Westbury or Westboro?

My nephew is the pastor of Westbury Baptist Church in Houston.  If you are not familiar with Houston, there is a section of the city called Westbury and thus the name of the church.  There are frequent calls to my nephew's church from people thinking they are calling the Westboro Baptist Church - the small, fanatical church that protests at soldier's funerals and other places where they angrily proclaim such things as signs of God's judgment.  Some people never go to the trouble to differentiate between a church in Houston called Westbury and a church in Kansas called Westboro.  Perhaps many of those callers do not realize there is a vast difference in location, actions and theology.

If you would call yourself an evangelical, Bible believing Christian, Newsweek magazine sees you as the same as the people at Westboro.  According to the cover article published December 23, 2014, "The Bible - So Misunderstood It's a Sin" there really is no distinction between your beliefs and the beliefs of the angry protestors from Westboro.  We are all one and the same.  We all have a very wrong view of the Bible. I will not try to explain all this but just let you go to the links below and see for yourself.

This Sunday, we will be looking at "What Happens When We Read the Bible?"  And just to clarify, it makes you nothing like the folks at Westboro.


For an overview of all this, see Dr. Jim Denison's Cultural Commentary:

http://www.denisonforum.org/america/1291-why-did-newsweek-attack-christianity

For the Newsweek article:

http://www.newsweek.com/2015/01/02/thats-not-what-bible-says-294018.html

For Dr. Michael Kruger's point by point rebuttal of the Newsweek article:

http://michaeljkruger.com/a-christmas-present-from-the-mainstream-media-newsweek-takes-a-desperate-swipe-at-the-integrity-of-the-bible-part-1/

for the journey...

Tim

One Step

Life changed for me with one step - one bad step.  I have a broken foot with a metal pin in it now.  I won't be able to put weight on that foot for several weeks because of one step.  Some things I am learning about one step:

One step, just one wrong step cannot be un-taken.  It was a step I took without seeing the changes in the San Antonio River Walk in front of me.  I was unaware of what that step would mean but it does not change the consequences and I can not retrace my steps and change things after that one step.

One step leads to another.  After that step, changes began to take place and I have a new path to follow.  I will be taking steps down that path but not with my left foot.  Christmas plans had to be changed or cancelled.  A mission trip to the Dominican Republic goes on without me and my wife.   I have to alter pretty much everything I do now - eating, bathing, sleeping, dressing and just getting from Point A to Point B.  They all have to be done differently now.  All requiring much more effort and much more time, because of one step.

One step I took, affects everyone around me.  Family Christmas plans, church services, every day life schedules all had to be changed.  People's lives were affected.  A whole surgical crew had to add me to their busy schedule on Christmas eve because of my one step.  I am very grateful for everyone who stepped up because of my step.

My one wrong step brings home the power of a single sin - a single unthinking decision and its consequences.  A lot of the things I have just written about are true also because of one wrong spiritual step as well as a wrong physical step.  I cannot undo my wrong spiritual steps, not a single one.  My wrong spiritual steps lead to another, they have an impact on everyone around me.  Just one wrong step.

But sometimes we don't see the power of a single positive step.  It can change things for the good and have just as many positive consequences with one right step.  One step in obedience, even "unthinking" obedience can be a very powerful thing.  One obedient step leads to others, because of one step life is changed and by one step other people's lives are impacted.  Usually when the positive happens we don't notice as much as the negative but it doesn't mean it is not as powerful.

This Sunday (Lord willing) we will talk about one step and how to carefully choose our steps.  Oh, the power of a single step.

for the journey...

Tim

Small Town Boy

My wife and I recently ate out at a local Mexican food restaurant and we kept running into people we knew.  All in all, we counted over a dozen people that we spoke to or encountered over the course of our meal.  Not all of them were Northsiders and I don't think any of them knew each other but we knew them.  When we were walking to our car we both commented on how Victoria is still a small town.  Things like that don't happen in Houston or Dallas and that is fine with us.  Don't get me wrong, it is a good feeling to go out and see a lot people you know.  We both said we like it that way.

When is a small town no longer a small town?  I think it is when you go out and never encounter someone you know at the grocery store or the restaurant or the mall.  So, though Victoria is growing, by my definition, it is still a small town.  I hope it stays that way.

Have you ever thought about the fact that Jesus was a small town boy?  He was born in Bethlehem.  It was classified as an "O, little town" even before the Christmas carol was written.  When the wise men came looking for him, they came to Jerusalem, of course.  When they inquired about where he was to be born, the scholars said, "In Bethlehem in Judea" another sign of a small town is when you have to say the name of the place followed by what region or county or state it is in also.

