Reaching Out

     Early in my ministry I was a member of the First Baptist Church single’s department mission team. Over a three year period our little team went to New York City and for a week during the summer we dedicated ourselves to introducing people to Jesus. (I know – “New York City!”…Get a Rope)  

     One year we did vacation bible school in Central Park, another year we handed out tracts and Gospel of Johns underneath the iconic Cyclone Roller Coaster on the boardwalk at Coney Island. God blessed us with being a part of a food drive in the heart of Brooklyn. Along with our host Church, the Brooklyn Tabernacle, we were a part of a Children’s ministry in the most dangerous park in the United States, Fort Green Park in Brooklyn. We saw many children come to know Christ and we got to love on some people that we may never have been exposed to in our life. 

     On these mission trips we were given down time that we could use anyway that we saw fit. During the down time we were able to do some sight-seeing. One morning I was rudely awaken from my sleep only to escort the woman of our group down to the set of the Today show to see if we could get on TV with Al Roaker. We ate incredibly good Pasta at Luna’s in Little Italy. We saw Derrick Jetter pitch in the now none existent iconic old Yankee stadium. We saw Les Miserable and Phantom of the Opera on Broadway. We shopped in FAO Swartz and Macy’s, and ate breakfast at Tiffany’s.   

     One of the greatest memories that I have is of a Fourth of July that we spent in New York. Most of the group wanted to stay at Central Baptist Ministries where we were staying but two of the women in the group and I decided that we wanted to go down to the Hudson River so that we could see the Macy’s Fireworks Display and if possibly hear Ray Charles sing the National Anthem. As we made our way down to the river we were joined by wave after wave of people who had the same idea that we had.  

     Somewhere under the FDR Bridge packed in the middle of thousands of people we waited for the fireworks. It was one of the most awesome experiences of my life. Just looking around me I saw almost every type of people you could see, people of every nation, color, background and age. I was standing next to a Methodist Pastor from the Midwest. The only thing that I could think was that this is what it is supposed to be like, this was America. For that one night we were all Americans. I was so proud to be an American; this was Mom and Apple pie.

    Two months later, high-jackers flew two planes into the twin towers and nothing will ever be the same. You do not know what it is like to look into a jagged pit and try to reconcile with your brain that a building should be there; that your brain insists has to be there, yet is no longer there. There is no going back.

     Genelle Guzmon was the last person to be pulled out of the rubble of the twin towers. Genelle was buried in that wreckage for twenty seven hours. The authorities had already come to the conclusion that anyone that was going to be found alive had already been found. No one could survive the devastation.

     The first responders had traveled over the area where Genelle was buried hundreds of time without knowing that she was there, never hearing her muffled cries for help. Trapped under the rubble Genelle prayed that she would be found. She prayed that God would give her another day and another chance. Genelle heard the voices of the responders and in desperation she thrust her fist forward hoping against hope that someone would find her. She did not know which direction that her hand was going or if anyone could see it but somehow it hit open air. A responder named Paul found her and grabbed her hand never letting go until Genelle was finally uncovered. Paul reassured her that he would not leave her. He never left her side until they took her to the hospital. He did not leave her side until he knew that she was safe.   

     I was blessed to be able to hear Gazelle’s story firsthand about a year after that fateful day in September. Genelle still walked with a limp and had to lean on the arm of her fiancé. The story of the twenty seven hours that she spent buried in the rubble of the twin towers will stay with me for the rest of my life.

     Day after day we live our lives. We travel, going back and forth over the same territory. We never know what we are missing in the course of our days. There are people who are buried under the rubble of their lives, covered in their desperation. There are people who are close to giving up.

     Christian has been charged with taking the words of salvation to a hurting and lost world. We are to find those who are desperate, those who have lost hope. We may be the one who finds them before it is too late.   We may be the ones to set the captives free with the love of Christ.     

Road Trip!

     Road trip! Every six months or so, I do a road trip. Over the hills and through the woods to grandmother’s house I go.  This usually entails hours and hours and miles after miles of interstate highways, State toll roads and the occasional road designated only by a number.

     The trip also entails listening to a little nag pestering me to go this way and that. Turn left, turn right, take the next exit, nag, nag, nag. Lucy is my traveling companion, she does not eat much, but she just refuses to shut up. Lucy has an English accent that does not make her droning any less annoying.    

     Lucy sits on the dashboard of the car in her 3 inch by 4 inch box. Lucy is the name that we gave to the car’s GPS. Lucy was the first English name that came to mind when we heard her voice. Lucy was named after the character Lucy Pevensie from the C. S. Lewis classic Narnia. Small, English and annoying, she had to be Lucy. Kind of like the little sister that I never wanted

     Although I have now taken this trip four times and could find my way through three states to get to my Grandmother’s house, I still rely on Lucy to get through some parts of the trip. She ticks off the miles and gives a turn by turn commentary of the trip. Even though we bring out Lucy on every one of our trips, we have, missed a turn or two which just causes her to say,” recalculating, recalculating.”  Lucy searches for a way to get us back on track and going in the right direction.

