I just heard about yet another “controversy” with one Christian ministry with a national presence criticizing another, in public. Thankfully, I hadn’t seen anything on it and still have chosen to ignore this latest diatribe. (And I’m not going to post the specifics here!)

The friend who shared it with me made this observation:

Quite frankly I was pretty appalled.  And not just by the content of his remarks, but by his tone and the jovial response his comments received from his audience at that time.

I responded:

It’s the critical, unloving spirit that’s worse than any particular position [the criticizing teacher] might take. And what have I accomplished by putting down someone else’s ministry and making my members feel good about themselves because they don’t listen to the teacher he was criticizing? There are no “points” for NOT listening to a particular teacher for whatever reason. What are you doing? How are you into the Word for yourself? How are you putting it into practice?

Thankfully, the criticized teacher responded with something like, “I’m responsible and accountable to my call from Jesus Christ.  I don’t serve you, I serve Christ.  You do not have to receive my ministry if you choose not to.”

My friend concluded:

The church could stand to “err” a little more on the side of love and compassion instead of legalism and judgment.

Amen. As I’ve quoted here often:

So tend to your knitting. You’ve got your hands full just taking care of your own life before God. (Romans 14.12, MSG)

One of our Air Force Academy cadets was visiting for his 30th class reunion (where does the time go?), and he was distressed about the changes he saw at the Academy. Mainly, it appeared softer to him, with less discipline, and many traditions he saw as useful for training were gone.

As a retired officer myself, not an Academy grad, I tend to agree that the loss of some traditions and lack of discipline can be problems. However, these verses from Isaiah may give us another perspective:

Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look at the earth beneath; for the heavens vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like a garment, and they who dwell in it will die in like manner; but my salvation will be forever, and my righteousness will never be dismayed….My righteousness will be forever, and my salvation to all generations.” (Isaiah 51.6, 8)

Things don’t last. Not only will the earth not last, but many of our cherished traditions don’t last. But God’s salvation and his righteousness will be forever. We have a guarantee of nothing else. 

If the heavens and the earth won’t last, what else won’t last?

• My life in its present form: I am getting older…
• The U.S. with economic freedom, reward for hard and smart work, working infrastructure…
• Any local church: the pastor will change, the people will change.
• Traditions in any institution like the military in general or the Air Force Academy in particular.
• Organizations like The Navigators. We can only pray that it lasts as long as it needs to, as long as it’s making a contribution.

Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. (Mark 13.31, ESV)

I have trouble keeping up with the general characteristics of Gen-X and Millennials and don’t really like labels anyway since people are different. However, my son Matthew, born in 1977, explained that he is neither Gen-X nor Millennial. He’s in-between, and they don’t have a good name for them. According to this article by Anna Garvey, written back in 2015, the “Oregon Trail Generation,” as she calls them, “…came of age just as the very essence of communication was experiencing a seismic shift, and it’s given us a unique perspective that’s half analog old school and half digital new school.”

Here’s what I found interesting: she decries the evils of today’s social media, which are just asides in this article. Here’s her first observation:

Those born in the late 70s and early 80s were the last group to have a childhood devoid of all the technology that makes childhood and adolescence today pretty much the worst thing imaginable.  We were the last gasp of a time before sexting, Facebook shaming, and constant communication. (Emphasis mine)

Later on, she writes:

The importance of going through some of life’s toughest years without the toxic intrusion of social media really can’t be overstated.  Myspace was born in 2003 and Facebook became available to all college students in 2004.  So if you were born in 1981-1982, for example, you were literally the last graduating class to finish college without social media being part of the experience. When we get together with our fellow Oregon Trail Generation friends, we frequently discuss how insanely glad we are that we escaped the middle school, high school and college years before social media took over and made an already challenging life stage exponentially more hellish. (Emphasis mine)

I’ve written before about the need for what author Cal Newport calls “digital minimalism.” But Anna Garvey’s remarks go beyond not needlessly cluttering up our lives: social media can be harmful, especially to our kids and grandkids.

Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. (Ephesians 5.18, ESV)

I’m finding the exile metaphor I wrote about yesterday helpful. Not everything about life is what we would want, and we should expect that. Years ago, a single Air Force officer friend of mine talked about living with unbelievers in the barracks. “Of course they don’t live the way I would be comfortable with! Why would I expect otherwise? They’re unbelievers.” A good perspective. If I were exiled to England, for example, it would do me little good to complain that “They talk funny and drive on the wrong side of the road!”

Before David became king, when he was in exile, he was still seeking to live in God’s presence. And this is precisely what God promised the exiles in Jeremiah 29: “I’ll show up and take care of you…when you call on me,…I’ll listen…when you come looking for me, you’ll find me…” David wrote:

Here’s the one thing I crave from God, the one thing I seek above all else: I want the privilege of living with him every moment in his house, finding the sweet loveliness of his face, filled with awe, delighting in his glory and grace. I want to live my life so close to him that he takes pleasure in my every prayer. (Psalm 27.4, Passion Translation)

I was meditating on a familiar passage from Jeremiah:

This is GOD’s Word on the subject: “As soon as Babylon’s seventy years are up and not a day before, I’ll show up and take care of you as I promised and bring you back home. I know what I’m doing. I have it all planned out—plans to take care of you, not abandon you, plans to give you the future you hope for. “When you call on me, when you come and pray to me, I’ll listen. “When you come looking for me, you’ll find me. “Yes, when you get serious about finding me and want it more than anything else, I’ll make sure you won’t be disappointed.” GOD’s Decree. “I’ll turn things around for you. I’ll bring you back from all the countries into which I drove you”—GOD’s Decree—”bring you home to the place from which I sent you off into exile. You can count on it. (Jeremiah 29.10 – 14, MSG)

It’s about the exile of the Jews to Babylon and the fact that they will be there 70 years. One common application is a personal, tempory exile: I’m going through a rough period right now, but God will be with me, and eventually, I’ll get through it.

This is a good application, but as I read it, I’m thinking, “You know, things are going pretty good for me right now. I don’t feel in exile.” Then I remembered: I’m not really home. I don’t often think about our eternal condition on the new earth, but I should. As C.S. Lewis wrote:

If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.

Right now, I’m on earth where evil sometimes has its way. I’m getting older, and I have way fewer years to be around than I’ve already been around. Maybe it’s time to change my focus to my permanent residence.

I’m in exile, but it is here that God will take care of me. It is here that he’ll listen when I pray. It is here that he’ll be found when I search. And he will bring me home.

This is a bit weird: having a focus on being exiled from my true home yet making my home here with God. I’m not waiting until eternity to be in his presence. I’m in his presence now. He cares for me now. He’s close to me now. 

Our Father, you’re in heaven, where I will join you soon. But in the meantime, may your name be honored here, may your Kingdom come here, and may your will be done here as it is there. 

If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. (Colossians 3.1 – 4, ESV)

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. (1 Peter 2.9 – 11, ESV)

I wrote back in June that the St Louis Blues hockey team won their first Stanley Cup Championship after being worst in the league with nearly half a season gone. (They won only 15 of their first 37 games, 40.5%.) It’s deja vu all over again with the Washington Nationals winning their first World Series after starting the season winning only 19 of their first 50 games (38%). 

Proving, once again, it’s not how you start, but how you finish.

Moreover, the Nationals had to win five elimination games, counting the one-game wild-card playoff. In each of those games, they were behind at some point in the game, usually late in the game. 

It’s the first time in any sport that all the games in a 7-game series were won by the visiting team. 

As Winston Churchill said: 

Never give up.

As the Nationals’ sweatshirts read:

Finish the Fight

At times we don’t know what to do, but quitting is not an option. (2 Corinthians 4.8, Passion Translation)

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. (2 Timothy 4.7, ESV)

My son Mark is a nationally ranked stair climber. These are the people who run up skyscrapers. Mark is one of four men in the world to have run up the Seattle Space Needle in under five minutes and one of three to have done it twice. He has won the Mile High Stadium race in Denver five years in a row (in a stadium race, they run up and down).

