John Updike died this week. In the past year we’ve lost Norman Mailer, William Buckley, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn as well .Frankly I don’t feel so well myself.
So I’d better write something today.
Track these four threads with me please.
1. I was born in Atlanta and grew up in a suburb .For my first 25 years I knew I’d never be able to live far away. Venturing to Dallas for Seminary stretched me no end. I felt like Ferdinand Magellan. As it turns out I haven’t lived in Georgia since 1972-- the year I finished college.
2. Through the years I heard from home-town friends about Louie Giglio, who spreads the fame of Jesus from North Atlanta.
3. Four years ago I was taking out the trash at my mother’s house in Flowery Branch, Georgia. I don’t take the trash out often so the memory is vivid. Nearby a lady I’d never seen was parting with a little trash of her own. She asked:” Are you Ronnie Stevens?” Stalling for time as I pondered my next move I recklessly admitted to the charge.
Her first name is gone from memory, but she registered her surname as Giglio. I said I was pleased to make her acquaintance, and asked if she were related to LOUIE Giglio. She confided that he was her son. Turns out my own mother had been regaling Mrs. Giglio (whose friend was a neighbor) with tales of her own missionary son. Mrs. G., a budding trivia expert in her own right, had somehow remembered my name. “How do you know Louie?” she asked. “I don’t know Louie,” I answered. “Your son is famous.”
Now that’s a line bound to make any mother feel those tiresome trash-disposal efforts are well worth the trouble. I’m sure I hoped the encounter would lead to joint ministry at some dazzling venue.
Alas it was not to be.
In fact I never saw Louie Giglio’s face or heard his voice until today
And today only on DVD.
4. Last Sunday after worship a young Hungarian put the DVD into my hand. He asked if I knew Louie Giglio. I had waited almost 5 years for that opening so I pounced immediately, “No, but I know his mother.” He told me I had to watch the presentation. Not only I, but the whole Congregation as well. Such was the lad’s fervor.
Well today I did watch. The talk is called HOW GREAT IS OUR GOD. I know the expression is dated and of suspect provenance, but the words ‘mind blowing’ are not amiss.
The title is more than justified. Louie begins with a survey of the macrocosm. Think immensity. Prominent among the projected images is the black hole at the center of the Whirlpool Galaxy perched at an angle perpendicular to our own. The image of that galaxy center is shaped like a Cross. Perhaps I should say “THE CROSS”. As he descends to the microcosm he explores the wonders of human conception, the way eyesight is conferred, the human genome and, finally, the subject of laminin –the substance which holds our cells together. Turns out the structure of laminin is also cross shaped.
The juxtaposition, shaped by a master communicator, was powerfully wrought. There was a running exposition of Psalm 33 throughout.
“By the Word of the Lord the heavens were made
And by the breath of His mouth all their hosts.”
The’ hosts’, of course, are the heavenly bodies.
He calls God THE STAR BREATHER. And when he moved in toward the Cross he declared that THE STAR BREATHER BECAME THE SIN-BEARER!
You can view an excerpt at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_e4zgJXPpI4
I hope you get the 40 minute segment entire.
The effort won’t disappoint.
Hands could be raised.
Tears could be shed.
And that would be entirely appropriate.
THE STAR-BREATHER IS AN AWESOME GOD.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Sunday, January 25, 2009
The White House and My House
For the last five weeks an African refugee from our church has been staying in our home. His name is Stephen. It is an easy hospitality for me to extend as Jane is still in the US . It is not an unselfish hospitality. Stephen cooks and I do not. For the last five days Stephen has been glued to CNN. I can hear him downstairs clapping, laughing, shouting amen. Stephen has never visited America . He was born in Cameroon . He has not seen his wife or children for ten years. His Hungarian visa does not allow him to work. For that reason he is homeless. He has precious little to celebrate.
But he is celebrating. He is celebrating because the President of the United States had an African father. Stephen’s sense of participation and enfranchisement through Barack Obama’s presidency is profound.
