A Beautiful Moment

Today a beautiful moment occurred. I had prepared lunch and called Jan to meet me at the table on our patio. It was a lunch like many we have experienced together over the last 48 years. This time it was somehow different. Knowing our years ahead are far less than those we have lived together as husband and wife, a reality and beautiful finality descended over our conversation. 

As a shared emotion arrived and displayed its intent, I said, “I love you, and I am so thankful for what we have had together.” Jan replied, “I feel the same.” In the next moment, tears formed in our eyes and began to release a moist trail of shared endearment. 

These are moments of gratitude that can only occur when a commitment to mutual love has led the way through failure and shortcoming in a relationship. Our tears were a gift from God reminding us once again of what truly matters.

The Focus of Our Hope

Habakkuk, the small book of prophecy seems to address where a believer can find themselves today as our culture continues to struggle. I read Habakkuk this morning and overlayed its content over the current season. It is a beginning-to-end portrait of faith in times of difficulty.

Regarding what we are seeing and feeling:

 

“How long, O Lord, must I call for help? But you do not listen! ‘Violence is everywhere!’ I cry, but you do not come to save. Must I forever see these evil deeds? Why must I watch all this misery? Wherever I look, I see destruction and violence. I am surrounded by people who love to argue and fight. The law has become paralyzed, and there is no justice in the courts. The wicked far outnumber the righteous, so that justice has become perverted” (Habakkuk 1:2-4).

 

Regarding what God has planned that we do not yet see:

 

“For I am doing something in your own day, something you wouldn’t believe even if someone told you about it” (1:5).

 

Regarding the delay of a promise and what to do in the waiting:

 

“If it seems slow in coming, wait patiently, for it will surely take place. It will not delay” (2:3).

 

Regarding what attitude we should possess as life unfolds:

 

I will rejoice in the Lord! I will be joyful in the God of my salvation!” (3:18).

 

Regarding the end of all things:

 

“For as the waters fill the sea, the earth will be filled with an awareness of the glory of the Lord” (2:14).

 

All of this, the pain, sorrow, and division we see taking place will be drowned by the increasing glory of the Lord. Everything will eventually be submerged in His presence. That should be the focus of our faith and where we place our trust.

 

Writing a Letter to Your Future

This morning while arranging some books and correspondence, I came across my daughter’s 50-Year Letter. It is a letter I asked her and her then-fiancé to write in preparation for their wedding last month. The letter would define what they hoped their marriage would become. In the letter, there was no mention of bank accounts, fast cars, opulent houses, or social status. It was filled with expressions of faith, relationship integrity, and lives yielded to the purposes of God.

When I was a pastor, each time I was asked to officiate a wedding, I had the couple write out a letter outlining their hopes and dreams. I used that letter to counsel them before their marriage and drew from its contents to craft my message during their ceremony. I also asked them to pull out that letter each anniversary and ask the question, “Are we still moving towards these goals and aspirations?” If not, I asked the couple to get some help from trusted friends and counselors so that none of their hopes and dreams would fall by the wayside and become unfulfilled.

 

As I held Anna’s letter in my hand, I felt a nudge to ask some of you, “Have written a letter defining the prophetic promises God has made over your life, your marriage, business, ministry, or your children’s or grandchildren’s future? If not, it may be time to write such a letter. The letter will become a promise-anchor that will keep you from drifting in times of fear and despair when your life and dreams seem to be wandering away from fulfillment.

 

When you write and read your letter in the years to come, you will be prophesying to the original promises made about your future. Just as someone might read God’s word to gain hope, so it is when we have allowed the desires of our hearts to be infused with promises made by God to become a statement of faith that will lead our unfulfilled desires to a place of fulfillment. 

 

Replica Love is a Dangerous Thing

People are tossing around a lot of opinions of late, opinions about things they picked up via some YouTube theologian, from a social media comments section, or the polluted well of their favorite cable news program. If that is you, be careful. Truth is best confirmed in a relationship, not from a distant and biased platform.