One of the reasons Mark is doing so well is that he trains. He has a schedule and sticks to it. For example, at least once/week he runs the Manitou Incline, a grueling one mile up railroad ties with a 2,000-foot elevation gain. Yesterday was his day to run it, and it was 15 degrees and snowing. Hence this post on FaceBook:

Many people would have changed their training schedule on a day like that! I would have. What excuses do we make for not doing what we have planned to do, whether it’s a spiritual or physical discipline or creating a holy moment?

…train yourself to be godly (1 Timothy 4.7, NIV)

If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them. (James 4.17, NIV)

I’ve written about outrage before, and this part of Jesus’ arrest and trial reveals that outrage may always be lurking just below the surface.

Then, as an act of outrage, the high priest tore his robe and shouted, “No more witnesses are needed, for you’ve heard this grievous blasphemy.” Turning to the council he said, “Now, what is your verdict?” “He’s guilty and deserves the death penalty!” they all answered. Then they spat on his face and blindfolded him. Others struck him over and over with their fists and taunted him by saying, “Prophesy to us! Tell us which one of us is about to hit you next?” And the guards took him and beat him. (Mark 14.63 – 65, Passion Translation)

As I say, people seem to have outrage resting right below the surface. All they need is provocation, and it comes out. Believers are no exception, but we should be. Certainly, religious people of all stripes are no exception. 

Even if the religious leaders sincerely believed Jesus was blasphemous and deserved punishment or even execution, there’s no reason for the violence. They could have calmly taken him to the Romans for execution. They could have even whipped him under Jewish law, which had restraint built in. “Not more than 40 lashes so your brother won’t be degraded…” But this is uncontrolled violence, in violation of their own law.

The works of the sinful nature include “outbursts of anger.” 

When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the results are very clear: sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other sins like these. Let me tell you again, as I have before, that anyone living that sort of life will not inherit the Kingdom of God. (Galatians 5.19 – 21, NLT, emphasis mine)

Maybe that’s why the fruit of the Spirit (the opposite of the works of the sinful nature) includes self-control!

But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things! (Galatians 5.22, 23, NLT, emphasis mine)

I’ve written about this once, but I’m struck anew with the simplicity of the gospel message as proclaimed by the first believers. The resurrection was all they had!

And with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. (Acts 4.33, ESV)

I was stunned to recall a verse in the middle of the night, one I memorized when I was a kid. Does it really say that? Surely not. But I looked it up first thing the next morning, and it does. How did I miss it? Here’s the verse:

If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. (Romans 10.9, ESV)

Confess that Jesus is Lord. That’s big. Caesar is not Lord. I’m not Lord. Jesus is Lord. So there’s a commitment there. A change of allegiance. But what do we believe? That God raised Jesus from the dead. That’s all.

This is the Paul that had just written in this same letter a long treatise on how the gospel works. Romans chapters 1 – 5 is a thorough explanation of justification by faith, apart from the deeds of the law. You’d think that to be saved, you’d have to understand and believe all that. Nope.

Then that same morning, I received an email addressed to Navigator staff asking us to recall the Thessalonians’ experience. Paul writes:

They tell how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath. (1 Thessalonians 1.9, 10, NIV)

“Turned to God from idols” = Jesus is Lord – check. And wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead – check. It’s the same as Romans 10.9.

I don’t yet know the implications of all this, but I suspect, as Andy Stanley argues in Irresistible, that we sometimes ask people to believe too much.

Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received and in which you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast that word which I preached to you–unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures. (1 Corinthians 15.1 – 4, NKJV)

We’ve just had our third October snow, and all three were preceded by bright sunny days, 65+ degrees. We make fun of ’em, but I’m thankful for the weather forecasters and their technology.

In everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. (1 Thessalonians 5.18, NKJV)

Giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. (Ephesians 5.20, NKJV)