Just Like Your Daddy

As I was walking on the beach I heard little snippets of conversations. Kids are just funny. One boy (probably about 7 year old) ran up to his mom and said he was tired of the beach and wanted to leave. His mom said, “Well, just go up to the room. Dad’s there. You are just like your Daddy!” I took that to mean that dad wasn’t a real beach lover either.

But it made me think of me with my Heavenly Father. I hope someone says that I’m just like my Heavenly Daddy.

1 John 4:13-17 This is how we know we abide in Him and He in us: He has given us His Spirit. We have seen for ourselves and can testify that the Father has sent His Son to be the Savior of the world. God abides in the one who acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, and He abides in God. We have come to know and rely on the love that God has for us. God is love, and the person who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in Him. This is how love has been perfected among us: we have confidence on the Day of Judgment because; during our time in this world we are just like Him.

It’s all about abiding in God.

And this abiding means:

1. To stay with Him,

2. Continue to stay with Him,

3. To linger in His presence spiritually,

4. To remain always with Him,

5. And to have a constant relationship with Him.

We have to believe in Him and  “go up to the room. Dad’s there.”

And then we have to stay with our God.

Then we will be just like Him.

The Difference Between Happiness and Joy

“Trust and obey, for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey."

I’ve been thinking about that hymn lately and am not quite sure about that little ditty of a chorus. The other words to the hymn are great though. OK, I trust in God. I obey His Word. I’m enfolded in Jesus’ love. But “happy” in Jesus? Not always.

There are 658,000 responses on Google about the Biblical difference between happiness and joy. I didn’t read all of them but the answer seems to be … Happiness is instigated by an external source and Joy is instigated by an internal source. Happy/ about 30 times in the Bible. Joy/ over 300 times in the Bible. It seems that God would rather us seek joy than depend on happiness to just show up.

 A testimony at a Dwight L. Moody evangelistic meeting was the impetus for the song. The story goes that a young man who had just been converted stood and said, “I’m not quite sure. But I’m going to trust and I’m going to obey.” John Sammis took those words as an inspiration for the song.

When we walk with the Lord in the light of His Word,
What a glory He sheds on our way!
While we do His good will, He abides with us still,
And with all who will trust and obey.

Not a shadow can rise, not a cloud in the skies,
But His smile quickly drives it away;
Not a doubt or a fear, not a sigh or a tear,
Can abide while we trust and obey.

Not a burden we bear, not a sorrow we share,
But our toil He doth richly repay;
Not a grief or a loss, not a frown or a cross,
But is blessed if we trust and obey.

But we never can prove the delights of His love
Until all on the altar we lay;
For the favor He shows, for the joy He bestows,
Are for them who will trust and obey.

Then in fellowship sweet we will sit at His feet.
Or we'll walk by His side in the way.
What He says we will do, where He sends we will go;
Never fear, only trust and obey.

It seems to me that this song is more about Joyful in Jesus than Happy in Jesus. But I wasn’t around in 1887 to give my input so I’ll just sing it as it is and whisper to myself “joyful”.

Galatians 5:22 But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,

The main thing is to Trust and Obey joyfully, even when we are not quite sure.

Listen to “Stir Me” (If You Dare)

I guess I had a nostalgic moment last week but I started remembering sermons that left a lasting impression on my life. Now I have heard sermons since I was able to realize that the guy standing up on the stage behind the podium was preaching. And I have not remembered the hundreds of messages I have heard. My apologies to all the pastors living or with Jesus. There are, however, sermons that changed my life. Those I remember.

One of the remembered sermons was called “Stir Me” delivered by a petite missionary lady named Helen Roseveare. I heard her as a college student sitting in a required chapel. I was not ready for this little lady to make a difference in me but the words she said burned my heart.

I bought the cassette of her talk. (I know, cassette, which I can’t even play on any machine I now own.)

I have found a website that has the recording of the message and I happily listened to it again. I wondered if it would still have the impact it did so long ago. It did. Find this at sermonindex.net and search “stir me” by Helen Roseveare. Let her get through her unassuming and dated intro before you turn it off, or skip ahead a bit.

Don’t! And I repeat, don’t listen to this if you are a half-way Christian. She doesn’t have time for you and her sermon doesn’t include you.

I’m not even sure if I can put myself in the complete surrender position she placed herself in God’s hands.  But I surely want too. And Hope I will if God calls me to it.

Stir me, God, really stir me.

Stir me to go.

Stir me to give.

Stir me to pray.

http://www.sermonindex.net/modules/mydownloads/visit.php?lid=17462

P.S. BTW she's still alive the last I heard. An amazing life story.

Look at the Groom

This is wedding season. I have 3 wedding invitations posted on my refrigerator door and am expecting another one any day now. And so my thoughts are turning to the friendships I have with the brides and grooms and their families. I remember all of the happy and even not so happy events that brought our lives together and bound us together. I'm so honored that they want me to share in this special event in their lives.

There is a lot of planning, preparations, and (dare I say it) stress involved with the process of getting two people married. But overriding all of this is overwhelming joy.

