We Were Soldiers Once, Part 2

This is the second devotional in a however-many-part series based on the movie “We Were Soldiers”.  Before they went into battle, Mel Gibson’s character stood before the troops and promised that he would bring every one of his men home.  Good men were going to die, but dead or alive he would make sure that they came home.  So during the course of the movie, we’ve come to know some of the men very personally.  Like “the enemy” in the last devotional, the movie has “some other Americans” that are just basically the “We Were Soldiers” version of the red shirt guys from Star Trek…they’re just there to be dead to add to the body count.  Those are the easy ones to talk about.  Those aren’t the guys talking about their baby being born today, or the ones that had a baby just before they left and prayed with Mel Gibson’s character about what it all means with new life and war.  And we see the new father as he prays has a pink bracelet with his baby’s name on it…to make his arm easily identifiable when we see it later in the movie dead on the ground.  And this soldier with the bracelet – who gave his life to save another soldier that had been shot – lay out there somewhere on the battlefield when Mel does a troop count.  He realizes that he has two men missing.

Mel Gibson and Sam Elliot go back out into the field – searching for the 2 lost soldiers.  He promised to bring them all home…and two of his men were out among the dead unable to be brought back home.  We hear the gunshots fired around them and the explosions as artillery hits nearby targets, and they waited until it was night to go searching…but Mel Gibson leads a group of soldiers out into danger to find those two men.

John 10 tells us that Jesus is the Good Shepherd.  A shepherd that is willing to lay down his life to protect his sheep where a hired hand would not.  And that the sheep know His voice and listen to Him.  And then in Luke 15, Jesus tells the parable of the lost sheep (and the lost coin)…how the shepherd will leave the ninety nine that are safe and go find the one that is missing.  Because that one sheep means so much to the shepherd.  I thought of these two parables as I watched that scene with Mel Gibson and Sam Elliot and the group of “some other Americans” walking through that battlefield looking for those two lost boys.

And after I thought of those two parables, it hit me just how long I’d been content to be one of the ninety nine safe sheep.  I know the usual application is that Jesus wants everyone to be saved, and that the parable isn’t really an illustration on the Great Commission in Matthew 28 – or used as a condemnation on our failure to do it.  But that’s what I thought of this time.  How often instead of going “into all of the world making new disciples and baptizing them into the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit” are we content being the ninety nine safe (saved) sheep?  How often have I thought, “Jesus is the Good Shepherd, so He’ll do all the looking and hunting and braving of the dangers to go find the lost sheep…they know HIS voice, not mine…He even said so in John 10.”  And not that it’s an active decision we make to let the lost be lost – but a complacency that just happens over time.  “They know HIS voice, those lost sheep, not my voice…they won’t listen to me.  And I’m worried about keeping myself safe…it’s scary out there.  And the Shepherd will risk HIS life – He said so in John 10.  Already even died for those lost…and I was a lost, but now I’m found, so I’ll be safe in this pen while the Shepherd goes looking for that other lost sheep.  I’ll just be safe and sit right here…being safe.”

But the lost sheep parable is about how much the lost mean to Jesus.  The parable of the talents in Matthew 25 shows how we’re really supposed to act.  A man went on a long journey – like Jesus crucified and ascending to Heaven.  He left some talents to his servants…10 to one, 5 to another and 1 to the last.  And when the man comes back, he goes to the servants.  The first two had doubled his money.  The last?  Well, that guy said that he knew the man worked hard for what he had…was scared to lose it so he buried it.  Sat in the pen.  Content to be one of the ninety nine safe sheep instead of getting out and finding more for the man.  And the man became angry and told the last servant “you KNEW how hard I worked for my money (looked for sheep), and yet you did absolutely nothing with what I gave you to try and help me get more while I was gone.”

Listen for the Whisper that tells you that, yes, Jesus is the Good Shepherd – but He wants His sheep to help.  Genesis tells us how God led the animals one at a time before the man and whatever the man called them, that was their name.  After creating the universe, I’m feeling pretty certain that God was capable of naming the animals and then telling the man, “Hey, Jethro!  This is an elephant.  This is a camel.  This is a dog.  No, that’s not a monkey, THIS is a monkey.”  Just like our parents did on zoo trips when we were little kids.  But God gave man work to be useful in the world.  And God wanted man to work.  And God wants the sheep to get out of the pen and help Him find his lost sheep.

You’re only lost if you don’t know where you are.  The two dead soldiers couldn’t make it back to the group, but the other American soldiers that were with Mel Gibson and Sam Elliot knew exactly where they were…following their leader.  A leader they trusted.  A leader they respected.  A leader that they knew would come looking for them just like they were looking for the two that they were looking for now.  And where are you?  Are you lost?  Have you wandered away from the flock and now you have no idea where you are?  Call out to the Shepherd.  He’s looking for you.  Are you out following the Shepherd?  If you are, then you know exactly where you are.  You’ve left the pen but you haven’t left safety.  You’re still following your leader.  The leader you trust.  The leader you respect.  The leader that you know died for you just like He died for the ones you’re out there looking for now.

Do we know of those out there that wandered away from the pen and have become lost – maybe they used to sit next to you at church, but quit coming?  Have you done what the Good Shepherd did and gone after the one that was lost?  Leaving the others to go find the two that are lost out there somewhere?  Or have you been content to be one of the ninety nine safe sheep.  “We’re all safe, and it’s a scary world out there.  I’ll let Jesus do His thing out there in the scary world, and I’ll just sit here in the safety of the pen and sing praises about how glad I am He saved me.”  And never mind those other sheep lost out there?  That’s not what we’re called to do.  The Great Commission tells us to get out there.  Follow your leader and follow the Shepherd.  When Mel Gibson finds the soldier with the bracelet, he sees that he’s died carrying a soldier that’s been shot – making sure that everybody comes home.  He looks at the bracelet and says, “He died keeping my promise”.  Are you willing to die keeping Jesus’ promise to seek and save the lost?  He wants to make sure that every single one of us comes Home.  Are you out there helping him look?