One night as a freshly minted rookie cop, I almost shot a suspect. My training officer and I were on patrol in one of the worst parts of the city. It was 4:00 a.m. when we pulled a car over for a traffic violation. As a two-man patrol unit, I approached on the passenger side in the darkness to take a look inside the car to make sure it was OK. The driver did not know I was present. When my FTO arrived at the driver's door, I heard him ask to see the man’s driver’s license, registration, and proof of insurance. At that point, the man reached for the glove box, and that is when things went sideways.

The man’s right hand entered the glove box and brought out a .45 auto pistol. This was one of those moments where time literally slows down under an adrenal dump giving us time to fight or flight. I fought.  While drawing my .357 magnum revolver, I yelled at my partner, “Gun!” I began to squeeze off my first shot. In a millisecond, while I was acquiring my target, and before my hammer fell, the man’s hand opened up, and he dropped his weapon. Another ounce of trigger pressure and my weapon would have discharged. The man’s hands went up, and he shouted, “It’s just a toy replica! I just wanted to show it to you!”

After we pulled the man from his car and let him know what almost happened to him, he began to shake uncontrollably. We had a long and intense conversation with a very naïve and foolish man. That event reminds me of what is taking place in some segments of our culture. Opinions can get our credibility killed if we bring a replica to a gunfight.

Be careful that in pursuit of truth, you don’t partner with a greater error than not having your theology neatly packaged or being aligned with the "right" worldview. That greater error is the absence of love. When we get to whatever heaven is going to look like, Jesus is not going to check our theology. He is going to check the quality of our love. To a self-anointed theology expert, this sounds like heresy. But in reality, it sounds a lot like how Jesus responded when dealing with the unloving nitpickers of His day. Anything less than love can get the head of our relationships blown off if we assume we have the corner on the market of truth, and everyone else doesn't. Sadly, like the man in the car that night on patrol, in those situations, the evidence will prove what we had was a replica and not the real thing.

A Beautiful Passage

There is an interesting shift that takes place in our thinking as we grow older, and our remaining days are less than what has already been lived. A lessening of stress from the demands of life slowly arrives and sets up camp in our mind. The need to always strive, push, or do something profound seems to walk off the platform of our life. We then experience a shift in our focus and begin looking at life’s finish line welcoming its release. The demands that once pulled on our peace vanish and are replaced with a strangely beautiful abiding. None of this is a compromise of excellence or abandoning of purpose. It is the power and beauty of rest being expressed in preparation for the final passage.

Through the Veil of Impossibility

God will deliver you into a destination you did not plan, one you could not even imagine. This will be an expression of His love and mercy extended to you through the veil of what you considered an impossibility. Your arrival will become a living testimony that confronts and disempowers the lies that have held you back from living in the fullness of God’s goodness. 

Closures

As we get older, something visits us with increasing regularity. That visitor is closure. Seasons of life come to an end. Places we once lived change over time and close behind the door of our history. The lives of friends and loved ones end transitioning from this life to the next in life's final closure, but the memories remain. A great treasure of growing older is being able to collect a lifetime of memories. I have noticed a sweet sorrow associated with those memories. Their sorrow tells us we have lived well and long and wanted life in all its forms to remain forever even though we knew better. The sweetness comes because we are thankful for the honor to have lived through a lifetime of openings and closures.  At this later time of life, we begin to reflect on the privilege we had to carry our memories to the end - to the moment of our own closure, always thankful for the journey, beginning to end. 

God is Writing the Story of Your Life

When I write a book or an article, it is rarely done in a linear fashion. I am not a traditional author who works from an outline. Donald Miller, the author of Blue Like Jazz, once said of his writing style, “If you want to see where my next book will come from, read my blog.” I am not a novelist who develops character profiles and plotlines. I write like a prophet who is creating a dish of revelation from a variety of ingredients with a dash of apostolic insight tossed in here and there to provide structure to my writing.

The way I write can resemble how we live our lives. Not much of life is lived in a straight line forming a predictable route of travel. Our journey is filled with detours, collisions, and misdirection.  Our lives are a collection of what can appear to be isolated events. These events feel separate and disconnected until God steps in and threads His needle with the scarlet thread of His loving interaction in our life and pulls together each isolated event to create the timeline of our unique story. 

