THANKSGIVING REFLECTIONS 2012

Last night our church had its usual Thanksgiving Eve service.  It’s different from the one we have on a typical Sunday.  We sang some wonderful contemporary songs about the love of God, songs you can clap to, songs that made my heart full of joy and thanksgiving to the Lord.  

We also had communion, the symbol of Jesus’ sacrifice for us and of our unity with Him, and with one another as brothers and sisters in Jesus.  

When we finished with communion the service took a turn from our familiar Sunday format.  For the rest of our time together we were given the opportunity to stand up and give the Lord praise for the ways in which He has worked in our lives.  There were some wonderful testimonies to God’s grace –in  a long time illness finally diagnosed; in the safe return of a young man who had served in Afghanistan; for sons and daughters home from college; and many other thanks- givings. Before I even entered the church my heart was full of gratitude, so all these blessings added to my joyful praise.  

Sitting there listening to others, I was struck by the mercy and grace of God in a new way.  

I remember reading a book that asked the question:  If heaven wasn’t included in the “package” of believing in Jesus, if believing was only beneficial for TODAY, would you still believe?  My answer would be a resounding YES!  I am so grateful to know God, to know that God loves me.  That He loved me enough to pay the ultimate price of the life of His Son so that I could come near.  So that I could love HIM!  The God of the universe!  The Creator of all things!  I can KNOW Him – not just for all eternity – but for NOW! Every day I live He gives me glimpses of Himself.

How grateful I am for Jesus, for His willingness to go to the cross, giving His life for mine, so that I could KNOW Him.  I was filled last night with the delight, the privilege, the blessing of KNOWING Jesus!  If there was no heaven to come with the package, the blessing of knowing Jesus NOW would be enough. 

I’m so grateful also that oneness with Jesus makes me one as well with all the others who also belong to Him.  I looked around the sanctuary at all those familiar faces and thanked the Lord for my brothers and sisters in Christ.  How I love them!

But these weren’t the only reasons I was filled with gratitude last night.  I was filled with gratitude for all those college students home for Thanksgiving, sitting in the pews with their family.  The Lord has blessed me to know so many of them personally simply because the youth group needed a female chaperone for a missions trip and I went.  What a privilege to know them!  What a privilege to see them grow into young men and women with a heart for God.  

I know what the Apostle John means in 3 John, verse 4:

“I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.”

These young adults are not my biological children, but in a way many of them are my spiritual children because I have prayed for them and been blessed to invest in their lives.  It gives me so much joy to see them walking in the truth!

I’m thankful for so much: for my family, for the food that goes along with this day, for extended family we’ll see later, for the country in which I live that sets aside a day to give God thanks, for young adults learning to walk with Jesus.   

But mostly I’m grateful for those more intangible gifts that cannot be readily “seen” that come about because Jesus came.

My cup is full.  Thank you Jesus.

CRAZY, YES! BUT CRAZY IN LOVE!

If you have read my blog entitled, “Indeed, the Lord still speaks. .”, then you know that I am in the process of being evaluated to donate a kidney to Jennifer, a friend and sister in Christ from my church.  I spent the day yesterday at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York City for a second round of tests and consultations with physicians.   

I was pretty amazed and also overjoyed that one of the doctors said I was in excellent health for someone my age.  From what he said, the final decision about whether or not I will be approved as a donor will be decided by a kidney donor panel which reviews all donors and their test results before together making their final decision.  I may have to have one more kidney function test before we receive a decision.

As I said in the blog mentioned above, Jennifer and I desire more than anything that the Lord be honored, exalted, and glorified in the entire process, regardless of whether the result will be my giving and her receiving a kidney.

In the dark of night when my nightly hot flash catapults me into complete wakefulness, I think.  Sometimes I write blogs in my head.  Sometimes I consider logistical solutions for things I’m doing – like do I ask the discussion questions in this part of my lesson, or that – for my Sunday school class or the ladies Bible class I teach.  Recently I’ve thought a lot about what I’m going to say to people who ask me why I want to donate a kidney to Jennifer, and say it in a way that will magnify the Lord and not me.  Several times yesterday I had that opportunity.

