I often pray while riding my exercise bike, and I must confess there are times when I think, “Is this doing any good? Just ‘thinking of certain things’ here in my house?” 

Then I (re)read Matthew 6.6:

But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. (Matthew 6.6, ESV)

Sounds like a promise to me! And it’s one for which I meet the conditions!

You do not have because you do not ask. (James 4.2, ESV)

P.S. June and I leave this morning, February 6, for the 2:7 Jubilee Conference in Frisco, Texas, returning Sunday morning, February 9. We’d appreciate your prayers! I look forward to sharing highlights of that time with you.

Here’s one more lesson from the John 2 story of Jesus changing the water to wine. It’s a possible application, one that I wouldn’t fight to the death for, but it made sense in a discussion I had recently had with a friend who feels responsible for the moral behavior of his adult grandchildren. It’s not the first such conversation I’ve had with people I respect on what to do about grandchildren, say, living with someone out of wedlock.

It’s not a hypothetical: we and many of our friends have family members not living as we think Jesus would have them live. June and I have chosen to live by principles:

• Our responsibility is to love them where they are and as they are.
• They don’t work for us!
• I am not responsible to God for others’ behavior.

It’s this last that I believe the water to wine story speaks to. My friend mentioned in the first paragraph didn’t want to fund hotel rooms for a family reunion that would be occupied by grandchildren “shacking up.” He said, “Am I not responsible, especially if it’s my money?”

I can’t dictate to others what to do (he doesn’t work for me either!), but I did notice that Jesus made A LOT of wine at that wedding. Probably more than they needed. And if it was a big wedding party, and people then are anything like people now, isn’t it possible that someone got drunk on Jesus’ wine? 

To apply my friend’s logic, Jesus would have said, “I’d like to help you, but I can’t be a party to someone’s abusing alcohol.” To put it into modern-day terms, “I’d like to help you since you’ve gone over budget, but I can’t, you see. I can’t use my money that way.” So I get to save money and attempt to make myself look holy in the process.

When my personal purity becomes an excuse not to help someone, I think I’m on the wrong track. Jesus was clear on that in the story of the Good Samaritan. And, I think, indirectly, in his being willing to make wine for a wedding.

So then each of us shall give account of himself to God. (Romans 14.12, NKJV)

[The conclusion of the story of the Good Samaritan: Jesus asked, ] “What do you think? Which of the three became a neighbor to the man attacked by robbers?” “The one who treated him kindly,” the religion scholar responded. Jesus said, “Go and do the same.” (Luke 10.36, 37, MSG)

I wrote earlier that distraction is one way Satan has derailed the church from its mission. Here’s a version of distraction that also contributes, I believe, to mental health issues among pastors and pastor burnout. 

The problem is that pastors, along with the congregations that hired them, think the pastors are supposed to do everything. Is someone in the hospital, for example? Visiting them is the pastor’s job. Ditto the shut-ins. That’s what we hired the pastor for! 

But that attitude ignores all the “one anothers” in the Bible. We are to care for one another (1 Corinthians 12.21-26), encourage one another (1 Thessalonians 5.11, Hebrews 3.13), teach one another (Romans 15.14), and stand with one another in mission (Philippians 1.27). If the pastors do all that, they are depriving the members of their chance to serve, the pastors are wearing themselves out, and they are NOT doing their job of equipping the members to be on mission. 

A friend of mine, a Navigator-trained disciple-maker offered to help a pastor disciple the men of the church. The pastor told my friend, “If anyone in this church teaches the men, it will be me.” I heard a pastor say in a sermon, “My job is to feed the sheep; your job is to serve the sheep by, for example, keeping the nursery on Sunday morning.”

As a result of attitudes and practices like these, the mission effectiveness of churches goes way down.

I need to emphasize that pastors can’t change course by themselves. As Neil Hudson writes in Imagine Church, the pastors need to “renegotiate the contract” from pastor-shepherd to pastor-equipper. A young pastor I was working with came to that conclusion even before he read the book! But he had read the original directive:

And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ… (Ephesians 4.11, 12, ESV)

I recently read a summary of a new book on spiritual warfare and among the quotes was this paragraph with a great start and, in my opinion, a weak finish:

Satan hates the church and is continually seeking to destroy it (Rev 12:13–17). He tries to find means to derail the church from its mission. This attempted destruction can be done through hypocrisy, false teaching, and persecution (Acts 5:1–11; 1 Tim 1:18–20; Rev 2:9–10, 13; 3:9). [Emphasis mine]

[I’m withholding identification of the book because I haven’t read it, and maybe my concern is addressed elsewhere.]

