Aug. 9 – Thoughts on Psalm 77-78 & Romans 10

How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?  And how can anyone preach unless they are sent?

This has been an important verse for my ministry since it began.  There are a lot of things you can do for God besides being a pastor.  As a good student, I wondered if teaching or engineering might be God’s path for me.  But once I received God’s call to professional ministry, other career options were taken off the table for me.  But within professional ministry (my, how I dislike that phrase), there are a number of different career paths, job opportunities, and areas where one might serve.  And that’s where this verse came to be quite helpful in my discernment.

How might one make the largest impact on the world for God?  I could individually serve people in an underfinanced setting.  I could run a homeless shelter.  I could run mission trips or teach theology.  But how might I make the largest impact?  Why, by not making a large impact at all, but instead by developing others to do that impacting.  If I could teach 100 people in my career to make a significant impact, that would be 100x as huge as me making an individual impact myself.  And so, the pastorate became my residence, my ministry, and my calling.

So, each week through sermons, each day through interaction and daily blog posts I try hard to teach and inspire others to impact this world for God.  I was sent to preach so others might hear and call on God (see the reverse order of the verse above?)  This is my ministry, my calling, and my passion.

May God send you in His perfect timing according to His perfect will to accomplish all He has in store for you.

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Aug. 8 – Thoughts on Psalm 74-76 & Romans 9:16-33

Who in their right minds tells people today to “try less”?  Not a coach in the world would tell his players to “not try too hard”.  No orchestra director, no CEO, no leader ever would put up a poster in their office of a person swinging in a hammock taking a nap with a thick black border and the caption, “Quit trying!”

So what do we do with Paul’s teachings?  Not Paul’s interpretation, nor Paul’s opinion, but Paul’s description of what God is doing in the world.  The Jews who have tried hard forever to find righteousness by following the law have all failed – every one.  But the Gentiles, who didn’t even try, were declared righteous through faith in Jesus.  Paul seems to be promoting the motto, “Don’t try so hard.”

Evangelical Christians get very uncomfortable with passages like this.  In fact, when we read Rom. 9 and similar teachings, we may literally squirm.  We justify it by saying that following Jesus here means following Jesus’ new set of rules instead of the OT rules.  We ignore it and proclaim that salvation comes through obedience to Jesus’ law.  Or we fight it, citing myriad other verses that tell of all we need to do to to be acceptable to Jesus.

Just like the Jews reading this 2000 years ago.

But what if?  What if what God wants of us is less striving to be loveable and more amazement that we are loved?  What if it truly isn’t about following the rules, but is in stead about following Jesus?  What if God is less interested in our sins and more interested in His destruction of our sinfulness through the cross?  What if we are taking the easy road to righteousness by making it a checklist of sins we have avoided, only to find that that easy road is a dead end?  What if righteousness is the much harder task of living in relationship with God, something that requires far more of our time, energy, focus, and will than just following a bunch of rules?

How long will we ignore, justify, or fight Paul’s (and God’s) teachings in Romans and beyond?

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Aug. 7 – Thoughts on Psalm 72-73 & Romans 9:1-15

This world seems a terribly unjust place.  As I hear from my black friends stories of their terror at a simple traffic stop because of all the shootings that have been reported, I cry at this world’s injustice.  As I hear from woman after woman who identifies with the #MeToo movement, and not a few males as well, I cry at this world’s injustice.  As bullying ruins lives, and self-righteousness ruins relationships, and the global sex-slave trade continues unabated, I cry at this world’s injustice.

We can choose who to blame.  Many blame “the world” and it’s sinful selfishness, for every one of these has it’s roots in people putting their own needs and wants above those of others.  Many blame “society” that teaches us unabashedly to put ourselves first, to solve problems with violence, and to seek pleasure above all else.  And many blame God who is in charge of this whole mess and should be stepping in to solve some of these problems rather than making His Children (us) do it as His representatives.  With the people of Malachi’s 2nd chapter, they cry, “Where is the God of justice?”  (My guess is that they wouldn’t be very happy with God’s answer to that question through Malachi.

