Finished Project

Throughout the late Spring and Summer 2014 Steve, his son Grant, and I worked on a crib for Grant's coming baby girl (born last week). We spent Monday mornings working on this project. My best guess is that we have at least 150 man hours into making it. The red oak wood and hardware were close to $500. I found a youtube video of a father and son doing this project  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RV0qnuaIQyg ].

My father made many wood projects: roll top desk, toy box, bunk bed, etc...I never understood the effort required until I inherited his tools, set up a shop, took a class, and started to make things.

The value of doing this crib was spending the time with an old friend, Steve, and making a new friend, Grant. As the little girl grows, they can share how dad and grandpa made the bed for her.
I once read that 'the process is more important than the product.'  If the process is done well, the finished product will turn out.

I think that can be a good life lesson. We go through life with a variety of experiences (some apparently good, others bad, others neutral, and others unknown), and we don't know the end purpose to many of them. But if we seek the Lord through them, they are not wasted.

The Bible has a good promise that God works through all things to accomplish His purposes in our lives.

 Romans 8:28 (ESV)
²⁸ And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.

May we all hold on to this promise.

Worm Theology

God knows our hearts, our intentions, our actions. What we are building with our lives will last or not last. We need to live with an awesome respect for God’s awesome holiness so that we build something which will last. We all live with the frailty of life and it is, but we also live with the confidence of faith in a gracious loving God.

“Worm theology” is a focus on our sinfulness in light of God’s holiness.

Considering worms

{from the children’s song}
 Nobody likes me, everybody hates me,
I think I'll go eat worms!
Big fat juicy ones,
Eensie weensy squeensy ones,
See how they wiggle and squirm!

Down goes the first one, down goes the second one,
Oh how they wiggle and squirm!
Up comes the first one, up comes the second one,
Oh how they wiggle and squirm!

I bite off the heads, and suck out the juice,
And throw the skins away!
Nobody knows how fat I grow,
On worms three times a day!

On a more serious note the effect of worm theology is to make us feel bad that we are awful sinners, without focusing on the grace goodness and power  of God which is highlighted by

Colossians 1:27-29 (ESV)
27 To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
28 Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ.
29 For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.


We are building our lives by how we live in light of eternity.

“How to please God” message outline

“How to please God”
1 Thes. 4:1-8
September 14th , 2014

Our ultimate purpose should be to Please God
1 Corinthians 10:31 (ESV)
31 So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.

Colossians 3:17 (ESV)
17 And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

Colossians 3:23 (ESV)
23 Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men,

How to please God.....

I. Nurture the Passion to Please God.  (1-2)
1 Thessalonians 4:1-2 (ESV)
1 Finally, then, brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God, just as you are doing, that you do so more and more.
2 For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus.

A fascinating spiritual dynamic is illustrated in
Exodus 33:13 (ESV)
13 Now therefore, if I have found favor in your sight, please show me now your ways, that I may know you in order to find favor in your sight. Consider too that this nation is your people.”


II. It God’s will for you to be Holy and  Avoid Sexual Immorality (3)
1 Thessalonians 4:3 (ESV)
3 For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality;

A.  Reinforcement #1.  If you don’t, you are living like those who don’t know God.(4-5)
1 Thessalonians 4:4-5 (ESV)
4 that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, 5 not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God;

B.   Reinforcement # 2   If you don’t, God will punish you    (6)
1 Thessalonians 4:6 (ESV)
6 that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you.

III  God empowers his call to Holy Living by His Holy Spirit.  (7-8)
1 Thessalonians 4:7-8 (ESV)
7 For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness.
8 Therefore whoever disregards this, disregards not man but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you.

Feed the nature that you want to have control....

The Spiritual Nature
Galatians 5:22-25 (ESV)
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.
24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.

The Sin Nature
Galatians 5:19-21 (ESV)
19 Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, 20 idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, 21 envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Conclusion
You don’t have to be anyone other than the person God created you to be.
Your uniqueness empowered by the Spirit God is what pleases God.

Remember to....
Please God by seeking Him.
Seek God by Pleasing Him.

Why are there so many Bible versions?

