2016: The Year of Service

For even the Son of Man did not come to be served,

but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.

Mark 10:45

This year, my role as a leader taught me many things, but perhaps the most impactful thought, and my summary word for 2016, is service. Leadership of all kinds, I've been reminded, is largely a position of serving one's followers - giving time and effort for their benefit, bearing the unseen load so they are enabled to be successful. Servanthood is often mundane, lonely, and thankless, and must have a driving force to prevent it from becoming either unbearably frustrating or mere heartless duty. Belief in a cause is not enough - you can't serve a cause. Nothing but love for those one serves will suffice to keep service fruitful and alive. "Through love serve one another" (Galatians 5:13). The joy of true service with love is that, expecting no return, it becomes an honor and reward in itself because its focus is completely on the one(s) served.

Christ Himself is, as always, the perfect example - He wholeheartedly served those closest to Him as well the thousands who crossed His path. He was driven by love, and looked for no reward but the ultimate benefit of those for whom He gave of Himself. He held nothing back, not even His life. In the great divine paradox, He who most deserves to be served is the greatest Servant of all. This, Jesus tells us, is the measure of greatness in God's eyes - not how many subordinates you command, but how willingly you offer your unconditional service to even the most undeserving.

Spiritual Hearing

"...it shall be, if He calls you, that you must say,

'Speak, Lord, for Your servant hears.'"

1 Samuel 3:9

"I keep hearing my name," said the girl. "I think God might be calling me." As I counseled this young believer, barely a month old in the faith, I was convicted by the sharp spiritual hearing of someone who has just begun to walk in the Spirit. With a heart so eager to learn, she keenly knows how little she knows, and yet desires to share that little with others. It is a trait we so quickly lose as we settle into life with Christ, forgetting the joy of first meeting our ever-present Friend, and losing that sweet voice in the din of earthly noise. I had no profound advice but what I needed to hear myself: ask Him to speak, and then be constantly listening -- when you open His Word, when you talk with others, when you look at Creation, and at all times in between. He will speak, because He has much to say to you!

The Patience of God

The Lord is not slow in keeping His promise,

as some understand slowness.

Instead He is patient with you, not wanting

anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

2 Peter 3:9

"If God can get rid of sin, why hasn't He done it yet?" asked a little boy. Countless people under the weight of a wicked world have asked such a question. How can we reconcile the endless string of wars, corruption, brutality and suffering with a good God who hates evil? Why does He let it all continue unchecked? A look at the darkness and depravity of the world brings sorrow that the human race, myself included, can make such short work of everything good and beautiful. Yet how much more must God sorrow to watch His children ruining the gifts He gave them and driving themselves to destruction? By all rights, He should have put an end to it long before now, and not in our favor. But He waits . . . because there are still souls He is rescuing even in the chaos. His grace and patience are unfathomable!

The Election Debate

No, this isn't a post about the presidential election . . . but the election vs. free will debate of theologians has had its own fair share of heated moments through the ages of church history. The arguments abound, and the hours I've spent discussing and musing on this particular doctrine may well outnumber any other. In the end, the doctrine of election remains both one of the most clearly stated in Scripture and one of the most paradoxical. Ephesians chapter one declares that God "chose us in Him before the foundation of the world" (v. 4), and a few verses later, we learn God's purpose in this mystery: "the praise of the glory of His grace" (v. 6). This, after all the scholarly studies and emphatic debates, is the essence of election -- God chose you, His child, not for any merit of your own, but that your ransomed life should result in praise and glory to Him.

Every point of doctrine has bearing on our lives, and it is a worthy pursuit to understand all we can about what is revealed to us. But there comes a point when the arguments must finally give way to the most basic faith: we know that somehow, God has seen fit to choose His saints, and yet legitimately include human responsibility. We may attempt to understand, to explain the paradox away, and yet it seems to me that the more we learn of the depths of God's mysteries, the more we see that is still far beyond comprehension. But for me, this brings a quiet sense of acceptance -- God is who He is, and that is enough. Whether the side I take in the election debate is correct or not, I do know that I am chosen to bring glory to my Lord, and I can do no better than this.