~Dwayne

ListenForTheWhisper@comcast.net

http://listenforthewhisper.blogspot.com

We Were Soldiers Once, Part 1

The movie “We Were Soldiers” starring Mel Gibson is one of my favorite movies, and at the same time one of the hardest to watch.  The bravery of those men is absolutely inspiring.  The dedication of soldiers standing as brothers while outnumbered in a foreign country is far more than something to be admired.  It’s something to aspire to as a country and as people.  But on the other hand, the sadness, the loss, the death, and then watching the family dealing with it all is extremely sorrowful.  It’s absolutely depressing.  I love the movie, but hardly ever watch it. 

I’ve tried to read the book on which it was based, We Were Soldiers Once…and Young.  I bought it for my father-in-law.  He read it, and told me it was good.  So some time after I bought it for him, I borrowed it and tried to read it.  I could barely make it through a third of the book.  The depression I go through after watching the movie is nothing compared to what I was experiencing reading the stories of the individuals.  You see, the movie hits some highlights, but the book goes into great detail about the individuals and gives battle details that too hard to even read them.  And it’s just sad to read, and I couldn’t do it – not to discount the suffering of those men, but I couldn’t even read about the sufferings they lived through in that battle.  And being the “born in 1973” guy that I am, and having a dad that was in the war (like mine was) for some reason thought a book to remind my father-in-law of the horrors he went through while he was there was a good idea.  I’ve never actually apologized to him for buying him the book – but I’ve wished a hundred times that I’d just bought him something else that year. 

But having recently watched the movie again, there are several topics from the movie that I want to reflect on in these devotionals.  And unlike the Otis Epistle, they merit more discussion than a single paragraph in a short devotional.  So this is Part 1 in the “We Were Soldiers Once” series.  In this first one I’d like to discuss the general open topic of “the enemy”…and how we treat them.

Like most war movies, of course, the Americans are fighting “the enemy”.  The scene is set early that the enemy is ruthless and evil.  In the opening scene of the movie, the French army is in the North Vietnamese Ia Drang Valley and the squadron is attacked.  We see one Vietnamese soldier ask the commander, “are we taking prisoners?” The commander tells him coldly, “There are no survivors.  If we kill all they send, then eventually they’ll stop sending them.”  But as the movie goes on, you see certain things shown about “the enemy” so that they become a little more personalized.  There’s one particular soldier that we see writing in his diary or journal or whatever, and in his book he has a picture of what is obviously supposed to be his wife clipped to one of the pages.  This guy has glasses so he’s easily recognized when we see him later trying to muster his courage and overcome his obvious fear and then runs to attack Mel Gibson.  The guy gets shot and later Mel is given his journal and then mails it to the grieving Vietnamese wife.  Because she’s mourning the loss of her husband just the way we’ve been shown the American wives mourning the loss of their husbands.  The little guy with glasses might have been drafted like so many American boys were and found himself fighting in a war he had nothing to do with.  But now, he’s just “the enemy”.  And what do we do with “the enemy”?  We hope that the good guys swoop in and kill them all.  They do, after all, deserve it.  Don’t they?

Flash back with me to Jonah.  Not the Jonah in the whale’s belly.  Not the Jonah before that who’s a moderately well-known prophet.  Not the Jonah who preaches the message to the city of Nineveh and causes everyone from the king to the cattle to wear sackcloth and put ashes on their heads in repentance.  No, I want to flash back to the end.  To the Jonah in Jonah 4 who is complaining to God about being merciful and gracious and loving.  Oh, not complaining about God being merciful and gracious and loving to HIM, but about God being loving to everyone and spared Nineveh.  Because Nineveh is “the enemy”.  Unknown.  Faceless.  “The enemy”.  And we, I mean, Jonah wants God to deal with “the enemy”. 

Just like we feel today.  We see those are attacking our beliefs.  We see those that attack our country.  We see those that mock us for believing what we believe.  And like Jonah, we want the God of Revelation to show up with the Four Horsemen (not Ric Flair and the wrestling guys) and dish out the judgment that we think “the enemy” deserves.  But what did God tell Jonah?  “There are 120,000 people in Nineveh, and guess what?  I created each and every single one of them.  Furthermore, whether you like it or not, self-righteous Jonah, I love every single one of them – because I created every single one of them.”  Just like Jesus told the listeners in Matthew 5:44&45, “I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, ⁴⁵ so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.”  And we need to realize that.

We hate “the enemy” – and classify lots of people and groups as “the enemy”, but like Jonah at Nineveh, we need to be reminded that God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – and our God loves them just like he loved us, because He’s not just “our God”.  And they may pray in a different way or to different gods, and they may fight for their beliefs and be willing to die (and kill) the ones that they classify as “they enemy” because of it, but in the end God sees them as worthy to die for.  Because He wishes that “all would come to repentance” that’s 2 Peter 3:9…and that just doesn’t apply to people you like.

So Listen for the Whisper that asks if we pray for “the enemy” or wish them death?  When we hear that this terrorist or that murderer has been killed or put to death?  How happy were we?  Do we hope they found Jesus, or are we (hypocritically) glad that they got what they deserved?  Do we read the obituaries and hope that those listed there are Christians?  Do we pray that those that will soon be listed will come to repentance and find Salvation in Christ before it’s too late?  Or do we see those names listed like credits at the end of a movie and not even care?  Complacently indifferent if they knew Jesus like you do? 