I share some of Stephen’s enthusiasm. Our new President is brilliant, stylish and a soaring orator. He has a beautiful family. We’ve not had a President this winsome since Ronald Reagan. No President has inspired so much hope since Franklin Roosevelt. I doubt if even George Washington himself entered office with such a tailwind. He’ll need the momentum. Oratory won’t count for much with the likes of Vladimir Putin, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Kim Jong-il.
I wish our President well. Our country wearied of the last President. Our war aims are not clear. Our economy is…well… you know. Were it not for this fresh start our country would be in near despair.
In the years I have been a Christian the Lord has blessed individuals and ministries I didn’t expect Him to bless. The Lord has blessed individuals and ministries I would not have blessed. And, candidly, He has blessed individuals and ministries I did not want Him to bless. This is so because He is wise and I am not. This is so because He is gracious and I am not. This is so because He is God.
But I do want Him to bless President Obama. The very name ‘Barack’ means ‘blessed.’ As his name is so let him be. I want that blessing because of Iraq and Afghanistan. I want that blessing because I have friends who’ve lost jobs. I want it most of all because I want African-Americans to bask in their own contribution to American achievement.
I want it for lots of reasons.
But I did not vote for Barack Obama.
And I would never vote for him.
This week he called for hope and opportunity.
This week he reached out to “gay and straight.”
In the past he has looked with favor on decriminalizing 20 million guilty who entered our country illegally.
Notably excluded from the comprehensive amnesty and good will are the only truly innocent—children yet unborn. They will be denied not only the right to live in America but the right to live at all.
They will be scorched, poisoned and dismembered in their mothers’ wombs.
Whither hope and opportunity for these?
I have heard the charges of simple-mindedness and shallowness leveled at one issue voters.
I have heard Christian opinion-makers like Jim Wallis and Donald Miller tell me there are other humanitarian issues to be considered beyond the slaughter of the unborn and the Democratic Party scores well on those.
I have Democrat friends who are godly and intelligent who tell me to get over it.
But I can’t.
And I never will.
But he is celebrating. He is celebrating because the President of the United States had an African father. Stephen’s sense of participation and enfranchisement through Barack Obama’s presidency is profound.
I share some of Stephen’s enthusiasm. Our new President is brilliant, stylish and a soaring orator. He has a beautiful family. We’ve not had a President this winsome since Ronald Reagan. No President has inspired so much hope since Franklin Roosevelt. I doubt if even George Washington himself entered office with such a tailwind. He’ll need the momentum. Oratory won’t count for much with the likes of Vladimir Putin, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Kim Jong-il.
I wish our President well. Our country wearied of the last President. Our war aims are not clear. Our economy is…well… you know. Were it not for this fresh start our country would be in near despair.
In the years I have been a Christian the Lord has blessed individuals and ministries I didn’t expect Him to bless. The Lord has blessed individuals and ministries I would not have blessed. And, candidly, He has blessed individuals and ministries I did not want Him to bless. This is so because He is wise and I am not. This is so because He is gracious and I am not. This is so because He is God.
But I do want Him to bless President Obama. The very name ‘Barack’ means ‘blessed.’ As his name is so let him be. I want that blessing because of Iraq and Afghanistan. I want that blessing because I have friends who’ve lost jobs. I want it most of all because I want African-Americans to bask in their own contribution to American achievement.
I want it for lots of reasons.
But I did not vote for Barack Obama.
And I would never vote for him.
This week he called for hope and opportunity.
This week he reached out to “gay and straight.”
In the past he has looked with favor on decriminalizing 20 million guilty who entered our country illegally.
Notably excluded from the comprehensive amnesty and good will are the only truly innocent—children yet unborn. They will be denied not only the right to live in America but the right to live at all.
They will be scorched, poisoned and dismembered in their mothers’ wombs.
Whither hope and opportunity for these?
I have heard the charges of simple-mindedness and shallowness leveled at one issue voters.