I counted fourteen versions of the Bible on my computer. I use two or three of them in my studies.  Unless you are proficient in ancient Hebrew and Greek, you will be reading the Bible  from a translation.

Here are the first two verses of Psalm 23:

King James Version  (KJV) 
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. [2] He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.

New King James Version (NKJV) 
The Lord is my shepherd;  I shall not want.  [2] He makes me to lie down in green pastures;
 He leads me beside the still waters.

Both the KJV and NKJV are literal translations of the Bible. They try to translate word for word from the original text. Modern literal translations include the New American Standard Bible and New Revised Standard Version.

New International Version of the Bible (NIV) 
 The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.   [2] He makes me lie down in green pastures,
 he leads me beside quiet waters,

The NIV is a dynamic equivalent which is an  attempt to go phrase for phrase from the original text in order to smooth out the flow of the language.

The Message  (MsgB) 
 God, my shepherd!  I don't need a thing. [2] You have bedded me down in lush meadows,
            you find me quiet pools to drink from.

The MsgB is a paraphrase. The goal is to put ancient vernacular to modern vernacular.  A paraphrase would be more appropriate for reading, than for in depth study.

There are many Bible versions because of the long history of the English language and different goals in the translation process.                   
Is one version of the Bible better for me than another version? 

For  greater readability, I encourage people to use a more modern translation of the Bible like the New International Version or the New American Standard Bible.

I have met many people who are committed to the King James Version. To these people I would ask them to check out the New King James Version because it updates some of the more archaic language while keeping the beauty of the original.

The bottom line is to find a Bible version you are comfortable with and spend time reading and studying it.

Funerals - thinking of eternity and teachable moments

Many years ago we attended the funeral of a young man who had committed suicide in his father’s home. ‘Tragic’ is the only word I can think of to describe the situation where such a young person reaches a point of hopelessness and takes the steps to end their life.  The church that had the funeral for this young man was filled with high school classmates, friends, and family who were there to say goodbye to this young man.  The youth pastor that conducted the service tried to make the situation as positive as possible when describing the life of this young man. The elephant in the room that was not addressed was this young man taking his own life and its devastating impact on those he knew and loved. By not addressing the issue of suicide this youth pastor performed a tragic disservice to family and friends

I’ve conducted many funerals over the years. The most enjoyable one (if that is appropriate to say) was that of my aunt who loved Jesus for many decades. Her prayers kept my dad alive in Vietnam. If he is in Heaven, her faithful and fervent prayers, along with the grace of God get the credit.  Her life and funeral reflected the grace and goodness of God amidst difficult circumstances.

Most of the funerals I that have done were in a sense more standard where the desire was to speak God’s truth in words of comfort to family and friends.  The most difficult funeral I conducted was for a bad guy. My desire was to acknowledge the value of his life to his estranged wife and teenage sons. And at the same time I did not want to gloss over how poorly he led his life and hurt those around him.  The family seemed satisfied with what I said.

More recently some celebrities have died under less than normal circumstances. Deaths related to drug abuse are common. It is even more of a tragedy when those who knew and loved them do not speak to the drug abuse that led to their early deaths.  The same is true when issues of mental illness and suicide are not addressed by those who knew and loved them.  

Funerals are time when people in the normal busyness of life take time to think of death and eternity.

1 Thessalonians 4:13-14 (ESV) 13  But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. 14  For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep.

 Christians are not to grieve as those who have no hope. We are to grieve in light of God’s goodness and grace. We are to have confidence know that for the believer to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. [2 Corinthians 5:8]

In our present reality may we look to God’s eternal purposes (John 3:16).

True Persecution

Years ago I got into a discussion with someone who said I was persecuting him. I said my disagreement with their religious views was not persecution. It was just disagreement. In the years before the internet I suggested he read "Foxe's Book of Martyrs" if he wanted to understand true persecution.

Organizations like 'Voice of the Martyrs' (http://www.persecution.com/) has a lot of detail on current Christian persecution.

On Christian radio a few weeks ago I heard about Paul Schnieder who was a pastor imprisoned in the prison camp Buchenwald. So later I googled his name and found out more of his story which is shared below.