The Vietnam War Memorial has 58,195 individual names listed.  To most it’s just a list of names.  But it’s so much more than that.  For every name, there’s a family eternally changed because that name is listed on that wall, and every name on that wall is important to some family.  God knew every single one.  Jesus died for every single one.  And He died for those on “the enemy” side, too.  God’s love reaches where sometimes ours won’t.  But if we cared like we’re supposed to, we’d share Jesus every minute of every day to make CERTAIN that not a single name that shows up in an obituary hasn’t already been written in the Book of Life.  And I’m not saying that I do and that I’m perfect and everyone that reads this should be like me…because I’m the one that reads them like movie credits.  Even worse, I only read them to make sure that our local paper (infamous for mistakes) doesn’t have the name spelled differently in the header compared to the actual listing.  Even to the point of posting the wrong ones on Facebook.  Have I ever stopped for one second to consider their eternal fate?  no.  Have I been the one to get excited that someone’s been sent to a lethal injection, and scoffed at “death row conversions”?  yes.  I’m not proud of either, but if I’m to have any credibility, I have to be willing to admit my shortcomings.  Especially if I intend on being able to change them.

This devotional wasn’t as cheeky and humor-filled as most.  But it shouldn’t be.  People are dying every day without knowing Jesus, and I’ve either been glad about it because I’ve classified them as “the enemy” (however I’ve personally defined it) or, just as badly, haven’t even cared.  Jesus cared.  I’m glad he did, because if He hadn’t cared for them, He wouldn’t have cared for me.  And I meant more to Him than just a name on some marble to be walked by as He went looking for a name He recognized.  Every name on that wall is important to some family.  And if we’re all supposed to be God’s family, they should be important to us.  If you need to share Christ with someone, now would be a fine time for that.  And if you haven’t prayed for someone’s salvation, now would be a fine time for that, too.  Especially if you’ve decided on your own that they’re “the enemy”.

~Dwayne

ListenForTheWhisper@comcast.net

http://listenforthewhisper.blogspot.com

That First Step Is A Doozy!

There’s a show on SyFy Channel called Total Blackout.  If you haven’t seen it, Jaleel White hosts it.  You remember Jaleel, right?  Steve Erkle with the high waters and suspenders from Family Matters?  Yeah, him.  Anyway, the point of the show is that the contestants walk into a pitch black room – no lights at all – and touch things or walk through things.  And they always assume the worst.  If doesn’t matter how harmless it is, they’re always scared it’s going to be snakes or spiders.  One guy, while identifying a sheep, touched it and yelled out “it’s a snake!”  But one of the tasks is to walk through three different containers.  And in the dark, they can’t see what it is.  But Jaleel will tell them that they’re walking on broken glass – it’s really potato chips.  Then he’ll tell them that they’re walking on hot coals – it’s really baked rolls.  But they have to overcome the fear of what they think they know and get to through the three containers.

In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, he had to take the step over the huge canyon as his third task.  He comes out of the small door, and sees nothing but the deep ravine in front of him.  He pulls out his Dora the Explorer book of clues, and reads that this test is to follow “The Path of God…Only in the leap from the lion's head will he prove his worth”.   And he knows that noboby can jump from one side to the other, so he places his hand over his heart like he’s saying the Pledge of Allegiance and steps out into the nothing.  Except that it’s not nothing.  There’s a bridge that he can’t see when he’s looking out of the little hole he’s just climbed through – but magically the audience can see it when the camera pans off to the side.  But the point is to take the step, even when it looks impossible.

Abraham was told to pack up and leave.  Gideon was told to go lead Israel.  Noah was told to go build an ark – and I imagine Bill Cosby wasn’t far when he joked that Noah’s response was, “Right…what’s an ark?”  When God calls, do you trust Him enough to take that step?  We like solid ground.  We like knowing the answers before we take test.  Before we upgrade our cellphone plans, we’ll compare companies and check the budget.  Because we don’t want any surprises.  Back when I was little, they had these “Choose Your Own Adventure” books.  You could decide whether to open the door where you heard the scream (turn to page 37) or to turn quietly and walk the other way (turn to page 94).  I loved those books…but, man I did a lot of “what if” reading!!  “OK, let’s put my finger here where I’m at and turn to page 37 and open the door to see what happens.  OH!!  A big hairy monster jumped out from behind the door and ate everything but my sneakers.  I’m dead!  Not a big fan of being dead, so let’s go back to my jump page and pick page 94 instead to see what happens when I DON’T open the door.”

But life doesn’t work that way.  You can’t just put your finger where you are and test the waters on page 37.  Because in real life, when you turn to page 37 then it’s done.  The cat’s out of the bag.  You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube.  The horses are already out of the barn.  And you’re there to deal with a decision you’ve made.  And if we won’t switch from Cable to Satellite without a 2 week inner debate to make sure we’ve covered all possible outcomes, how much more unwilling are we to take that step of faith to walk the road that God calls us to walk?  The road where we don’t even know where we’re going.  God called people to go to China and preach the gospel.  “What happens if things go wrong?”  Thanks for trusting God.  People are called to Africa.  “What happens if things go wrong?”  Thanks for trusting God.  People are called to go to the rainforest like I mentioned in a previous devotional.  And what happened?  Things went tragically wrong.  For them.  But look at all the people saved since then.  The problem comes when we put our own comforts and more to the point, our own discomforts ahead of spreading the gospel.  Some people are called to spread the gospel allll the way, not to China, not to Africa, not to a rainforest in South America, but allll the way to the “bad side of town”.  And how many of us (my own hand raised) have never been to help them?

