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A Better Kind of Grief!

5×5×5 Bible Plan

Read: I Corinthians 15
Meditation: I Corinthians 15:50

“I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.”

Shift Your Focus… I suppose I have conducted close to a hundred funerals as a pastor.  You have been to your fair share of them as well—or you will by the time you reach the end of your journey.  Death is simply a part of life.  It has been ever since the fall of Adam and Eve when sin entered the human race, and with sin came death.  You and I will die someday, too, because the death rate persistently hovers around 100%.

What is so profound is the amazing difference in the funerals I have conducted for non-believers and memorial services that I have led for Christians.  I use the terms “funeral” and “memorial” as a very purposeful distinction.  And I can sum up the difference in three words: hope, joy and peace.

Funerals don’t have much hope; there is not much deep and lasting joy there at the death of an unbeliever; people don’t leave a funeral service for a non-Christian with much peace—if any at all.  I am not saying that a non-Christian didn’t leave good memories.  In many cases, they did.  They just didn’t leave eternal hope, joy and peace.

To be sure, in a memorial service, there is the grief of loss at the passing of a Christian.  But there is an amazing and undeniable sense of hope that pervades the atmosphere and sustains those who are grieving.  It is the hope that Paul describes here in I Corinthians 15 that the lifeless body of that Christian has been transformed into a eternally living, spiritual body.  As the wife of the great preacher R. A. Torrey said at the death of their twelve-year-old daughter, “I’m so glad Elisabeth is with the Lord, and not in that box.”

There is also a special kind of joy that just doesn’t make sense in the natural.  I have often sat in amazement at such services as songs of praise and gratitude are lifted to the God of all comfort.  That just doesn’t happen at the funeral of a non-Christian, where typically, wailing rather than worship fills the air. But at a Christian’s memorial, it is not untypical for worship and wonder to drown out the sounds of death.

And then there is the peace that passes all understanding that accompanies the believer’s death.  It is the kind of peace that guards the hearts and minds of those whose lives have been touched by loss.  It is God’s gift of peace, and it makes such a loss endurable.  It is the kind of peace that comes from knowing that our gracious God is in control—even in the death of a loved one—and that our God does all things well, and will bring good out of loss and glory out of grief.  It is peace that the world cannot give and the world cannot take away.

Of course, there is grief at the loss of a Christian loved one—but it is a good grief.  How can that be?  One word:  Jesus.  Sin and death entered the human race because of Adam, Paul says in I Corinthians 15:45-48, but through Jesus’ death and resurrection, the power of sin and the sting of death has been neutralized.  Thanks be to God for our resurrected Lord and Savior, Jesus.  Through him, we can defiantly declare to death,

“Death is swallowed up in victory.
O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?”

Yes, thanks be to God!

“Death stung himself to death when he stung Christ.” ~William Romaine

Prayer… All thanks to you, Father God, for you have given me victory over sin and death through Jesus Christ my Lord.

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Prophecy In Everyday Language

5×5×5 Bible Plan

Read: I Corinthians 14
Meditation: I Corinthians 14:4-5

“Proclaiming God’s truth to the church in its common language brings the whole church into growth and strength.”

Shift Your Focus… I grew up in a tradition that embraced all the gifts of the Spirit, and actively welcomed their expression in our church services.  Judging from the church’s collective reaction to a “move of the Spirit,” the gift of prophecy seemed to rank at the top of these expressions.

What I witnessed in both the drama surrounding a prophetic outburst as well as the congregation’s response to it led me to the conclusion that this gift was, for one thing, a very spooky, quite mysterious gift. A corollary to that conclusion was that the one speaking the prophecy must therefore have attained some high-ranking level of spirituality to be used in such a manner, i.e., they were a bit “spooky” too!

Another observation led me to conclude that the manifestation of a prophetic gift was synonymous with either predicting the future or revealing a secret sin or a deep dark struggle of someone sitting in the church service, and although we never knew whom that person might be, it was sure fun trying to guess.  In retrospect, neither of those outcomes—prediction and revelation—occurred, at least to my knowledge.

