Speaking of Speaking....

The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit.  

- Proverbs 18:21

Let this serve as another confession:  I tend to talk too much.  I remember once (and only once!) eloquently espousing the benefits of natural childbirth to some women at a beach party in East Hampton.  It only took watching one documentary for me to foolishly believe myself an authority on the matter.  I somehow felt I had license to preach to new and expectant mothers that night.   Later, I noticed across the sand a group of women surrounding Megan saying, "you need to tell your husband to get hold of his tongue!"  Let me sum up the car ride home: tense.

The all of me (including my speech!) is a work in progress by the power of God's grace.   These days I give myself about three minutes in our Sunday School class when talking to the opposite sex.   After the third minute I step away from the conversation guided by the knowledge that somewhere in the fourth minute I will inevitably insert foot in mouth.

Simply scan the headlines; foolish speech abounds.  It's a rare thing to read a headline like "Mr. so and so said something extremely insightful at a White House Dinner last night".   More often than not careless or hateful speech sends people free-falling through the blood-thirsty media's ringer.

A persons words do indeed reveal what is already taking place within them.  After Jesus drove demons from a blind and mute man so that he could both talk and see, The Pharisees told the crowds that He drove out the demons by the power of Beelzebub (literally The Lord of the Flies, referring to the false God Baal, whom The Jews thought of as a pile of dung and his followers, the flies).  It's no wonder then that Jesus returns to them a stinging sermon of rebuke...

You brood of vipers! How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil. I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.” 
- Matthew 12:34

The Pharisee's words had revealed the attitude of their hardened hearts.   So darkened were their minds they thought Christ to be of the Devil when he was God's very Son.   These same men would lead the call for Christ's crucifixion. Their words revealed their intentions and consequently, their coming condemnation.

President Obama had what many construed to be a terrible week a couple of weeks ago based on his simple but profoundly debatable comment in a press conference that "the private economy is doing fine".   The tide of an election and, indeed, the direction of a nation can turn based on the utterance of words.   In The Book of James, the apostle writes that a tiny rudder moves a big ship (James 3:4).

There's a super-natural  (creative and/or destructive) power at work through words in relationships and the circumstances into which they're spoken.   "I'd like to rescind that statement" or "I didn't mean to say that, I'd like to take those words back" fails even in its truest intentions.   Once spoken there is no amount of backpedaling that can undo the harmful and potentially disastrous effects of speech.

Conversely, words can bring (read: impute) life to the deadest of scenarios.   For instance a word of encouragement from a wife lifts a husband who is depressed by his helplessness to control the circumstances of his life.  A compliment from a husband goes a long way towards deepening a wife's sense of self.  Encouraged that, regardless of what anyone around her thinks of her, her husband finds her attractive she can then move out into the world in confident beauty.   Relationally there is no denying the sometimes devastating, sometimes liberating power of words.

Likewise the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark.  The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell. All kinds of animals, birds, reptiles and creatures of the sea are being tamed and have been tamed by man, but no man can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. 

- James 3:5-8

If no man can tame the tongue, then man has reached a perilous impasse (me included!).   Men and women, who continually suffer the consequences of careless talk, participate in hurtful gossip or dole out the destruction of mean-spirited speech find themselves in a dire predicament relationally.   Nowhere short of falling at the mercy and grace of a God who brings light to the darkness (Job 12:22) and who gives wisdom to the wise man's heart guiding his mouth to bring instruction from his lips (Prov 16:22) will we find deliverance.

The one who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory; but the one who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true, and in him there is no falsehood. 
- John 7:18

The Bible understands original sin, total depravity and man's bound-will.    The Bible understands that without aid from The Holy Spirit, man cannot help but speak from his own self-absorbed heart and for his own gain (glory) to bring about his desired ends, to convey and control the way others perceive him.   Directing conversations as he wishes or maligning those individuals he naturally perceives as a threat to him or his well-being is the way of fallen man.  False-flattery (or the desire for flattery), manipulation and even vengeance are but a few of the seductive symptoms of Sin that taints even the most well-intentioned speech.   We can look to the Psalms for some description...

For there is no truth in their mouth;

their inmost self is destruction;

their throat is an open grave;

they flatter with their tongue. 
- Psalm 5:9

Everyone utters lies to his neighbor;

with flattering lips and out of  a double heart they speak.