     Life is full of wrong turns. We turn left instead of turning right. What looks like the right path for our lives can turn out to be a dead end or worse we can find ourselves miles from the place that we wanted to be. We can get further and further from the right path. On our own we can get ourselves desperately lost.

     The good news is that we don’t have to go it alone. We have our own GPS that we can follow. For those who are willing to listen we have God’s Positioning System. God says in the book of John, “My Sheep know my voice and they follow me.” Through the pages of our bible, through our church services, and even through our prayers we can navigate through life by listening for God’s voice.

     Through the midst of the chaos and tumult of our busy lives we hear his turn by turn directions. But we don’t hear him in the whirlwind, we don’t hear him in the earthquake, but we can hear him in his still small voice. By listening for his voice, we can avoid the dead ends, one ways, and the wrong turns of life. We don’t have to worry about getting lost, but even if we do get off course, God’s word recalculates to get us back on the right path.       

Long row to hoe.

     I’m a city boy. I don’t like to be far from the creature comforts. The only things that grow around me are asphalt, glass, and steel. The only green of the city are the weeds pushing up between the cracks in the sidewalks. Eggs come in Styrofoam containers by the dozens and milk in sanitized cartons behind frosted glass doors.

     An hour drive in any direction and it is a different story. Buildings turn from skyscrapers to single level storefronts; multiplex malls turn into mercantile and feed stores. The speed of the city turns to a slower pace, and the inherent tension slowly disappears like a sigh.

     Drive out into the country and you’ll see a patchwork of farms. Each farm  neatly lined with cultivated rows ready for the spring planting. In some will grow corn, some will contain wheat, others a myriad of possible vegetables.

     This is a life style that is foreign to me. It is a life that, though it has its appeal, can never replace the home of the city boy.  After all, how can you return to the farm once you have seen Paris?

     Just because I’m a city boy does not mean that I’m beyond taking a lesson from the country side. Jesus often used the agrarian life as a setting for his parables when he taught his disciples. He taught about planting seeds, he called his followers to go into the fields that were already ready for the harvest, he talked of vineyards and warned of Gods threshing floor where the chaff would be removed from the wholesome wheat.

     One of the images that strike me is the image of the man who plows the fields. Jesus tells one of his potential followers in the book of Luke, “No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.”  It is a lesson that all Christian should remember. 

     The man who plows the field does not look behind him while he is plowing. If he looked back the rows would meander all over the place. None of the rows would be straight. He only looks forward to the end of the row.

     In our walk we have to go forward as well. The past can only serve as a distraction from our walk with Christ. No matter if the things of our past are beneficial or not.   Those past things will get us off the path and take us into a different direction from the one that He, Christ wants us to follow.  

     The things of the past only serve as a distraction.  Everything that we did in the past, even those things that we got right, those things have to be set aside. It does not matter that you once taught Sunday school or that you had a wonderful prayer life it is what is happening now. Used-to-be’s  don’t  make honey. What you are doing now in your relationship with God is all that matters. We have to keep in mind that we have an end goal and Christ is at the end. Our goal is to become more like Jesus, to achieve Christ likeness. We can only do this by looking forward and by keeping our eyes on Jesus the author and finisher of our faith.     

 

Trust Me

     Have you ever had to go to one of those team building meetings that seem so popular these days with companies and organizations?  The whole bases for these meetings are to get your staff or organization to work together as a cohesive unit.

     Each of those meetings use various games, all geared to solve some problem; creating a stories out of random words drawn from a hat, building a structure out of straws, or drawing a picture from the instructions proffered by their team members.  One of the oldest of these games is a trust building exercise where one person falls backwards into the waiting arms of another person.  At least they hope that they will be caught.

     Building trust is essential in any relationship. In our spiritual life it is mandatory. Hard habits are hard to break. Especially here in Texas we are an independent breed. We hold the notion that we will be beholding to no man. We think that, “If it is to be, it is up to me.” We would not even trust one of our own family members to catch us in one of those exercises.  My family would yell, “Ole,” laughing as I crashed into the floor.

     We spend most of our lives making ourselves into our own personal god. It is extremely hard for us to “Let go and let God.” Most of us would say that I trust God to take care of XYZ, but I’ll take care of the rest. It does not even have to be on a conscience level. We can let God have every aspect of our lives and yet still find ourselves picking up things or worrying about things that are not ours to worry about.

      Jesus said follow me because my yoke is light. It is light because He is taking care of everything. Doing all the heavy lifting. The weary can have rest because He is carrying their burdens. It is all in His power not in ours. If it was up to us we would mess it up every time. Nothing says that we mistrust God like a joyless life filled with drudgery.

