With Folded Hands and Believing Heart...

My son has a burden and prayer request to share and I wanted to give him the floor today. I’ve also asked him to write a bit on his journey and I expect him to do that soon. But for now, here’s his heart on a matter of great importance:

I’m not as good a writer as my dad (this is Graham, by the way), I don’t really blog but this has been on my heart and I need your prayers. While I was away I gave everything to God. He can take on any situation. He takes it on like a warrior! My God can do anything. I asked him to graduate me on August 19, which, to New Hope Academy (Teen Challenge ministry’s school for boys) standards, is completley impossible; in fact they told me I was going to have to wait a “few” weeks after my contract was due. My contract was due the 15th of august and I graduated the Sunday after that–the 19th! By God’s grace I am the only boy in the history of NHA to ever finish six contracts in six months and graduate all in that time span. See what my God can do!

Now I am a senior in high school but don’t have one to go to. We have gone to my former christian school and they felt it best not to have me back (and I respect that completely). Another area (christian) school has decided not to take a risk on me as a bad influence. But my God can do anything! I think that there is a school for me but I need guidance. The Holy Spirit isn’t silent; I think he just wants me on the edge of my seat.

Please pray for my parents. My dad is undergoing extreme amounts of stress and my Mom too. Pray that the Lord works something out. Remember: God can do anything! He can do the impossible. The impossible right now for me is school. Please pray for me! Love you all. And for my New River family, I am looking forward to seeing y’all next Sunday. Got a few things to share but thats a surprise. PEACE!!!

Love,Graham (they call me ‘BIG BOY’)

A Prayer For This Day

Occasionally (well rarely…er, never?) I will add something out of my prayer journal and post it for public consumption and that mood strikes me this day. A little context, if you please: my life has been a runaway roller coaster for several weeks now, running from meeting to meeting, imploding under the weight of protocols, agendas, procedures, tasks and deadlines. This push pace has fairly smothered me and I’ve begun to see life ooze from my very spirit.

Serenity Now!

I shared with a friend today that this is not the life I am wired for. At heart I am a cave-dweller, needing much alone time with the Lord in order to have order and integrity in my interior life. And so, even to the point of near rudeness to decline yet another meeting this morning, I “stole” some much-needed intimacy time with the One who, sadly, all too often gets shoved into the “to do” pile of my life.

To my delight, what I found in my holy ground place (my van, you recall) was not a miffed Potentate thumping His watch and pumping His crossed legs impatiently. He was not in a tizzy, giving the cold shoulder until just enough groveling had embarrassed us both. No, I found a Lover patiently waiting by, already coming toward me as I shyly crossed over the threshold, and just like that, we were in the moment.

Blessed Father,

I come to You to worship and praise the God of all gods and every living thing. I worship the One God who rules over all and is a Jealous Lover. The skies spread prostrate before You, the stars pulsate with the energy of Your love, the trees bow and wave to the King who rules, and the seas move in the rhythm of the One who sings over them.

You are God forever and none can compare to You. You are manna from heaven, water from the Rock, the Way through the wilderness, Rivers in the desert, the pillar of fire and cloud who goes before Your people to lead them to their Eternal Rest. You are the Eternal Shabbat and I call You Lord, Savior and Lover of my soul.

You are good and Your love endures forever! In You is ALL my soul should ever long for, pant after and need. The world and all its pleasures are passing away! All that is this “world” is opposed to You and if I am friendly with it, then I am against You. God, may this not be my enduring testimony but may I always and ever seek only after You and may the “One Thing” of my heart’s confession be to find You and be found by You. To live only for Your pleasure and awake in Your likeness.

Oh God! May Christ be fully formed in me! Oh, that I would come into the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ and that my inner man might be built up in You and may I be sanctified wholly, finished and completed and be found blameless!!!

As a bride adorned and festooned with the jewelry of righteousness (not her own), incandescent with the touch of the holy on me, wearing the fragrance of Christ, giving no doubt to all that I have been with Jesus, wrestled with You, not letting You go without Your breath to fill me inside. I declare in this moment of eternity that I want You to be my First Love without a close second. Woo me today. Seduce me and romance me! I am here, in my chambers, a virgin bride, kept and waiting for the Day of Your Arrival.

There is oil enough for the night—is there? I pray so. That’s why I come to this place of our meeting to express my heart’s yearning for You.

