Anxious? What's the Answer?

 In my mid 20’s, I had the privilege to go to South Africa.  One of the highlights of the trip was an overnight stay on a gamefarm on the edge of Kruger Park. We rode on a game viewing truck, think padded bleachers on the back of a Landcruiser truck.  He drove us around and we saw many beautiful and unique creatures.  It was amazing. We had a braai that night, think, barbeque with meat and vegetables on a griddle over coals from an open fire.  It was delicious. I had never seen the Southern Cross so clearly in the night sky; it was awe inspiring (think Crosby, Stills, and Nash, “when you see the Southern Cross for the first time, you understand now why you came this way, the truth you might be runnin’ from is so small, but it's as big as the promise... of the coming day.”).  Our host left late that night to drive home. He told us to walk out to the watering hole to do some game viewing the next day.  He’d pick us up in the afternoon. All I could think of was the intimidating roars of the lion we had heard in Kruger Park a few miles away. It was quite a vulnerable feeling walking out a dirt road armed with nothing but a camera, still groggy from staying up too late the night before. We joked that we didn’t have to outrun a lion, just each other, unless there were two lions! Sticking together, we quickly made our way to find the viewing stand.  We looked intently into the bush, as our host had taught us, to see if we could see any eyes looking back at us: some looking to run from us, some ready to eat us. We saw some amazing wildlife and enjoyed the rugged beauty of the bush, but it was a very humbling experience. 

The Apostle Peter warned God’s people not to be anxious, because God cares for His own. However, anxiety, pride, and lack of connection with God make us vulnerable to a Spiritual Predator out there who is looking to do us harm. Peter tells us to stay humble and alert, remember we belong to God, and we can trust  Him with all those things that make us anxious.  He reminds them, “God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.” Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings.” (1 Peter 5:5-9)  So, remember Whose family you belong to, stay humble, alert, and sober minded, and give ALL your anxiety to the One who sees us, hears us, is glad to be with us, loves us, and wants to do good things for us! 

Hang in there people! God is glad to be with us! I’m praying for us all!

Meeting on a Mountain!*

 

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While in seminary, I interned at Travis Avenue BC in student ministry. We took a mission trip to Colorado Springs to support a local church plant. We caravanned in several 15 passenger vans to a beautiful Christian Camp in the mountains. The first morning, we split up and each van went to a different neighborhood to do Backyard Bible Clubs. I took my vanload of kids to one particular house and it was a rough morning. The neighborhood kids were having a bad day (read “Bill was having a bad day from lack of sleep and general orneriness; the kids were just being kids in a new setting”).  The TABC students did a great job of redirecting the youngsters and eventually the kids settled down and our students had things well in hand with the games, activities, and Bible Study they had planned. I decided the best thing I could do with an hour of time that morning was to go have some quiet time with God and get refocused. The neighborhood was just a few minutes from the Air Force Academy, so I wondered if the beautiful Cadet Chapel was open for a few minutes of solitude and personal Bible Study. When I arrived the Chapel was closed so I took a little hike up a nearby trail and found a bench, sat down, opened my Bible and began to read. I eventually was drawn to a passage in Hebrews that was hard for me to understand about an Old Testament king who was also a priest. These two don’t usually go together in Israel’s history. Kings come from the tribe of Judah and priests come from the tribe of Levi. So the writer explains in  Heb. 7:1,   "This Melchizedek was king of Salem and priest of God Most High. He met Abraham returning from the defeat of the kings and blessed him, 2 and Abraham gave him a tenth of everything. First, the name Melchizedek means “king of righteousness”; then also, “king of Salem” means “king of peace.'" As I sat there reading God’s Word, some people came up the trail to where I was sitting. One was in uniform and the other was a family with a young man who was considering the Air Force Academy for college. The officer stopped, shook my hand and said, "I'm Lieutenant Colonel Melchisedek.” He asked me a few questions, handed me his card and continued his tour for this prospect.  Bewildered, I dug into the passage more.

The writer of Hebrews wanted the early church of Jewish believers to understand that there was a new covenant that was much better than the first one that had depended on their good behavior and a sacrificial system to pay for their sins when they weren’t good. The writer reminded them,  Jesus is completely sufficient to save us in spite of our inability to do everything right and have a good day. He is our King, also our eternal High Priest, who offered Himself as the “once and for all” sacrifice for our sins. The incomplete sacrifices of animals made over and over again by Levitical priests who must be replaced over and over again for sins committed over and over again would never be enough.  The writer says, “Now there have been many of those priests, since death prevented them from continuing in office; but because Jesus lives forever, he has a permanent priesthood. Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them.”(Hebrews 7:23–25) Wow! I have never forgotten how God met me in the wilderness by a chance meeting with a recruiter with a unique name on a hiking trail at the Air Force Academy while studying His Word.

