hard before acquiring something outside of that list. I get many emails of this and that new book that are marketed as being “essential” for the pastor but the simple truth is that a publisher’s idea of essential and mine are quite different. 

Among those five books is a three-volume work in ethics, which is being translated from Dutch. Volume one came out a few years ago and volume two came out perhaps a year ago. When volume three comes out I can buy the whole thing at a discount and be in business. They were written about a 100 years ago by a pastor and professor whose other works have been a great blessing to me, both as a Christian and a pastor. I anticipate a similar blessing in reading his writing on the discipline of ethics. 

Ethics. Here is my off-the-cuff definition: The ways in which Christians live in their day-to-day lives that are pleasing to God. Francis Shaeffer wrote an excellent book titled How Then Should We Live? Ethics answers that always relevant question.

All I have written so far in this post serves as an introduction to something Robin and I read tonight, from Deuteronomy 19:9, which includes this phrase:

“…by loving the Lord your God and by walking ever in His ways…”

That is ethics in a nutshell. The person, the era, the situation may vary, be it any biblical person, such as Adam, Eve, Noah, Moses, Saul, David, Jonah, Paul, or Peter, or any non-biblical person and their circumstances and place in history, such as Polycarp, Augustine, Tyndale, Spurgeon or Jim Elliot. No matter the person or situation the fundamental principle to guide life is the same. Love the Lord and walk in His ways. Short and to the point.

I have no doubts that the three-volumes, translated from Dutch to English, will be very, very good. But I am also quite certain that the principle that will underlie the entire work will be the idea that Moses gives in Deuteronomy, a principle repeated in other words and in other places in the Bible. Love the Lord your God and walk in His ways. May that be the principle that sticks in my head and guides me for however many more days the Lord grants to my life, and may that principle guide you as well. 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.

 

Pay What You Can?

 

I just got home from the post office, with two pieces of mail for the church and one for me. The ones for church were the gas bill and the renewal for the license plates, on either the church car or van. I left those bills unopened, as they can go directly to our treasurer and I don’t have to know what precisely what we owe in those cases. There are some expenses I keep close track of but not either of those.

The mail addressed to me was also a bill. It was for the renewal of a magazine I subscribe to. I opened it up to see how much it was for. $48 for another year. I don’t recall what it was last time, when I may have renewed for two years, but $48 for another year sounded okay to me. But then I noticed the next line, which read “I’d like to renew my 1 year subscription and I can pay $____.” That got my attention. What was that about?

I unfolded the entire renewal notice and read of a special offer in recognition of their 30^th anniversary. A “Pay What You Can” special. Now that sounds interesting. Given that I put gas in the car on the way home from the post office the unexpected opportunity to save some money is, frankly, appealing. 

But in the offer there is that little word, ‘can’. The offer isn’t “pay what you want” but “pay what you can,” and I can afford to pay $48, and so I will. But the whole thing got me to thinking about the gospel and the good news of a healed relationship with God through faith in the saving work of the Lord Jesus. Someplace floating around in my head was the idea of eating and drinking without cost.

Google to the rescue, because it’s faster than a concordance. Isaiah 55:1 reads:

“Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters;
and he who has no money, come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.”

Isaiah speaks to the people of his day and calls them to return to the Lord. But his words also look farther ahead in history and are fulfilled in the finished work of Christ.

Jesus offers what exactly we need. We need the forgiveness of our sins, so that we can be in a healed relationship with God. We desperately need this forgiveness, and Jesus is the only way.

If we attempted to “buy” forgiveness through our obedience to God’s law, we’d fail completely. If we attempted a trade, our good works to remove the bad, our efforts would be fruitless. If I had the combined wealth of Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk and gave that to the church I still wouldn’t have the slightest chance. The only way is to trust in what Jesus gave, His very life, for me, on the cross.

Salvation is not “pay what you can” but “trust in Jesus who paid what I could not.” And He has paid in full. 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.

Maps

 

While I was out for a run this morning I looked ahead and saw a car, a large truck, and another car, all with flashing yellow lights on top as they headed towards town. It was a truck with an oversize load and two escort vehicles, one in front and one behind. I moved to the far side of the soft shoulder as they approached and then passed me. A minute later I turned around and headed back into town.

