But It Is

 If you're a reader of God's Word at all, you at least know something about the book of Job. You know that Job was God's example to Satan of a man who was fully devoted to Him. You know too that the Father allowed Satan to test God's trust in Job as well as Job's trust in God with intense and severe affliction. You know all this, but if you're honest, you'll admit that the intensity of the pain and agony that Job must have felt is something you can't really imagine or believe possible for yourself. But what if, at some place in your life, it is?

I don't mean to put myself on the level of Job. What I have suffered in life does not begin to compare with his sufferings. Indeed, they don't compare with what many of my fellow believers have lived and walked through. Yet, I do know they were intense enough that I, like Job, just wished to die in order to escape them.

Few of us can begin to identify with what must have been Job's thoughts when he was hit with wave after wave of horrible, life altering news of death and loss. How his mind must have been reeling, how he must have thought, "This can't be happening." But it was. But it is. That's something that I can identify with very well, for I remember my own such day, and the reeling of my mind, my heart, and my spirit in the midst of it.

It was the day my wife left and took my daughter with her. It was something she had been planning for some time, but that I knew nothing about. She informed me two days before that she would be going. She'd reserved the truck and her father was coming to move her. On the day of the departure, I was numb with shock, My mind couldn't grasp all that was going on. Like Job must have, I thought, "This can't be happening!" But it was. But it is. I felt like I was watching someone else as my life crumbled around me. Even now, more than 30 years later, I can't really begin to describe all the emotions, fears, and sheer terror I was experiencing. I know now that He was present, even speaking in all of it, but I couldn't sense Him and I for sure couldn't hear Him. All I could sense and hear was my pain. That's where Job was. That's where I was. What couldn't happen did happen. What couldn't be, was. Everything around me was shattered, along with everything within. Everything but Him. What shattered me would not shatter Him. Nothing will ever be able to do that.

Someone said that our faith is never real until it has been tested in the fire. Life has taught me the truth of that, and if yours is to be real, it will teach you as well. God had allowed me to enter the furnace. It was devastating. I thought everything had been lost. Not just my marriage and family, but my present and my future. I was in the wasteland. I thought I'd die there. I wanted to die there. God wouldn't allow that. He had more for me. More than I could ever have dreamed of. In His word, He promises to make our deserts bloom with fruit and flowers. He kept His word to me. The suffering and pain were real. He proved to me in their midst that He was more real. If we cling to Him, He'll never fail to prove this to us no matter how desperate our situation is.

We tend to think that a good God should prevent our suffering, that He should stop evil acts. Sometimes He does intervene, but we have to remember and know that we live in a fallen world filled with fallen people who have free will. He will not violate that free will, but neither will He abandon us when we are victimized by the choices of others. On the worst day of my life, in the midst of what couldn't happen, happening, He was there. He was there even if I couldn't sense or hear Him. And He didn't leave me there. Yes, I thought that what was happening couldn't be happening. But it was. It did. But He was the greater happening in all of it. He had hold of my shattered life and all that came along with it, and led me on and out. He will do no less for you.

If you're in that place that Job was, that I was, saying, "This can't be happening," I understand. But it is. Cling to the truth that while it is, He is. He is working, He is moving, He is bestowing grace. This is not the end. Indeed, it's the beginning. The beginning of a deeper experience of Him then you ever knew possible. Trust Him. He won't fail you. All else may fail. He never will.

Blessings,
Pastor O

The Garden

 One of the most powerful scenes in the movie, "The Passion Of Christ," is that of Jesus praying in Gethsemane just before He was arrested. Mark 14 says that He was "filled with horror and deep distress" over what was about to come upon Him. As He prayed, the devil appeared, which he'll almost always do whenever anyone tries to seek the face of God. As Jesus pours His agony out to the Father, Satan whispers to Him that what He's about to do, go to the cross, and take the sin of the world, of me and of you, upon Himself, was too much for Him to bear. For anyone to bear. He couldn't do it. He must turn from it. Jesus cries out, "Abba (Daddy), Father, everything is possible for You. Please take this cup of suffering away from Me. Yet I want Your will, not mine." As He lies prostrate, the devil whispers, "Who is Your father?" and after a pause adds, "Who are You?"