Hang in there people! God is glad to be with us! I’m praying for us all!

Who Are You Becoming?*

In college, I took a semester off and worked at the Louisiana World's fair in New Orleans. My first day of work was Ash Wednesday.  I arrived at the office a few minutes early, but even after start time, no one was there.  I was confused, so in my naiveté I asked, "where is everyone?” They said, “It’s Ash Wednesday.” I thought, “oh maybe they were very religious and just wanted to kick the beginning of the Lenten season off right, having some extra morning devotion.” I quickly learned, however, that everyone had apparently really indulged in the fatness of Marti Gras. I noticed the longer I stayed in that city, the more I not only began to accept this destructive overindulgence, but I indiscriminately embraced the behaviors that devalued others and myself and harmed my relationship with God.  It was a city with great fun, food, music, culture,  but foolishness came easy for me there.  At first I lived in Kenner a little drive from the city. Then I moved into New Orleans. Then some the not so good values of Crescent City moved into me and I became less like the person God intended me to be. God helped me realize I needed to get out of that town and get parts of that town out of me. (No offense to New Orleanians, I loved the food, fun, music, and culture of your great historic city, but in my weakness, I was too easily drawn to become someone God didn’t intend for me to become. My denomination has a seminary there, but at the time I was not drawn that direction. As a matter of fact I was running from God’s call on my life. Also, my apologies if this sounds moralistic or judgmental of others, that is not my intention.)

They say you become like those around you.  In the Bible, we learn about Lot, the nephew of Abraham. Abraham, though far from perfect, kept seeking God and was blessed.  Lot on the other hand kept drifting further from God. At first, he and his family lived on the plain outside of the wicked city called Sodom. Then Lot is living inside the city accepting the city’s behaviors as normal. Then just before God is about to destroy the city, Lot is sitting at the city gate where the leaders sit. He had become just like the worst of those in the city, even offering his own daughters to wicked men.  In God’s grace He sent angels to rescue Lot and his family from the coming judgement He would bring on Sodom and sister city Gomorrah. Lot was about to change his mind about getting away from the evil city, but God’s messengers insisted.  Genesis 19:16 says, “When he (Lot) hesitated, the men grasped his hand and the hands of his wife and of his two daughters and led them safely out of the city, for the LORD was merciful to them.”  God’s plan is always to rescue, but we gotta accept being rescued. We also read that the angels had warned Lot's family not to look back, but Lot’s wife couldn’t resist and she infamously became a pillar of salt, an icon of the consequences of continued and deepening disobedience.  Who are you becoming like?  When we run toward God and away from evil, we begin to act more like God’s children, but when we are drawn toward evil, we become someone God never intended us to be.

Hang in there people! God is glad to be with us! I’m praying for us all! 

Don't Go It Alone!*

 Don’t go it alone?  My sweet bride and I were blessed to go to Maui for our honeymoon. A friend told us about an inexpensive condo in Kaanapali. We had a marvelous time snorkeling, biking, and enjoying the beauty of “paradise,” and I was trying to figure out how a husband is supposed to act around this beautiful human I had espoused.  We were told we needed to drive the road to Hana to fully enjoy Maui, so we turned in our standard rent car, got a convertible for the day, put the top down, and started driving. At the time the map wasn’t very helpful to me and audio and video guides weren’t around at the time. Besides, I was a man and wanted to impress my new bride. The manly conventional wisdom of the time was, for a man to ask for help or use a map was a sign of weakness. (Turns out it would have been much wiser to get some conventional help by asking someone.) Our destination was the “Seven Sacred Pools.” We started driving and saw beautiful ocean scenes, cliffs, flowers… it was amazing. I stopped at a place that I thought perhaps was a trail to the Seven Sacred Pools. Anita and I parked, jumped out and started hiking. Anita, said maybe we should ask someone, "this doesn’t look right." And I was like, “no, here’s the trailhead, let’s go.”  The further we walked the darker it got in the jungle canopy of the bamboo thicket. I was kinda proud of myself, blazing the trail for my new bride, when she finally spoke up behind me saying, “Bill, I don’t think this is the right trail.” I turned around ready to convince her that the pools must be just up ahead, when I saw her lovely lily white legs covered in black dots… On closer observation, they were mosquitoes, dozens of them sucking the blood out of my sweet new wife. I started swatting them, which didn’t really help because she then had red swat marks on top of white bite welts... So, I quickly said, “You are right, dear. This must not be the trail. Let’s go back.” As we emerged from the deep jungle, Anita, covered in bites and swat marks, was not to be shaken, so we kept driving.  We finally found the beautiful Seven Sacred Pools clearly marked with a big sign and we jumped in the water for a moment before driving back. We had been warned “don’t drive the curvy road in the dark!” Fortunately, I did heed that warning and we returned to the hotel without further incident. In my pride and confusion about how a husband who belongs to Jesus really acts, I pretended to know where I was going, when I had never been there before.  I thought I was supposed to figure this out “all by myself.” 

