Category: believer

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.
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/

The Art of Being Seen

Jesus entered Jericho and made his way through the town. 2 There was a man there named Zacchaeus. He was the chief tax collector in the region, and he had become very rich. 3 He tried to get a look at Jesus, but he was too short to see over the crowd. 4 So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree beside the road, for Jesus was going to pass that way.

5 When Jesus came by he looked up at Zacchaeus and called him by name.“Zacchaeus!” he said. “Quick, come down! I must be a guest in your home today.” 6 Zacchaeus quickly climbed down and took Jesus to his house in great excitement and joy. 7 But the people were displeased. “He has gone to be the guest of a notorious sinner,” they grumbled.

8 Meanwhile, Zacchaeus stood before the Lord and said, “I will give half my wealth to the poor, Lord, and if I have cheated people on their taxes, I will give them back four times as much!” 9 Jesus responded, “Salvation has come to this home today, for this man has shown himself to be a true son of Abraham. 10 For the Son of Man came to seek and save those who are lost.”

Luke 19:1-10, NLT

Zacchaeus was a resourceful man.  Jericho was a prime toll center in the entire area, and Zacchaeus would’ve been the richest man in the entire region. He was very wealthy, being an overseer of other tax collectors (the region with a major export of balsa wood.) He was well on his way to becoming a millionaire at least, the ancient Judean version of it.

We should know two things about Zacchaeus:
  1. His Hebrew name meant “pure.” This was an ironic moniker for a despised man who had sold out to the Roman tax business. (Perhaps he had had a ‘godly mother?)
  2. He was very short in stature. I suppose we could call him ‘vertically challenged’?

I suppose there is one other thing, my guess is it’s the main one. He simply wanted to see Jesus. He was so short that he couldn’t see over the crowds. Perhaps he could’ve bribed his way to the curb, but apparently, there wasn’t enough time. Jesus was coming this way! He must make a decision.

He looks and sees a tree. It grew on the side of the road, its branches hanging over the well-traveled path. He clumsily climbs up (in a robe!) and finds a clear spot to get a good look at Jesus. He is a simple man, and this is all he wants is just to see Jesus!

Within the Christian faith over the many centuries, there has always been a heart’s desire to get closer to Jesus. Many of the established ‘disciplines’ such as:

  • prayer
  • the study of scripture
  • fasting
  • evangelism
  • simplicity
  • solitude
  • service
  • confession
  • worship
Think of this list as simply branches of the tree.
Each discipline comes as one of several. But they are futile, or worse if they don’t lead us to Jesus Christ. 

It is critical to grasp the end result; they are merely the methods we use to see Jesus clearer. Its folly to climb the tree, just for the sake of climbing. No. The branch we are sitting on is just a means to an end. To behold our Lord, to somehow get closer to Him is priceless.

For example, I usually don’t pray for ‘prayers sake.’ I must pray like Zacchaeus climbed;  I just to see Jesus. I know He is always watching and yet I want Him to see me.

But we also are not to build tree houses. Rather we’re meant to see Jesus, come down, and have a wonderful time with Him in close fellowship.

aabryscript

Flourish-61

Living Tethered to the Cross

We live in this place.
We live in this place.

 “The devil never rejoices more than when he robs a servant of God of the peace of God.”
Sometimes I think I’ve made the devil dance far too many times.

I confess that peace has never been real high on my list. Love, joy, kindness and even goodness are clear priorities. Peace–well… not so much. Until it’s not there. And then I get frantic by its absence, and look for it with manic bewilderment. (Not again!) It seems that peace matters.

I’m panting for some real peace, some sign that God still loves me. Anxiety eats at me. I beat myself up by my last failure. The guilt of my latest sin grows until it looms larger than the blood that saved me. Someone once told me that religious people have the most neurosis. And that could be true.

Perhaps it’s a legalistic Christian that gets strangest?

I’m afraid that we are taking “the present tense’ out of the Gospel.

The past tense is far preferable to us as we manage the Christian life. We like to make check marks on our list. Repentance– check. Baptism– check. Bible study– check. I think it gives me a definite feeling of ‘maturity.’ I think that somehow I am holy.

