Category Archives: Life

Greater is He….

What is it to be a true Christian?

What does it mean to be united to Christ?

What happens when we are accepted by the Creator Beloved?

To start with, it is not simply Christ stepping in the way between God’s justice and God’s Love.  He does not just step into our world and settle our debts.  He does this act of mercy and love but there is so much more.  He comes into our lives to give us a perfect picture, a divine example, of what we should be.

Jesus is the perfect personality.  It is not for us to make an imitation of that perfection.  It is not for us to copy.  Any effort at this will only lead to frustration, discouragement, defeat and utter failure.  It is only when we allow God to be God that He will duplicate Himself in us.

Greater is He that is in me, than he that is in the world.

If my God lives in me, if he is part and parcel of my life, then I am another Christ.  No error here, I am not like Him, but I have a same mind set.  I am not conformed to this world but transformed by the renewal of my mind.  Christ develops in me a new life. I have heard many times that man can never be perfect.  We all fail, we all fall short of God’s perfection.  But never-the-less, this quandary should not stop us from moving forward toward the high calling that is in Jesus. We must take God’s provision for our failure and rise above it through His grace.

We must take Jesus as a substitute for our miserable selves. It is not me who lives but Christ in me. Our lives are a constant giving up.  We must give up that which is bad.  And just as important if no more so, we must give up the good as well and take Him instead. It is hard for us to learn that we must relinquish even the good in order that we will depend upon divine impulses rather than even our best attainments.

What do you think?  Leave a comment.

 

Belief and Faith

We live in a “Christian Nation”.  I have heard this statement thousands of times.  Christianity is the most adherents at 31% of the world population. Many of these people say with confidence, that they ‘believe’ in God. Many of these same people think that this is enough to guarantee that their sins are forgiven and gain them admission to Heaven. However, is this simple ‘belief’ in God enough? Is this ‘belief’ the same as the ‘faith’ spoken of in the Bible? I wanted to share a few thoughts.

True faith is more than simply ‘believing’

Faith absolutely includes an element of belief. But they are not the same.  As I used to tell my kids, “if they are not spelled the same they are not the same.”  A belief in something or someone is required before faith can be manifested. I believe that Grand Canyon is still deep, even though I am not on its edge right now.  I can believe in things that do not affect my life.  I don’t have to worry about the depth of the Grand Canyon grabbing me up as I set at my desk. I can believe in things that do not affect my life. I can live my life without this great hole in the ground because of my belief.  So also you may well believe in God but if that belief does not directly affect your life it is not faith.  It will not save you, it will not justify you, it will not bring God’s favor on you.

To have faith is to put trust in that someone or something.  And who or what you place your trusting faith in is what has far-reaching, even super-natural, eternal, effect.

Story here:  A pastor and his wife was scheduled to attend a very large denominational meeting on the other side of the nation.  Pastor’s wife had never been on a plane before and was very frightened.   She believed that airplanes can fly.  She was terrified. Her husband trying to console her quoted scripture, you know the Bible says, “I will be with you always, even to the end of the world.”  After a moment of thought she replied, “LO I will be with you.”

We can well say that I believe a plane can take me from here to there, but if I’m afraid to get on it, I reveal that I have no ‘faith’ in that plane. Also, if I do not get on the plane, I have no reason to expect it to take me anywhere. I must exercise my ‘faith’ in that plane, by boarding it, if I am to receive the benefits it offers.

Faith results in changed actions

I am not one to judge anyone’s faith or belief.  Never-the-less I have personally seen those who claim to be followers of Christ but their lifestyle remained the same.  They still

I have heard of, and have known, some people who claim to be followers of Christ; however, their lifestyle remained the same after they became Christians as it was before they became Christians. They still lived the same way, talked the same way, and had the same mindset as they did when they were living in rebellion to God. Were they exercising true faith? Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15), meaning that our actions will reveal the change our heart has gone through when we became His true followers. Conversely, if our lives do not exhibit a change of allegiance from self to Jesus, we have good reason to doubt our salvation is real at all. John writes, “And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments” (I John 2:3). True faith is evidenced by a change in the way we act.

Faith results in changed priorities

If anything in our lives is more important than God, our priorities are misplaced and we should examine ourselves to see if we have truly given our lives to Christ. If our lives are focused more on our jobs, our favorite sports team, the next new technological toy, our love life, or anything else that diverts the center of our attention away from God, we should question the validity, or at least the maturity, of our faith.