     Not too long ago I was blessed to perform the wedding of a dear friend. This was not my first Rodeo, not my first wedding. It was important that it go off without of a hitch. I have been preaching off and on since 2002 and I have always been a little nervous before a sermon.

     While preparing the sermon I trusted God to give me the right words. I trusted Him to give me the right passages to read from. I even trusted Him to run all aspects of the service.  Yet I was more nervous than I’ve ever been.  I almost forgot the sermon that I had spent hours memorizing. The rings got tangled in the strings of the pillow. I had to have one of the groomsmen untie it so that I could do the ring ceremony. 

     I was upset that the wedding had not come off the way that I had thought that it would. I was so disappointed. I had the perfect passages.  I had thought of everything that could go wrong and had minimized it. I had memorized the sermon and I had it down cold. All that I had to do was to preach the service.  Give me a half an hour and I could still do the service by memory today.

   And yet… and yet…  After the service I prayed. I asked God why things had gone wrong, why I was so nervous. The answer that God gave me stunned me. He said,” You did not Trust me.” “You trusted me in everything, but when it came to the sermon you did not trust me.” “When it came to the most important part, you did not trust me.”

     In the clutch I did not trust God to catch me. I figured that he would let me fall so I took things into my own hands. I tried to do it in my own power. I took out the “me” god, and put it at the center of my life. I should have seen the outcome before it even happened.  Trust is essential in any relationship. Our relationship with God is no different. It may take a while but we can cultivate a relationship built on trust. It does not even take toilet paper suits or crayon drawings suitable for framing on you fridge.

Good to the last drop!

 You can get coffee anywhere in the city. It’s pretty hard to go anywhere without passing a Starbucks. You can get coffee at 7-11, a Mc Café at Mickie-d’s, Kona that once could only be had at specialty roasters, can now be had at any hole in the wall. Whether you go for your morning Joe or a tiny thimble full of cappuccino, there is nothing like a good cup of coffee. Nothing ruins a good cup faster than reaching across the diner counter, or pulling a carton out of the fridge before you realize the cream you just poured into your cup has gone bad.

     Anything that is left long enough will start to sour and over time will become unusable. If we were not to use our legs, the muscles will start to shrink and over time will cease to function. If we do not exercise our faith, it will shrink. We can get to the point where we don’t see God working in our lives, after a while we can get to the point where we don’t see the blessings anymore. We act as if there is some kind of point system with God. When we get to that magic number, we get to quit, this far and no more.  We get to a certain age where we think that we have done everything that we were supposed to do. Our faith was never supposed to have an expiration date. 

     If you are living and breathing God has a plan for you. It is us who puts restrictions on how God gets to use us or work through us. Jeremiah was called to be a prophet of the people of God. All he had to do was to repeat everything that God told him to speak, but Jeremiah told God that God was wrong and that he was too young to be of any use to God. If Samuel had looked through the eyes of man, instead of God’s eyes, David would have been left in the fields tending the flocks. He did not look like the kind of King that the people expected. He did not even look like a King that they would have chosen for themselves.

      Moses thought that his time for serving God was long gone, dead and buried along with the Egyptian that he had slain. It was forty years later before God was ready to use him to bring Israel out of Egypt. Moses would later take the people to the very brink of the promised-land. The night before they were to take the land they sent spies into the land to check it out. God had said that the land was theirs, all they had to do was to go in and take it, and instead the people believed not God but the spies who told them it could not be done.

     For forty years the people wandered the wilderness, they trailed behind them the bleached bones of those who would rather listen to men than to God.  God raised a generation that would have the faith to follow Him. Forty years later when Joshua got them to the edge of the river Jordan, he would not listen to any voice other than the one that said the land is yours. They crossed that mighty river on dry land. Joshua told the people that God had given them everything that the eye could see from mountain to sea. There were still those who said,” There might be Giants.” Caleb at the age of 78 came forward and said,” There might be Giants, but God said go.” “There might be Giants, but give me the Mountain.” “There might be Giants for He makes Young out of the Old.”

     If you still draw a breath, God is not through with you. If you still draw breath, God still has a plan for you. We were never intended to sit, soak, and sour. Most of us think , I have done enough, I can sit and be fed; but what we find is that we have nothing to show for it but day old Manna. God has given us enough for today and if he has given you more than you need, it is up to you to pass on the rest. Look around you, there are plenty of ways that you can serve. Jesus tells us that even if we give someone a cup of cool water in His name we show our love for Him.      

      There are plenty of people who need to hear from God. There are widows and orphans who we are responsible for. There are prisoners who need to be visited and not all of them are in jail, some are in the prison of failing bodies.  We are responsible to the least of these. We have a job to do, but we hold to our excuses, I’m too young, God couldn’t possibly use me, I’ve failed God, and it’s too late for me. We tell ourselves, “There might be Giants,”    God still says “Go.”