When Jesus Dies

 Pastor and author Erwin McManus asks a penetrating question; "What do you do when Jesus dies right before your eyes?" All four of the gospels relate in some way the response of the disciples when Christ was killed. They fled. They hid. They prepared to go back to the life they had lived before knowing Jesus. They had invested all in Him and He was gone. What else was there for them to do?

If we profess to be a follower of Jesus Christ we believe that He has risen from the dead, that He's alive. What happens though when, in the midst of our following Him wholeheartedly, He "dies," and right before our eyes? Think about this question. You have a deep sense of the rightness of your path and of your being in His will. Your life, ministry, marriage, and livelihood. Or you've made a major life change, fully believing He is leading you. You're convinced of the rightness of the path and His call to you. He's been leading you step by step with a real and powerful presence. And then....suddenly, everything collapses around you. You can't sense His presence, He seems totally absent. He has "died," and right before your eyes. What do you do when the dream dies, when visible hope dies. Do we, like the disciples, have an overwhelming urge to flee? To hide? To go back to what we came from and out of?

I began to follow Him in August of 1979. He led me from a life that was all I'd ever known to a distant Bible College sitting at the foothills of the Rockies. Then, into a marriage I was sure was from Him and into a ministry assignment I was sure was His will in West Texas. There were difficulties, mistakes, and failures along the way, but there was no doubt that He still went before me, leading me to a ministry in a small town in Virginia.Then, in August 1989, almost exactly 10 years from when it all began, everything collapsed. My marriage failed, and soon after, my ministry was lost. Nothing was as it had been. Where was my Lord? My Jesus, so real and alive before, had "died" before my eyes. I now knew what must have been in the hearts of His disciples 2000 years before. I had countless questions but no answers. Yet in it was a ray of great hope. God is not put off by our questions. As McManus states, "Your questions will lead you to God." 

The Gospels relate the death of Jesus and the disciples' reaction. They also relate what followed. Jesus, risen and alive, appeared again and again. Like Thomas, they all had questions and even doubts. He may not have answered all as they had hoped but He did give them one indisputable truth. He was not dead. He was alive and still with them. He would continue to be with them all along their way. Where one dream had ended, another had begun. This is what I discovered in my own life and it's what I continue to discover.

That August of 1989 was not the last time I would experience the seeming death of Jesus in the midst of my following Him. But, and this is the victory that overcomes, neither was it the last time that I would experience His sudden appearance in the midst of all that seemed lost, giving new hope, a new dream, and a new life.He restored the years the locust had eaten. He continues to do so. Questions always arise, but I have found, as McManus says, they lead me to Him. 

Has Jesus died before you in some way? Have you deep, heart wrenching questions? Ask them, and without fear, for they will lead you to Him. The Jesus who still lives. Who will always live.

Blessings,
Pastor O

Home

 The late 60's and early 70's were a time of upheaval in America. I know. I was there. Morals and values that had been ingrained in the culture were being challenged and in many places, overthrown. Rebellion was a favorite word and activity. I know. I was a part of it. In the midst of all of it was something that seemed totally out of place and one would think would be ridiculed by most. Yet it wasn't. I'm speaking of a TV program called "The Waltons," about a 1930's depression era family living in Virginia. It centered on family, home, integrity, and very traditional values. Somehow, it became a hit series, and was so even among those who were railing against those very things.

At that time, I was in college, living in a notorious place known as the Edinboro Hotel. Every room was occupied by long haired, drug and alcohol partiers and counterculture wannabes. I had friends there that went by the names of Nutso, Monkee, and the Shark. We lived above the only bar in town but on many a Saturday night, the manager had to send notice to us that we were making too much noise. The crowd in the bar couldn't hear themselves. We called ourselves The Sewer Rat Mob, and we sought to live up to our name. Yet in all of it, there was something going on that would make no sense to those who knew us. On the night that it came on, almost all of us would gather, usually under the influence of some substance, and watch the Waltons. We loved a show that depicted a life none of us claimed to want. A show built upon love, safety, and the wonder of a real home.

