Category Archives: Portraits of the Blessed

What a “Cup of Cold Water” Can Look Like

29 Monday Jul 2013

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Be Kind

 

And whoever in the name of a disciple gives to one of these little ones even a cup of cold water to drink, truly I say to you, he shall not lose his reward.  Matthew 10:41-42

 

A little boy wanted to meet God. He knew it was a long trip to where God lived, so he packed his suitcase with Twinkies and a six-pack of root beer. He started his journey.

When he had gone about three blocks, he met an old man. He was sitting in the park just staring at the pigeons. The boy sat down next to him and opened his suitcase. He was about to take a drink from his root beer when he noticed that the old man looked hungry, so he offered him a Twinkie.

The old man graciously accepted the snack and smiled at the boy. His smile was so pleasant and infectious… the boy wanted to see it again, so he offered him a root beer. Again, the old man smiled. The boy was delighted! They sat there all afternoon eating and smiling, but they never said a word to each other.

As it grew dark, the boy realized how tired he was so he got up to leave. But before he had gone more than a few steps, he turned around and ran back to the old man giving him a huge hug. The man gave him his biggest smile ever.

When the boy opened the door to his own house a short time later, his mother was surprised by the look of joy on his face. She asked him, “What did you do today that made you so happy?”

He replied, “I had lunch with God.” Before his mother could respond, he added, “You know what? God’s got the most beautiful smile I’ve ever seen!”

Meanwhile, the old man also radiant with joy, returned to his home. His son was stunned by the look of peace on his face and asked, “Dad, what did you do today that made you so happy?”

He replied, “I ate Twinkies in the park with God.” However, before his son responded, he added, “You know, He’s much younger than I expected.”

Twinkies and root beer may not be a cup of cold water, but they can be if we allow ourselves to be used by the Lord.  Look for an opportunity to be a source of encouragement to someone who crosses your path today.

 

Blessings – From God’s Incubator,

Pastor

 

Portraits of the Blessed #4 Negate-the-Hate and Know-Your-Fate!

24 Wednesday Oct 2012

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22 “Blessed are you when men hate you and when they exclude you, And revile you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of Man’s sake.”

26 “Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for their fathers used to treat the false prophets in the same way.”  Luke 6:22,26

 

Believers need to understand there are real causes for persecution. Jesus affirms such reasons in this passage. Unfortunately, the sad truth is that many Christians are persecuted not for their faith or for Christ, but because they are so unpleasant to be around. Some believers are rude, insensitive, thoughtless, and piously obnoxious. Others face rejection because they are thought to be proud and judgmental. These folks are the butt of jokes and constant harassment. I know there is no premium on stupidity… but it is these types of dues we needn’t pay. Peter warned us long ago about this issue.

If you are reproached for the name of Christ, blessed are you, for the Spirit of Glory and of God rests on you. On their part He is blasphemed, but on your part He is glorified. 15 But let none of you suffer as a murderer, a thief, an evildoer, or as a busybody in other people’s matters. 16 Yet if any suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in this matter. 1 Peter 4:14-16

 

According to Peter, there is no intrinsic merit in being rejected and persecuted, but only in being thus mistreated on account of our service for Christ. It is impossible to negate all the hate out in the world. All true professors of Christ will experience some level of persecution. Jesus emphatically stated, “If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you.” (John 15:20) Our call is to expect persecution, not create it.

Knowing this, Jesus warns His followers of the persecution which will surely follow the real believer. A paraphrase of verse 26 says, “There’s trouble ahead when you live only for the approval of others, saying what flatters them, doing what indulges them. Popularity contests are not truth contests. Your task is to be true, not popular.” I like being both truthful and popular. How about you? When the world pushes us, and it surely will… we will ultimately have to sacrifice our truth or our popularity. If in the end we find men speaking well of us, then we have sacrificed our truth.

There is an old saying, “Even a dead dog can swim with the tide.” To swim against the tide you have to be alive and kicking. A person who is persecuted because of Christ is the only one truly living. Resistance is not futile…it proves you are alive for the Lord. Persecution becomes the only true gauge of how closely we are walking with Christ. If you find the tide always going the other direction, it is not a curse but simply an indicator. Keep swimming! There is nothing in the world’s waters you need anyway. When we do latch on to worldly items floating round, we stop swimming and thus drift with the tide.

In New York City, there are eight million cats and eleven million dogs. New York City is basically just concrete and steel, so when you have a pet in New York City and it dies, you can’t just go out in the back yard and bury it. A while back the city authorities decided that for $50, they would dispose of your deceased pet for you. (I don’t think this is the case now.)

One lady was enterprising. She thought, I can render a service to people in the city and save them money. She placed an ad in the newspaper that said, “When your pet dies, I will come and take care of the carcass for you for $25.” This lady would go to the local Salvation Army and buy an old suitcase for two dollars. Then when someone would call about his or her pet, she would go to the home and put the deceased pet in the suitcase.