OK, so now I’m studying all the passages about “brides” in the bible. And do you know what I found? It’s really not all about the bride.(As they say in the south, "Well, shut my mouth!") It’s all about the groom! Sorry, I know that is a shock to our cultural sensibilities.

Symbolically in God’s word His people have always been portrayed as the bride and the Godhead as the Groom. That’s why the Bible puts more emphasis on the “Groom.”

I remembered a line from the movie “27 Dresses.” Yes, it’s a chick-flick. The main character, Jane, says, “You know how the bride makes her entrance and everybody turns to look at her? That’s when I look at the groom. Cause his face says it all you know. The pure love there.” The writers probably didn’t realize it but that is what the Bride of Christ, His church, our, response is and will be. We look at our God spiritually but finally face to face at His return and see…pure love.

Isaiah 62:5 for just as a young man marries a maiden, your sons will marry you; and just as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride; so your God will rejoice over you.

So while we turn and look at the bride as she comes down the aisle, remember where the bride is looking. She is looking at the groom. She is looking for the pure love in his eyes.

Our world can get pretty crowded and distracting.

But let’s not lose our focus.

Let’s keep our spiritual eyes on Jesus.

If we look to Him we will see His pure love for us.

We will see that He is rejoicing over us.

Keep looking at the groom.

You Are the Boss of Me

My mother was a saintly woman but even she could be pushed too far. I remember one time she was making her way slowly with her walker from one room to the next and and I was telling her what she should do and not do. She stopped, looked me in the eye and said, “You’re not the boss of me.” It’s pretty bad when your 80 year old mother puts you back in your place.

I thought about her as My Pastor Wade was preaching on Sunday. We all have that tendency toward independence. In most cases, that’s not a bad thing.  But in our Christian life we have to be the followers and surrenderers (Is this a word?). We need to follow Christ and surrender ourselves to pattern our life after The Word of God.

My Pastor Wade took us through the early ministry of the disciple Peter (pre-apostle.)

Jesus originated the contact with Peter. He just looked at him and basically said, “I am the boss of you and I will completely overhaul your life into something you have never experienced before. But you have to stick with me.”

Matthew 4:18-20 While walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon (who is called Peter) and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. And he said to them, “Follow Me and I will make you fishers of men." Immediately, they left their nets and followed him.

The disciple Peter had a struggle with the “who’s the boss” part of his life in the beginning of his pursuit of Christ. Sometimes he got it right and sometimes he asserted himself way beyond his place of total surrender.

I can’t be too critical of Peter because he just lived out loud my struggle. I can easily follow Jesus until He steps out of my comfort zone and beckons me to follow. Then, I must confess, the old independent me (or is it scared me?) stands still and says, “You’re not the boss of me.”

My Pastor Wade said in his sermon, “He loves you as you are but He loves you so much He won’t let you stay there.”

And He won’t let me stay there .He didn’t let Peter stay in his beginning place but with love and patience molded him from a lowly uneducated fisherman into a bringer of the Gospel of Christ to his world. He is using great love, grace, and patience to realign me into something that resembles Him too.

I like what Charles Spurgeon said in his sermon “How to Become Fishers of Men” - When Christ calls us by his grace we ought not only to remember what we are, but we ought also to think of what he can make us. It is, "Follow me, and I will make you." We should repent of what we have been, but rejoice in what we may be. It is not "follow me, because of what you are already" but, "follow me, because of what I will make you." It doth not yet appear what we shall be.

My job is to surrender and follow.

His job is to make me into a new person.

He is the boss of me.

New Name Because of Inclusions

Now here’s how you can tell if someone is a gemology geek:

Friend, “I splurged and bought a new puppy.”

Geeky Me, “Great! I splurged and got a new gemstone microscope.”

I love my microscope. I can look closely at gemstones and see internal inclusions. Inclusions are the fuzzys, flakes, featherings, horsetails, lily pads, and other extra stuff inside the otherwise clear stone.

Now usually we don’t want inclusions. In diamonds – carbon spots – no, no. But in some gemstones it is an identifying mark that they are real and not fake, or they are the indications from where they came. And in some gemstones they make them, well, just pretty.

Now quartz… is quartz… is quartz. But when it has inclusions of hematite (red and silvery black flakes and ribbons) it gets a new name. It is then called “Strawberry Quartz.” It’s a pretty name for a pretty little stone. And the inclusions are what give it a new name. (OK, finished being geeky.)

When I was thinking about having a new name because of inclusions, I thought of me. And not just me, but other people like me now and in centuries past. You see, people started believing in Jesus Christ as the forgiver of their inclusions (sins) and started following His teachings as the Son of God. They admitted their inclusions and admitted that Jesus Christ forgave inclusions. Were the inclusions gone? No, just forgiven. And the people around them saw a difference and gave them a new name – Christians. That means “followers of Christ” or little wanna be Christs, or we just want everyone to see Christ in us first and start with that in our name.

