Grace When I Am Terminal
March 8, 2008
This is the last of the series by Pastor James McDonald. The text he used is found in 2 Kings 5:1-14.
This is the story of Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Syria. He was a great man, but was a leper. Towards the end of the story you will see how he experienced God’s wonderful grace and was healed.
Leprosy - an infectious disease that has been known since biblical times. It is characterized by disfiguring skin sores, peripheral nerve damage, and progressive debilitation. It is a terminal condition.
Sin is likened to leprosy. In Ezekiel 18:20, it says, “The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself.” Furthermore, Romans 6:23 says, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
These are the obstacles that Naaman experienced during his sickness:
1. It can’t be this hopeless. 2 Kings 5:1.
- He was a great man with his master and in high favor, because by him the Lord had given victory to Syria. He was a mighty man of valor, but he was a leper. He felt hopeless inspite of all the fame and success.
2. It can’t be this hard. 2 Kings 5:2-7.
- He thought the process of him being healed was easy. He realized it was hard.
3. It can’t be this humbling. 2 Kings 5:8-12.
- Pride kept him from doing what he was instructed to do by the prophet Elisha. The same pride keeps us from coming to the Lord and doing what He wants us to do.
4. It can’t be this simple. 2 Kings 5:13-14.
- Verse 14 says, “So he (Naaman) went down and dipped himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God, and his flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.”
As soon as Naaman obeyed, he experienced God’s grace to its fullness. He was healed. He was made clean.
Whatever you are going through right now, there is power in believing the abundant grace and love that our Lord Jesus so freely gives. He is everything that you and I need.“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:28-30.
May God’s Word bless you today and everyday.
You are loved.
Beyond Pat Answers
March 8, 2008
by Renee Altson
The youth pastor patted me on top of the head—not with tenderness, but with a dismissive, condescending motion. Tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap. “Just remember,” he said, “God causes all things to work together for good. God won’t give you anything that you can’t handle.”
I wiped away the tears that had started to form and forced a smile. Walking away, I thought, “Dude, you have no idea what I’m going through. I don’t even know if there is a God anymore.”
We live in a world of instant gratification. We can have almost anything we want on demand. Fast food, fast Bible lessons, fast relationships—everything comes with a money-back, feel-good, 30-minutes-or-less guarantee.
Today’s Christianity has bought into that kind of mentality,as well. Got a broken heart? Jesus can fix it. Feel overwhelmed by sadness? Cast all your cares on him. Feeling stuck between two decisions? Just trust and obey.
What are we offering our students when we give them pat answers and tired clichés? Are we teaching them that we buy into the notion of instant pleasure and quick fixes? Are we setting them up for a life of disappointment and doubt?
The pat answers given to me throughout my lifetime, particularly during my adolescent years, almost did me in. They brought guilt and shame—a sense of never being good enough, of never being godly enough. I struggled constantly with these quick fixes that just didn’t work for me. I’d confess, repent, and accept Jesus into my heart—I really would. And nothing would feel any different. So I’d do it again, repeatedly confessing and repenting in an attempt to feel the answers that were supposed to be there. I’d pray for hours, asking Jesus into my heart again and again. Why didn’t he fix me? Why didn’t God give me strength? What was I doing wrong?
In the end, swamped with frustration and sadness, I didn’t blame God or suddenly decide it was Jesus’ fault. I blamed myself.
One of the problems with pat answers is that they’re usually taken straight from Scripture and therefore contain some element of truth—enough truth to distort; enough truth that, when offered, seems real.
We don’t offer lies to our students, we offer half-truths. We offer the resurrection without the agony of the cross. We offer the ascension without the garden of Gethsemane. And we end up with students with half-truth lives—students who won’t know how to survive the difficulties they face; students with weak faith that is easily uprooted by winds of disappointment and doubt.
What can you do to help ground your students? How do you get beyond pat answers? Do you even want to?
Face Pain
You must befriend the reality of hurting people; you must acknowledge some wounds that are so big they may make you ask, “Why, God?” and even “God, are you there?”
One of the problems with Christians is that we feel we must constantly defend our faith so zealously, we don’t know how to let God handle the huge issues. We try to minimize our situations and lives so we don’t need a big God. Big pain requires a big God.
Embrace Unknowing
A million years of theology doesn’t speak to the heart like a genuine “I don’t know.” And let’s be truthful—there are some things we don’t know.
