Month: June 2018

Psalm 46:1-11
Mark 6:30-46

A man seeking solitude moved to an isolated mountaintop. One day he heard a knock and there sat a snail and it said, “It is quite cold out here can I come in?” The man shouted, “No, I came here to be alone!” and he flicked the snail down the mountainside. One year later there was a knock at the door and there sat that snail and it said, “What did you do that for?”

I’m not recommending relocation to a lonely mountaintop, but I am strongly endorsing planned solitude as an important aspect of Christian living.

To be sure, there is a difference in being alone and solitude. Being alone is by definition, being alone; that is, by yourself. Many of not most people would say that they do not relish being alone. Solitude, on the other hand, is a preferred state of being in which we seek God’s own heart to keep company with Him.

The author of Celebration of Disciplines, Richard Foster, writes, “Loneliness is inner emptiness; solitude is inner fulfillment.” ¹

Famed theologian Paul Tillich wrote: “Loneliness expresses the pain of being alone and solitude expresses the glory of being alone.” ²

The irony is that the pain of loneliness often deters people from seeking the glory of solitude.

If Jesus is our model for Christian living, then we need to follow Him as He seeks solitude on a regular basis. Anyone who reads the gospels quickly picks up that Jesus is a very busy guy as He ministers to droves of people seeking something from Him. But it is only the careful reader who discovers that Jesus was very proactive about getting away to spend time alone with His Heavenly Father.

Seeking solitude was how He made important decisions; it’s how He dealt with troubling emotions; it’s how He handled the constant demands of His ministry; and it’s how He prepared for his death on the cross.

Today’s text from Mark aptly illustrates both the busyness of the ministry of Jesus as He feeds the 5,000 as well as His purposeful sending away of His disciples so that He can seek a few precious moments of solitude with His Heavenly Father.

Jesus invites us to join Him in solitude for at least four very good reasons. (more…)

Psalm 27:1-6
Mark 12:28-31
Hebrews 10:19-22

I was reading about a father who was also a pastor and who asked the third-grade class to draw a picture of God. His daughter, who was in that class, showed her dad her picture: “I don’t know what God looks like,” she said, “so I just drew you, daddy, instead.”

It has been said that “a child is not likely to find a father in God unless he finds something of God in his father.” And so I thought it would be good to spend some time today talking about drawing near to God, our Heavenly Father, through the Lord Jesus. For I can say with certainty that the closer any father gets to God our Father, the better father he will be.

Seems to me the first step in drawing near to God is having the desire to do so.

It’s one thing to talk about wanting to know God better, but how desperately do we want it?

Let’s do a heart check. On a scale of 1 to 10, how much do you desire to draw near to God?

Is this as much a priority for us as it was for the writer of the 27th Psalm?

One thing I ask of the LORD, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple.” (27:4)

In those pregnant verses I read from Hebrews, there is only one main, frank command, “Let us draw near!” 7 times in this letter the writer uses this verb “draw near.” We’ll take a gander at just three of those

4:16 “Let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and may find grace to help in time of need.

7:25 “He is able to save forever those who draw near to God through Him

11:6 “Without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who draws near to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.

It may well have been that this writer had Jeremiah 29:13 in mind: “You will seek Me and find Me when you seek me with all your heart.” Or perhaps, he had read a copy of James. “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you” (4:8).

But regardless the overwhelming passion of this writer is that we “draw near to God” that we have fellowship with Him; that we not settle for a Christian life at a distance from God, that we experience what the old Puritans called communion with God.

This is the very heart of the entire New Testament gospel, isn’t it? That Jesus came into the world to make a way for us to come to His and our Father in heaven.

But how in the world can we draw near to someone we can’t see, hear, or touch? It’s not like we can meet God at Starbucks for coffee and greet Him with a hug. So how do we “draw near;” what is that supposed to look like?

Once we have the desire, we can take the next step toward drawing near: “Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, mind, soul, and strength.” (more…)

Matthew 7:1-5
John 8:1-11

In this passage from John’s gospel, Jesus was practicing what He preached in Matthew’s gospel. “Do not judge others, or you will be judged.”

I shudder when I read that because it is so easy to do exactly what Jesus said we should not do.