Paul asks this same question for his readers in today’s reading:  “Is God unjust?”  But Paul’s answer is a bit more pensive than God’s in Malachi.  Paul’s answer is this: it is God who defines what justice is, so He is inherently just.  We can’t allow the world to define justice for us, for the world doesn’t know what true justice is.  It changes it’s mind and it’s definition regularly.  And it punishes every breach of it’s standard with corporate shame and judgement, exacerbated by social media.

The next time you find yourself questioning God’s justice, maybe what you are really questioning is God’s timeline.  God promises that the unrighteous will face punishment, and that the victims, the poor, the widows and orphans, the oppressed of this world will have their rewards, but in His time, not ours.  So the next time we think God is allowing child abuse, or bullying, or anything else on our list of injustices, lets remember that His timeline is not ours, and that Justice is itself defined by God’s will, plan, and behavior.

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Aug. 6 – Thoughts on Psalm 70-71 & Romans 8:22-39

Yesterday, a young man from my church walked up to me, put a piece of paper over my head, and proclaimed, “Pastor Steve, you’re under arrest.”  I looked up to see the piece of paper had a musical quarter rest drawn on it.

Get it?  “Under A Rest”.

I told him, “there’s nothing like a good pun.  And that was nothing like a good pun.”  We laughed and off he went to find another victim.

I truly love puns.  Pun Wars have been a part of my father’s family for a very long time.  I share them with my kids, much to their dismay.  Some call puns “groaners”, and I think I know why.

“Groaning” is not a very fun word.  Groaning means we are in pain, whether physically or otherwise.  Groaning can describe us hearing a bad pun or rocking on the floor with a life-threateningly painful injury.  But seldom if ever have I heard “groaning” used as a pleasant or even good term.

Paul says that sin is causing the ultimate groaning.  In v. 22 all of creation is groaning under the weight of the world’s sin.  In v. 23, it is we who are groaning as we await our redemption.  In v. 26, the Holy Spirit of God groans it’s intercession for us.  And all of this pain, this groaning, is the result of sin, of our disobedience to God’s will, of our constant act of putting ourselves ahead of God.

But the good news comes to us at the end.  In the midst of this groaning and pain, we still cling to the Truth that we are more than conquerors through Jesus Christ because He loves us in spite of this sin.  Sin has consequences, but being unacceptable to God is NOT one of them.

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Aug. 5 – Thoughts on Psalm 68-69 & Romans 8:1-21

What was your name for your father growing up?  For us, he was daddy, but I’ve heard titles from bampa to father, from pops to sir.  We all have names for our father or father figure – seldom do I meet anyone who called him by his actual name except as a phase in high school.

Jesus used, and Paul then picked up, a beautiful phrase for His Heavenly Father – Abba.  There have been many interpretations of this word, and the most common translation is “daddy”.  It’s a term of endearment from a young son to his respectable father.

Jesus’ use of this for God was shocking, even sacrilegious, to His critics.  It was far too familiar a word to be used for the Almighty, the Creator, the focus of their lives.  This kind of intimacy was heresy, and so this became one more reason for them to condemn Him in the end.

The word Abba, however, was far worse than this.  This is not the word a boy uses for his father.  Let me explain.

As infants, we have just begun using our vocal chords and moving our mouths to produce sounds.  So try something with me – let your mouth hang open and vocalize – you should hear something like a sustained “ahhh” coming from your mouth.  Now, like an infant who has just learned to close and open his mouth, keep the vocalization and open and close your mouth a few times.  Now you begin to get “Bah, ba, ba, ba, ba”.  If you use your tongue as well you might get, “da da da da”.  This is how we invented the honorific “dada” as an infants word for her father.  In the Middle East, rather than a “da” they heard a “ba” and we got the word “Abba”.

All of this is to say that Abba is not the word a young boy uses for his father, but is the word a helpless infant uses.  If we use the term Abba for our Heavenly Father, we are proclaiming ourselves as helpless infants in His sight – and truly that is what we are in spiritual terms.

Let me encourage you to use the term “Abba” in your prayers this week.  Just see how the title fits, and how it feels to admit your helplessness to God.

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