- Psalm 12:2

His speech was smooth as butter,

yet war was in his heart;

his words were softer than oil,

yet they were drawn swords 
- Psalm 55:21

God has given us His very Spirit to reside within us directing our hearts for His glory.   Let us cling then to God who has spoken righteousness over us by His word who became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14), Jesus Christ, who took to the cross all our sin (and sinful speech!).  Having been crucified along with our hearts, mouths and words, let us pray that as we have been resurrected by God in Christ, He would now redeem even our speech that His heart and His words might reign through us to His glory forever and ever.

Matt

This Week

* Monday Men's Lunch - Grace in Practice - Chapter 3 -  Dakota's Steakhouse 12pm
 
* Wednesday AM Book Study - The Explicit Gospel, Chapter 5, 7am - 2 American Center, 5th Floor (Ritcheson Law Firm)

* Sunday - Matt Magill at Green Acres Baptist Church, 9:45 and 11:15  - Tyler, TX

Please pray as we meet with hurting couples in the East Texas area who are in desperate need of God's restoration individually and relationally.

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The Pain and The Pump....

Just in time, I found you just in time
Before you came my time was running low
I was lost, the losing dice were tossed
My bridges all were crossed, no where to go

Now you're here, now I know just where I'm going
No more doubt or fears I've found my way
For love came just in time, you found me just in time
And changed my lonely life that lucky day

          

     - Just in Time, Songwriters: Betty Comden,  Adolph Green, and Jule Styne

 

Recently a friend described the harrowing experience of running out of gas as friends and neighbors drove by stopping to ask what was the matter.

I'm no different.  Like many people I find myself avoiding the gas station these days.  "Ohhhh, we can make it there and back," I tell Megan.  "Look! the gas light hasn't even come on yet!" I plead while casually motoring by the gas station secretly hoping to actually make it "there and back".

Last Sunday morning the gas light was on and just as I accelerated past the filling station I began to feel the jitters of an engine that could not push the wheels any longer without "the juice".   I had literally pulled into the gas station on fumes.  Imagining "what could have been", I thanked God for the presence of mind to recognize how empty I really was causing me to pull in and fill up.

I got back into the car and turned the key.  The engine swallowed the gas and began to purr again as Dean Martin crooned on the radio "you found me just in time, love came just in time".  Just then it became apparent what I would be writing about this week.

You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it;
    you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.

My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit;
    a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise.

- Psalm 51:16-17

This is the beauty of The Gospel of Jesus Christ - this is the good news.   When we are completely out of steam - when the needle is on empty, we are finally in the place to receive His amazing grace.  There is nothing we can bring to God but our brokenness.  The only thing our creator is interested in is our acknowledgement that we can't get it done, that we need Him to do the work for us.

My dear friend, Tommy, is suffering with the knowledge that cancer is literally alive and well in his body.  These days Tommy lives with a continual reminder of his mortality; Simply put, he is helpless.   This certain type of cancer did not respond to chemotherapy.  He cannot will his body to return to health - it is literally beyond his influence.  He can only wait to see what God will do through it.   But in the midst of the waiting, God is awakening Him to the bits of his life that He can never lose - the love of his wife, his children, his friends and his Creator.   In this way Tommy is not so much "battling" or fighting "cancer" he is surrendering to God.

Completely unlike Tommy is Walter White from Breaking Bad (in my opinion maybe the best show on television since Friday Night Lights), a high school chemistry teacher who when faced with the knowledge of his terminal cancer begins to grab for control in disastrously horrifying (and gruesomely entertaining) ways.   Like a drowning man, the more he struggles for control the quicker he sinks bringing down those around him who would seek to rescue him.

The sad reality of Walter's suffering extends to all of humanity; no one is exempt (no not one!).   God understands the human condition.  He knows how we suffer with our self-absorption and self-justification and yet, by His grace, He has made a way for us.  The futility of our reaching for control leaves us trying to "possess" our lives like Steinbeck's Lenny from Of Mice and Men who, unaware of his strength, kills a puppy by continually petting it.    Our problem is not that we don't think enough of ourselves as many in my generation (The Self-Esteem Generation) were raised to believe.  In fact, quite the opposite, we never stop thinking of ourselves.   To this (as with all things) Jesus provides the answer....

Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. 

- Matthew 10:39

Letting go of (read: losing) our lives is made possible by our God of grace who essentially gently takes the gun out of our cold dead hands, talking (read: loving) us off the ledge saying to us "you can't do it, but I already have and it's all OK now because I love you"....