If you are feeling a bit fragmented, I want to encourage you that each stand-alone and seemingly disconnected experience of your life will someday be brought together to reveal a script you could not have imagined nor written. God is the only one capable of writing an accurate account of your life.

Perhaps I am sharing all of this with you because it was just this morning that a writing project finally began to fall into place as God tugged on the scarlet thread, and all the pieces seemed to come together. If we give God the time and space required to knit together the narrative of our story, we will live without the frustration and angst that comes when we try to write our story without the help of His merciful editorial wisdom. Only God can bring together the fragmented seasons of our life and create a bestseller.

Mystery and Wonder

In your transition, leave room for mystery and wonder. This is a spiritual endeavor, not a business plan. 

Religion is mankind’s attempt to codify God and have him all figured out. Man-made religion is devoid of the mystery and wonder that exists when we relate to the eternal God. He is so large that we will need all of eternity to explore his depths. 

Whenever we lack a sense of mystery and wonder, we find ourselves attempting to control every aspect of the process and its outcome. Human control drains wonder and mystery from the process. 

God wants to amaze you. God wants you to worship in wonder and awe when other people think you should live in fear. Your journey is a spiritual journey. See it from that perspective, and you will live in a sense of awe at what God will do in and through your life. 

 (An excerpt from the book, A Good Place)

The Arrival of Your Good Deeds

As I read through the 14^th chapter of Revelation, I came across verse 13. One part of that verse caught my attention. The text reads, “…for their good deeds follow them.” As I pondered what that phrase could mean for us today, I began to get a sense of what the Lord wanted to say to some of you reading these words.

You have had seasons in your life that were filled with trials and challenges, but you kept moving forward in faith. At times what took place was overwhelming. You felt alone even though in your heart you always knew the Lord was near. It has been a struggle trying to find meaning in all that has transpired.

The Lord wants you to know your good deeds have not disappeared. They have been following you and are about to arrive to manifest something you could not have imagined or even considered as a possibility. These good deeds that have been following you are the acts of obedience and love you did in the name of the Lord when it would have been easy for you to simply bail out on your life of faith. 

Your good deeds have been silently following you waiting for a moment in time when at the Lord’s command, their accumulated goodness would be poured out upon your life. You will be overwhelmed when you see what has been following you.

I Have Come to a Conclusion

The older I become and the closer to eternity I get, I have come to a conclusion. Amidst all our opinions about God, His Word and how the Church should function, in the end, God’s mercy will have the final say. His mercy gives me great peace about what will take place in eternity. His mercy also extends an invitation to each of us to live the remainder of our days at peace with each other in the middle of our never-ending debate and discussion about so many things that, at our best, we only see in part.

Sacrificial Altars

Sometimes, we make sacrifices on altars that do not exist. We can make a sacrifice when a blessing was God’s actual intent.

Some of us need to be set free from thinking our entire experience with God is a sacrifice. Life does include sacrifice, but Jesus came and made the ultimate sacrifice so we could experience joy—even in our suffering. Jesus was obedient because he saw the joy set before him. This kind of joy is always greater than the pain of sacrifice. 

We can look ahead and think we are called to build altars for a continuous life of sacrifice and not see the places of celebration. Each altar we construct for a personal sacrifice should be followed by an expression of joy dedicated to celebrating the victory of that sacrifice. Jesus went forward toward the Cross because of the joy set before him. 

(An excerpt from the book, A Good Place)

While It Was Still Dark

This morning, I walked outside and stood on our front porch while it was still dark. I wanted to experience the predawn environment of the first Easter morning when Mary Magdalene came to visit the Lord’s tomb. Scripture says, “Early on Sunday morning, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and found that the stone had been rolled away from the entrance.”  Mary’s first thought was to think someone had stolen the body of Jesus. 

We are no different than Mary. When the evidence of the life of Jesus stares us in the face we must first process our disbelief. That is the purpose of evidence. It is presented to help us displace our doubt. Only when Mary Magdalene had a personal encounter with Jesus later in the morning did it all begin to make sense. Jesus became her evidence. The empty tomb did not at first persuade Mary and neither will just the facts about the Lord and His resurrection persuade us. It was an encounter with Jesus that birthed the words of her testimony, “I have seen the Lord!” 

