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A recent discussion on a leadership forum has raised the issue of the appropriateness of women in ministry again. I’ve briefly blogged on the issue here. In re-visiting the sometimes controversial topic, I see that I never posted the position paper I wrote on it. If you want more on the topic, you can check out the paper here.

I love this passage from Isaiah. Perhaps you do to:

⁶For unto us a Child is born,
Unto us a Son is given;
And the government will be upon His shoulder.
And His name will be called
Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
⁷Of the increase of His government and peace
There will be no end,
Upon the throne of David and over His kingdom,
To order it and establish it with judgment and justice
From that time forward, even forever.
The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.
Isaiah 9:6-7 (NKJV)

As I prepared to preach at my mom’s nursing home this past Sunday, I was drawn to this familiar passage. What occurred to me was that in its familiarity, perhaps we have missed its application. And I don’t want to miss the application.

For unto us a Child is born,
Unto us a Son is given;

The Child, the Son, is given to us – to you and to me. Have you received Him? A gift may be given, but until it is received, the transaction isn’t complete. God has given us His Son. Have you accepted the gift from God?

And the government will be upon His shoulder.

In the December issue of Discipleship Journal Online News the editor, Connie Willems, quoted this line from The Message translation of the Bible: “He’ll take over the running of the world!” She went on to express her relief and state the obvious (which is what I so often need to hear):

“If it’s Jesus’ job to run the world, then I don’t have to. True, I’ve never been asked to run the world. But that hasn’t stopped me from occasionally slapping on a crown, waving around a scepter, and trying to force my corner of the world into perfect running order.”

Scripture says that the government will be upon His shoulders. And if He can shoulder the government of the world, He can shoulder the government of my life. Way better than I can. Which begs the question:

Is He that for you? Is He the ruler of your life? Do you give Him full reign in your life?

And His name will be called Wonderful,

Wonderful. Full of wonder. Jesus is, and always has been, and always will be filled with wonder. Truly awe-inspiring.

Is He that for you? Does He inspire your awe? Do you sense His WOW-ness?

And His name will be called Counselor,…

A counselor – a trusted friend who helps us find wisdom and peace in our situations.

A counselor (as in lawyer) – one who pursues righteousness and truth.

Is He that for you? Do you turn to Him for counsel when you need wisdom? When you need peace? When you need to know truth? When you need to find righteousness?

And His name will be called Mighty God, …

In my last blog I recounted about hearing the story of Mary read shortly before getting up to preach, one phrase caught my attention: “For nothing is impossible with God.” (Luke 1:37) That message resonates in my spirit as I read Isaiah 9:6 this week. “His name will be called Mighty God.” He is the Mighty God of the impossible.

Is He that for you? It’s too easy to live our lives day after day not expecting the God of the impossible to be our Mighty God. I don’t want to live that way. I want to always know and live like I serve a Mighty God.

And His name will be called Everlasting Father, …

Everlasting. From eternity past to eternity future. More than I can comprehend, but I accept it as fact. Because I have accepted God’s great gift, the Son that was given to us, He is my Father – from eternity past to eternity future. My Father who protects, provides, loves, disciplines, and loves more. He is my Everlasting Father.

Is He that for you? Have you accepted the gift of His Son? Do you allow Him to be your Father, turning to Him for protection, provision, love, discipline and more love? Is He your Everlasting Father?

And His name will be called Prince of Peace.

I am so thankful that the omnipotent – all powerful – God who spoke the universe into existence and holds it together with His very breath – that God, is a Prince of Peace. He is not a warrior God. Yes, He is able and willing to fight battles when they are necessary, but His name, His nature, is the Prince of Peace. He desires to bring peace out of warring chaos – peace that goes beyond our understanding. Peace when it seems there can be no peace.

Is He that for you? Do you allow His peace to hold and keep you?

Of the increase of His government and peace
There will be no end,…

Read the words carefully – of the INCREASE there will be no end. Christ’s government and peace will forever be increasing! That means it will always grow, there will always be more than there is now. I can’t wait for tomorrow! More of Christ’s rule, more peace. Hallelujah!

Upon the throne of David and over His kingdom,
To order it and establish it with judgment and justice
From that time forward, even forever.