To be sure, if the Holy Spirit wants to reveal either an upcoming event or a personal struggle, he is free to do that—and the church ought to embrace that aspect of the prophetic.  But I think the more healthy and helpful approach to practicing the prophetic in the church would be to take the mystery out of it and look at it as a much more practical gift.  I agree with Eugene Peterson’s rendering of this verse in The Message version of the Bible, which defines the prophetic gifts simply as “proclaiming God’s truth to the church in its common language brings the whole church into growth and strength.”

If we embrace that definition of this gift, then we’ll see prophecy as not just reserved for the few spiritual elite, but as something the common Christian can be used in as well.  We will also understand that an expression of the prophetic gift will be more authentic if it is delivered in the “common language” of the church rather than the special “God language” that often is worked up for a prophecy.  Not only that, prophecy will not be relegated to foretelling the future, but in foretelling truth; not revealing secret spiritual stuff, but affirming what should be commonly known and embrace.  Finally, this definition of the prophetic gift shows us that an authentic prophetic word should bring growth and strength to the congregation.  If it weirds people out, spooks the saints, and causes the cringe factor, it is likely that the prophetic expression was either inappropriate and off the mark, or it was delivered in a way that was over-the-top, inartful, and inauthentic.

So, and this is just my opinion, but I am convinced of it, we ought to demystify prophecy (and the other utterance gifts as well).  We would enjoy them and be edified by them much more often than we are now.

“The gift of prophecy is not a new revelation, but a clearer understanding of already-given truth.”  ~Ray Melugin

Prayer… Lord, let there be a resurgence of all the gifts of your Spirit in the body of Christ, rightly understood and authentically expressed.

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Love Is…

5×5×5 Bible Plan

Read: I Corinthians 13
Meditation: I Corinthians 13:13

“Now the greatest of these is love.”

Shift Your Focus… Love is… Love is the beginning, the end, and everything in between. Love is the motive, the fuel and the goal of life. Love is the thing, and there is really nothing else.

God is love. Love is the highest law of his universe. It is the most powerful force in existence. Love is what God intended human beings to know and give. Since God is love, God intended that his highest creation, man, should be love too. That Divine intent was obviously and tragically broken at the fall of man, but in the restoration of his eternal plan, now expressed through the church, God’s love once again is to reign supreme. The church, made up of believers like you and me who have been the unlikely and undeserving recipients of God’s redemptive love, is to embody and express love as God designed it before a watching world.

Love is… Love is a verb much more than it is a noun. Love is a choice. Love is not a poem, it is a principle. Love is a universal law, much like the law of gravity, or the law of sunrise and sunset. Love is an action that originates with God and flows from the redeemed life. Like water naturally flows from a spring, so love should naturally flow out of the life of a Christian unconditionally. Love is, not because of what is done for it, but because of Who the true, overflowing and inexhaustible wellspring of love is.

Your assignment as a Christian, above all, is to love. In all that you do—in thinking and interacting, in acting and reacting, in serving, sharing, and singing, even in expressing the gifts of the Holy Spirit as Paul has been talking about in the two chapters that sandwich this “love chapter,” love is to motivate you, love is to guide you, love is to be the outcome.

Everything else in life comes in a distant second to your willingness to be the conduit of God’s love for you flowing through you today. Nothing else is as important.

Love is… And if you will permit it, love will change your world today!

“Open your hearts to the love God instills… God loves you tenderly. What He gives you is not to be kept under lock and key but to be shared.”  ~Mother Teresa

Prayer… Lord, above all else, will you remind me today that I am the living proof of your amazing love.  Make me ever mindful of allowing your love flow through me in every situation I encounter.  Use me to change my world through the power of your love.

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The Common Good

5×5×5 Bible Plan

Read: I Corinthians 12
Meditation: I Corinthians 12:7

Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.”

Shift Your Focus… Attitudes toward the manifestation of spiritual gifts vary from congregation to congregation. Some churches believe that the gifts of the Spirit ceased at the end of the New Testament era. Other churches would fall more into the category of the Corinthian church—anything goes as it relates to the operation of the gifts. In those churches, there are manifestations of spiritual gifts early and often, more akin to a free for all than a finely orchestrated Spirit-event.

