That Quiet Voice from Eternity

Skeptics insist that Christian worship is just so much voodoo for hillbillies! They are convinced that worship services survive into the 21st Century only because bored, superstitious conformists in 'Flyover Country' need a place where we can feel safe and secure. If we hadn't grown accustomed to such rituals through years of repetition and reinforcement, this dry, sanctified blather would be appear as bankrupt of meaning as it truly is.

Of course, critics like Bill Maher and Christopher Hitchens have never experienced my vantage point. As a pastor, I step up behind the pulpit every week and look into the faces of educated men and women, row after row, waiting to hear something that matters. I'm not a scientist or a sports commentator; just a simple theologian with a sacred book in my hand. I have never believed that my thoughts and opinions are particularly profound or even novel. But the book I hold in my hand each week is more than profound; I have come to realize it is supernatural.

As I arrive on campus this morning, I wonder how my church family will relate to the text. We're working our way through 1 Corinthians. Last week was the celebrated "Love chapter." Next week, we consider the mystery and wonder of the resurrection. But today's sermon is based on 1 Corinthians 14: tongues and prophecy. In this disastrous economy with world crises looming at every turn, I wonder how many of today's worshipers have been wondering about glossalalia and prophecy this week? Probably not very many, I suspect.

Speaking in tongues hasn't been a hot topic in most churches for a generation. Some people do it. Others don't. We all go to different churches. As I recall, that debate lost it's appeal and finally died out nearly forty years ago. And when it comes to prophecy: I'm not the kind of prophet who can forecast when the economy will turn around or even when the Gulf Oil Spill will be resolved. My calling has always been more "forth telling" than foretelling. So I open the Holy Bible and begin to teach.

As I speak, I notice the faces of those men, women and teenagers seated out there in the pews. There are people who grew up in Southern Baptist churches deep in the Bible Belt. I recognize others who can honestly say they had never gone to a church anywhere until they came to ours as adults just years or months ago. I notice numbers of sophisticated, well-versed professionals with positions of influence in DC. Some of these have been in worship with us for mere weeks. Quite a few of them grew up Catholic, which is like a different planet in the same solar system.

Many are leaning forward intently while others nod in agreement. Nobody rattles papers or randomly flips pages. And as usual, some have tears in their eyes. Why are these people so moved by a sermon on tongues and prophecy? There are no emotional stories- no tear jerkers- in this message. We are talking about hearing the Word of God and using it to build up the church. There is nothing here about conducting a relationship rescue or dealing with abuse from childhood.

These phenomena happen every week, but I pay particular notice this morning because of one verse in our text. Paul describes what happens when a person hears the Word of God being taught: "The secrets of his heart will be laid bare. So he will fall down and worship God, exclaiming, 'God is really among you.'" (14:25) As I unpack God's prophetic truths, minds are being unlocked and secrets of the heart are indeed laid bare.

One woman has arrived to worship with us for the very first time. She comes quietly into the room and takes the first seat she can find- a pew on the very back row. As worship unfolds, her eyes become moist. Soon tears well up. By the end of the service, she is weeping quietly as she jots down notes on a small sheet of paper. People check on her near the end of the service. She is fine. God is good. She hasn't been in a worship service in a long, long time. She remains there in her seat for 10 minutes after worship concludes, dealing with secrets suddenly exposed inside her heart.

Like most people, our critics get angry when they realize their arguments are weak. Meanwhile, the worship of Jesus Christ advances in the 21st Century for the very same reason the Bible remains the most potent and talked about book in the world. These are the very words of God. Humor can alter my mood for a few moments, and pop psychology can soothe for a time, but the Bible is the voice of God. Men and women who listen carefully can hear an affirmation that reaches all the way from Eternity. It is the wisdom of their Heavenly Father probing secrets long buried in their hearts. They had thought no one else knew; that nobody really cares. They had supposed there is no other way. Hearing the very words of God, they discover they were wrong.

Self Important Saints

Some days I feel pretty spiritual. Other days, I have a better grip on reality, and I feel more like those church people in Laodicea who made God want to throw up. You remember, Christ warned those proud worshipers, "You're neither hot nor cold- just room temperature, pretty much like a corpse. And, pardon the expression, but I think I'm going to vomit!" Okay, so that was my personal translation of the Greek.