How does Satan “derail the church from its mission?” These authors say “through hypocrisy, false teaching, and persecution.” How about distraction? We see this clearly in Acts 6 with the widows. And what the apostles would not be distracted from was teaching the word publicly and from house to house:

Day after day, in the temple courts and from house to house, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Messiah. In those days when the number of disciples was increasing, the Hellenistic Jews among them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food. So the Twelve gathered all the disciples together and said, “It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables…We will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word.” (Acts 5.42, 6.1, 2…4, NIV)

Today’s pastors are distracted by myriad duties associated with “running a church.” Few are able to implement Paul’s basic instruction to Pastor Timothy:

You then, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others. (2 Timothy 2.1, 2, NIV)

Once at a meeting where I was encouraging the staff of a church in some basic spiritual disciplines, one staffer astutely observed, “We’re so busy doing the business of the church that we don’t have time for the business of the church!”

There are other means Satan uses to derail the church from its mission, and I’ll address them over the next few days.

(A Parable about being distracted by busyness)
And as the king passed, he cried to the king and said, “Your servant went out into the midst of the battle, and behold, a soldier turned and brought a man to me and said, “Guard this man; if by any means he is missing, your life shall be for his life, or else you shall pay a talent of silver.” And as your servant was busy here and there, he was gone. (1 Kings 20.39, 40, ESV)

Today is a special day, not because it’s Groundhog Day or Super Bowl Sunday. It’s a day, the like of which comes around only once every thousand years or so. As a math guy, I like numbers, and unless you’re afflicted with aibohphobia*, you might like this too!

02/02/2020

It’s a palindromic date, reading the same front to back as back to front…no matter what culture you’re in!

Americans, for reasons I’ve never understood, do month/day/year. Europeans follow a logical progression: day/month/year. So today is palindromic in both the US and Europe. But that happens from time to time.

What makes this one even more special is that it’s palindromic for those who write year/month/day, as they do in Asia or the way I sometimes name files: YYYYMMDD so that the computer alphabetizes them chronologically.

2020/02/02

So enjoy the day…and the game. There’s no particular spiritual significance to this that I know of, but it’s OK just to enjoy numbers, isn’t it?

This is the day that the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it. (Psalm 118.24, ESV)

One person esteems one day above another; another esteems every day alike. (Romans 14.5, NKJV)

*aibohphobia is the (unofficial) word for “an irrational fear of palindromes”

I’m well aware that the older we get, the more of our friends we expect to bury. I saw a friend of mine last year at a memorial service, and he said he had been to 20 memorials so far in 2019! Still, it’s always a shock.

I heard from my cousin on my mother’s side the other day. Steve is about six months older than I, and I’ve seen him only once since we were children. He wanted to send me a school textbook that belonged to my mother, but as part of the message, he added, “I am doing well but the holidays were rough without my wife of 53 years. Diane passed away in July from a blood clot after knee surgery. She is very much missed but God must of had a better plan for her. I’ll meet her again one day.”

I expressed my condolences and added, “Gives one pause since my second knee surgery is scheduled for May!”

Then just a few days later I received an invitation to a memorial service for the wife of a local, older friend who is active in men’s ministry. I had just received a message from him a little over a week ago, and his wife was copied on the email. Now she’s gone.

Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope. For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. According to the Lord’s word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage one another with these words. (1 Thessalonians 4.13 – 18, NIV, emphasis mine)

Yesterday we thought about Whatever Jesus tells you, make sure that you do it! from John 2.6. And what did Jesus tell the servants to do?

Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from twenty to thirty gallons. Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water”; so they filled them to the brim. (John 2.6, 7, NIV)

This is the part most of us remember, I think. Fill the jars. And they did. But the question is, when did the water become wine? The answer, according to The Passion Translation, may surprise you. It did me:

Jesus came to the servers and told them, “Fill the pots with water, right up to the very brim.” Then he said, “Now fill your pitchers and take them to the master of ceremonies.” And when they poured out their pitcher for the master of ceremonies to sample, the water became wine! (John 2.7 – 9, The Passion Translation, emphasis mine)

The miracle happened when the servants completed their obedience. Water, or even wine, sitting in stone jars wouldn’t do any good. The water/wine had to be put into service by the action of the servants.

Similarly, the bread and fish multiplied in the process of distribution, not before:

Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, [Jesus] gave thanks and broke them. Then he gave them to the disciples to distribute to the people. (Luke 9.16, NIV)

Sometimes, it appears, we need to act in faith, and the miracle happens “on the way.” I’ve seen that in this daily blog. I’ve written 391 so far since January 2019, and, as another daily blogger just told me, “It takes a miracle every day!” The ideas come as we commit to sharing them.