If you look at the great men of the Bible, they weren’t perfect men.  They weren’t even great listeners.  Sure Noah built an Ark, and Abraham packed up and left.  But what about Jonah?  God called, and he ran the other way.  Or even looking at David?  God called the shepherd boy, and he answered.  Ready, willing and confident in God to deliver him.  And what did he get?  Brothers laughing at him and trying to send him home.  King Saul telling him that he was “just a boy” then saying that David at LEAST needed to put on the king’s own armor.  And what did David do?  He said that God had delivered him so far, he would deliver him now (1 Samuel 17:37).    So Listen for the Whisper that tells you that God has delivered you so far, why would He stop now?  If Jesus came to die for you on a cross, why would you doubt Him when he asks you to take that step?  Don’t put your own comforts before your submission to God.  As a Christian, nothing we do should ever be more important than submitting our will to His.  And the part we don’t like is taking a sentence like that, and adding the caveat “even if it’s the last thing we do.”  Total submission, even if it’s the last thing we do.

~Dwayne

ListenForTheWhisper@comcast.net

http://listenforthewhisper.blogspot.com

All You Need Is Love

Onions, pictures of my friends, hay, old pickup trucks, grass, kisses from a child, squirrels, life and why not, let’s throw you into the list, too.  What do all of these things have in common?  Each one of them (along a few equally disconnected items that I omitted) is something that Tom T. Hall lists in the song “I Love” as things he loves.  That’s a pretty wide grouping of things for one person to love if you ask me.  And I love that song.  I’ve loved that song since I was little.  Or at least I’ve liked it a whole lot.

We love lots of things.  We love “Hey Jude”, and we love Elvis, and we love Grandma, and we love Christmas when we’re little…lots of great things that we love.  And at the same time – we love Taco Bell, and we love Weekend at Bernie’s, and we love sleeping late on Saturday, and we love buying gas for 15 cents cheaper than we would have yesterday.  We love our new phone, and we love our parents.  We love fresh, hot pizza, and at the same time we love our wife and kids.  Do we really love our phone the same way we love our kids?  I mean, we say we love them both.

Now comes the hard part of the quiz – and those of you that just googled Tom T. Hall thought THAT was hard part, right?  But which end of the spectrum do we put our love of Jesus?  Deuteronomy 6:5 – and repeated by Jesus in Matthew 22:37, and Luke 10:27 as the Greatest Commandment – says we’re to Love the Lord your God with all of your Heart, Soul, Strength, and Mind.  There have been volumes written on the different variations of “love” used in the Greek language.  When Jesus reaffirms Peter, “Peter do you agape (all encompassing love) me?” “Lord, you know I phileo (brotherly love) you” is that stylistic by the writer or indicative of some deeper meaning that Peter is unwilling to commit to an all-encompassing love?  I don’t know.  I wasn’t there – but I’ll ask when I get to Heaven.  But it’s certainly something applicable to our word love.  Certainly we don’t love the new song on the radio as much as we love our new-born baby.  But we use the same word, and which is really closer to our love of Jesus?  Words are tricky though.  So let’s look at the heart.  Because that’s what God looks at.

 When we look at the heart and ask “Do I love Jesus as much as I love the Beatles”, the answer might well be a resounding “Sometimes!”  No, I mean a resounding “Yes!”  Well, sometimes I mean a resounding “Yes!”  Moses told the Children of Israel to “Love the Lord your God, and walk in his ways.”  But some days, things are hard.  Some days we’re frustrated and our “Love the Lord your God” is a rheostat.  Rheostats are used in the knob-style dimmer switches on some lights.  And some days our “Love the Lord your God” is turned down on the level that we love old pickup trucks and squirrels.  And other days our “Love the Lord your God” is turned all the way to 11 (to reference Spinal Tap and Tom T. hall in the same devotional).

Listen for the Whisper that tells you that it’s always supposed to be turned up to 11.  God loved you enough to die for you on a cross.  So be holy because He is holy.  And love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, strength and mind.  With all that you are…always.  We’ve all been there, though...the days when the world seems against us, and nothing’s going right, and it’s bad news after bad news and “the hits just keep on coming!” and if it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all and what ELSE could go wrong.  And even in those times, we’re to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, strength and mind.  Just like Job.  We don’t really like to talk about Job, though – because Job scares us just a little bit.  But through our fears, and our worries, and our failures, and our successes and our joy, God is there.  And He still died for you.  So the next time you use the word “love”, remember that God is Love.  Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13:13 “And now these three remain: Faith, Hope and Love.  And the greatest of these is Love” because God is Love.  Not all of human love is the same love, but our love for God should be.  Like the cheesy radio commercials say, you need to crank it to 11 and then rip the knob off!  God’s love is perfect love, and He gave it to you when He didn’t have to.  So crank your love for Him to 11 and rip the knob off!

~Dwayne

ListenForTheWhisper@comcast.net

http://listenforthewhisper.blogspot.com

Stop! Hammer Time

There’s a little picture going around Facebook that says, “When someone yells stop; I don't know if it's in the name of love, it's hammer time, or if I should collaborate and listen.”  The three of those being references to songs, of course, with a “stop” in them.  The first, obviously is the Supremes “Stop in the name of love”…although folks in their twenties and younger might not even know who the Supremes are (it’s a pizza, right?).  The second, almost as obviously, is from the song “U Can’t Touch This” by MC Hammer (at the time anyway, later he was just Hammer, and later still he was a self-parodied clown in a SuperBowl Ad)…although folks in their twenties or younger, or in their fifties or older might not know who HE is regardless of what he calls himself.  And the last was from the song “Ice Ice Baby” by Vanilla Ice…and he’s pretty irrelevant regardless of how old you are, other than knowing that he straight stole the bass groove from the Queen song “Pressure” no matter how many times he’s said that he didn’t.

But back to my point, the word “stop” is a forceful, impactful little word.  Like a pistol firing or a loud hand clap, it’s a short, to-the-point word.  Someone yells “stop” and kids immediately know to not run out into the street or touch the stove, bad guys know the cops are about to start shooting at them, people reading telegraphs know that they’ve gotten to the end of a sentence (stop), and you know that you should immediately cease and desist whatever it is you’re doing or about to do.  Or that it’s Hammer Time, I guess (Stop! Hammer Time).  C’mon, those of you that know the song have been thinking it anyway, haven’t you?