She would then take a ride on the subway, where there were thieves. She would set the suitcase down, and she would act like she wasn’t watching. A thief would come by and steal her suitcase. She’d look up and half-heartedly cry, “Wait. Stop. Thief.” My guess is the people who stole those suitcases got a real surprise when they got home.

A lot of us are like those New York thieves. We’re chasing after anything we think will bring fulfillment. When we get it home… it is not what we thought it would be in the beginning. Life attractions simply fail to deliver. Once we latch on to them, the tides of the world cause us to drift and we lose the ground we had gained.

If you find that your zeal or spiritual hunger is not what it should be, then I give you the same counsel that Jesus gave to the church in Ephesus which had left it’s first love. What Jesus said to them, He is saying to us. “You have forsaken your first love. Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first.” (Revelation 2:4,5)

Blessings,

Pastor

 

Portraits of the Blessed- #3 Learning to Laugh and Cry With God

22 Monday Oct 2012

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“Blessed are you who weep now, For you shall laugh.”

“Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep.” Luke 6:21,25

 

Jesus is not attacking laughter and promoting sadness.  If Jesus was attacking laughter, I would be in deep trouble! I like a little levity. I don’t think Jesus wants His followers to be grim, dull, sad, and joyless. “A cheerful heart is good medicine.” (Proverbs 17:22.)

What Jesus is attacking is the superficial, shallow humor which characterizes most of the world. I believe apart from knowing God we are unable to weep over the right issues and conversely, we laugh about the wrong events. We were designed to both laugh and cry. What, when, and how we express those emotions is the issue. Comedians know the best joke material is found in the serious situations of life. Situations which should make us cry, they turn into funny material. There is nothing inherently wrong with doing this on occasion.  But when every situation becomes a joke and we are unable to discern the sarcasm… something is wrong.

Kent Hughes probably states it best in his book Luke: That You May Know the Truth. Vol. 1.

We are called to weep over lost souls, people who will go into eternal darkness without Christ. We are to weep over the world’s misery, over injustice that falls on so many helpless people, over the unfairness that victimizes the weak, child abuse, battered spouses, over marriages destroyed by adultery, over homes destroyed by divorce, over rejection, over those who laugh now but who, unless they turn to Christ, will suffer an eternity apart from God.

 

It is OK to laugh and make jokes. Jesus did when He called James and John “sons of thunder.” Jesus also cried over unbelief, the lost House of Israel, and the death of a friend. We too need to appropriately express our emotions. If not, we will also explode and eventually burn out.

Jesus warns of inappropriately expressing the wrong emotions at the wrong time. “Woe to you who laugh now, For you shall mourn and weep.” (25) The type of laughter Luke is referring to is more than a quick chuckle. This type of laughter indicates a satisfaction and a contentment in which we believe life is flowing correctly. Listen to how The Message paraphrases this verse. “It’s trouble ahead if you think life’s all fun and games, There’s suffering to be met and you’re going to meet it.”

Jesus’ call is for all to laugh and weep at the appropriate time. The disciple of Christ is to be sensitive to both good and evil in the world. Sometimes it means we are to weep over what is absent around us, like love, justice, and peace. Praise the Lord, no condition is permanent. Even though sometimes it is difficult to discern if something “good” is happening… the Lord assures us He is in control. Eventually He causes “all things to work together for good.”  I believe the Lord will give us clues to know when we are to laugh and cry. One of the greatest pleasures in life is to be given the opportunities to laugh and cry with the Lord.

The story below demonstrates how desperately we desire to turn bad situations into good. Even at young ages we laugh and weep over the wrong situations.
Alexander M. Sanders, Jr., is the Chief Judge of the South Carolina Court of Appeals. When his daughter Zoe graduated from the University of South Carolina in 1992, he told this story that happened when she was just three years old. Sanders came home from work one day to find his home — and especially his young daughter — in a state of turmoil. Zoe’s pet turtle had died, and she was crying as if her heart would break.

Zoe’s mother had been dealing with the situation all day and declared that it was now Dad’s turn to try and make things better. Although he was successful both as a lawyer and a politician, who confidently faced all kinds of complex issues and problems every day, this seemed out of his league. The mysteries of life and death are difficult, if not impossible for the mature mind to fathom.

The task of explaining them to a three-year-old was completely beyond either his confidence or experience. But he tried. First, he told Zoe that they could go to the pet store and buy another one just like the one who had died. Even at three years old, Zoe was smart enough to know that a turtle is not a toy. There’s really no such thing as getting another one just like the one who died. And so Zoe’s tears continued.