I always explain how I found out about being a live kidney donor through a post Jennifer had on her Facebook page.  It kind of blows minds when they hear of this social media vehicle used in that way.  I’m sure the guy who developed it didn’t see that one coming!

One of the appointments I had yesterday was with a psychiatrist who most certainly wanted to know why I would do such a thing for someone who was not a family member.  I knew this appointment was coming and I was somewhat concerned about whether the psychiatrist would really grasp the role my faith and Jennifer’s has in this adventure we have embarked on together. It was an interesting discussion to say the least!

What I was most hesitant to share was how the Lord had impressed upon me that this was an invitation to say yes to something He was leading me to do.  It’s the “God TOLD me to do it” explanation that I imagined would be a red flag to someone whose job it is to recognize insanity!  Psychiatric hospitals are probably FULL of people who believe that God speaks to them!  I was thinking that if the psychiatrist was not a person of faith, then I might be in trouble!   

Just so you know, I do not believe that the Lord speaks to me – or anyone anymore – in an audible voice.  We now have the full counsel of God’s Word – the Bible – and the indwelling Holy Spirit to speak for Him.  That’s how I believe God speaks today.  In this case, when I read Jennifer’s Facebook post, the Lord just kept bringing it to my mind until I felt I had to act on it and see where it, or rather He, would take me.

During the course of the conversation with the psychiatrist, the Lord gave me a great deal of opportunity to share how faith in Jesus impacts my motivations, my actions, and my whole life really, and the Spirit gave me freedom in sharing it.  

I shared how it was the Lord who spoke to me through Jennifer’s Facebook posting with a link about live kidney donorship.  I shared how it was the Lord who guided us through first the blood type match, and then the cross match match.  It is He who guides us now through all the good test results that have been keeping the way open.  It is He who fills us with joy and anticipation of what He’s going to do – in our lives and the lives of others – whether or not I’m approved to be a donor, and whether or not Jennifer ultimately receives my kidney.  And it will be the Lord who will help us both accept a “no”, in the event I am rejected as a donor, although it would take time for us each to come to grips with that.

The psychiatrist asked if I saw this as a sort of culminating life goal of mine.  I told her that glorifying God was a life goal – in all of my life, not just in this – and that there were plenty of things I was currently involved in to illustrate that, not just this. Jim spoke up as well to assure her of that.

She asked if I had any fear of a negative outcome to the surgery and I said no, because I felt I was following the Lord’s leading, and because I knew what lay ahead at the end of my life on this earth, and it would be glorious.  She remarked then, “So you’re not afraid of dying?”.  My response was a hearty, “NO!, I know where I’m going and the anticipation of it becomes sweeter the older I get”.  Just to clarify though, in case she was thinking maybe I had a death wish – I told her that despite the joyful anticipation of heaven – I wasn’t anxious to get there just yet!

I don’t know what impact, if any, anything I said had on that psychiatrist.  I do know that the Lord was magnified as the Spirit guided my words.  My desire and prayer will be that she’ll give some consideration to her own eternal future, that curiosity about why I believe what I believe will cause her to seek for herself what it means to have the kind of relationship with God through Jesus that gives such joy and peace, and enables us to speak to Him, and Him to speak to us and recognize His voice.  

I would have loved to have us each slip out of our “doctor”, “crazy donor” roles, so that we could talk some more about eternal things – for they truly are more important than the physical and temporal.  Maybe she and I will cross paths again and talk further, who knows?

Someone at our women’s Bible class today quoted this verse from the Jewish prophet Jeremiah to the nation of Israel: 

“’For I know the plans I have for you’, declares the LORD, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.  Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you.  You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.  I will be found by you, ‘ declares the LORD, ‘and will bring you back from captivity’.”    Jeremiah 29:11-14a

May all those who read these blogs and know Jesus personally be drawn to Him in a deeper way, for He IS alive, He still speaks, He wants you to know Him – not just intellectually, but personally, and He invites you to draw closer.  