God, my Lord and King, I pray for ALL ties to anything that hinders me from running to Your embrace to be broken. ALL! I am so attracted and dis-tracted by passing pleasures and the siren calls of other lovers and I would not have it this way. This is why I cry for Christ to be fully formed in me—until I am so consumed by Your Life that I see through Your eyes, hear only Your voice, follow hard on Your steps and taste only Your wine and Your lips. Until I am heartsick for You, and have NO appetite except for Your Presence to linger always as close as my own breath.

I am ever Your Shulammite, struggling to turn from Solomon’s overtures because love—real love—is found in my Shepherd Lover. Solomon is relentless and greedy. He has a harem and wants to make me “one of many” but You are in pursuit of me and will spare nothing to lay hold of me, breaking even Solomon’s bewitchments and enticements so that I remain single-eyed for the True Lover of my soul.

“Arise, my darling…” You say.

“Come away with Me!” You call.

Lord, please find that place in my heart where is a sincere desire—a protected secret place—where I want and will to go away with You and truly leave all this far behind…Woo me today. Seduce and romance me! I pray You will not turn away and leave me for Solomon’s consumption.

You are a great, high and holy God! You are ever near to the cry of Your servant and faithful to accomplish all that You’ve begun and with all that Your servant cooperates with You to do. DO ME, Lord! Baptize me in the deepest waters You have! I want this old man to die away! For good! I want him to be belly-up and bloated in the Red Sea along with Pharaoh and his hapless army.

God, my King, do this and draw me into the reality of such a conquering of myself. I repent, Lord, of my own self-rule and taking the Throne when You alone have the right to rule. Reign over me, over my life, over my family! And over all I am attracted to…Reign, O Lord!

In Jesus’ Name, amen.

15:20

“And he got up and went to his father. But while he was still far away, his father saw him and was moved with pity for him and went quickly and took him in his arms and gave him a kiss.”
–First century parable from the lips of Jesus

Long about noon on Saturday a father and son will meet in a giant bear hug far from the horizon that once separated them. And Mom will be there too, just the right touch needed to make a three-corded strand. Perceptive onlookers might catch a glimpse of something arcane and otherworldly in this simple tapestry: a family wrapped, cinched and secured in the keeping power of the Strong-Armed One. I’d call that an unbreakable family bond.

The son is, at long last, coming home. Gone will be the rags and fetters of the far country and, though the memories of depravity and hellishness will linger, the air will be gloriously cleared of the demons that enslaved and harrassed.

I noticed a subtle nuance about that story this afternoon. I found in my Bible, the NASB’s translation of Luke 15:32 to be, “this brother of yours was dead and has begun to live…” The translators took the verb anazoo and made the distinction in it’s aorist tense that a process or action has begun that, if it continues, will certainly end in a completed action or effect.

That’s pretty technical sounding so let me dumb it down for you and me. When I have told others of our son’s return, I (a) do not refer to Graham as a “prodigal” because he no longer wears that moniker by the grace of our Lord, and (b) advise them not to expect our boy to exude an ethereal glow and matching halo. The boy has begun to breathe again the new air of the liberty by which Christ has set him free. He is just now beginning to lay hold of that for which Christ has taken hold of him.

Like me (and you), he will not have “arrived”. He might break our hearts again. (I sure wish there was a verse 33 in that chapter so we could see how it plays out six weeks, six months or six years from the banquet!) He might revert. I pray not, for the scriptural phrase “a dog returning to its vomit” is not such a good thing. It’s deadly, in fact.

All we have is today.

And 15:20.

And verse 32.

And that’s got Mom and me giddy from the word go.

And go we will. To meet our son on a hillside of grace, restoration, reconciliation and…

JUBILEE!

Finally, let me end with this captivating story found in Philip Yancey’s book, What’s So Amazing About Grace? The details might not mirror ours exactly and while it is about a young girl rather than a teenaged boy, you’ll see why I’ve done it.

A young girl grows up on a cherry orchard just above Traverse City, Michigan. Her parents, a bit old- fashioned, tend to overreact to her nose ring, the music she listens to, and the length of her skirts. They ground her a few times, and she seethes inside. “I hate you!” she screams at her father when he knocks on the door of her room after an argument, and that night she acts on a plan she has mentally rehearsed scores of times. She runs away.

She has visited Detroit only once before, on a bus trip with her church youth group to watch the Tigers play. Because newspapers in Traverse City report in lurid detail the gangs, the drugs, and the violence in downtown Detroit, she concludes that is probably the last place her parents will look for her. California, maybe, or Florida, but not Detroit.