All who follow Jesus will come to their own Gethsemane, their own place of crisis, decision, surrender. It will be a dark and lonely place and we, you and I, will also find ourselves filled with "deep distress and horror." We'll also hear the voice of the enemy along with his whispers that seek to turn us away from Him, to step back and give up. To agree that what He calls us to can't be done. That we must turn back from it. He'll ask those same questions of us; Who is your Father? Who are You? Everything depends on whether we know the answers to those questions. Do we? Do you?

Who is your Father? What is His character? What is His heart.....towards you? Have you settled these questions? Do you, like Paul, know who it is you've believed in? Are you persuaded that what you've given to Him, entrusted Him with, will be kept by Him? Securely. Safely. Forever. Do you know all that He gives, and do you know what He does not give?......A means to avoid going to your own Gethsemane.... but that He will give Himself to you there.

Who are you? Do you know the answer to that? Does your answer come from what others have said, what the world says, and most of all, what the devil has spoken? Or, does your answer come from what He has said and continues to say about you? That you are precious, fashioned by His love in your mother's womb. Scripture says that before He formed you, He knew you, and He knows you now, in your own Gethsemane. He knows too that if you will hold onto Him, He will lead you out of this place of distress and horror. Or, so saturate you with His presence that it loses all of its power over you. You know His peace there. You will discover, through this garden and its cross, His resurrection life flowing into and out of you.

The scene in "The Passion," ends with a snake moving out of the folds of the devil's robes. It moves towards Jesus, seeking to sink its poisonous fangs into Him, but with one powerful step, the Lord crushes it, killing it. Just as He will shortly crush the devil under His foot and the power of sin, on the cross. He means for you to experience the power and reality of this in your own Gethsemane. Hold to Him as you do. 

Are you hearing the enemy's whispers in the dark? Whispers that accuse even more than they question. Listen more deeply. You will hear the still small voice of the One who has crushed the snake and given you your answers of Truth. He has shown you the Father, made Him known to you, and made yourself known to you as well. Stand up. Go forward. Holding to Him, dying in Him, rising with Him, and best of all, living in Him. Know who you have believed in. Be persuaded.

Blessings, 

Pastor O

Still?

 I've longed prayed for myself, as well as for those I've pastored, that He would break the spirit of mistrust and the unholy fear of Him that so many are trapped in. An inability to trust God almost always stems from an unholy fear of Him. By unholy I mean an attitude and mindset that believes that God is against us, means us harm, means to lessen our standard of life, not add to it. These attitudes, to whatever degree they exist, are present because  we don't know Him, and ignorance of who He really is can be a spiritual stronghold in our mind and heart.

The verse, "If God is for us, who can be against us," may be widely quoted, but there are great numbers who in their hearts, don't really believe He is for them at all. The thought that He is trustworthy may be in their mind, but the reality of it has yet to reach their heart. As a result, we cling to something or someone else, be they people, finances, professions, even ministries. Above all of them, we cling to and depend upon ourselves. We seek manage and control all of these and all of how they can and do affect us. All the while we live in a growing sense of anxiety and fear because deep down, we know we can't control all the things going on around us, or the people involved with them. As a result, all of that which we're trying to control just gets more and more out of control. We want to believe in the truth that He is for us, but we can't because we lack any real experience of that. We lack it because we don't really know Him. The Father declares in Scripture, "My people are perishing for lack of knowledge." The proof of this is seen everywhere. Is it being seen in you?

There's a lot of talk and teaching within the church concerning the need for communication in marriage and relationships, and that is a need, yet there is so little being taught and said about how communicate with Him. We don't really know how to talk with our Lord. We talk at Him, not to Him. This is true even in the lives of those who would say they have been walking with Him for many years. We're like the disciple Thomas, called by many, "Doubting Thomas." Jesus, in love, gently rebuked his doubt by asking, "Have I been with you so long Thomas, and STILL you don't know Me?" How often must He ask us this same question?