I didn't think of it then, but I do now. In all of us is a desire and longing for home. A real home. The home we were created for. The home found only in the Father's heart. A home reached only through His Son, Jesus Christ. God speaks to this longing in Zephaniah 3:18-20, "I will gather you who mourn....I will save the weak and helpless ones; I will bring together those who were chased away....On that day, I will gather you together and bring you home again." 

Home. The place we've been looking for all our lives. It can never be found here though we seek it with desperation. Only through Christ can we enter into it. Abraham, father of the Jewish people, knew this. Hebrews 11:10 says, "He went out confidently looking for a city with eternal foundations, whose maker and builder was God." He found it in the heart of the Father.

In the midst of my rebellion my heart was longing for home. How I was living just took me further and further away. For my friends and me, the closest we could get was a nostalgic TV program. Yet, all the time, that home we longed for was standing before us in the Person of Jesus Christ. It took me five more long and painful years before my eyes were opened to "see" Him. I finally came home to Him. Have you? Will you? Wherever you are, no matter where that is, if you are without Him, you're wandering, homeless, yet searching for home. Are you ready for the search to be over, for Him to bring you home? Reach out to the One who is always reaching for you. Come home...to Him.

Blessings,
Pastor O

The Cross

 "Then Jesus said to His disciples, 'If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me." Matthew 16:24....."We must do one of two things about the cross; flee it, or die upon it." A.W. Tozer

Tozer speaks some hard words, but Jesus speaks even harder ones. Both speak as to what makes up Christ's invitation to come and follow Him. It makes me wonder, what's involved in the invitations we give when encouraging someone to come to Jesus Christ? Just what kind of a relationship do we invite them to? Does it bear any resemblance to His invitation? In our particular fellowships, when people are called to come to Him, does the centrality of His cross ever come up? Is there really a cross in our walk with Him?

Jesus drew great crowds in His ministry. People loved the good bread and fish He gave out. They loved His miraculous healings and the wonders He performed. They followed Him wherever He went, but when He told them in John 6 that they must surrender all of themselves to Him and His Lordship, the crowds left. Not long after, the crowds that cheered Him were screaming for Him to be crucified. And He was. He went to His cross and He died there. It was His mission from the beginning. Yet His death led to His resurrection and this unleashed the power of His risen life to all who would come to Him. We all want that kind of life, but not many of us desire the cross we must also die on that comes with it. His resurrection life is only ours by way of His cross. 

I think we hear so little of His cross because of the truth of Tozer's words. Those who would follow Him must do something with the cross and there can only be one of two responses. We will either flee from it or embrace it and die upon it. Paul said He had been crucified with Christ and that it was no longer he who lived but Christ lived in Him and through Him. Paul was completely Christ's. His will was to do Christ's will. He had died to himself so that he could live fully for Him. Paul understood what was involved in the Lord's call to follow Him. We must as well. To truly be His disciple and follow Him, we must do business with His cross. Everything that constitutes life is nailed to it. Hopes, dreams, past, present, and future. Every desire and attitude is nailed to the cross. That's all involved in the invitation. Have we accepted it? Do we proclaim it?

As Tozer said, we must do something with the cross. Flee it or die upon it. Lloyd Ogilvie said one of his theology professors once confronted him about his commitment to Christ. He said to him, "You cannot sneak around Golgotha." Golgotha was the place where Christ was crucified and died. Many of us are trying to sneak around, flee from the cross that is there. Too few of us are willing to die there. Which marks your life and mine today? Do we flee our cross, or do we die upon it?

Blessings,
Pastor O

The City

 Many things spoken and written by blind writer and speaker Jennifer Rothschild have ministered to me. What she relates here does. 

After losing her sight as a teenager, she began to be instructed in the use of a cane. She said she had to learn to live, not by what she couldn't see, but by what the cane told her was there. In the same sense, we need to learn to live not by what we feel or fear, but by what He says. By what He says is there. What is there is Himself. His total faithfulness and His abiding presence. This is the walk of faith.