On the way to Jerusalem he was passing along between Samaria and Galilee. And as he entered a village, he was met by ten lepers, who stood at a distance and lifted up their voices, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” When he saw them he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went they were cleansed. (Luke 17.11 – 14, ESV)

I have a couple simple observations from Jesus’ first recorded miracle, changing the water into wine at a wedding (John 2.1 – 11). I like The Passion Translation’s rendering of Mary’s instructions to the servants:

Whatever Jesus tells you, make sure that you do it! (John 2.5, Passion Translation)

That’s a good word for us, and it reminds me of James 1.22:

Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. (NIV)

And since Jesus is the Word (see John 1.1 – 3), we could say:

Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what HE says.

The servants had a slight advantage in that since they were standing in his presence, they had no doubt as to what he wanted them to do. Sometimes we have to discern his voice, and that can be the subject for another day, as will my next observation from John 2.

In the meantime, with respect to Jesus’ word: just do it!

My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. (John 10.27, NIV)

As part of my application of the importance of preparation that I wrote about recently, I began learning Mathematica, powerful and sophisticated software for mathematics of all kinds. In addition to studying a couple of books, I participated in a webinar where I was watching and listening using my tablet while typing commands into my copy of Mathematica.

Everything was going fine until we began to explore Mathematica’s free form expression capability. “Just tell it what you want, and it will figure it out. Watch!” So we typed something like “Plot the sine of x.” And up it came! Magic.

So I typed something I thought I heard him say: “Plot a sine-like curve.” But of course, being a mathematician, I automatically abbreviated “sine” to “sin” like we always do. Here is the result.

Oops! I wrote to the Mathematica folks asking something like, “Who is she and why is she here?” Amazingly, the nerds at Mathematica knew the answer: she is Sinthea Schmidt (goes by “Sin”), and she is an arch-villain for Marvel Comics. And her picture is certainly a “sin-like plot.”

But it’s OK. I’m pleased that June and I, in our 70s, are not afraid to try new things. And making mistakes is part of learning and being alive, actually.

Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? (Isaiah 43.18, 19, NIV)

One thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3.13, 14, NIV)

My friend Bill Mowry, Navigator and author of the wonderful discipleship tool Ways of the Alongsider, likes to quote author Wendell Berry who often draws life lessons from his experiences on the farm. Recently Bill wrote about “organic ministry” – a subject for another day – and in it he included these paragraphs:

[Wendell] Berry asserts that successful farming begins with a simple act: walking the land.“Farming,” writes Berry, “is mainly observational . . . walking and looking, season after season, for many years. . . . The gait most congenial to agrarian thought and sensibility is walking. It is the gait best suited to paying attention . . . and most permissive of stopping to look or think. Machines, companies, and politicians run!”

[Bill continues: ] How are walking and farming related? Berry argues that “the faster we go the less we see, the less we see [the less the land flourishes]. This law also applies with equal attention to work; the faster we work the less attention we pay to its details, and the less skill we can apply to it.” It logically follows that as speed increases, care declines.

This reminds me of Bill and my mutual friend Skip Gray, now in his late 80s. Skip says:

Jesus had a 3-mile-per-hour ministry: he didn’t go jogging through Judea, sprinting through Samaria, or galloping through Galilee. He walked wherever he went.

Jesus had an unhurried life and ministry. Often the gospels record, “Jesus saw a man…” (E.g., John 5.6 and John 9.1) Jesus saw people because he was walking, moving slowly. I’m reminded of that day in Haiti when a missionary and I were walking to a nearby village and met one of my seminary students on his way to a meeting. After talking with us for a few minutes, he turned around and began walking with us toward the village. The missionary asked him, “Weren’t you on your way to a meeting?” To which he replied, “Well, I was, but you’re here now!” Walking (or at least a slower pace of life!) affords us the opportunity to change direction, to see what needs to be done, or to learn a lesson.

The next day, John stood with two of his disciples. And looking at Jesus as He walked, he said, “Behold the Lamb of God!” The two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus. (John 1.35 – 37, NKJV, emphasis mine)

Walking down the street, Jesus saw a man blind from birth. (John 9.1, MSG)

One day I walked by the field of an old lazybones, and then passed the vineyard of a lout; They were overgrown with weeds, thick with thistles, all the fences broken down. I took a long look and pondered what I saw; the fields preached me a sermon and I listened… (Proverbs 24.30 – 32, MSG, emphasis mine)