I have heard Christian opinion-makers like Jim Wallis and Donald Miller tell me there are other humanitarian issues to be considered beyond the slaughter of the unborn and the Democratic Party scores well on those.
I have Democrat friends who are godly and intelligent who tell me to get over it.
But I can’t.
And I never will.
Friday, January 23, 2009
Resolution, Reckoning and the Hidden Life
…reckon…yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Romans 6:11
Many of our New Year’s resolutions will have been forgotten by now. January fuels the determination that things will be different this time. But experience is cruel. The former patterns tend to reassert themselves. .
Yet Scripture requires that we ‘reckon.’ We class reckoning and resolution as similar if not identical things. The word ‘reckon’ is from an older translation. More modern versions translate the original Greek with words like ‘consider’. Still, the older term is better.
The command to reckon is the first command in the book of Romans. Scripture never calls us to mindless activism. Truth must supply a motive for effort. And truth must be ascertained. The great Apostle establishes the foundational truth for this reckoning through five chapters and ten verses.
That truth as expounded by Paul has to do with the Death and Resurrection of the Holy One. The death of Christ is a cosmic event with personal consequences. Time, eternity, and the universe itself are all permanently changed by the death of God’s Son. By Christ’s death, death is slain, disarmed, its terror voided. Through His Resurrection our own life is elevated above an animal existence, invested with a purpose which would have been impossible had the sinless Savior disintegrated in His grave.
Resolution is like reckoning in that it expresses the intention that real change be effected. Yet there remain differences between biblical reckoning and our normal approach to resolution.
1. Resolution is usually self-regarding. Reckoning requires a concentration on Christ and His achievement.
2. Resolution is the determination that change must take place. Reckoning is the recognition that change has taken place.
3. Resolution looks mainly toward the future. Reckoning is ever conscious of the past. Two thousand years ago in Jerusalem the Son of God died to break sin’s power. The Cross is the focus of reckoning. Resolution hopes for a new reality. Reckoning flows from a new reality
4. Resolution is the attempt to attain a goal. Reckoning is the appropriation of a fact.
5. Resolution succeeds by human will. Reckoning advances by faith.
Christianity is very much an interior phenomenon. Jesus declared such when He denounced anger in addition to murder, lust in addition to adultery. God’s demand for purity in the inward life defined Jesus’ controversy with the Pharisees. If a cup is dirty on the inside it matters little if the outside is washed. Repentance, belief, joy and reckoning are all functions of an inward consciousness.
Over 30 years ago an obscure author named Miles Stanford (1914-99) wrote a spiritual life trilogy first published privately. The last of the three (after ‘The Principle of Position’ and ‘The Green Letters’) was called ‘The Reckoning that Counts.’ The little book (get it if you can) was an exposition of the Romans 6:11 theme. I regard it as a minor classic. There is a current obsession with making ministry ‘work’ through technique. Ought there not to be a prior concern with making the Christian life work –seeing that life lived out practically as prescribed by the Lord and His Apostles? When we say “lived out practically” we mean obedience: consistent, self-denying, joyous.
In the end “success” will be defined by God Himself.
When we understand that definition we can be sure it will have to do with what is happening on the inside, with what Scripture calls ‘the heart’.
Let us give ourselves to the cultivation of those interior spaces.
Let us resolve to reckon.
Many of our New Year’s resolutions will have been forgotten by now. January fuels the determination that things will be different this time. But experience is cruel. The former patterns tend to reassert themselves. .
Yet Scripture requires that we ‘reckon.’ We class reckoning and resolution as similar if not identical things. The word ‘reckon’ is from an older translation. More modern versions translate the original Greek with words like ‘consider’. Still, the older term is better.
The command to reckon is the first command in the book of Romans. Scripture never calls us to mindless activism. Truth must supply a motive for effort. And truth must be ascertained. The great Apostle establishes the foundational truth for this reckoning through five chapters and ten verses.
