Is Anything too Difficult for God?

The Lord said to me, “Go down to the potter's house, where I will give you my message.” So I went there and saw the potter working at his wheel. Whenever a piece of pottery turned out imperfect, he would take the clay and make it into something else. Then the Lord said to me,“Don't I have the right to do with you people of Israel what the potter did with the clay? You are in my hands just like clay in the potter's hands." 

My dad used to say, "Nothing is ever so broken that it can't be fixed."  Actually, Dad never said those exact works, but that's the way he lived.  I grew up believing my dad could fix anything, mostly because he never gave up on things until they were fixed.  

That was probably the greatest gift my dad could have given to me. Growing up in a home where broken things were consistently fixed instilled a sense of confidence within me that developed into an attitude... a set of beliefs... an approach to life.

If my dad, who was slight in stature and had little more than a high school education, was so good at fixing things, then how could anything be impossible for God?  That is a consistent theme throughout the Bible.

Jeremiah was directed to go down to the potter's house and watch the potter work at his wheel.  He saw how the potter worked the clay, making things that were useful and beautiful.  He also noticed that sometimes a piece of pottery turned out imperfect, but the potter never threw away an imperfect piece of pottery.  He would patiently take the clay and rework it until it was shaped the way he wanted it.

No matter how broken our lives may become, we are like clay in the hands of a skilled potter.  God delights in taking what is imperfect... broken... unusable, and reshaping us so that we are useful and beautiful.

God Bless You... Its Nothing to Sneeze About!

Why do people say, "God bless you" when someone sneezes?  One source claims that people long ago believed a sneeze could release the soul from the body and allow an evil spirit to return in its place. "God bless you" was offered as a shield against evil spirits.  Another source says the custom began during an outbreak of the bubonic plague.  Sneezing was seen as an early symptom of the plague. God's blessing was given as a sort of antidote.  What ever the reason, God's blessing is nothing to sneeze about.

The Bible is full of blessings. Here are a few to take with you today: 

• May the Lord watch between you and me when we are absent from one another. -- Genesis 31:49 

• May the Lord bless you, and protect you; May the Lord smile on you, and offer grace to you; May the Lord show you his favor And give you his peace. -- Numbers 6:24-26 

• May God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ give you his grace and peace. -- I Corinthians 1:3 

•  May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship  of the Holy Spirit be with you all.            -- 2 Corinthians 13:14 

•  May you overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. -- Romans 15:13 

•  May the Lord of peace himself always give you his peace no matter what happens. The Lord be with you all!            -- 2 Thessalonians 3:16

God wants to bless us today, and when God blesses us, its nothing to sneeze about. 

Hi, my name is Bob

I'll never forget the first recovery group I attended at the counseling center where I worked.  It felt like church, the kind of church where people could be honest without being condemned and forgiven rather than judged.  The kind of church where people understood your problems and wanted to participate in your recovery.

I've gone to church from the time I was a child, but not that kind of church.  More often than not, I've gone to a "let's pretend everything is okay" kind of church.  Even though things are never completely okay, we put on our Sunday shoes, cloths, manors and smiles so others won't be shocked by the way things really are. This sounds dishonest, but we're just trying to look religious.

Phillip Yancey shares a similar experience in an article entitled The Midnight Church.  He wrote:

I attended a unique "church" recently, one that exists without a denominational headquarters or paid staff and yet attracts millions of committed members. Its name is Alcoholics Anonymous. A friend had invited me during a poignant conversation in which he confessed his problem to me. I'd like you to come with me," he said, "and I think you'll get a glimpse of what the early church must have been like." When I pressed him for details, he simply smiled and said, "Come, You'll see." 

At 12 o'clock on a Monday night I entered a ramshackle house that had been used for six other sessions already that day. Acrid clouds of cigarette smoke hung like tear gas in the air. I soon sensed what my friend had meant in comparing A.A. to the early church: a well-known politician and several millionaires were mixing freely with unemployed dropouts and dazed-looking-kids who wore Band Aids to cover needle marks on their arms. The group conveyed obvious warmth, and conversations tended to be intimate and intense: alcoholics can expertly cut through a facade of polite aloofness or feigned strength.

