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Category: The Milk Can (Page 12 of 17)

Where did the time go?

January 27, 2015 /

Alarm Clock

We all have the same number of seconds in a day, 86,400 to be exact. Yet for must of us it feels like there are never enough. Of course there are those people we know who seem to have discovered a secret bank from which they can draw upon additional seconds when they need them. The people annoy me. Jay Akkerman in the article Making Time Stand Strong: Spiritual Formation Day by Day, shares a powerful insight about how we spend our time: “In December 2009, Nielsen reported that ‘Americans consume media at a record pace–140 hrs of TV, 27 hrs of Internet, 3 hrs of mobile video each month,’ which means than on average, Americans now spend as much time in front of their screens as they do at work” (108). Ouch!

What would happen if for one week you were to take an audit of your time, recording how each hour of the days were spent? What would you discover? Would the way you are spending your time be consistent with what you say is most important to you?

Blessings,
Pastor Stephen

 

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Article published in the book Spiritual Formation: A Wesleyan Paradigm edited by Diane Leclerc and Mark A. Maddix. Kansas City: Beacon Hill Press, 2011.

Do we want revival or comfort?

January 20, 2015 /

Dear Friends,

At least one thing seems to be universally true of churches across the decades and across the faith spectrum: The church prays for revival. But what are we really praying for and do we really want revival to come? Are we willing to pay the price for revival?

If we are honest, when we are praying for revival we are often praying for God to restore some glory days of the past or we are praying for God to work within the framework of our own expectations and comfort level.

Timothy Keller, in his book Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City, shares some very important insights about revival. First, “revivals occur mainly through the ‘instituted means of grace’ preaching, pastoring, worship, and prayer. It is extremely important to reaffirm this. The Spirit of God can and does use these ordinary means of grace to bring about dramatic, extraordinary conversions and significant church growth.”

But if we stop there we miss something very important. Keller goes on to say, “nevertheless, when we study the history of revivals, we usually see in the mix some innovative method of communicating the gospel.” So it is that revivals of the past have have used the printing press, preaching in the fields, modern music, alter calls, and much more.

So the question to ask ourselves, when we pray for revival are we willing to be used in ways outside our comfort zone? In ways that may not be seen as acceptable by the church establishment? In ways that “have never been done before?” If so, pray for revival! If not, then please stop praying for something you really don’t want.

Blessings,
Pastor Stephen

Close enough to be burned

January 13, 2015 /

Dear Friends,

Are you close enough to those who suffer to feel their pain yourself? Many times I have sat in meetings or been a part of conversations that questioned whether they church really should be helping those who walk in from the street. Often those discussions are filled with questions asking “What if?”

What if they take advantage of us?
What if they use the money we give them to buy alcohol?
What if the story they are telling us is not true?
What if they go back to their old way of life?
What if they take our generosity and walk away?
What if I get hurt?
What if it takes too much of my time?
What if I do not have the answers to their problems?
What if . . . ?
What if . . . ?
What if I lived as Jesus lived?
What if I loved as Jesus loves?

Jesus demonstrated for us a different kind of life and a different kind of leadership than many of us are comfortable with. As Henri Nouwen in his book The Wounded Healer, states “The beginning and the end of all Christian leadership is the give your life for others” (77).

How many times did Jesus heal a person and tell them to go and sin no more and the person then went and sinned? How many times did people take the second chance given to them my Jesus and squander it? We do not know. The Bible never says. Maybe that is just the point. To love is to risk being taken advantage of and to be hurt but we love and serve anyway. Nouwen goes on to say “Who can save a child from a burning house without taking the risk of being hurt by the flames? Who can listen to a story of loneliness and despair without taking the risk of experiencing similar pains in their own heart and even losing their precious peace of mind? In short, ‘Who can take away suffering without entering it?'” (78)

Blessings,
Pastor Stephen

Kingdom Prayers

January 8, 2015 /

Dear friends,

What kind of prayers are you praying? Are your prayers filled with the words of the Kingdom or do you pray prayers of maintenance? In his book, Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City, Timothy Keller offers these powerful insights:

To kindle every revival, the Holy Spirit initially uses what Jonathan Edwards called “extraordinary prayer” united, persistent, and kingdom centered. Sometimes it begins with a single person or a small group of people praying for God’s glory in the community. What is important is not the number of people praying but the nature of the praying. C. John Miller makes a helpful and perceptive distinction between “maintenance” and “frontline” prayer meetings. 1 Maintenance prayer meetings are short, mechanical, and focused on physical needs inside the church. In contrast, the three basic traits of frontline prayer are these:

1. A request for grace to confess sins and to humble ourselves

2. A compassion and zeal for the flourishing of the church and the reaching of the lost

3. A yearning to know God, to see his face, to glimpse his glory

These distinctions are unavoidably powerful. If you pay attention at a prayer meeting, you can tell quite clearly whether these traits are present. In the biblical prayers for revival in Exodus 33; Nehemiah 1; and Acts 4, the three elements of frontline prayer are easy to see. Notice in Acts 4, for example, that after the disciples were threatened by the religious authorities, they asked not for protection for themselves and their families but only for boldness to keep preaching! Some kind of extraordinary prayer beyond the normal services and patterns of prayer is always involved.

So I ask again, what kind of prayers are you praying?

Blessings,
Pastor Stephen

A Baby Born this Christmas

December 24, 2014 /

Baby Born

Dear Friends,

The sounds of the airwaves are filled with Christmas songs, new and old. Some are fun. Some are touching. And some will require years of therapy to strip their painful tones from civilization’s psyche. Without fail one Christmas song always seems to make an appearance at church children’s programs.

Away in a manger, no crib for a bed,
The little Lord Jesus lay down His sweet head.
The stars in the bright sky looked down where He lay,
The little lord Jesus asleep on the hay.

The cattle are lowing, the baby awakes
But little Lord Jesus, no crying He makes . . .

When I hear these words I long for something more. The image we are given is of a serene picture. Mother and baby quietly resting in a stable while the gentle sounds of livestock rock them to sleep. This picture, while cute, fails to portray magnanimity of this first Christmas. The song I want to hear is a song describing, as his lungs are filling with air, cries coming out, so loud, so full of life, that death itself loses its grip on humanity. I want to hear sound of a baby’s screams so piercing all of hell shudders in terror at their sound. I want to hear the stunned awe of all creation as it beheld its creator born as a baby. The wonder of the one who breathed life into Adam taking his first breath shouting the victory of the Kingdom of God. No, it is not a silent night, but it is the most holy of nights.

Blessings and Merry Christmas!
Pastor Stephen

Breakout the Jackhammers and Open the Roof

December 9, 2014 /

Dig a big hole

Dear Friends,

It really was a very crazy scene. The crowds were swelling around Jesus. He was teaching. He was healing. He was casting out demons. And anyone who was anyone was there to see it all. Luke says the crowd grew so large that “one day as [Jesus] was teaching, Pharisees and teachers of the law, who had come from every village of Galilee and from Judea and Jerusalem, were sitting there” (5:17). There were so many of them pressed in around Jesus that some men, carrying their paralytic friend, couldn’t get him in to see Jesus. So they did they only reasonable thing they cold think of. They climbed up on the roof of the house, broke out the pick axes, shovels, sledgehammers, and dynamite and opened a hole in the roof. Then, using ropes, they lowered their paralytic friend right down in front of the crowd next to Jesus and “when Jesus saw their faith, he said, ‘Friend, your sins are forgiven'” (vs. 20). And the man who had once been paralyzed leaped into the air dancing around. The pharisees and teaches of the law began to cheer. Even the Chief Priest got involved hoisting the man into the air so he could body surf the crowd of followers of God. It was all going great until he accidentally knocked old Caiaphas’ hat off his head. In a moment the crowd went silent staring in fear at what he might do, but Caiaphas only laughed and picked his hat up off the floor. Who could be angry on a day like this? A man who as paralyzed now can walk. At least that is how we want the story to go, but it didn’t go that way. The reality of a man who would never walk again miraculously walking was quickly lost in a theological technicality. Jesus had not played by their rules. Jesus has not set a man free in the way they knew God set men free. Time and time again the devout would fail to see that the good news was being preached to the poor, prisoners were set free, the blind recovered their sight, the oppressed were released, and the year of the Lord’s favor proclaimed (4:18-19) all because he wasn’t doing it properly.

