Tuesday, August 22, 2006
For more pics of my vacations, click the link below as I have them all online at Shutterfly.com:
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Here's Jac and I on our Bermuda cruise during formal night...
Here's Jac's dad, brother and sister with us on the Alaska cruise...
Monday, August 21, 2006
Heb 9:14 "How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!"
My pastor in a sermon last week related a moving story about a dying man he'd spent time with in the hospital during his final days. In those days, the dying man spent a fair amount of time telling my pastor stories, many of them about his days in WWII. He was in a tank brigade under General Patton, and remained there for the duration of the war, going all over Northern Africa and Europe.
At first, the man was really struggling to keep it together. His buddies were dying all around him and he was constantly afraid that the next bullet had his name on it. This went on for a while, till one day he and his buddies were sitting around a fire talking about how scared they were and it hit them: They were going to die! They were not going to make it out alive, and as such were basically dead men already. Having made his peace with the fact that he was basically a dead man walking, the man began taking more dangerous assignments, like driving the gasoline truck. His "courage" couldn't have been greater. He saw the tracers flying through the air all around him and he didn't give them a second thought. It just didn't matter anymore. He was already dead, it was just a matter of timing.
Obviously the man didn't die in the war, since he was sitting in his hospital bed many years later recounting this story to my pastor. But I think there's a key lesson here for me and others like me that the author of Hebrews also hits upon.
How is it that we "die to sin"? I certainly don't feel dead to sin. In fact, Paul and I should shout and beat our chests together as we lament our complete inability to consistently execute on that which we know is right.
What if we looked at OUR life like that? I'm capitalizing OUR life because I want to be clear that most of the time when we say that, we're implying some type of ownership and stake in how it all goes down. Jesus says "He who loses his life for my sake shall find it." Maybe this is a case where we daily consider ourselves dead to ourselves - as in the case the of the man in the war, only the mission matters. There's something freeing about not worrying about staying alive.
At the end of the day, fear is usually about risk. Whether it's the risk of getting caught, getting hurt, or just getting embarrassed. When you're dead, there is no more risk. When there's no more risk, there is no more fear. I would like to call out how incredibly difficult this is, and the tension that Jesus presents here. He is AGONIZING in the Garden of Gethsemane (Luke 22:44) because it takes a tremendous amount of effort to die to self and submit to the will of God. (Ray, you're going to have to comment on this as it might be a little misleading, because I feel like it might not actually be consistent with the nature of Jesus to be agonizing about his death. Perhaps he's agonizing about being separated from the Father by the sins that he is about to bear...thoughts??) Either way, I bring it up because I don't want to trivialize how difficult this can be sometimes.
Bringing this back to the passage from Hebrews, I believe that this hits upon the same point. We must be single-minded in our focus "Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus." We cannot let our past failures deter us or hinder us. Our Lord has called us for a specific purpose, gifted each one to build up the body of Christ, and paid the price for our failures and manifests his strengths in our weaknesses.
I was going to end my post there, but this truth is so great that it would be a shame for my feeble literary skills to get in the way of the point, so I'm going to paint a couple of simple illustrations to make it clear:
Illustration #1 (this one's a bit personal):
You've got a great job, making all kinds of money, people are really excited about your potential and future with the company. IT DOESN'T MATTER! There is no pressure to live up to the hype! As long as you're seeking the will of God consistently through consistent prayer, fasting, and reading the Word, you operate on His will. Not that of peers, bosses, or even yourself. You're dead to that. You've got a mission and you're following marching orders. If that means staying with the company, you'll happily do that. If that means leaving the company, you're happy to do that - but it's not a risk either way! It's only a risk if you're "living" this life!
My pastor in a sermon last week related a moving story about a dying man he'd spent time with in the hospital during his final days. In those days, the dying man spent a fair amount of time telling my pastor stories, many of them about his days in WWII. He was in a tank brigade under General Patton, and remained there for the duration of the war, going all over Northern Africa and Europe.
At first, the man was really struggling to keep it together. His buddies were dying all around him and he was constantly afraid that the next bullet had his name on it. This went on for a while, till one day he and his buddies were sitting around a fire talking about how scared they were and it hit them: They were going to die! They were not going to make it out alive, and as such were basically dead men already. Having made his peace with the fact that he was basically a dead man walking, the man began taking more dangerous assignments, like driving the gasoline truck. His "courage" couldn't have been greater. He saw the tracers flying through the air all around him and he didn't give them a second thought. It just didn't matter anymore. He was already dead, it was just a matter of timing.
Obviously the man didn't die in the war, since he was sitting in his hospital bed many years later recounting this story to my pastor. But I think there's a key lesson here for me and others like me that the author of Hebrews also hits upon.
How is it that we "die to sin"? I certainly don't feel dead to sin. In fact, Paul and I should shout and beat our chests together as we lament our complete inability to consistently execute on that which we know is right.
What if we looked at OUR life like that? I'm capitalizing OUR life because I want to be clear that most of the time when we say that, we're implying some type of ownership and stake in how it all goes down. Jesus says "He who loses his life for my sake shall find it." Maybe this is a case where we daily consider ourselves dead to ourselves - as in the case the of the man in the war, only the mission matters. There's something freeing about not worrying about staying alive.
At the end of the day, fear is usually about risk. Whether it's the risk of getting caught, getting hurt, or just getting embarrassed. When you're dead, there is no more risk. When there's no more risk, there is no more fear. I would like to call out how incredibly difficult this is, and the tension that Jesus presents here. He is AGONIZING in the Garden of Gethsemane (Luke 22:44) because it takes a tremendous amount of effort to die to self and submit to the will of God. (Ray, you're going to have to comment on this as it might be a little misleading, because I feel like it might not actually be consistent with the nature of Jesus to be agonizing about his death. Perhaps he's agonizing about being separated from the Father by the sins that he is about to bear...thoughts??) Either way, I bring it up because I don't want to trivialize how difficult this can be sometimes.
Bringing this back to the passage from Hebrews, I believe that this hits upon the same point. We must be single-minded in our focus "Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus." We cannot let our past failures deter us or hinder us. Our Lord has called us for a specific purpose, gifted each one to build up the body of Christ, and paid the price for our failures and manifests his strengths in our weaknesses.
I was going to end my post there, but this truth is so great that it would be a shame for my feeble literary skills to get in the way of the point, so I'm going to paint a couple of simple illustrations to make it clear:
Illustration #1 (this one's a bit personal):
You've got a great job, making all kinds of money, people are really excited about your potential and future with the company. IT DOESN'T MATTER! There is no pressure to live up to the hype! As long as you're seeking the will of God consistently through consistent prayer, fasting, and reading the Word, you operate on His will. Not that of peers, bosses, or even yourself. You're dead to that. You've got a mission and you're following marching orders. If that means staying with the company, you'll happily do that. If that means leaving the company, you're happy to do that - but it's not a risk either way! It's only a risk if you're "living" this life!
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