That truth as expounded by Paul has to do with the Death and Resurrection of the Holy One. The death of Christ is a cosmic event with personal consequences. Time, eternity, and the universe itself are all permanently changed by the death of God’s Son. By Christ’s death, death is slain, disarmed, its terror voided. Through His Resurrection our own life is elevated above an animal existence, invested with a purpose which would have been impossible had the sinless Savior disintegrated in His grave.
Resolution is like reckoning in that it expresses the intention that real change be effected. Yet there remain differences between biblical reckoning and our normal approach to resolution.
1. Resolution is usually self-regarding. Reckoning requires a concentration on Christ and His achievement.
2. Resolution is the determination that change must take place. Reckoning is the recognition that change has taken place.
3. Resolution looks mainly toward the future. Reckoning is ever conscious of the past. Two thousand years ago in Jerusalem the Son of God died to break sin’s power. The Cross is the focus of reckoning. Resolution hopes for a new reality. Reckoning flows from a new reality
4. Resolution is the attempt to attain a goal. Reckoning is the appropriation of a fact.
5. Resolution succeeds by human will. Reckoning advances by faith.
Christianity is very much an interior phenomenon. Jesus declared such when He denounced anger in addition to murder, lust in addition to adultery. God’s demand for purity in the inward life defined Jesus’ controversy with the Pharisees. If a cup is dirty on the inside it matters little if the outside is washed. Repentance, belief, joy and reckoning are all functions of an inward consciousness.
Over 30 years ago an obscure author named Miles Stanford (1914-99) wrote a spiritual life trilogy first published privately. The last of the three (after ‘The Principle of Position’ and ‘The Green Letters’) was called ‘The Reckoning that Counts.’ The little book (get it if you can) was an exposition of the Romans 6:11 theme. I regard it as a minor classic. There is a current obsession with making ministry ‘work’ through technique. Ought there not to be a prior concern with making the Christian life work –seeing that life lived out practically as prescribed by the Lord and His Apostles? When we say “lived out practically” we mean obedience: consistent, self-denying, joyous.
In the end “success” will be defined by God Himself.
When we understand that definition we can be sure it will have to do with what is happening on the inside, with what Scripture calls ‘the heart’.
Let us give ourselves to the cultivation of those interior spaces.
Let us resolve to reckon.
Monday, December 29, 2008
Fire and the Fading Year
"...I will send a fire on the wall of Gaza..." Amos 1:7
There is an old spiritual centered on the promise that the world will nevermore be destroyed by water. The assurance to Noah does not mean all judgment will be averted. Hence the song includes the words: "...the fire next time." War recurs in the Mid-East by reason of wounds of long bleeding. The conflict is protracted. The conflict was predicted. The conflict will not abate until the coming of the Son of Man. Our former UN Ambassador mentioned the likelihood of an Israeli strike on Iran between the election and the inauguration. The idea is that Iran's nuclear program must be stopped. If Israel attacks during the transition between two Administrations, immediate American pressure to desist is less likely. In an article in the London Times Britain's former Foreign Minister (David Owen) urged Israel to resist any inclination to attack. At this moment the fire is falling on Gaza not Iran. One day it will fall over the entire earth. I once heard Eric Alexander say that one who refuses the salvation offered in Christ Jesus has no shelter from the wrath of God. It is a truth seldom emphasized in our day. It was the special province of a prophet to warn. But pity the poor pastor who makes his congregation uncomfortable today. When we insist that sermons merely palliate and congratulate (a famous West Coast Pastor just demoted his own son for deviating from that path) we divest our pulpits of the prophetic. It is a trend much to be lamented. While Gazans flee the fire this time we note that there will be a fire next time.
If we have shelter well and good.
Let us press the urgency of shelter upon those who don't. Leisure is ill-suited to this task.
The number of allotted years is fixed and finite.
And the year we're in is fading.