In Hebrews 11:8, it says of Abraham, father of the Jewish nation, "By faith, Abraham when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place, which he was to receive for an inheritance, and he went out not knowing where he was going." I began my walk with Him in 1979. I thought I knew where I was going, but I had no clue. He kept leading me to places that I never thought I'd be. Physically for sure, but even more so in the realm of the Spirit. Too often, I wanted to stay in the realm of the known, but He kept calling me, leading me into the unknown. I didn't always go easily, but He continued to call, to lead, and to invite me into my own inheritance. To trust not in what I think may be there or even see that is there, but in what He says is there. Himself. His life. The land that He has for me. This call doesn't stop with age and it will not stop in death. The path He leads us on stretches into eternity, and though I've never "seen" that place, He tells me it's there. The fullness of my inheritance lies there but I can begin to live in that inheritance now. So too can we all.

Today we may be feeling like Rothschild must have when she was being taught the use of the cane. Our world may have been turned upside down, with circumstances, needs, and challenges that have rendered us, in a sense, blind. We can't "see" what to do next, but His call to us is to not live afraid of what we cannot see, but by what He says is. He IS, and He always will be. We may not know where we're going, but we know that we're going with Him. Faith is knowing that we're always going onward with Him.

Hebrews 11:10 says that Abraham was "looking for the city which has foundations, whose Architect and Builder is God." This is our destination as well. We are born with a yearning for it. We'll never find its fullness here, but here is where the journey starts. All along the way there will be places where we'll be "walking blind," except that we won't be blind at all. He's with us, leading us along. Our having to know all the details doesn't matter. He knows. He'll lead us into His city, to our inheritance. Designed and built by the Father, led there by His Holy Spirit, Home at last.

Blessings,

Pastor O

Baggage

 Anyone who's ever flown knows the ritual of checking your baggage at the flight counter. Since 9/11 this has gotten to be a very intrusive process as our bags are now opened and searched. I know few people who like this as it makes us feel our privacy is being violated. All of this puts me in mind of a spiritual reality.

All of us who have experienced life in this fallen world have accumulated "baggage" that we take with us wherever we go. This baggage can not only be cumbersome, but dangerous. To us, and to those we come into contact with.....and to those we love.

Sheila Walsh asks the question, "What would it look like right now if all your baggage became visible?" Few of us would care for that. Just as we don't like the idea of unknown agents rooting through our private things, so too do we not want the eyes of others seeing the invisible but very real emotional, mental, and spiritual "baggage" that we carry. Even if that someone is God. In fact, we can go to very great lengths to try and hide it from Him. Denial is usually our favorite means. Yet God, in His goodness and love is willing to violate all our privacy, or more correctly, secrecy, in order to bring it to light. Believe it or not, the means He uses to do so bears some resemblance to our airport experiences.

Our baggage can be very toxic. He knows this. If we're going to journey forward in Him, we will need to submit our baggage, check it if you will, at His "counter." His counter is His altar. We bring our baggage to His altar and we place it, all of it, in His hands. As He opens it up, He examines each "piece," and with His handling of it, heals and cleanses it. Wounds, failures, bitter experiences, disappointments, broken dreams, these and so many more are found to varying degrees in our bags. We carry these wherever we go, and  continuing to hide them only makes them heavier and more burdensome as we go. In truth, because of our baggage and the harm it does, we never really make progress in our journey. Our baggage blocks the way.

What's the extent of your baggage and mine? What has it cost you and what does it continue to cost you? Scripture tells us that everything about us is laid bare before His eyes. He knows what's hidden and He wishes to bring it to His light. Our flesh will see this as a violation, but in truth, it is His healing. Too many of us are "stranded at the airport." We're not moving in the direction He has for us. It's a baggage problem. How deep a problem is it for you? How weary are you of carrying it everywhere you go but always trying to conceal it from everyone around you? Jesus calls you to His altar of surrender. Release it all into His hands. Be healed, be whole, be free.

Blessings,

Pastor O

Bars

Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. Philppians 3:13-14

Paul's above exhortation from Philippians is a powerful and true one. Why then is it so hard for us to do? To live out?