I turned left at the first intersection when I got to town and when I looked down the road I saw the escort cars and truck, about a half-mile away, stopped on the side of the road. As I drew closer they were beginning the process of getting turned around and as I continued my run I looked over to the US highway leaving town and saw them on it. My guess is that as they came into town they knew there was a left turn coming up and for unknown reasons turned at the first opportunity rather than the second. Instead of staying on the highway they took a road that looked similar but headed to a different destination. Perhaps they misread their map.

Maps are quite useful. We may have lived in a place many years and know all of the streets and locations within our community, so that we can get around just fine by memory. But when we go to places that are less familiar, or perhaps completely unknown to us, then a good map and the ability to understand and follow it become essential. And with the arrival of the smartphone having quick access to a good map is very easy.

In a similar manner there are many ways in which having something similar to a map is useful, and even essential, for guidance through life. We progressed through childhood and adolescence with guidance from our families, friends, schools, employers and the culture that we live in. And then as a we head off into life on our own we are free, for better and worse, to look at any given situation and make our own choices as to how to proceed. If your life has been like mine, and I don’t think mine has been particularly unique, there are choices you’ve made that were good and other times where you clearly took a wrong turn. A wrong turn that may have been evident right away, such as the oversize truck this morning, or may have only been clear over time, as that truck driver would have eventually figured out while traveling a road that looked right but really wasn’t.

I confess a bias at this point. The very best “map” that we can use to guide our life each and every day, is God’s word, revealed in the Bible. It is a good and perfect map, but must be used properly in order to be of benefit.

To open it at random and read whatever may be before your eyes may be helpful on rare occasions but is actually quite risky. There is an internet story that strings together several examples of this method that are humorous as they illustrate the hazard of this method.

To read it as someone who doesn’t really believe in God is also not recommended, as it won’t really make any sense. Reading it as an unbeliever may lead you to believe in God and trust in the Lord Jesus, but until that happens your reading will mostly be like road signs in a place where you don’t speak a word of the language. The words may be legible but the things they signify will be incomprehensible.

But to read the Bible as a believer, regularly and methodically, such as reading a particular book from beginning to end, will give you guidance for your life that will always prove to be correct. Read and consider what it is you are reading. Take time to observe what you read. Take time to think about what it might mean. Take time to understand how it might apply to your life. And do all of this prayerfully, asking God to give you understanding, and being willing to follow where He may be leading you. If you’ve never done this the Gospel of John is a great place to start, and to make things easy click on the link to one of many places you can find the Bible online.

Maps help get us to our destination, and there is no better map than the Bible.

 

Friends

 

My hiking boots are dusty. Really dusty. I last wore them when we went to Go Jii Ya. 

Go Jii Ya is a fall celebration on the reservation. It takes place at Stone Lake, about 20 miles south of town. It is an annual event that often draws Jicarilla Apaches living in other place back home for a few days. In August families begin working on their campsites, so that everything is ready on September 15th. 

The main event of Go Jii Ya is a footrace between the men of the two clans. Tradition holds that if the red clan wins then hunting will be good the following year. If the white clan wins then the next year will be good for crops and harvesting. 

The race itself is quite exciting to watch and there are also pre-race and post-race rituals that take place. Non-tribal members are not allowed to take pictures and we tell our friends that Go Jii Ya is much better experienced than described. Arrange your visit to take place on September 15^th and you’ll go home with memories you’ll never forget. After the race people return to their camps to eat, usually a variety of traditional foods, virtually all of it cooked over open fires. They eat, and then go visit other camps. 

Because of the pandemic Go Jii Ya was held in a much more limited and largely ceremonial fashion in 2020 and 2021. This year was the first more normal celebration in three years, and because we took our 2019 vacation in September it was our first time there in four years.

This year the grounds at Stone Lake were dusty. It was dusty watching the footrace, which lasted nearly 40 minutes. It was dusty during the post-race rituals, and it was dusty as we visited camps.

We usually camp during Go Jii Ya but the woman we used to camp with passed away during the pandemic. We saw her son during the race and accepted an invitation to eat at his camp. It takes some time after the race for food to be ready and so we wandered a bit and then headed in the direction the camp of an extended family within our church.

On the way we saw two women we know and haven't seen for a long time. "Come eat with us." We sat down for a bowl of cabbage soup, bread and melon. And good conversation, especially when the father of one of the women got to camp. He is truly a local legend, in the very best of ways, and I feel honored to hear him call me his friend.

Back to walking on the road to the top of the hill. We happened on the camp of a woman from our church and her sister. That woman is a dear friend of Robin. The food wasn't ready and after some conversation we set off for our original destination, the camp of an extended family within our congregation. 