Conclusion

The mindset of belief can well be simply a passive mental acceptance that amounts to nothing.  Belief must affect your life. Simply to say “I believe in God” means very little if it is merely coming from the lips and not from the heart. People can, and do, say that they ‘believe’ in God, but their lives never change at all. However, when one has true faith in God, one’s life cannot help but reveal this truth. True faith, dependence/reliance/trust, in God reveals itself in our actions, our thought life, and our priorities. If we claim we are Christians, but this is not the attitude of our hearts, it would be wise to ask God to search our hearts, cleanse us, mold us into the people that He wants us to be, and strengthen our faith.

What do you think.  Leave a comment.

Liar, Liar, pants on fire.

There is a divide in our country.  It is not about morals.  It is not about religion.  It is about our President of the United States.  President Trump, because of his method of communication has caused much discussion and even hot tempers.  I read this morning a writer’s characterization of this split. The “division between pro-Trump voters and anti-Trump voters could be described as follows: his opponents took Trump literally, but not seriously; whereas his supporters took him seriously, but not literally.”

What we say is important.  I believe the way we say things are also important.  The Pro-Trumper,s find his style of communications refreshing and appreciate is “speak your mind” way of addressing issues. The “Never Trump group calls our President a liar. They want to judge President Trump on his words based upon a concept of what truth is.  They seem to want to take every word, every phrase and dissect them to a point to where these snippets become giant inferences of the total character of the man speaking them.  Sure, we all live in a community, we all speak with a perceived audience and with every word we expect them to hear the words as we speak from our ears.  It just doesn’t work that way. So should I, or even the President be responsible for everyone to instantly understand the framework of the speaker and not from the hearer?

So what am I trying to say?  What is a lie?  Are the words spoken to be judged by the hearer or the speaker?  I am well aware the answer to this last question expects to be a yes or no.  But it is not that easy.  First and probably most important is the words must be understood from the person saying them.  A lie is a mismatch between what’s in your heart, that is what you take to be true and what’s on your tongue or what we say is true.  We lie when we speak words that are not what our lives and hearts believe. We lie when we speak words that contradict our thoughts.

OK, how about someone who speaks words that are part of his life and fully believes in what he is saying?  Is this inwardly truthful person a liar?  If I truly believe the world is flat and say so, am I a liar?  Don’t think so.  I am just speaking my heart, my belief, my understanding of the truth.  Am a liar?  No I am not.  I am just deceived or haven’t placed truth deep in my heart.  Liar, no, deceived, yes.

If you call someone a liar you are simply saying to the one speaking the words that your concept of the truth is different than what someone else is saying.  But the problem saying they are a liar is a judgement based upon your truth.  Your understanding of the truth is not the same as the speaker’s understanding of the truth.  And if speaker is not violating the internal understanding of the speaker’s truth, it is not a lie.

Maybe those who are so critical of our President are on to something. God does care what we think. And he knows that what we really think will always, in the end, come out of our mouth. The issue is a judgement based on our own personal views of truth. And your truth is not always my truth.  Your truth may not be anyone else’s truth.   We as Christians are people who are on a journey to the place where we believe that truth brings more hope than lies. That journey makes us more and more honest — more and more like God our Father who never speaks what he knows to be untrue, and whose heart is disclosed to us perfectly in the words of Scripture, and, above all, in the Word of God, Jesus his only-begotten Son.  I cannot call anyone a liar.  And I truly believe neither should any other Christian.

What do you think?  Leave a comment.

 

Dry Worship, now what?

I arrived early for my small group lesson last Sunday.  We had a substitute leader and the portion of scripture is well known and everything that can be said had been said a thousand times before.  I read the scripture when asked, bring in historical references when appropriate.  But something seems to be missing.  10:30 and we pray move to the sanctuary for worship.

It is well done: the song service is meant to set an environment of worship. But I am not feeling it.  Where is the awe of God? Where is the beauty of worship?  I am just not getting it today.  I look around and there are some that are raising their hands and praising God.  But for me, nothing.

So what should I do from here? Should you go through the motions anyway?  Do I just bear the lack of personal oneness with God and wait for next week?