Because he loves me,” says the Lord, “I will rescue him; 
 I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name. 

 He will call on me, and I will answer him; 
I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him and honor him. 

With long life I will satisfy him and show him my salvation. - Psalm 91:15

You only come to Christ out of gas.... totally empty.   New Testament theologian, Paul Zahl, speaks of God's love as always and only "one way love".   There is no "meeting in the middle"; there is no "you take one step, He'll take two".  We bring nothing to the throne but exhausted efforts and empty hands. As we, drawn by His Spirit, approach God, he sees not our efforts and our hands, but the crowning achievement that is the Cross of Calvary and the nail-pierced hands of His Son, the only servant with whom God has ever been well pleased (Matt 12:18).

"Taking Jesus as my personal savior" has always sounded a little like it was my choice to posses a path towards salvation and having chosen Jesus, He is now mine.  It's always sounded to me like "I have Jesus in my back pocket".  How easy it is to make Christianity a means to our ends.  But the bible has made clear...

The Lord has made his salvation known and revealed his righteousness to the nations.

He has remembered his love and his faithfulness to the house of Israel;

all the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God. 

- Psalm 98:2-4

His salvation - His righteousness - His Love - His faithfulness.  Thank God then that we are no longer responsible for any of it.  By God's Grace, Jesus holds it all, and consequently, us, in His hands.

Blessings,

Matt

 This Week

* Wednesday AM Book Study - The Explicit Gospel, Chapter 1 - tomorrow at 7am - 2 American Center, 5th Floor (Ritcheson Law Firm)
 

* Thursday -  KE Cellars on Broadway - Tyler, TX - 6-9pm

* Saturday - SCRUBS Medical Missions Fundraiser - Rose City Flying Clays - The Magills play 3-5:30pm

Next Week

* Monday Men's Lunch - Grace in Practice - Chapter 2 p. 100-110 -  Dakota's Steakhouse 12pm

TO SUPPORT B3 MINISTRIES CLICK HERE

The Resurrection (Charmed) Life In Christ!

Darkness is a harsh term don't you think?
And yet it dominates the things I seek.

It seems that all my bridges have been burned,
But, you say that's exactly how this grace thing works
It’s not the long walk home that will change this heart,
But the welcome I receive with the restart

- Roll Away Your Stone, Mumford & Sons

I spend so much time thinking about The Gospel that I'm rarely surprised at what seemingly insignificant incidents bring it to mind.  Last week when I poured Maggie her first bowl of Lucky Charms, she immediately ate all the marshmallows and none of the "unlucky" cereal.  She then asked if she could have more.

In the days that followed I repeatedly preached to her that a true cereal connoisseur, like her father, eats the "magically delicious" Lucky Charms one bite at a time allowing the marshmallows to fall only by chance (or by luck!) into the spoon.   Yesterday, however, I poured a bowl for myself only to find that this sneaky three-year-old had been working her way through the box digging out all the "marshmellow-y" goodness.

Appetizing right?

Loretta Lynn famously wrote and sang, "Everybody wants to go to Heaven - but nobody wants to die!" Indeed Maggie is showing signs that she will take her place alongside the rest of humanity - only wanting what's tastiest while resisting what's healthiest.

Matthew records Jesus temptation in the desert just before his earthly ministry began.  Of the three temptations, Satan's final temptation was truly insidious. Scripture foretells of Christ's eventual and eternal reign as the "king of kings and lord of lords" (Rev. 19:16) but Satan tempted Jesus to embrace then and there what was only meant for Him in eternity and what could only be attained by perfect submission not through some Faustian exchange.

Author Russell D. Moore writes in Tempted and Tried that "what God had veiled in future promise, Satan sought to uncover in present observation.  We must see why we want to exchange the end-time exaltation by our Father for the right-now exaltation of a snake."

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.”   Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.  - Matthew 4:8-10

Christ knew that the way of the suffering servant would be the way by which He would set things right between a perfectly Holy God and sinful humanity.   This would require patience, heartbreak and obedience unto death.  Though Christ taught His disciples of the coming sacrifice predicting his death time and again (John 3:14-15), yet even those within his inner circle completely missed His intimations....

They (James and John) replied “Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory.”

  
“You don’t know what you are asking,” Jesus said. “Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?”