I belong to this generation of self-important saints. I don't know, but maybe you belong to that same generation. We are the people who made Anna Nicole Smith a star... and Lindsay Lohan... and all those people on The Hills. We belong to the multitudes who empowered Twitter to become a global phenom. We can be motivated to spend money by a phrase as banal as "Whazzup?" And with achievements as grandiose as those, we have this tendency to talk about ourselves as though our restless lives are jammed with activities that are really important! Even in the church, we tend to self-inflate. We talk only about the truly significant issues- things like:

• Engaging the culture: This is not happening, unless it means that we are asking the culture to marry us so we can be more intimate.
• Standing for Justice: Sympathizing with the plight of child sex slaves in Sri Lanka while consuming a $5 cup of coffee and a $4 pastry, and idly pondering a mission trip to Chile may be classified as sitting for something, but not standing for anything, least of all justice.
• Making the Gospel Relevant: When most Americans admire Jesus but think church people are out of touch, unhappy and deluded, perhaps it's not the Gospel that needs a makeover.

Our man Paul never considered himself important. To the contrary, he often compared his own accomplishments to filthy rags or even dung, and he labeled himself the chief of sinners. If he had ever once deceived himself into thinking that the salvation of the world depended on his ability to engage the culture, he would have done a 180 and gone home to pray for a better plan.

I get convicted when I read the things Paul talked about. Writing to his friends in Ephesus, he rambled on for whole paragraphs, elaborating on the magnificence and boundless generosity of God. Read Ephesians 1 before you go to bed tonight. God has blessed us; chosen us; adopted us, predestined us, enlightened us, loved us, united us, forgiven us, etc., etc. God has enriched us, lavished good things upon us, revealed things to us, and offered us an inheritance. Paul simply could not get over all the supernatural splendor God had already invested in his life and his destiny.

You and I think nothing of suggesting God should find us a parking place in a crowded mall, as though a shopping trip is momentous; as though the Mind & Voice behind the universe can be reduced to the status of parking valet by my amazing faith! An honest, clear thinking person would call that self-importance.

I gotta confess: I'm not smart enough to engage the culture. And I'm not so special that God should find me a parking place at Starbuck's in the morning. And I wish I weren't so depraved that my flesh can still seduce me with delusions like that after all these years. On my best day, all I am is an unworthy servant of the Most High God. That's not false modesty: just honesty.

I'll never be very important, but God doesn't need important people- or famous ones. So I pray to God again today and ask him for the wisdom to bow my knee to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think, according to the power at work within us! To him be glory in the church, and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

Lord, help me elevate my thoughts, crucify my flesh, and set my affections on Christ.

Watching through the Window of Eternity

Once in a while, I try and explain the amazing perspective God must have on our world. People ask about election- "How can God know who's going to trust him before they actually choose?" Or they ask about prayer, "Why do we pray when we know that God has already made up his mind?" And I explain, "Because God knows that you are going to pray about this one day, even as he is deciding in the beginning of time!"

This evening, I had one of those "Eureka" moments. I'm reading a book called Mission to the Headhunters. In 2002, retired missionaries Frank and Marie Drown published a book about their mission work in Ecuador in the 1950's. Not married that long, and already pregnant with their first child, they were called by God to reach a violent tribe of headhunters, the Atshuara, who shrunk heads and committed mayhem in the rain forests somewhere beyond Quito.

I find myself gasping in astonishment at least once or twice in every chapter. They live in a hovel and must grow nearly everything they eat in a garden they must cultivate and plant. They walk for miles, endure dreadful tropical illnesses, and help Indians erect buildings and construct landing strips in jungles. Their lives are in danger, their motives are misunderstood, and living among these vengeful tribesmen is like being exiled to another planet. The Atshuara routinely murder whole families, fashion their cracked skulls into good luck charms, and celebrate with their children in violent, drunken orgies.

