Forward in faith

From Derek Miller ~ Back in the early ‘70’s, I fashioned myself to be a pretty good baseball player.  I could hit the ball fairly well and was a pretty good fielder.  I enjoyed going to practice and playing in the games.  Most of my practices were fairly close to home and my parents were reliable to pick me up after practice.  One day, however, our practice was held at a local elementary school that was positioned by one of the malls in the city.  Relatively speaking, it was pretty far away from my house.  My mom dropped me off at 4:00 for practice and the last thing she said as I got out of the car was, “your Dad will be here to pick you up” and she drove away.  At about 5:15, our practice ended and other players started leaving the field.  Many asked if I needed a ride and I would just reply cheerfully, “oh no, my Dad is going to be here to pick me up.”  Finally, the school yard cleared and I was the only kid left there.  The time went by, 5:30, 5:45, 6:00 and my Dad had not arrived.  Remember this was before cell phones or texts, so I had no way of knowing what the hold up was.  As it started moving toward darkness at about 7:25, I hatched the idea that I would walk to the mall and call home—how I was going to do that, I have no idea as I had no money to use in the pay phone.  As I started walking away from the field, an approaching car caught my attention—it was my Dad and brother coming.  So, I ran back to the school to meet them as they passed me by.  It seems that my Dad had forgotten that he needed to pick me up and I was there alone for over 2 hours waiting on him.

I was never so fearful in my life when I was waiting for him and had no idea why he was not there.  Our heavenly Father, on the other hand, is there for us.  The hardest part for us is that we have to completely trust Him and have faith that He is going to be there for us and direct our paths.  Just like the fear that I experienced wondering where my earthly Father was when I was sitting at that practice field, I am sometimes paralyzed by fear—fear of the unknown in my future.  In Proverbs 3:5-6, it says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding, in all your ways acknowledge Him and he will make your path straight.”  In the King James Version, the last part of that verse says that, “He shall direct your paths.”  Notice that we are not called upon to trust in the Lord with some of our heart, or most of our heart, but every single bit of our hearts.  In the same way, we are called upon in all of our ways to acknowledge Him.  That can be easy to say and very difficult to put into practice every single time we are faced with a challenge.

With our upcoming transfer to Georgia, we had lots of questions.  While we are familiar with the area and it would seem that it would be easy to re-acclimate back there, we were faced with lots of decisions that had big impacts.  Most all of those were encapsulated in one big decision—where would we live.  While we had our own ideas of where that should be, we turned it over to God to help us make the decisions.   We thought we should look at areas closer to our offices.  We would continue to rule out areas further away.  While we watched, many houses that we looked at, started dropping out as options pretty early on.  One house that we really liked and was the first house on our list, went under contract in early March.  It was located further away from our offices so we dismissed that as being expected when we looked at it and kept moving forward because it was not in our desired location.  That house came back on the market and we continued to pray for God’s guidance as we looked.  I even remarked to our realtor that it might get to the point, where we would need a neon sign outside of a home saying, “This is the One”.  As we continued the process, many homes came on the market and we would pray for discernment as to which house we should choose.  One by one, those houses went under contract.  It became so concerning that we contacted our realtor and asked her if we needed to go ahead and come earlier than planned to find a house.  She indicated that we should.  So, in late March, we went over and started looking at houses again.  We saw one house that we really liked in the same neighborhood as the other one we liked.  Joyce and I discussed which one we would prefer and we prayed for God’s discernment.  During that week, the 2^nd house sold and we were left with the original house in that neighborhood.  As we walked up to the house on our realty tour, we could see a sign in the foyer.  There was a neon green poster board that said, “This is the One!”  While we know the realtors had talked, it became evident that the sign was right.  As we negotiated the price, the counter-offer came back right where we had hoped to be if we were buying the house.  The very next day, another offer came in but we had an agreed price by then.  It was not where we originally thought we would be, but it was evident that it is where God wanted us to be.

