PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE:  “DON’T SURRENDER YOUR DREAM-WHISTLING THROUGH THE TOMBSTONES!”

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Dec 272015
 

PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE:  “DON’T SURRENDER YOUR DREAM-WHISTLING THROUGH THE TOMBSTONES!”

By:  Ron Woodrum

 

     In his great classic The City of God Augustine describes our condition on earth as a form of citizenship in two cities, the city of man and the City of God.  The lure of the city of man often silences the summons of the call of the City of God.  Earth’s city is visible, solid, apparent to our senses and always alluring.  God’s city, by contrast, appears hidden, uncertain and very far away.  But appearances are deceptive, for the City of God is the real, the substantial and the lasting, while the city of man proves fleeting and vain.  Next to the immediacy of the city of man, which promises to meet our needs right now, God’s promise does not seem like much.  But when broken promises of the city of man are strewn like cast-off baubles in the ash heaps of life, it means everything to know that we can know God, and in knowing Him find the one thing, above all other things, that  our hearts long for!  Those truths caused Augustine to say, “We are restless until we find our rest in thee Oh God!”  That is what C.S. Lewis called “the secret signature of the human soul”.  In his book The Problem of Pain, he wrote, “There have been times when I think we do not desire heaven: (intimate relationship with God); but more often I find myself wondering whether, in our heart of hearts we have ever desired anything else…it is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable desire, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work….All your life an unattainable ecstasy has hovered just beyond the grasp of your consciousness.  The day is coming when you will wake to find, beyond all hope, that you have finally       attained it!”

     C.K. Chesterton contrasted the lack of such signature in animals, with the image of it in humankind.  He wrote, “who has ever found an ant hill decorated with statues of celebrated ants?  Who has seen a bee hive carved up with images of gorgeous queens of old?”  But man does those things!  He continues, “The fact that apes have hands is far less interesting to the philosopher than the fact that having hands he does nothing with them!  He does not play knuckle-bones or the violin; does not carve marble or mutton; People talk of barbaric achitecture and debased art.  But elephants do not build colossal temples of ivory even in a rococo style; camels do not paint even bad pictures, even though they are equipped with enough material out of which they could make many camel’s hair brushes!”  Blaise Pascal highlighted this unique signature of the soul too when he said, “The greatness of man is so evident that it is even proven by his wretchedness.  For what in animals is called nature we call wretchedness in man; by which we recognize that, his nature now being like that of animals, has fallen from a better nature which once was his.  For who is unhappy at not being a king except a deposed king!” (Pensees). Fallen man is a deposed King.   We were made for fellowship with God.  Not just any fellowship with God.  God is to be our number one passion.  Even as Christians who love God we often let the city of man take priority and rob us of experiencing the fullness we should be enjoying with Him every day of our lives.  That is why, as Emerson said, “we live lives of quiet desperation”.  C.S. Lewis also called that “man’s inconsolable secret”.  He wrote in The Weight of Glory, “We should hardly dare to ask that any notice be take of ourselves.  But we pine.  The sense that in this universe we are treated as strangers, the longing to be acknowledged, to meet with some response, to bridge some chasm that yawns between us and reality, is part of the inconsolable secret…our life-long nostalgia, our longing to be reunited with something in the universe we now feel cut off from, to be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside, is no mere neurotic fantasy, but the truest index of our real situation.  And to be at last summoned inside would be both glory and honor beyond all of our merits and also the healing of that old ache”

     Man has an inconsolable secret…and old ache that we live with every day that knaws at us deep inside.  We were made for intimacy with God.  Even though being born again has restored that fellowship, we do not give our whole hearts to that intimacy with proper fervor and passion.  There in defines the struggle of the Christian life.  We give more time, more attention and more love to the blessings than the Blesser.  We find ourselves more attached to the gifts that the Giver.  Scott Wesley Brown has written a song titled Things that warns us about the danger of surrendering the fulfillment of our spiritual dreams by whistling through the tombstones of the city of man!

 

Things

 

Things on the mantle, things on the shelf

Things that others gave me, Things I gave myself

Things I’ve stored in boxes, Things that don’t mean much anymore

Old magazines and memories Behind the Attic Door

 

Things on hooks and hangers, Things on ropes and rings

Things I guard that blind me, to the pettiness of other things

Am I like the Rich Young Ruler, ruled by all I own

If Jesus came and asked me, could I leave them all alone?

 

Oh Lord, I look to heaven, beyond the veil of time

To gain eternal insight that nothing is really mine

And to only ask for daily bread, and all that contentment brings

To find freedom as your servant, in the midst of all these things

 

For discarded in the junkyards, rusting in the rain

Lie things that took my finest years, of my lifetime to obtain

And whistling through these tombstones, the hollow breezes sing

A song of dreams surrendered to the tyranny of things!

