Amazing Grace

Lately, I have been thinking about how blessed I am in my life. Since Thanksgiving I have been especially thankful that I have enough food and that I have people in my life who enjoy preparing it for me to eat. My mother-in-law, wife, and sisters-in-law all contributed to our Thanksgiving meals and they were delicious! Since then I have been especially aware of the effort that my wife makes to ensure that we have good food that is good for us. My daughter prepared her first roast yesterday and I thoroughly enjoyed it last night, and so there is another person in my home who is beginning to prepare meals for me to enjoy (my son has found enjoyment in preparing a variety of breakfasts and also in preparing steaks for supper for quite a while). In the midst of my thoughts of food and physical blessings, I read and have since re-read a passage in Romans.

"For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person--though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die-- but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." Romans 5:6-8

My Lord and Savior laid down His life for me so that I would be reconciled to God the Father. As I look at my sinful life, I hold tightly to His word that "while we were sinners, Christ died for us", even as I strive to live a life worthy of the calling to which I have been called.

Thank you God for all my physical blessings and relational blessings, and thank you for your son Jesus Christ and His willingness to be the atoning sacrifice for my sin.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year. For those of you who may know me, I will add that it is NOT because of the feasting.

I love this holiday because it gives me an excuse to think about all the things I am thankful for. I have been thinking over the past week or two about many things for which I am thankful to my God in Heaven. On several occasions I have started to write about my Dad, my Mom, my wife, my daughter, my son, my mother-in-law, my extended family including those on my wife's side of the family, my church home, several men in my church who inspire me, encourage me, support me, and pray for me, and numerous other things including my health, job, material possessions, etc. I think that these people and things are so important to who I am that I will devote some time to writing about them. But for today I have another thought of thankfulness.

I have so many things to be thankful for and at times I feel overwhelmed with the way God has blessed me in this life. I know that some of His greatest blessings do not include any of the things I mentioned previously, and do include struggles, suffering, pain, and humility. When I read James 1:2-3 "Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know the testing of your faith produces steadfastness", I first think that I would like to be joy filled without the need to face trials. I find it difficult to pray for trials in my life, but I do want to be steadfast in my faith. Can I be steadfast in my faith without testing? Can I experience deep relationship with my Lord Jesus Christ without sharing in His suffering? Can I truly empathize with the passion the Lord calls me to with people who are suffering if I have never suffered?

I struggle with these thoughts and with what I am asking for when I ask the Lord to strengthen my faith, deepen my love for Him, draw me close and shelter me beneath the shadow of His wing. When I pray those things am I not praying that the Lord will give me trials that will lead me to Him, help me to identify in the suffering of my Lord and Savior, and seek Him for shelter and as a refuge?

This Thanksgiving I am thankful for the faithfulness of my God. I am thankful that He has clothed me with Christ so that when I stand before Him he doesn't see the blackness of my heart and the guilt that the enemy tries to make me claim, but He sees the Lamb that was slain, the Holy One of God, His one and only Son. Because of the blood of my Lord Jesus Christ, the mighty God of the universe sees me as His son; holy and blameless in His sight and washed with the blood of the Savior. Praise God from whom all blessing flow!

We sing a song at church sometimes that touches my heart. It is a song where in one verse I thank Him and praise Him when the sun is shining down and all is as it should be, and in another I thank Him and praise Him when I walk in the desert place, thought there is pain in the offering. My God is faithful and He will receive my praise and my worship whether I feel as if I am on the mountain top or mired in the deepest valley. My God reigns and He is worthy of my praise, my devotion, my adoration, my worship, my faithfulness, and, while I sit with my family and eat from the abundance He has provided, my thanks.

Prayer

"The first (great human reason we ought to pray) is because of what prayer does to our character. Prayer is like a time exposure to God. Our souls function like photographic plates, and Christ's shining image is the light. The more we expose our lives to the white-hot sun of His righteous life (for, say, five, ten, fifteen, thirty minutes, or an hour a day), the more His image will be burned into our character - His love, His compassion, His truth, His integrity, His humility."

(from: Disciplines of a Godly Man by R. Kent Hughes p. 83, published by Crossway Books)

Thankful for my Senior Pastor

I have been thinking a lot lately about how blessed I am by whom God chose to place in the body of Christ as my senior pastor. Since the time He moved me to move our family to become part of the body where we worship, I, personally, and my family corporately, have been blessed in many ways. I don't know if I will be able to articulate the ways God is blessing us through being part of the body of Christ, but I may share some of the rest of them in upcoming posts. Today I want to share a few words about my senior pastor, Kevin and the ways in which God has blessed my family and me through him.