In my prayer journal I have a question asked by author and speaker Christine Caine. She asks, "Are we looking at life through the prison bars of the past? The Word of God comes to us, but we hear it through the bars." Obviously then, we can't live out this verse by sheer will power or by positive thinking. It takes the renewing work of His Holy Spirit. The renewing of our minds and even our memories. Not a wiping clean of the slate, but a breaking of those very bars from yesterday that diffuse the power of His Word in our lives and distort the face of Jesus. The prison bars consist of lies planted by the enemy. Lies that tell us that we're still subject to the things that have happened to us, and even more, that tell us we're the same person we were when these things took place. The prison bars keep us from taking hold of His truth that we are new creations in Christ, that all things are new. The old has passed, the new, in Christ, has come. This is what happens in the heart of every believer when He comes to Christ. Our great problem is that it can take time for that message of truth to reach our minds and our patterns of thinking. Especially as concerns how we see ourselves.

We live in a fallen world, polluted by sin. We're born into it and the pollution fills every corner of our being. We're powerless to change that, which is why we desperately needed the One who has all power, Jesus Christ. He breaks the power of that sin pollution in our lives but we have to step into the freedom that comes to us through faith in Him. Too many of us never do. Too many of us live like prisoners of war in a war that has already been won at the cross of Christ.

The Israelites spent 400 years as slaves in Egypt. God broke their slavery and led them out, but they never seemed to fully escape their slave mentality. Neither do so many of us. The Israelites kept hearing Him through the bars of their slavery. They couldn't fully grasp that they were free. Have you?

If you're seeing your life and His promises through prison bars, I encourage you to first confess that to Him and then ask Him to fill your mind with the truth of His Word and have those bars disintegrate before you. They disintegrate when the truth of His Word and promises lays hold of both your heart and your mind. Someone said that the truth of His Word dissolves the shackles that keep us prisoner. The shackles and the bars as well. Be free of a life that only sees through the enemies bars. Embrace His truth. Embrace Him. See everything clearly. See Him!

Blessings,

Pastor O 

What Remains

 "And be sure of this; I am with you always, even to the end of the age." Matthew 11:20

You cannot go through life, even as a believer, and not suffer loss. Sometimes devastating loss. Losses can traumatize, paralyze, and cripple us. Losses can hold us captive. They can form prison cells that we never leave. Yet, as one person put it, we can get past what we cannot get over.

In my prayer journal I have written down an exhortation from a source I cannot remember. It says in essence that in the midst of loss, even deeply painful loss, we must not be trapped in focusing on what we've lost, but must focus instead on what remains.

I think I have the "right" to speak on this as one who has suffered a great deal of loss in my journey with Him. All of it was painful, but not all of it was bad. Some things in our life need to go, to be removed. That's part of the journey of faith. However, there are other losses that seem to make no sense. Things that are cherished. The death of loved ones. Of professions and ministries. Of marriages and relationships. The pain can be crushing. We must grieve them, but we cannot be held prisoner by them. Too often, we are. I know. I was.

Perhaps one of the most crippling losses I suffered was in my ministry. I planted a church in 1992, and the first years were exhilarating, with growth and excitement. I had labored hard, but it was not my labor but His that brought it about. I was rejoicing in my ministry. Then, in 1995, it all began to change. I was in a highly transient area. Many of my people, very good people, were being transferred and moving to other places, and it was happening all at once. I had been harboring dreams of an ever expanding ministry, reaching more and more people. Now it all seemed to be crashing down, and I couldn't understand why. Why would the Lord, who had engineered it all, now allow all of this? I sank into a kind of despair, and I couldn't get my mind and heart off of what I'd lost. It lasted for nearly two years. Then the Lord confronted me with that quote from above. I was mourning what was gone, but I had no joy in what remained. I mourned the lost blessings but was oblivious to the blessings that remained.

What remained was a core of people dedicated to Him, to His church, and to my leadership. Yet, I had not seen this and I lacked gratitude for it. Worst of all, I realized that my despondency likely caused me to miss blessings that He had for me but that had gone unnoticed. With that, I began to heal over the losses and once more have hope over the future.

As I said, we will experience loss. It will be painful. Take the time to grieve, but don't end up living there. Rejoice in what remains. Rejoice that the greatest truth of what remains is that He, Jesus Christ, remains.

The wine only appears to be gone. His best wine is yet to come. Press on.

Blessings,
Pastor O