Educational Grants

Wednesday 1/29/2014 4:11 AM

Last night we had family dinner, as is our Tuesday night custom.  Our friends Dale and Edith, who are visiting from Michigan, joined us.  The scene was somewhat chaotic with the grandkids running around and playing but we definitely enjoyed the evening.  On many occasions throughout the night I whispered a silent prayer of thanks to God for the rich blessing of a loving family and long-time friends.

This morning my assigned scripture included Philippians 1, written by Paul from prison.  He is writing to the church in Philippi that was also being persecuted for their faith in God.  The first chapter ends with these words, “For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for him, since you are going through the same struggle you saw I had, and now hear that I still have.”  The words Paul chose you use were of interest to me.  They had been granted to believe in Christ and they were granted to suffer for him.

When I attended college I received a grant to help pay for some of my expenses.  The money was a gift to me, which enabled me to pursue my education and without which I could not have gone to college.  It something for which I am extremely grateful.  I can see how being granted belief in Christ would be beneficial for me but seeing suffering as a positive thing goes against the grain of my being and against the grain of our feel-good society.  I see suffering as something that hinders my faith and I try to avoid the difficulties that life brings as much as possible.  Suffering is certainly not something for which I am extremely grateful.  However, when I am honest with myself, I have to echo Paul’s sentiments that are expressed earlier in the chapter.  “Now I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that what has happened to me has actually served to advance the gospel.  As a result, it has become clear throughout the whole palace guard and to everyone else that I am in chains for Christ.  And because of my chains, most of the brothers and sisters have become confident in the Lord and dare all the more to proclaim the gospel without fear.”  Most of the difficult situations I have encountered in life have been the forge God used to shape me and to make me stronger.  The people who are my closest friends and with whom I have the most meaningful relationships are those with whom I have walked through the most difficult circumstances.

Paul also acknowledged the means by which he was delivered from the sufferings he had endured.  “I know that through your prayers and God’s provision of the Spirit of Jesus Christ what has happened to me will turn out for my deliverance.”  The prayers of God’s people and the comfort and encouragement of the Holy Spirit are the things that sustain people who are experiencing suffering.  I need to be sensitive to God’s Spirit and obedient to his call to me to intercede on behalf of others.  Lord, let me be faithful in this regard.  Someone’s deliverance may depend upon it.

Order from Chaos

Monday 1/27/2014 5:04 AM

Lately I have been reading books about math and science.  I am currently reading the book SYNC: How Order Emerges from Chaos in the Universe, Nature, and Daily Life.  I have only read the first couple of chapters but the author, Steven Strogatz, is attempting to explain phenomena like fireflies blinking in unison, flocks of birds or fish that move in unison, the rhythmic beating of the heart muscles and brain waves, the tendency of women’s menstrual cycles to coincide when they live together in the same house, and the like.  He has used mathematical equations to model the behaviors and then seeks the solutions to the equations to see if they align with reality.  It is a fascinating process and, thus far in the book, he has some interesting results.  Like most scientists, he is attempting to find natural explanations for what seem to be supernatural processes.

As a Christian I acknowledge that God designed the universe and everything in it so I am by no means surprised that there is order and precision nearly everywhere you look.  I am not surprised that order emerges from chaos or that DNA contains millions of pieces of information any more than I am surprised that a computer program contains lines of organized code which enables it to function.  In fact I would be surprised to find it otherwise.  I believe a Christian scientist should also seek to find the mechanisms by which our universe operates rather that simply saying, “God made it and that is enough for me.”  The Christian community should embrace science and its efforts to explain the universe as we know it rather than constantly fight against it.  If we believe God made it then his fingerprints should be all over it and the more we discover about how it works the more it will point to God.

My psalm for the week is Psalm 28.  Verse 5 says, “Because they have no regard for the deeds of the Lord and what his hands have done, he will tear them down and never build them up again.”  I believe that any attempt to explain the mechanisms of how the universe operates or how it came to be that does not acknowledge God will fall like a house of cards or will require much more faith to believe than by simply believing in God.  If I keep in mind that God has made everything and that he sustains it all, I have nothing to worry about if I attempt to discover how it operates or how it came to be.

What's in it for Me?

Sunday 1/26/2014 5:42 AM

I recently became aware of some friends who are having marital difficulties.  This past week I have been reflecting on my own marriage and the difficulties I have experienced at times throughout our thirty-five years of marriage.  When I got married I made vows to love, honor and maintain Jaci, and to encourage her to develop the gifts God has given her.  Every time there has been difficulty in our relationship it is because of a lack of love.

Ephesians 5:25 says, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her ….”  The difficulty comes when I fail to give myself up for Jaci.  In my marriage, and in any relationship, there is a tendency to focus on me, to ask if the other person is meeting my needs.  When they fail to meet my needs in some area, and they will because no one can meet every need, I look to fulfill that need somewhere else and I justify my behavior by pointing out the deficiency in the other person.