The churches with which I am most familiar tend to embrace the gifts, at least in theory, but their use in church gatherings seems to suffer from a kind of benign neglect. This neglect primarily arises from what I would call the “cringe factor.” Let me explain:

The “cringe factor” occurs typically when one of the more mysterious and sensational gifts is expressed in a church service, like a message in tongues or a word of knowledge or a prophecy. When one of those occurs, a significant portion of the crowd “cringes” because they are not sure that the timing of that manifestation was appropriate, or if its content was substantive, or if the style and delivery of the message was authentic and relevant (it is amazing how God tends to use King James English when speaking through one of these dear folk), or if the one expressing the gift has much spiritual credibility. Frankly, because of these factors, it is easier not to have any expressions or manifestations of the Spirit at all.

Paul would advise differently. He would warn us not to forbid the expression of the gifts, and in fact, would encourage us to eagerly desire them (I Corinthians 14:39). However, Paul has laid down some pretty clear metrics for the authentic manifestation of the Spirit in I Corinthians 12,13 (the love chapter was written not for marriage ceremonies, but for moderating the gifts of the Spirit), and 14.

In a nutshell, both the motives and metrics for the manifestation of the Spirit is found in our verse for the day, I Corinthians 12:7. Three important governing rules are revealed:

First, every Christian has been given spiritual gifts. As you read the rest of the chapter, one gift is not better than the other. They are all needed. They are the internal organs that make the body of Christ work. We need the whole body and all the gifts to work in order for the church to be a healthy representation of Christ.

Second, the gifts are a manifestation of the Holy Spirit. We do not conjure up and wish into existence these gifts, nor are they given as rewards to the spiritually mature or talented. We need to remember that the gifts originate with the Holy Spirit; he gives them as he chooses. Therefore, we ought be very careful how we steward them.

Third, the gifts are given, and to be expressed, for the common good. If you wonder how to measure the effectiveness of both the gift and the one expressing it, this is the best metric I know. Is it building up the body of Christ, or is it, in reality, nothing more than a “self-authentication” of the one expressing it? Is the gift interrupting the service, or does it contribute to the flow of the Holy Spirit? Is it a fine stroke that disappears into the portrait, or does it distract from the Master’s masterpiece? Does it bless and build up, or does it bother and break the momentum of what God had in mind for his people at that particular moment.

If we could ever truly grasp this “for the common good” concept, I have a feeling there would be a lot less weirdness in our services, the cringe factor would all but disappear, and there would be a much needed resurgence of the gifts of the Holy Spirit in the church today.

“If God were to take the Holy Spirit out of this world, most of what the church is doing would go right on, and nobody would know the difference.”  ~A.W. Tozer

Prayer… Lord Jesus, you have declared us to be a temple of the Holy Spirit.  Now fill your temple, I pray, and let your Spirit freely manifest his gifts again in our day.

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Remember!

5×5×5 Bible Plan

Read: I Corinthians 11
Meditation: I Corinthians 11:24

“Do this to remember me.”

Shift Your Focus… Several years ago a highly acclaimed movie called “Saving Private Ryan” hit the theaters.  I will never forget that heart-wrenching opening scene as the Allied soldiers stormed the beaches of Normandy on D-Day, sacrificing their lives by the thousands for the cause of freedom.

The story centered around an army officer, Captain John Miller, and a small unit of men assigned to search the interior of France to find one soldier and bring him out.  This was a search and rescue mission.  This soldier, Private James Ryan, had three brothers who had been killed in three different battles in this war.  The military brass decided it just wouldn’t be right if he, the fourth brother, lost his life as well.

So this search and rescue party was dispatched, and ultimately, Private Ryan was found, and saved.  In the process, several men gave their lives to save this one man, including the heroic Captain Miller.  The captain was mortally wounded in the final battle to get Private Ryan into allied territory, and with his final breath, he pulled Private Ryan close and whispered, “Now, go and earn this!”