In my prayers, I seek that He would teach us how to really pray. Not just ask for things, but to relate, communicate in deep and intimate ways. This is what prayer is meant to be. What prayer should be for us. Yet, more often than not, it's a hurried obligation, or a "to do list" to be presented to Him. He wants to talk. He wants to hear our, your, heart, and the heartaches upon it. He wants you to share your hearts hopes and dreams, and its burdens too. More, He wants to share His heart with you. His hopes and dreams for you. The purposes He has for you, and above all, how precious and loved beyond words you are to and by Him. Author and speaker Priscilla Shirer asks, "Satan wants to make us dependent upon others for hearing from God.....if He loves us enough to die for us, doesn't He love us enough to talk to us?" 

The apostle John wrote in I John 3:2-3, "Beloved, we are God's children; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know when He appears, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is." I know the full realization of the Scripture lies in the future, but we don't have to wait till then to begin to come into that realization. We can know Him as fully as we are capable right now. His time for knowing Him is always NOW! Ignorance, fear, and mistrust of Him is a spiritual and emotional prison and such is never His plan for you. How long has He been with you and yet you still don't know Him? In the midst of Thomas' doubts, Jesus invited Him to lay hold of Him and know the truth. He invited us, you, to do the same. He invited us to intimacy with Him. Lay hold of Him. Know Him. Now!

Blessings,
Pastor O

Posers

I think there's a secret fear lurking inside us all. It's the fear of being "found out." Of someone finding out who we really are. How weak and fragile we really are. How unlovely we really are. How complex and difficult we really are. The fear that, if these things were really known, no one would want to be with or around us. No one would stay with us. Everyone would leave us. Author John Eldredge writes of the fear of being exposed as nothing more than a "poser," pretending to be what he feared he could never be. That fear is shared by so many, both men and women. We are, far too many of us, "posers" in our day to day lives.To combat these fears, we construct facades of self-protection, feeling that though we may never be close with someone, neither will they be able to wound us, hurt us, leave us. The ruse can work very well. Except with One. It never works with Him.

In Matthew 1 we're told an angel of the Lord appears to Joseph and spoke to him of Mary, who was betrothed to him as a wife. Mary, who even now carried the child born of the Holy Spirit. Immanuel. Jesus. The Messiah. The angel told Joseph that it was this child Jesus and that it was He who would, "save His people from their sins." The prophet Isaiah, speaking of this same child 500 years earlier said, ".....and He will be called Immanuel, meaning, 'God is with us.' " 

We become "posers" because we are born into a fallen world where we have no idea who we were created to be. No idea who we can be in Him. Feeling isolated and cut off is natural to us. Try as we may, we can't undo the damage. We can't make things right. We can't save ourselves. God, in His love, knew this. He still knows it. It's why He sent and gave us the gift of His Son. Jesus. Immanuel. God with us. God, always with us and always for us. Jesus undoes the damage, heals the wounds, restores life. Life as He means it to be. His life. Eternal life.

You see, this Jesus comes to us, seeks us out. He not only seeks entrance into our hearts, He's fully aware of all that is within them. He knows what's unlovely. He knows where the fear is, the anger, and the hatred. Hatred towards others, and yes, towards ourselves. He knows where the wounds and hurts are. Some years, even decades old. He knows what no one else knows, and none of it turns Him away from us. He comes in love. He ministers to the wounds and hurts in love. He cleanses our hearts in love. He heals in love and He stays in love. He doesn't leave, abandon, or reject us. Our failures don't deter Him, and though there may be places of ugliness within us, we ourselves are beautiful to Him. He breaks through our facades and layers of self-protection and reaches us where we live. He reaches who we really are. He's Jesus, God with us. Always with us.