Where Do We Begin?

Oh, where do we begin -- the rubble or our sins?

~"Pompeii" by Bastille

My favorite line from this popular song asks an important and sobering question which is relevant to all of us. The rubble in our lives is easy to see, and tends to be our first focus when something goes wrong. We turn our attention to picking up the pieces and trying to fix our problems by painstakingly putting the broken bits back together. Maybe it's because the effect is so much easier to identify and deal with than the cause. Once life is back to normal, we think, then we can take care of the issues that started the whole mess in the first place.

Nehemiah was a man who had to deal with a whole lot of rubble. When the news came to him that Jerusalem lay in ruins, and such ruins that a donkey could not even get through the streets, Nehemiah immediately began, not with the rubble . . . but with his sins. He said to God, "I pray before You now . . . and confess the sins of the children of Israel which we have sinned against You. Both my father's house and I have sinned" (Nehemiah 1:6). Nehemiah knew that the rubble was only a visible result of the inward condition of his people's souls, himself included. So he began with their sins, and God then used him mightily to repair the rubble.

Of course, the rubble in Nehemiah's day still required a whole lot of work once the sin issue had been addressed, and so will the rubble in our own lives. But where we choose to begin will go a long way to determine our attitude and approach to the restoration process, and thus, the outcome. Where will you begin?

Gifts From a King

In ancient times, kings often demonstrated their lordship by bestowing extravagant gifts on their favored subjects. Such generosity established the wealth, power, and benevolence of the ruler. In addition, the recipients were in a sense bound to their sovereign by the gift -- they possessed something that belonged to the king and spoke of their relationship to him. They were justly expected to use that gift in the service of their lord. The glory was to the giver, not the receiver.

A. W. Tozer says of God, "He gives but He does not give away. All that He gives remains His own and returns to Him again." We serve a King with infinite riches to bestow on His people, and He does so very generously -- all that we have is a gift from Him. As an absolute Sovereign, all in His dominion remains His, no matter who possesses it, and He expects us to use the gifts of His favor to honor Him. Do you rejoice in all your gifts as royal privileges from God? Do you serve your Lord faithfully with what He has given you?

And what do you have that you did not receive?

1 Corinthians 4:7

When God Takes a Dare

"God Himself couldn't sink this ship!" declared Captain Edward Smith of the RMS Titanic. Just days later, he and his invincible ship were at the bottom of the icy North Atlantic. God had taken the dare: He showed His effortless power over man's finest engineering pride and glory, and proved to the world that no cocky captain could tell Him what He was able to do.

Thousands of years before the Titanic sailed on her fateful voyage, a cocky king gave God another dare. At the dedication of his infamous monument, Nebuchadnezzar challenged three Hebrews who refused to bow to his pride, even on pain of a frightful death, "What god is there who can deliver you out of my hands?" Moments later, the condemned men walked unsinged out of the king's execution inferno, and Nebuchadnezzar had to admit before all the rulers of his empire that there was a God with the power to save, even from the might of the mightiest king on earth.

God often holds back when His awesome authority is questioned. But sometimes, He will answer a dare from prideful men with a spectacular, perhaps terrifying display of His greatness. To challenge the Almighty is a rather foolish thing to do, because He will always come out on top. Ultimately, no one can mock Him and get away with it. Consider His greatness and stand in awe!

For My own sake, for My own sake, I will do it;

For how should My name be profaned?

And I will not give My glory to another.

Isaiah 48:11

No Excuses

". . . what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them.  For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God . . ."

Romans 1:18-21

It's the age-old question: How can God be just to condemn people who never had a chance to hear the Gospel? The first chapter of Romans clearly tells us that there will be no valid excuses on Judgment Day. Why? First of all, because God is manifest in Man -- that is, the human heart is designed with an instinctive knowledge that there is a great Being, a rational, emotional, intelligent Being like himself, to whom he owes his existence. Also, the world around Man speaks to him of an eternal, powerful Deity with supreme authority over Creation.