Desperate to quiet his little girl’s tears, he said, ‘I tell you what, we’ll have a funeral for the turtle.’ Being three years old, she didn’t know what a funeral was. Scrambling to come up with an explanation — as well as something that would get her mind off the turtle’s demise, he said, ‘A funeral is like a birthday party. We’ll have ice cream and cake and lemonade and balloons, and all the children in the neighborhood will come over to our house to play. All because the turtle died.’ Well, the prospect of a turtle funeral did the trick. Instantly, Zoe was her happy, smiling self. The turtle’s death was no longer cause for tears, but reason to rejoice. So, with visions of cake and ice cream in their heads, the two beamed down on the deceased turtle lying at their feet. As they did, the turtle began to move. And a few seconds later, he was crawling away as lively as — well, as lively as a turtle, but an undeniably LIVE turtle.

Then an even stranger thing happened. Sanders — a politician and a lawyer — was speechless. Zoe had no such problem. She still wanted her funeral party.   After considering her options, she looked up at her father with her big beautiful eyes and — with all the innocence of her tender years — she said quietly, ‘Daddy, Let’s kill it.’”

Blessings,

Pastor

 

Portraits of the Blessed #2 Don’t Go Around Hungry!

17 Wednesday Oct 2012

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21 “Blessed are you who hunger now, For you shall be filled…”
25 “Woe to you who are well-fed now, for you shall be hungry.

 

Both the Old and New Testaments reveal it is better to be spiritually hungry than to be physically hungry. Hunger is a driving force in our lives. I often say, “I’m hungry.” What I am really communicating is… “I am ready to eat.” Why all this talk about being hungry for God? One of my favorite verses about this issue is found in Psalms.

“As the deer pants for the water brooks: So pants my soul for You, O God (2) My soul thirsts for God, for the Living God….” “ O God, You are my God; Early will I see You; My soul thirsts for You; My flesh longs for You In a dry and thirsty land Where there is no water.” Psalm 42:1-2

 

I like this verse because it is passionate. Here David equates his soul thirsting to his body aching for water, when water is unavailable. Have you ever been this thirsty or hungry? The better question …. have you ever been this thirsty and hungry for God.

Jesus blesses spiritual hunger and a person’s quest to know more of the Lord. “Blessed are you who hunger now for you will be satisfied.”

Here is the crux of the matter… If you are not hungry for God, then you are to create a hunger for God. Hunger is something you can jump-start. You can’t fill yourself with God, but you can generate a hunger for God. God is in the business of satisfying the hungry seeker.

When I was in college there was a snack machine in the lobby of the our dorm. The sign on the front was most titillating. It read, “Don’t go around hungry!” Like who purposely wants to go around hungry. Most college students I know are in a perpetual state of hunger. You can’t feed them enough or ever fill them up.  Snacks from a machine are like hor’dourves. They fail to fill an empty belly. Hunger is not merely a word, but a condition. Just like we get hungry at times because we don’t eat… So should there be times when we find ourselves spiritually hungry… which God fills. Spiritual food is unlike physical food. When we eat physical food, our sugar level goes up and eventually our bodies tell us to stop eating. Spiritual food operates differently. The more we eat from God’s table…the more we want to eat from His endless bounty. His food is satisfying, but it also causes our inner man to crave more of God!

This is why Jesus gives His listeners a “woe” in verse twenty-five. If we continue to gormandize ourselves with the food of this world, we will never desire real spiritual nourishment. Jesus warns, “Woe to you who are full, For you shall hunger,” Listen again to the paraphrase of this verse from The Message. “It’s trouble ahead if you’re satisfied with yourself, Your ‘self’ will not satisfy you for long.” Ouch!

Jesus is warning us that just because everything is OK now, both physically and spiritually, the day always arrives when we find ourselves empty. In that day we will need more than the junk food we have been eating… we need God’s filling, God’s supply, and God’s food.

Blessings,

Pastor

Four Portraits of the Blessed #1 Beware of Getting It All Now!

12 Friday Oct 2012

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I am going to spend the next four blogs on the Beatitudes as recorded from Dr. Luke’s account. The good doctor only mentions four of these beatitudes, whereas Matthew records nine. Most believe both men were writing about the same sermon. It sounds like some of the people who have taken notes during my messages. I believe Luke was not simply abbreviating the sermon, but highlighting what he believed to be the four most important traits a disciple of Christ needs to possess. According to Luke, those who follow Jesus must operate under a set of values different from and often opposite of that of the world. Thus, the blessed life is not found in “getting” or from “doing”, but from “being.”

In Luke’s portrait of the blessed life he wants his readers to notice the good and bad, the right from the wrong. For each of the blessings there is a corresponding woe. These four woes all share a common truth … beware of what you take from life, you will pay for it in the long run. So these are not simply commands, but descriptions of what the life of the righteous should look like.