It's a big family. Brothers, sisters, children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. They aren't all connected to our church but they have always treated us very well and invited us to many family gatherings. We ate well and enjoyed spending time with friends. 

Then we wandered back towards the race track and ended our day at the camp where we had first been invited for a meal. The food was good but to sit and talk, face-to-face, for the first time in far too long, was the best part.

It was a good day, and bittersweet when we had to leave to take our sons to soccer. There were other camps I would have loved to drop in at just to visit. And truthfully, if I had the entire day I wouldn't have gotten to them all.

I've got a dusty pair of boots. And that dust, today, reminds me that of the many blessings of ministry on the reservation, perhaps the richest is in the many people who nine years were unknown to us, who were strangers, and are now dear friends. 

Cast Your Burden

One certain thing about pastoral ministry on the reservation is that it is not boring. There are many things that need to be done on a regular basis and have an element of consistency to them, such as planning worship and preparing to preach each week. Then there are things that happen less often but have an element of routine to them, such as meetings related to church business or shopping for things needed at church. And then there are the many things that could come up on any given day for which I can be both prepared for and unprepared at the same time. Broadly-speaking I would call these things pastoral care.

I keep a spreadsheet related to pastoral care. There is a page for each year and on that page I track the things I do in pastoral care. Date, person, and a very brief note as to what took place, including what scripture passage I may have used in praying with them. Pastoral care includes visits to the hospital, home and nursing home. It includes conversations with people ringing the parsonage doorbell. It includes counsel and prayer over the phone in the middle of the night. It includes a few other hard-to-label things as well.

This year has been a banner year for pastoral care. According to my spreadsheet I have had more instances of pastoral care so far this year than any year except for last year, and I’m on pace to break last year’s record in about one more month.

More significant than merely the number of contacts I’ve had this year, and last year too, is the nature of things that I have talked and prayed with people about. My predecessor here in Dulce mentored me over my first few months and he said that it would take five years before I had a true sense of this place and the people here, and them of me. Five years. I was skeptical, but he was right. 

In the last four days I’ve spent time with seven different people and in each case found myself talking and praying over things that I never would have been asked about or told of in those first years. And that is where the idea of being both prepared and unprepared comes in. I can rarely anticipate the particulars when someone rings the doorbell but I can seek the Lord each day and ask Him to give me wisdom and guidance as the day unfolds. I’m no one’s savior and I am not an unfailing source of wisdom or peace or strength or whatever else might be needed at any particular time. But I can be used by the Lord Jesus to point people to Him for all of those things, for whatever they might be in need of at the time. Psalm 55:22 says: 

“Cast your burden on the Lord, and he will sustain you.”

In whatever you may be struggling with in life, seek the Lord, and know, on the promise of His word, that He will sustain you. 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.

 

Assurance

 

Each Sunday as a part of our worship we have a place where we confess our sin and receive God’s words of assurance of the forgiveness of our sins. It works like this: I give an invitation for silent, personal confession. After a brief time to allow people, including myself, to confess I lead all of us in reciting a prayer of confession that is printed in the worship bulletin. And then I pick up my Bible and read a passage that speaks to the assurance of forgiveness that we can rest in, usually adding some comments about how that passage assures us.

I have a collection of prayers of confession that I rotate through in planning worship. I also have a collection of Bible passages that assure forgiveness that I rotate through. These two collections are unequal in number and so there is almost always a different pair each Sunday morning. Every once in a while my Bible reading brings something to my attention that would serve as words of assurance and I add that passage to my collection. And that is happening this Sunday with Deuteronomy 4:31, which reads:

“For the Lord your God is a merciful God. He will not leave you or destroy you or forget the covenant with your fathers that he swore to them.”

What, you may ask, does that have to do with the assurance of forgiveness?  The ‘sin’ word is not even mentioned, and neither, for that matter is Jesus. Pastor Brad, what gives? 

In writing these words Moses has a few things to say about God, most noticeably being that he is merciful and faithful. He has made a covenant, a solemn promise, to hold the Hebrews as his own people, and he intends to keep it. That covenant is not dependent on their behavior, but solely relies on God’s word to them.

Their behavior, frankly, is often very ungodly and fully deserving of God’s wrath. But instead of wrath God gives mercy. Instead of giving them what they deserve he does the exact opposite, being merciful in forgiving their sin. Without mercy on God’s part he could not be their God and they could not be his people.