But someone will say, "Nature says nothing at all about the Gospel of redemption in Jesus. It's not the fault of the poor jungle natives that they never got an opportunity to hear. They worship God in the best way they know -- surely God will give them credit for that." True, they never heard the Gospel. And that is not the criteria by which they will be judged. They will be judged because, contrary to all the clear evidence in and around them, they chose to invent gods that did not measure up to the invisible attributes of the One True God. If Man's conscience and Creation merely hinted at some ambiguous creative force, a god somewhere out there, then Man would be justified in worshiping a god in whatever detail he imagines. But nature doesn't just tell us that there is a God, it says quite a lot about what He is like. And when Man in his pride conjures up a nice, manageable deity who is not the eternal, all-powerful, all-knowing, everywhere-present, unchanging, sovereign, transcendent Being that nature declares Him to be, he is guilty of idolatry.

In reality, no one in his natural state really wants to worship God as He is. But since Man can't escape his innate need to worship something, he invariably creates an object of worship that he can manipulate and control. Even the Israelites, who saw the glory of God every day, made themselves a golden calf -- that was certainly not ignorance! God could hardly have been more clear about the basics of His nature than He has been in the Creation, and in the end, no one will stand before Him and say, "I had no idea that the Creator would be anything like this." There can be no excuses.

Colorblind World

I met a friend beside the sea --
We walked together, I and he,
Gazing on the sights so fair
As salty wind blew through our hair.

I pointed out a deep green swell
That left behind a purple shell
All lined inside with pearly sheen,
A palace for a mollusk queen.

I spoke of colors in the spray,
A dancing rainbow in a ray
Of golden sunlight on the strand
Of glistening mirrors in silver sand,

Reflecting sky of azure bright
And drifting clouds of dazzling white
Which cast soft shade on inland trees,
Their verdant tips brushed by the breeze.

A blue-gray gull alighted nigh
With crimson feet and amber eye,
And in the log on which he stood
Were patterns all through auburn wood.

I turned to see my friend's delight
To share with me this glorious sight,
Yet in his face was scarce a sign
That his joy was the match of mine.

Unmoved was he while I admired --
"Can you not see it?" I inquired.
Then crept o'er me the startling truth:
He'd known no color from his youth.

Purple, crimson, golden, green:
Only words he'd never seen.
Even that his eyes were blue
He knew not, nor beheld the hue

Of his own skin -- I pitied him!
To live a life so dull and dim
As not to know the captured eye
By an arc of light-art in the sky.

In silence we turned back again --
My heart was filled with sadness when
I thought how, though we both perceived
The same world, only one received

The fullness of the beauty there.
O! privilege beyond compare
To see the world for all it is --
What tragedy a world like his.

And yet what tragedy, thought I,
Too often, heedless, I pass by
The splendor of simplicity
Which should invoke felicity.

Can we with opened eyes and mind
Look down upon the colorblind
When we ourselves were once as they,
Walking in worlds of only gray?

Look once more on golden light
And see your colored world aright,
Nor cease to wonder, nor expect
The world to know what you forget.

Wonder

For those of us who have grown up in the church, the stories of the Bible are all too familiar -- so familiar that it's easy to forget how real they are. The Easter story in particular seems to have lost much of its charm in the yearly retelling. We all know how it ends, so we're not too horrified when we hear of the crucifixion, not too sympathetic for the grieving disciples, and not too surprised when the news of resurrection comes. Yes, we know the vital doctrinal significance of the atonement and Christ's victory over death, but it's too easy to stop with a nice sermon and a clean, smooth wooden structure bedecked with flowers.