Her second day there she meets a man who drives the biggest car she’s ever seen. He offers her a ride, buys her lunch, arranges a place for her to stay. He gives her some pills that make her feel better than she’s ever felt before. She was right all along, she decides: her parents were keeping her from all the fun.

The good life continues for a month, two months, a year. The man with the big car–she calls him “Boss”– teaches her a few things that men like. She lives in a penthouse, and orders room service whenever she wants. Occasionally she thinks about the folks back home, but their lives now seem so boring and provincial that she can hardly believe she grew up there.

She has a brief scare when she sees her picture printed on the back of a milk carton with the headline “Have you seen this child?” But by now she has blond hair, and with all the makeup and body-piercing jewelry she wears, nobody would mistake her for a child. Besides, most of her friends are runaways, and nobody squeals in Detroit.

After a year the first sallow signs of illness appear, and it amazes her how fast the boss turns mean. “These days, we can’t mess around,” he growls, and before she knows it she’s out on the street without a penny to her name. When winter blows in she finds herself sleeping on metal grates outside the big department stores. “Sleeping” is the wrong word–a teenage girl at night in down town Detroit can never relax her guard. Dark bands circle her eyes. Her cough worsens.

One night as she lies awake listening for footsteps, all of a sudden everything about her life looks different. She no longer feels like a woman of the world. She feels like a little girl, lost in a cold and frightening city. She begins to whimper. Her pockets are empty and she’s hungry. She needs a fix. She pulls her legs tight underneath her and shivers under the newspapers she’s piled atop her coat. Something jolts a synapse of memory and a single image fills her mind: of May in Traverse City, when a million cherry trees bloom at once, with her golden retriever dashing through the rows and rows of blossomy trees in chase of a tennis ball.

God, why did I leave, she says to herself, and pain stabs at her heart. My dog back home eats better than I do now. She’s sobbing, and she knows in a flash that more than anything else in the world she wants to go home.Three straight phone calls, three straight connections with the answering machine. She hangs up without leaving a message the first two times, but the third time she says, “Dad, Mom, it’s me. I was wondering about maybe coming home. I’m catching a bus up your way, and it’ll get there about midnight tomorrow. If you’re not there, well, I guess I’ll just stay on the bus until it hits Canada.”

It takes about seven hours for a bus to make all the stops between Detroit and Traverse City, and during that time she realizes the flaws in her plan. What if her parents are out of town and miss the message? Shouldn’t she have waited another day or so until she could talk to them? And even if they are home, they probably wrote her off as dead long ago. She should have given them some time to overcome the shock.

Her thoughts bounce back and forth between those worries and the speech she is preparing for her father. “Dad, I’m sorry. I know I was wrong. It’s not your fault; it’s all mine. Dad, can you forgive me?” She says the words over and over, her throat tightening even as she rehearses them. She hasn’t apologized to anyone in years.

The bus has been driving with the lights on since Bay City. Tiny snowflakes hit the pavement rubbed worn by thousands of tires, and the asphalt steams. She’s forgotten how dark it gets at night out here. A deer darts across the road and the bus swerves. Every so often, a billboard. A sign posting the mileage to Traverse City. Oh, God.

When the bus finally rolls into the station, its air brakes hissing in protest, the driver announces in a crackly voice over the microphone, “Fifteen minutes, folks. That’s all we have here.” Fifteen minutes to decide her life. She checks herself in a compact mirror, smoothes her hair, and licks the lipstick off her teeth. She looks at the tobacco stains on her fingertips, and wonders if her parents will notice. If they’re there.

She walks into the terminal not knowing what to expect. Not one of the thousand scenes that have played out in her mind prepare her for what she sees. There, in the concrete-walls-and-plastic-chairs bus terminal in Traverse City, Michigan, stands a group of forty brothers and sisters and great-aunts and uncles and cousins and a grandmother and great-grandmother to boot. They’re all wearing goofy party hats and blowing noise-makers, and taped across the entire wall of the terminal is a computer-generated banner that reads “Welcome home!”

Out of the crowd of well-wishers breaks her dad. She stares out through the tears quivering in her eyes like hot mercury and begins the memorized speech, “Dad, I’m sorry. I know…”
He interrupts her. “Hush, child. We’ve got no time for that. No time for apologies. You’ll be late for the party. A banquet’s waiting for you at home.”

Here’s to new beginnings, new hope (thanks, New Hope Academy!) and 15:20.

