PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE: “The greatness of a man is the measure of his surrender!”

 By:  Ron Woodrum

     Most of us are very familiar with the ministry of the Salvation Army.  We have all given donations to the Red Kettle, and probably many of us have even taken a turn or two at “ringing the bell”.  Every major town or city has its Salvation Army Church and ministry center right in the heart of where it is needed most!  That was the aim of their founder from the beginning.  William Booth started this ministry in 1865, on the East Side of London England with that very intent.  He said, “Go for souls…and go for the worst”.  He did that very thing.  He encountered and won the prostitutes, gamblers, alcoholics, and homeless beggars to Christ.  His ministry revolved around the three “s”‘s-Soup-Soap-Salvation!  He was converted under the ministry of John Wesley, carried on by Wesley’s followers after his death in 1791.  Booth found Christ at a Methodist revival in 1844, at the age of 15.  He said, “I worshipped everything that bore the name Methodist.  To me there was one God, and John Wesley was his prophet.  I had devoured the story of his life. No human compositions seemed to me to be comparable with his writings…the best hope for the salvation of the world was the faithful carrying into the practice the letter of the spirit of his instructions”.  He spent his life doing just that!  He said. “The greatness of a man is the measure of his surrender!”  In that regard William Booth is a great man and a great example of those who would follow Jesus.

     Let me share a few of his impactful quotes.  He said, “to get a man soundly saved it is not enough to put on him a pair of new breeches, to give him regular work, or even to give him a University education.  These things are all outside a man, and if the inside remains unchanged you have wasted your labor…you must graft on the man’s nature a new nature, which has in it the element of the Divine!”      Listen to this:  “It is against stupidity in every shape and form that we have to wage eternal battle.  But how can we wonder at the want of the sense on the part of those who have had no advantages, when we see such plentiful absence of that commodity on the part of those who have had all the advantages!”.  Called to ministry?  His view:  “Not called!  Did you say?  Not heard the call.  I think you should put your ear to the Bible and hear Him bid you go and pull sinners out of the fire of sin.  Put your ear down to the burdened agonized hear of humanity and listen to their pitiful wail for help.  Go stand by the gates of hell and hear the damned entreat you to go to their father’s house and bid their brothers and sisters not to come to this place of torment.  Then look Christ in the face, whose mercy you have professed to obey, and tell him whether you will join heart and soul and body and circumstances in the march to publish his mercy to the world!”  “God loves with a great love the man whose heart is bursting with passion for the impossible!”  “We must wake ourselves up or somebody else will take our place, and bear our cross, and steal our crown”. 

     He said the danger for the future is: “A religion without the Holy Ghost; Christianity without Christ; forgiveness without repentance; salvation without regeneration; politics without God; and heaven without hell!”  He was a very perceptive prophet.  Listen to his determination.  “While women weep, as they do now.  I’ll fight.  While children go hungry, as they do now-I’ll fight.  While men go in and out of prison, as they do now-I’ll fight!  While there remains one dark soul without the light of God-I’ll fight.  I will fight until the very end!”  “We are not to minister to a congregation and be content to keep things going.  We are sent to make war and to stop short of nothing but the subjugation of the world to the sway of the Lord Jesus”.  When he was asked to speak to a graduation class of clergymen he said, “If I would have had my way you men would not have be graduated with just these studies.  I would have had you spend twenty-four hours in hell to experience the torments of those who are damned and then turned you loose on a dying world!”.  Toward the end of his life he was unable to attend the annual meetings of his denomination.  They asked him to telegraph a message for the congregants.  He responded with one word-“Others!”  When he was told that the work was failing and they did not know what to do next-he responded with a two-world telegraph-“Try tears!”  It would not hurt us to take a refresher course in the theology of General William Booth.   He sounds very much like our Lord Jesus Christ! Amen? 

PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE: “IDENTITY-YOU CAN’T GO BACK HOME TO FIND IT!”