What Captain Miller was really saying was, “Remember this…don’t ever forget what others have done for you…your life has taken on higher value because of their sacrifice…so remember this moment and these men by making the rest of your life count.”

As the movie ended, it fast-forwarded to the present, with Ryan, now an aging man, visiting a military cemetery and kneeling before the marker of Captain Miller. Moved to tears, he remembered the sacrifice of Miller that had saved him. With a deeply emotional, trembling voice, the now elderly Ryan whispers to the grave of Captain Miller,  “Everyday I’ve thought about what you said…I hope, at least in your eyes, I’ve earned what you’ve done for me.”

These scenes from Saving Private Ryan remind me of another search and rescue mission. About 1900 years before Private Ryan was saved, there was another warrior who was sent out.  Instead of the many sent to rescue the one, this was the story of one sent to save the many.

This warrior gave his life to deliver the many out of the enemy’s territory safely into his Father’s kingdom.  And as he was about to go into his final battle, knowing that his would be sacrificed, he uttered these moving words we reread each time we come to the Lord’s Table:

“This is my body, which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of me. This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.”  (I Corinthians 11:23)

What was Jesus saying?  He was pulling us close and whispering in our ears, “Remember what I am about to do.  Never forget it!  Your life will never be the same because of this. What I am about to do for you shows that your life has infinite value in my Father’s eyes.  So don’t live a day without thinking about what I’ve done.  Do this in remembrance of me.”

When you receive communion in your fellowship, is the Lord’s Table truly a time for remembering what Jesus has done for you, or do you simply perform your way through it?

I read of a youth pastor who led his youth group in a re-enactment of the crucifixion.  He played the role of Christ, the students the jeering mob who shouted, “Crucify him! Crucify him!”  Then they dragged him into the yard of the church and hung him up on a cross.

As this “Christ” hung there, the kids grew quiet, and he said, “Even though you are doing this to me, I still love you.”  The pastor of the church had been watching, and he noticed one of the younger girls in the front of the group, transfixed by the scene. He looked at her and saw real tears streaming down her face.  The pastor, moved by her love, said, “I was envious of her. For the rest of us, this was a ‘performance.’  For her, it was the real thing. She was there, she was remembering.”

Next time you come to the Lord’s Table, don’t let it be a performance.  Make it a remembrance. 

“If we show the Lord’s death at Communion, we must show the Lord’s life in the world. If it is a Eucharist on Sunday, it must prove on Monday that it was also a Sacrament.”  ~Maltbie Babcock

Prayer… Lord Jesus, I will never forget!

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Cautionary Tales: Take A Good, Long Look!

5×5×5 Bible Plan

Read: I Corinthians 10
Meditation: I Corinthians 10:13

“No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.”

Shift Your Focus… One of those “ways out” from temptation that Paul talks about is for us to take a good, long look at the plethora of Old Testament saints who crashed and burned at some point in their spiritual journey.  In the previous verses, Paul writes,

“These things happened to [these Old Testament saints] as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the fulfillment of the ages has come. So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall!”  (I Corinthians 10:11-12)

In other words, all you have to do is slow down and do a little Old Testament “rubbernecking” and it will make you think twice about making their mistakes.  You know what “rubbernecking” is?  It’s when you slow your car down and gawk at an accident along the side of the road.  And if you have children in the car, you warn them: “Kids, that’s what happens when you don’t pay attention when you are driving!”  My dad did that to me on occasion, and I’ve repeated the tradition with my children.

One of the greatest defenses against temptation of any kind if to slow way down, take a good, long look, and make the connect between what they did and what you’re about to do.  That little cost-benefit analysis will likely lead you to say, “whoa, I don’t want what happened to David to happen to me.”

Take a leisurely afternoon drive through Old Testament country and look at the wrecks along the path of some of our faith-heroes.  Take one look at what happened to Abraham in Genesis 16.  Abraham got ahead of God’s timing with having a son, and Ishmael was the result. If you are wondering why that should be a warning sign, I’ve got three words for you:  Arab-Israeli Conflict.”  That’s what happens when you don’t trust God.