God calls me to meet a much more difficult standard.  He asks me to deny myself and look to the needs of the other person, trusting him to meet my needs or to change my desires.  I am to sacrifice my own desire and look to meet the needs of the other person.

This definitely goes against the culture in which I live, which urges me to fulfill every desire I have in any way possible, the world and others be damned.  In my culture, self-fulfillment and self-realization are the goals for which I should strive.  God’s goal for his people can best be summarized by the words of Philippians 2:3-4, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit.  Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of others.”  If everyone had that mindset it would be a lot easier to have healthy relationships with other people and there would be a lot more love in the world.

Hospitality

Friday 1/10/2014 5:57 AM

I have always envied people who have the gift of hospitality.  I would like to exercise that gift more but it seems that our house always has to be in pristine order before we feel comfortable having anyone into our home.  I feel that having everything in perfect order gives a false impression to whomever it is that is visiting.  I long to be able to have people see us the way we truly live, warts and all.  I think everyone occasionally has a pile of unfolded laundry sitting around or a sink full of dirty dishes.  To me, that should not be an embarrassment, it is simply the way most people live.

In his book The Wounded Healer, Henri Nouwen writes, “Hospitality is the virtue which allows us to break through the narrowness of our own fears and to open our houses to the stranger, with the intuition that salvation comes to us in the form of a tired traveler.  Hospitality makes anxious disciples into powerful witnesses, makes suspicious owners into generous givers, and makes closed-minded sectarians into interested recipients of new ideas and insights. … Like the Semites, we live in a desert with many lonely travelers who are looking for a moment of peace, for a fresh drink and for a sign of encouragement so that they can continue their mysterious search for freedom.”  Unfortunately in the culture in which I live most Christians are seen as being anxious, suspicious and, especially, closed-minded sectarians.  I am a Christian but I do not think I am in that camp and do not want to be viewed that way.  I think I am a generous giver and an interested recipient of new ideas and insights but I also realize that, from the vantage point of others, I may simply be deluding myself rather than dealing with reality.

My biggest frustration is that I see the lonely travelers to which Nouwen refers every day in my classroom.  I want to be that moment of peace, that fresh drink and that sign of encouragement to them.  The problem is, I don’t know how best to be hospitable to my students and colleagues in the school setting in which I work.

Dry Spring

Thursday 1/2/2014 6:52 AM

Last night Jaci and I attended a worship service with Emily and Garrison at the church where they have been worshiping recently.  The speaker encouraged those present to remain focused upon God and upon his kingdom in the coming year.  In the course of his message he recounted the story of how a Korean pastor had prayed for the healing of a paralyzed woman.  He fell into a trance where he battled with a snakelike creature that he eventually defeated by invoking the name of Jesus.  The next day he saw the woman walking and, when she saw him, she thanked him for coming to her house healing her.

Some of my siblings have had similar experiences in which they were doing battle with demons or they have had visions of a spiritual world where good and evil were doing battle.  The Bible says that the believer’s battle is against an unseen enemy and, because of that, a believer must fight with different weapons than those that are used in our visible world.

I have experienced the presence of God in a very tangible way on more than one occasion but I have never had visions like those of my siblings or the Korean pastor.  I have experienced the pain of those going through difficult circumstances and wept uncontrollably during times of intercessory prayer for them but I have never seen the enemy with whom Christ is doing battle.  When I hear about the experiences of others it makes me wonder about the validity of my own faith.  I have regular times of reading the Bible, trying to determine God’s will for me, but I do not experience dramatic revelations or miraculous events as a result.  I simply have a deep-seated assurance that God is real and that he is with me at all times, when things are going well and when the wheels are coming off of the bus.

Jesus commanded his disciples to go into the world and make disciples.  The speaker in last night’s worship service told the story of the Korean pastor that I cited above, which resulted in an entire area of Seoul coming to faith in God.  He also told the story of a blind woman who simply called people on the phone and talked to them about Christ.  The result of her ministry was that over three thousand people came to faith.  When I look in the wake of my life I see very little.  I once prayed with someone when they accepted Christ as their Savior but it was not because of my urging.  In fact, I felt as if they came to faith in spite of my presence, not because of it.  As far as I know I have made zero disciples in my life.

When speaking with the Samaritan woman Jesus said, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst.  Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”  It seems that if I am drinking from God’s love it should well up in my own life and spill over into the lives of others.  When I see so little evidence of others being affected by my life I begin to wonder if my spring is dried up.

In his book The Manhood of the Master, Harry Emerson Fosdick describes the prayer life of Christ out of which his ministry flowed.  He writes, “The Master’s preeminence comes not chiefly from his describable virtues, but from those deep sources of his life with God, out of which his virtues flowed, begotten not made, and fragrant, every one of them, with the quality of his perfect fellowship with the Father.”  I am spending time with God but somehow it seems like I am disconnected from the source.  Perhaps, like Jesus’ disciples, I need to ask him to teach me how to pray.