A Mediocre Devotional

Richard Sherman.  Does that name ring a bell?  If you’ve been anywhere near a television covering football this week, then it likely does.  He’s the cornerback for Seattle that had the loud and abrasive interview after the game this past Sunday.  As a quick aside, if you said that Richard Sherman was the guy that co-wrote world-famous songs with his brother you’d also be right.  But I’m not talking today about the guy that helped write songs like “It’s a Small World”, “Bare Necessities” from the Jungle Book movie, or “Chim Chim Cher-ee” for Mary Poppins (for which he won an Oscar).  Yes, that WAS Richard Sherman, but today I want to talk about the one that plays football.

Actually, I don’t really.  What I want to talk about today is specifically the reaction to the Richard Sherman that plays football.  At my house we watched The Interview right after the game.  I said, “I bet the league has a talk with him about representing The Shield” (as they call it), and I read a ton of responses worse than that on social media – up to and including kicking him out of football.  As another quick aside, I have no intention in this devotional of condoning his actions.  But I want to just point out a few quick somethings…then challenge us a Christians to ask ourselves honest questions.  And that being said, let’s get started down this twisty road.  First of all, we’re all upset at Richard Sherman and wanting Peyton Manning to throw 6,000 yards against him specifically in a few weeks.  Why?  Because he called himself the best corner and called another guy mediocre.  Jury, your verdict please.  “GUILTY!”  Really, jury?  But all you know of him is a 25-second rant on television.  “We said he was guilty!”  But he was raised in Compton, California and graduated high school with Straight A’s (including Advanced Placement classes).  “still Guilty!”  But he’s a Stanford graduate.  “So what?! Guilty!”  But he has a charity that helps raise money so that under-privileged kids can have school supplies and clothing.  And he volunteered to help the Special Olympics all the way back in high school.  And when charities came to Stanford and asked for volunteers, his teammates remember him as always the first guy to raise his hand to help.  “We said he was guilty!”  But is that a little wavering I hear in your voice?

As Christians, we’re called to forgive.  That includes everyone.  Not just church friends.  Not just ourselves.  But everyone…regardless of what they’ve done.  I used to be the guy that pounded my chest and proudly announced to anyone that could hear me when talking about the electric chair that “I’d be the guy that pulled the switch” with no reservations.  Now, I’m not so sure.  I used to be the guy that would hear stories of death row conversions and think “yeah, of course they believe in Jesus NOW!  They’re about to meet him!”  But I don’t say things like that anymore.  I mean, you hear some stories, and you think “how could God ever forgive that guy?”  Like this one story I read…it’s something that happened long before I was born.  This guy killed some other dude.  Then he buried the body in a hidden grave.  He thought he’d gotten away with it, until he found out that folks around him knew about somehow.  SO…he ran. Ran and hid and never did a single day in jail for it.  In fact, while on the run for that murder…he was still getting into fights.  But then he had himself his own little “death row conversion” of sorts.  Well, forgive me.  I’m paraphrasing, and I’m not telling it exactly right.  If you want the full story exactly as it happened, it’s Exodus 2:11-22.  You know, when Moses killed the taskmaster, then buried his body in the sand.  Then started telling the two Hebrews to quit fighting, and they asked him, “or what, you’ll kill us, too?”  So then he fled, and then got into a fight at a well protecting the daughters of the priest of Midian.  And then?  Oh, only God Himself came to Moses in the burning bush.  And God Himself told Moses what His plans were to use Moses to deliver Israel from slavery.

