The Sacrifice of Praise

 Thanksgiving.  Giving thanks.  So much has been preached, written, and taught about the importance of giving thanks and why embracing the Thanksgiving holiday is so good for us.  Offering praise and thanks to the Lord reinforces to us that God is God and we are not.  Research shows that cultivating a grateful heart is an important component in our experience of happiness. And when we express our thanks, we become an encouragement to others.  Giving thanks changes us, making us more fit for heaven.

 

But herein lies the catch.  Giving thanks can be difficult.  Really difficult.  A few weeks ago, our pastor at Windsor Chapel, preaching from I Thessalonians, commented that waiting on the Lord, waiting for Him to answer our prayers, is often challenging and frustrating.  We see in this epistle an ongoing tension: Paul longingly prays for the opportunity to return to Thessalonica, to be reassured and encouraged by their faith and fellowship while at the same time offering deep heartfelt praise and thanksgiving and exhorting the Thessalonians to do the same even as both sides wait to be reunited.

 

Paul makes note of struggle and suffering in his letter to the Thessalonians, both on his part and theirs.  These are hard times for these young believers living in a very secular world hostile to their faith.  And yet, giving thanks and praise is an unmistakable thread that runs through Paul’s heart and spirit, and his words.

 

We are often told to count our blessings.  While this can be good advice, it can also minimize the challenges of genuine thanksgiving and cultivating a heart of gratitude.  And, the exhortation to count our blessings can mislead us into thinking that the giving of thanks requires us to pretend that times aren’t tough when they are.  Rather, the giving of thanks requires us to think beyond our tough times and beyond ourselves and to refocus on our good God.  The determination to present a grateful heart before the Lord means that we claim by faith that the Lord will work good out of each and every one of our circumstances, to cling to the Truth that we are not yet able to see.

 

“And not only this, but we also exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance; and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope; and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.”  Romans 5:3-5

 

 

Through Him then, let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that give thanks to His name.

 

 

 

A Thought For Halloween

 "There's a day that's drawing near when this darkness breaks to light

And the shadows disappear and my faith shall be my eyes

Jesus has overcome and the grave is over-whelmed

The victory is won; He is risen from the dead

And I will rise when He calls my name; no more sorrow no more pain

I will rise on eagle's wings before my God, fall on my knees...."

                        Chris Tomlin, Jesse Reeves, Louie Giglio, Matt Maher

                                                     

Thought For The Day

 “Being honest may not get you a lot of friends, but it’ll always get you the right ones.”

 

                                                                                                            John Lennon

A Lesson From Middle Earth

 October is arguably my favorite month, and I know I am not alone.  The cooler, crisp weather that heralds the changing season is invigorating as it invites us to embrace the rhythm of God’s creation.  And while I am learning the value of living in the present, October includes for me thoughts of past and future: memories of the summer just past and anticipation of the upcoming holiday season in the near future.  And as I integrate these components into my October present, I find a constructive perspective to guide my days.

 

Jogging (with the company of our Doodle) is an integral part of my commitment to fitness, but the heat of summer usually suspends our twice-weekly outings.  And so this past summer, I found myself retreating to Middle Earth (via film) as I worked through interval training workouts on our elliptical trainer.  As The Lord of the Rings trilogy begins, there is an introduction that sets the stage for the epic good vs. evil struggle that follows.

 

Middle Earth is populated by a diverse group of intelligent beings: Wizards, dwarves, elves, hobbits, and men.  When the evil Lord Sauron determines to put the whole of Middle Earth under his cruel rule, he crafts the “one ring to rule them all” as his ultimate weapon.  Men and elves come together to challenge him, and the future of the land rests upon the outcome of the subsequent battle.  After young Prince Isildur witnesses the death of his father, the King of Gondor, he grabs his father’s broken sword and severs Sauron’s ring-bearing hand from his body.  Sauron’s kingdom implodes and disintegrates—for the time being.  But the young prince disregards the advice of the elf lord at his side, and instead of destroying the evil ring, Isildur keeps it for his own purposes.  Sauron’s ring has a will of its own, and it quickly slips away from the prince.  Its location unknown for centuries, the continued existence of the ring enables Sauron to slowly regain his power even as the general population loses the collective memory of the long-past events that threatened their lives and well-being.  It is only as the growing evil represented by the resurgence of Sauron’s sphere of evil influence becomes recognized does the folly of Prince Isildur become clear.