As you walk into your place of worship this morning, ask God to help you encounter the risen Lord, not an Easter program. That encounter will change everything. All the historical facts about Jesus’ resurrection and the gauzy, stylized social media Easter images cannot give us the faith we need to press on when we want to give up. Only an encounter with the Resurrected One can give us that kind of faith.

Our Easter Destination

The cross and the tomb are both empty, but the throne is forever occupied. That is God’s Easter message to the Church – Jesus has risen to His place of honor! He was raised from death to occupy a place of enthronement where all powers and authorities contrary to the love and will of God are in submission under His feet and as a result of His victory, under our feet as well. 

The suffering of the cross and the darkness of the tomb were only temporary stops along the way toward the ultimate fulfillment of Christ’s mission - enthronement.

As you worship the Lord this Easter, take time to contemplate your place in Jesus seated with Him upon His throne. This is not a future event. It is your present reality. That understanding has the potential to change everything.

“For he raised us from the dead along with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:6). 

Have a blessed Easter!

A Day Without a Yesterday

Belgian priest, mathematician, and astronomer, Georges LeMaitre wrote to Albert Einstein inquiring about his theory of relativity. In his letter, LeMaitre made the following statement “Your theory suggests there was a day without a yesterday.” The inquiry was a statement crafted by a person who was both a scientist and a theologian. LeMaitre developed a theory that would later become known as the Big Bang Theory suggesting our universe had a single moment of creation that set in motion an expanding universe. That first day of the Big Bang was a day without a historical yesterday. All things became new at that moment.

A follower of Jesus Christ is supposed to live each day with the same newness that would have taken place on the first day of creation.  With each new day, we are offered a day without a yesterday. Our sinful past does not follow us in the mind of God. What follows us is a slate wiped clean by the mercy of God. That realization might be the most profound expression of God’s love a human will ever experience. God spoke of that reality in Scripture, “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more” (Hebrews 8:12). 

We are being followed by a yesterday of complete forgiveness. We cannot run away from the love of God. Every lie that wants to pull us back into a false yesterday where regret and sorrow attempt to displace the love of God must be challenged.  When lies appear and attempt to communicate an unforgiven past, confront them and say “No more!” God has chosen to remember our sins no more and neither should we unless the Spirit brings them to mind as part of a redemptive process. Any other remembrance of a painful yesterday is a lie. Today is truly the first day of your new life - a day without a yesterday. 

Get Behind Me!

The phrase uttered by Jesus “Get behind me, Satan!” was spoken in response to a comment made by Peter in a moment of bravado. The rebuke took place when Peter tried to interfere with Jesus going to Jerusalem to encounter the Cross. Jesus had just told His disciples He must go to Jerusalem to suffer many things, be killed and raised on the third day. Peter blurted out, “God forbid it, Lord. This will never happen to you” (Matthew 16:23). It was then that Jesus spoke His words of rebuke to the spirit motivating Peter’s undisciplined comment. The “Get behind Ne, Satan” statement modeled a level of faith that did not allow Satan or any lie to take up an unchallenged place in the scenery of Jesus’ future. Jesus was vigilant regarding the works of hell. The same must be true for us.

If you were a fly on the wall in our home, you would think I sound like an unstable person from time to time. A few weeks ago, a thought came to my mind that was trolling to gain a place in my thinking. It was subtle, yet obvious. I was in our living room and spoke out loud with authority, “Satan, get behind me!” From the back of our house, Jan called out, “Are you talking to me?” 

Many times a lie will take up residence in our mind when we allow the junk of hell to stroll through our thought life unchallenged. This isn’t always a sexual image, it can be a prideful thought or a scenario of revenge where we try to get even with a betrayer. If left unchallenged, these thoughts will take up a dominant position in our thinking. Instead of Jesus being the image of our future, the landscape of our thought life can become littered with lies and deception. These dark thoughts were sent on a mission to displace truth and lead us away from our appointment with destiny. That is what Jesus was challenging when He rebuked Peter. This is what we are called to challenge as we partner with the Spirit in the process of having our minds renewed.