Jesus called them together and said, “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant,  and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.  For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” - Mark 10: 37-38, 42-45

When James and John asked to sit at Jesus' "right and left hand in glory" they were assuming some kind of military might or political honor and glory would soon accompany Jesus' earthly ministry. But Jesus made clear that "his moment of greatest glory" would be a radically counter-intuitive and painfully fatal act of self-submission with which they (along with the other disciples) would want no part.

Yesterday, I caught a picture of Maggie really listening to The Easter Story for the first time. She was heartbroken as she heard of the suffering that Jesus went through. To date, the focus of our teaching (through story and song!) is how much Jesus loves Maggie, but yesterday that "how much" was unpacked in a lot more detail.

She gasped hearing how he was whipped with The Cat o' Nine Tails, the crown of thorns, the mocking and The Crucifixion.  With each new station she winced a bit more and seemed truly shocked that anyone would hurt the one who loves her so much.  But then when finally she was told of Christ's first Easter, The Resurrection of the Son of God, the relief on her face revealed more than a glimmer of hope in her heart. She literally jumped up smiling and exclaiming, "He's alive!"

Jesus forsook "the charmed life" due him to embrace the pain and suffering we all deserved paying the debt that we could never pay.  In so doing He made a way for us to meet the harsh realities of life (pain, disappointment, failure) with the hope hidden within us of a future in which sin and suffering no longer holds sway over our hearts and minds.   But (and this is the thrust of B3 Ministries message!) this hope has a mysterious power to change us now.

What you believe about your future changes you in the present.

 - Tim Keller, Redeemer Presbyterian, NY, NY

Jesus' love for us has led us into new life now - resurrection life now!   No longer do we fear what once could crush us (1st John 4:18).  No longer is there shame over our past transgressions (Rom. 8:1).  No longer must we labor under crushing expectations coming from ourselves or others calling for our "best life now".  For in Him, death has lost it's sting (1st Cor. 15:55), death is no longer victorious.   In Him our life is now hidden - we have died to this life - our real life (read eternal life) is now hidden with Christ in God (Col. 3:3).

Can't no grave hold our bodies down!
Happy Easter,
matt

Jessie Mae Renfro - Can't No Grave Hold My Body Down

 This Week
 
* Wednesday AM Book Study - Grace in Practice by Paul F. M. Zahl - get your books here!  Chapter 3, Grace in Families tomorrow at 7am - 2 American Center, 5th Floor (Ritcheson Law Firm)
 

* Thursday -  KE Cellars on Broadway - Tyler, TX - 6-9pm

* Easter Sunday - The Magills at Arbor Fellowship (Bethel North) 10 am - Elks Club Building - 202 S. Broadway - 3rd Floor, Tyler, TX

Next Week

* Monday Men's Lunch - Grace in Practice - Chapter 1 p. 30-45  -  Dakota's Steakhouse 12pm

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The Posers Posters!

Let's go to my room - I'll show you my posters

- Dada, Posters 1992

Megan and I recently purchased a stunning piece of art for our living room and oh how far I've come!   At one time it was $3 posters that were my pride and joy; my father designed perhaps the world's largest cork board (most likely to save his walls from me) and I filled every square inch.  Those posters unashamedly spoke to every entrant of just who that 14-year-old me planned to become - they were pictures of my idols.

I grew up in Mayberry... not exactly, but close enough.  It was a picturesque slice of Americana with just a few trees that stood strong (if not tall) - those that would not be blown over by Western Oklahoma's infamous wind that pushes through town and on to more exciting places - but the folks stay put.   Like a few of my friends, I felt trapped.

But there were strangers' songs and stories from other places - from a world outside our little town - places we'd never been and longed to go.   We heard about the stories and listened to the music on Rock 100.5 The KATT and I couldn't get enough.

But try as I might to imagine what that life outside was like, I was stuck in my room with posters of "rockers" on my wall.  Guns N' Roses, Tesla, Cinderella, Motley Crue - you name it.  They looked drunk, angry, petulant, high and most of all, mysteriously exciting.  And I wanted what they had.

I wanted out of a risk-averse, manicured existence - to have all the fun - consequences be damned.  In retrospect it's clear to me that I believed myself to be above the consequences.  I was privileged, relatively speaking, and though I'd been given an (advanced) inheritance, in a sense, of safety, security, and a steady-handed work ethic that could pave the way for the same in a family of my own one day, what I wanted was sex, drugs and rock n' roll.  Essentially I salivated to become a walking cliche and that's just what happened. 

Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. - Gal 6:7

I'll spare you the details of where my desires led me.   Suffice it to say this reformed poser eventually ran out of gas, I gave up and came home.   Not home to "Mayberry" but home to my creator.   I had made the journey. I'd caused a lot of pain to others and to myself in the process but in the end I found grace and forgiveness in The Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Amazed that THE quintessential story of a father's one-way love for his wayward but "found" son had somehow evaded a friend's ears his entire life, I recently explained The Parable of The Prodigal Son. This is the universal story of every man in relation to his creator through which Jesus described the essence of The Gospel.

We have all in some form or fashion, to varying degrees, wasted the good and perfect gifts (read inheritance) given to us by God.  We've done so by living life to please ourselves - living lives either to please or manipulate others.    For some the result has been disappointment, guilt, shame and isolation for others the "rotten fruit" of self-absorbed lives cannot be faced.  The resultant and ever-present self-deception for these unfortunate prodigals increases to catastrophic and blatantly obvious levels.

For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted. 

- Matthew 23:12

But then when all hope is lost.  When every effort and attempt to recover has been exhausted there is that liberating word from God, "sinner, come home".

The return home, repentance, the turn from one's old way of thinking to a true awakening of the heart and soul found only in the outstretched arms of the Father who alone can provide clarity in the midst of our confusion and light in the midst of our darkness.

This is the parable that continues to preach to my weary soul.   The eternal offer of God to return to Him.   The way home is a one-way road that leads the sinner across a bridge built with the wood of the cross and the nails of crucifixion by the pierced hands of Christ Jesus.  When He has delivered me to the other side once again, I am no longer my own.  I have been hidden in Christ to be received like the king that He is - righteous and without blame.

...continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose. - Phil 2:12-13

That journey begins anew each day.  Though I turn from the costly love of Jesus again and again,  by God's grace, my ears are being attuned to more quickly perceive the call of the Father and the sound of His footsteps rushing towards me at my slightest inclination to return to Him again.  With each journey home I learn more of the sickest parts of me that so desperately need all of Him and the grace that makes my repetitive return home possible.

As it is written: "I have made you a father of many nations." He is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed--the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were. - Rom. 4:17

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. - Gal. 2:20

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus - Rom. 8:1

In a sense, I suppose, Christians spend their lives repeating that journey home being made ready for that eventual and final return, carried home in the arms of a Savior, Jesus - the only Son of God, who rather than waste His inheritance on Himself, lavished His life completely on humanity to the Glory of God and for the salvation of every prodigal son. (The most recent rendering of this kind of one-way "carrying" love was The Cohen Bros. True Grit's final scene)

Having shed His light on the futility of faithfulness to false idols and the ensuing disappointment to which they inevitably lead, may He paper the walls of our hearts and minds now and forever with His love and truth!

Let love and faithfulness never leave you; bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart. - Proverbs 3:3

Blessings,

Matt

This Week
 
* Monday Men's Lunch - Grace in Practice - Chapter 1 - Dakota's Steakhouse - 12pm
 
* Wednesday AM Book Study - Grace in Practice by Paul F. M. Zahl - get your books here!  Chapter 2, The Four Pillars of a Theology of Grace tomorrow at 7am - 2 American Center, 5th Floor (Ritcheson Law Firm)

* Thursday - The Magills at Rick's on The Square - Tyler, TX 8pm-11pm

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An Squirrely Omen?

Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall. - Proverbs 16:18

Clothes don't make the man - anonymous

I don't throw salt over my shoulder.    I don't like black cats (or, for what it's worth, cats at all) but I'm not afraid to cross one's path.    If I break a mirror, I suppose I'd pick up the pieces, throw them out and buy a new one.   Simply put,  I don't believe in any kind of luck, good or bad.  That said, something so peculiar happened recently that I had to step back, take a big gulp and consider my life in the light of this altogether strange occurrence.  Let me explain...

My friend works at a high-end clothing store.   He recently told me that all the distributors, from which he purchases the clothes to sell, continually send him clothes to keep and wear.  It's the kind of perk that this fashion-conscious, cheap skate would "eat up".   In any event, he told me his closet needed to be "raided".   "You're my size" just come on over and I'll give you some of these clothes.   I have to make room for more!"