 

And this is the point in the saga that directs my thoughts forward from this past summer, through October, and toward the Christmas holiday that will soon be upon us.  John the Baptist went about his days proclaiming the imminent appearance of Christ and the importance of repentance.  During his public ministry, Jesus repeated John’s message, and the Apostles who continued Jesus’s ministry after His death and resurrection continued to call for confession and repentance.  If we are to be ready for the coming of Christ—in our celebration of the Incarnation at Christmas and/or His second coming—we must be about the business of confessing and repenting.  If any of us believe that we have not sinned, we are deceiving ourselves (I John 1:8).

 

This, then, brings us back to The Lord of the Rings.  The dramatic plot rests upon the deadly consequences of Isildur’s choice, centuries in the making.  Isildur did not experience any consequences of his choice apart from losing the ring; he could not have imagined the cost of claiming the evil ring of power.  But consequences are not limited by our lack of vision or imagination.  And it is not simply our human limitations of vision and imagination that can set us up to make poor choices.  In the course of this powerful story, two elf lords make two observations about the race of men: Men are weak, and they desire power above all else.  We see in Isildur the weakness that made him unable to resist the power pull of the ring that could and would only serve the evil purposes of Sauron.  

 

The Lord of the Rings is a fictional narrative, but its author, J.R.R. Tolkien, understood very well the ability of fiction to represent truth in an extraordinarily effective way (On Fairy-stories).  The story of Isildur challenges us to consider our weakness and our desire for power.  It also challenges us to consider that there are consequences to our choices that we may never see or imagine.  Our choices matter.

 

And so we now have our own choice to make.  Are we going to take responsibility for our weakness and desire for personal power?  Can we accept our limitations as human beings?  Are we going to follow Isildur’s trail, or are we going to learn from it?  If we want to learn from Isildur’s choice, we must prepare our hearts for the kingdom of God, proclaimed in the coming of Christ.  We must maintain a humble attitude characterized by confession and repentance and a dependence upon Christ not only for our salvation but also for our identity, value, significance, power, and influence.  

 

Tolkien’s Middle Earth saga reminds us that our choices matter and that we are not to be trusted to make those choices independently.  Praise God that the kingdom of God is upon us!  Our loving Lord has provided a way for us to safely travel through this world and into His kingdom.  May we prepare with gratitude and joy.

 

Thought For The Day

 "Happiness is not a goal, it's a by-product."

                                        Eleanor Roosevelt

Back To School

 September.  Regardless of our age or family/life circumstances, it is difficult to walk into September without some Back To School thoughts.  And so here we are.

 

Some of us are, in fact, returning to school, either as students or teachers/staff.  Others of us are sending children back to school.  Some of us are relieved to have put our school years behind while others look back with longing for those good old days.  Regardless of our current situation, September stands as a reminder of our continual need to grow and as an invitation to do so.  This is a wonderful time to consider going back to school, so to speak, under our spiritual Schoolmaster, Jesus Christ.  The Bible reminds us that a life of faith is a life of learning and growing.  We are to work out our salvation with fear and trembling as the indwelling Holy Spirit does His work in sanctifying us (Philippians 2:12-13).  

 

Our faith-work takes multiple forms, but one of the most significant and powerful elements of Christian growth remarkably echoes our school years: Bible study.  Reading, studying, and meditating on this Book is our foundation for a growing life of faith.  God has provided His Word for us, that we might learn who He is, who we are before Him, and what a faith relationship with Him looks like.

