I have the privilege of speaking at an upcoming winter retreat for Faith Community Church in Crofton in a couple of weeks. It is kind of weird but from the moment I was asked the passage that I have felt was right for the weekend was the passage in Matthew 16:13-20 where Jesus asks Peter who people say Jesus was. Jesus is not looking for the names that they called him, but more what they were saying about him. Were people calling Him the Son of God or a prophet, or simply just a carpenter? Jesus moves from the general to the specific really quickly in this passage and asks Peter who he says Jesus is.
What name does Peter have for Jesus? What description does Peter choose? These questions led me to consider how the answer Peter gave Jesus was a strange one. Peter doesnt respond by saying Jesus' name back to him, he uses words that describe what Jesus has done and who he is through demonstration and not description.
Peter says, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God..." He doesnt even mention Jesus' name - just His character. I wonder how many of us have become defined by our character as opposed to our given names, and how many of us have the character worthy of such a description. Or I wonder how many of us have given up the truth of our birth names with all of their meanings and have accepted the names that peers have given us, or that society has given us. How many of us have given up our names and accepted names like 'loser', 'dummy', 'idiot'. How many of us have accepted those names and have become defined by the names that we have been called? How many of us have been called stubborn and therefore remained inflexible? How many of us have been labeled as losers and believed that we will never amount to anything, and therefore we have given up and stopped trying?
I think God wants to change some names at this retreat. What about your name? Does it need changed too?
There is an interesting group that has caught my eye, and my heart at present. This capture came about in a God designed whim when we attended a session at Catalyst 2009 that we were not planning on attending. The speaker at that session described the simplest of things which struck home with the magnitude of a lightning bolt.
He described how God had ordained two institutions in the scriptures - the church, and the family. Throughout the bible the Lord has a special place for these two groups. He repeatedly refers to them, declares His love for them and states His intention to rescue each of them. God loves families and God loves the church.
The simple question is, does the family love the church and the church love the family?
This seems like a simple question from the outset, however if we really consider what we do with these two institutions then we might be a little concerned over what we find. In church we are very pro-family. In fact, we are so pro-family that we have employed staff who's job it is to reach out to our children or our youth or our adults all with the purpose of connecting them to church. However, there is one missing link. We do a great job trying to reach and connect these three groups SEPARATELY, however we are not that intentional about reaching the whole family at the same time.
Is it even possible to do that? Is it possible to somehow do church together in such a way that we effectively reach the entire family at the same time - together? There are some great folks at a group called Orange - if the family were a color it would be red and the church would be yellow, mix those two and you get Orange - who believe that it is not only possible to blend the church and the family, it is essential. If we were somehow able to intentionally reach the whole family through church then we would have somehow been able to blend these two God ordained institutions. Wouldn't that be a good thing?
I think I will read some more of the Think Orange book and see what the Lord has to say. Why dont you check out the folks at Orange and see what God says to you. Post your comments and let me know if you get any insights.
If you are like me then you will have sat in silence, dumbstruck at the events of the past few days in Haiti. For many we may not know much about this little country or its people. We may not even know where Haiti is, but the devastation that has occurred there must move us. I have a friend who works with the Community Coalition for Haiti (web site link is above) and he has traveled to Haiti for week long medical missions twice a year for a number of years. He has been busy working with INOVA Fairfax hospital in preparing to send three teams to Haiti this coming weekend.
While we may not be able to do much ourselves, we can support those who are helping. I want to encourage you to make a donation to CCH by following this link Give to Haiti Relief and please continue to pray for the people in Haiti and the rescue of those still trapped.
Today I am working on next Wednesday's theme for our week of prayer and fasting - BE STILL ...
If you have any bible knowledge then there are probably a couple of verses that jump to mind when you hear those two words. The first for me is the passage in the book of Psalms where we are commanded by the Lord to 'Be still, and know that I am God". The second passage that comes to mind is when Jesus was asleep in the back of a boat having preached all day and a storm blows up. Jesus is sleeping, the storm is raging and the disciples are panicking - hmm, a common occurrence in the bible I think. The disciples are so afraid that they are going to die that they wake Jesus up so He can save them. I always found it interesting that fishermen would wake a carpenter up in the midst of a sailing crisis, but I digress.
So we join the story with Jesus, just being woken by a bunch of scaredy-cat fishermen whining about the wind and the waves. Mark tells us that Jesus, 'got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, "Quiet! Be still!" Then the wind died down and it was completely calm.' Then he shared a few harsh words with the disciples about their lack of faith and presumably went back to sleep - the story doesn't tell us that part.