And what is Moses?  He’s a hero.  We tell our kids about how great a man Moses was!  Murderer.  We tell our kids how great God was to Moses.  Murderer.  We tell our kids about Moses going up the mountain to receive the Ten Commandments. Murderer.  We tell our kids that only one man, Moses, saw God on Mount Sinai and that his face glowed with radiance after looking directly upon God’s glory.  Murderer.  I’m sorry, I don’t mean to keep throwing that one mistake out there.  But why not?  We do it for simple things like guys playing football.  Richard Sherman didn’t curse.  He didn’t make any rude gestures.  He didn’t even pull a Mike Tyson from 2000 and proclaim “I want your heart! I want to eat your children!”  He just called another guy mediocre…albeit in an extremely inappropriate setting and a completely unprofessional manner.  And I suppose that’s where we’ve come as a society.  As a collection of Christians, too, I suppose.  Because a great deal of the vengeful “I hope for bad things on him” reactions were from good, Christian people.  All of those people that help others, and give to their churches, and pray for sick friends and family, and volunteer for local charity work wanted Instant Karma to get Richard Sherman. (and we all shine on…sorry, I couldn’t help it)  Meanwhile, all the other good things he may have done before then don’t seem to matter.  We don’t want forgiveness for something brash and insensitive.  We want Peyton Manning to light him up.  We want Demaryus Thomas or Eric Decker to knock him out in a couple of weeks.

Did anybody pray for him?  Did anybody pray that he let go of that anger?  Did anybody care that, off the field, he’s a prime example of giving back?  Did anybody act like a Christian about it all?  Or did we all pull out the pitchforks and torches and go chasing him down the street like in the old monster movies.  That’s what I did.  I said that the league would likely talk to him, and, while already rooting for Peyton, I hoped that much harder that Denver wins the game (by 300 points) in a couple of weeks.  Then as the next few days came and went, I heard the rest of Richard Sherman’s story.  Then I reflected on some of the stupid…and I mean absolutely, unequivocally STUPID things that I’ve said in my late teens and early twenties.  Well, late twenties, and all through my thirties. Well, and I guess my forties, now that I’m forty.  And I reflected on how I hope that those are not the things that I’m judged on today.  When we hear the name “Moses”, our immediate word association is not “Murderer”.  When I hear electric chair, I no longer say “I want to pull the switch”.  When I hear of stories like Jeffery Dahmer, I don’t think that sarcastic “yeah, I bet he did” type thoughts anymore.  Like the prodigal son coming home, the Father rejoiced.  When we hear of death row conversions, do we rejoice?  Are we the “other brother” when think of seeing murderers in Heaven?  That’s where the rubber meets the road on Christian forgiveness.

We want justice!  We want fairness!  But only for other people.  OUR sins aren’t as bad as those other people’s sins.  But through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, God no longer chooses to remember our sins…or theirs.  He doesn’t look at Moses and think “murderer”.  He sees the man to lead Israel to freedom.  He doesn’t see Saul as the man that killed Christians.  He sees Paul, the man that will sow the seeds for a thousand churches through a handful of epistles.  God doesn’t see us as the one mistake that we won’t let go of, so why is it that that’s how we choose to see others?  Forgiveness is forgiveness.  Jonah sat on a hill beside Nineveh and wished he had died instead of seeing Nineveh forgiven.  The lessons of Jonah and of the prodigal son aren’t just for the Ninevites and the son that left home.  We always spin them that way…repentance, forgiveness, and “come back home” lessons all seem to stem from those.  But I believe that the real lessons are from Jonah and the older brother.  Forgiveness.  Letting go.  Don’t be bitter that they didn’t get their comeuppance.  Rejoice that they found forgiveness from God.  And remember…always remember…and I mean that if you don’t ever listen to another whisper, listen for the whisper that tells you that Jesus plainly told us in Matthew 6:15, that if you don’t forgive others, the Father will not forgive you.  Others.  God didn’t specify which others…just forgive others.

~Dwayne

ListenForTheWhisper@comcast.net

http://listenforthewhisper.blogspot.com

 

 

 

From Parts Unknown

On the front end, let me say that I hope this devotional will help the people that sit around me at church understand that I’m not constantly whipping out my phone to text my friends right in the middle of a sermon or immediately after a prayer.  Sometimes when someone says something in church, my brain will flash this idea for a perfect illustration for a devotional.  When those brief glimpses of insight happen, I have to Notepad it (yes, I just used that as a verb) immediately or it’s lost forever.  That happened yesterday morning at church – and to show exactly how my brain works – Preacherman had just finished reading the 2 Corinthians 5:11-21 passage that has been the focus of our reconciliation lessons.  Specifically, he had just read 2 Corinthians 5:17  Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!  And where did my brain go?  Well, to Memphis Rasslin’, of course.  AND IMMEDIATELY!!  So I whipped out my phone and jotted this note:  “Loser leaves town. Mask. New wrestler. World tries to rip mask off.”  For those that didn’t make that same connection, I’ll elaborate a bit.