The good news is that in our spiritual life we don’t have to go it alone.  As a matter of fact we can’t. If we decide to go it alone or try “conventional spiritual wisdom” we end up on a dark trail somewhere, leading ourselves and the ones we love the wrong direction, and putting us all in harm’s way.  Jesus knows that we can be like this, so he tells his disciples (and us):“And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever — the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.” (John 14:16–17) He reminds them: “...when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.” (John 16:13) Sometimes we need to be reminded that God will never leave us to figure it out all by ourselves. Often the Spirit will speak to us through more mature Jesus-belongers, who have "been there and done that." They can help us know which way to go. Immanuel, “God with us,” says, the Spirit will be with us, and in us, to guide us. 

Hang in there people. God is glad to be with us. I’m praying for us all. 

ALRIGHT!*

 Moody Center...

When my oldest daughter was a preschooler, she was curious about her dad painting a wall in the den with a paint roller. Anita was taking care of one of the other 3 preschoolers in another part of the house at the moment and I had just loaded my roller with paint from the roller pan on the floor. I climbed the step-ladder to make the “W” motion, just like the paint store expert told me. I was using a roller on a pole to reach the high part of the vaulted ceiling.  I could see out of the corner of my eye that MA had come through the door and I could hear her stepping on the plastic drop cloth. Just as I looked down, I yelled, “NO!”, but it was too late she had just stepped right in the middle of the roller pan. My shout startled her so much she turned and ran across the room in a frightened toddler scamper, making a footprint of paint with every other step across the carpet (did I mention this was a rental house). I quickly climbed down the ladder, shouting “STOP, STOP!” Which startled her even more and she continued to run, extending the paint trail of tiny footprints across the room.  I finally was able to put the roller down in the pan, catch her, and remove the paint covered shoe and start trying to get the paint off the carpet. In my parenting ignorance, I had resorted to probably the least effective method of trying to solve this issue… raising my voice. I had momentarily forgotten that toddling, inquisitive, baby humans are much more important than carpet or paint or anything else. I didn’t have a lot of calming, peace bringing tools in my parenting crisis toolbox at the time, only the one I had grown up with… effusiveness. This ability may have been something good for collegiate cheerleader to have, but it was not always the best parenting technique.  If all you have in your toolbox is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. If all you have is effusiveness, every problem should be solved by yelling louder, RIGHT?  Though this tactic seldom worked, I had trouble seeing that I needed some more effective tools in my tool box for when the train was about to run off the rails or when it was already a full blown train wreck. I also didn’t realize how many of my decisions were made from fear: fear of messing up, fear of being inadequate, fear of lack, fear of being a bad dad or husband, fear of so many things… In my anxiety, my tool box could not expand or add more tools. The positive tools that I needed could only come if I operated in joy and love, rather than fear.

We operate in fear when we don’t trust that God loves us, cares for us, is glad to be with us and works all things together for our good.  These fears come from a religion based on anger and retribution, rather than a relationship of love, joy, and care. Not that God is not capable of anger and retribution (because His righteousness and honor sometimes require it) but the fact that He loves us enough to send His Son to save us, shows His great love for us. Though He always requires our reverence and respect, He is first about rescue, rather than condemnation. John, the beloved disciple, quotes Jesus saying, “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”(John 3:17) God is about making everything new and alright. One of Texas’ favorite sons, Matthew McConaughey says it three times, “Alright, Alright, Alright!”  Our assumptions about life need to come first from the fact that God loves us tremendously and He is making everything “Alright” between us and Him. 

Hang in there people! God is glad to be with us! I’m praying for us all!