To order it and establish it with judgment and justice forever. I confess – I like order! God’s world will be ordered (that is, not chaotic) and established with judgment and justice. That’s the Kingdom I want to live in. One that is ordered and established with judgment and justice. Don’t read judgment to mean condemnation. It means that He, who is the Prince of Peace, the Wonderful Counselor, the Everlasting Father – He will judge and He will administer justice. Merriam-Webster defines “judge” as “to form an opinion about through careful weighing of evidence and testing of premise.” The all-knowing God will carefully weigh all evidence and test all motives to judge righteously and administer justice. I look forward to that day.

And the pièce de résistance is the final line of the passage:

The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.

Why and how will all of this be accomplished? By the zeal of the Lord. By His eagerness and strong passion. His great desire will ensure that this is accomplished. That’s good enough for me!

May I encourage you this Christmas season, to allow Christ to be all that He came to be in your life. It’s His heart’s passion and my prayer for you.

If you’re anything like me, sometimes you wonder what you can possible get from reading some passages of Scripture. Reading along with the Resting at the River’s Edge plans, we’ve come to Amos this week. Perhaps you wondered what you could possibly glean from Amos.

Here’s a quick look at the verses that jumped out at me from yesterday’s reading of Amos 1-4:

Amos 3:

² “You only have I chosen
of all the families of the earth;
therefore I will punish you
for all your sins.”

• God disciplines those He loves. Thank You, Lord, for disciplining me for my good and Your glory. Thank You, Lord, for not leaving me as I am but helping me to become more than I ever thought I could be.

⁷ Surely the Sovereign LORD does nothing
without revealing his plan
to his servants the prophets.

• Hallelujah – I can know the plans of God. I can trust that He will reveal them. I can know what God is doing in the earth and I can become a part of that effort.

Amos 4:

¹³ He who forms the mountains,
creates the wind,
and reveals his thoughts to man,
he who turns dawn to darkness,
and treads the high places of the earth—
the LORD God Almighty is his name.

• He is God Almighty! Hallelujah! He is the One who has formed the mountains that rise majestically from the earth. He is the one who created the wind that brings refreshment or devastation. He is the One who chooses to reveal His thoughts to man. He is the only One who can turn dawn into darkness (and darkness to Dawn). He is the One who treads where man cannot go. The Lord God Almighty is His name!

If you’re reading along with us using the Resting at the River’s Edge Reading plans, you’re in the book of Ezekiel. I told Phil a few days ago that I was reading Ezekiel and his response was “Wheels within wheels? I’m sure some day we’ll see Zeke in heaven and say ‘Dude, you got the call and you did the best you could with it, but seeing it – this is something else!’”

In other words, if you can make sense of what Ezekiel saw, you’re doing better than everyone else who has ever tried! I can’t imagine the challenge Ezekiel had in describing what is clearly other-worldly. But one day we will see the unbelievable beings he saw and we will stand (or fall) amazed. What can we take away from a book with such mind-blowing “characters?”

I can’t begin to get my mind around the pictures described by Ezekiel, but I can still gain from reading the book. Here’s just two lessons I take from the first dozen chapters of Ezekiel.

God is…More Than
I struggled with a subtitle here and settled for this generic one – God is More Than. Let me tease it out a bit:

• God is more creative than I can possibly imagine. My mind can’t bring the beings Ezekiel is describing into a cohesive picture, yet God created them from nothing. Imagine the degree of creativity required to create such things! I like it that the God I serve isn’t limited in His creativity. (Note to self: Quit trying to suggest to God how to solve your problems when you’re praying – leave the solutions to His creativity – don’t put limits on His answers to your prayers by asking in a way that causes you to receive less than God’s creativity wants to give you!)
• God is more concerned with details than I sometimes remember. The amount of detail that Ezekiel includes about the beings is commendable – but beyond Ezekiel’s detailed writing is a God who included such detail in His creations. Eyes and wings and wheels and motors and hands and faces and much more. I am certain that no part of the beings occurred by happenstance –there is significance to each element. I don’t understand that significance yet, but I know the God who does. He is patient and kind and He is love. He is trustworthy. So I leave the details to Him for now. He’ll explain them to me when I need to know. For now I can be content to marvel at His ability to create such things.
• God is not from around here – and that’s a good thing. Reading about the whirling wheels and the cherubim who interacted with them (or perhaps were a part of them) makes it clear to me that God didn’t grow up in my neighborhood. There is no amount of influence that could make someone from earth imagine what God has created. The creations are clearly other-worldly, as is the God who created them. It can become easy to think of God as a super-human. He is not. He is from a realm that He can give us insight into but while in this body, we cannot truly know.
• God is the ultimate Commander in Chief. He commands the creatures that are beyond description. He speaks and they respond. There is no hesitation in them. (Another note to self: Learn from the creatures – obey without hesitation!) Imagine the power and authority required to command such creatures!
• God is…more than – More than I can imagine, more than I can understand, more than I can describe. And as such, he is more deserving of my praise than I am able to give. Lord, help me to give you more praise!

