Author: Pastor Bryan Lowe

A repentant rascal with definite issues, but who is seeking to be authentic in his faith to Jesus Christ. An avid reader and a hopeful writer. Husband and father. A pastor and Bible teacher. A brain tumor survivor. Diagnosed with clinical depression, and now disabled. Enjoys life, such as it is, in Alask.a (Actually I have it pretty good.)

Words of Hope for a Baby Born Blind

Anophthalmia–the condition of being born with no eye tissue–affects about 30 out of 100,000 babies, leaving them irrevocably blind. This is the letter that a pastor wrote to a Christian couple confronted with this tragic reality.

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 Dear John and Diane,baby-with-no-eyes

Last night, as I prayed with Noel, you were heavy on my mind. I said, “Lord, O Lord, please let me be a pastor who preaches and leads and loves in a way that makes the impossibilities of life possible for your people by a miracle of sustaining grace. Help me to know the weight and pain of this life and not to be breezy when the mountains have fallen into the sea. Help me to have the aroma of Christ’s sufferings about me. Prevent shallowness and callousness to pain. O Lord make me and my people a burden bearing people.”

O John and Diane, I am so heavy with your child’s sightlessness! God is visiting Bethlehem Church with such pain these days in the birth of broken children. Randy and Ann Erickson with their baby’s broken heart; Jan and Rob Barrett with their baby’s liver outside the body; and your precious little one! Is the Lord saying, “I have a gift for your community.” This is not one or two or three couples’ burden. This is a gift and call to the whole church.

This is a word concerning the brokenness of this fallen age of futility.

This is an invitation for you all to believe that “here we have no lasting city” (Hebrews 13:14). This is an invitation for you to “count every gain as loss for the sake of Christ” (Philippians 3:7). This is a shocking test to see if you will “lose heart” when in fact God’s purpose is to show that his grace is sufficient to renew our inner person every day to deal with the “slight momentary affliction which is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, because we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen; for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:17-18).

O Lord, open our eyes to your love in this pain. Open our eyes.

“Then Elisha prayed, and said, ‘O Lord, I pray thee, open his eyes that he may see.’ So the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw; and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha” (2 Kings 6:17).

John and Diane, the mountains surrounding your lives are filled with the horses and chariots of God. Only to the eyes of unbelief does the devil have the upper hand here. God is at work in ways and for years and generations and millions of people that we cannot now imagine. This is ours to believe and to bear, no matter the cost. This is ours for this short life.

It seems to me that this life is a proving ground for the kingdom to come. Some are asked to devote forty or fifty years to caring for a handicapped child instead of breezing through life without pain. Others are asked to be blind all their lives…

But only in this life – ONLY in this life.

I want to be the kind of person who makes that “ONLY” what it really is – very short. Prelude to the infinity of joy, joy, joy. But not yet. Not entirely.

How will we ever cope with the burdens of this life if we believe this is all there is, or even the main act in this drama of reality? O Lord, give us your view of things.

May God fill you with anticipated joy.

“I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.”

I love you,

Pastor John

Source: http://theworksofgod.com/2009/09/24/helpful-things-pastors-who-love-their-people/

Pastor John Piper site:  http://www.desiringgod.org/

My Enemy is at the Door

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“And he said, “Listen, all Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem and King Jehoshaphat: Thus says the Lord to you, ‘Do not be afraid and do not be dismayed at this great horde, for the battle is not yours but God’s.”

2 Chronicles 20:15, ESV

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We certainly don’t face a human army, yet the spiritual battle is just as consuming. Satan and his hordes are working 24/7 to capture our hearts and minds. He wants to enslave our spirits, and to assimilate us into his rebellion against God. For the broken believer, we know where we are weakest. Satanic influence can be fierce. However we are not alone.

Jehoshaphat’s own situation was precarious. Vastly out numbered, his own troops were about to be slaughtered and Jerusalem captured. Jehoshaphat responds by praying. He acknowledges God, and asks for divine help. We find him desperate, and that is how humility grows.

‘Do not be afraid and do not be dismayed at this great horde, for the battle is not yours but God’s.”

When God intervenes, we can only watch (and trust) His deliverance. King Jehoshaphat arranged for his army to be led by singers. There is a confidence here. Praise and worship is the way the enemy is defeated. “The battle belongs to God.” A great victory is won.

Make God your general. Infuse the atmosphere with prayer and praise. Impossible things are about to happen. Victory can be yours if you can only ‘get out of the way.’ This is the wisest and the safest course. (My worst defeats have come when I try my hardest to battle on my own.) When the enemy is pounding at the door, ask Jesus to answer it. He alone will bring you the victory.

P.S. Find a psalm– and then hide yourself in it.

 

Being a Feet-Finder

A terrific study is finding the people who fell at Jesus’ feet. Tucked in the Gospels you’ll find stories of those who despair. You’ll also see them come to Jesus in brokenness and humility, without any other recourse. I call these the feet-finders.