We can guess. We can come up with alliterative phrases that describe the atonement, the purpose of sin, the meaning of redemption; but when it comes to this student in this moment in this situation, we all too often just don’t know. Pretending that we do leads to pat answers and dishonesty.
Allow for Process
There’s a lot of pressure in the church to be okay. It’s subliminal, from upraised hands during the worship chorus to kneeled moments during the altar call, but it exists.
Many people will expect you to fix the hurting kids in your ministry. After all, you’re the youth pastor. But it’s important not to rush the process. We don’t serve a God who expects us to be put together; we serve a God who suffers with us in our sufferings, who weeps with us in our sorrow.
Listen
Sometimes the best words are no words at all. A lot is unsaid in those quiet, intimate moments. Much is conveyed in quiet breathing and simple sharing of space. And in that silence, you won’t damage someone’s heart. You won’t minimize his pain or tell him what you think he needs to hear or what you want to say.
Just be with her. Be with her without feeling a need to fix her. Listen to the cries of her heart. Offer them up to God.
Pat answers are dangerous. They minimize our God and they minimize us. They turn our religion into something that God never intended. And they diminish our light in the world.
Renee Altson is a pat answers survivor, a former youth worker, the Web editor for YouthWorker Journal, the Web content specialist at Youth Specialties, and the author of Stumbling towards Faith: My Longing to Heal from the Evil that God Allowed (emergentYS/Zondervan).
reprinted by permission of youthspecialties.com
Journey in Faith
March 8, 2008
Gospel: Jn 7:40-53
Know Your God in Prayer
March 7, 2008
Gospel: Jn 7:1-2, 10, 25-30
Jesus said to his people, “You know me and also know where I am from. Yet I did not come on my own, but the one who sent me, whom you do not know, is true.”
In fact, there was truth behind the hostility and hatred faced by Jesus from the Jewish authorities, scribes and Pharisees of that time. They thought they knew everything about God and his ways. But their knowledge was just intellectual and not experiential. They considered God as someone who had to be feared and revered so that He may not interfere with their lives. So it was enough to keep the precepts and commandments; the mere literal observance of them. They never tried to know the one who gave them and the purpose for which they were given to them. In short, they did not know their God and his ways.
In the gospels, we come across a person who recognized Jesus and his mission; Simon, who was in the temple at the time of the presentation of Jesus. He recognized Jesus as the Messiah because he had personal experience of God in prayer. Anna, too, recognizes him for the same reason. John the Baptist recognized him for he had known God and his ways in his life. All these holy men had known God as He is. But the people who did not recognize Jesus had a concept of God of their own; a messiah of their dreams, a messiah who would act as they wanted him to act. We read in today’s gospel that when he failed to live up to their expectations, “they were looking for chances to Kill Him”.
Where are we? With those who recognize the messiah or with those who do not want to accept him since he is different from the God of our dreams. Do we search for chances to kill him? Friends, each time we fail to live up to our Christian call, we are indeed searching for chances to kill him. Because a Christian who lives a life of scandal can do more harm than a non-believer who attacks the church. Let us implore God’s grace to grow in knowledge and love of Him and his words. May God bless us.
(the photo in front is from intimacywithgod.com)
The Power of Intercession
March 6, 2008
Gospel: Exodus 32:7-14
In the passage of today we have the picture of a powerful intercessor, Moses, interceding before God for the people who turned away from him by worshipping a golden calf. To intercede means to take the place of another in prayer. Intercession does not mean praying with someone for their needs but in place of those not praying for themselves. Since we are all sinful and weak, we all have gaps in our prayers and need someone else to “stand in the gap,” to take our place, to intercede.
“Thus I have searched among them for someone who could build a wall or stand in the breach” (Ez 22:30).
Moses became a great intercessor. He didn’t feel like standing in for the Israelites in prayer, especially after their disobedience and constant complaining, but still he did. He prayed to God: “Let Your blazing wrath die down; relent in punishing Your people” (Ex 32:12). “So the Lord relented in the punishment He had threatened to inflict on His people” (Ex 32:14).
There was a Moses who interceded for the people of Israel. There was a Lot who interceded on behalf of his people. All the prophets were intercessors before God. Jesus himself was an intercessor before God the Father and when He left us He promised us another intercessor, The Holy Spirit, who came to the apostles in the form of tongues of fire. It is the Holy Spirit who dwells within us who makes us cry out, “Abba, Father!”