Are you hiding today? Are you living under layers of self-protection, years, decades in the making? These layers may have succeeded in keeping others out, but they can't keep Him out. Two thousand years ago this child was given to us. Jesus. Immanuel. God with us. Have you received Him? He knows your name. He sees you, and He sees not only who you are, but where you are. He won't turn away. He won't abandon you. He loves you. As you are and where you are. But He will not leave you there. He will shape your life into what it was created to be. He's come for you. Will you now come to Him.....poser no longer?

Blessings,

Pastor O 

Unleashed

 "Paul and Silas have turned the rest of the world upside down, and now they're here disturbing our city," they shouted.  Acts 17:6

Pastor, author, and teacher Mark Buchanan once said, "The Gospel is unleashed through radical welcome, radical forgiveness, radical healing, radical confrontation, and radical worship." This statement raises a lot of questions. Would we in the west describe the church in this way? What is it that we "unleash" upon an unbelieving and lost culture?

One of the meanings for the word "radical" is, "thorough and completely curative." To me, that speaks completeness, whether it be forgiveness, healing, worship, and above all, transformation. How thorough and how complete are our gatherings each week, be it corporately, or in small groups? Are we doing the "right things" but without His power, presence, and anointing? Are we offering sanitized versions of the world's entertainment? Are we mainly appealing to emotions, or to a person's heart, soul, and being? What happened in the early church was a radical departure from all that had been before. These were people that encountered Christ when they came together and when they were apart. They expected to encounter Him. That was a radical change from all that had been experienced in both the Jewish synagogues and the pagan temples. Is what we're inviting people into in the church today anything like first seen in the first century church?

Radical welcome means more than just a friendly smile and handshake, or remembering names. It is having such a presence of His life and love that even the hardest heart senses that His welcoming invitation is for all, even them. Radical forgiveness goes along with radical confrontation. The human race has a sin problem and each of us are born with that problem. It's our death sentence. Our flesh hates that truth and runs from it. We can't water down that message. Jesus never did, but along with the radical confrontation concerning our sin problem He offered radical forgiveness and deliverance from death into His life for all who would receive it. Total forgiveness for all that we have done and all we are. The old has passed away and the new has come. That's radical transformation coupled with radical healing. The soul is healed, along with the mind and emotions, and very often, even the body.

All of this then leads into the experience of radical worship. When people have been forgiven and they know why they've been forgiven and for how much they've been forgiven, the only response can be deep gratitude expressing itself in full hearted worship of the One who forgave them, loves them, and has made them new. This is what marks the radical church. Is it what marks ours.....yours?

May we and our fellowships be a people that the Father can "unleash" upon a desperate and dying world. Unleash with the offer of a radical and transformed way of life to all those trapped in the darkness. Fellowships that offer up cleaned up versions of what the world offers have no power to be such a church. May it be that we, and the churches we are a part of, can and do. 

Someone said that Christ didn't save us to make us safe. He saved us to make us dangerous. Dangerous to the enemy and his kingdom of death and darkness. Dangerous as well to those in His Church who have grown soft, complacent, and comfortable. Dangerous to a flesh centered faith. The kind of radical faith Buchanan speaks of terrifies both the world and the church so heavily captivated by it. May such a faith be ours. May we be so radically His that He can unleash us upon a world and church that He loves and died for.

Blessings,
Pastor O 

The Furnace

 "Look," Nebuchadnezzar shouted, "I see four men, unbound, walking around in the fire. They aren't even hurt by the flames. And the fourth looks like a divine being." Daniel 3:25

Though she would never describe herself as such, Joni Eareckson Tada is a hero of the faith. Paralyzed by a diving accident at age 17, she has lived for over 50 years now with painful limitations that few of us could even begin to understand. Yet, in the midst of her affliction, she has not only been used by Him to minister and encourage thousands upon thousands in the faith, but has herself experienced an intimacy with Christ that few ever come to know.

Recently I heard her speak of what her life has been and how she has experienced Him. She used the example of the Hebrews Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who, because they wouldn't worship the image of himself that Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon had set up, had been thrown, fully bound, into a furnace of red hot flames. As the king and his entourage watched, they saw not men being consumed, but instead, free of their bonds and walking about with a fourth who had joined them. That fourth was the pre-incarnate Christ Himself. Tada said this, "As the three Hebrews walked in the middle of the flames, we can walk in the middle of our pain and suffering and expect to see and experience Jesus there. He transforms that horror into a place of intimate encounter with Him. We can know intimacy with Jesus in the most hellish of circumstances." 