Acts 11: 21- 26

And the hand of the Lord was on them, (They were refugee believers fleeing persecution and going to Antioch.)

and on a great number who believed in the Lord. (These were the refugee’s converts.)

The report came to ears of the church in Jerusalem (They wondered if this was real.)

and they sent Barnabas to Antioch. (He was supposed to figure out what was going on.)

When he came and saw the grace of God, he was glad and encouraged them to stay faithful to the Lord with a steadfast purpose (He told them to keep living following Jesus and telling others.)

because he was a man full of the Holy Spirit of faith. (Barnabas could tell that their belief was real.)

And a great many people were added. (There were a growing number of believers in Christ.)

So Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Paul and found him and brought him to Antioch. (And said, “Hey, man, you gotta see this.”)

For a whole year they met with the church and taught many people. And in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians. (People came up with a name for these Christ followers that was easier to say than “these little Christ followers who have given their life to live the Jesus way and are very different from the rest of us.")

*All the (  )’s are mine.

We have inclusions.

We have believed in Jesus the Christ who has forgiven our inclusions.

We have given our lives to follow this Savior.

We have a new name because of this.

And it’s not “strawberry quartz!”

God is Extraordinarily Good

You are good and do good; teach me your statutes. Psalm 119:68

After we’ve been through ordinary albeit unpleasant events we can look back and evaluate them.

That’s where I was Sunday morning in church; at the evaluation stage of an unfortunate Saturday.

And here are the events of that day:

I had just spent a week of a wonderful family vacation at Oak Island, North Carolina. Knowing that I had a 9 hour drive ahead of me and that I was singing in the praise team the next day and I’m not a spring chicken anymore, I thought I would leave at 7 AM. I’d get home in time to unpack and decompress.

 About 2 hours into the trip I thought I’d stop and get gas. I had forgotten to do it at the beach on Friday. On the off ramp my car started doing funny things: all the lights on the dash were flashing, and the car was sputtering. I’d just gotten into the parking lot of the gas station when the car quit and I knew something was wrong.

I am prepared for this kind of event because I have AAA. So I called and in a short amount of time the tow truck came. The very friendly guy got my information and asked if I knew anyone in Florence, South Carolina (That’s where I had the breakdown) I could stay with while the car shop he was towing it to could fix it on Monday. I explained, “No” and that I really needed to get back to Montgomery, Alabama that day because I was singing in the praise team at my church on Sunday

. 

He very kindly said, “I’m going to get you to church on Sunday.” So he loaded my car on the truck put me inside the cab with him and started calling repair shops. He must have called 4 or 5 shops before he found a place that would work on my car that day. It was Sears at the mall in Florence.

He dropped off my car and told me exactly what to tell them and said everything would be taken care of. (He must have told the repair shop at Sears that I had to get to Alabama that day because they got to my car quickly and knew all about my trip from the beach to Alabama) He had predicted that I needed a new alternator and that was exactly what mechanic Mike found out. As he was fixing that, he found one of the belts was frayed. (He showed me the belt and it looked like it was held together by threads.) Scary that I had been driving with that!

Since I was at the mall I had lunch at the food court, visited many stores, and had a Starbucks coffee. Not really part of the plan but not unpleasant. The nice lady at the auto desk, Phyllis, called me on my cell and told me that my car was fixed so I went back to Sears Auto. As I was getting ready to pay, Mike, the repair guy came in and said that as he was backing out my car he noticed the hood was higher on the right side than the left. When he looked in he saw that the wrong size battery had been installed and was causing arcing which was the reason for the messed up the alternator. And a closer examination showed that the underside of my hood was singed and the covers of the battery posts were partly melted. Scary that I had been driving with that.

So back into the shop it went and Mike who could have gone home stayed to replace the battery with a proper sized one. He also found that the wedges that keep the battery safely in place had been removed to make room when the wrong sized battery was put in. So Phyllis called around to other stores to find the right size wedges because they didn’t have them and she put a rush on it to get the part there that day. While we were waiting for the wedges another of the mechanics came in and said that I had broken down at the right place because there was nothing between Florence and Columbia on highway 20. He even said that God was looking out for me

.  

And low and behold after 5 hours my car was safe to drive home. Phyllis included on the receipt that the reason the alternator died was because of the wrong sized battery and included that the wedges were missing. Mike put the old battery in my trunk for me and they both told me to take it to the ridiculous installer and ask for recompense. (They said, "ridiculous.")

Well, I did get home (the 9 hour trip turned into a 14 hour trip) and did make it to church. And then My Pastor Wade started his message with this statement:

“God ordinarily does the extraordinary through the ordinary.”

Exactly!

And here is my evaluation of Saturday:

Yes, God made sure I didn’t hurt myself driving the death trap to the beach.

Yes, God made sure I broke down at the right place.

Yes, God made sure I got the tow truck driver that cared.

Yes, God put Mike and Phyllis at the shop in Sears.

Yes, God got me safely home.

Yes, God is good and He does good things.

Look around at your ordinary events and see how God is putting the extraordinary in your ordinary.