By:  Ron Woodrum

      In 1975, two years before his death, Charlie Chaplin was visiting France.  He visited nearby Monaco, and while there he entered “Charlie-Chaplin Look-Alike Contest”.  He thought he was a shoe-in to win the prize money, and everyone would have a good laugh.  Charlie came in third!  Most thought it was due to the fact that most of his movies were in black and white, and in real life his genuine baby blues may have made him look less like Chaplin than at least two others in the contest.  Coming in third in your own contest might just cause you to suffer an “identity crisis”!  Identity crisis-i.e. “knowing who we really are”, can be devastating.  Arthur Miller, in his book Death of A Salesman, brings that out in relation to his main character Willy Loman.  In one excerpt Miller describes the precarious position of his character by saying, “He’s a man out there in the blue, riding a smile and a shoeshine.  And when they start not smiling back-that’s an earthquake.  And then you get yourself a couple of spots on your hat, and you’re finished!”  The identity crisis was too much for Willy to handle, and he ended up “taking his own life”.  At the funeral, with just a hand-full of people there, Bif, his oldest son remarks, “Willy had all the wrong dreams…he never knew who he was!”

     Miller was quite adept at describing not only Willy Loman’s predicament, but the one that the entire human race faces every day.  Who are we?  Why are we here?  Where are we going?  Is there any meaning to all of this?  What is my mission for being here?  Do I even have one?  G.K. Chesterton, in his book Orthodoxy, points out that this is the condition of all human-kind apart from their relationship with God, through Jesus Christ.  He writes, “We have all read in scientific books, and indeed in all romances, the story of the man who has forgotten his name.  This man walks about the streets and can see and appreciate everything: only he cannot remember who he is.  Well, every man is that man in the story.  Every man has forgotten who he is…We are all under the same mental calamity; we have forgotten our names.  We have all forgotten who we really are…we all feel the riddle of the earth without anyone to point it out.  The mystery of life is the plainest part of it…Every stone or flower is a hieroglyphic of which we have lost the key; with every step of our lives we enter into the middle of some story we are certain to misunderstand”.  Frederick Buechner points out that we lose our true identity, our “true shimmering self” that God intended for us to be by letting this world force us to become who they think we should be.  In his book Telling Secrets he illustrates this: “Starting with the rather too pretty young woman and the charming but rather unstable young man, who together know no more about being parents than they do the far side of the moon, the world sets in to making us what the world would like us to be, and because we have to survive after all we try to make ourselves into something that we hope the world will like better than it apparently did the selves that we originally were.  That is the story of all our lives, needless to say, and in the process of living out that story, the original shimmering self, (that God intended us to be through Him), gets buried so deep that most of us hardly end up living out of it at all. Instead, we live out all the other selves which we are constantly putting on and taking off like coats and hats against the world’s weather!’  Buechner, in a later book Now and Then, went on to explain that we can recover the buried shimmering self though listening to God’s Word, listening to fellow Christian’s that God puts in our lives through His Church, but also by seeking His face in the experiences of life.  He writes, “God speaks to us…through official channels as the Bible and the Church,…but I think He speaks to us largely through what happens to us…if we keep our hearts and minds open as well as our ears, if we listen with patience and hope, if we remember deeply and honestly, then I think we come to recognize, beyond all doubt, that, however faintly we may hear Him, He is indeed speaking to us, and that however little we may understand of it, at the time, His Word to each of us…is precious beyond telling”.