What is true worship? Jesus said true worship must involve both spirit and truth (John 4:24).  OK, let’s look at truth.  The Bible is truth.  The lesson was truthful, the Pastors message was truthful, the songs were truthful. Worship in truth is a revelation of Jesus.  I have the truth part covered, it must be the other requirement.  Worship in Spirit.

What’s worship in spirit?  What does that mean?  Back to study.  I have to find the truth about the spirit.  What does the Bible say about spirit?  Normally when book refers to the Holy Spirit, it is predicated by the word “THE”.  Digging a little deeper, John was using the word spirit to refer to feelings and emotions.  So worship in spirit is to do so with feelings and emotions.  Now don’t get me wrong, I am not proposing rolling in the isles and handling snakes, but it is more than a stoic resignation to boredom.

So how to get to the feeling part.  Especially for a person not known for his outgoing enthusiasm.  I would think that worship in spirit includes joyful praise, awestruck wonder, sorrow for sin, longing for God, and maybe a chill or two.  But what if I am just not feeling it.  What can I do? Is there a pious position which I can put my head?  Where are the holy feelings? I guess I could just go through the motions.  Stand when everyone else stands.  Sit when I am asked.  Try and sing songs that I really don’t think have much good theology.  But that just sets me up for what Jesus calls hypocrisy in Matthew 15:7-8

You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said: “‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me…”

So what can I do?

In my studies today I found an interesting passage in Psalms 40 and was the theme of a great old hymn He Brought Me Out

My heart was distressed ’neath Jehovah’s dread frown,
And low in the pit where my sins dragged me down;
I cried to the Lord from the deep miry clay,
Who tenderly brought me out to golden day.

He brought me out of the miry clay,
He set my feet on the Rock to stay;
He puts a song in my soul today,
A song of praise, hallelujah!

At the beginning of Psalm 40 David was not feeling the worship. He felt as I did, in a pit of destruction and stuck in miry clay.  But it changed, God put a song of praise in his mouth. What is the difference?  What is the change that brought the song of praise?

David states plainly. “I waited patiently for the Lord.”  He did not go through the motions.  He did not stand when everyone else were standing.  He did not mouth the words.  He did not hold his head at a pious angle.  He simply waited for the Lord. He did not give up on worship; it was still the goal, but he simply waited for God to help him worship.  And here is how to do it.  I borrowed this quite a few years ago and I don’t know where but here it is:

  1. With expectation point yourself to the divine.  No use looking inwardly if it is just more emptiness.  Don’t focus on your lifeless heart — trust Christ to meet you, help you, change you.
  2. Pray and ask Him to help you worship.  Admit you want to worship and you are not doing so well. Cast your burdens upon Him — and ask Him to strengthen your faith.  Ask for more of the Spirit’s work in your heart to enable you to feel joyful praise, awestruck wonder, and heartfelt longing for Him.
  3. Open the Bible again and find the truth of God that points to praise. If worship is fire, then truth is the fuel that causes the fire to burn.  The more fuel — the hotter the fire.  Focus on the truth in the songs, the prayers, the Scriptures.
  4. Do point one through three again and again patiently.  It’s called waiting for a reason.  God might change your heart instantly — or not.  But His timing is perfect love for you.  So humbly continue waiting for Him.

It may take a long time or just an instant but it will come.  My God is not one to disappoint.

But — if we will wait on the Lord — it’s just a matter of time before we feel the wind of the Spirit start to blow — that fog starts to break up — we see the beauty of God revealed in Jesus Christ —

And we will worship.

Just breathe

Life is a continuous series of changing circumstances. Our thoughts help us make sense of this ever-changing landscape and they help guide us from one event to another along this path to future “now’s.” As things change around us, we constantly try to understand the why.  It is this constant asking that brings uncertainty and frustration.  Sometimes all we need is to take a big breath and see the future and its associated change as a possibility for growth. Change happens with or without your input; but you can create in ourselves a joy in the prospect of new growth.

Ship on the Horizon

[fsn_row][fsn_column width=”12″][fsn_text]

Growing up with a father that always seemed greater than life was not always easy. He worked all the time.  If he wasn’t at Ordside Garage, he would be working on some other car for a neighbor or friend.  It was a rare treat to spend time with my dad alone.  One special Sunday I was invited to an adventure. We were to go to the Monterey wharf to see one of the last three mast sailing ships still working the coast of California.  I could not have been more than 9 or 10. We toured the ship just me and my dad.