Take one look at Moses in Numbers 20:10-12.  Moses decided to go a little beyond what God had commanded, and he struck the rock twice when God had told him only to command water to come forth from it.  Because Moses tried to help God out, his disobedience caused him to forfeit entrance into the land of promise.  Let that be a lesson to you:  Even small sins can have huge consequences.

Take one look at David in I Samuel 11.  A midlife crisis in a season of boredom with the unwieldy use of power led to an adulterous affair.  The affair led to a cover up which led to conspiracy which led to the deaths of some innocent people which led to a family in deep and abiding turmoil for years to come.  That’s what happens when you choose a few minutes of fleshly pleasure over self-control.

Take one look at these good people who made bad decisions, and consider the outcome of their actions.  Take one look and then hear Paul’s words loud and clear: “So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall!” (I Corinthians 10:12)

What temptations are you facing?  Just remember, others stronger and closer to God than you faced those same temptations.  They ignored the warning signs and they failed.  And if they could, they would shout, “Don’t you do it!  Just look what happened to me!”

In truth, they are shouting to you.  Their examples are written down in God’s Word for your benefit.  So take a good, long look.  Do a little rubbernecking.

That is your way out!

“Temptation usually comes in through a door that has deliberately been left open.”  ~Arnold Glasow

Prayer… Father, when I am tempted to sin, bring the faces of Abraham, Moses, David and other Bible saints clearly into my mind and remind me from their examples of what happens when we choose not to follow you.

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Incarnational Evangelism

5×5×5 Bible Plan

Read: I Corinthians 9
Meditation: I Corinthians 9:22

“I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some.”

Shift Your Focus… This verse has been used by Christians to justify all sorts of questionable behavior. Some have resorted to drinking and frequenting bars in order to be a “witness” there. Others have taken up the dance club life in order to bring a Gospel presence in those places. In yet a more trendy example, churches have gone ultra casual in their worship experience—pastors wearing shorts instead of suits, ushers in Hawaiian shirts, singers in flip flops—in order to be more relevant to the culture they are trying to reach.

They have “become all things to all people that they might save some.”

Technically, there is nothing wrong with that—so long as the motive is pure. However, I have a feeling in some cases, perhaps most cases, the motive has not been to proclaim the Gospel but rather to indulge in those behaviors for purely selfish reasons. The reasons are very spiritual sounding, but in reality, that person simply wanted to drink alcohol, or use foul language, or find a potential romantic interest, or wear ripped out jeans in church because they thought it was cool.

If we are going to use that verse to explain our approach to faith—that we have become all things to all people—then it had better be for the purpose of entering the world of the lost with the strategic and expected outcome of pulling them out of that world and into the new and different world of the Kingdom of God. That is incarnational evangelism. That is exactly what Jesus did when he came to earth, born as a baby in a stinky stable in Bethlehem. He entered our world to pull us out of it and into God’s world.

If that is truly our mission, then our behavior will not be fundamentally modified as we enter the world of the spiritual seeker. A Christian woman will not become a barfly. A believing man will not go trolling for babes in a nightclub. A preacher will dress modestly and respectfully.

The translation given to this verse in the Message version of the Bible helps to shed light on what Paul was saying:

“Even though I am free of the demands and expectations of everyone, I have voluntarily become a servant to any and all in order to reach a wide range of people: religious, nonreligious, meticulous moralists, loose-living immoralists, the defeated, the demoralized—whoever. I didn’t take on their way of life. I kept my bearings in Christ—but I entered their world and tried to experience things from their point of view. I’ve become just about every sort of servant there is in my attempts to lead those I meet into a God-saved life. I did all this because of the Message. I didn’t just want to talk about it; I wanted to be in on it!” (I Corinthians 9:19-23)

That is a pretty powerful motive for winning the lost—and a sure-fire way to become more effective in your witness for Christ. Follow those guidelines, and you will always be contemporary without compromise.

Why don’t you give that some thought!

“Enemy-occupied territory—that is what this world is.  Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign in sabotage.”  ~C.S. Lewis 

Prayer… Lord, show me how to be current without compromise in my witness to a lost world of your saving grace.