Lights On During Fog

I’m sitting here watching a preacher on television, looking dapper in his nice pin-striped suit and colorful tie, offering well-traveled principles on how to get the most out of life. One of the points he has just made is “Learn How To Travel In The Fog” meaning, of course, when life is uncertain, there is One who is always certain and can be trusted, so follow His lead with the eyes of faith. Good reminder to be sure.

The trouble is, when he made his point, the corresponding words that flashed on the television screen were slightly different. One little word was altered which changed the meaning completely. The person in the multimedia department who was responsible and for whatever reason, flashed the words: “Learn To Travel In A Fog”.

I’ll bet they wished they had caught it before it went to broadcast!

That seems to be the general atmosphere among the church scene of the 21st century. We yawn our way through Sunday and sleep-walk our faith throughout the week. Cobwebs grow along the cavernous chambers of our hearts. There is no bite, no vim and vigor and little passion in our love affair with Christ. What love affair? We’d rather keep it on the down-low, not wanting to turn it into something that will raise eyebrows or elicit exclaims of “what’s happened to you?” We prefer, many of us, to keep the thermostat on 75; not too hot, not too cool. Just right. Cozy, even.

I’m not posing that we look to emotionalism as being the savior of the church. Lord knows we have churches that pump up the jam, jump and shout amid lasers and stage lights and still have no more effect on cultural transformation than how a frog’s hopping in the woods would cause someone in town to turn his head worried over tremors and earthquakes. Whether the fog is on the stage or in the pews, no matter.

I am positing, however, a return to a high view of God. His being transcends all and if we lift our eyes above the fog, we will see Him.

Tony Evans, pastor of the Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas, said he went to his neighborhood Wal-mart recently to shop for a few items. He didn’t want the hassle of long lines so he left his house early to avoid the hubbub but when he arrived, the parking lot was full. Groaning and not a little puzzled over why so many would be out shopping so early, he went inside to discover the reason: there was a store-wide clearance sale.

While waiting in one of those cursed long lines, it dawned on him that this is how most people approach their commitment level with Christ. If you can get God at a reduced price, they’re all for it. Keep God cheap and they’re in. But offer me a God at retail, or worse, an inflated price, uh, no thanks, I’ll just sleep in.

Say what you want about the Puritans, I have a strong appreciation for my forebears concerning the esteem to which they raised and praised God. It sounds out-dated I know, but they feared Him something fierce! Sure, at times they went a little overboard with the language of we humans as low-down dirty worms and worthless, but they really knew how to exalt the Almighty to the highest place and give Him His due honor.

Over the weekend, I heard some Christian girl group from the UK sing about Jesus as being their “sunshine”, all the while dancing and looking worldly and seductive; and though the sound was catchy, the lyrics were so nebulous one could easily think they were singing about a boyfriend. We want to package Christianity so close to the world’s comfort level (“keep Him cheap”) thinking that will hook them when all it does is muddy the waters a good deal more. Christianity then gets so assimilated into all other religions and worldviews it has lost its potency.

Ah, but go to the airwaves or workplace and herald Christ as the Almighty, omnipotent, transcendent Lord, the only way and only hope for mankind, then heads will turn and the fog will clear. Our culture is saddled with many gods, none of which can save the human race. We, the people of the only true God, must get God out of the bargain basement and elevate Him in our lives, our homes, and our weekly places of worship.

Who wants to fall in love with “Sunshine”? No, beloved, but I certainly can swoon and blush at the thought of creation’s Creator fighting and conquering all enemies just to win me for His Bride! And to think He’s coming for me—any day now!—makes me want to be ready and clear-headed.

Though I’m dark You say I am lovely

Though I’m poor You say I am beautiful

Somehow my weakness has overwhelmed You

Somehow my weak glance has stolen away Your heart

That’s reason and motivation enough, wouldn’t you say? Oh, and if you catch me napping, remind me of these things. And if I look like I’m in a fog, do me a favor and slap some sense into me.

Left-Turn Jesus?

When Jesus entered Jerusalem amid the cries of “Liberate us! Rescue us! Now! Today!” He once again zigged when mob mentality preferred He zag and have done with it. Our Savior who was there when beasts of burden were created, gently nudged the animal on which He was riding to go right when all of the Passover throng urged Him left.