The first and perhaps most obvious blessing is his preaching of the Word of God. He blesses me on a weekly basis with sound teaching from the text of the Bible. He teaches with clarity and conviction through each section of the Holy Scriptures whether they are "feel good" passages or very challenging passages. His preaching and teaching challenge me to be change the way I think, change the way I speak, change the way I act toward my family and others, and to change the way I worship the Holy God. As I sit under his teaching of the Word, I feel the Lord speaking to my heart, pointing out the blackness and calling me to live, think, act, and speak more like my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I also see my God more clearly as I listen and study the Bible under his leadership and direction. I see a Holy God, and awesome God, a creative God, a loving God, a just God, a patient God, a faithful God. I clearly see God sharing His heart for His people, and I feel loved despite my sin and despite my rebellious heart.

Another way the he blesses me, my family, and our church is by the way he talks with us and greets us on Sunday mornings. He frequently can be seen walking throughout the building greeting people and especially taking time to stop to talk with people who he hasn't seen before, welcoming them and getting to know something about them. He is sincerely glad to see those who God brings to the church and I believe he feels a call to help us all feel welcome. The job of welcoming members, guests and visitors is the responsibility of each of us, but his willingness to use the few minutes before the start of services to welcome us personally encourages me to be more welcoming and to be more sensitive to greet those who I don't know.

He also blessed our family when we were searching for a church home through the class that he and his wife taught that helped us to focus our search. Then the follow-up class that helped us to know more about this church, the staff, teaching, elders, deacons, and ministry opportunities.

He has blessed me and blessed my son through his willingness to serve and to patiently teach some of what he knows about fishing. I have been privileged to go with some of the men of our church on a camping and fly fishing trip, once by myself, once with my son, and then this year my son was able to go when I couldn't. On these trips, I have observed that he spends his time on these trips serving. He spends eight hours a day, for four days, rowing a boat and teaching people who know nothing about how to fly fish. He patiently encourages and teaches and helps each of us to feel the satisfaction and excitement of hooking and landing a beautiful brown or rainbow trout and then gently releases them back to their crystal clear home. I have seen the man who loves fishing as much or more than anyone I know spend his days in one of his favorite fishing places, teaching others to fish, and rowing against the current all day long, and for four days rarely, if ever, actually fishing himself.

He has blessed my family and our whole church through his wisdom and leadership as an elder. His prayerful consideration of the needs of the church and his desire to lead us to God and to a Holy and Godly life, has given me a sense of comfort and peace that our church is being led by men of prayer, humility, and God-given wisdom.
My family and I have been blessed by this man of God through his teaching, his leadership, his service, and his friendship. We reap some of the reward of his devotion to God and to prayer, and I am very thankful that God has placed me, with my family, in a church body where we can serve alongside a man of God like Kevin. I pray that God will give him the strength and wisdom to overcome the attacks of the enemy who will always target men of God who are leading in their family and leading in their church. I thank God that He has placed me in this body of Christ where I am served by a man whom I admire and love as a brother in Christ.

Politics Aside

I was born in 1963 and in that year many children aspired to be firemen, nurses, policemen, doctors, (for the first time) astronauts, and president of the United States of America. While the phrase “you can be anything you want to be” was heard by and was true for many children, there were few if any women who believed they could actually become president and there were probably fewer people of color (any color other than white) who truly believed they could be president.

I am proud to be an American. I am a patriot and a believer in what our founding fathers established and what I have grown to see is a nation blessed by God. There are parts of our history that I am not proud of in the least, but there are also parts of our history that inspire me to continue to believe that God can and will work in and through this nation. In the 1860’s one of this nation’s greatest sins against humanity was done away with through the signing of the emancipation proclamation. While the devaluation of life to the point of considering another human being to be property was eliminated, the devaluation of some lives continues to this day in this country. For over 100 years those who were “freed” 140 years ago had no realistic chance to be president of the United States or to enjoy many of the “freedoms” we consider foundational to our country’s identity.

In a nation where in 1968 a man who said “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever” received nearly 10 million votes in our presidential election, a man who would have been part of that segregation has been elected president. Praise God that our nation has healed enough in 40 years that I am able to see that the color of a man’s skin no longer eliminates him from consideration to the highest office in our country.