But every now and then, it’s something we need to tell ourselves.  We over-commit.  We tell everyone that we can “take care of that” for them, and for them, and for them, and eventually you’ve told everyone you know that you can be there at 12:30 on Saturday as soon as you finish helping everyone else on the list – and you’ve essentially booked that one Saturday afternoon from 12:30 until 2:45 the following Thursday.  We can’t be everything to everyone.  Sometimes, we have to tell someone “I’m sorry, I can’t”.  And before you can tell someone else “no”, you have to tell yourself “stop”.  (Especially if your over-committing is a way to hide from some larger issue that you don’t feel like dealing with.)

It’s great to give all you have to help others.  It’s great to be someone that people can rely on when they need help.  It’s great to be the guy at work that knows a lot about a lot.  To be the one that everyone calls to ask questions about things that are well out of your supposed “job description”.  But sometimes you get so far outside your job description that you’ve blurred the lines as to what those actually are, and your free advise turns into expected service.  And sometimes we’re so caught up in helping other people that we’ve forgotten to help our own families.  We walk 25 miles…through the snow…uphill both ways…barefoot no less to help the new family at church move into their house, or help work in the church garden, or volunteer at the senior centers or the homeless shelters.  And then you’re too tired to help your wife fold towels.  Or spend quality time with your kids.  Or to get up and go to church on Sunday morning.  Or to study your Bible on a Saturday afternoon.  It’s not so great to be the person that people say “well he said he’d be here, but who knows when he’ll actually get here.”  Because you’ve gotten to where you’re always willing to help everyone, but you’ve left yourself no time to actually help MOST of the people you’ve said you’d help.  And worse still to be the one that constantly neglects your family because you’re overcommitted to everyone else.

Although, to be fair, sometimes when you commit to help, those you’ve committed to help have tighter time frames than you’d been led to believe.  You show up to help, and they’re gone because “we’ll be here around 3:00” meant “I’m not waiting a minute later than 3:00.”  And sometimes when people come to you for help, it’s a situation where they shouldn’t be coming to you in the first place.  You might be the easy stop.  The quick stop.  But you’re not the right stop.  And you’re actually the harder stop to get to.  Sometimes you’re the “I’ll walk around the corner, up two flights of stairs, knock the secret knock, do the secret handshake, and interrupt what they’re doing to ask my question” option.  And you know what?  It’s not wrong to say to that person “I don’t know, you’ll need to go ask this other person.  They’ll know the answer you need.”  They might not want to ask that other person their question, but that doesn’t make you a bad person for not knowing the answer or not going to track it down for them.  Albert Einstein supposedly said that he never memorized something that he could easily look up.  (And he might have actually said that, but I didn’t feel like looking it up! HaHa!)  And that seems pretty smart to me…and fairly applicable to this devotional.  Why trying to come up with an answer on everything, when the easiest solution is to just point them to the right person, so they can go ask the question themselves…cut out the middle man, so to speak.  And that’s ok, too.  Whether or not they want to ask the right person is on them.

Jesus said to “let your yes be yes, and your no be no”…but first, to yourself let your stop be stop.  And then let your yes be yes, and your no be no.  Because once you’ve told yourself to stop telling everyone that you can do everything for them, you can actually be useful to the people you’re left helping.  Jesus was completely and fully about helping people.  We read time after time of his reaching out to those that needed him.  And yet we read on several occasions where he went off by himself to pray.  If we get so busy in the helping that we neglect our own spiritual nourishment, then we end up helping no one, not even ourselves.  On the seventh day, God rested.  He didn’t need rest any more than Jesus needed to be baptized.  But we’re thick-headed, “stiff-necked people” (just like they were called in Exodus), and God knows that we need visual aids.  Listen for the Whisper that tells you that you need to slow down.  And that sometimes you need to just stop.  Take a deep breath.  Pray.  And learn to say, “I can’t today, but I’ll be glad to help when I can”.

~Dwayne

ListenForTheWhisper@comcast.net

http://listenforthewhisper.blogspot.com

A Heart Like Whose, Now?

We’ve all gotten bad advice from time to time.  If you’re like me, most of the bad advice was free…and most of it from fellow 16-year-olds who didn’t have any more of an idea of what good advice was than I did.  Some of that advice is just peer pressure…but that’s another email.  I think a lot of people get their biblical advice that way.  Catchy phrases that we think are Bible verses, misconceptions of forgiveness and what it means to be a Christian, and general “here’s what I would do” type suggestions from friends and co-workers that are based more on the human sense of right and wrong than a biblical sense of what it means to be holy.  Well, I take that back…an eye for an eye is absolutely biblical, but only under Old Testament Law.  And since most of us call ourselves Christians and aren’t wearing a tallit, then chances are good that we’re not really under Old Testament Law at the moment and need a better standard of “what we would do if it were us”.

But the main point I want to focus on today is the biblical advice we get from pop culture.  We like to rationalize our behavior, and if we can find one more person to agree with what we do, then that must mean we’re ok.  And if that second person is a celebrity, well then…all the better.  We all know that celebrities are well-known for their always-correct opinions.  I mean, they have to be right, right?  Otherwise they wouldn’t be millionaires for being able to play a guitar, right?  Because playing a guitar or knowing how to act in a movie certainly means you’re a biblical scholar, right?