That mercy for God’s people is fully seen in the death-and-resurrection of the Lord Jesus. Moses points God’s people far ahead to the wrath of God against sin poured out on the one person who can bear it, something Jesus does freely, out of love, for all the people of God living at all moments of human history. He takes our sin and its punishment and gives us his sinless nature. The one sacrifice of Jesus to take away our sin, forever. This is the greatest expression of mercy in all of human history, and in it, alone, all who believe in Jesus can be assured that their sin is forgiven. Every last bit. 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.

Bull riding or barrel racing?

 

For most of this year I’ve been having trouble with my laptop. There were a variety of things happening, such as the fan speeding up and getting very loud, and recording video of my sermons that was choppy and made it sound like Alvin, of the Chipmunks, was in the pulpit, and programs running very slowly, and, perhaps most annoying of all, my laptop just shutting down, seemingly at random.

I searched online for help. I asked friends who are more computer-savvy than I for help. I took my laptop to the shop. In the process of understanding what was going on and what I could do about it I tried a number of things, such as deleting files to clear up memory, having fewer files and folders open at the same time, and taking the back off to clean the fan ports. But in the end the day-to-day problems were unchanged and using my laptop, which is essential to many pastoral tasks, was becoming chronically frustrating. And so last week I took the advice Robin had been suggesting for months and ordered a new laptop.

It arrived yesterday and I spent part of the afternoon getting things set-up. I turned it on and did whatever it said to get the basic systems running. I copied all the files from my old laptop that I wanted to transfer to my new laptop onto an external hard drive and then moved them over. I set-up some bookmarks and shortcuts for apps and programs that I use frequently.

There is a learning curve to getting this laptop, and its operator, to work well together. Part of that work has gone easily and part of it has not. My new laptop is from a different manufacturer than the last several I’ve owned, and it runs on an upgraded operating system. For reasons I can’t possibly imagine there are things within programs that work differently than before. I’ve been able to figure a number of things out, but not without a bit of trial-and-error. I know where I want to go, and I know where to start, but I’m not sure by what route I’ll be able to get there. But, regarding changing laptops, this is not my first rodeo.

There is a spiritual idea coming in this post and I attached a rodeo picture, but it occurs to me I’ve got the wrong image. A bull-rider might be perfect to characterize a rodeo itself, but a barrel-racer would be a more suitable photo for my point. The average bull rider gets thrown off much more often than they succeed but a barrel racer has to learn to work as one with her horse.

In Psalm 32:2-3 David is in a miserable place, lamenting the present difficulty in his life, but then he points to the solution in verse 5, saying: 

“I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity;

I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord”,

and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.”

David begins like the bull rider, thrown to the ground and perhaps dazed and trying to figure out what went awry. And the solution is to be more like the barrel racer, to go back to the beginning and learn to work with the Lord, rather than to live at odds with Him.

When your life with God stumbles may you be encouraged to get back to basics, such as prayer and confession, and get going again, working with Him.

Time for me to figure out another new thing as I upload this blog post. There may be a hiccup or two, but it’s not my first rodeo. 

 

 

Photo credit: RodeoHouston.com, via the author’s cellphone

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.

Prayer Meeting

“And when they had entered, they went up to the upper room, where they were staying, Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot and Judas the son of James. All these with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers.”

This evening we are re-starting a regular prayer meeting at our church. Re-starting is a bit loose, as we had a weekly prayer meeting briefly, for a year or maybe two, when our ministry began here late in 2013. I don’t recall how long we had it nearly as well as I recall how poorly attended it was. There were many times when during the hour that had been set aside I was the only one present. So, in a moment of practicality in considering my schedule, I cancelled the prayer meeting. I was already regularly spending time in prayer on my own and I didn’t need to schedule another period of that same thing into my week, did I?

Well, with prayer, as in so many things, it’s not about me! It has often occurred to me, particularly in the past 2-3 years, that there are a number of things that our congregation could be praying over. And not in the sense of putting those things in the prayer list I pull together for worship each Sunday morning, but that we should be gathering together outside of our Sunday worship to seek the Lord in prayer together.  

Things like the kinds of ministry we are engaged in within our community and that they would bear fruit pleasing to God. For our local schools and the tribal government. For our mission partners. For stronger families in our community. For sobriety and encouragement for those actively pursuing sobriety. For us to encourage each other as sisters and brothers in Christ. And as the old commercial said, “That’s not all!” for the Lord will certainly also lead us to pray for other things too.

