May 25, 2021 Making the Most of Life
Recently I had another birthday. I often find myself particularly reflective at times like birthdays and other anniversaries. I found myself looking back and especially thankful for all of God’s blessings over the years. There are many parts of God’s grace that are invisible to us. Still I was thankful for all the ways He led me over the years and the highlights of those portions of His grace in my life that were more visible to me. The thought came to me recently that it was seven years ago this month that I taught my last courses for Bethel Seminary of the East as a full-time faculty member. But God had other plans for me and I have pursued a variety of different ministry opportunities over these intervening years. Even now at my age I still find myself looking forward to the future. I woke up this morning, still alive, and still ready to go. I believe by faith that God still has more for me to do in my life. (I am one who is fully persuaded that the Lord calls us home to be with Him the moment that our work on earth is done.) In particular, I have three goals for this next season of my life: (1) I want to continue to grow in my relationship with God, to get to know Him better and to grow in my love and worship of Him, (2) I want to grow in my understanding of His Word as His perfect revelation of Himself, and (3) I believe God has more for me to do in the area of writing and making Him known. Birthdays are simply milestones along the way. Today is another opportunity for me as I seek to live out the life God is giving me. So days like birthdays are times to celebrate God and all He has done. So join me in celebrating the God who gives life, even as you look to Him for all that He has done for you in your life!
December 31, 2020 New Year’s Day 2021
One thing I like about New Year’s Day is that it gives me an opportunity to quiet myself and look back at the previous year as well as set new goals for the coming year.
Time is a gift from God. It is also a gift we can’t presume. None of us know how long God will allow us to walk on this present world before our life is over. I can’t help but think of a new neighbor we met last summer who died unexpectedly this fall. There are others who are still with us whom we would expect that their days are limited. Here I am thinking of a woman in her 90’s who is now on hospice for her second time and suffers from significant dementia. Yet she is still alive and others who seemed to be in perfect health are now gone. None of us know the future we will experience in 2021. But we can know the One who holds our future—and that makes all the difference. The challenge for each of us is to continue to grow in our walk with God for as long as He gives us opportunity. Here, even in the midst of this present COVID-19 world, we can discover more of who God is and of the wonders of His gospel.
Recently I have been thinking about how I would like to grow in 2021. I have found myself praying that God would help me think right thoughts this coming year. Many of us have seen more conflict than ever in the world around us, yet the biggest battles we will ever experience often involve our own mind and thought life. I know this is true of me. We each have our own struggles. For me, my mind naturally seems to focus on myself and a litany of fears and other self-centered concerns as opposed to reflecting on the beauty and wonder of God and His perfect plans for me and this world around us. We are told in Scripture to “take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5), so I am praying, asking God to protect me from patterns of faulty thinking and help me focus my mind more and more on the things that will last for eternity: especially God and what He is doing. I have seen Him answer prayers again and again, and I am looking forward to experiencing His help in 2021.
But growing requires a strategy. One of the key strategies for growing in our walk with the Lord is simply reading His Word, the Bible. I know that this has been one of the most significant means of growth in my own life. It has now been well over 40 years that I have read the Bible through each year, usually using Robert Murray M’Cheyne’s Bible reading plan. But there are many other excellent plans: see, for example, https://www.ligonier.org/blog/bible-reading-plans/. The important thing is not what plan we are using, but simply being in God’s Word on a regular, daily basis. Different plans work for different people. And I have also learned the value of switching and trying to include new elements in our personal devotional times with the Lord. One of my goals as I look ahead to 2021 is to see what changes I should make in keeping my own devotional life fresh and challenging, even as I look to the Lord to speak to me.
What about you? Where do you find yourself at the end of 2020? Where would you like to be as we enter the new year of 2021? And what is the best strategy to help you grow and change?
December 23, 2020 Reflections on the Day Before Christmas Eve
Most of us have already voiced in some way or other how this year has been totally and completely unprecedented and without parallel. Who would have ever imagined that we would be celebrating Christmas entirely by ourselves? At least here in MA, we have been told that we can’t safely invite others (who are not already a part of our immediate household) to join us.
Christmas 2020 finds us in different places emotionally. I think of two families we know who have lost loved ones unexpectedly (neither were COVID). Others find themselves in life-changing family and health crises (again not COVID). Still others are in the midst of other kinds of losses: jobs, finances, and for some, even hope for the future. With God we know there is always hope. With Him, we can heal, but even His healing doesn’t take us back to the good-old-days of the past. He almost always has something different and better for us.
My mind also goes back to experiences of Christmas from years ago. Today would have been my father’s 100th birthday. Growing up as a child we always celebrated his birthday two days before Christmas. Yet in the perfect providence of God, he was called home to be with the Lord almost 60 years ago. He was 40 and a half, and I had just turned 13. It was his second heart attack, back in an era when there were no such things as electronic heart monitors there by his bedside in the hospital. I have been reminded many times over the years how our times are in God’s hands. He was a good father and a growing Christian when he died. The lesson I have learned here is that God’s ways are not our ways, but He still calls us to trust Him. And we are to remember and give thanks for His good gifts. So we are celebrating his memory today.
