Tag Archives: Luke

Just one hour a week… [the challenge]

Posted on March 6, 2014 by | Comments Off on Just one hour a week… [the challenge]

hour glass

Earlier in January, I was working on our church’s newsletter and needed something to fill a page.  As I was considering what to do with the page, I felt led by the Holy Spirit to share something that has been on my heart for a while. During my days as a volunteer for the Boy Scouts, one of the standby jokes was that “it only took one hour a week” to make a difference in the life of a boy.  Without a doubt there is a lot of truth within that statement.  There is a lot of difference that one hour a week can make if we use it wisely.  For a moment, think of the impact in the community that the church would have if everyone would just spent one hour a week doing something to further the ministry of the local church.

As I was preparing to post this, a thought came to mind – what if for a four-month period, a challenge was made to myself and any others who wanted to see the difference that just one hour a week would add to the local church’s impact on the community.  Please do not take this challenge lightly as it is not something you can pledge to do and then not follow through with it.  If you do decide to take part in this challenge, remember what God has said about making vows: When thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it; for he hath no pleasure in fools: pay that which thou hast vowed. Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay (Ecclesiastes 5:4-5).  If you decide to take part in this, remember your commitment is not to me or this discipleship blog; it is a commitment between you and God. Alternately, remember that if you do make the commitment to spend an hour a week for four months, you should make every effort to complete it.   It’s why David, the psalmist, wrote Vow, and pay unto the LORD your God: let all that be round about him bring presents unto him that ought to be feared (Psalms 76:11) and why Jesus taught the crowds during his earthly ministry: And Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God (Luke 9:62). Once the commitment to spend one hour a week is made it is something that we must keep doing for the entire four-month challenge.

The reason I believe that this must be a four-month challenge is because of human psychology.  According to numerous studies, it takes 120 days before anything becomes a habit, regardless of if it is a good or bad one.  It is my sincerest hope that this challenge will not be something that ends once those participating hit the four-month mark, but is something that continues beyond.  I believe that as we strive to make that difference in that one hour a week, God will bless our efforts and we will see fruit as a means to encourage us to continue. Based on my experiences, I know that if we diligently spend one hour a week sincerely trying to expand the reach of the local church’s ministry it will have an impact on our communities.  We will see souls saved, we will see the broken-hearted healed, we will see fellowship restored with members, and we will see families coming together.  I believe that one hour a week will make a difference if we use it wisely.

For many of you who are already facing busy days, you are probably wondering how you can squeeze one more hour into your already busy week.  To be completely honest with you, it would not need be given at one time, nor would it need to be spent doing just one thing. As I was preparing the article for our church newsletter, I thought about how taking the hour and dividing it into six parts, one for each day of the week except Sunday, could be used by even the busiest person to be able to make a difference over the next four months. Think of the difference that one hour could make each week even if divided among six days:

  • Just ten minutes on Monday to call those who missed Sunday morning service. It would let them know that you cared enough to notice they were not there and are concerned for them.
  • Just ten minutes on Tuesday to call the older members from our church who are shut ins. This would let them know that they are not forgotten by their church family.
  • Just ten minutes on Wednesday spent sending out cards to those going through trials and hardships in our church. This could encourage them to keep going, praying, depending, and remaining faithful to God and not giving up.
  • Just ten minutes on Thursday to take cookies to a next door neighbor or co-worker and to invite them to church. We all have neighbors and co-workers that need to have someone reach out to them with the love of God.

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Learning from a winter storm

Posted on March 4, 2014 by | Comments Off on Learning from a winter storm

Winter 004

In my hometown of Henderson, Kentucky, we’ve had another round of winter weather.  While the winter storm is long gone, the snow and ice still remain. While many people see the snow and ice as an inconvenience, for me, I welcome the lessons that God teaches me through something as simple as a winter storm.  Being a bit hard-headed in my early Christian walk, I had to learn the hard way that God does not use a loud and booming voice to communicate to us.  In fact, I feel in good company.  I Kings records the lesson that God had to teach the prophet Elijah: And he said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the LORD. And, behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the LORD; but the LORD was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the LORD was not in the earthquake: And after the earthquake a fire; but the LORD was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice (I Kings 19:11-12)

Oftentimes, we miss the methods that God uses to teach us because we are not waiting to hear the still small voice.  We claim that if God would just speak to us, give us some physical sign and with that we would listen and be obedient to Him. Jesus taught on this very thing that big wondrous signs will not make a difference.  In the story of the rich man and Lazarus, Then he said, I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father’s house: For I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment. Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them. And he said, Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent. And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead (Luke 16:27-31). Although Jesus is talking about the lost coming to God, there is still a similar theme to these two passages of scripture.  In both, God loudly proclaims that it is not through great and mighty miracles where He does His work of touching the hearts of people.  Even if He did allow Lazarus to go and witness to the rich man’s family, they would not believe that God had done such a miracle and would demand that God do another.  Look at the number of miracles the crowds saw Jesus doing; look at the numbers of followers that remained near him on Golgotha.

