Here’s a bit of whimsy that falls under the category, “You can’t make this stuff up!”

There’s a new outdoor concert venue north of Colorado Springs that’s getting a lot of bad press due to excess noise in its neighborhood. That’s all I read on NextDoor these days. But that’s not what this blog is about.

The new Colorado Springs venue was called Sunset Amphitheater while it was under construction, but then they sold the naming rights to Ford Motor Company so it’s now the Ford Amphitheater.

Decades ago, President Gerald Ford maintained a home in Vail, and the town named an amphitheater after him. You can see where this is going can’t you? Here’s the story:

The Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater in Vail has never branded itself as the Ford Amphitheater, but the shortened handle has stuck nonetheless.

It has never been an issue until this summer when a new venue in Colorado Springs sold its naming rights to the Ford Motor Company, and the Colorado Springs location chose that moniker.

Some concertgoers predicted it would be an issue. On Instagram, in a post announcing the venue’s new name, one user predicted that there would be “a lot of (upset) people who bought tickets to the wrong venue.”

Dave Dressman, the Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater’s event director, said that prediction did indeed come to pass recently when concertgoers showed up in Vail to see The Beach Boys with tickets to the Colorado Springs venue. The Beach Boys played the Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater [in Vail] on Aug. 15 and the [new] Ford Amphitheater [in Colorado Springs] on Aug. 16. – Denver Post, August 23, 2024

Oops!

There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death. (Proverbs 14.12, ESV)

I’ve written about Dr. Frank Dennis before. His stories of adventures as an orthopaedic surgeon in Taiwan are always inspiring. Frank is about to turn 95, and I received this email “report” of his ongoing activities. I’m inspired. I hope you will be, too.

I soon will pass the 95 milestone.  I thought I would send out a little update, sort of an inventory of what is still on my shelf and how God is still keeping me going.  I will be celebrating in 3 different places and with a Taiwan Zoom call in the midst of one of them.  Chocolate cake seems to be abundant in which case I may skip my daily routine  of a 30-minute nap, followed by a small cup of coffee and. a chocolate nugget. That routine keeps me perky to 9 or 10 most evenings. I sometimes feel old!

I dress like a cowboy with a big hat.  In the hat I keep handouts to explain the Key of Promise in Ephesians 2:10, ”You are God’s masterpiece, created in Christ Jesus for Good Works, which God has prepared in advance for you to do”. (NIV) I also have one that is “How to use the Key” for those who are looking for ways to advance the Kingdom and want to buy more ($2.50).  Sad that very few Christians realize they were created to do a Good Work appointed by God!   I buy keys 250 at a time and have them engraved EPH 2:10. We must use this tool before keys become obsolete!

The hat also has a lot of paper strips for making the world’s cheapest educational toy, a paper helicopter which  teaches  1/3 and 1/2 very simply and is fun and an intro into a conversation. I have a lot of fun in restaurants with kids and grandparents while they wait for food.

Portrait of Frank by a pastor’s wife in Taitung, Taiwan

I also am enjoying giving lovely gift books of the “Life and Teachings of Jesus Christ”… a vey readable sequential record from the Bible, just a straight read all together.  If you want to get in the game, just go to plusnothing.com and ask for as many as you can give away.  These are FREE!

I still preach once a month at  the Colorado Springs Chinese Evangelical Church, drive when Billy [his son] isn’t available, Billy will be flying to Taiwan for two weeks so I will see how I get along without him.  My granddaughter, Anna Saracoff, is living downstairs and will be a help. She is also making Blessing Bracelets which she and I love to sell ($10) to remind the wearers to give thanks for their blessings, a blessing for each of the 4 or 5 beads. “Count your blessings, name them one by one ,and it will surprise you what the Lord has done.”  It helps cultivate the attitude of gratitude.

My book, “Come, Let’s Work Together with God.” has been printed in Taiwan but we are having distribution problems with the English version.  The Chinese version is available in Taiwan.  Billy is hoping to sort out the problems.

I am scheduled to go to Taiwan Oct 14 for about 10 days to show my face at a drama production about our work, always a lot of fun and to see many friends and speak here and there.

I always appreciate your prayers which have opened many doors and have preserved me so long. I am not sure I like that word “preserved” but you know what I mean. Please keep praying God will be pleased and Jesus will come soon.

Still in His glad service,

Dr Frank Dennis, AKA。譚維義 or 譚爸爸, Papa Tan

Again, the man is 95. I get tired just reading about all his activities. Frank embodies this section of Psalm 92. I want to be like Frank when I grow up!