For those who do not yet know Jesus, I pray that as you read these blogs, you’ll be drawn to seek with all your heart the One who promises to be found by you when you do.  He, and only He, can bring you out of the captivity of sin, and seal you to Himself through faith in Jesus.

So, to set the record straight - I am NOT crazy!  But I AM crazy in love – with Jesus – the lover of my soul!

THIS JUST IN: SPACE ALIENS CAUSED THE SINKING OF TITANIC!

I love books.  Ever since I was a kid books have held a special place in my heart. You can imagine how excited I was to discover the library!  I can remember my mom putting me on a local bus at the tender age of 6 or 7 (it was safe back then!) to visit my Aunt Elsie some blocks away.  The first thing we would do when I arrived is stop at a little extension library.  Wow all those books for the reading! For me, the library was right up there next to the candy store on my list of favorite things.  

I still love books and I still love to get them at the library, so when my girls suggested maybe I’d like a Kindle, I wasn’t interested.  They bought me one anyway.  (They never DID listen to me!) I was glad to have that Kindle when we lost power for a week after Hurricane Sandy and the library was closed.

Because they were free, I downloaded a bunch of books on my Kindle that I had never read, like “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, and some I have read and wanted to read again, like “Jane Eyre”.  I also downloaded a few recent books that were free that I’d never heard of, like one I’m currently reading called, “Titanic 2012”.  It’s a silly book really, but I’m engrossed.  That’s what happens when you have 5 hours of darkness to kill every night!

The premise of the book is interesting.  The author takes the true story of Titanic and gives it a completely different spin.  The book flips back and forth between the past when Titanic was launched, and the present aboard a ship preparing a diving expedition into the hull of Titanic itself.  That is interesting in itself.  

Here’s where it gets a little weird.  The characters suggest that Titanic was deliberately sunk in order to destroy an alien life form bent on reproducing itself within the bodies of the passengers.  (I told you it was weird!)  This alien life form somehow survived the sinking and now, inhabiting the body of one of the crew members on the modern day expedition, it is returning to collect it’s eggs.  By now you are undoubtedly wondering why I’m still reading this book and where I’m going with this blog!  Hang in there, I’m getting to it!

I was thinking about how cool it was to take a real life story, like that of Titanic, imagine some alternate reason why it sank, and write a book about it.  Think about the fun you could have putting new spins on things like why the Lincoln Tunnel was built (aliens wanting a secret passage into Manhattan), or what would happen if the Statue of Liberty was alive.  Okay, so my imagination isn’t as creative as the author of “Titanic 2012”.

It occurred to me as I was reading that people do this kind of thing all the time when it comes to the events surrounding the life and death of Jesus as recorded in the Bible.  They prefer the alternate story.  Like the one where the disciples stole Jesus’ body.  Or the one where Jesus, a mere man, managed to self fulfill all those prophecies about his death written in the Old Testament – like none of his bones would be broken, or that he was laid in a borrowed tomb, or that the soldiers would cast lots for his garments.  Somehow these alternates seem more plausible.

I’m always amazed at how many people will read the writings of Buddha, or the Dalai Lama, or Zen masters, but will refuse to read the Bible to examine the story for themselves.  They will adamantly affirm that they don’t believe it, but when you ask, they usually haven’t read it either.

Why is that?  Because to believe what the Bible records requires a choice, a choice many don’t really want to make.  If they read it, they will need to decide whether they will believe it and deciding to believe it will require a change.  Better not to read it at all and adhere to the alternatives, even when the alternatives can be as ridiculous as alien invasions.

If you’ve NEVER read the New Testament because you’re convinced it can’t possibly be true, maybe it’s time to stop believing in unchallenged “alien” alternatives and read it for yourself.  I DARE YOU!

 

LORD, WHAT ABOUT HIM?

John 21:18-23

Jesus, in another post-resurrection appearance, the last the Apostle John records, is having a conversation with Peter.  He gives Peter a glimpse of his future when He says:

“I tell you the truth, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.”

The text goes on to say: 

“Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God.  Then he said to him, ‘Follow me’.”