A few weeks ago, Pastor Mike told the story in Joshua where the Israelites were crossing over the Jordan River heading into the Promised Land.  In Joshua 3:14-17, it indicated that the Jordan River was at flood stage.  Joshua directed the priests carrying the Ark of the Covenant to go forward.  As soon as they stepped their feet into the Jordan, the river water started backing up and the people crossed over on dry land.  Notice something here.  God did not tell the Israelites to stand on the sidelines until He was ready for them and then the miracle would happen.  He did not say, wait until I part the water in front of you before you cross.  They actually had to take steps forward in faith to step into the water before the miracle occurred.  Before they did that, they had no idea what was being planned.  They had to “trust in the Lord with all their hearts and lean not on their own understanding.”

In the book we just recently started in MOVERS called “Crazy Love” by author and Pastor Francis Chan, he talks about our minds are the size of a soda can and our God is as vast as the ocean.  Do I really want to have faith in and serve a God that I can compact into a space that I can comprehend and understand everything that He is doing?  Having read the entire Bible, I am yet to find where it says that we will always have complete understanding of everything that God is up to.  What it does say in several places is that we are to trust in the Lord.  In Proverbs, I am called upon to trust with my entire heart and acknowledge Him in everything that I do and He will direct my paths.  Just like the people of Israel, we have to move forward and let God direct us where we need to go even if we don’t fully understand what is going on.  Also, in Deuteronomy 31:6, God tells Moses to “be strong and courageous.  Do not be afraid or terrified. . ., for the Lord your God goes with you; He will never leave you nor forsake you.”  With promises like that, are you willing to take the first steps of faith and let Him direct your paths?

Companionship

A key leader at Lexington Baptist Church, Jerry Tarlton, died this past week. All of those who knew Jerry have a blessed assurance that he is with Jesus today.

The visitation was this past Friday night, advertised from 6-8 p.m., at Caughman-Harman Funeral Home in Lexington.

I wanted badly to be at the visitation, to speak to Jerry’s wife Pat, and to meet his family. I also wanted to be around my “faith family” that I knew would be assembling there. I wanted to pay my respects to Jerry’s memory, too. But, my Pony League baseball team had a game on Friday night. Knowing how much Jerry loved baseball and our local Dixie program, I knew he would want me to be at the game rather than the visitation.

The game wrapped up about 8:30. Vicki and I met at home about 9, and decided to grab some dinner. Since I can remember, I have celebrated baseball victory with Kentucky Fried Chicken. So, off we went to KFC, passing Caughman-Harman Funeral Home on the way. There were still cars in the parking lot – an hour after the visitation was supposed to have ended. So, we made a last minute decision to step inside the visitation.

At 10:10 p.m., Vicki and I got home from the visitation (with our chicken). The visitation for this good man lasted almost four hours – far beyond the advertised time.

Standing at the end of the receiving line, I overheard someone say, “I knew that Jerry knew lots of people, but I had no idea that he touched so many people's lives.” Do you see the powerful difference in knowing and serving?

Through Lexington Baptist Church involvement, our local Dixie baseball league, his work with Farm Bureau Insurance and living within our community, Jerry Tarlton had plowed his life into a lot of people and allowed a lot of people to plow into his life as well. I was deeply reminded of why we live this life we are given: We live it to link arm-in-arm with other believers to love and serve the Lord, to love and serve others, and to open ourselves to be loved and to be served. (Yep, it’s important for us to allow others to exercise faith in our direction – to fail at that is sinful.)

In Ecclesiastes 4:9-12, the great King Solomon writes: “Two people can accomplish more than twice as much as one; they get a better return for their labor. If one person falls, the other can reach out and help. But people who are alone when they fall are in real trouble. And on a cold night, two under the same blanket can gain warmth from each other. But, how can one be warm alone? A person standing alone can be attacked and defeated, but two can stand back-to-back and conquer. Three are even better, for a triple-braided cord is not easily broken.”

These verses are about companionship, especially among like-minded followers of Jesus. Where are you? Are you linked arm-in-arm with other believers? Have you pulled a seat up to the camp fire? Are you in the game? Or, are you trying to navigate this life all by yourself? Are you on the fringe of fire’s warmth – freezing and in the dark? Are you sitting in the stands, watching the game you should be playing?