When we went around and introduced ourselves, it went like this: "Hi, I'm Tom, and I'm an alcoholic and a drug addict." Instantly everyone shouted in unison, like a Greek chorus, "Hi, Tom!" Then Tom, and each person there, shared a personal progress report on his battle with addiction. For many, these fellow members are the only people in the world who treat them with care and respect, and even a ritual can have profound meaning.

The A.A. gathering has helped Yancey's friend to deal with his addiction and deepen his faith. 

"None of us can make it on our own - isn't that why Jesus came?" he explained. "Yet most church people give off a self-satisfied air of piety or superiority. I don't sense them consciously leaning on God or each other. An alcoholic who goes to church feels inferior and incomplete."

He sat in silence for a while; then a smile began to crease his face. "It's a funny thing," he said at last.-"What I hate most about myself, my alcoholism, was the one thing God used to bring me back to him. Because of it, I know I can't survive without him. Maybe God is calling us alcoholics to teach the saints what it means to be dependent on him and his community on earth."

Wouldn't it be great to be part of a church where you don't need to pretend that everything is okay because we are learning to depend on God and his community on earth.  You can read Phillip Yancey's full article HEAR.

  

Act Compassionately

Love is in the feet!  That's a popular Nigerian expressions.  Nigeria is in West Africa where my family lived in a little village a couple of hundred miles south of the Sahara Desert. The rainy season was brief there, only two or three months long.  So the sight of dusty, often shoeless feet, was pretty common in a culture where walking is the primary mode of transportation.  Even in the sandy soil of sub-saharan Africa, broad, dusty, shoeless, calloused feet can be beautiful when they are moved by compassion, kindness and love.

In his book, Conspiracy of Kindness, Steve Sjogren tells the story of how his church conspired to get off of their pews and hit the streets with love in their feet.  After reading Steve's book, I persuaded folks in my church to do the same.  It was a blast!

Our first act of kindness involved taking loaves of homemade bread to homes in a needy part of town.  While heading down one street I passed a house where the front door was wide open and a dog inside started to bark and run toward me.  "Hey," I shouted, "close your door, before your dog runs away." (I wasn't worried about the dog)  The tiny voice of a little girl replied, "We don't have a door." I was startled to find someone living in my town, within blocks of my house, who didn't have a front door.

When our group came together again after passing out the loaves of bread, others shared similar stories of needs within the community.  Why hadn't we seen these needs before?  Because our feet hadn't taken us that way before. Every Sunday, kind hearted church goers drive past needy neighbors without noticing their needs.  We need to slow down, look around, and let the love in our hearts flow into our feet.

The next week we returned to the community where we had passed out loaves of bread, but we didn't return with more bread.  We came to put a new door on the little girl's house, and pour a new cement slab for an elderly man whose front stoop needed to be replaced and to built a handicap ramp for a single mom with a disabled child. With love in our hearts and in our feet, we felt like dancing!

Pray Intensely

"I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go.  My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that day." ~ Abraham Lincoln

Our prayers are seldom more focused... more urgent... more intense than when we have used everything at our disposal to fix things and still can't fix them.  But does prayer really fix things that are broken? The answer is No!  Prayer can't fix what is broken, but God can.  Our God is the master mechanic behind all of life's fixes, the great physician behind every healing.  The power of prayer is not in the words we pray or in the way we pray them. Prayer is the pathway that leads us into the presence of God. 

In 1999 a group of young people from Chichester, England were driven to their knees by the overwhelming conviction that there was nowhere else to go.  Their friends needed help; friends who struggled with substance abuse, eating disorders, self-harm, pregnancy... the whole spectrum of twenty first century afflictions and complications.  They knew they couldn't fix their friends, but they knew the one who could.

So they decided to come together to pray, non-stop, for a month. What happened was... amazing.  They didn't stop after one month, they continued to pray for four months.  Their prayer experiment touched their lives and the lives of their friends, and it turned into an international prayer movement called 24-7 Prayer.

Peter Greig, one of the founders of 24-7 Prayer writes, "From a single, unsuspecting prayer meeting in Chichester, England, we’ve grown to touch half the nations on earth. More than two million people – mostly young people – have now heard this simple call to prayer, and along the way an expanding network of new ministries and missional communities has been born."  

I have helped to organize 24-7 Prayer events and have personally witnessed what can happen when people come together to pray.  Prayer seldom offers a quick fix when things are broken, but when we come together to lay our heartfelt prayers at the feet of Jesus, we are always touched and somehow changed.