Imagine for a moment that I tell you “the righteous only drive 35 miles per hour.” “What!” You say, “I have the capability to cruise 70 mph and do so all the time.” I retort, “Yep, I know… but the righteous only go 35 mph.” I am not telling you that you have to always operate at 35 mph. I am telling you that the righteous only travel at 35 mph. You are simply given the choice to learn, listen from the Lord, and operate as He instructs. You don’t have to travel at His speed, but righteous people do.

 

Beware of Getting It All Now

 

20 “… Blessed are you poor For yours is the Kingdom of God”
24 “But woe to you who are rich, for you are receiving your comfort in full.”

 

A Sunday school teacher was telling her class the story of the Good Samaritan, in which a man was beaten, robbed, and left for dead. She described the situation in vivid detail so her students would catch the drama. Then she asked the class: “If you saw a person lying on the roadside, all wounded and bleeding, what would you do?”
A thoughtful little girl broke the hushed silence, “I think I’d throw up.”

You never know how someone is going to respond in any given situation until you are actually walking it out. The same is true of life. We really don’t know what it means to be “poor” or “rich” until we experience it. There is nothing innately righteous about being poor, nor is there any automatic evil in being rich. The poor are not automatically spiritual and the rich are not automatically evil. The writer of Proverbs states it perfectly.

“… Give me neither poverty nor riches—Feed me with the food allotted to me; (9) Lest I be full and deny You, And say, “Who is the LORD?” Or lest I be poor and steal, And profane the name of my God.” Proverbs 30:8-9

 

Riches and poverty can be a blessing or a curse. Jesus taught…. when a choice must be made between money and God, God must always come first.  “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.” Matthew 6:24 When we fail to have our priorities in order… our circumstances, whether we are rich or poor, dictate our response. Money is not evil, unless it takes the place of God. This is why Jesus said, “It is the love of money which is at the root of all evil.“

Jesus follows this teaching of blessings on the poor a few verses later with a corresponding “woe” in verse twenty-four, “But woe to you who are rich, For you have received your consolation.” The word “woe” is an expression of dismay and regret, rather than a threat. Woe is meant to serve as a road sign like “yield” or “stop” what you’re doing. Jesus is expressing disappointment for the actions and attitudes of those who do not accept what the Kingdom of God offers. Listen to this modern paraphrase of this verse. (The Message) “It’s trouble ahead for those who think they have it made, What you have is all you’ll ever get.”

The Lord doesn’t want us to spend all of our resources totally on ourselves. This would be a waste or our time, talents, money, and abilities. This is what actually makes people poor…wasting their God-given resources on selfish pursuits.

Jesus is not blessing economic poverty or raising one social class above another. Matthew spiritualized the word “poor” by saying “poor in spirit”. This is how we usually quote this verse. “Poor” is actually “pious“, a religious term, not an economic word. The word for “pious” means, “those who depend absolutely on God.” Being pious has gotten a bad rap here in the modern era. But being pious is a good thing, especially as it relates to the Lord.

Luke wants his readers to compare these two words. Being pious stands in a juxtaposition to being rich, which means “self-sufficient.” Rich doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with amounts of money or accumulation of wealth. You are either (pious) God dependent or (rich) self-sufficient. If you are poor, you are trusting the Lord to reward you later. If you are rich, you are getting all your rewards now. It is usually easier to move towards God when you are poor, rather than when you are rich, because you don’t have to battle having riches or self-sufficiency.

The big blessing here… “the Kingdom of God is yours!” The meaning of “is” is always two-dimensional when speaking from the eternal point of view. It means “is now” and “will be” even more so in eternity. Jesus is saying that if one has this attitude now, he or she already is enjoying life in the kingdom or realm or atmosphere of God.

Shizo Kanakuri disappeared while running the marathon in the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm. He was listed as a missing person in Sweden for 50 years — until a journalist found him living quietly in southern Japan.

Overcome with heat during the race, he had stopped at a garden party to drink orange juice, stayed for an hour, then took a train to a hotel and sailed home the next day, too ashamed to tell anyone he was leaving.

There’s a happy ending: In 1966, Kanakuri accepted an invitation to return to Stockholm and complete his run. His final time was 54 years, 8 months, 6 days, 8 hours, 32 minutes and 20.3 seconds — surely a record that will last forever.

I know a lot of believers who run from being “pious” and totally dismiss any assertion they are “rich”. They honestly look at this beatitude and struggle to apply it. The truth is the Lord wants to give us His Kingdom right now! The only way to discover the deeper joys of Kingdom life is to become God dependent and less self-sufficient. If we choose to disappear from the race like our friend from Japan and blend into crowd of mediocrity, we will lose our identity. The call is always to “seek His face while He can be found and call upon Him while He is near, because He cares for us.”

Blessings,

Pastor