The prophet Micah had written in chapter 5 verse 2 and following. "But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a ruler who will be the shepherd of my people Israel."  The word "least" could also be translated "insignificant."  God sent his son to come to earth in a place that people could have called insignificant if not for his birth.

Jesus was raised in Nazareth, not Rome, not Jerusalem, not even Jericho but Nazareth.  Everyone knew him as "Joseph's son."  That is another sign of a small town - everyone knows you and all your family connections too.  When Jesus began his ministry, he made trips to Jerusalem and to Jericho but the bulk of his time seems to have been spent in places like Capernaum - another small town.

So at your Christmas gatherings when your relatives are talking about their big city adventures and advantages and you are feeling a little insignificant, just remind yourself - Jesus was a small town boy.  When you travel out of town and meet your cousin's new wife from Dallas and she asks where Victoria is and as you explain she gets this dazed, confused look on her face as if she has no idea what you are talking about, just remember - Jesus was a small town guy.

He came to those who could be called insignificant to prove that no one and no town, are insignificant to him.  Merry Christmas.

for the journey...

Tim

Using Christmas

Perhaps he was the original "Bad Santa."  We know he was bad enough to be lynched by an angry mob, perhaps the last man in Texas history to meet such an end.  His name was Marshall Ratliff.  He borrowed a Santa Claus suit from his landlady and set out from Wichita Falls in a stolen car with three other men to rob the First National Bank in Cisco, Texas.

On December 23, 1927, Ratliff dressed in his Santa suit and armed with a gun, walked into the bank and announced it was a hold up.  He did not count on several children dragging their parents into the bank right behind him because they had just seen Santa walk through the streets of Cisco, Texas.  They walked into the lobby behind Ratliff, saw Ratliff's friends who had now entered from the back of the bank with guns drawn and one little girl began to cry, "They're gonna shoot Santa!"

Things turned violent very quickly.  There was a gun battle in the bank, a high speed car chase (for 1927 standards), a car jacking, a group of armed citizens joining the pursuit and finally a capture of the bank robbers.  In all, six people were killed and eight wounded. Ratliff later escaped from jail and was captured by a mob of angry citizens who lynched him.  Using Christmas backfired on Ratliff and his bank robber friends big time.

People still try to use Christmas for their own selfish reasons.  A man called the church the other day, telling a tale of woe.  He had just begun to attend our church, he said -  we had no record of him coming.  He was now calling "his pastor" to see if "his church" could help him by putting money onto his prepaid VISA card.  There was no other possible way he could be helped and it need to happen immediately he said.  I told him I was sorry I could not send money that way, but we would pray. We later saw he had been on our website fifteen minutes before he called and left his name and email address.

We can grow cynical and bitter about "the way people use Christmas," but maybe a better way to approach this season is to ask ourselves, "Are we letting Christmas use us?"  In all the commercialism of Christmas, the conflict about Christmas and the chaos of the world at Christmas are doing anything positive?  Are we being messengers of something different?  Witnesses of God's love in sending his son?  Examples of a better way to honor and celebrate the season?

I must confess, I am not as creative in letting Christmas (and of course God) use me as others are creative in using Christmas, but maybe it is not about my creativity.  Perhaps it is more about responding to what God is doing in the world rather than what the world is doing in Christmas.  Where is God at work this Christmas around you?  How are you going to respond?  Maybe that is a request I really need to respond to this week.

for the journey...

Tim

Do You See What I See?

The preschool kids were coming out into the foyer after their turn at the Northside Baptist School's presentation of "The Best Christmas Present Ever."  I was there in the foyer, at the Welcome Center, ready to hand out invitations to "The Sounds of Christmas" performance on Sunday and I heard their conversation. 

The first little boy in the line they were now struggling to stay in, turned and announced to the other preschoolers, "I saw my Daddy!"  Without skipping a beat the next little girl in line said, "I saw my Mommy and my Daddy!"  Then someone else chimed in to the new competition, "I saw my Mommy and my Daddy and my Grandma!"

As the teachers tried to keep them in line and coach them to walk back through the foyer for their appearance in the next act, the one-upmanship continued of who each one had seen. It was as if this whole Christmas program had been arranged for them so they could see their family. As adults we know the bigger reality is that all those people - family and friends - had not come there to be seen by the children but to see the children. 