It is through our quiet time that God truly speaks to our hearts.  We cannot expect to hear the still small voice that God chooses to use if we are doing so amid the distractions of the television, traffic, and the other experiences of day-to-day chaos?  Solomon wrote, Therefore came I forth to meet thee, diligently to seek thy face, and I have found thee (Proverbs 7:15). In other words, it’s never going to be during the “normal routine” of the day where we actually can hear the voice of God.  It is only when, in the case of Ezekiel, where we diligently seek to hear his voice that we will find Him. The apostle Paul understood this very thing too, writing to the Jewish Christian converts of his lifetime, But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him (Hebrews 11:6). Again, this idea of only through our diligent efforts will we hear God speak and reward us.  In my own experiences, the times where I diligently sought after the Lord, I had to come to an end of my own understanding of the situation and had to truly seek out God’s counsel.

As the winter storm began to hit Sunday morning around 6:30, I began to think how the storm would cause people to slow down; perhaps that was what I and others within the tri-state area affected by the storm needed.  Often times we allow life to run ahead of us and we forget what it is like to simply slow down and wait upon God. David understood this as the Holy Spirit led him to write, Rest in the LORD, and wait patiently for him: fret not thyself because of him who prospereth in his way, because of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass (Psalms 37:7). Again, this idea of waiting, of diligently seeking Him and waiting patiently for Him is something that does not come natural to us in this microwaved, smart-phoned, and multi-tasking generation.  We want instant results and when, as in the case of a winter storm, life requires us to slow down and to be patient, many of us have a hard time doing that.  Let the electricity and cable television go out, and our problems are even worse. The lesson from this winter storm:  slow down and enjoy the time with friends, family, and the Lord.

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Are you worshiping a totem or the God of the Bible?

Posted on February 13, 2014 by | Comments Off on Are you worshiping a totem or the God of the Bible?

Totem_polesIn the late 19th Century, when the fields of anthropology and sociology were still in their infancy, David Émile Durkheim was travelling around the world studying various tribal religions of Stone Age societies.  Naturally curious about the development of religion, he set out to visit Polynesian societies within the Pacific Basin, Alaskan Inuit, Native Hawaiians, and even some of the Pacific Northwest American Indian groups.  His original theory was that each of these religions shared similar traits that could connect them to a much more ancient worship system rooted somewhere within Asia.

As he prepared his research for his latest work, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, he made an observation in the Pacific Northwest that not only confounded him, but also caused him to question his own faith in God.  As a child, Durkheim had been raised as an Orthodox Jew in France.  As he attended higher education at the end of the Nineteenth Century, he adopted humanism and forsook all but the ceremonialism of his childhood faith, more out of tradition than out of reverence.  Before his death in 1917, Durkheim had returned to worshiping the God of his fathers but with a stronger passion and zeal than he had as a child, a fact rarely discussed in academic circles today.  The explanation of his change of heart towards the God of his youth came from his academic inquiry of the Pacific Northwestern Indian totem poles.

As Durkheim began to catalogue the totem poles that he encountered in the Pacific Northwest of the United States and the Canadian Pacific Coast, he learned that each small tribe had at least one to as many as three totem poles in each village, depending on the age of the village.  He also learned that each village would, within a generation, choose which gods or spirits to be featured on the totem pole.  Normally, these various tribes would select animals that they believed had the best qualities that they all should aspire to have.  He noticed that strength was represented by a bear, intelligence was represented by birds (either an eagle or owl), ravens represented negotiation skills, turtles represented strength and determination, foxes represented quickness and agility, and fish represented a giving spirit.

What he began to notice is that each of these things assigned to animals – called “personification” within anthropology – was actually traits that the members of the village already, in some form or fashion, already possessed. Within the process of creating a totem pole containing representations of these traits, these Indian groups were not worshiping animals or spirits, but were actually worshipping themselves – they had created their gods in their own image! Durkheim saw a visual interpretation of what the Holy Spirit led Isaiah to write, Their land also is full of idols; they worship the work of their own hands, that which their own fingers have made (Isaiah 28).  In Durkheim’s last year of life, he decided to use his theories on the Pacific Northwestern Indian religion and apply it to his own Jewish faith from childhood.  What he discovered was that just as the Pacific Northwest Indians crafted their own faith to match their needs, he had actually done the exact same thing with his Jewish faith, changing the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob into a God that could not be trusted and only recourse was to adopt a godless existence through humanism. For the rest of his life, Durkheim returned to the Orthodox Judaism of his childhood with a renewed appreciation of his faith.

As Christians, if we are not careful, we can do the exact same thing in our quest to understand our relationship to God. The prophet Jeremiah, as he was led by the Holy Spirit, wrote, Shall a man make gods unto himself, and they are no gods? (Jeremiah 16:20). The apostle Paul pondered this tendency of man to create God in his own image as he wrote to the early Christians in Galatia, Howbeit then, when ye knew not God, ye did service unto them which by nature are no gods (Galatians 4:8). What both verses show is that while we know the truth about God and what he expects from us, there is a strong  fleshly desire to create shortcuts, different interpretations of scripture, or a justification of our actions.  When we do these things, we now are worshipping a Jesus of our own making – or a totem Jesus.

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