The good news is, after 2,000 years, we finally know better. Or, maybe we don’t. Several years ago I read Billy Graham’s biography. The one thing that stood out to me was the amount of vitriol and hatred that was directed toward him early in his ministry, and one some levels continues to this day. The truth of people being saved and set free did not matter. He was not doing it the right way.

What about you? Have there been times when you have been quick to criticize another because it made you uncomfortable or didn’t fit your understanding all the while missing the miracle that just happened in front of you?

Blessings,
Pastor Stephen

Praying for You

December 2, 2014 /

Praying

Dear Friends,

Every so often I will receive e-mails and text messages from individuals telling me they are praying for me. On more than one occasion, I have been on the verge of entering a trying situation, and have received a message from a friend just to say they are praying for me as I tackle the circumstance. Once in a while I have even been known to send such a message to a person to encourage them and let them know I am praying for them in what they are facing.

Did you know it is not just fallible persons who are praying for you, but Jesus is also praying for you? Paul tells us in Romans, that even right now, Jesus is at the right hand of God, praying, interceding for you (8:34). What is Jesus praying? He is praying that we might be one just as he and his Father are one, and that we might be brought to complete unity that the world might know about Jesus (John 17:21, 23). Furthermore, because Jesus is continually praying for you, you can have confidence that nothing will ever separate you from the love of Christ, no trouble, hardship, persecution, famine or nakedness (Romans 8:35). In any circumstance we may face know it will not prevent Jesus from praying for you and can never separate from his love.

And so, hear today Jesus say to you, “I am praying for you.”

Blessings,
Pastor Stephen

Saying Thanks

November 25, 2014 /

It's Greek

Dear Friends,

Those of us who regularly endure the trauma of social media have probably seen the daily posts of people expressing their thanks in the month of November. Not to be left out, I started to think about those in my life who are long overdue for me to say “thanks” to. And by long I mean, at least ten years overdue.

If you are one of the few who has survived the Biblical Studies major at Northwest Nazarene College (now University) the journey took you though 5 terms of New Testament Greek. While the ranks were large the first day of Greek 1 by the 5th class the trail laid strewn with many bloodied bodies.

For my group we were whittled, beat, and carved down to three. Kevin, Bill and myself. The small class size did occasionally lead to tangents by our professor. It was one of these tangents that is forever engraved in my soul. Our professor, Dr. George Lyons, spent the majority of the class period one morning talking about the challenges of singleness, especially for those in the ministry. He advised us that if we ever wanted to change things then we needed to make changes in our lives. We needed to actually ask a girl out. We needed to live in such a way that made us “interesting” to those of the female persuasion. Now there is just one other detail about our trio you should know. Kevin and Bill were married. I was the only single in the class . . . and I was furious. In all the hours I have spent in the classroom I have never been so angry or humiliated. The lecture was clearly directed at only one person in the room: ME. I left the class never wanting to come back. If I had not been so close to graduation I probably would have walked off campus to never return.

Once I calmed down, my respect for the professor and trust of my classmates, brought me back to the class. But it would take months, actually a few years, for the lecture to fully sink in. When it did, I began to make changes to my life. I can still picture in my mind the day I sat in a dorm room in Larrabie-Morris Hall, while attending a different school, looking out over the Lexington Avenue in Wilmore, Kentucky, recalling the advice from that painful day in Greek and finding in it the courage to ask a girl to take the risk to intentionally spend time together. That girl was Laura, and an infuriating lecture in Williams Hall was the place where the ground for our relationship was prepared.