Most people live their life with that Willey Loman identity crisis.  David Letterman, in an interview not long before he retired, basically said that his sense of himself was only grounded in the twenty-four-hour period between shows.  If the last show was good, he felt good about himself.  If the audience didn’t respond, he felt horrible instead.  Women often share the same identity crisis when society tells them their only value is in their external beauty.  Marilyn Monroe, after becoming famously the most beautiful woman in the world, went to nightclubs disguised in a black wig to see if she could still attract a man as Norma Jean.  When she got so much less response the emptiness of her Hollywood identity turned into a crisis that left her with the same fate as Willy Loman!  That is why God comes to us, desires us to know Him, and find our true identity in who He intended us to be.  Simon Tugwell writes, “So long as we imagine that it is we who have to look for God, we must often lose heart.  But it is the other way about; He is looking for us.  And so we can afford to recognize that very often we are not looking for God; far from it, we are in full flight from him, in high rebellion against Him.  And He knows that and has taken it into account.  He has followed us into our own darkness; there where we thought we finally escaped Him, we run straight into His arms.  So we do not have to erect false piety for ourselves, to give us hope for salvation.  Our hope is in His determination to save us, (see the Cross), and He will not give up!”  Finding our identity in Christ, through the salvation that God provides through His grace, is the only way to be completely at peace with who we are and what God is making us to be.  Gerald May, a dynamic Christian counselor who deals with battles that Christians struggle with all the time says: “There is a desire within each of us, in the deep center of ourselves which we call heart.  We are born with it, it is never completely satisfied and it never dies.  We are often unaware of it, but it is always awake…Our true identity, our reason for being, is found in this desire”.

Peter had found this identity in Christ.  Jesus had called him to follow Him, and to become a fisher of men.  After Calvary, and even after the resurrection, Peter was still languishing with an “identity crisis”.  He decided that he would go back home, take up the fishing for fish business, and walk away from what he had been called to do.  He found out what Thomas Wolfe found out, and expressed in his great novel-You Can’t Go Home Again.  After Jesus…Peter’s identity was never to be on the old shores of the Sea of Galilee.  It was going to take him on a mission…with His Master still by his side.  He would become even more than he ever dreamed on that first day he forsook the boats and the nets to follow Jesus!  But before he can set off to discover his true destiny he must ask and answer the question Jesus asked him about MISSION-OR MISSING?  Which would it be?  So must we!  It’s our identity!

PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE: THE TREASURE OF AN EASTER WEEK SNOW

By:  Ron Woodrum

This past week we were all surprised by the sudden winter storm that left 5-7 inches of very wet Spring snow as we began the week leading up to Easter.  God used the snow to give a message to Job.  Isaiah and David both understood the snow to give an object lesson of the Gospel to all who have eyes to see.  It might be good for us to revisit the treasure locked in this Easter snow.  Waking up Saturday morning reminded me of a quote I had read in a book by Frederich Buechner called Telling the Truth.  He wrote, “You wake up on a winter morning and pull up the shade, and what lay there the evening before is no longer there–the sodden gray yard, the dog droppings, the tire tracks in the frozen mud, the broken lawn chair you forgot to take in lasts fall.  All this has disappeared overnight, and what you look out on is not the snow of Narnia but the snow of home, which is no less shimmering and white as it falls.  The earth is covered with it, and it is falling still in silence so deep you can hear its silence.  It is snow to be shoveled, to make driving even worse than usual, snow to be joked about and cursed at, but unless the child in you is entirely dead, it is snow, too, that can make the heart beat faster when it catches you by surprise that way, before your defenses are up.  It is snow that can awaken memories of things more wonderful than anything you ever knew or dreamed.”  The Bible has a lot to say about “snow”.  In one Scripture, in particular, God, (pointing out the ignorance of Job), asks, “Have you personally taken inventory of the wondrous treasure-house of snow that I reserve in the Heavens?” (Job 38:22).  God was reminding him, and us, of his power to display His glory, wonder, power, and awe, by sending a silent but substantial storm that deposits snow that covers the land and leaves us awe-struck.  Scientists have been awe-struck by the glory and majesty of the snowflake.  The snowflake is amazing.  This tiny six-sided miracle of creation baffles scientists with its ingenious structure and awe-inspiring beauty.  This magnificent piece of art is a perfect example of pure beauty and marvel.  Wilson Bently was one of the first to take photomicrographs of a snowflake.  He photographed snowflakes for over 47 years!  He discovered that the average snowflake is made up of 2 to 200 separate snow crystals, larger ones containing over 1000 separate snow crystals.  These crystals form around tiny dust particles that have been carried high into the atmosphere.  When the temperature drops below freezing water vapor clings to these dust particles.  The water vapor skips the liquid stage and turns directly into ice, in a process called sublimation.  The moisture turning into ice crystals then begins to fall as snow.  There are four different types of six-sided snowflakes with no two flakes alike!  Each snowflake a geometric hexagonal structure, similar to the honeycomb of bees, which scientists believe provide the maximum space to compact the maximum ice crystals, or honey in this tiny storehouse.  God took credit for that design being beyond Job’s comprehension!  Johannes Kepler studied snowflakes for years and came to the conclusion that this well-thought-out pattern can only have been the imprint of an all-wise artistic Creator!  The Bible tells us that God’s power and glory is revealed in the snow,”He spreads the snow like wool, and scatters the frost like ashes” (Psalm 147:16); The weather is ruled by Almighty God-“lightning and hail, snow and clouds, stormy winds that do his bidding” (Ps. 148:8).  Daniel’s vision of the Ancient of Days in his heavenly glory was seated on a flaming throne and wearing clothes that were “white as snow” (Dan. 7:4).  When Jesus was transfigured on the Mt. of Transfiguration that Jesus’ clothes became shining, exceeding white, like snow” (Mark 9:2-4). On the first Easter, the angel that rolled the stone of the tomb away was sitting on it with clothes “as white as snow”. (Matthew 28:3).  And of course, in John’s parallel vision to that of Daniel, he too saw Jesus in all His glory, and takes note that “the hair of His hair was white like wool, white as snow”.  So snow symbolizes the glory of the purity of God, revealed in His Son Jesus Christ.