The righteous flourish like the palm tree and grow like a cedar in Lebanon. They are planted in the house of the LORD; they flourish in the courts of our God. They still bear fruit in old age; they are ever full of sap and green, to declare that the LORD is upright; he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him. (Psalm 92.12 – 15, ESV)

1 Chronicles 23 – 27 is much like the first nine chapters: names. This time, not the genealogy but the organization of the temple and the military. I’m supplementing my reading by continuing through the psalms, landing on one of my favorites: Psalm 37. I encourage you to take a few minutes to read it. I’ve linked to the translation I’m using for the psalms, The Living Bible.)

There’s a lot in there. For example, perspective:

Never envy the wicked! Soon they fade away like grass and disappear. (verses 1, 2)… For the wicked shall be destroyed, but those who trust the Lord shall be given every blessing. Only a little while and the wicked shall disappear. You will look for them in vain. (verses 9, 10)…The Lord is laughing at those who plot against the godly, for he knows their judgment day is coming. (verses 12, 13)

The wicked are temporary. Good to know. Of course “temporary” could be decades…

There are also verses that in years past I might have called promises:

• Be delighted with the Lord. Then he will give you all your heart’s desires. (verse 4)
•  I have been young and now I am old. And in all my years I have never seen the Lord forsake a man who loves him; nor have I seen the children of the godly go hungry. (verse 25)

As I get older, I’m not sure we should call these promises. Verse 4 certainly didn’t seem to work for black slaves in pre-civil-war America. With respect to verse 25, an American missionary to China told me, “That might have been King David’s experience. It certainly hasn’t been mine.”

No matter, there is still a nice list of things to do (or not do): prescriptions:

• Never envy the wicked. (1)
• Trust in the Lord instead. (3)
• Be kind and good to others. (3)
• Be delighted with the Lord. (4)
• Commit everything you do to the Lord. Trust him to help you do it, and he will. (5)
• Rest in the Lord; wait patiently for him to act. (7)
• Don’t be envious of evil men who prosper. (7)
• Stop your anger! Turn off your wrath. Don’t fret and worry. (8)

The bottom line?

Don’t be impatient for the Lord to act! Keep traveling steadily along his pathway and in due season he will honor you with every blessing, and you will see the wicked destroyed…Evil men shall be destroyed, and their posterity shall be cut off. (Psalm 37.34, 38, TLB)

Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it, until it receives the early and the late rains. You also, be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand. Do not grumble against one another, brothers, so that you may not be judged; behold, the Judge is standing at the door. (James 5.7 – 9, ESV)

As we move through 1 Chronicles, chapters 19 – 21 contain stories we looked at in 2 Samuel:

• 1 Chronicles 19 = 2 Samuel 10: Success!
• 1 Chronicles 20 = 2 Samuel 21: Giants! 1 Chronicles skips over the David and Bathsheba affair and Absalom’s rebellion.
• 1 Chronicles 21 = 2 Samuel 24: Lessons from a Hard-To-Understand Chapter (the census)

The takeaway from the ill-advised census story with a pestilence as punishment leads to the site of the new temple:

God then sent the angel to Jerusalem but when he saw the destruction about to begin, he compassionately changed his mind and ordered the death angel, “Enough’s enough! Pull back!” The angel of GOD had just reached the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite. David looked up and saw the angel hovering between earth and sky, sword drawn and about to strike Jerusalem. David and the elders bowed in prayer and covered themselves with rough burlap…The angel of GOD ordered Gad to tell David to go and build an altar to GOD on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite. David did what Gad told him in obedience to GOD’s command…At this time the Tabernacle that Moses had constructed in the desert, and with it the Altar of Burnt Offering, were set up at the worship center at Gibeon. But David, terrified by the angel’s sword, wouldn’t go there to pray to God anymore. So David declared, “From now on, this is the site for the worship of GOD; this is the place for Israel’s Altar of Burnt Offering.” (1 Chronicles 21.15, 16, 18, 19, 29 – 1 Chronicles 22.1, MSG)

Then we have an example of how we seniors need to be equipping the next generation. David didn’t just choose a site for the temple, he gathered materials:

David ordered all the resident aliens in the land to come together; he sent them to the stone quarries to cut dressed stone to build The Temple of God. He also stockpiled a huge quantity of iron for nails and bracings for the doors of the gates, more bronze than could be weighed, and cedar logs past counting (the Sidonians and Tyrians shipped in huge loads of cedar logs for David). David was thinking, “My son Solomon is too young to plan ahead for this. But the sanctuary that is to be built for GOD has to be the greatest, the talk of all the nations; so I’ll get the construction materials together.” That’s why David prepared this huge stockpile of building materials before he died. Then he called in Solomon his son and commanded him to build a sanctuary for the GOD of Israel. (1 Chronicles 22.2 – 4, MSG)

“If I can’t build the temple, the least I can do is pave the way for Solomon to build the temple.” A good attitude. The elders equipping the next generation? Absolutely!

Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled. (Titus 2.3 – 5, ESV)

When I was on church staff back in the early 2000s, I preached the Sunday night service from time to time. It was attended mostly by the older members of the congregation, and once I got a baton (the kind the US men’s 4 x 100-meter team can’t pass!) and talked to them about passing the baton. About helping train their children and grandchildren. Later that week, one of the older men dropped by my office and said something like: “That was a really good sermon Sunday. You need to share that with the younger people.” I said, “I was talking to YOU!” And then I suggested some ways he might become involved with a son who lived in another city.

David took his responsibility seriously. Might we do the same.

Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. (Deuteronomy 6.4 – 7, ESV)

As we continue in 1 Chronicles, we have some duplicate narratives of battles that we had back in 2 Samuel. We won’t rehash those. In this version, David wins battles and begins to gather materials that were used later in building the temple. For example:

David plundered the gold shields that belonged to the servants of Hadadezer and brought them to Jerusalem. He also looted Tebah and Cun, cities of Hadadezer, of a huge quantity of bronze that Solomon later used to make the Great Bronze Sea, the Pillars, and bronze equipment in The Temple. (1 Chronicles 18.7, 8, MSG)

And the reason for David’s success is clear:

God gave David victory wherever he marched. (1 Chronicles 18.13, MSG)

And unlike his predecessor, Saul, who was not such a good guy:

David ruled over all of Israel. He ruled well, fair and evenhanded in all of his duties and relationships. (1 Chronicles 18.14, MSG)

You can’t ask any more from a king than that.

Then he chose David, his servant, hand-picked him from his work in the sheep pens. One day he was caring for the ewes and their lambs, the next day God had him shepherding Jacob, his people Israel, his prize possession. His good heart made him a good shepherd; he guided the people wisely and well. (Psalm 78.70 – 72, MSG)

Yesterday, we discovered that “follow your heart” is not necessarily the best advice. David’s heart was in the right place, but God didn’t want him to build a temple. Here’s a modern-day story about an Assembly of God pastor who felt he needed to start a breakaway denomination, all for the right reasons, of course! Here’s the story from Lead with Prayer.

Pastor Rob Ketterling was months away from launching a full-scale denominational split. Rob founded and leads River Valley Church, one of the largest churches in one of the largest denominations in America (Assemblies of God). His church gives almost $10 million to missions every year, making it one of the largest mission-resourcing churches in Christian history.

But Rob had grown frustrated with his denomination. His frustrations spilled out publicly, and as a result he started building a coalition of pastors ready to follow his lead. He wanted to take a few thousand pastors with him and start a variant of the Assemblies of God, splitting the denomination. He even procured lawyers to begin creating the new charter. In his heart, Rob felt that he was doing the right thing, taking a bold, courageous step in serving God for the good of the Kingdom. At the same time, as he formalized his plans, Rob sensed a nagging unease.

Rob was faithfully committed to prayer, and part of his Rule of Life was to do the Examen. During this extended prayer time, Rob listened for any way he was displeasing God, and in a powerful encounter with God, Rob heard God’s voice say to him, “You are going to divide my people and at the same time say that I am behind it?!” Later in this same intense time of prayer, Rob sensed the voice of God again: “If you do this, I will remove my favor upon you, and you will be on your own.” The encounter was so real, powerful, and serious that Rob was filled with the fear of God.

He repented of his divisiveness. – from Lead with Prayer: The Spiritual Habits of World-Changing Leaders by Skoog, Greer, and Doolittle, page 111

There are times when, as much trouble as it is, breaking away and starting something new is called for. This wasn’t one of those times, and kudos to Pastor Ketterling for spending daily time with God in the first place and then listening for the Spirit’s leading.

And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way, walk in it,” when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left. (Isaiah 30.21, ESV)

One of the mantras of our age is “Follow your heart.” Generally, this is not a life rule supported by scripture. We have, for example,

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? (Jeremiah 17.9, ESV)

But sometimes one’s heart is in the right place as David’s was in 1 Chronicles 17. He had just fetched the Ark of the Covenant and brought it to Jerusalem and established regular worship. He felt bad that he lived in a nice house while the Ark was in a tent (of course the ONLY prescribed place for the Ark was a tent! See Exodus 25 – 40).

