I Will Praise You in This Storm

February started off on a great foot. Late last year I bought a car that was busy growing grass when I found it. We (my son, a good friend, and myself) spent the next three months fixing those things that kept the car from running properly and I was able to start using the car regularly the first of February. I have always wanted one of this particular brand of car, and the day I licensed the car I opened the sunroof and had a "thank you Jesus" party as I drove up and down the road.

Life was good.

Then Monday came, literally.

Our family was plunged into a deep, dark abyss. Many of you know that my wife and I lost our first two children. I do not hesitate to tell you that this crisis rivals those great losses, The rest of February was lost in a deep struggle that was all at once physical, emotional, and spiritual. All of our lives have been affected profoundly by this experience. Each of us has carried an enormous load that at times grew heavier but has not yet grown lighter.  And while we are beginning the see the light at the end of that tunnel (we hope), the journey to the final resolution is going to be a long and difficult one.

Added to the personal struggles have been some professional issues as well. I have heard the work of a pastor described as being something akin to "herding cats" or "pushing cooked spaghetti." Those amusing anecdotes carry a great deal of truth as they describe some of the unique challenges of being a pastor. Please understand, our church has been very gracious and generous towards my family during this time of crisis. But people are people and life continues for all of us, and that means that there were still misunderstandings and conflicts and decisions to be made. Like any family, the church is a work in progress, filled with differing opinions and desires and agendas. As a pastor, I'm trying to herd these cats in a unified direction while I deal with my own personal and family struggles.

Leading a church is a demanding thing, and I was not up to the task for most of the last six weeks.

All of this has left me weak and vulnerable and Satan has done his best in these past weeks to discourage me, to steal my joy. I wish I could tell you that I have weathered these storms with flying colors, that I never lost my joy or my confidence or had my faith tested...but that isn't true. There have been times in the last six weeks that I simply lost it. I have had my share of struggles and have voiced my frustrations with God more than once.

I'm not writing this from the position of someone who has emerged on the other side, but as someone who continues to struggle as we all do. Would you allow me share with you some of the things I am learning/relearning in all this?

1. God knows where I am. There have been times in the last few weeks that it seemed as if I was all alone. We made the decision not to make the public the nature of our family crisis. We told only a few trusted prayer partners and some church leaders. But for the most part no one knew/knows what was happening within our family. It was hard in those early days to not answer the texts and phone call and other questions that came. Sometimes we must walk a lonely path in human terms. But human loneliness is not spiritual aloneness. God was and is always with us. When I remember this I am better able to deal with the struggles because I know that  I am not alone and that I am not the only one who has struggled.

2. God never sleeps.  I have never slept much...but during that last few weeks I have slept even less. Some of my most intimate moments with God have come in the deepest hours of the night. I  have poured out my heart to God at 2:30am and found that he was there. When I couldn't share my heart with anyone else, when there was no one there, God was. In what little, fitful sleep that I've had He has watched over me. He has been there.

3. God cares. One of Satan's biggest lies is that God doesn't care about us. Another is that God is too busy to bother with us. If we believe either of those we will certainly succumb to despair. The truth is that God does care for each of his children. In the midst of our struggles God has proven again and again in a number of different ways throughout all of this that He cares.

4. God fights for His children. It's easy to lose sight of God in the midst of all the things that happen around us. There are some folks who think that God sits in heaven and doesn't bother himself with us. That couldn't be farther from the truth. I have a word for those who seek to advance their personal agendas at the expense of others...The Lord will fight for those who are his and you will not prevail.

5. God loves me. Some of you know of my childhood. The hardest struggle of my life has been accepting the fact that God loves me. The past few weeks have resurrected that old struggle. Satan has used these many struggles to whisper that God must not love me because if He did I wouldn't have such issues. That's a lie. The love of God doesn't mean that there won't be struggles, in fact the exact opposite, because God loves us we can expect Satan to do his best to cause us to struggle and doubt. As long as we live in this fallen world we can expect struggle. The presence of struggle is not evidence of the lack of God's love, but His work of deliverance is the greatest proof of his love for us.