I’ll cut to the chase on this one because this one’s prone to be a little long anyway, so let’s just jump in and get started.  Miranda Lambert has a song out called “Heart Like Mine”.  In her song, she sings about how much braver she is after her second drink and that her daddy cried after he saw her tattoo, and how she’s not the kind of girl that you’d bring home to mom.  But the chorus of the song makes my skin crawl as she justifies herself by singing that she’d heard that Jesus drank wine.  And just because Jesus drank wine means that He’ll be toasting her with a long-stemmed glass when she gets to Heaven.  And why?  Because “he’d understand a heart like mine”…and that’s where she’ll get no argument from me.  Jesus fully understands the non-repentant, “I’m going to do it my way” heart.  The country duo Big & Rich had a song with similar sentiments.  And from a general standpoint of the temptations we face from this world every day, their song is a great portrayal.  But then you get to lines like how he gets a little crazy trying to have a little fun, and he may be passed out on Friday night, but on Sunday morning he’ll be passing the collection plate.  And yeah, we all stumble.  None of us are perfect…not even me.  But you have to be trying harder than the song makes it sound.

Romans 6 makes it clear that while Grace saves us, and Grace is a wonderful thing, we’re not supposed to just keep on sinning so that we can get more that Grace.  It’s not a situation where you keep pulling your back so you can get another prescription of the “good stuff” from the doctor.  Grace is not a treatment.  Grace is a cure.  And if you’ve been cured, then you don’t suffer the disease anymore.  Romans 6:1-4 1 What shall we say then? Are we to remain in sin so that grace may increase? 2 Absolutely not! How can we who died to sin still live in it? 3 Or do you not know that as many as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 Therefore we have been buried with him through baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too may live a new life.  Put another way…like I said, Grace isn’t a treatment, it’s a cure.

You’ve been raised into the likeness of Christ.  And you might not want to hear that you should die to your old wants and desires…but that doesn’t stop it from being the truth.  1 Peter 4 talks about walking the path that Christ walked.  3 For the time that has passed was sufficient for you to do what the non-Christians desire.  You lived then in debauchery, evil desires, drunkenness, carousing, drinking bouts, and wanton idolatries.  4 So they are astonished when you do not rush with them into the same flood of wickedness, and they vilify you. 5 They will face a reckoning before Jesus Christ who stands ready to judge the living and the dead. 6 Now it was for this very purpose that the gospel was preached to those who are now dead, so that though they were judged in the flesh by human standards they may live spiritually by God’s standards.  Put another way…”hey, let’s go out Friday after work and get good and drunk!!”  Ummm, no thanks.  I’m a Christian, and I don’t go to bars to get drunk anymore.  I’m setting an example for my kids and those around me, and while drinking alcohol isn’t a sin in and of itself, drinking it to excess is, and it opens the door to decisions I may regret when I can’t think straight.  Plus, there might be a Christian that isn’t sure about the whole “drinking” thing and my public drinking might cause my brother to stumble.  So since it’s not all about me anymore, but about Christ living in me (because I’ve died to myself, you see), I’m going to pass.  Y’all have fun and be safe, but my time for that sort of thing is passed.

Raise your hand if you thought that I sounded a little corny just then.  Yeah…my hand’s up, too.  You know whose hand isn’t up?  The hand with the nail scars.  Those hands aren’t raised.  Because Romans 14 makes it clear that it’s not up to the mature in their faith to tell the others to “get over it”…it’s up to the mature to sacrifice their wants and desires for the betterment of others.  You know what you should want more than a good time?  The spiritual uplifting of your Christian family.  20 Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food. For although all things are clean, it is wrong to cause anyone to stumble by what you eat. 21 It is good not to eat meat or drink wine or to do anything that causes your brother to stumble.  So, yes, the mature Christian may realize that all things are clean, but if they cause someone to stumble, then it’s unclean BECAUSE it made them stumble.  Just like everything else in Christianity, it’s all about humility and submission.  The first shall be last and the last shall be first.  That’s not about standing in line at the pearly gates.  That’s about submitting yourselves to others as Christ did.  In 1 Corinthians 8:1-13, Paul is talking about food sacrificed to idols – and this is the passage I equate to a lot of practices that some see as acceptable.  He tells the church at Corinth that while some may eat the sacrificed meat with a clear conscience, other can’t.  And if the ones that can’t are caused to stumble because of the ones that are…then it’s the ones that are who are responsible.  Their “knowledge” (as Paul calls it) that it is not meat that makes a person unclean is great, but it causes a weaker brother to stumble…and that’s not great.  Verse 13 “Therefore, if food causes my brother to stumble, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause my brother to stumble.”  We’re supposed to have that sort of resolve, but I know I don’t have it…I’m trying to, though.  Growing up my mom and my aunt were very close, and most things we did it was like 3 kids instead of me and 2 cousins.  Explains why I have an only child personality with a sense of oldest child superiority and my cousin (who is actually the older of 2 sisters) has a middle child complex.  But I’m digressing.  The point is that growing up I was told “Don’t do that.  They’ll see you doing it, and they’ll try it.  And they’re not old enough to do it yet,” more times than I care to admit.  Made me FURIOUS growing up!  “Well I AM old enough! So Why can’t I?!”  Drove me crazy, but when it comes to spiritual brothers and sisters, it’s the attitude we’re to have.

Listen for the Whisper that tells you that even though it might be a catchy tune with some cute phrases, they’re not necessarily scriptural.  Christianity is submission.  It’s submission to God, to Jesus Christ, and to others.  “Going to church” doesn’t excuse how you act.  “Changing how you act” excuses how you act.  I feel quite certain that Jesus would have rather spent his days growing old and telling stories on the front porch to the multitudes.  But it wasn’t parables that saved us.  It was His choosing to die for you that saved you.  And regardless of what some song on the radio might try to have you believe…if you’re not dying to yourself, you’re not doing it right.  It’s not about keeping on keeping on with the way you always were…it’s about keeping on keeping on trying to be the Christian you’re supposed to be.  And partying like there’s no God every Friday night and then praying like there’s no tomorrow every Sunday isn’t the Christian you should be striving to be.  And when it gets down to it, it’s not about Jesus understanding a heart like ours, anyway…it’s about US understanding a heart like His.

