Tag Archive: Jesus

Do small things with great love.

April 20, 2018 0 Comments

Waiting for Spring ~ Central Park, March 2018

 

While preparing for the talk coming up this weekend, I’ve been reflecting on a favourite saying of Mother Teresa, “Do small things with great love.” Our stewardship of the stuff of Creation must be rooted in the love of Jesus. Without confidence in His love our efforts become slavish and our patience becomes apathy. Soon we easily reduce ourselves to the roll of consumers. But, we are consumed.

 

 

In our great affection for celebrity we are as mindless as the kids that want to be famous. Why? They do not know. How? Most cannot imagine small things first. We are too limited. So we look only for what seems great and worthy of applause. We confirm by our longing that we need to be loved. Our hearts need a thaw. We need the Spirit’s spring and warmth to remind us that though we are a small thing in the universe we have not escaped the affectionate eye of the Father.

 

In 2017 a group of musicians, artists, scholars, and pastors gathered in New York City to collaborate. The Porter’s Gate Worship Project has released some wonderful music since then. Here’s another: Little Things with Great Love. Jesus often spoke of little things, acknowledge the little people, and always acted loved.

 

 

 

In the garden of our Savior no flower grows unseen

His kindness rains like water on every humble seed

No simple act of mercy escapes His watchful eye

For there is One who loves me

His hand is over mine

 

In the kingdom of the heavens no suffering is unknown

Each tear that falls is holy, each breaking heart a throne

There is a song of beauty in every weeping eye

For there is One who loves me

His heart, it breaks with mine

 

O the deeds forgotten, O the works unseen

Every drink of water flowing graciously

Every tender mercy You’re making glorious

This You have asked of us:

Do little things with great love

Little things with great love

 

At the table of our Savior, no mouth will go unfed

And His children in the shadows stream in and raise their heads

O give us ears to hear them, and give us eyes that see

For there is One who loves them. I am His hands and feet

 

 

 

Discipleship, Leadership

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A Pastor’s Agony on Easter Monday

April 2, 2018 0 Comments

In 24 years of ministry in Vancouver I have never preached an Easter message I am completely satisfied with. The Resurrection of Jesus has more to say to us than I can say. Texts built around the Resurrection of Jesus provide a frame, the subject, and the colour for the message, but I must admit again, I am terribly inadequate to the preaching of the Resurrection of Jesus on the day of our celebration. I fall short of finding words conveying the joyful and fearful surprise of this great reversal.

 

Lord help.

 

The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. 6He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. 7Then go quickly and tell his disciples: ‘He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.’ Now I have told you.”  Matthew 28:5-7 (NIV)

 

Did you see that?

 

“Now I have told you.”

“Now I have told you.”

Who gets to end a message with that? Who gets to say, “Now I have told you” and be done?

Apparently the first messenger who proclaimed the good news of Jesus’ resurrection, that’s who!

The angel says it.

And next, the women proclaiming this good news to the disciples could have said it too.

“Now I have told you.”

 

But for me, on a Resurrection Sunday I am plagued with the indictment that I’m going to have a crowd who have heard it all before and somehow are not moved. Somehow we have been conditioned to non-response. I don’t get to say, “Now I have told,” with the same confidence that somebody is going to get moving.

 

Lord help. Stir us again Holy Spirit.

 

Maybe I should take up painting. Well on second thought, probably not. Last year Mike Frost introduced his readers to what he calls the “greatest Easter painting of all time.” I like it. The painting, The Disciples Peter and John Running to the Sepulchre on the Morning of the Resurrection, by Eugene Burnand, is most appropriately housed not in a great museum, but in an old railway station in Paris. Typically no one stands still for long in a railway station. If your train is called, you get moving. “Now I have told you.” The word assumes a change is coming, in fact the change has come, whether you are ready for it or not. Scroll up and take a look at it again. John to the left seems to joyfully anticipating the possibility of a reunion with Jesus. Peter though has a look of agony and fear at the possibility. They have been told, and they are moving.

 

8So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples. 9Suddenly Jesus met them. “Greetings,” he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him. 10Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”  Matthew 28:8-10

 

Before the women preachers got to their audience they were interrupted by the subject of the Resurrection.

 

Did you noticed the pairing of fear and joy?

Did you notice how Jesus interrupts their movement?