Thank you Dr. Lyons, I learned many things about life and ministry from you during the three years I spent at NNU. Any success I have in life and ministry is partly due to your influence and my failures are likely the product of my falling asleep in class.

To the others who are reading this message, what about you? Are there people in your life who are ten years or more overdue to hear about the influence they have had on your life? People you should say “Thanks!” to?

What better time could there be than now to send them a message?

Blessings,
Pastor Stephen

A Fight Was Breaking Out

November 19, 2014 /

Dear Friends,

I stood at our back window looking out. I was waiting for the coffee to finish brewing. Despite my years of attempts, I have yet to develop a perfectly brewed cup of coffee without having to wait. With nothing better to do I gazed across the yards between the houses the next street over.

To my shock I saw a concerning site. The middle school had just let out for the day. I watched a group of boys surge forward against another then disappear out of sight, hidden by a house. A few moments later the group returned, this time chasing a single boy. Thoughts raced through my head as to what might be happening. Was this bullying at its worst? Were two groups breaking into a fight? Then another surge as one group pushed back. In the few moments I watched the battle I wondered if I should quickly drive over to the next street to see what was going on or just call the police. It was then that I saw it. The thing that would change everything. A boy ran through the gap, chased by a dozen others, holding a football.

What I had thought was a fight was only a pick-up game of America’s favorite sport. What had prevented me from seeing the truth were the houses on either side of my field of vision. If I had been able to magically blast them away I would have known the true context of the battle between these boys on this day. I would have known this was not a neighborhood falling into pre-gang violence but a community united. What I lacked was the full context.

When we read our bibles we can too often be guilty of the same thing. We can read a few verses without seeing what is around. The results can be devastating. There can be many houses which block our vision: chapter and verse markings, headings, and pages to be turned. Left unmoved we can fall victim to the same errors I made watching football.

During a class I took in seminary I endured a near daily drill from Dr. Ben Witherington, “A text without a context is a pretext for anything you want it to be.” And a football game without a Good Year blimp overhead becomes gang warfare. Whenever we read our bibles it is a good exercise for us to step back and read the surrounding verses, chapter and book. This is also why it is a good practice to occasionally commit to read your bible through (yes, from Genesis to Revelation). The practice will help implant into your mind a general context of scripture as a whole.

Blessings,
Pastor Stephen

P.S. Did you know you can read through your whole bible in a year by reading 3 chapters on week days and 5 chapters on weekends?

Do you feel a little rusty?

October 28, 2014 /

rusty truck

I have seen the movie so many times I should be able to quote the entire dialogue. Trevor used to love to haul logs and help thresh the corn. But those days were long passed him. He sat in the yard amongst rusty old cars and machinery waiting to be melted down and reused. That was the reason Edward came to the yard that day. He came to get a load of scrap metal to take to the steel works to be melted down. After meeting Trevor all that Edward could say was “It’s a shame. It’s a shame.” They were going to cut Trevor up and sell him for scrap. You see, Trevor is a traction engine and Edward, well he is a small steam train. Edward saw through the rusty exterior to see the usefulness of the old traction tractor. As the story progresses it is surprisingly the church who comes to Trevor’s rescue. Buying him from certain destruction, giving him what he needed most, some paint, polish, and oil and in no time he was good as new.

Seeing potential in people can sometimes be a bit more challenging and the road of transformation more complicated. But the first step is to see the next is to do something. Compassion that has no action is really no compassion at all.

Most of us have times in our lives when we questioned our general usefulness. It seemed like life was on an express train to the scrap yard. That is until someone saw us. Someone saw potential we struggled to see in ourselves. They came alongside us with compassion and gave us the opportunity to be as good as new again. Are there people in your life that need to hear a message of continued hope? Do you see them?

Blessings,
Pastor Stephen

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