And, a warning. Satan is real. He is wanting to destroy you and all that you love.

He wants you and me to be isolated from the fellowship of other believers. He wants us turning to non-believers for good advice on faith, marriage, parenting and relationships. He wants us to be lonely, self-indulged, and looking in the mirror. Because he knows that if we are isolated, well, we will remain in sinful, stale and unfulfilling lives, unchallenged, unchecked, and mediocre at best. No one will come to Jesus because of us.

Companionship.
We were not created to be isolated from one another. We were made to enjoy one another, to lift each other up, and to reflect the Savior who loves us.

Planning: From here to there

Vicki and I have been slowly remodeling a few rooms in our home. Remodeling to us is pretty self-contained: (a) Clean and throw away; (b) Strip old wallpaper and paint; (c) Rethink what’s on the walls; and (d) Update some furniture. (When one corner of the sofa is propped up by three books, it’s time for a new one.)

At one point in this multi-phase, multi-year remodeling plan, Vicki came across a box of old stuff. From this box, she placed three items on my desk. One was an old program from a black-tie event we attended during our engagement. One was the program for the 1983 Sugar Bowl, which we attended in New Orleans. The third was a multi-page love letter that I wrote her in 1983 – a little over a year after we had started dating. For our 20^th wedding Anniversary, we put together a scrapbook that includes letters I wrote her during our five years of long-distance dating. The scrapbook also includes cards we exchanged, and some black and white pictures from our first Valentine’s Day together. The letter before me was one that needed to be in the scrapbook, and that’s why she put it on my desk. As I read it, thinking back to the 24-year-old boy who wrote it, I had to pause, laugh and even flinch at some of the words before me.

It was encouraging to read, in my own words, a reminder to Vicki that I had prayed for her before I even knew her. It was encouraging to read my reminder that she was an answered prayer. I had been through a lot, even at 24, and knew that God was in control of my life. There had already been too many answered prayers and too many moments when God reminded me of his presence. I can take you to the exact location – the exact spot – where I got on my knees in that bathroom apartment, acknowledged that God knew who she was while I didn’t, and asked him to go ahead and send her to me. It was only a few weeks later that we met. Reading those words from the past, I was reminded at how faithful God is to each of us. In Jeremiah 29:11, God reminds his people: “For I know the plans I have for you. They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. In those days when you pray, I will listen. If you look for me wholeheartedly, you will find me. I will be found by you.”

God knows. God knows what? God knows everything.

What confidence we can take in those words from Jeremiah. As followers of Jesus, we are minded that God is with us and He is already in our future. He knows our future and we can have hope in it. God says His plans are good and not for disaster. That doesn’t mean we will be spared pain, suffering and hardship, but it does mean that our lives will be with Him, and He will see us through this life to a glorious conclusion with Him.

And, God reminds us that when we pray wholeheartedly (earnestly), He will listen and we will find him. This is not a casual, reckless, ADHD approach to prayer. Praying earnestly means a focused, intense, purging of self and crying out to the Lord. My prayer for Vicki was like that. In fact, I’ve had times when my prayer posture was simply flat on the floor heaving my life out to the Lord. When you do that – when you get to that place, friends – you will literally feel the power and peace of Almighty God. You will never question or doubt again His love for you and the peace that comes from a relationship with Him through Jesus Christ.

But, also within that letter were words that made me flinch. While acknowledging God’s sending of Vicki to me, I quickly defaulted to my plans for us. In several paragraphs, I spelled out my plans for us related to all things of the Earth. I spelled out that we would do this and do that, have this and have that, and go here and go there. And, not one time did I place those plans at the feet of my Lord and say, “but, all things according to your will for us.” And, that’s the problem with planning. We go to God with the big stuff, and then we default to our plans for the day-to-day stuff. James 4:13 reminds us, “Look here, you people who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we are going to a certain town and will stay there a year. We will do business and make a profit – How do you know what will happen tomorrow? For your life is like the morning fog – it’s here a little while, then it’s gone. What you ought to say is, ‘if the Lord wants us to, we will live and do this or that.’ Otherwise, you will be boasting about your own plans, and all such boasting is evil.”