 

The Resurrection of Jesus will illicit both fear and joy. Fuelled by these we may want to dance; we may want to run. We may be so ready to take action. Zeal for the message and task may consume us. But it seems our Lord, would have us pause before the apostolic action is taken, and simply meet Him and worship.

Change, Discipleship, Leadership

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A prayer that will be answered

March 12, 2018 0 Comments

Life has its disappointments. I liked Pirate Joe’s. Why? I admire entrepreneurs and enterprising folks. But as we know, even though the pirate met a need here, he irritated the original Joe, and had to close up shop. Not to make light of the struggle or the disappointment, but this is our common experience: everything doesn’t always work out the way we hoped. For praying people, we often pray all the way through such struggles. Which causes us to wonder

about our prayers

and

about our adventures

and

about our Lord.

 

Will all prayers be answered the way we intend?

 

Here’s a prayer that will be answered just as it was intended:

“They they may be one just as we are one.” John 17:22

 

Jesus asked the Father to do it.

In the Scripture when get to listen in on Jesus’ prayers, that’s the conversation of the communion of God. Father, Son and Holy Spirit are aligned with His intentions.

Jesus prayed for us…”That they may be one just as We are one.”

I am challenged by Oswald Chambers as he explores the implications of this prayer. (See below) What is available to God to accomplish Jesus’ request in us? All my struggles! Surrendering to the Lord in the midst of my struggles entails surrendering these struggles to Him and surrendering the “aims” that are frustrated.

“That they may be one just as We are one.”

In oneness with the Father, we can discern what to leave behind, how to persevere and how to love.

 

God is not concerned about our aims. He does not say, “Do you want to go through this bereavement, this upset?” He allows these things for His own purpose. We may say what we like, but God does allow the devil, He does allow sin, He does allow bad God is not concerned about our aims. He does not say, “Do you want to go through this bereavement, this upset?”

He allows these things for His own purpose. We may say what we like, but God does allow the devil, He does allow sin, He does allow bad mean and intensely selfish. How are we behaving ourselves in our circumstances? Do we understand the purpose of our life as never before?

God does not exist to answer our prayers, but by our prayers we come to discern the mind of God, and that is declared in John 17: 22: “That they may be one just as We are one.” Am I as close to Jesus as that? God will not leave me alone until I am. God has one prayer He must answer, and that is the prayer of Jesus Christ. It does not matter how imperfect or immature a disciple may be, if he will hang in, that prayer will be answered.

Chambers, Oswald. If You Will Ask: Reflections on the Power of Prayer (Kindle Locations 618 -629). Discovery House. Kindle Edition.

 

Our Father in heaven,

hallowed be your name,

your kingdom come,

your will be done,

on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us today our daily bread.

And forgive us our debts,

as we also have forgiven our debtors.

And lead us not into temptation,

but deliver us from the evil one.

AMEN.

 

Discipleship, Prayer

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The vision that humiliates a leader

March 1, 2018 0 Comments

 

The prayers in the New Testament have to do with a heavenly state of mind in a heavenly people while on this earth. We are continually reminded that we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers and the rulers of this world’s darkness.

 

The first thing to remember is to watch at the right place, the place where God has put us. Watch, that is, for God’s answer to our prayers, and not only watch, but wait. When God calls upon us to pray, when He gives the vision, when He gives an understanding of what He is going to do through us in our Sunday school class, in our church or home— watch.

 

How many of us have had to learn by God’s reproof, by God’s chastisement, the blunder of conferring with flesh and blood. Are you discouraged where you are? Then get on this tower with God and watch and wait. The meaning of waiting in both the Old and New Testament is “standing under,” actively enduring. It is not standing with folded arms doing nothing. It is not saying, “In God’s good time it will come to pass.” By that we often mean, “In my abominably lazy time I let God work.” Waiting means standing under, in active strength, enduring till the answer comes. We must never make the blunder of trying to forecast the way God is going to answer our prayer.

 

Chambers, Oswald. If You Will Ask: Reflections on the Power of Prayer (Kindle Location 444- 454). Discovery House. Kindle Edition.

I love this line from Oswald Chambers: “We must never make the blunder of trying to forecast the way God is going to answer our prayer.”

 

For those who lead forecasting is a danger. We are seduced by the talk of being visionaries. Our educators cry out, “Money follows vision. People follow vision. Without vision the people perish.” So quickly our leadership becomes not example, but telling — telling people what God is going to do. In fact before you know it, we are telling God what to do as well. That’s visionary idolatry.