We can read the Christmas story and see it is written from the human stand point of what we saw in that first advent.  Mary saw the angel, Gabriel.  The wise men saw a star.  Joseph saw visions in a dream.  The shepherds saw a host of angels and then they saw the baby in the manger.  These were all wonderful sights and those who saw them told others of the amazing things they had seen.

I wonder if from heaven's view though, we all are a lot like those preschoolers.  We can think about what we have seen in "Christmas" but the greater reality is that the reason Christmas happened in the first place is because we were seen.  God sent his son from heaven to earth because he saw our need and he acted on his love for us - just like the families in the audience came to see the kid's performance.

Perhaps this Christmas, we need to not take the perspective that all this happened for us to see, but it all happened the way it did first and foremost, because we have a God who sees us, who knows our need and who always acts on it.  The fact that we get to see him at all, is because he sees us.

She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: "You are the God who sees me," for she said, "I have now seen the One who sees me."  Genesis 16:13

for they journey...

Tim

The Cost of the Incarnation

"Most American evangelicals hold views condemned as heretical by some of the most important councils of the early church."  That statement from a Christianity Today article got my attention.  As I read the article I found that much of our modern confusion centers around things related to Jesus and the incarnation.  We are good at celebrating Christmas but not as good at understanding the implications of the incarnation of Christ.

Note that this survey is speaking to people, 96% of whom believe Jesus rose from the dead and 92% believe that salvation is found only in Jesus and 96% believe in the Trinity.  But nearly a quarter (22%) said that God the Father is more divine than Jesus with another 9% not being sure.  Also, 16% said that Jesus was the first creature created by God with another 11% not being sure.

The Bible does not teach that Jesus was created and it certainly never teaches that Jesus came into existence to come at Christmas.  It always teaches that Jesus was fully human and fully divine.  Somehow Jesus came into this world as a human but never lost any of his divinity.  He would even say that he and his Father were "one" (John 10:30).

It cost something for the Jesus, the son of God, to become a son of man.  People would never fully understand him while he walked on this earth and today we still don't. That was one price he bore in becoming God incarnate - being misunderstood. 

Our little minds can hardly fathom what it must have been like to leave the glory of heaven for the goriness of a human birth.  Perhaps C. S. Lewis caught this part best when he wrote this in Mere Christianity:

The Second Person in God, the Son, became human Himself: was born into the world as an actual man—a real man of a particular height, with hair of a particular color, speaking a particular language, weighing so many stone. The Eternal Being, who knows everything and who created the whole universe, became not only a man but (before that) a baby, and before that a fetus inside a Woman’s body. If you want to get the hang of it, think how you would like to become a slug or a crab.

We often think of what it cost him to go to the cross.  To fully understand him, perhaps we should first seek understand what it cost him to go to a stable in Bethlehem.

for the journey...

Tim

The poll can be found at http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2014/october-web-only/new-poll-finds-evangelicals-favorite-heresies.html

Researching Thanksgiving

Last week as I listened to some other pastor's preach on giving thanks, I heard a statement like the following one several times, "Research shows that being thankful improves your health."  But the research was never cited or directly quoted, so I did some looking into that.  I found some studies on gratitude that came out of Harvard (Harvard Mental Health Letter, "In Praise of Gratitude"  November 2011 quoted in preachingtoday.com).

Psychologists Dr. Robert A. Emmons and Dr. Michael E McCullough asked participants in one study to write down a few sentences each week. One group was told to write down things they were grateful for in their week.  Another group wrote about what irritated them.  A third group just wrote down events of their week with no instructions on whether they were to be good or bad.

Ten weeks went by and then the groups were studied.  The ones who wrote about gratitude were more optimistic, felt better about life, had fewer doctor's visits and exercised more than either of the other two groups.

Another researcher, Dr. Martin E. Seligman tested 411 people, giving them various assignments and then studying the impact those assignments had on the individual's moods.  The most impactful assignment given to the group was to write and personally deliver a letter of gratitude to someone who had never been properly thanked.  Study group members immediately showed a huge increase in happiness scores after the assignment with benefits from the letters they wrote and delivered lasting for more than a month.

Though none of these studies show a direct cause and effect correlation, they point to the power of gratitude to change our lives for the better.  I doubt that a typical Thanksgiving dinner with all it's calories will improve your health and well being, but the act of thanksgiving surely will.  Writing things down seems to big part of that as well.  Why not write a thank you note to someone this Thanksgiving?  What have you got to lose?

for the journey...

Tim