Should the horror of the cross be less shudder-inducing to us because such a heinous death is beyond our imagining? Should the devastating emptiness for the Lord's followers be less heart-rending to us because we have inside information about what's really going on? Should the ecstasy of the words "He is risen!" be less hope-overwhelming to us simply because we've heard them before? This is no mere account with theological significance, it is a living story as real and human as our own. The question for us may not be, Where is your faith? but perhaps we ought to ask ourselves, Where is your wonder?

Just Another Day

So teach us to number our days,

that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

Psalm 90:12

I find it ironic that I read this verse on leap day, a day that gets numbered only once every four years. Is there really anything special about February 29th? It doesn't add a day to your lifespan, or even to your week. It don't do much of anything . . . except make you wait a day longer for payday (and keep our calendars in balance, of course). Today went by just like any other day of the year. Just like yesterday. Just like tomorrow. Every day is essentially the same: just one little twirl of our little planet. What makes one day different from another? Only what we do in it.

Time is a treasure that can't be hoarded, only spent. If you were born with a meter counting down the days of your life, would it make a difference in how you spent them? We have no way of knowing the number of our days, but we can put a value on what we exchange them for. Every person, from the most active leader to the laziest couch potato, has the exact same twenty-four hours to spend, and what he does with them is what builds him high or drags him low. Have you traded your days for money? For knowledge? For skill? For relationships? For souls? Or for nothing at all that will last into the next day, much less eternity?

Great things cost time. But that is no reason to shy away from them -- you will spend the time anyway. To number our days is not perhaps so much about keeping tabs on the countdown, but counting up the worth of the days we have spent. Would you give a day of your life for what you gained today? Because like it or not, you did.

The Definition of Me

I am lazy.
I am impatient.
I am proud.
I am unforgiving.
I am selfish.

Every one of us could come up with a list like this, and ten times as long.  Our sins stare us in the face on a daily basis as we look in the mirror, recite our failures, and kick ourselves soundly before we go out and do them again.  It is tempting sometimes to let our trademark sins become a definition of who we are.  This is the world's way -- a classification system of various sins that people can adopt as a sort of disclaimer label: "I'm an alcoholic," "I'm gay," "I have anger issues."  But sin is not a book of stickers you can choose from to decorate your self-portrait, it's one big ugly sign, SIN, and it's either hanging over you or hanging on the cross.  In God's eyes, all people are either rebel sinners or redeemed saints.  There is no gradient line, no sub-categories to rank ourselves by.  Yes, those of us who know Christ still struggle with sinful actions as a result of being human in a fallen world, some perhaps more than others.  But instead of looking at our sin and calling ourselves names for it, let us rather look at Jesus, who has overcome our sin, and praise Him for what He now calls us.

I am a servant of my Lord.
I am chosen by my Creator.
I am a child of my God.
I am forgiven by my King.
I am a friend of my Savior.

This is what defines me, and knowing that makes all the difference in the world.

For sin shall no longer be your master,

because you are not under the law, but under grace.

Romans 6:14

Surrounded

As the mountains surround Jerusalem,

so the Lord surrounds His people both now and forevermore.

Psalm 125:2

Oregon is a very blessed state when it comes to natural beauty.  You name it, Oregon probably has something like it somewhere.  My whole life, I might have taken for granted a little the verdant forests and hills of The Valley, my homeland.  Now, I make my home in The Basin, which boasts its own brand of beauty.  The hills are a little higher here, and not nearly so green, but their formidable openness is inviting in its own way.  Here, the crags are not distant boundaries, but close in all around you like the walls of some fortress.  From atop the rampart, you can see the world beyond, and in the distance, a stalwart peak, painted white.  But down in the enclosure, it's a strangely secure feeling to look around at the heights against the sky.  Surrounded -- it's a truly humbling feeling.  It may be enemy forces, unfathomable heaps of earth, a group of good friends, or an Almighty God, but you're keenly aware you're just one small person in the middle of it all.  Every direction you turn, the same picture faces you, and there's no escaping it.  And maybe you don't want to.

You are my hiding place;

You shall preserve me from trouble;

You shall surround me with songs of deliverance.

Psalm 32:7