My wife and I have been spared many of the harsher challenges of this present coronavirus world. For us, the greatest struggle has been what have become almost chronic feelings of loneliness as we have found ourselves separated from so many of our family and friends. Yet even here we acknowledge that God has blessed us with the remarkable resources of online church services to point us to Him, virtual conferences to challenge us intellectually and spiritually, and the ability to connect by video with many of our family and friends. The good news is that God is still at work in this world—and I am fully persuaded, He is more at work than ever. He is a great God.
As is often the case, God allows things in our lives that catch us by surprise and we don’t understand. Yet He promises that He will always go with us as we look to Him: “It is the LORD who goes before you. He will be with you; he will not leave you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed” (Deuteronomy 31:8).
May this Christmas be a very special one for you—in spite of all the strangeness of Christmas 2020. You continue in our prayers.
December 5, 2020 Hope and the Christ of Christmas
Hope often seems in short supply. But there is a difference between feeling a lack of hope and the utter despair of total hopelessness that is so deep that it is tinged with despondency and even a sense of darkness.
Many years ago, I happened to be at the calling hours for a deceased acquaintance where there were a number of people weeping and wailing as if there were no tomorrow. I never in my life have felt such an atmosphere of darkness and despair. Usually people maintain at least a veneer of hope regarding deceased friends and family members—even if it is unrealistic and unfounded. But here I felt as I had entered into a world of complete paganism where people believed there was nothing beyond the grave.
Then more recently I was reading the Puritan prayer “Reproofs” in The Valley of Vision that asked the question: “How do poor souls live who have not thee, or when helpless have no God to go to, who feel not the constraining force of thy love, and the sweetness of communion?”
It is one thing for a believer to struggle to hold onto hope in some of life’s challenges when we don’t understand what God is doing in our lives. It is something very different to be a total stranger to any form of genuine hope.
Hope, by definition, involves confidence in the future—looking ahead to a time when all our needs and deepest longings will be met. It is no surprise that hope is one of the triad of characteristics most often associated with the new life that is ours in Christ: “faith, hope, and love” (see 1 Corinthians 13:13 and elsewhere).
Where and how do we experience this hope? Paul reminds us in Romans 15:13 that God is “the God of hope,” where hope is both a characteristic of God and one of His key gifts to His children. God also promises in this same verse to fill everyone who looks to Him in faith and trust with all His joy and His peace, suggesting an abundance and all-sufficiency of joy and peace. Finally, He promise us in this verse that one way that the Holy Spirit works in our lives is so that we “may abound in hope.”
One recent purchase we made was some Advent candles to remind my wife and me of the wonder of Christ’s coming to earth so long ago. Each Sunday in Advent (the four Sundays leading up to Christmas), one of these candles is lit to remind us of the light that came into the world in a new way that first Christmas. Thus, the first candle was lit last Sunday. Traditionally, this first candle is specifically called the Hope candle. It symbolizes the fresh hope that is ours in Christ.
May you experience a fresh measure of hope this season as we reflect anew on Christ’s birth and all that He can mean to us as we live each day in a relationship with Him.
November 29, 2020 Choices
Life is characterized by the existence of choices.
Our past choices impact our present and future; but thankfully with God, our present choices can trump our past failures and position us for a far better future than we otherwise would deserve.
The key choices this Thanksgiving season are whether we recognize and acknowledge the goodness of God in our lives.
The key choices this coming Advent and Christmas season are whether we recognize and acknowledge God’s gift of sending His Son to this fallen world to give us new life.
We are the product of the choices we make—and especially of the grace of God in our lives that guides and trumps our choices.
October 31, 2020 An Encouragement from a Strange Source
Hidden away in the Old Testament Book of Hosea is the challenge for us to “press on to know the LORD” (6:3). Immediately after this encouragement is the wonderful reminder of the character of God and how He makes this all possible: “his going out is sure as the dawn; he will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth.”
The context of Hosea is a warning that God’s people are on the verge of experiencing God’s chastening for their own disobedience and distance from Him coupled with the marvelous promise that in spite of their sin and broken relationships with Him, God was still interested in them. The theme here is the frequent one in Scripture: after affliction comes healing.
Hosea is built around the imagery of an unfaithful partner in marriage. The prophet Hosea is told specifically to “Go, take to yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom” (1:2). The reason for this strange command is simple: God is setting up an object lesson for His Old Testament people: “for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the LORD” (1:2).
God is warning people of the consequences of remaining far from Him even as He seeks to woo people back to Himself. Even when we are far from the Lord, God promises He is still at work. There still was hope. God was still at work creating a people for Himself where He would be their God and they His people.
If God is giving you a hunger and thirst to know Him where you appreciate His greatness and majesty, then respond to Him. Don’t allow these opportunities to pass by. Press on to know Him. He is worth every effort to seek Him out and get to know Him better.