Had He gone left, the road would have taken Him to the Fortress of Antonias, the residence of Pilate who was then governor of Judea. You can almost imagine the egress of humanity as it parted to give their conquering king leeway to lead the revolution Rome-ward. Get Rome out of our Home! signs, if there were such, would say. The waving of palm branches and the rubbing of palms would intermingle buoyed by the hoots and hollers of antsy renegades long tired of Gentile occupation.

But He turned right instead.

“Wha–?”

“What the–?”

“Where’s He going? Jesus! Jesus! Wrong way!”

“Left!”

“Left, we say!”

But the butt end of a donkey spoke volumes. Its right flank told the fed-up malcontents that this King may not be their king after all. Where was He going? Oh wait, I know, some thought. Optimism rising: He’s gonna do a victory lap around the city BEFORE He rides into the jaws of Gentile dominion. But they were wrong.

Gently coaxing the beast onward through the thickening atmosphere of suspicion and burgeoning alarm, the Teacher wended His way past the curious and the quietened. Mouths were hanging open and palm branches drooped, tips touching the stone and sand of the city. Whispers carried over the tops of heads and more than a few voices raised in faltered protest, still not exactly sure what this quasi-king was up to.

The Temple. Oh, sure, He needs to go into the Temple for a blessing before He confronts the enemy. So they thought.

The outer court of the Temple proper was filled with turtledoves, pigeons, lambs and rams. Moneychangers had their booths set up all over the area and as Jesus dismounted, a strange and deadly fire billowed in His eyes. He looked upon the carnivalian sight with disgust and wasted little time finding some cords with which to fashion whips. If no one had been watching and wondering up until now, they were certainly doing just that in this moment. What was He going to do? Wait! The whips must be for the backs of the oppressors!

Hardly.

With zeal no one had seen until this time, the Christ’s arms flashed out tentacles of cord against the backs of the moneylenders and court shysters. The tips never touched animal flesh but how they snaked and bit into the cloth and skin of those who were turning this sacred ground into their operations of greed and blasphemy. How the Son of Man whirled in furious passion, a blur of blazing authority! Howling out protests agains such unrequited insolence, these merchants of mayhem ran for the exits and straight into the waiting arms of the planners of the carpenter’s demise.

Fast forward several days.

Pilate stands before the mob, irritated and incredulous at their fickleness. How could the same people who lauded and applauded this pitiful Man a few days earlier now want His blood to run down the sewers of the city? Can anyone figure out these lunatics? He called for a man named Jesus to be brought forward, a terrorist imprisoned for atrocities against Roman soldiers. Standing him beside another Man named Jesus, he said:

“Which Jesus do you want?”

You see, One Jesus had said to anyone who would listen for three years that He had come from His Father and most if not all knew exactly what He meant. He was saying quite literally He was the sent-One from God, God in human flesh, the One this nation had been waiting for, prophesied for centuries, and He was here, now.

The other Jesus was one who spoke their language and gave them exactly what they wanted. Few know his first name was Jesus but most know him as Bar-abbas, translated: the son of his father, and both stood side by side before the world, as it were, and, except for a shockingly small number, most chose the one who would give them immediate satisfaction. They wanted the freedom-fighter, not the Giver of Freedom. They wanted the one who whipped the Romans, not the Jews.

And so Jesus was tried, convicted and crucified. All because He turned right instead of left.

There are so many ways to take this but I want to submit that much of what is called the church today, had it been living in that era, would, I fear, blend into that fickle mob, choosing a left-turn Jesus rather than a right-turn Lord. Many do not want a Supreme King to reign over them but they are fired-up silly for a God who will give them what they want.

Peter himself, in a fit of schizonphrenia, told Jesus to turn left just weeks from Passion week, way up in the foothills of Mt. Hermon near Caesarea Philippi (see Matt. 16:21-22). Jesus told the disciples ahead of time which way He would turn, but Peter said, “NO! Not on my watch You won’t!” You see, Peter couldn’t stand the thought of Jesus dying—for a variety of reasons, some of them subtle, some not-so. I think that the impulsive fisherman innately knew Jesus’ death meant his own would surely follow.

That’s the church, or at least what passes for the church today. We want left, left, left! But Jesus is turning right. See Him? And if we are His people, we need to go that way too.

Must Jesus bear the cross alone
And all the world go free?
No, there’s a cross for everyone
And there’s a cross for me.

The consecrated cross I’ll bear
Till death shall set me free;
And then go home my crown to wear
For there’s a crown for me!



This post inspired by David Pawson’s teaching, “The Uniqueness of Christ”