Back in the glory days of Memphis Rasslin’, there were these “loser leaves town” matches.  Sometimes the good guy would lose, and then come back the very next week…with a mask and calling himself “the Masked Marshmallow” or whatever.  Despite the fact that he had the same open-heart surgery scar down his chest and the “I love my momma” eagle tattoo hidden in his gross back hair, he claimed to be a NEW wrestler.  With the “loser left town’s” voice, he would pound his chest and claim to NOT be that loser that left town, but a the NEW wrestler come to clean up this town…The Lone Ranger or whatever.  Then the head promoter dude would come out and proclaim that if they could prove that the Masked Menace was really Loser Left Town, then he would be out for good.  So naturally, every wrestler that had a grudge against Loser Left Town would always come running in try to pull off the mask to show who he really was.

Are we tracking yet?  See now why I had the connection?  In Christ we are a new creation!  The old has lost the match and gone, and a new is here!!  But The World doesn’t buy it.  The World doesn’t believe it for one minute.  The World (which, as a personified entity refers to itself in the third person like good bad guy wrestlers do) says, “The World knows that you’re still the loser under that mask!  You’re not some New Creation, so The World is going to pull your mask off of you and expose you to be the fraud you are!”  So you find yourself in the fight of your life trying to keep your mask on.  You struggle against the world and say, “you can’t take off my mask…I’m not the old guy, I’m a new guy!”  But The World calls in its cronies from the back, and The World and its group of henchmen gang up on you.  You’re getting beaten down right in the middle of the ring in front of the whole crowd.  You keep wondering if help is going to come running out to save you – but you’re overwhelmed by the hoards of bad guys kicking you down and pulling at your mask and can’t get a breath to call for help.  Finally, when you’ve fought all you can fight, The World knocks you out…and then finally thinking it’s won, grabs your mask and pulls it off!  The World has pulled off the New Mask of the New Creation.  And the whole arena will see who you really are.

Listen for the Whisper that tells you that it’s not a mask.  It’s a cute story, and a fun little illustration about how we feel sometimes with The World beating on us, attacking us, and trying to question our new identity.  Where the illustration falls apart, though, is that in the story (and in our minds), we’re alone and trying to save our mask, and nobody ever comes running from the back to save us.  But in reality, the fight was won before we ever picked up the mask.  Jesus Christ was slain on Calvary and conquered the world and all the evil in it long before you put on the mask.  The World and all his henchmen don’t stand a chance and never did.  Which brings us to the other flaw in the illustration…true Christianity is not a mask.  When we enter the ring as The New Creation, we really ARE a New Creation!  “Go ahead, The World, pull this mask off…because like in the old Scooby Doo cartoons, sometimes it’s not a mask.”  The World can pull and pull at you for all its worth.  It’ll never get the mask off, because there’s no mask to pull off.  You’re not the Masked Christian. That other loser really left town.  You are the New Creation!  Can I get an Amen?

~Dwayne

ListenForTheWhisper@comcast.net
http://listenforthewhisper.blogspot.com

Operator, Can You Help Me Place This Call?

Andrea and I have a group of friends.  Very good friends, actually.  In the essence of full disclosure (with no offense intended to any church people we know), they are, in fact, some of the very best friends we have.  Each and every one of them was born and raised entire states away from us.  Some of them across the country, even.  We met them through our Tim McGraw concert outings.  What started as basically general acquaintanceships, has turned into deep, honest loving friendships. We only get to see them about twice a year (and that’s on a good year), but through the magic of internet communications and texts and emails, we talk to them almost every day.  And they’re good Christian folks…and it’s truly a “sometimes we laugh together, and sometimes we cry” group of friends like we sing about in the old church hymn “God’s family”. 