God Hates Sin
You don’t have to have read very far in Ezekiel (I’m actually a few days behind in my reading according to our reading plan), to understand how grievous sin is to God. As I read chapters six, seven, eight and beyond, my heart was pierced as I understood what an affront sin is to God. I was also struck by the perspective of the seventy elders who were burning incense to idols in the temple. They say:

“The LORD does not see us; the LORD has forsaken the land.”
Ezekiel 8:12b

Wrong, my friends! The Lord sees, and He is grieved by our sin. Beyond that, however, He will judge sin. Period. Let’s not be like the seventy elders and delude ourselves into believing that God does not see and will not judge. As the Apostle Peter reminded the early Christians:

⁸But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. ⁹The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.
2 Peter 3:8-9

The Lord sees, but is being patient, giving us and everyone else time to repent before He must come and judge. Peter goes on, reminding the Christians (and us today) that the Lord will come. He follows with an exhortation of how we are to live. I’ll let him write the ending to this blog:

¹⁰But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare.

¹¹Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives ¹²as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. ¹³But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness.

¹⁴So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him. ¹⁵Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. ¹⁶He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.

¹⁷Therefore, dear friends, since you already know this, be on your guard so that you may not be carried away by the error of lawless men and fall from your secure position. ¹⁸But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever! Amen.
1 Peter 3:10-18

Amen!

Six Temptations of Failure, Day 5 of 6

Are you still with me? So far we’ve covered the following temptations:

1. Believing that You are the Failure
2. Allowing a Failure to Spread its Branches
3. Making Inappropriate or Unintentional Vows
4. Blaming Others

Only two more to go. I pray that God is speaking to your heart as you read this series of blogs.

Temptation #5: Avoiding Others
In the midst of a failure, you may be quite tempted to avoid others because of feelings of humiliation.

First, know that the feelings of humiliation are probably totally inappropriate. Humility is a good thing; humiliation is a bad thing. Experiencing a failure may be humbling, but you should not feel humiliated by it. You tried something and it didn’t go as planned.

Repeat after me: “Everyone fails.” It’s a part of life. There’s no reason for you to feel humiliated. And everyone makes mistakes. If a mistake on your part lead to the failure, it wasn’t your first mistake and it undoubtedly won’t be your last. Learn to live with not being perfect. Only God is perfect and you’re not God.

So resist the temptation to avoid others – you need them to love you as you recover from the failure. You need people around you who will regularly remind you about the great talents and gifts God has given you, and about how special you are to God and to them. You need people to love you. Trust me, avoiding friends is debilitating and will prolong your recovery process.

And perhaps most importantly of all, the world needs to see how a confessing Christian deals with failures and setbacks in their lives. This might be the most important message that your life could ever deliver to the watching world around us. Hiding your failure and avoiding the world will never get that message across. It’s like burying your talent in the sand.

If you’ve avoided others lately, let me encourage to right now think of someone you will call later today or tomorrow. Or perhaps you can reach for the phone right now. Go for it!

Praise the LORD.
Blessed is the man who fears the LORD,
Who finds great delight in his commands.
– Psalm 112:1

Praise the Lord!

Praise – from the Hebrew word halal – as in hallelujah! It literally means a number of things that can help us worship Him better today:

• To be clear (originally of sound, but usually of color)
• to shine
• to make a show
• to boast – even to the point of appearing foolish!

We are to praise the Lord without regard to looking foolish! As I thought about this, I realized that when our focus is on HIM, not on ourselves, we naturally become less concerned for “how we look to others.” When we “clear” our minds from the sound and color of others’ expectations, focusing on Him instead of ourselves, we are free to shine for Him and Him alone! And if others consider that foolish, that’s for them to deal with – I prefer to deal with the Lord.

The Lord – from the Hebrew Jah, a shortened version of Jehovah. It means self-existent or eternal.

Shine for the one who is self existent! Boast about the eternal One! Dare to be considered a fool for the one who always was and always will be!