 

Yes. Vision matters. Articulating a vision that truly corresponds with the kingdom of God is a humiliating experience. But of greater humiliation is waiting on God to move hearts.

 

Wait. What? Yes. Its of greater humiliation to wait on God to move hearts for that’s what the vision of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ requires: a vision of people touched and transformed by Jesus Christ. There’s so much here that I am not in charge of —I am not in charge of their heart. Church leaders we must be humble. To seek to dominate is contrary to ways of Jesus.

 

Yet, I believe we can lead with humble confidence. We can plant seeds of the Gospel. We can persuade and respect autonomy. We can create nurturing environments with a culture of grace.

 

And so we pray and we contend.
And so we watch and we contend.
And so we wait.

 

Its humiliating and necessary.

 

Colossians 1:24-29 (NIV)
24Now I rejoice in what I am suffering for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church. 25I have become its servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fullness— 26the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the Lord’s people. 27To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

28He is the one we proclaim, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone fully mature in Christ. 29To this end I strenuously contend with all the energy Christ so powerfully works in me.

Discipleship, Leadership

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The Cost of Prayer

February 23, 2018 1 Comment

The cost of our redemption is succinctly captured in the phrase, “Jesus paid it all.” So, why do we treat prayer as a struggle? Why is it a struggle to pray? We struggle to pray not because prayer for us is meant to be a struggle. It is not that God Himself has ordained for us that prayer must be a struggle. God does not gain from our struggle to pray. Rather we have gained the right to pray from His struggle.

 

And yet, I do struggle at times

to pray.

And I struggle

in prayer.

 

Oswald Chambers suggests our struggle in prayer may spring from unsettled regions of our heart and mind, places where we have not yet rested in the redemptive work, agony, struggle of Jesus Christ.

 

The more we get into the atmosphere of the New Testament the more we discover the unfathomable and unhastening leisure of our Lord’s life, no matter what His agony. The difficulty is that when we do what God wants us to do, our friends say, “It is all very well, but suppose we all did that?” Our Lord did not tell all the disciples to sit there while He prayed. He told only three of them. The point is that we must take as from God the haphazard arrangements of our lives.

 

If we accept the Lord Jesus Christ and the domination of His lordship, we also accept that nothing happens by chance because we know that God orders and engineers circumstances. The fuss has gone, the amateur providence has gone, the amateur disposer has gone, and we know that “all things work together for good to those who love God” (Romans 8: 28). If Jesus says, “Sit here while I go and pray over there,” the only appropriate thing we can do is to sit.

 

We ought to give much more time than we do— a great deal more than we do— to brooding on the fundamental truths on which the Spirit of God works the simplicity of our Christian experience. The fundamental truths are redemption and the personal presence of the Holy Spirit, and these two are focused in one mighty personality, the Lord Jesus Christ. Thank God for the emphasis laid on the efficacy of the Holy Spirit to make experientially real the redemption of Jesus Christ in individual lives.

 

Remember, what makes prayer easy is not our wits or our understanding, but the tremendous agony of God in redemption. A thing is worth just what it costs. Prayer is not what it costs us, but what it cost God to enable us to pray. It cost God so much that a little child can pray. It cost God Almighty so much that anyone can pray. But it is time those of us who name His name knew the secret of the cost, and the secret is here: “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death.”

 

Beware of placing the emphasis on what prayer costs us. It cost God everything to make it possible for us to pray. Jesus did not say to these men, “Agonize!” He said, “Watch with me.” Our Lord tried to lift the veil from before these disciples that they might see what He was going through. Think who He was— the Son of God. “My soul”— the reasoning mind of the Lord Jesus Christ—“ is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death. Stay here and watch with Me.”

 

Chambers, Oswald. If You Will Ask: Reflections on the Power of Prayer (Kindle Locations 223-229, 242-249, 256-259). Discovery House. Kindle Edition.

 

Heavenly Father,
I have struggled to drag myself forward into prayer. So, I’m going to sit here in this moment and trust You in the shadow of the your Son’s Cross. I will take each thought that comes to mind and consider it under your gaze and your grace. I trust you. May Your Spirit direct me into Your thoughts and your ways. Thank you for creating me anew as your child. Thank you for calling me into your Kingdom.
AMEN.

Change, Discipleship, Prayer

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