So why did I tell you that?  Because we have other really good friends that we take for granted that they’re so close.  They’re not better friends or closer friends – other than the general location sense of being closer.  But since they’re closer, we don’t take the effort we should to stay in touch like we do with our “Tim Friends”.  And when we finally bump into them it’s always the same old stuff…you know the words, because I’ve said some of them to the very people reading this…”Boy, I haven’t talked to you in so long!  We’ve been busy, and dad’s been sick, and homework and big projects and work” – and it’s all the typical reasons we give for why we’ve not made the effort to pick up the phone and call.  And we say things like, “we should get together and go eat during the Christmas break when everyone’s off.”  But we don’t.  But we make plans months in advance for the out-of-state friends.  We schedule weekends specifically to meet them.  But won’t take 10 minutes to call the ones across town on a Friday to meet up.  Not sure why that is…but then we run into them at the store again, and it’s the typical “Boy, I haven’t talked to you in so long!  We’ve been busy, and dad’s been sick, and homework and big projects and work” excuses again.

And those are the exact same excuses we give for not talking to God.

When those are the VERY reasons we should be talking to Him more.  We ought to take more time for our friends, and we ought to make more time for God.  I’ll be honest. I’m not the best giver when it comes to the collection plate.  That’s not to say I’m not generous when it comes to giving when it needs giving, but my general weekly giving…it needs work.  But here’s the thing.  (And it’s principle proven by games like Candy Crush.)  We’ll throw tons of money at a game to keep from waiting 30 minutes.  And why is that?  Because there’s no little joint on the corner called “Time in Flash” – or some rhyming version to make a better analogy to the Cash place.  You can’t offer anything as collateral to bargain more time.  Father Time is undefeated as they do say.  SO while money may be worth a lot, and we may work hard for it, your time is more valuable.  You might give God 50% of all the money you make, but how much of your time do you give Him?  Even if it’s just to talk to Him?

 Is God worth more to you than 10 minutes of sleep?  Is God worth more to you than 30 minutes of a lunch hour?  Is God worth more to you than a reality TV show?  Or even an obnoxious commercial during the goofy reality show?  Well, of course He is!!  So why can’t you spare that time to talk to Him?  Get up 10 minutes early…or step out for 30 minutes of your lunch hour – you know, give up talking to Steve in accounting for 30 minutes to talk to your Creator.  I’m sure Steve’s got juicy gossip, but how about a little Thank You For Being There For Me chat with God?  How many times have you given up an episode of Honey YooHoo to spend that time praying?  Or when Chuck Woolery says he’ll be back in “two and two”, have you ever muted the TV and spent that two minutes and two seconds asking for forgiveness for your shortcomings – or just telling God “Hi, it’s been a good day”?

 Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot you were standing there.  Sorta got lost talking to myself.  Although I refuse to ever watch Honey YooHoo…but the shows I watch are just as important.  Maybe say a little prayer during the Duck Dynasty commercials…or pray by yourself when Phil prays at the end of the show.  If you really stop and think about it, there are a hundred different times during the day that you could use to talk to God.  Stopped in traffic.  Sleeping through a boring update meeting at work.  Standing in line at the store…instead of griping about the line, take that time to thank God for allowing you to be alive to talk to Him one more time.  Maybe when you’re on hold on the phone for the doctor’s office, say a little prayer for health…or thank Him for the doctors.  Or when you’re standing there pushing that elevator button over and over again…you pushed it once, it’s coming (but that’s a different devotional)…but instead of hitting the “Going Up” button a hundred times, stop and say a little prayer.  It doesn’t have to be a bowed head, hands folded deal.  There are a lot of prayer positions described in the Bible.  Just clear your mind, take a deep breath, and talk to God for a minute or two.