Be still - two simple words, spoken as commands in two places in the bible - once by the Father in Psalm 46:10 "Be still and know that I am God" and then by the Son in Mark 4:39. When Jesus spoke the words there was an immediate threat to the safety and welfare of the disciples, at least as they perceived it. Have you ever considered that the same two words spoken by the Father in Psalm 46 were spoken with the same authority and command as those spoken by Jesus to the wind and the waves. Have you ever considered that the command given in Psalm 46:10 should be responded to by us in the same way that the wind and the waves responded to Jesus.
Is it possible that when the Lord says, "Be still ..." that we are actually supposed to BE STILL? Is it beyond the realm of possibility that when we read the rest of Psalm 46 and the trouble that the author describes the children of Israel being in, that this command to BE STILL was the LORD telling the children of Israel to quieten down, to stop thrashing about and causing a commotion and to allow Him to be God? Could the same be true for us today?
Next Wednesday I want to encourage our church to obey the command of Psalm 46:10 and to BE STILL. I want to encourage myself and our whole congregation to stop trying to come up with the solution to our problems, to stop getting all agitated about situations around us, to stop, to BE STILL.
During this week I have been preparing for next week’s prayer and fasting week and I have had a scripture rolling around in my head that I wasn’t really sure what to do with. The verse is in Isaiah 43:18-19. It reads, “18 "Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. 19 See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.”
There is a lot in this verse – let’s break it down. The rest of the chapter before these verses is the Lord telling the children of Israel who He is and how much He cares for them. God follows this declaration of who He is with this incredible statement – Forget the former things. In other words, what has happened in the past is in the past, it is time to leave it, move on and forget it.
What a powerful verse that is, and yet how incredibly difficult it is to achieve too. How many of us live with our minds on things that have happened to us in the past? How many of us ‘dwell’ on things that have happened to us in the past? How many of us hold on to our past hurts and fears like they are our favorite teddy bear – no-one can pry our fingers off of them? How many of us need to hear these words from the LORD? I believe that as we enter this season of fasting we need to hear these words – FORGET THE FORMER THINGS, DO NOT DWELL ON THE PAST.
As we begin our fast I want to challenge myself and all of us to forget the things that have happened to us in the past. I know that many of us have been hurt by the church, and by leaders and people in the church. I have walked on both sides of that line in my past – I have been hurt, and to my shame I have caused hurt. If you know of a situation where you have caused hurt or pain to a brother or sister then please take time to repent and seek forgiveness. If you are holding on to hurts from the past that have been inflicted on you, then I want to encourage you to take a step and LET THOSE HURTS GO. This does not excuse hurts from the past, but it releases us to move forward. We hold on to our pain and it not only stifles our walk with God but it also cripples our relationship with anyone we perceive to have hurt us in the past.
In this verse in Isaiah God says “FORGET THE FORMER THINGS”. The greatest news in this comes in verse 19. The reason we need to forget the former things is because God says this, “See, I am doing a new thing!” God wants to do a new thing in you and through you. God wants to do a new thing at Mt Oak. If you quickly mentally asked “why ?” , or internally said, “No He doesn’t” then I want you to seriously consider if you have forgotten the former things. This verse doesn’t command us to forget the bad former things, it commands us to forget all the former things, good and bad.
I am doing a new thing! Those must be among the most exciting words in the bible – a creator God, the Almighty declares “I am doing a new thing!” I believe that as we forget the former things and ask God to show us the “new thing” He is doing then we will be amazed at where the Lord wants to lead us personally and lead us collectively as Mt Oak.
What is the NEW THING you would like to see God do in your life? What is the NEW THING you would like to see God do in Mt Oak? In the New Testament, Jesus told a story of a rich young ruler – in Luke 18: 18-29 – and in this story the young man asks what he needs to do to get into heaven, especially since he had kept the law from a young age. Jesus answers him with these words, “You still lack one thing.” Jesus then goes on to highlight the area of the young man’s life where he had not let go – where he had not forgotten the things that were behind. The young man was rich, he had everything he needed, and he knew it. Jesus tells him that the ONE THING he lacks is complete trust on the Lord – he trusted in his stuff.
What is the ONE THING that Jesus would tell me if I were in that situation. I doubt it would be wealth, but I am sure there is ONE THING. What ONE THING would Jesus say that you lack? What ONE THING would Jesus say you are holding on to from the past? What ONE THING do you need to “FORGET” and move on from?
This week, maybe we need to just listen for ONE THING. Maybe we need to FORGET SOME FORMER THINGS.
Lord, show me the ONE THING that I lack, and the FORMER THINGS that I need to FORGET.