The leadership team at 24-7 Prayer has a great website with all sorts of resources.  You can access their website HERE. Check out this video, it's one of many great videos you can view at the 24-7 site.

By the way, if you have viewed the video, you need to know that an eruption of mafia violence has recently forced the 24-7 team to evacuate their purpose-built rehabilitation center in Boy's Town. Please pray that God will reopen the door to that work.

Think Deeply...

Years ago I took one of those snorkeling charters and headed out to the coral reef on the edge of the Florida keys.  During the 45 minute ride to the reef I sat next to a bright young man who was on break from an Ivy League college.  Half way through our ride the conversation turned to the topic of faith. I was amazed by what he thought. He had no idea that faith and thought could compliment one another. Both of his parents were college professors and so he had grown up in a home that valued thinking.  Unfortunately they dismissed the importance of believing.  The idea that someone could both think and believe had somehow alluded them.  Amazing!

It is surprising how many seemingly bright people subscribe to the belief that faith is usually "blind" while thought is invariably "insightful."  Many blindly accept that myth as an important twentieth century truth.  Heartbreaking! Faith and thought are not enemies, they belong together.  Through the centuries many great thinkers have also been persons of great faith.

An entire section of the Bible is devoted to wisdom literature.  One of the books in this section is the Book of Proverbs, a collection of sayings and teachings that provide wisdom and insight.  Proverbs begins with this introduction:

These are the wise sayings of Solomon, David’s son, Israel’s king—Written down so we’ll know how to live well and right, to understand what life means and where it’s going; A manual for living, for learning what’s right and just and fair; To teach the inexperienced the ropes and give our young people a grasp on reality. There’s something here also for seasoned men and women, still a thing or two for the experienced to learn—Fresh wisdom to probe and penetrate, the rhymes and reasons of wise men and women. (The Message)

In his book Think Like Jesus, George Barna says 2 out of 10 Christians in America do whatever feels right or comfortable in a given situation.  And 1 out of 10 do whatever they believe will make the most people happy or create the least amount of conflict with other people.

Jesus, on the other hand, chose to think before acting.  When a group of religious leaders brought a woman caught in the act of adultery and asked what Jesus thought about stoning her, he refused to rush to judgement. Instead, Jesus knelt down and began to write on the ground with his finger, deep in thought.  After some moments he said, "Let anyone who is without sin be the first to throw a stone."  Brilliant!

Throughout history, faithful followers of Jesus have found that great faith and deep thought belong together.

Its Time to Think Deeply... Pray Intensely... Act Compassionately

"Being sensible that I am unable to do anything without God’s help, I do humbly entreat him by his grace to enable me to keep these Resolutions, so far as they are agreeable to his will, for Christ’s sake." The Colonial preacher, Jonathan Edwards made these resolutions on August 17, 1723.  There are 70 in all, focusing on seven areas: his overall life mission, good works, time management, relationships, suffering, character and spiritual life.  He also resolved to read this list of resolutions every day.

Some of the resolutions are rather lengthy.  Here are a few of the briefer ones:

13. Resolved: To be endeavoring to discover worthy objects of charity and liberality.
14. Resolved: Never to do anything out of revenge.
15. Resolved: Never to suffer the least emotions of anger about irrational beings.
16. Resolved: Never to speak evil of anyone, except if it is necessary for some real good.
17. Resolved: I will live in such a way, as I will wish I had done when I come to die.

If anyone could have stuck to their resolutions for more than a few weeks, Jonathan Edwards was that kind of person.  Yet, it's unlikely that he was able to consistently live as he had resolved to live.  It is easier to make resolutions than to keep them. As Jesus said, "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak."

The good news is this!  Even when we are faithless, God is faithful.  At the slightest call for help, God will patiently, graciously lend a helping hand as we commit ourselves to live "for the glory of God and our neighbor's good." Whether or not you make resolutions, none of us can accomplish anything of real importance without God's help. In his book, Letters to a Young Evangelical, Tony Campolo suggests three areas where we all need God's help.  Here are three prayer points for the new year:

• Lord, help us to think deeply
• Lord, help us to pray intensely
• Lord, help us to act compassionately

May the living God patiently, graciously help us to think, pray and act for God's glory and our neighbor's good.