~Dwayne

ListenForTheWhisper@comcast.net

http://listenforthewhisper.blogspot.com

Hello, Judge Wapner? It's Me.

Daytime television is awful.  There’s a newsflash, right?  Are you hearing the parrot from Aladdin (Iago was his name) saying, “Oh there's a big surprise! That's an incredib – I think I'm going to have a heart attack and die of not surprise!”  The trashy talk shows, the soap operas, and the court shows.  All with the same commercials…technical colleges and lawyers.  Thank you, television, for insinuating that the primary reason for being home during the day is because I’m uneducated or injured in an accident (or injured at the hands of an incompetent doctor or drug company).  But I must confess that the reason I know that those are the only commercials is that I like People’s Court.  It was an addiction that started with Judge Wapner and Rusty when was home from school in the summers.  They have had some real clunker replacement judges, but I like the lady they have now.  Smart and no-nonsense without being rude and well, just rude like Judge Judy.  People’s Court is the only judge show I watch, but I love to watch it.  Why?  I don’t know.  Because honestly there’s nothing inherently must-see-tv about a woman with 7 parking tickets getting her car towed while it’s the shop because the mechanic parked it outside so she’s suing the mechanic, or a woman suing her upstairs neighbor for $5,000 because his fishtank leaked on her 35-year-old, crusty, moldy couch and ruined it.  But I like to watch it.  You never know when that information might useful, I guess.

But while I like to watch Judge Milian (the name of the People’s Court judge lady) on television, that doesn’t qualify me to be a judge.  It doesn’t qualify me at all…anymore than watching Andy Griffith qualifies me to be a sheriff or watching Top Gun qualifies me to be a Navy fighter pilot.  As a quick aside, watching football on television, apparently DOES qualify us to be head coaches and general managers, though.  Just ask us, right?

On the sign front of the church here a while back (or maybe it was a couple of years ago) we had this:  God called us to be Witnesses, not lawyers or judges.  But how often do we do the lawyering and judging vs the witnesses we were called to do?

Matthew 28:18-19  Then Jesus came up and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.   Anything about judging in that?  Jesus himself did not come to Earth all those years ago to judge.  He said so himself.

John 12:47-48 If anyone hears my words and does not obey them, I do not judge him. For I have not come to judge the world, but to save the world.  The one who rejects me and does not accept my words has a judge; the word I have spoken will judge him at the last day.  Did you catch that?  Jesus will judge on that last day.  Not when we decide that it’s judgment time.

We’re called to be CSI agents, not Mattlock or Judge Judy.  We observe the facts and the situations and compare it to God’s Words as the standard.  We’re not to condemn, only point out the deviation from the Word.  Like Jesus and the accused adulterer.  They all had their stones in their hands ready to be judge, jury and executioner…and did Jesus roll up his sleeves and say, “You caught her!  Hand me a big, jagged one!”  Nope.  “Let he without sin cast the first stone.”

Judge not, lest ye be judged. Luke 6.  Luke 7:2 For by the standard you judge you will be judged, and the measure you use will be the measure you receive.

Whom does Jesus judge?  The religious people of his day that judged others.  The Pharisees knew the Old Testament text inside and out, and then they used it to manipulate people to their way of thinking and to corrupt the Word of God to say what they wanted it to say.  They knew the Old Testament well enough to carry on conversations and debates using only adjacent verses…you know, rimezzes. (did you remember that word before I told you?)  We can barely quote what 25?  50 verses? We give awards if someone can do 100.  Yet somehow think we know enough Bible to cast judgment on someone’s style of worship or nuances of their beliefs when they differ from ours?  The Pharisees knew the Scripture inside and out and were chastised by Jesus for judging.

I would guess most of our egregious judgers today couldn’t name the 10 Commandments in order or even which of the 12 apostles were brothers.  But even if you can…even if you can start with “In the Beginning,” and quote all the way to “The grace of the Lord Jesus be with God’s people. Amen” (That’s Genesis 1:1 to Revelation 22:21, by the way), that doesn’t give you the position of judge.

So the next time you decide to pass a heaping helping of judgment on someone…because they don’t go to your church…or they use music, or don’t use music…be careful.  These are the essentials:  God is God of all…the Creator God, the Father of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (“His name forever” as he told Moses).  That God came to Earth in the form of Jesus Christ to pay the ultimate sacrifice for the sins of the world.  That based on Jesus’ own words, no man comes to the Father except through him.  Belief, Faith, Baptism, Repentance, Absolute Submission are all essential.  Each of those are things that Jesus himself said we had to do.  If it’s not essential, it’s not worth arguing about.  We need to quit judging and quit trying to convert everyone that doesn’t go to our own church.  Believe me, I have enough beams in my own eye without worrying about specs that I perceive in the eyes of the folks in a church down the street.

But most importantly – Now is not the time to judge.  God will judge at the appointed time.  And will use our own standards against us.  In fact, I do not even judge myself. 1Corinthians 4:4 For I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not acquitted because of this. The one who judges me is the Lord. 4:5 So then, do not judge anything before the time. Wait until the Lord comes.

The next time you start getting an itch to start passing a little judgment, Listen for the Whisper that tells you that it’s not your job to judge, and it’s not time for the One that judges to pass His judgment.  When the time is right, Jesus is quite capable of judging the world.  Thanks for the help, but if He can create the world, then in due time Save the world, then He can most certainly judge the world alllll by Himself when it comes down to judgment time.  Let’s stick to watching the People’s Court to get our fill of judging and leave judging the world to Jesus.