Maybe you are in a place where you do not lack ONE THING, but you need to hold on to ONE THING. The apostle Paul wrote in Philippians 3:13-14, “13Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But ONE THING I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”
The apostle Paul takes these two ideas of forgetting what is behind and holding on to ONE THING. He sets the example for us to stop living in the past, stop comparing the present with the past, stop comparing people in our lives today with people who used to be in our lives, stop living in times gone by and forgetting what happened then, forgetting the good things and the bad things for ONE reason. The reason we forget the former things is so that we can fix our eyes on the GOAL – we can fix our eyes on the NEW THING the Lord is doing, we can focus everything within us to strain towards the GOAL to win the prize.
As we enter this week of fasting, let’s take this exhortation seriously.
Forget the things from the past
Desire the NEW THING God wants to do
Focus your life towards the GOAL to win the prize.
It's Tuesday, only a few days before we embark on a special journey. Only a few days before we have the opportunity to put ourselves in a place where change can occur. A place where real change can come. But it takes just one thing. It takes our willingness to submit.This incoming week of prayer and fasting will be much more difficult for most of us than we think.
For many of us we have thought about the physical difficulties that we will face as we deny ourselves food, or certain foods, or technology or whatever it is we believe God is asking us to give up.
I wonder how many of us have considered the cost that next week will bring on who we are. I wonder how many of us have thought that next week might just be the time when we deconstruct our dysfunctional relationship with the Lord or with our friends, spouse, family, and then wait as He lovingly reconstructs us to e the person that God wants us to be.
I wonder if we think that we are just going to spend time telling God the things that we want or feel we need, or have we grasped the enormity of the possibility that we will simply put ourselves in the presence of the living almighty God of the universe, and He may wna to make some adjustments.
Will we be willing to change? Will we be willing to allow Him to break us? "But what will people think or me if they really find out what I am like?" "Will people still want to be in the same church or small group as me when they learn that I am not the person I portray myself to be?" "How can people follow me if they learn the sort of terrible things that I do when I don't think I can be seen or will get caught?"
I believe that this week is a critical point in the life of our church. It is a time when we can allow the Holy Spirit to sweep through his house and clean away long held positions and fears and replace them with passion and love. It is a time when the Holy Spirit can take a tired and weary people who have become tired in rebuilding the walls and strengthen their hands and reignite the fire in their hearts to continue the work that the Lord has set before us.
I believe that this incoming week could be a week that is looked back on as a 'red letter week' in the history of Mt Oak. This week could be a week when we truly humble ourselves and pray and seek His face and His righteousness. This week could be the beginning of something great.
Or it could be just another week, except one where our stomachs growl more frequently.
As we get ready for the start of our fast I wanted to write what will hopefully be an encouragement to all who are considering joining us on our fast but yet have that hesitancy that is distracting them. Let's be honest, undertaking a week of denying yourself food, or any comfort for that matter will not be easy. I wonder who said life was going to be easy anyway? James said, "Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds ...". Now I know what you are thinking, but these trials are self inflicted. We could endure the trials of our faith being challenged by a co-worker, or the trials of being different in our family for Jesus' sake. But when we are inflicting the trials on ourselves it is a little different.
I read an article in the January edition of Charisma (click here) which was very encouraging. The article (if you didnt follow the link) was entitled 'Start the New Year with Extraordinary Prayer' and describes a 21 day fast that one church is undertaking, but the length of time of the fast doesn't matter - you don't get more brownie points in heaven the longer you go without food. The key thing is the attitude you take into the fast and the way you spend your time when you are on the fast.
The piece that struck me was the reason they gave as to why they fasted at the beginning of the year. They were three-fold:
You set the course for the rest of the year by how you start the year. If you begin the year with prayer and fasting then you set the rest of the year up to be successfully dedicated to the Lord. Just like praying at the beginning of the day often sets the rest of the day up and covers anything that may occur, so fasting at the beginning of the year sets up the whole year. Maybe we should carry that on into other areas of life - like giving God the first part of the day, giving God the first part of the week (Sunday), giving God the first part of our income (offerings and tithes), giving God the first consideration in every decision we make.
Blessings will occur because you set aside time at the start of the year to fast and pray.
Fasting at the beginning of the year sets us in line with Matthew 6:33, "Seek FIRST the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you." So if we seek Him FIRST then we should be expectant for ALL THESE THINGS to be added.
Wow! some simple truths that when we are reminded of them should change our attitude of a fast from something to be endured to something to be anticipated and enjoyed.
Let Your Kingdom come, and Your will be done O Lord.
By day an Associate Professor in Physical Therapy at Marymount University. By night a husband to my beautiful wife Julie, a dad to my wonderful daughters Cara and Emma. A servant of Christ trying to build the kingdom.
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