Take a look into the miracles of Jesus. He was always eager to perform miracles in behalf of those who interceded for others. It was Jairus who interceded for his daughter, the Syro-Phoenician woman interceding for her daughter, four men bringing a paralytic to Jesus, even breaking the roof of the house of Peter.
Don’t stop interceding before the throne of the Mercy of God, for all that you have in your life may have come to you through the intercession of someone praying for you. So, intercede for your family, your children, friends, leaders of the world. May God bless us all.
March 8th 5:30 PM
March 5, 2008
Kaamulan rehearsals will be held on Saturday, March 8th, from 5:30-9:00PM. Tentatively scheduled at Emmanuel Parish Church; confirmation to be given before Saturday. Please continue to monitor this info channel, and don’t forget to update each other with every new developments.
Most Holy Trinity
March 5, 2008
Gospel :Jn 5:17-30
In an ecumenical meeting, a meeting where the different Christian denominations come together to work together for unity, someone said, “ the whole problem for the disagreement among the theologians of different denominations is that of ‘Trinity’; God, one and three. Let us put aside the dogma of the Trinity and give importance to Jesus. Only then we can attain true unity, and we can be a united church”.
That is a dumb idea. Do you think that putting aside Trinity and giving importance to Jesus will help us to become a united church? Never! In fact t it is when we pay attention to Jesus and his words that we come to know the reality of Trinity. Jesus is the one who revealed the Holy Trinity to us.
For example listen to the Gospel of Today. It is a great insight into the mystery of the Blessed Trinity and the relationship between the Father, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. We are told how Jesus receives his Mission from God the Father and executes it with the help of the Holy Spirit.
Our vocation in this world is nothing but to give expression to their love here on earth. God, me and my neighbour. Let us pray today for the grace to order our lives based on this Trinitarian love and unity and to become praises of God’s Glory here on earth. May God bless us. Amen.
(photo in front page from shootgardening.co.uk)
So Nothing Worse Will Happen to us…
March 4, 2008
Gospel: Jn 5:1-16
Imagine yourself being in the sick-bed for the last thirty-eight years of your life. And there was nobody to help you in any way. You were left alone, uncared for, abandoned and ridiculed. Then all of a sudden, someone comes to your life, and not only cares for you, but heals you completely. But the very next day, you forget about him and about his great mercy.
That is what happens in the gospel passage of today. And that is what happens to many of us. When we go through personal tragedies, disappointments, insults, and other negative experiences we depend on God as if there is no one else to turn to. But once we come out of those experiences and our life begins to flourish once again then we forget God and we find all kinds of excuses for not supporting the church and its ministries to the point of saying,”… all that I have worked for is mine - why should I give to the church?”
Although we go away from God once we have everything, our God does not leave us. As it happened in the life of the man who was healed, God, again and again, breaks into our lives, appears in the ways of our lives, reminding us of one thing: “look you are well; do not sin anymore, so that nothing worse may happen to you”.
Only living a life in remembrance of God’s mercies will empower me to embrace everything in my life with appreciation and grace. Otherwise, my life will turn out to merely be a relentless search for pleasure, position and approval from others; all of which can never satisfy my life. So the important lesson is: “Never ever forget the Lord and his mercies to you”. Make him a partner in every commitment you make and every decision you take, so that “nothing worse may happen to us”.
Interview With God
March 3, 2008
If, out of the blue, God appears to you and gives you three chances at questioning him about anything, would you have those questions ready for the asking?
If he requests the privilege of asking you about your life in turn, would you have the answers? Would you be ready when he comes?
Read the Signs!
March 3, 2008
Gospel: Jn 4:43-54
In today’s gospel passage, Jesus says, “Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will not believe.” When we apply it to our spiritual life, many a time we get an occasional glimpse of what is wrong with us, but we don’t face the facts. We simply close our eyes thinking, ‘I can deal with it later’.
Once, a pilot, who was flying over the ocean, radioed the control tower from his airplane: “I am out of gas at sea, four hundred miles from shore. What should I do? Urgent!”
The control tower replied: “Here are your instructions: say an act of contrition, then wait for the touch down”.
Let us not wait for something tragic to happen to us, before we straighten up our life style. Let us not wait for the signs and wonders from our God. Let us make it a practice of our daily life to make an examination of conscience to see where we stand before our God and do what is necessary to stay closer to him and to our neighbors.
(photo on front page from worth1000.com)