Let’s face it, judging others is a natural human trait. At one time, making quick judgments made the difference between life and death. Today our social media craze exacerbates the problem as we are encouraged to add our comments, our judgments to every story that appears. Our society is becoming a society of judges.

I try my hardest not to make assumptions about others, I really do, but sometimes despite my best efforts, I will find myself exploring feelings of negativity towards someone else. Is there anyone here who has not been guilty of making some gross misjudgment toward another person? Is there anyone here who has not suffered from someone else’s misjudgment?

There are several reasons we should not judge others; that is: make fun of others, criticize others, talk about them behind their backs, turn our backs on them, or in any other way think we are superior to them.

First, although first impressions are sometimes true, things are not always as they at first appear.

Researchers out of Princeton University have found that people make judgments about such things as trustworthiness, competence, and likeability within a fraction of a second after seeing someone’s face. The researchers caution, “The link between facial features and character may be tenuous at best, but that doesn’t stop our minds from sizing other people up at a glance.”

It is true sometimes we are accurate at making a judgment about other people based upon first impressions. However; this limited ability becomes a problem when we begin to believe our first impressions are always right.

Not long ago, an elderly woman in California went to a grocery store. When she returned to her car, she noticed four men getting into it. The woman let go of her shopping cart, reached into her purse and pulled out a small handgun she keeps for just such occasions. She walked to the front of her car, aimed the pistol and started screaming at the top of her lungs for those guys to get out of her car. They didn’t hesitate, they threw the doors open scrambled out as fast as they could and took off running across the parking lot. She put her gun back in her purse, put her groceries in the back seat and got into the driver’s seat intending to drive to the police station. There was only one problem; her key wouldn’t fit in the ignition. A quick glance around the interior confirmed she was in the wrong car. Her car was parked three spaces down in the same row. So she loaded her groceries into her car and drove to the police station to report what she had done. When she told the sergeant what she had done, he couldn’t contain his laughter as he pointed to the other end of the counter where four very shaken preachers who had just finished having lunch together were reporting a car-jacking by a mad elderly woman. The woman apologized profusely and the clergymen declined to press charges.

Have you ever jumped to conclusions about someone and then judged them in some way only to discover later that you were badly mistaken? Like the woman in that parking lot, do any of us have a tendency to jump to conclusions and assume the worst about other people?

Jesus taught that if we avoid judging others by not jumping to conclusions we won’t have to worry about being embarrassed or having to apologize later. Which leads to the next point.

We never know all the facts about either a situation or the person. (more…)

Matthew 18:20
I Corinthians 10:16-17

I had been teaching my three-year-old daughter, Caitlin, the Lord’s Prayer for several evenings at bedtime. She would repeat after me the lines from the prayer. Finally, she decided to go solo. I listened with pride as she carefully enunciated each word, right up to the end of the prayer: “Lead us not into temptation,” she prayed, “but deliver us from E-mail.”

Seriously though, as helpful as e-mail can be, it one medium that is to blame (if I can use that word) for the increasing isolation psychologists are seeing across the board. Yes, many experts are noting in various studies the trend of people moving away from face to face communication with even our friends preferring more and more instead to relate to them electronically. And this trend is rapidly growing through the ever increasing use of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and texting.

Similarly, psychologists say that as the number of people who participate in worldwide online, virtual reality video games, there is mounting concern that many are squandering their real lives by obsessing over their imaginary ones. According to a survey of 30,000 gamers conducted by Stanford University nearly 40% of men and 53 % of women who play online games rated their virtual friends as better than their real-life friends. ¹

A study conducted by the National Opinion Research Center revealed that Americans have fewer people they confide in than past generations. In 1985, the average American had three people in whom to confide matters that were important to them. In 2004, that number dropped to two. Perhaps even more striking, the number of Americans with no close friends rose from 10 percent in 1985 to 24.6 percent in 2004. ²

It all adds up to people spending less and less time in the company of fellow human beings.

Psychologists have even come up with an acronym for the phenomenon; PSI is Perceived Social Isolation. From an online article I read this morning about the relationship of PSI to health:

There are clear linkages between PSI and the cardiovascular system, neuroendocrine system, and cognitive functioning. PSI also leads to depression, cognitive decline, and sleep problems. ³

It’s even happening in the church where more and more Christians are preferring to remain isolated by watching church on television or online.

From my perspective, that’s tragic and that’s an opportunity for the church. (more…)