~Dwayne

ListenForTheWhisper@comcast.net

http://listenforthewhisper.blogspot.com

Anywhere with Jesus I can safely go

I love the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes – the little boy and his stuffed tiger for the ones that don’t know it by name.  My all-time favorite is a June 13, 1992 strip (yes, I had to look it up) where for the first 2 panels, Calvin is burping a huge, window-rattling burp.  The third panel his mother yells at him and asks what he has to say after something like that.  He replies, “great diaphragm control, huh?”  The last panel shows him sitting on his bed, obviously sent to his room in trouble, saying, “when I’m a great soloist, she’ll be sorry.”  Granted, it’s a visual joke – being a comic strip and all – but I love it (and most of you aren’t surprised that it’s THIS one that’s my favorite).  But I have them emailed to me every day.  And like most strips, there are little stories.  Each strip tells a piece of a broader story arc.  On one particular arc, Calvin & Hobbes are at the zoo.   The first panel shows him talking to his mom who is wearing a black skirt.  Then when see him walking around the zoo gawking at all he sees while the black skirt is in front of him.  But then he notices that the woman in front of him isn’t his mother!  And now he is LOST!  She asks him what his mother looks like and he says, “from the knees down, she looks just like you”.

How often have I done that in my own life?  I get too busy looking at everything around me…work, soccer, friends, work, even church activities…but I get so busy looking at everything going on around me that I take my eyes off the one I should be following.  Ever been there?  You think you’re right in His footsteps – but you’re not actually actively looking at Him – just generally going along thinking you’re behind Him.  But somewhere along the way, the path turned, and He turned with it, but we missed it…drove off the road…lost in the wilderness.  We were so busy looking at everything else that we forgot to actually look AT Jesus.  And there’s moment of realization that you’ve wandered off the path.  You have that “how did it get this far?” moment.  You think you’re so far lost that you’ll never find your way back to the path.  Lost, just lost.  Despair hits you.  You start saying things like “if ever went back to church, the roof would collapse on me.”  And in the process, you undervalue the amount that Jesus was willing to pay for you, and you undermine the power of Jesus’ blood to cover your sins…whatever they are. 

But do you know what you have to do?  It’s really simple.  Just admit you’re lost.  Stop trying to get YOURSELF unlost (yes, I just made up that word, but you got the point).  You’re the one that got you in this boat to begin with, so just stop saving yourself.  And then yell for help for all you’re worth!.  Cry out to Jesus, if you will.  He knows you’re lost.  He saw you get that way.

Quick personal illustration time.  Way back when, my dad and I where hunting up in the Ozarks.  Beautiful country up there, by the way.  But we were hunting on the side of this mountain, walked all through trees and brush and who knows what looking for squirrels that we’d heard barking in the distance, and then dad asked me if I could get us back to the trail where we’d parked the motorcycles.  Well I knew everything, so I could SURELY get us back to the little path we’d walked away from.  We were standing next to a fence, so I started leading the way away from the fence.  And in my mind it was Sergeant Dwayne and his battered troops returning from the war – I was like 14, not like I was doing this at 30.  Well, maybe I did stuff like this at 30, but THIS time, I was only about 14.  But here were the troops – guns in hand, almost out of ammo, and I was single-handedly leading them out of the wilderness and heading for home.  Weary, hungry, lonely they were finally going to fight our way out and…”Hey!  Here’s another fence!” is what I said when I stopped visualizing military glory and realized what I was seeing.  Dad just laughed.  He knew what I had been doing all along.  I’d started out walking away from the fence, and for the past 15 minutes, I’d slowly been curving us in a big circle leading us right back towards it.  “That’s the same fence…I’ve been watching you walk slowly to your left, the farther you walked around this mountain.  Every brush pile you went around, every tree you avoided, your circled us a little more to the left.”  And then he led me to the road…Back to the bikes and the way out.

It’s the exact same thing with the Cross.  We take our eyes off of where we’re headed…and we slowly start that circle back to where we started.  The sinful nature, they call it.  Selfish desires.  We slowly start that circle back to what we want and not what God wants.  But when we see that fence…and realize that we’ve completely circled back.  Jesus already knows it.  Just like my dad, sometimes He’s followed right along behind you.  Watching you circle around and trying whisper in your ear to turn around.  And sometimes He knows that we’re stubborn people and lets us wander on our own.  And He’ll stop and wait for us…calls us back to the path if we’ll listen for His calling.  Like the parable of the shepherd, He leaves the 99 that are safe to go and get the one that has wandered away.  And the lost sheep recognizes the Master’s voice.  But if that lost sheep keeps trying to finding its own way out, it’s only keeps getting more and more lost.  So when you get THAT lost…just can NOT find your way back.  Just stop and cry for help.  Jesus will get you back on the path.  Take you by the hand and help you out of your struggles with sin.  But just as important as not trying to find your own solution is actually wanting to be found.  Don’t cry for help, then continue to struggle against Him when He takes your hand. 

Listen for the Whisper that leads you home when you’re lost.  But more than that think about how much easier it would have been better if we’d been following closely enough to not get lost in the first place.  The world is full of distractions, and (like Calvin at the zoo) if we only keep glancing at the One who leads us, we might get tricked into following the wrong shepherd.  When the devil tempted Jesus, he did it with Scripture.  2 Corinthians tells us that Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.  So how closely are we following?  Are we following just closely enough to hopefully kind of keep up, or are we holding onto Jesus’ hand everywhere we go?  Because from the knees down, Satan can try and look just like Him.  Don’t try to be like a kid at the store…close enough to see mom, but trying to stay far enough away to still find mischief and be out of swatting distance.  Walk hand-in-hand with Jesus…everywhere you go.  And like a cloud in the daytime and a pillar of fire at night, you’ll clearly see the path you’re walking together.  And you’ll never walk it alone.

~Dwayne

ListenForTheWhisper@comcast.net

http://listenforthewhisper.blogspot.com