Is it wrong to plan? No. But, we must square our plans with God’s plans for us. That means we should be praying for our tomorrow in keeping with God’s place in tomorrow. We should surrender our tomorrow to the God who is already there on our behalf. And, we can’t boast about our plans because that’s equivalent of saying, “I am in charge of my life, not the Lord.” And, Scripture says we can’t follow two masters – we will either follow self or we will follow God. (Matthew 6:24)

Here’s some other Scripture for you:

Proverbs 19:21 – Many are the plans in a man’s heart but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.
Proverbs 27:1 – Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring forth.
Job 17:11 – My days have passed, my plans are shattered, and so are the desires of my heart.

In Luke 12:13-21 – Jesus tells the parable of the rich fool – “a person is a fool to store up earthly wealth but not have a rich relationship with God.”

So, what are we to do?

1. When God says in Jeremiah 1:5 that he knew you and me before we were born, and He says He has plans for you – what are those plans? Go to the Lord and earnestly ask Him. Just cry out to the Lord, ‘Help me, I’m tired. I need a new direction. I need to be a better spouse, parent, child, sibling, friend. I can no longer do this or that on my own. I must have you.” Lay it out there.

2. How do I know I am doing what God wants me to do? First, get past the notion that God’s plan for you is tied to your career in some way. Certainly, God’s plans for you may involve your gifts and strengths and passions related to work, but ultimately God’s plans for you will involve the sacrificial love and service toward others in the name of Jesus. You may need to change careers. You may even need to move to another place. But, God’s calling will not involve chaos and confusion – ultimately, you will be at peace with it.

3. How do I discover God’s plan for me? Pray earnestly, and listen to the encouragement of other believers. I believe that one of the ways God speaks to us is through other believers. Are you surrounding yourself with them? Are you allowing Satan to weed you out from the fellowship of believers, living alone and without that encouragement?

Excuses - "They are a bunch of hypocrites."

Should you find yourself on Family Feud, and you are asked to name the excuses people give for not attending church (engaging faith with other believers), the No. 1 answer will be this one: “They (Christians / church attenders) are a bunch of hypocrites.” I found LifeWay research information, from 2008, that indicates 72 percent of those who are unchurched believe church-attenders are hypocrites. In more direct terms, many people believe you and I are liars when it comes to living out our faith. Many of the unchurched believe you and I don’t practice what we preach, and that we are less than authentic when it comes to our public and private personalities.

Hypocrisy is such a complicated topic because each and every person struggles with it. The sickly world we occupy calls us to be this way, and the Holy Spirit within us calls us to be another way. It doesn’t take long for us to get twisted up and turned around. Fighting hypocrisy – and it comes in lots of different forms and fashions – can only be conquered when we completely focus on Jesus, and trust Him to make our paths straight, our decisions right, and our focus on God’s plan for us.

Without diving deeply into the etymology of the word, hypocrite comes from the ancient Greek playhouses, when actors would perform a role on stage and the role was contradictory to who they were in life. That has fed our culture today – “publicly play acting” a different person from who we are privately.

When I was ordained, in October 2011, pastor Mike’s charge to me was very simple, “Protect the calling.” That really resonated with me. If I’m going to be “set apart” for gospel ministry by the church, my life must conform to that calling. I have a responsibility to live up to the Lord’s calling on my life. But, it goes much deeper than that for me. Shouldn’t Mike’s charge apply to every single one of us? When we are “converted” by the Holy Spirit, we are changed. Each of us is called out to follow the Lord, and that means we must protect our individual calling. If the Lord called you to lay down your life’s ambition and desire, and follow Him, and you genuinely received that call, it stands to reason the Holy Spirit changed you from that person to a new person. I’m not suggesting that you and I go about forced changing, but that we let the Lord convict and massage and change what He needs to change within each of us. Some of our personality quirks need to stick around, some of the good and fun things we enjoy may need to stay in place because they become valuable in building relationship with others and helping us introduce people to Jesus.