They came to Jesus because they had no hope otherwise. They were people who were hopeless and wretched, they had long ago run out of options. They came to Jesus, falling down in front of Him. They were all feet-finders.

They were men and women who were truly desperate.

“Now when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet, saying to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

John 11:32

One of the classic scenes in the Gospels is when Mary meets Jesus after her brother’s death. She doesn’t understand Jesus’ delay, Lazarus has been very ill and Jesus could have healed him. She is grieving and confused. But she only has one posture and one place in her heart to be– at the feet!

There are some common characteristics that feet-finders have:

  • A great need that can’t be met without His touch
  • To understand one’s true condition–humility, brokenness
  • To beg for a healing, for self or family
  • To honor Jesus as the Messiah
  • To be more receptive to His teaching, to understand Him
  • To become a witness to others (although it does seem secondary)

The following 3 verses are just a small selection of those who fell at Jesus feet.

“And great crowds came to him, bringing with them the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute, and many others, and they put them at his feet, and he healed them.”

Matthew 15:30

“But immediately a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit heard of him and came and fell down at his feet.“

Mark 7:25

“Then people went out to see what had happened, and they came to Jesus and found the man from whom the demons had gone, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind.”

Luke 8:35

But there are several other instances where people came to sit at Jesus’ feet:

  • Mark 5:22-23, Jairus, a leader in the local synagogue
  • Luke 7:37-38, a sorrowing mother for her daughter
  • Luke 8:41, also Jairus
  • Luke 10:39, Mary, when Jesus was teaching
  • John 11:32, Mary, meeting Jesus entering Bethany
  • John 12:3, Mary, with her perfume
  • Revelation 1:17, John to express what he was seeing (also 19:10)

In every case we find people consciously coming and kneeling at the feet of the Lord Jesus. It was a deliberate action that came from their hearts. Each had a terrible need, and each was without hope.

It’s the end of religion if you’re a feet-finder. No more facades, no more treadmills. Instead your heart forever changes.

Formality and religious politeness are jettisoned. Brokenness and true humility takes their place. A foot-finder is no longer operating on spiritual niceties. Religion is comfortable, noble, and respectable, but it cannot heal or change people deeply.

Feet-finders know that they need Jesus desperately and will go to any length just to be touched by Him. They defy what is conventional and proper. They are not what we call respectable. You can find them at the feet of Jesus. They are feet-finders. Foot-finders weep, kneel, beg, shout. Too many tears and maybe some snot.

Hardly decent to religious people.

Are you really that desperate yet? Have you seen your need, and do you realize how lost you would be without His healing touch?

Often when I do pray, I sometimes think of the woman who was unclean. She speaks to me about approaching Jesus. I see myself in a crushing crowd of people, and I’m reaching out just to touch the hem of His robe. I know only Jesus can stop my own uncleanness. (Matthew 9.)

I’m convinced only Jesus can make me clean and whole.

I’ve tried to be holy and acceptable to Him. But I felt like a juggler, trying to keep my balls in the air all at the same time, and I could never pull it off. So I tried again and again. I was the unofficial master of religious effort.

But I found my rightful place at His feet. It’s where I belong. I love Him.

I’m not ashamed to be found kneeling.

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What Are You Ashamed Of?

“We all carry about in our pockets His very nails.” –Luther
 “I am proud of the good news! It is God’s powerful way of saving all people who have faith, whether they are Jews or Gentiles.”  

 Romans 1:16, CEV

 “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.”

Romans 1:16, ESV

What is it that holds you back? 

Is there a significant issue–a new boat or your next vacation to Disneyland?  Would that keep you from following Him?  Would you trade Him, for that?

So many of us are “chicken” when it comes to witnessing Jesus Christ. We ‘cluck and duck’ when the subject of God or religion is raised. We hope no one is looking when we ask God to bless our food in a public place.  Honestly, most of the time the issue for us is the fear of rejection. (It’s funny but some have never really gotten past the intimidation we experienced in High School.)

The saints who watch us from heaven, have got to be astonished at our embarrassment of Jesus, (Heb. 12: 1).  They look and wonder at the way we act, when so many of them have suffered deeply.  They have been repeatedly, and deliberately hurt for Jesus. But yet we’re arguing about padded pews and the color of the carpeting in our sanctuary.

“For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”

Mark 8:32, ESV

 I suppose we must learn again the spirit of the saints who are suffering for the sake of the Gospel. This very minute they are in prisons, in torture, in abuse all because they profess a love for Jesus Christ.

Could it be possible that God is calling you to leave your comfortable Christianity behind and tell someone that Jesus loves them and wants to save them. Will you do it, or will you be too ashamed? Let this be the present now that you bring the light of Christ to your dorm, your neighborhood, your apartment building, your baseball team, or  wherever God has placed you. Let Him use you for His glory!

I suggest that our faith will activate God– your fear switches on the influence of Satan.

“Fearing people is a dangerous trap, but trusting the Lord means safety.”

Proverbs 29:25, NLT