There are so many other lessons that I am learning, but I think that this is enough for now. I ask that you continue to pray for my family and our church. May God be glorified in both.

Settling for Poor Substitutes

Last week it was revealed that the 2010 book "The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven" was a work of fiction. The young man whose "story" the book purports to tell made a public announcement that the book was a work of fiction. What should have been a minor story with a short shelf life has become a story with "legs" (a longer shelf life than expected) and with a reach that may include LifeWay, the Southern Baptist Convention's publishing operation.

It seems that both the publisher of the book (Tyndale House) and LifeWay were made aware of the controversial nature of the story itself some time ago (in the case of Tyndale, a couple of years) and yet chose to do nothing. As with stories of this nature, the truth is sadly hard to discover and we may never really know who knew what about this story. It is a sad thing that Christian men and Christian companies appear to be evading honest disclosure about this matter. (Here's a link to the story: http://www.christianpost.com/news/boy-who-came-back-from-heaven-publisher-retailer-warned-story-was-a-lie-continued-to-sell-despite-concerns-from-mother-christian-leaders-132775/)

Stories such as this were once the nearly exclusive domain of small publishing houses and those who could afford to self-publish. But Christian media of all kinds has become BIG business. The movie version of the book "Heaven is for Real" made almost $92 MILLION DOLLARS (source; IMDB)  and Rick Warren's "The Purpose Driven Life" sold over 30 MILLION COPIES (source:  The Christian Post). Yes, Christian media has become big business, but that's not necessarily good news.

Please note that I have never read "The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven." and will not. What concerns me is the rapidity with which the Christian community in North America is abandoning the Bible and orthodoxy for those things that appeal to a fanciful interpretation of what the Christian faith is all about. I have been a Christian since 1971 and have seen (sadly) a re imagining of Christianity over the last 40 plus years. I remember when guitars and lifted hands were looked on with suspicion. We sang that new song "Pass It On" around campfires as a youth group and listened to music groups that actually used drums in their music! (Scandalous, I know) But through all that we were taught that the Bible was the standard for belief and behavior. We did not worship the Bible, but we reverenced it as the word of God and any time that our opinions collided with the Bible  it was the Bible that won the day.

I don't make any apologies for my stand on the centrality of the Bible for the Christian's life and faith. In fact, I blame the church for much of what the faith has become. When the church became more concerned with flashy services, big crowds and competing with the culture as opposed to countering it we slowly but surely began to drift from our moorings. Please understand that I am not condemning large ministries or new things or modern technology in themselves. I believe that we should use all the tools at our disposal to share the Gospel with those around us. The problem comes when the tools become more important than our message. The Bible was and is and always will be the Word of God and the standard for belief and behavior. We don't have to like it....that's just the way God made it, and everything we do, every tool we use should be held up next to the Bible to ensure that we are in line with its message.

Closely aligned with the over emphasis on tools is our desire to make the gospel "easier." In our desire to when folks for Christ we have created a gospel that lacks a clear call to sacrifice and commitment. Jesus said that we must be willing to deny ourselves and carry a cross (Luke 9:23). That's not easy and it's not popular in a culture that values individual freedom and comfort as much as ours does. There are those who have watered down that dynamic call to a matter of simple mental assent, an easy believing that really makes no demands on us at all. Those will be the people who stand before the Lord and wonder why God doesn't know them (Matt. 7).

It seems to me that in the midst of all the Christian books and cd's, movies, clothing and everything else that we have lost the centrality of the hard things that Jesus calls us to do. Being born again is hard and it requires hard things of all who would follow Jesus. Is it possible that in our rush to be bigger and more successful and relevant that we have substituted genuine wisdom for a poor substitute that only serves to tantalize our imaginations and not point us to a true faith in the one and only living God?

I fear for a church in which popular, relevant, and trendy are more sought after than truth, justice and love for one another and  for God. God desires our reverential awe (the Bible calls that fear) and transformed lives. I don't think that he's that interested in unbiblical tales of trips to heaven, no matter how many copies they sell.