This evening I'm reading about one particularly violent crisis the missionaries worked through. And the date strikes me- 1955. I was a tiny baby back in the United States even as the Drowns' children were growing up amid swarming mosquitoes, suffocating humidity, and ominous strangers armed with knives and deadly weapons. I don't even know these people, and yet from this time and distance I am moved by their faith. I deeply respect these people, and yet I've never met them.

I turn the page and a bush pilot lands with a cargo of life-saving medicine. He's risking his scalp to land his craft on a barely finished, primitive air strip that has never been tried before. There is nothing he won't do to advance the Gospel or rescue a lost soul. I read his name, Nate Saint. I know this man! Well, I don't know him, and yet I do. I know about his family, and that his small plane is yellow. Long before I had ever heard of Frank and Marie Drown, I had been moved and inspired by the lives of Jim Elliot, Nate Saint and their fellow missionaries. They, too, did pioneer missions in Ecuador in the 1950's. They took their wives and children into a world so primitive that most of us cannot even imagine it.

Here's the strange part: I don't know what's going to happen to Frank and Marie Drown. But I know precisely what will happen to Nate Saint and several of his fellow missionaries. I've known the story for years: in January, 1956, Elliot and Saint, and three other missionaries will attempt to reach another violent group of tribesmen known as the Waorani. They will be speared to death beside their plane, in spite of the fact there are guns inside the cockpit which could be used to fend off their attackers and save their own lives. The five men will meet death bravely, refusing to kill people who aren't saved.

I haven't come to that fateful year in the Drown's book yet. It's only 1955 in a story being written in 2001 by a missionary who began his work there in 1945. I'm reading it in 2010, and being moved to tears. And coming across the name Nate Saint, I know what the future holds for him, even before it's written, long after it happened.

I love this guy who shows up in 1955, even though I've never met him- because I know the stand he will take in just one year... and maybe another 45 pages!

I wonder if that's what it's like for God watching from the window of Eternity? In his mind, the story is already finished. He knows the ending, yet it's still unfolding on the Earth. He loves the saints, knowing what they've done, knowing what they're going to do in chapters not yet written, and yet already familiar to him. He knows the price they will pay, the reward they will receive.

Jesus knew it all when he went to the cross. He knew that he was rewiring the future. And he knew it was settled forever, even though the centuries would yet unfold. "It is finished, " he breathed those words with his final breath. And yet, it was only beginning. Earlier, he mystified some Jewish critics when he explained, "Before Abraham was, I am." Two thousand years later, he still is.

God created time, and now he lives above it. My future is all history to him. Much of his history is still future to me. I cannot begin to understand him. That's why grace is such an amazing asset. God arranged it for us while we were yet sinners, centuries before we were born, knowing what we'd need long before we were present to realize it.

Scripture teaches, "Whom he foreknew, he predestined." Long before Nate Saint was born, the Father knew when he would be born again. God foresaw how Nate would live, how he would die, and when he would arrive in Heaven. And long before Nate was born, his Father made sure that on the day he confessed Christ as Lord, he would be sealed and made safe forever. Sin could never snatch him away, and spears could never finish him off. His destiny is much too great for that. And his God is much too strong.

A Pool Hall Prophet

Sports Illustrated featured a very frank cover story on QB Ben Roethlisberger this week. Apparently, his "repulsive behavior" and his track record of "athletic entitlement run amok" have earned him a six game suspension and a shaky job status for the upcoming season. It all came to a head recently when his drunken, out of control antics at a small-town bar crossed the line from outrageous to illegal. Now Pittsburgh fans believe that in spite of his recent public apologies, he is "embarrassing the franchise."

One disgusted fan at an area pool hall told an SI reporter, "They should make him go to church every Sunday. How else is he going to change? Otherwise, the only thing he'll be changing are nightclubs." In a predictable article designed to create buzz and attract readers, here was an insight to raise eyebrows! "How else is he going to change?"

Because the Christian Faith is a big target, we catch lots of arrows- a few of them deservedly. But here's the dirty little secret of which secular types are all too aware: adult character transformation seldom happens, and when it does, Jesus Christ is most commonly the cause! Overcoming destructive habits and addictions is exceedingly hard. Teary-eyed promises and warnings from employers notwithstanding, willpower can fade as quickly as a 149 pound defensive lineman trying to drop a powerful, 250 pound tackle lunging toward the quarterback! Good intentions just aren't enough.