After the king had made himself at home, he said to Nathan the prophet, “Look at this: Here I am comfortable in a luxurious palace of cedar and the Chest of the Covenant of GOD sits under a tent.” (1 Chronicles 17.1, MSG)

In other words, I want to build a temple. And Nathan, man of God, discerner of David’s heart, responded enthusiastically:

Nathan told David, “Whatever is on your heart, go and do it; God is with you.” (1 Chronicles 17.2, MSG)

“Follow your heart!” Especially when you have God’s interests in mind!

Not so fast…

But that night, the word of God came to Nathan, saying, “Go and tell my servant David, This is GOD’s word on the matter: You will not build me a ‘house’ to live in. Why, I haven’t lived in a ‘house’ from the time I brought up the children of Israel from Egypt till now; I’ve gone from one tent and makeshift shelter to another. In all my travels with all Israel, did I ever say to any of the leaders I commanded to shepherd Israel, ‘Why haven’t you built me a house of cedar?’ ” (1 Chronicles 17.3 – 6, MSG)

And God goes on to promise that God will build David’s “house,” a permanent dynasty.

But our point today is that “follow your heart” is not the only decision-making criterion. I shared a multi-part decision-making framework recently.

[Paul’s missionary team] went to Phrygia, and then on through the region of Galatia. Their plan was to turn west into Asia province, but the Holy Spirit blocked that route. So they went to Mysia and tried to go north to Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus wouldn’t let them go there either. (Acts 16.6, 7, MSG)

PS I just read a modern-day example. Stay tuned.

Sunday, August 25, 2024, Dr. Tim McConnell, lead pastor of First Presbyterian Church, Colorado Springs, shared this list of “Why I Tithe,” from Russell Johnson, a pastor in Seattle. (Neither of us knows anything about Russell.)

Tim delivered the list rapid-fire, the same way Russell Johnson did, but I found the snippet on Tik-Tok and captured the list, which I present without comment. (By “tithing” I assume he means regular giving to one’s church, as distinguished from giving to meet the needs of the poor or supporting missionaries. However it’s defined, this is a good list for why believers should be giving.)

1. It provides for God’s house.
2. It tells God I trust him.
3. It creates margin in my life for God to fill.
4. It reminds me that I am not my source.
5. It connects my money to Kingdom purpose.
6. It gives my job eternal significance.
7. It transforms my money into a seed.
8. It breaks greed and self-reliance off of my heart.
9. It lets everything else in my life know that God is first.

He goes on to say:

Tithing is not an act of generosity, it’s an act of obedience…We have an obedience problem. God doesn’t need my money. It’s me who needs the open window of heaven over my life.

Good stuff, and I will tell you that June and I have found the following promise to be true in our lives:

Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work…Now he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness. You will be enriched in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God. (2 Corinthians 9.6 – 11, NIV)

The earth keeps going around the sun, and we’re still here, celebrating our 56th wedding anniversary today. Here we are at Sprague Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park a couple of weeks ago. The unusually shaped flat-faced mountain is Hallett Peak.

We are blessed.

The Man said, “Finally! Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh! Name her Woman for she was made from Man.” Therefore a man leaves his father and mother and embraces his wife. They become one flesh. (Genesis 2.23, 24, MSG)

David installed the Ark in 1 Chronicles 15 and instituted regular worship in chapter 16, led by Asaph:

That was the day that David inaugurated regular worship of praise to GOD, led by Asaph and his company. (1 Chronicles 16.7, MSG)

So Asaph was a contemporary of King David, and you’ll see his name on a lot of psalms. 1 Chronicles 16 records excerpts of three psalms:

• 1 Chronicles 16.8 – 22 is Psalm 105.1 – 15
• 1 Chronicles 16.23 – 33 is Psalm 96.1 – 13.
• 1 Chronicles 16.35, 36 is Psalm 106.47, 48

Here are a few snippets – commands:

• Study God and his strength.
• Seek his presence day and night.
• Remember all the wonders he performed… (1 Chronicles 16.11, 12, MSG)

• Sing to God, everyone and everything!
• Get out his salvation news every day.
• Publish his glory among the godless nations, his wonders to all races and religions. (1 Chronicles 16.23, 24, MSG)

Wow. Strong commands for God’s people. Study God, seek his presence, remember… Then, don’t just talk to ourselves. Talk to the nations…all races and religions.

Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all the peoples! For great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised, and he is to be feared above all gods. (1 Chronicles 16.24, 25, ESV)

I think overall we’re not doing a good job.

May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us, that your way may be known on earth, your saving power among all nations. Let the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you! Let the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you judge the peoples with equity and guide the nations upon earth. Let the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you! (Psalm 67.1 – 5, ESV)