It comes down to this really: As believers, we can’t act or claim to be one way in public, but let selfish attitudes rule our private thinking. Ultimately, those private weaknesses will become public ones, and in that conflict – we express our hypocrisy. And, people see it. And, as we trumpet faith publicly, but live as unbelievers privately, we pollute the entire pond for the entire faith community. Consider:

1. The believer who says church participation is important for my family . . . as long as it makes my family happy and is convenient to our schedule.
2. The believer who advises prayer by those who are hurting, but then comes unglued when their own life turns into a deep valley. Or worse, uses prayer as an indictment, as in, “You need to fall on your knees and pray about your attitude toward me!”
3. The believer who whispers about the shortcomings and personality flaws of others, but fails to see the sinfulness in that shadowy form of gossip and character assassination.
4. The believer who carries a Bible, but never uses it. Or worse, uses the Bible as a weapon to beat people up, and then put it back on the dusty bookshelf.
5.  The believer who gives generously, but then circles back around to ensure most everyone knows it.
6. The believer who claims to follow Jesus, but then denies Jesus by their actions and words under just the right amount of peer pressure. (I believe we may need to wade into the murkier areas of life, at times, in order to shine for Jesus. If I’m never around unbelievers and within their environment, how can stand as a testimony for Jesus? I just have to be careful not to compromise my faith, and create questions of hypocrisy in the minds of others).

It’s these inconsistencies by the team’s players that cause the spectators – the unchurched – to say, “That team is in complete disarray. They don’t believe what they say they believe. Why in the world would I want to be involved in that mess.”

It’s true, we Christians are a confused, muddled, and hypocritical bunch. The road of spiritual growth is not easy because of the sickly world that we live in. It’s true that sometimes even the best of us look and act more like unbelievers than we do believers. None of us are immune to it because of the internal struggle between human nature and the Holy Spirit.

Jesus, in Matthew 23:1-39, confronts spiritual leaders who were indeed hypocrites. In some Bibles, this extended passage is titled “Seven Woes” because Jesus essentially comes out heavy with a warning and a threat. For all of us – as believers - , I feel, Jesus is warning us to avoid:

•  Creating man-made rules forced into Scripture and presented as God’s laws.
• Telling people to obey Scripture, but not obeying Scripture ourselves.
•  Obeying Scripture, not to honor God, but to make ourselves look good. Caring about looking holy, rather than being holy.
• Using the church for personal gain – love of positions outweighing love of the Lord.
• Allowing love of the church to get in front of our love of Jesus.
• Focusing our giving on the money, but never giving time or never giving abilities in service.
•  Washing the outside of the cup, but never washing the inside of it. Taking care of your heart and mind will lead to a beautiful person on the outside.

But, I also have a word to the unchurched, who wag their fingers and use hypocrisy as an excuse to avoid church and faith.

Faith and by extension – church – is not for the perfect, or the pretty, or the ducks-in-a-row, or the healthy – church is for the sick, the hurting, the lonely, the tired, the hungry, the thirsty, the poor in spirit, the angry, the frustrated, the worried, and the weary. Church is sanctuary from the world – sanctuary for broken and busted people, who know the only way to put things back together is through Jesus. You will never find a perfect person in church. You will find spiritually sick, relationally sick, physically sick and emotionally sick people – just like you and just like me! – but who know Jesus as Savior and are walking in a “love and serve” relationship with others. I would rather be forgiven of my contradictions and in faith, than lost in my contradictions – separated from fellowship with God and the love of other believers.

And, we believers must understand that we are each ailing – we must be here with arms wide open – working out our own hypocrisies and inconsistencies – laying down our attitudes so we love and serve anyone and everyone the Lord chooses to send our way. It’s not what we say that matters, it’s how we live out what we say that matters, and how we live it out for everyone around us – not just those that make us comfortable.