Last Sunday afternoon we had a meeting of our church council and decided to resume some things that we haven’t done since the pandemic began. I put out the idea of beginning a prayer meeting. There wasn’t a whole lot of talking about the idea as we decided to do it on Wednesday’s a 6:30 PM.  And so tonight we begin. Join us if you are local and pray with and for us if you aren’t. Like the early church in the book of Acts, nay we be “joined together constantly in prayer.”

 

Photo credit: www.RaifordRoadChurch.org

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.

Real Life Adventures Of A Rez Pastor

 

“reallifeadventuresofarezpastor.”  Yesterday I used that tag on a Facebook post. Two weeks ago a cable had broken on the church’s riding lawnmower and a volunteer here last week took a look at it and told us what we needed to order to be able to repair the mower. The part was ordered and arrived on Monday. Monday evening I watched a 10 minute YouTube video and decided to repair the mower after I finished my run on Tuesday morning.

Tuesday morning I got to work, encountering two minor hiccups in my situation that differed from the video. They weren’t a big deal to manage, but then came the first significant problem, in that while the new cable was designed to connect like I had seen on the video, the original part on our mower connected in a different way. The second major issue was that the new cable was significantly longer than the original. I improvised solutions to both issues and when Robin went to mow the lawn everything seemed to work and our grass and weeds, which have been growing rapidly this year, were quickly trimmed.

Real life adventures of a rez pastor. The things I share on Facebook, such as the mower repair, or Saturday afternoon, where I had done pruned some shrubs, attempted to repair my laptop, and then improvised a tool to remove a plastic cap from a bathtub drain, are just a part of the story, and truthfully not nearly as connected to being a pastor as to taking care of a house and raising children, things that a great many people also do.

Real life adventures of a rez pastor.  Not so much the week-to-week activities of preaching, planning and leading worship, visiting people in the nursing homes and doing a variety of administrative tasks. Those things are being done by most pastors.

Real life adventures of a rez pastor. The truth is that much of what really falls within that hashtag aren’t the kinds of things where I can share any but the barest of details. The three men I gave a ride to on Monday evening. The two men I stopped to talk with while on my run Tuesday morning. The man calling me Tuesday morning to talk about some things he’s struggling with. The man I had a long conversation with at the post office on Tuesday afternoon. The man on Tuesday evening that we gave a meal to and a safe place to sleep for the night.

Real life adventures of a rez pastor. Some things that can be shared and a lot that can’t, but all joined together in one overarching goal: to point people to Jesus Christ as their Savior and to live with Him as their Lord. The reservation might be a unique setting but the goals I have in mind as I serve here apply anywhere. Wherever it is that you happen to live, may God be glorified as you serve the Lord Jesus in that place.

Boundaries

This past week we hosted a mission group here in Dulce. One thing they did this week was run a youth sports camp, where each morning about 20 or so children played and/or learned basketball and pickleball. Most of the kids knew something of basketball, while pickleball was a new experience. Each day also included a lot of miscellaneous playing, snacks, a Bible lesson and prayer, and lunch before going home. All-in-all the sports camp was an outstanding part of an outstanding week.

This week my Bible reading plan brought me back into the psalms. For the past nine or ten years I’ve followed a plan that has me read through the New Testament and Psalms twice a year and the remainder of the Old Testament once. Monday I returned to the Psalms.

Psalm 1 is short and to the point. It contrasts the difference between the person who aims to live close to God in their life and the person who lives farther and farther away from God. Verse three says:

“…but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on His law he meditates day and night.”  

The psalmist understands that there is a known way in which a person should live, and that way is found in the law of God. Much like our children playing basketball and pickleball need a line on the court to know what is in bounds and out-of-bounds, the law of God acts as a boundary for the shape of our lives. Good, and even glorious, things can happen inside God’s boundaries. Outside of them? Not so much.

God’s law is a boundary that is truly given for our good. We can’t keep it perfectly, and praise God that He has given His Son Jesus to save us in those times when we disobey the law.  But we can learn the law and strive to keep it, as a thankful response for the gift of our Savior. 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.

Know Before Whom You Stand

“Prayer: Know Before Whom You Stand” That was a chapter title in a book I finished reading last night, Between God and Man, by Abraham Joshua Heschel. Heschel was a Jewish rabbi and I am a Christian pastor, and so there were some things in his book where he and I agreed, and other areas where I would see things differently. But that chapter title grabbed my attention, particularly as I read it the evening before the Jicarilla Apache Prayer Run. 