We’ll spend much of September with the Prophet Jeremiah. He is the author of both Jeremiah and Lamentations. Jeremiah had a hard job — prophecying to a people who didn’t want to hear what he had to say. That made him unpopular and, in the world’s eyes, unsuccessful. I bet there are times that you feel that way. Times when it seems that you aren’t where you wish you were at this point in your life. Times when you look around at others and everyone seems to be doing better than you are. Well, as I said, Jeremiah had a hard job. But God dealt with him graciously and I think we can learn much from seeing the interaction between the two and from watching Jeremiah’s faithfulness in difficult times. Was he successful? You make the call!

We’ll also finish the book of Psalms, ending with the triumphant last verse:   

Let everything that has breath Praise the Lord.
Praise the Lord.
Psalms 150:6 (NIV)

Let everything that lives sing praises to the Lord!
Praise the Lord!
Psalms 150:6 (NLT)

We’ll also read 1 and 2 Peter, but I’ll leave discussion of those books for when we get to them.

Don’t give up, friends! I’m guessing you’ve made much progress toward reading the Bible this year – perhaps more than you ever have before! Congratulations! Keep at it!

Enjoy!

To download a PDF of September’s reading schedule, click here.

Nothing sets a person so much out of the devil’s reach as humility.
Jonathan Edwards

Humility is the exhibition of the spirit of Jesus Christ and is the touchstone of saintliness.
Oswald Chambers

In Saturday’s blog, one of the points I made is that when God wants to accomplish something on earth He usually inspires one person. What an awesome thing to be used by God to accomplish His purposes. Paul, in speaking to the Corinthians, goes so far as to refer to himself and his fellow workers for Christ as “partners with God.” I love that He doesn’t save us just to have us sit around and enjoy the free gift of salvation. I love sitting around and enjoying the free gift of salvation, but I love it even more that He values me enough to want me to partner with Him to accomplish eternal purposes while I am here on earth.

In the book of Ezra, we saw God use many people. The first (in this book) was King Cyrus, an unbeliever. God gave him the desire to help the Israelites rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. But a King’s decree is just that – an order for something to be done. And building a temple is a huge job. So God inspired and enabled the leaders if the Israelites to move to Jerusalem, settle there and rebuild the temple. Zerubbabel emerged as a leader and lead the building effort and stood against Israel’s enemies when there must have been great temptation to let them join in the effort. (After all, more hands would have meant easier work for everyone.)

The rebuilding of the temple was not a short-term or easy assignment. It took seven months just for the people to relocate. Then the rebuilding began. After building for some period of time, opposition forced the work to stop…for about sixteen years! Imagine how disappointed Zerubbabel must have felt. Imagine how defeated he would have been tempted to feel. But it was Zerubbabel who again started the building process sixteen years later.

The outcome would have been much different if Zerubbabel had not been obedient to the call of God.Zerubbabel’s life would have been much different if he had not been obedient to God’s call. There were many places in the story when he could have said “Me? No thanks! I’ll let someone else do that job!” At the beginning it must have seemed like an insurmountable task. When facing the attacks of Israel’s enemies, he must have been as tempted to be discouraged as everyone else. When work stopped, it would have been easy to give up hope. When it was prophecied that they should begin to build again, it would have been so tempting to say “been there, done that! It didn’t work the first time, why should I stick my neck out and try it again? Find another sucker.” But that’s not Zerubbabel’s story. His story is one of faithful servanthood.

God changes the world through faithful servants. People like you and me who say “Yes!” to God. I’ve focused on Zerubbabel, but each person who moved to Jerusalem and helped rebuild the temple and each person who provided finances to make it possible were used by God to accomplish His purpose. In each case, the outcome would have been a bit different if they hadn’t said “Yes.” Maybe a portion of the temple would have been built differently or wrongly. Maybe some of the work would have been delayed or altered because of lack of finances. God desires to use all of us, according to our gifts and talents. But he gives us the option. We can be the faithful servant like Zerubbel or we can hinder God’s work by saying “I think I’ll sit this one out.”

I hope you won’t sit this one out. Say “Yes” when you feel God stirring your heart about something. That’s how He usually speaks – by starting a process in our hearts so that we begin to feel a draw toward something that maybe we wouldn’t naturally pursue. Like relocating and rebuilding a temple. Like giving offerings of money and personal property to see the work of the Gospel move forward.

God wants you to partner with Him on an upcoming project. Will you join Him? The results will be God-enabled. And that’s a pretty cool thing! No, that’s a WAY cool thing.