For more than 25 years, the forces of American literature and entertainment have been leading us all on a joyride to freedom. The slogans and catch phrases constantly change,but they always boil down to a simple prescription: "more sex, less God." We've been told endlessly that half the problems in our land can be traced back to our Victorian morality and the secrecy surrounding sex! And the other half of the nation's problems are due to narrow minded Christians. But with our pagan, anything-goes culture now enduring more sexual assaults, failing families, pregnant teens, hopeless high schools, depraved public figures and sexual predators than ever before, I wonder if it's still premature to ask , "Hey, how's that more sex/less God thing working out?"

What does a guy do when he has to look himself in the eye and say, "I've almost thrown it all away?" One of the most terrifying moments in life must surely be the one in which a failed sinner confronts the beast who prowls deep within him, realizing that family, career, reputation, and even happiness are all on the line. First come the public promises: "I'll never do this again." Then comes the cold sweat: "I have never been able to control this maniac inside for long- ever." Where does a guy like that turn for even a glimmer of hope? Is all the news bad news?

That one is easy. The good news can still be found at the cross of Jesus Christ, and in the lives of his followers. That notorious QB in Pittsburgh doesn't need a high priced lawyer, a famous therapist, or a better publicist: he needs the good news of Jesus Christ. To quote a fan down at the pool hall, "How else is he going to change?"

How else is anybody going to change?

If My Sins are Erased, Why's the Devil on My Case?

We don't talk enough about saints in Protestant churches, do we? No, I don't mean the legendary ones who got elected by the Pope years after their departure. I'm talking about the New Testament variety; the category that includes every man, woman and child who comes to Christ and walks away with a personal cross. Saints like that may go on to perform a few miracles, but they'll never stop sinning- not down here. That's not how real sainthood works.

I watched a sweet old motion picture from 1983 last night. In Tender Mercies, Robert Duvall is portrays a burned-out, liquor whipped, ex-country singer named Mac Sledge. He eventually finds redemption through the love of a simple country girl who sings in the church choir and prays every night. There's a wonderful moment where Mac is baptized along with his nine year old stepson. Driving home in the pick up truck afterwards, the boy laughs, "They told me I'd feel different. I don't feel no different! Do you, Mac?" Duvall wistfully replies, "Not yet."

I wonder how many new Christians are tempted to ask that question a few days or weeks after they are baptized? They were promised everything would change after they prayed. They were assured the old would pass away and the new would come. They were encouraged to seek the power in the blood. A few weeks later when routine life sets in, surely some must wonder, "If all that was true, why do I still want to go out and get__________ tonight?" (Take your pick and fill in the blank creatively.)

I guess we're pretty good about telling new believers that they need to read the Bible, cultivate a prayer life, and learn the art of corporate worship. We're probably less likely to tell them about the Flesh. It's not as inspiring as talking about new life and radical change, but it's pretty important.

The Bible is clear that when Jesus Christ extends his grace to me, he gives me a new inheritance, a new destiny, and a new nature: the Holy Spirit. But even as my sins are all erased in heaven, the personal part of me that craves sin is still a factor in my life. Scripture talks about the Flesh: it's no longer dominant, but it's certainly not dead and gone! In fact, it can sneak up and push you over the edge into temptation at moments when you least expect it. And it's wired into your survival instinct, so it can be persuasive.

Galatians 5:16 is one of my favorite NT verses. Paul explains, "But walk in the spirit and you won't fulfill the lusts of the flesh." In that three way battle between the Spirit, the conscience, and the flesh, I want the Spirit to win every time. I want to renew my mind with the truth of God, so that it can be more attuned to the Spirit. I must limit the activities of my body, so that I avoid places where my flesh could get the upper hand.

The flesh is like that creepy guy who gets killed in Halloween: The Movie, but keeps coming back in Halloween 2, and Halloween 3, and Halloween 13! Yes, I crucified the flesh yesterday, but I'll need to do it again today and again tomorrow.

Once in a while, I don't feel very different. But most days, I know the change is well underway.