There is an old spiritual centered on the promise that the world will nevermore be destroyed by water. The assurance to Noah does not mean all judgment will be averted. Hence the song includes the words: "...the fire next time." War recurs in the Mid-East by reason of wounds of long bleeding. The conflict is protracted. The conflict was predicted. The conflict will not abate until the coming of the Son of Man. Our former UN Ambassador mentioned the likelihood of an Israeli strike on Iran between the election and the inauguration. The idea is that Iran's nuclear program must be stopped. If Israel attacks during the transition between two Administrations, immediate American pressure to desist is less likely. In an article in the London Times Britain's former Foreign Minister (David Owen) urged Israel to resist any inclination to attack. At this moment the fire is falling on Gaza not Iran. One day it will fall over the entire earth. I once heard Eric Alexander say that one who refuses the salvation offered in Christ Jesus has no shelter from the wrath of God. It is a truth seldom emphasized in our day. It was the special province of a prophet to warn. But pity the poor pastor who makes his congregation uncomfortable today. When we insist that sermons merely palliate and congratulate (a famous West Coast Pastor just demoted his own son for deviating from that path) we divest our pulpits of the prophetic. It is a trend much to be lamented. While Gazans flee the fire this time we note that there will be a fire next time.
If we have shelter well and good.
Let us press the urgency of shelter upon those who don't. Leisure is ill-suited to this task.
The number of allotted years is fixed and finite.
And the year we're in is fading.
Friday, December 26, 2008
The Festival of the Born King
“Where is He who is born King of the Jews?” Matthew 2:2
Alec Motyer, the Anglican Old Testament scholar, called Isaiah 9:6 the prophecy of ‘God come to be born.’ The notion that God could be born was an idea without precedent. Just so, babies are not kings at the moment of their birth.
Edward VII (d. 1910) was not king when he was born; his mother Queen Victoria was on the throne. She was still on the throne when her grandson George V (d. 1936) was born. It was the same with Edward VIII and George VI. Babies wait their turn. They wait on their own maturity as well as the death of the previous monarch.
The exception of course was Bethlehem. Jesus did not ascend to the throne—He descended. He came from the higher heavenly place to the earthly. He came not to be an earthly king but the earthly king. The star proclaimed it. Magi believed it. Christians celebrate it.
So come, let us adore Him, born the King of Angels.
Alec Motyer, the Anglican Old Testament scholar, called Isaiah 9:6 the prophecy of ‘God come to be born.’ The notion that God could be born was an idea without precedent. Just so, babies are not kings at the moment of their birth.
Edward VII (d. 1910) was not king when he was born; his mother Queen Victoria was on the throne. She was still on the throne when her grandson George V (d. 1936) was born. It was the same with Edward VIII and George VI. Babies wait their turn. They wait on their own maturity as well as the death of the previous monarch.
The exception of course was Bethlehem. Jesus did not ascend to the throne—He descended. He came from the higher heavenly place to the earthly. He came not to be an earthly king but the earthly king. The star proclaimed it. Magi believed it. Christians celebrate it.
So come, let us adore Him, born the King of Angels.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Hymn to the Christ Child
We greet Thee Lowly Babe
Near Bethlehem we heard your fame
Now draw we near to learn your Name
Sent to live with sinful men
Sent to be the Shepherds’ Friend
We sought Thee Lovely Babe
By Eastern Star we saw your sign
So rushed to make our treasure Thine
Brought gifts of myrrh and gifts of gold
Though great the distance, great the cold
We hail Thee Lordly Babe
From Heaven’s gate we hastened down
To share the joy the earth has found
To show the slaves, to tell the free
That angel hosts still worship Thee
Near Bethlehem we heard your fame
Now draw we near to learn your Name
Sent to live with sinful men
Sent to be the Shepherds’ Friend
We sought Thee Lovely Babe
By Eastern Star we saw your sign
So rushed to make our treasure Thine
Brought gifts of myrrh and gifts of gold
Though great the distance, great the cold
We hail Thee Lordly Babe
From Heaven’s gate we hastened down
To share the joy the earth has found
To show the slaves, to tell the free
That angel hosts still worship Thee
Merry Christmas from Ronnie and Jane
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