 Time:  Our most valuable asset.  And the one we waste the most.  God’s told us that our days were numbered before we were born.  We know that and quote that to other people, then we squander it anyway.  When Job’s tests were all over…after the loss of riches and family and health and all that he had lost, God blessed him double what he had before.  But through it all, there’s one thing that Job didn’t get back.  Listen for the Whisper that reminds you that Job didn’t get that time back.  So the time you’ve wasted complaining when you could have been praying is time you’ll not ever see again.  When you pray, you have a chance to talk to the Maker of the Heavens and the Earth.  How awesome is that?  Why would we want to spend our time doing anything else?  So the next time you’re stuck in traffic, or sitting at a restaurant waiting on your food, or taking a day off and waiting for the cable dude to be at your place sometime between Monday at 8:00AM and next March, take that time to do something amazing.  Take the time…no, make the time…to talk to God.  Once you get into the habit of filling in the gaps of your day with little chats, you’ll want to start purposely setting aside larger parts of your day for deeper conversations.  Jesus Christ WAS God, but while He was on Earth He took the time to talk to the Father in Heaven.  So why shouldn’t we?  Like the old hymn says, “Take time to be holy.  Speak oft with the Lord.”

 
~Dwayne
ListenForTheWhisper@comcast.net
http://listenforthewhisper.blogspot.com

 

January Prayer Theme

We're starting a new prayer ministry at church this month.  Each month will have a focus for prayer for the month.  I'm writing them out (with input from the other members of the team), and I decided to add them here to the Listen For The Whisper devotional page.  I hope it helps you when you pray.

The New Year:  A time for new beginnings.  It is a time to pray for reconciliation, forgiveness and renewal.

Holy God, as we start this new year dedicated to You, we pray that You will help us to offer each other the same forgiveness and reconciliation that You have offered to us.

Our identity is found in Jesus Christ who has given us the ministry of reconciliation (2 Cor. 5:18-19), and called us to selflessly love others (John 13:13-14).

We realize that we cannot be fully holy in Your presence to stand before You if we hold grudges (Matthew 5:23), and that You have called us to love one another and to forgive the shortcomings of others (Eph. 4:2-3)

The first obligation in our faith, our first ministry outreach is to our families (2 Chronicles 20:13), and that our calling to love and forgive begins there (Proverbs 15:20).  Like the lesson of reconciliation Joseph witnessed as his father and uncle met again (Genesis 33:1-4) was reborn in the reconciliation of brothers in Egypt (Genesis 45), we are teaching and witnessing to our children as we forgive the ones who have wronged us.

If God the Creator is able to forget the sins I’ve committed against Him and remember them no more, then I need to be able to forget what others have done to me (Hebrews 8:12).  The phrase “forgive and forget” does not appear in the Bible, but true forgiveness is found only when the wrong is not the first memory we have of someone.

Help us, God, to understand that our neighbors are not just those who live beside us (Luke 10:29-37).  All of humanity are God’s children and worthy of His love and forgiveness (Jonah 3:10-4:3, 4:11).  Being a follower of Christ means that we must love our enemies just as we love those who love us (Matt 5:43-48), whether our enemies are people from high school or rulers of foreign lands who hate us for our beliefs.

Our Salvation came at a price.  The price paid was the sacrifice of Jesus Christ dying on a cross.  As Stephen was being stoned, his last words were a prayer of forgiveness (Acts 7:60).  As my sins held Jesus on that cross, some of His last words were prayers of forgiveness (Acts 23:34).    As He forgave us, so we must forgive others (Colossians 3:12-13).  Forgiveness of others is not a suggestion or recommendation, it’s a requirement. (Matt 6:14-15)

Lastly, Loving Father, we pray that as the calendar turns from 2013 to 2014, that we will turn a page as well.  We pray that our change will be as dramatic as when You created light in the darkness.  We ask that you forgive our stubbornness and selfishness, and we pray that You help us start over.  May our Christian headstones clearly be marked with 2013 as the year we died to ourselves, and 2014 when were raised to live in Christ (Romans 6:11-14).

And we ask this and all else in Jesus’ name,

Amen