We fear the flames of pain and suffering, yet if we will trust Him, He will use the flames to not only reveal Himself to us in a deeper way than ever before, He will also use them to burn away those things that have kept us bound and enslaved for so long. All that the three lost in the furnace were the bindings that the king had them held with. The bindings were gone, and Nebuchadnezzar, who had placed them upon them, could only see them walking about freely, with their Lord, in the midst of the furnace. I see Nebuchadnezzar as a symbol of our enemy, Satan, who delights in using every kind of binding in our lives, seeking to keep us in his bondage. He looks to do his best work through our suffering. Yet, if we, like the three Hebrews, will trust that we will not go into the furnace alone, our Lord Jesus will join us, free us, and bring us into an experience of Him we never knew possible.....in the furnace and amidst the flames.

For the believer, the furnace awaits in some form. We will go into it. If we will trust Him, nothing will be lost to us except that which binds and holds us. We will lose that which is harming us and in return, gain in and through Him what can never be taken away. As Tada says, He will transform the place of horror into a life changing encounter with Him.

If you're in the furnace today, expect to meet Him there. He went in before you and He will lead you through and out. Nothing will be lost except your bindings. Nothing will be burned away except that which holds you back. In the flames you'll discover the One who sticks closer than a brother. Look for Him. Trust Him. He will bring you out.

Blessings,
Pastor O

Storms

 I've never liked storms. You know, the kind with huge, grey-black clouds, deafening peals of thunder, and piercing cracks of lightning. I remember that as a small child I would cling to my mother as she went from room to room, closing the windows in our home as the storm moved in. She would often talk of how hard it was to do that while dragging around a four year old who'd suddenly become a part of her leg. Ah, the memories of childhood.

Here's another memory. With the simple logic of a child, I thought that when the storms arose, the sun and blue sky just disappeared, that they no longer existed. All that was there were the clouds, the thunder and lightning....and the fear. I also remember the wonder of learning that this wasn't the case at all. Above all the destruction, the sun still shines and the sky is still blue. The storms, no matter how strong, couldn't last. The sun would. It had never left. Life is like that. God is like that.

David writes in Psalm 18:11-12, "He shrouded Himself in darkness, veiling His approach with dense rain clouds. The brilliance of His presence broke through the clouds." In my Bible, the heading of this Psalm says of David that, "He sang this song to the Lord on the day the Lord rescued him from all his enemies and from Saul." Could it be that today you're finding yourself engulfed in darkness? Memories of bright, sun filled days are distant and almost forgotten. The "sun" is gone, and you don't see how you will ever know its warmth and beauty ever again. As you look up, all you can see is the steady, terrifying approach of more rain filled clouds. Clouds that you know will pelt you with steady sheets of heavy, soaking, depressing rain. Will it ever end? Can it ever end? You run to "close the windows," but you just never seem to be able to get to all of them. The floods are bound to overwhelm you. They would too, if it weren't for one mighty truth; in the midst of it all, His brilliant presence is there. A presence no cloud can hold back or blot out. A presence that will break through, and at just the right and proper time. A presence, His presence, that has been there all along. A presence that the most blinding storm cannot keep from being there.

Can you believe this today? Will you dare to? I still don't like storms, but they no longer terrify me. I know the sun's still there and I'll see it again. I don't like life's storms any better, but by His grace, I no longer fear them either. I know He's there. I know the brilliance of who He is, who my Jesus is, will break through for me and to me. I may not be able to reach and secure all the open "windows" in my life, but He will. Let the storm do its worst. It can't really harm me, because He not only stands before it, He stands in the midst of it. And because He does, I do too. You can and you will as well. Look above the clouds and into His face. His Word says that He "rides the heavens." Let's ride them with Him.

Blessings,
Pastor O