The closer I move toward the light the more I see my sinfulness. I haven’t arrived, and it seems I’m still the sinner I always was. I cannot pretend otherwise, trying hard changes nothing. I still desperately need God’s grace.

I know, I’ve tried to produce godliness, and I just can’t do it. Discipleship starts in earnest but it ends up only disappointing me, and maybe even annoys God, ( but I’m not always sure of that). I know forgiveness, and I do walk in its wonderful light. When I read the Word it’s so good, and I know that it’s true. But, that’s not the issue.

I read Luther 30 years ago. (And Bonhoeffer would say something similar.)  “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, ‘Repent,’ he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.” Luther once wrote.

There is a present tense here we can’t ignore. I don’t just repent over smoking, or fornication, or of hypocrisy, once and done. But my entire way of living is meant to be one of repenting!

Repentance needs to be a moment-by-moment grace.

As I read the Beatitudes I cannot evade the sense that they are present tense. Read them, they’re obviously not a spiritual checklist. Each verse seems to speak of the time being, the present moment. No list here, guys. Discipleship is not a simple list to check-off spiritual growth.

“God blesses those who are poor and realize their need for him,
    for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs.
4 God blesses those who mourn,
    for they will be comforted.
5 God blesses those who are humble…
 
   

Matthew 5:3-5

“All of the Christian life is repentance. Turning from sin and trusting in the good news that Jesus saves sinners aren’t merely a one-time inaugural experience but the daily substance of Christianity. The gospel is for every day and every moment. Repentance is to be the Christian’s continual posture.”

John Piper

Luther’s last words, laying on his deathbed wrote on a scrap of paper these words, “We are beggars! This is true.” Thirty years before, he was only echoing his first thesis that he nailed on that door. It seems dear ones, we are to live at the foot of the cross. Everyday. Because we desperately need to.

And perhaps the biggest reason is this: Jesus only comes for ‘sinners.’

I want to suggest that we will always be beggars, I think that this is true. But I also believe that someday, I will shine with the glory of God and be changed into  the likeness of my Savior.

That dear one is true.

&bry-signat (1)

Repeat Offenders

“Father, every family has a rascal someone who breaks the rules a juvenile delinquent of untold frustrations and sleepless nights a repeated offender and bearer of sad woe the problem child who needs the most discipline.

Is this why you love me most persistently? When you correct me, is it because I’m the one most contrary?

Or is it that you love me so much?”

 I wrote this thinking about Hebrews 12 and God’s purpose of chastening. I don’t pretend to understand this dynamic completely–all I can say is that my childhood was punctuated by much difficulty. But now, as a father (my two children are now grown), fatherhood has become far easier than my dad had with me.

7 “As you endure this divine discipline, remember that God is treating you as his own children. Who ever heard of a child who is never disciplined by its father? 10 For our earthly fathers disciplined us for a few years, doing the best they knew how.“

“But God’s discipline is always good for us, so that we might share in his holiness. 11 No discipline is enjoyable while it is happening—it’s painful! But afterward there will be a peaceful harvest of right living for those who are trained in this way.”

Hebrews 12:7, 10-11

I really think we understand our Heavenly Father when we spend quality time with Hebrews 12. We are given insight into His care and into our own issues. It is a good thing He gives us— it enriches our spiritual lives.

It’s never nice to be corrected.

It’s not pleasant. Part of being corrected is being reminded that we’re not as righteous as we think we are. To be corrected strikes us to a reprimand, an admonition that something isn’t right inside of us.

The Father corrects His children–in many ways through a myriad of circumstances. He loves us far too much to allow us to continue in our sin. He’s making us into the image of Christ.

We should welcome His correction. He has a plan for you.

When He disciplines you, it only proves that He is your Father. It’s critical to remember: God’s correction is always for our good. It may be painful yes, but it comes with real hope. It’s not to harm or punish you.

“Father, I’m so sorry that I grieve you as often as I do. I promise to behave. Thank you for being a faithful Father who cares deeply for my soul. Amen.”

“Look upon your chastening as God’s chariots sent to carry your soul into the high places of spiritual achievement.” 

 Hannah Whitall Smith.

Please check-out my other site: alaskabibleteacher.com.