The Power of God's Word Over Our Words

We were having a problem in my previous church.  We had just started Upward Basketball (a non-competitive, Christian instructional league for children).  People were having a hard time grasping how this children's basketball league was different. 

Though it was in the church's new gym, there was definitely some "un-church-like" language going on.  Parents were working on the referees.  The crowd would say things to the opposing team's coach.  Coaches were jawing on other coaches.  The older kids were trash talking each other during the game.  The tones were harsh.  The language was at times crude.  We had a problem.

The leadership team of our new Upward league struggled with what to do after that first week of games.  Something had to be done but is was such a pervasive problem.  So we came up with a plan to address our talk during games.

I did the half time talks to the crowd the next week to again explain that Upward was different.  This is not a basketball league at a church.  We were a church that had a basketball league.  But we did something else to address the problem that I think was much more effective than anything I said. 

We plastered a single Bible verse all over the gym.  Everywhere you could look in the gym there was a piece of paper with the verse visible.  Every door had it on it.  Even the bathroom stalls and walls had this verse on it.  We left them up all season.  I think that verse made the difference, the others on the leadership team agreed with me. What was the verse?

Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.  Ephesians 4:29

We all learned a lesson about the power of God's word over our words.  It is powerful and it is effective.

You probably wish there were some places at work, at school or in the community you could put this verse up to see if it would change the kind of things being said, but you can't. Have you thought about starting with your home? 

Our words are most powerful at the places we are least careful - at home, with our family.  We will look at that Sunday.  God has great things to say about what we say.  I hope you will join me.

for the journey...

Tim

A Place to Call Home

Right now our church is involved in a mission trip where the main project is to build a home for a family that has qualified through a special program.  The family has met a whole list of criteria for this project and they are also a family that has faced and is facing some special needs.  The mobile home they are living in, is going to be taken back by the owner when he moves back to the Rio Grande Valley from out of state.  The family also has had a child who has survived cancer and they are caring for an elderly father who is ill and blind.

Those are certainly some compelling reasons to help this family but why go all the way to the Rio Grande Valley with all of its troubles and why go to all this expense for one family?  We could stay closer to home and meet many smaller needs and touch more people.

As I have been reading through this year's Bible reading experience (or SOAP challenge) on the key characters of the Bible, I have seen more clearly than ever something of God's plan for addressing the whole world's need.  He started by working with one family - through Abraham.  Then God called him to go to place far away and there God would provide a place, a promised land and, in essence, a home.

With all the vast needs of mankind, God started with one family and in one particular place, a troubled place at that.  From human terms that does not seem very efficient nor would it seem to be very effective.  But fast forward through the centuries and we see what God did through that one family in that one place.  It was not a perfect family.  That home, that promised land, was not in a nice safe, quiet region.  Yet God brought blessing after blessing to that family and through that family in that volatile place.

Eventually he brought his son into the world through that family and in that troubled place.  His son lived his whole life there and there he died - for the whole world.  He was raised from the dead there and the Bible says, when he returns, it will be in a special way to that place.

That family that God started with has a story.  That place where God did such a work of grace in a troubled land has a story too.  In some ways that is what we are also participating in, giving a single family who follows God a place to allow God to work through them in an area that has seen - and will see - many trials.  And in all of that, we are praying that God will continue there in our day and in the days to come the ancient work of redemption he started long ago in one family in one particularly troubled place.

Even in that family and even in that place God created a place he called home.  May he do the same in our day and through our work with one family in one place.

for the journey...

Tim

Family Reunion

I recently attended a family reunion that was the first of it's kind.  Maybe it is best not to call it a RE-union if it is the first one, but that is really what it felt like.  There were over 3,000 people there -  cowboys and Koreans, Filipinos and Haitian Creoles, Hispanics and Arabic speakers,  African Americans and about "any kind" of Americans you can imagine.  There were 64 different languages spoken in all.  What kind of family am I talking about?  Well, its not the Williams family but the Texas Baptist family - at the first every "Family Gathering" of all the different Baptist families in Texas.  We met in San Antonio and worshipped and prayed together.  It was a really great time.

One high point for me was hearing Pastor Earl Grant, an African American pastor from San Antonio preach on 1 Peter 2:9-10. "But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation a people belonging to God..."  Though the whole message was good, one line of the sermon stood out to me, "You do not have value on your own, but you have great value because you are owned."  I like that.  I like belonging to that kind of family and being owned by God.  I hope you do too because that is a glimpse of the family of God - that is a taste of the greatness of His love by which He 'so loves' the whole world.

For the journey...

Tim

Who are My Brothers?

The story intrigues me.  While Jesus was speaking to a crowd he was told that his mother and brothers were waiting to speak to him outside (Matthew 12:46-50).  Why had they come?  Why were they waiting to speak in private?  Had they come to talk to him about some family matter?  Had they come to convince him to come home and come back to his rightful place as the head of the family and family business as the first born son?  Had they come to talk some sense into his head about this "son of man" stuff?

We have no record of them following him as disciples until after the resurrection.  Can you imagine how hard it was on them to be the mother or brother of Jesus?  What did the neighbors say?  What did they say in their family?  Jesus never said he would bring peace to a family if anything, he said there could be conflict in families because of him.  Matthew 10:34-36 "Do not suppose I have come to bring peace..."

Is that what was happening?  A family was about to deal with conflict?  Is that why they came that day?  When Jesus spoke the words of Matthew 10, was he speaking autobiographically? What we do know for sure is that Jesus wanted to bring a new dynamic to the family and he wants each of us who follow him to know a deep, real, family bond with him.  I must confess that I have not fully grasped that.  Jesus wants me to know him as a brother.  He wants me to have a family connection with him and with all who follow him.  "For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother." Matthew 12:50.

It is easier to accept that family connection with Jesus than to make that family connection with everyone else who follows him but that is our charge if we follow Jesus. There is an old saying that you get to pick your friends but you don't get to pick your family.  I think that is what Jesus is saying.   I need to work on that today.  We will all have a chance to work on it Sunday.

For the journey...

Tim