 

Bible study is more than the book learning that my Back To School analogy would suggest.  The ultimate goal of Bible study is to be transformed by the renewing of our mind and to be conformed to the character of Christ and His kingdom.  As we immerse ourselves in God’s Word, our minds and hearts are touched.  We become better able to love as Christ loves and better able to explain Truth to others.  We become informed and wise, yes, but we are changed from the inside out for all eternity.  This is a far greater reward than the grades we earn/earned from our school studies.  May we eagerly and gratefully return to the Lord’s schoolhouse of His Word, sit at our Teacher’s feet, diligently study His Word, and humbly submit to His work in us.

 

"And They'll Know We Are Christians By Our...."

 Summer continues, the pandemic is at bay, and fall is just around the corner…. Many if not most of us have become ambitious with thoughts and plans of places to go and people to see.  And for believers, there is a sense of renewed opportunity for ministry and engagement with an increasingly divided, dark and unbelieving world.  It can be easy to feel confused and overwhelmed.  What can we as individuals and as a small church do to proclaim the kingdom?

 

Fortunately, redemption is the Lord’s work.  It is the work of the Holy Spirit to convict unbelievers and draw them to the Father through the Son.  We get to come along for the ride.  Our role is simple yet confoundingly complex and challenging: we are to love, in unity.  As believers love one another and worship and serve as one, we become witnesses of Love Himself and reflect the intimate unity within the Trinity.  

 

When we embrace our role as witnesses to the ends of the earth, we become God’s hands, feet, and skin.  As difficult as it may be to believe at time, our Lord delights to include us in His redemptive work.  But make no mistake: even as the Lord uses us to extend His kingdom, He uses the process itself to do His redemptive work in us, both individually and corporately.  Sin, selfishness, and stubbornness are exposed, and we must confront those stumbling blocks to love and unity if we genuinely want to fulfill the Lord’s purposes for us.   

 

Scripture is extremely clear on this point.  In His last words to the disciples in the upper room before His death, Jesus talks repeatedly about the love and unity among Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and the expansion of that love and unity to and among the disciples, that they would know the joy and peace of God and proclaim Him to the world.  We, as spiritual descendants of those disciples in the upper room with Jesus, are also called to love and unity, to put our flesh into action in ways that express the love of Christ and the unity of the Godhead in the here and now.  

 

But the church is not and has never been immune to division and a lack of love, and that is more evident now than ever before.  How can we bear witness to the love and unity of our Triune God when we exhibit neither love nor unity?  But does bearing witness mean that we sacrifice our convictions held in faith to an amorphous “higher good” of mushy, tolerant love?  Again, I would like to consider our spiritual ancestors, the original disciples.  The geopolitical environment was as hostile to Christianity then as it is now; and there was plenty of opportunity for strife in those times: we read in Scripture times of sharp discord in the early church.  But early believers still managed to build the church by growing in love and unity and manifesting those distinctive characteristics to the unbelieving world; the church grew exponentially.  

 

What might this look like for believers in local bodies?  There is no prescription, no script.  But I believe that there are a couple of Biblical truths that can help us to negotiate this difficult path.  The first is that we are all sinners: we all fall short of the glory of God.  This means that we have reason to cultivate humility in our own hearts and minds and to regard others as valuable—with valuable perceptions and convictions—even as they sin.  A second truth to consider is that the human heart is deceitful, and only God knows its depths.  Our motives may not be as pure as we would like to think, and we might easily misinterpret or misjudge the motives of others.  We need not make it our mission to convince others that we are right.  It is much wiser and more profitable to make it our mission to find commonalities in our respective positions within the context of a shared faith.  

 

Again, I do not believe that the Lord would have us trade in our convictions for a diluted faith that is untethered from truth.  But please consider that it is indeed possible to hold our convictions and to also pursue love and unity with our brothers and sisters in Christ.  We can seek to be fertile ground for the Holy Spirit to bear His fruit in us, that we would treat others with patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self-control even as we hold our convictions.  And again, we can remember that God is God and we are not.  He is the One doing the redemptive work; we get to participate, but we have not been invited to supervise or superintend.  The more relevant issue here is that we may very well need to trade in our prideful desire to be right in order to build a body characterized by love and unity.  

 

We are living in a time of unprecedented opportunity to leverage the power of love and unity in a divided and hate-filled world.  May the Lord work within us so that He can work through us…!