After having him over for dinner with Megan,  Jim and I drove to his place where he proceeded to give me so many great pieces of clothing that I've had to in turn give a great deal of my clothing to The Salvation Army just to make room for the new.   "Get to the point" you may be saying....

Feeling like Joseph after receiving his exquisite coat of many colors I was becoming extremely excited thinking of how much Megan will like seeing me in these new clothes and quite honestly, how great they will look on me.  I know, GAG! (See Donny Osmond to the left!)

With arms so full of clothes that I can barely see above them I walk out the front door when I was struck by the sight of a really plump squirrel laying flat on his stomach with his head cracked open and blood running all over the sidewalk.  

I called to my buddy, "Hey, check this out!"

He tells me, "yeah sometimes they try to climb too high and the poor things fall to their death!"

After tip-toeing around the squirrel to drop off the clothes in my trunk, I helped my friend clean up the squirrel's remains and drove home excited. I must have dreamed about the whole scene continually reviewing Jim's remark because I popped up out of bed before the sunrise to the reality that it may have been an omen.

This is what the LORD says: "Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight," declares the LORD. - Jeremiah 9:23-24

Materialism calls out to us continually.  In this instance, being conformed to the world (Rom. 12:2) would simply mean trusting that my wealth and health are signs that God loves me.   And in one sense they surely are...

Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. 

- James 1:17

...but only to the degree that humility (His not mine!) ignited by God's grace within leads to deeper gratitude on my behalf to God for his goodness to me.   If for one moment I believe I am somehow due the good things with which God chooses to bless my life, I have become self-deceived climbing ever higher in the "shaky tree of self-justification" (i.e. If I keep doing for God, He'll keep doing for me).


And yet isn't this where we all so often live?  Doing and doing and doing intoxicated by worldly methods of transaction.   Thinking if we scratch God's back, He'll scratch ours.   Functionally, we so often operate under "prosperity gospel" precepts.   This is akin to a hamster on wheel, going nowhere but running at a fever pitch, laboring but void of any true meaning.

See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. 

- Col. 2:8

I deserved the death of an overweight squirrel reaching for another nut in an unstable tree.   Instead I was delivered to safety because Christ took my place on a tree of His own.  Obedient unto death on a cross (Phil 2:8), Christ knew that "the son of man must be lifted up" (John 12:34) temporally as a sacrifice for our sins that He might then be lifted up eternally and "seated at God's right hand in the heavenly realms" (Eph. 1:20).   The Gospel (Good News) of Jesus Christ proclaims I'm there too!

And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms with Christ Jesus 

- Eph. 2:6

In Jesus' most famous parable (The Prodigal Son), the Son returns to the father after squandering his advanced inheritance.   Instead of simply becoming a worker in his father's house (which was the very best he could think to hope for),  the exuberant joy and love of the father overwhelms the boy with grace.  The father says, "bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet" (Luke 15:22).


I deserved what the squirrel got.  But last week, I got outfitted like the Prodigal Son coming home.  I'm thankful to Jim but I'm especially thankful to the giver of all good gifts.   I'm clothed for a blip in the here and now, but I'm clothed eternally in Christ's righteousness.


Thanks be to God.

Blessings,

Matt

PS - here's one for the squirrel....

This Week

* Wednesday AM Book Study - Grace in Practice by Paul F. M. Zahl - get your books here!  Chapter 1, Grace in Theology (pgs. 68-90) tomorrow at 7am - 2 American Center, 5th Floor (Ritcheson Law Firm)

* Thursday - The Magills w/ The In-Laws and Outlaws at Rick's on The Square - Tyler, TX - 8:30-11:30pm


* Saturday - The Magills w/ The In-Laws and Outlaws at The East Texas Auto and Cycle Show to benefit The East Texas Women's Crisis Center - Harvey Hall - Tyler, TX 12-4pm
 
Next Week...

* Monday Men's Lunch at Dakota's - 12pm - Chapter 6 of Tempted and Tried
 

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The Artist's Masterpiece

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

- Charles Caleb Colten

If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever,  even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.

- John 14:15-17

I recently played a wedding reception.   I was asked by the bride and groom to play a couple of songs by their favorite singer/songwriter.   So I charted the songs, studied his strumming patterns and vocal phrasing and began rehearsing the songs.   I didn't want to give the couple a carbon-copy ("I'm making copies!") but, on the other hand, I wanted to maintain the original integrity of the songs and intent of the artist.