 

“Don’t surrender your intimacy with God-whistling through the tombstones of the lesser things of the city of man!”

 

 Posted by at 12:10 am

PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE:  “So hallowed and gracious is the time”

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Dec 202015
 

PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE:  “So hallowed and gracious is the time”

By:  Ron Woodrum

 

     “So hallowed and gracious is the time”-those are words from Shakespeare’s Hamlet.  They should be read in context.

 

Some say that ever ‘gainst the season comes

Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated,

The bird of dawning singeth all night long;

And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad,

The nights are wholesome, then no planets strike,

No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,

     So hallowed and so gracious is the time.

 

These lines from the first scene of Hamlet  in a sense say it all.  We tend to think of time as a progression, as moment following moment, day following day, in a relentless flow, the kind of time a clock or a calendar can measure.  But we experience time also as depth, as having quality as well as quantity-a good time, a dangerous time, an auspicious time, a time we mark not by its duration but by its content.  The New Testament speaks of both of these kinds of time by the use of differnt words.  Time measured by the clock was identified by the Greek word “Chronos”- (from which we get our word chronology).  But there were times of special significance-noted for the quality of the event occuring-identified by the word “Kairos”. The latter is time marked by its content, not its duration.

On the dark battlements of Elsinore, Marcellus speaks to his companions of the time of Jesus’ birth.  It is a “hallowed” time he says, a holy time, a time in which life grows still like the surface of a river so that we can look down into it and see glimmering there in its depths something timeless, precious, other.  It is also a “gracious” time, Marcellus says-a time we cannot bring about as we bring about a happy time or a sad time but a time that comes upon us as grace, as a free and unbidden gift.  Marcellus explains that Christmas is a time of such  holiness that the cock crows the whole night through as though it is perpetually dawn, and thus for once even the powers of darkness are powerless.

Horatio’s answer is instructive-“So I have heard, and do partially believe”, he says to Marcellus.  Christmas time is a holy and gracious time that reminds us that God has reached out for a relationship with fallen man, through the incarnation of His Son.  Even though not everyone opens their heart to the full revelation and salvation that this season brings, there is the initial desire to “partially believe”. The glaring truth of this season is “that this is of all things the thing most worth believing!”

     As we experience the holiness and grace of the advent of our Lord we dare not miss out on the full impact of what happened then.  The Divine Son of God became the Incarnate Son of Man.  The Infinite became an Infant.  The Divine second person of the God-head took on humanity. God entered human history with the mission of “reconciling the lost and dying world unto Himself”.  The heavenly son of His heavenly Father, became the earthly son of his earthly Mother.  The unique theanthropic person-fully God and fully man, at the same time came into eternal existance!  What we celebrate at this time of the season is “hallowed and gracious” but is also beyond our comprehension.  When Isaiah predicted that his name shall be called “Wonderful” we often miss the import of that prophecy.  The Hebrew word “pela means “something uncommon  or out of the ordinary”.  It reflects “a phenomenon lying outside the realm of human explanation; that which is separated from the normal course of events; something that cannot be explained”. That is the reality of the event we celebrate each year at Christmas.  Jesus was God’s expression of love and salvation that goes beyond all of our comprehension. We should never get over the wonder of the Christmas story.  We should relive it each year in all its glorious truth and excitement.  We need to put exclamation points on the virgin birth; the miraculous star; the angelic choirs visiting the shepherds; the wise men journey and worship.  These truths should be reaffirmed and experienced with reverence and worship.  The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.  Light came into darkness as never before in human history.  The hopes and dreams of all the years were fulfilled on this glorious night.  But it is to be celebrated not only with reverence but also with reality.

Musician and Theologian Michael Card talks about the Scandal of Christmas.  He insists that we have created a pretty significant “myth”  about Christmas.  Our tradition and celebration of the Christ event has transformed it into something that is a twisted version of the reality of that first Holy night.  He says, “that night a homeless king was born in a barn, wrapped in rags, and laid to sleep in a animal feeding trough…we tend to turn the barn into a palace, etc.  but I think it’s important for people to get the feel for the degree of sacrifice that began with the birth of Jesus”.  Jesus came into a world dominated by an evil world system where Caesar was Lord.  Caesar’s taxation was used of a Sovereign God to bring about the fulfillment of His Son’s birth to be in Bethlehem, not Nazareth.  But Jesus had to survive the long ardurous trip inside the womb of his mother riding donkey-back from Nazareth to Bethlehem.  When they arrived they received no welcome.  He was born in a barn with no room in the inn.  John would later see the significance of his first welcome by saying, “he came unto his own but his own welcomed him not” (John 1:11).  Then don’t forget that when he was born that another King, Jesus’ evil counterpart sought to kill Him, by killing all the males born in Bethlehem twp years old and younger!  Things are not too different today.  Muslims recently sanctified a new Muslim holiday and have demanded its recognition on Decemeber 24th.  Christmas Eve is  the new designated time to celebrate the birthday of Mohommed!  Just a reminder that the world in which we celebrate our Saviour’s birth this year is a world dominated by the spirit of antichrist and Jesus, in reality, is not welcomed any more this year as He was His first year!  But there are still those who like the first shepherds, recognize the one wrapped in swaddling clothes in Bethlehem is the “Lamb of God” come to solve the sin problem of the world.  There are still wise men who still seek Him and bring their sacrificial and deserving gifts to worship Him who was Himself God’s unspeakable gift sent from heaven to earth for us to be able to go from earth to heaven through Him and His Salvation.  The Crowning Message of Christmas involves a reverential and real celebration of a Cradle; of a Cross; and of a Crown.