To carry this thought to its practical conclusion results in snow being an illustration of the purity that becomes the possession of the sinner that has his crimson sin-stains washed white in the shed blood of the Sacrifice of Calvary.  We read David’s pray of confession in Psalm 51.  He pleads, “wash me and I shall be whiter than snow!”  Isaiah, pleading with a sinful people who were sick from the top of their heads, to the bottom of the soles of their feet, to come “let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow:  though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool”.  One of the most interesting stories in the Old Testament is the story of Beniah.  He was a special warrior of King David, who later became the head of the army for David’s son, King Solomon.  On one occasion the Scripture records one of the amazing feats of Beniah.  He is said to have jumped into a snow pit and killed a lion.  This is what the Scripture says in I Chronicles 11:22.  “Beniah, son of Jehoida, a valiant fighter from Kabzeel, performed great exploits.  He struck down Moab’s two mightiest warriors.  He also went down into a snowy pit on a snowy day and killed a lion”.   Imagine this warrior.  He falls into a pit only to be confronted by a vicious lion.  Imagine the dead lion’s blood staining the pure white snow.  What a contrast!  What an illustration.  Sin as crimson as blood…covered with blood of the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world leaves the sinner pure as freshly fallen snow.  Erwin Lutzer tells how a fresh snowfall is an illustration of how God can cover “the dirtiness of the earth with the purity of his grace”.  Warren Wiersbe tells a story of an English father that took his son to watch a parade that displayed the British army dressed in their brilliant red coats.  The father asked the son if he saw their red coats.  He responded that he only saw white coats.  The father was puzzled, but understood as the looked down at his son.  The son stood at the window, but his eyes were looking through the red stain glass that bordered the window from which they were watching the parade.  Looking at red, through red, resulted in white!  When God sees our crimson stain through the prism of the crimson blood of his son, we are white as wool, white as the freshly fallen snow!  Those sudden heavy snows can cover some pretty big stuff.  Some pretty ugly stuff!  Don’t lose the wonder!  That is what God can do from His treasure-house of Grace!  A great reminder as we started the week that concludes with the triumph of Calvary and the Transformation of Easter!