The Return of Prodigal Dreams

Jan and I take a daily walk together. Normally, we walk at mid-morning after our writing schedule is finished, but on this particular morning, we had to be on the road early so we walked just after sunrise. I’ve walked past the home in the photo hundreds of time but because our walks are normally during daylight hours, I never saw the light inside the cupola depicted in the photo. We live in an older neighborhood with few streetlights so that little light must be visible for a great distance during the night hours.

For a few days, I wondered why I felt drawn to take the photo. This morning, the Lord said, “Prodigal dreams are returning home.” When I think of the word “prodigal” I typically think of returning children or loved ones, never a dream. The longer I thought about the Lord's words the more they began to make sense.

Some of you have dreams you abandoned because you did not understand the timing or content of the dream or something took place in your personal life that stalled and distanced the fulfillment of the dream. When those things were taking place you had a dream, but not the heart of the Father. A work more important than the dream itself had not yet taken place in your heart. As a result, the dream wandered away and you moved on with life thinking the dream was lost forever. 

In the intervening years, as the dream wandered, your heart has changed. A healing and maturing have taken place. You now have the heart of the Father. That heart is the light that now sits atop your life – a cupola of hope welcoming the dream back home. When you see the dream at a distance coming home run to embrace its return with joy. Prepare the equivalent of the fatted calf. It is time to celebrate. You now have the heart to carry the dream through all its future stages of development and bring it to the fulfillment of its original intent.  With God and with hope, nothing is impossible, even the return of a prodigal dream.

My New Best Friend

On November 27, 2017, a best friend of mine died. Abby was my Australian Shepherd. She lived just a few days shy of 15 years. To say I was devastated at her passing would be an understatement. I cannot remember grieving like that in all my life. A few weeks ago, the same breeder from whom we purchased Abby let me know a new litter would be coming this month. We will bring our new puppy home around the first of June. 

Loss is like a dull ache without borders. It bleeds over into all areas of our lives and sets off tearful emotions at the oddest of times.  Loss needs time to heal and process. I am ready. The healing of Abby's loss is taking place with the thought of a new Aussie. I want a girl. Unless something changes her name will be Lady.

Our new dog won’t be Abby, but she will be what I need in this season of my life, just like Abby was for all those years when she was part of our lives. With God, He knows just the right time to fill a strangely quiet home with the sounds of a new life. God is good and so are the creatures He gives to us who become our faithful companions walking with us along the path of life.

Remembering Where We Were Going

Perhaps it's because I am writing this on Sunday evening knowing Monday is coming that I sense a somber, tender sorrow of sorts. Monday is that day when the routine of life is re-engaged, again. These routines become so circular and repetitive that we can forget where we were going. 

A dream can succumb to the demands of a routine. Relationships can become derailed and fall to the wayside because the routine demanded all our attention. A child can reach out to a parent who is physically present but emotionally distant thinking only about the routine. Routines must live in submission to the dream destination or we will lose our way.

Tonight, try to remember where you were going before the routine created its detour. When you go to bed tonight, kneel at your bedside and pray. Ask God to show you where you were going, but forget because the demands of your life-routine erased your dream map. When you awake tomorrow morning, take steps to engage the dream once again and you will rediscover where you were going. 

Over-Controlled Lives

When we over-control our lives, we lose a sense of wonder and mystery. Some people have so over-planned and controlled every aspect of their lives they have taken on the sole responsibility for the realization of all aspects of their future. To the natural mind, this makes sense. In the spirit, it becomes tragic. 

God is creative. His creativity did not end when he created the world and said, “It is good.” He is still creating. He is creating new futures. As he creates a new future for you, he is also inviting you into the creative process where new and unexpected things take place. Some of these creative moments can be quite surprising—full of wonder and mystery. These are the surprises that take place when we are in a relationship with the Living God. 

The longer we live, the more we realize the importance of holding this life loosely—and the plans we make even more loosely. When we tightly grip our spiritual steering wheel and try to force a turn to the left or right, we can end up over-controlling our life-transitions and actually cause the process to lose traction and spin out. 

(An excerpt from the book, A Good Place. https://www.amazon.com/Good-Place-Walking-Transitions-Ministry/dp/0615947573/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1545056288&sr=8-6&keywords=garris+elkins)