At that point Peter turned around to see John following them.  Looking at John, Peter asked Jesus:

“Lord, what about him?”

Jesus replied:

“If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? 

You must follow me.”

Now, when I read that, I think Peter is wondering what kind of future is in store for John – not necessarily because he’s not so happy with the death Jesus has described for him – but because he’s wondering what’s in store for this beloved brother in the Lord.

I’m wondering whether you ever think the way I do.  I’ve gone through some pretty tough things in my life, things I would rather have avoided.  Many times, even today, I have asked God why.  I confess that I have looked at the lives of other Christians I know who seem to have been blessed with every good thing – no tragedy, no apparent hardship, all their adult children walking with the Lord – and I have pangs of envy and confusion, during which I ask, “Why them and NOT me?”

I don’t question why the Lord has worked in the way He has in their lives – I’m glad He has, I’m just confused about why He didn’t work that way in mine.  Maybe you feel that way too.

So I was chastened today by this passage, and encouraged as well.  

Here are some things I took away from it:

Looking at the lives of others and wondering why God has worked in a certain way in theirs but not in mine, can distract ME from following Jesus.

• Every time I do this myself I’m effectively saying, “Lord, I think you’ve treated me unfairly.”  That kind of thinking can make me bitter and resentful and it can bring my walk with Jesus to a screeching halt!  

Following Jesus requires a personal commitment.  

• Peter had to determine that he was going to follow Jesus no matter what was in store for him, or what was in store for John.  John had to do the same, and so do you and I.  
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• How Jesus is or isn’t at work in the life of another person can’t be used as an excuse for not following Him myself. 
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• Jesus is saying the same thing to you and me as He said to Peter – “Never mind about that other person.  YOU follow me!”

God’s desire for our life, and even for our death, is that we bring Him glory. 

• I don’t know why I have never been as struck by it before but today it leaped out at me.  John says that Jesus’ words about Peter being carried where he didn’t want to go were an indication of the kind of death “by which he would glorify God”.

• Each of these men had a God given ministry while they lived.  Peter led the church in Jerusalem and wrote books which would be included in the canon of Scripture.  
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• John was also a leader in the church, wrote the Gospel and several New Testament letters that bear his name, and the book of Revelation, written while exiled on the isle of Patmos.  Each one brought God glory with his life.  Every time we read their words today and observe their lives and testimonies in God’s Word and are impacted by them, God continues to be glorified.

• And each one glorified God in his death.  John, the longest living disciple, lived out most of the last years of his life in exile, and died a peaceful death in Ephesus.  Peter, as history and church tradition record it, was crucified, but upside down, out of reverence for his Lord.

The Lord is at work in the lives of all His saints – those whose lives have been relatively trouble free and those whose lives have not.  

The question I need to ask myself when I’m comparing my life with the life of another saint is not, “Why or why not?”, but “HOW.  How can I bring you glory in this, Lord?”

Asking why, or why not, fixes my eyes firmly on THEM.  Asking HOW fixes my eyes on Jesus.

Oswald Chambers in his book, “My Utmost for His Highest”, says this under the reading for today, November 7:

“The circumstances of a saint’s life are ordained of God.  In the life of a saint there is no such thing as chance.”

The life that the Lord gives to you and to me is His gift.  We can surely make a mess of it because of our sinful nature and choices and the resultant consequences.  

But even when we do, our reaction to His choice is all important, and we need to ask:   

 How will I glorify God in this?

Am I going to fix my eyes on the seeming smoothness of some other saint’s life, comparing it always with my own and asking why or why not me?  Or am I going to choose to shift my gaze from them to Jesus, seeing the circumstances ordained for me as an opportunity to bring Him glory?  

When difficulties arise in my life, am I going to continually look at others and ask: “What about them?”, or am I going to say, “Never mind about them.  I need to follow Jesus?"   How willing am I to bring glory to Jesus even when He leads in places I don’t really want to go?

How do I want to face death?  As ONLY the avenue by which I will be translated to glory, or also as the MEANS by which I might glorify God with the last opportunity He gives me in this life to do so?