It was amazing.  Tall masts with furled sails.  The hull was made of iron but the rest was all wood and rope. We toured through each berth and saw the cook in the galley. It was a wondrous time.  The smells and the sights were so much better because I was sharing with my dad.

But the tide was going out and we had to disembark.  So we watched as the brightly uniformed crew of that grand old ship pull all the lines in and set its grand white sails and moved into that arching blue bay.
It was going to San Francisco, its next point of call. That ship was an object of beauty and strength. We stood there until the white sails became nothing more than a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky came down to mingle with one another. Then someone in the crowd said, “Look, she’s gone”!

That day is often brought to memory.  My sometimes over shadowing Father, the perfect blue sky, and  while sails as they seemed to fall off the edge of the world. But it also brings to mind that exclamation from the crowd, “Look, she’s gone”.  But we must ask, “Gone where?” Gone from my sight, that is all. That grand ship with its large mast and hull was not any less strong or able to cut the waves. That ship was diminished size only because of my perspective.  That ship is “gone” because I can not see it any more.

My dad is no longer with us.  He has sailed over the horizon.  Is he gone?  I don’t think so.  He is just out of sight and never out of mind. In my golden years of retirement I often wonder how I will be remembered when I am “gone”.

[/fsn_text][/fsn_column][/fsn_row]

Joseph Monson – My Dad

I posted this previously in a different media and I thought I might share it again.


Every time I open my hands and look at the grooves and line in my own hands, I see my father.  I have big hands: the hands of German English heritage. Just like my father’s hands, the digits are not well suited to playing the piano or sometimes even typing.  There are few images in my mind of my father which are stronger than the sight of his hands. My father’s hands were huge, but the most remarkable characteristic was the rough callousness of them.  My dad was a mechanic in the days before computers and smog control devices.  Being a mechanic meant you were tough, greasy, tolerant, and patient.
Those great big hands that would reach out to me to come and give him a hug seemed so coarse.  Years of working with hot engines, sharp tools, and caustic chemicals made them that way.  I remember dad when mom was in the hospital for a three day visit and trying to fix the kids something to eat, reaching out for a hot black iron frying pan from the electric stove top.  He had picked it up to take it to the table and he had gone five steps before he realized it was burning hot.  His hands were so desensitized to heat it took that long to set off the warning bells in his head.  With one giant throw, the pan and our dinner went into the sink splattering oil and our food all over the wall.
I guess the reason I remember my father’s hands so well is because as he suffered from the ravages of Alzheimer’s and the rest of his world shrank his hands were still the most remarkable thing to see. They bore the unmistakable signs of hard work.  Those thick, strong and rough hands did not shrunk with the rest of his body.  Those hands that had gripped steel, plunged thousands of times into gasoline and oil,  and pulled chains never seemed to change.  In his last days as his body could no longer keep up with demands of his shrinking world, his hands hung from his arms from still thick wrists that stretched any watch band he had ever known.  They were not the hands that should be idle in darkening days.  They shook and were increasingly awkward when he tried to wipe the drool off his  own proud chin.

Some day all will meet our ends in this world.  But today I will remember a grand man with big hands.

TWO GREAT HANDS

My Father was a man with two great hands,
The skin was rough as it could be.
Work was his life with its pulls and commands,
But he always made time for me.

Sleep and rest were not part of his clock,
There was always someone else in need.
Never did he stop, even when he could drop,
For there were many mouths at home to feed.

His bones were often tired and painfully uncured,
His hands often bandaged and red.
But a promise was a promise, and his bond was his word,
And everyone believed what he said.

He was my dad, and constant each day.
It amazed me how he could be ever so strong,
In his life, in his convictions and in his way.
In my eyes he would never do wrong.

Consistent in actions and strong were his words,
All were made better for walking with this man.
My hands are not as rough, or nearly as tough,
But my inheritance was his gentleness of his hand.

My Dad was a man with two working hands,
Until his life did stop with a beat.
Oh how I miss him, his hands and loving gentle soul,
But these hands I have will ever remind and keep.