It didn't sink in until a few days before the wedding that, in a way, what I was doing with the songs was analogous to what they would do with their marriage.   By God's grace they would become a faithful interpretation of the author's original masterpiece.

And isn't that what marriage really is?  At its best it is the clearest example of the covenant (unconditional love) God has made with us in Christ.  After all his grace is certainly the only hope for sinners joined together for life.   Without grace we're at the mercy of our inability to look past one another's shortcomings, weaknesses, annoyances etc...

Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven--for she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little loves little. - Luke 7:47

Christ taught that the actuation of true sacrificial love (read: costly love that requires forgiveness) is evidence that one has been forgiven.   Grace (distributed vertically by God), like that shown to the "sinful woman" in Luke's narrative (Luke 7:36-50), imbibes the forgiven with the supernatural and altogether counter-intuitive power to love (read: love at a cost) others bending that grace out horizontally.  Without this kind of love, sooner or later, any marriage is headed for dire straights.

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 

- Ephesians 5:25

Marriage continues to have an indelible impact on my life driving me more deeply into the arms of a savior who forgives me and reconstitutes me spiritually when I recognize how impossible it is for me to follow Paul's direction (above).  Only in the power of The Spirit can I return to Megan as a forgiven man with the power to love her like Jesus has loved me.  

In all marriages there is the ever-present temptation to ask the question "is she/he giving me what I expected when we got married".   Janet Jackson famously sang, "what have you done for me lately?".  Is this not the modus operandi in most marriages?  Sooner or later, a spouse examined under the unbearably bright light of expectation will inevitably be found wanting.

Next comes bitterness and resentment.   Once this takes root, only two roads remain.   The first leads to divorce and the second leads to a quiet acquiescence on the part of one or both partners to the painful reality of a loveless marriage - "I do not love her (or she just doesn't love me) and that's just the way it is".

What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” 

- Mark 10:9

But if the master created the masterpiece which our marriages are meant to emulate, The Gospel must deliver hope to couples exhausted by their inability to love one another well.

So often "the perfect marriage" seems just beyond our reach...and that's because, this side of heaven, it is!   Taylor Goldsmith of the band Dawes, beautifully illustrates this reality with his song Moon in the Water.  He describes his initial experience with unrequited love (read: heartbreak) where he learns that love is more than something to be "attained" or "mastered".  Instead, it is something so immense and perfect that one must continue "fishing for" or "swinging for" it's reflection in the hopes that someday he/she will reach the ideal.

After 10 years of marriage this could not ring more true for us.   The perfect marriage is undeniably that which cost the groom everything; my sacrificial love is, admittedly, shoddy by comparison.  THE act of love never to be perfectly copied but merely imitated is the love made absolutely manifest in the cross of Christ.    Jesus' bruised body and shed blood became the bread and the cup which nourishes all those who have been left heartbroken by life and (what so often passes for) love and have come face to face with their hunger and thirst.

To continue with (my reading of...) Goldsmith's metaphor, the love of God in Christ Jesus is the love which all who enter into marriage must reach towards.  Yet, in it's infinite wisdom, God's plan goes a step further.

In our reaching/swinging for this perfect love we become exhausted and frustrated arriving at the crossroads where all who are truly broken in Spirit finally arrive.   "I cannot, so He must".   I have become powerless to manage my life.  HELP! I need somebody!

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. 

- Psalm 51:17

Thank God then that Christ Jesus' strength begins in the midst of our weakness.   He loves us more perfectly than we with our best intentions could ever hope to love one another.   The Perfect Marriage between Christ and His church is already consummated in the heart of the believer.    It is there that The Spirit has made his home and it is there that love like this is made perfectly possible.....

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.  For we know in part and we prophesy in part,but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears.  When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.  For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. 

- 1 Corinthians 13

Christ's Blessings,

Matt

P.S. For your listening pleasure....



This Week


* New Wednesday AM Book Study - Grace in Practice by Paul F. M. Zahl - get your books here!  Chapter 1, Grace in Theology tomorrow at 7am - 2 American Center, 5th Floor (Ritcheson Law Firm)

Next Week...
 
* Monday Men's Lunch at Dakota's - 12pm - Chapter 5 of Tempted and Tried
 

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Silent Night, Violent Night

Silent night, holy night
Son of God, love's pure light
Radiant beams from Thy holy face
With the dawn of redeeming grace
Jesus, Lord, at Thy birth

Every year we are asked to play Christmas parties and every year, just after Thanksgiving,  it's time to pull out all the Christmas music (the chords to which I promptly forgot December 26th of the previous year) and relearn it.    I'm actually quite a fan of most Christmas music but of all the merry, merry songs we revisit every year none is more impactful than quietest hymn of all, Silent Night.