A Journey through His Word

I have finally accepted the call the Lord has had on my life for several months to read through His Word in chronological order. As I begin this journey, I do so with the full expectation that the Lord is going to transform my life through the renewing of my mind. There have been times when I committed to reading through the Bible when my thoughts were of my own accomplishment and the blessing that would come from exposure to the Word. This time is different. This time I feel that the Lord is calling me to Himself and that through His Word He is going to change my life.

I am writing this down partly so that anyone who reads this can keep me accountable to my commitment, but the main reason is to mark this date as the starting point of a new adventure in my journey with the Lord. I believe that by the end of 2009, my family will receive a great blessing from the Lord through the work He will do in me during this time spent with Him.

I was speaking with my friend Jim yesterday and confessed that I rationalize that I don’t have time to commit to daily reading of the Bible or other books. As we talked it became clear that there is a good measure of laziness mixed into that recipe, and that the enemy desires for me to be complacent, detached from my God, tired, lazy, disobedient, rebellious, and alone. Over the past several months I’m sure he has been pleased with the way I have wandered from the path the Lord has cleared and placed before me. I have rationalized about this as well; telling myself that I can still see the path off to the right or left and that I am still traveling in the general direction of the path. I have sinned in my disobedience to my God, my Lord, and my Creator.

As part of His call, the Lord has called me back to the discipline of fasting and He has called me to pray for those He will put on my heart. There have been several people He has called me to pray for over the past year and I have prayed sporadically for them, but I believe that He is calling me to a disciplined time of prayer for those He brings to my heart and mind. I have asked forgiveness for my disobedience in this as well and I also apologize to those for whom I have been called into prayer. I know the Lord will accomplish His will, and that He certainly does not need me to accomplish anything. I also know that He calls me to prayer for a reason. I know that I have missed a blessing from Him by following my own path rather than His path, and I have done a disservice to those for whom I was called to pray.

My desire is to be obedient. My desire is not to “accomplish” anything, but only to more closely live with my Lord in the way in which He has designed me to live and has desired for me to live. I know that part of the reason for this time alone with my Lord is so that He can convict me of my sin. I am not looking forward to being humbled; I wish now I had humbled myself before my God every day.

Thank You to My Band of Brothers

As expected, Nathaniel had a fantastic trip to the San Juan river. He has been sharing stories of fishing, camping, building fires, and great time spent worshipping, eating, and laughing. As much as I expected that he would have a great time and the reason for it would be the men of South Side and the love they shared with him, I underestimated the impact it would have on him.

Nathaniel is already bearing fruit from his time spent with Godly men. I have already seen in him a confidence that comes from knowing that he is accepted and loved by men whom he admires and respects. He learned things about fishing, about fire-making, about setting up and breaking down camp, about dealing with disappointment and joy, and about living as a Christian man in the midst of a world that rejects much of what God has given.

A sincere "thank you" to Russ, Andrew, Clay, Dwayne, Thomas, Kevin, Russell, Tim, Richard, and the rest of the men who modeled the love of Christ to my son.

Sharpening in My Absence

I have prayed for my son several times over the past 30 hours or so. I have prayed for his safety as he travels and that he enjoy his week with the group of men from our church who take an annual trip to the San Juan river in the NW corner of New Mexico. I have been privileged to share in this time of fishing, camping, eating, worship, prayer, travel, and conversation for the past two years. This year, due to a job change and the resulting schedule, I am unable to go, but my son was invited by his friend Andrew. I am excited for him to be able to have fun in a beautiful place, and I would have allowed him to go even if that was the only thing he would gain from the trip. The reward that awaits him from this trip is so much more than just the fun of catching a beautiful trout or delicious salmon. The reward is to spend a week in the presence of men who truly love the Lord and who desire to be more like Jesus every day. All of them are flawed and struggle to walk the path the Lord has for them, but Nathaniel will see in them a love for God and for His creation through their smiles, their fish stories, their singing, their prayers, their BS around the BS fire (that's Bible Study for you non San Juan folks).

I am very thankful that there are men in our church who I trust with my son. Men who will watch out for his safety, will demand that his behavior reflect his own love for the Lord as well as the teaching he has received at home, and who will pour themselves into his life. I believe he will come back from this trip knowing that to be a christian man at South Side Baptist Church is to be part of a band of brothers who will love him, teach him, hold him accountable, and encourage him to walk in faith and use his God-given gifts to bring glory and honor to the Lord. I thank each of the men going on this trip, including those who are probably still an hour or more from their arrival time, for investing in Nathaniel's life during this week. God bless you.