[The following was copied from http://www.perryville.org with their notation "adapted from an article in the Kairos Journal;
For those interested in more details - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Schneider and http://www.amazon.com/Paul-Schneider-Buchenwald-Christian-sourcebook/dp/1887732098]

The Buchenwald Apostle—Paul Schneider (1897 – 1939)

   As the Nazi swastika was raised over Buchenwald prison camp, the command, “Caps off!” blared through the loudspeakers. On this May morning in 1938, every prisoner instantly obeyed, except one scrawny pastor from the Rhineland, Paul Schneider. His fellow inmates glanced fearfully toward the guards. These prisoners knew the young preacher was no coward, but this was madness.

When the formation was dismissed, his friends rushed to him, urging him to cooperate. He calmly replied that he must bear faithful witness to Christ and must protest the brutality he saw around him.1 That witness would soon be tested, for the loudspeakers then directed the prisoner who kept his cap on to report to the gate. If he did not, the whole camp would be punished. Schneider responded by heading to the guardhouse at a fast trot.

Schneider was in the camp because he would not accommodate Hitler’s heresies. He refused to give communion to two local Nazis, who were members of his church.2 At the funeral of a member of the Hitler Youth, a leader spoke of enrolling the deceased in the “Storm Troopers of heaven.” Schneider publicly rebuked the man and was imprisoned for a week. During the winter of 1935-36, the mayor’s office summoned him twelve times for speaking out against the party. Following another arrest in July 1937, the Nazis banished him from the Rhineland. They drove him outside his parish and warned him never to return. Instead Schneider walked straight to the station, threw his exclusion order in the bin, and caught the next train home.3

Schneider was neither a brilliant intellectual on the order of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, nor a colorful, national celebrity like Martin Niemoeller. He was only an ordinary pastor, faithful in the conduct of his day-to-day ministry. That faithfulness carried over into the camp, where he was severely beaten for refusal to remove his cap. Cast into solitary confinement for a year, Schneider nevertheless continued to protest. When escaped prisoners were captured and then executed, the pastor cried out from his cell, “In the name of Jesus Christ, I witness against the murder of prisoners . . .”4

Each time he spoke up, he was brutalized once again, and on July 18, 1939, he succumbed to his injuries. His life—and death—were so inspiring that even the atheists in the camp joined in calling him the “Buchenwald Apostle.” Later, the Communist government of East Germany would build a memorial to honor this Christian pastor.

Shortly before his final arrest, Schneider warned his congregation about the peril in the land: “[W]e can no longer close our eyes to the high towering waves which we see rolling in from our ‘folk-life’ in the Third Reich.”5 He called Nazism “naked paganism” and proclaimed it incompatible with the Christian faith.6 There could be no middle ground. It was time for fearless confession, as in the early Church, for Jesus Himself said, “Only the one who confesses Me before men will I confess before My heavenly Father.”

Though many Christians around the world today suffer severe persecution, few in the West must sacrifice their very lives for the integrity of the Church. But even in Europe and the Americas, there can be a cost, so all must decide whether they will stand with Jesus and confess His Truth or continue to look the other way and allow evil to triumph by default. If they stand true, they do so in the tradition of Pastor Schneider. Though he paid a dear price, he gained the title “Buchenwald Apostle.” Christians doff their hats to him—and to all whose graceful, yet unbending witness, honors the kingdom of God.

Footnotes:

1  Claude R. Foster, Jr., Paul Schneider – The Buchenwald Apostle (West Chester, Pennsylvania: West Chester University Press, 1997), 786.

2  Arvan E. Gordon, “Between God and the Gestapo,” Church Times Website, http://copies.anglicansonline.org/churchtimes/990716/feature.htm.

3  “A Twentieth Century Martyr,” Free Church Foundations Website, www.btinternet.com/~s.j.mackay/foundations/martyr.html (accessed May 27, 2004).

4  E. H. Robertson, Paul Schneider: The Pastor of Buchenwald (London: SCM Press, 1956), 112-114.

5  Rudolf Wentorf, Paul Schneider – The Witness of Buchenwald, trans. Franklin Sanders (Tucson: American Eagle Publications, 1993), 50.

6  See also Kairos Journal article, “The Pulpit at Le Chambon.”




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