Originally the song was written in German (Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht) in Salzburg, Austria by the priest Father Joseph Mohr who simply wanted a song that could be played on a guitar.  No organs, strings, horns....simply a guitar.

There is indeed a simplicity to the song indicative of the birth of Jesus.   Maybe because initially the world did not take notice; there was no pomp and circumstance.   There was simply a baby in a manger beheld by parents who were certain of a majestic truth, this baby would be the Savior of the world.

The incomparable Werner Herzog describes frankly in the clip below that the way of life in The Amazon is death but intimation is clear; The Amazon is simply the way of the world unrestrained.  He calls it "overwhelming and collective murder".  The only order is strength and aggression.  Survival of the fittest.  This is the world into which Jesus entered, a counter-intuitive savior who would lay down His strength and win bringing about a new kingdom, the kingdom of Heaven, where the weak are made strong (2nd Cor. 12:19), the foolish are made wise (1st Cor. 1:27) and the poor are made rich in faith (James 2:5).

Though the majesty of the incarnation cannot be overstated, perhaps this Silent Night was also a violent night (foreshadowing the life and the death before him).   Two millenia from the comfortable, cozy hospitals where my two daughters were born, Jesus entered into a cruel drama in which he had would offer up his flesh and bones to the same cruel end we all must face - death.

Christians can celebrate Christmas morning because we've received the gift of eternal life made possible not because a baby was born, but primarily because The Son of God condescended to identify with man completely yet remained obedient to His Father even unto death on a cross.

Can we really party today?  With all that's going on shouldn't we get started today? 

- Johnathan Wilson, Gentle Spirit - 2011

 
There's always "the heavy"isn't there?  The person among us who just can't say the polite thing.   There is such pressure to keep up the facade that somehow things are as they ought to be.  There's not a time of year when tradition seems to reign more prominently than at Christmas, but why?  We want to be happy, don't we?  Think of the countless dinner tables around which deeply troubled families will gather this Christmas in order to feign some semblance of normalcy.

"It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 

I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners." 

- Mark 2:17

Laboring under the law of happiness ("I ought to feel like celebrating") so many will suffer silently unable to appropriate the true joy of the cross of Christ where it is most undeniably needed:  in the midst or our suffering.  In our weakness Jesus truly comes (not in our strength), in our poverty we will find Him (not in our wealth) and in the sickness of sin we will find forgiveness (not in our self-righteousness).

Slow down - you move to fast.

- 59th Street Bridge Song, Simon and Garfunkel

Out of the cacophony of the bustling city of Bethlehem that would make no room for Him, Christ was born in the country in a dirty, manger stall.  This was no wonderful scene.  Births are difficult and painful in the best cases.  Cow dung and straw were this King's accommodations.  When he returns again to us this Christmas will He find much to be different? Read the headlines, it's doubtful.

But He will come again as sure as He has come before not because we celebrate His birth, but because we are still in need of the grace that is made most trans-formatively manifest in His death.

His grace is our only lifeline.  As Andrew Murray put it, "his humility must become our humility".  It does not come at the behest of our best attempts at recreating angelic choruses (vis-a-vis The Messiah).   Grace comes when we are finally ready to give up trying to whip up God's presence with our busy-ness, decorations, songs, traditions and romantic notions of The First Christmas.   Grace moves in when we finally surrender to and accept the deliverance made possible by The Violent Night on Calvary.   This reconciliation between God and man that Christ achieved through His death leads us to new life, The Silent Night, much needed rest for our weary souls. 

Merry Christmas!
Matt

 

PLEASE FIND B3 MINISTRIES' END OF THE YEAR UPDATE AND APPEAL HERE!

This Week

* Wednesday Men's Group - Tempted and Tried by Russell D. Moore - Chapter 5 @ 7am - 2 American Center, 5th Floor (Ritcheson Law Firm)

* Sunday - Merry Christmas!

Next Week...

* No Monday Men's Lunch
 
Week After Next

* The Magill's w/ The Outlaws and In-laws - Saturday, January 7th - The Moores Store in Ben Wheeler, TX, 7pm-10pm

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