Yesterday morning I was invited to come and give an opening prayer for the Prayer Run that the tribe’s Department of Youth would be hosting this morning. As a Christian pastor living in a place where many different religions are practiced, including a Jicarilla Apache understanding of God, I am conscious that all understandings of the person of God are not equal. A corollary of that is that all persons prayed to as God are not really God, but gods. People may turn to them and worship but they are what the Bible would call false gods. They are given the honor, respect, or what have you, of God but they are not truly the God of the Bible, the One True God.

Can a person know God? According to Heschel, perhaps, but he also noted other rabbi’s who found God to be unknowable.

Can a person know God? My answer would be “absolutely!” Taking a step back I would say that a person can know much about God, without really knowing God. The Bible has much to say about who God is and what His character is like. As we read the Bible we learn of God’s holiness, power, beauty, love, righteousness, justice and goodness, to name just a few of His attributes. Throughout history many pastors and theologians have written on the topics of God’s attributes, and I have been richly blessed in reading some of them, particularly Stephen Charnock and Herman Bavinck. Similarly, many excellent sermons have been preached and published on the character and attributes of God. And so it is possible to much about God, but not really know God at all.

But can a person know God? Again, absolutely, for He is revealed to us most clearly in the person and work of Jesus. And as we read of Him in the New Testament and take to heart the truth of who He is and why He came, trusting in what He did to forgive our sin and heal us, we pass from “knowing about” to “knowing” and in doing so we find that He has sent His Spirit to be with us, His dearly loved children, forever.

This, then, is the God before whom I stood this morning, offering prayers to Him on behalf of the gathered people. Again, speaking from my point-of-view as a pastor, everyone at the Prayer Run was not a believer in Jesus, but my prayers were offered in the name of Jesus, and in my own times of prayer I pray that one day all the people of this place may know and love Jesus as their Savior and Lord. Amen. 

According To Plan

One day Robin and I plan to retire. Several years ago, as a part of that “plan,” we bought a house. Retirement is still several years away but we are working on a few things at the house before it becomes time for us to live there. One of those things is moving a split rail fence, which we worked on a few days ago. Our original “plan” was to take down and relocate the fence in a single day. From nearly the moment I put my hands on the fence to get to work things began happening that changed our plan.

The first post cracked and broke off. Couldn’t reuse that one. The same thing happened with the second post. I was able to remove a post intact and see what depth would be required. Twenty inches. I went to work with a power auger to drill the holes. I could only reach ten inches before the clay became impassible. I had no tools along to break up the clay and help the auger.

Back to work removing the posts. It turned out that three of them had been set in concrete, and so, as the picture shows, I removed them as best I could with the tools I had on hand. What we had thought would be a one-day job to take the fence down and rebuild it in a new location turned out to be a full day just to remove the fence. My new estimate on the remainder is three more days to build the new fence. So it goes sometimes with the plans we make in life. Good plans and bad plans alike are often subject to unplanned changes.

This Sunday I will be preaching from Matthew 11:1-15. One thing in that passage is that John the Baptist, through his disciples, because he is imprisoned, ask Jesus this question:

“Are you the one to come, or shall we look for another?”

A key part of John’s ministry was to herald the arrival of the promised Messiah, someone he rightly believed was Jesus at the time he baptized him. But imprisoned for, as we might say today, “speaking truth to power” in calling out Herod Antipas over his illegitimate marriage to his former sister-in-law Herodias, John seems to be wondering what is going on with God’s plan. If Jesus is the Messiah, and all things are to be made right by him, then why is John in prison? Why haven’t Herod and Herodias repented? What is going on with God’s plan?

The answer, which I intend to bring out more fully as I preach this Sunday, is that God’s plan is working, on God’s timing. We have an advantage that John did not, which is that while he was living things out as they unfolded in real time, we can look back and read the Bible and see the fullness of God’s plan of salvation being worked out in the person and work of the Lord Jesus.

Everything that needed to be done to accomplish our salvation, and John’s as well, was done. It was all done according to the perfect plan of God, a plan that was revealed in bits and pieces in the pages of the Old Testament, and which is seen in it’s entirety in the testimony of the New Testament.

May you know peace with God through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. May God’s perfect plan of salvation be something that brings you peace, now and forever. 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.