 Posted by at 12:13 am

PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE: WONDERFUL WORDS OF LIFE  

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Dec 062015
 

PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE: WONDERFUL WORDS OF LIFE 

By:  Ron Woodrum

 

Adolf Hitler certainly knew the power of words.  His book Mein Kampf, (My Struggle), written during his imprisonment in 1921 has rivaled Pilgrim’s Progress for the second-best selling book in history, second only to the Bible.  That book laid the foundation for the rise of the Nazi regime that plunged the entire world into war.  Warren Wiersbe, in his book Be Skillful, says that for every word in Mein Kampf 125 people lost their lives in WWII.  Karl Marx boasted “give me 26 lead soldiers and I will conquer the world”.  He was referring to the alphabet.  He took their soldiers (the letters of the alphabet) and put his evil philosophy into the words of his Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital, and nearly succeeded at his goal!  I doubt if either of those two evil dictators realized that they were bearing witness to the truth of Holy Scripture.

The Bible says, “death and life are in the power of the tongue” (Prov. 18:21); “There is one whose rash words are like sword thrusts, but the tongue of the wise brings healing” (Prov. 12:18); “A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger” (Prov. 15:1); “A word fitly spoken are like apples of gold in a setting of silver” (Prov. 25:11);  “From the wise mind comes wise speech; the words of the wise are persuasive” (Prov. 16:23); “Kind words are sweet like honey-sweet to soul and healthy for the body” (Prov. 16:24); “A gentle tongue is a tree of life, perverse words break the spirit” (Prov. 15:4); “The good person out of the goodness of his heart produces good; the evil person out of the evil treasure of his heart produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Luke 6:45); “The gospel is a savor of death unto death for those who reject it, and a savor of life unto life to those who welcome it” (II Cor. 2:15-16);  What is true of human words is infinitely more true of Divine words.  That is why the writer of the book of Hebrews said, “The Word of God is alive, and sharper than a two-edged sword” and has the power to transform! (Heb. 4:12).

Let me share a real life example of that with you.  One Sunday morning Charles Spurgeon was getting ready to enter the pulpit of the great Metropolitan Chapel.  He was discouraged.  He felt like he had nothing to speak to his people.

This is what he said, in his own words- “Upon this day,” he was in his study, seated at his desk, he said, “I was sick and discouraged.”  And he said, “I sat down at the desk and I thought, ‘Oh, how can I preach?  I am sick and I am discouraged.  How can I preach?’”  And as he sat there at the desk, sick and discouraged, he said, “I noticed on the desk a mission report.”  He said, “I picked it up and it was a missionary who was reporting on his year’s work in the Dominican Republic.”

And he said he looked through the report and the missionary reported, said, “We had a hard year.  We had very few souls.  And I don’t have much to report.”  But he said, “There was one glorious conversion.”  He said, “There was a man who came from a long distance, from Haiti on the other side of the island, there was a man who came from Haiti, and he said, ‘I’ve been saved, and I want to be baptized.’”

And the missionary said, “You’ve been saved?  Where and when and how?”  And the man replied, “I came upon, I found a sermon by the London preacher, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, translated into French,” which is the language they speak in Haiti, “translated into French.”  And he said, “I read that sermon, and I was saved.  And I have come all the way over here to the Dominican Republic, I heard of you, wanting you to baptize me.”  And the missionary said, “That is the bright place in my report for the year.”  Spurgeon said, “I read that,” and he said, “when I did, the Holy Spirit of encouragement and strength came upon me, and I prepared the sermon that I am preaching today.”  That’s the way Spurgeon began that message.  You never know.  You never ever know.  There is power in words.  Power for good.  Power for evil.  But the Word of God is the epitome of power!  As Isaiah 55 promises “it will not return…void”.  Please welcome Bro. Herb Curtis as he shares more testimony of the Power of the Living Word.

 

 

 Posted by at 12:15 am