Why I Write

My purpose of writing is to clean out the cob webs of my life.  It is not enough to just be.  You have to pass something along. I have done much in my life but little to make waves.  What is strange is some would say I talk to much, others would say I am stoic and don’t talk much at all.  When I am quiet, I am told that I must be mad or angry.  When I am loud and verbose it is a attitude of passion not an attitude rejection of others ideas.
My writing is about my personal struggle, my personal grasping for happiness, my travail for my destination that almost pushed all else out of my journey.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not comparing myself to the great journalistic giants of history, but the more I study, the more I read, the more I understand, I find there are paths, rivulets of cohesive continuity in the chaos.  If I just take a moment to look carefully and stop for a moment, I learn.   I have realized that it is the journey not the destination.
Serendipity is finding something when looking for something else.  It is the discovery of joy along the way.  It is the “ah ha” moments we encounter as we stumble along our journey. Serendipity is not luck.  It is not finding a crisp 20 dollar bill along the road.  Serendipity is having your efforts produce more than you expect.  Serendipity still requires effort.  It still requires a pointing toward the destination, because if you don’ know where you are going, you have already arrived.
But Serendipity is looking for words to describe a grandchild, the sweet strength in the quiet of a son and in doing so discovering beauty of someone that makes you happy.  Understanding is found in the most unlikely places.  Serendipity is offering a kind word to a stranger just to get them to smile for a moment, and having them change their mind about suicide. Serendipity is walking the halls of a small hospital trying to do the right thing and be confronted with someone asking to be led to a new path.
Serendipity is writing a description of one person’s life and discovering your own.

Passion

Passion is what energizes life. It is the zing in our waking.  It is the empowerment to go one more time. It turns the impossible into possible. In fact, if you don’t have any passion in your life, your ministry, your church, or in your salvation, you will become boring, dull, routine, monotonous. What I am saying here is, if you don’t have passion in your life you are not living. You are existing. God made you to live a passionate life and to serve him and his people with vitality. Life with vibrancy, energy, and enthusiasm is not the exception, it is the expected norm. He wants you to have this in your life.  If you are not living on the edge of excitement you are probably just taking up space.

In John 10, Jesus said “My purpose is to give life in all its fullness.” God wants you to live a full life, a fulfilling life, which is the basis for a fulfilling your calling to be one of his followers. If that’s true, that’s the kind of life God meant for us to live. Life is meant to be enjoyed, not merely endured. Sadly, however, countless thousands of pastors, hundreds of thousands of Godly church members and ministry leaders are simply enduring, holding on for the ride and hoping to survive until death without blowing it too badly.

The apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 1:9, “God, who got you started in this spiritual adventure, shares with us the life of his Son and our Master Jesus. He will never give up on you. Never forget that.” God’s will for you is to live and lead in a spiritual adventure. The life that God plans for you is not a mundane boring life. It is an adventurous life. Helen Keller once said, “Life is either a daring adventure or it’s nothing.” I often think the same should be true of our spiritual walk – it’s a daring, bold adventure, or it’s nothing.

Brent Hobbs defines passion this way:
Passion is waking up in the morning wherever you are and bounding out of bed because you know there’s something out there that you love to do, that you believe in and that you’re good at. Something that’s bigger than you are and you can hardly wait to get at it again. It’s something you’d rather be doing more than anything else. You wouldn’t give it up for money because it means more to you than money.

Lent

Lent is a season in which the Church proclaims life is more than just getting by day to day. Lent is about renewal.  It is observed by self-denial. It is saying I can do without something that may well be set in concrete in our lives.  For some it is giving up sweets, for others it is giving up certain meals, for others it is not eating meat of any kind two or three days a week. Lent is a kind of short term “New Year’s Resolution.”

The word Lent means “Spring;” we use it now when we speak of the spring fast–the forty days before Easter Day–I mean forty days not including Sundays, for Sundays are never fast days.

Does the word “fast” frighten you? Does it mean something hard, something very distasteful, or perhaps something that does not concern you at all? If so, it is because you have not yet learnt for yourself (as I hope you will this Lent) its true meaning and happiness.

This is the invitation which our LORD sends to each one of us this Lent–listen to His Voice.  It is as if Jesus is speaking to us “Come ye yourselves (here mention your own name) apart into a desert place, and rest awhile.”

Lent is about realizing I’m on a journey I don’t really get, led by a God I can’t really grasp.  And the end of it all is God.