Category Archives: Personal Reflection

Camping in Tampa for OGC's & My Joy

March 4, 2010 By in Personal Reflection Tags: , , , 2 Comments

I know what some of you are thinking. Camping and joy don’t belong in the same sentence. I’ve had some of those experiences. I feel your pain.

My post comes from Tampa this evening. Camp Logos brought me here. That’s what Libronix calls it. Two days of intensive seminar training on the lastest version of their Bible study software, Logos 4. You know, the package I purchased in Minneapolis a few weeks ago spurred on by the promise of doing exegesis 10,000 times faster!

So this is camping of a different kind. Frankly, I’m nestled in at a cost effective hotel near the training site, getting ready to retire soon in hopes of awaking fresh tomorrow morning for another go around of mastering this incredible computer resource.

Why do this? What’s the point? Always a good question. Answer? Our mutual joy. Everything comes down to that when it comes to a pastor’s job description, if I read 2 Cor. 1:24 right.

Not that we lord it over your faith, but we work with you for your joy, for you stand firm in your faith (emphasis added).

I’ve actually got the software up and running as I write this piece. The literal Greek reads: sunergoi we are of your faith. We get our word synergy from the Greek word. It’s a noun, not a verb. Spiritual leaders are workers together with their people (this is synergy at the highest level) for their mutual joy in Jesus. Another way of saying it is that we work together for that which brings us the greatest pleasure. Who would argue with the notion that joy comes as a direct result of the experience of pleasure?

Where might we find greater pleasure than at the right hand of God (Psalm 16:11)? What reveals the God who gives such extreme pleasure more than the Scriptures (Psalm 19:7-11)?

I read today in my devotions a segment of J. C. Ryle’s book, Holiness, with this thought about pleasure:

Millions live for pleasure. Hedonism is the great spirit that knows no boundaries, whether economical, social, political or cultural—pleasure is an idol enslaving the great majority of the world. The schoolboy looks for pleasure in his summer vacation, the young man in independence and business; the small business owner looks for it in retirement, and the poor man in the small comforts of home. Pleasure and fresh excitement in politics, travel, amusement, in company, in books, in several vices too dark to mention, pleasure is the shadow which all alike are hunting; each, perhaps, pretending to despise his neighbor for seeking it, each in his own way seeking it for himself, each wondering why he does not find it, each firmly persuaded that somewhere or other it is to be found.

Oh my, it is indeed to be found and nowhere more intensely than at God’s right hand in His word. I’m camping out in Tampa these two days in hopes of gaining greater proficiency in my study of the Bible for our mutually exceeding joy and intense pleasure.

Missing the Boat at SeaWorld

February 26, 2010 By in Cultural Issues, Personal Reflection Tags: , , , Leave a comment

What are we to make of the tragedy at a local theme park this week?

A seasoned trainer of killer whales got dragged under water by her ponytale by a male Orca known for a history of living up to its name.

The debate in the news remains alarmingly this-worldly in terms of animal rights, conservation, ad nauseum.

As always, the Scripture speaks profoundly on an altogether different level.

In response to Job’s complaints in the face of unspeakable suffering far exceeding that of the family of Dawn Brancheau who dared tether Tilikum to her less-than-containable leash, the God of the universe said this:

“Can you draw out Leviathan with a fishhook
or press down his tongue with a cord?
2 Can you put a rope in his nose
or pierce his jaw with a hook?
3 Will he make many pleas to you?
Will he speak to you soft words?
4 Will he make a covenant with you
to take him for your servant forever?
5 Will you play with him as with a bird,
or will you put him on a leash for your girls?
6 Will traders bargain over him?
Will they divide him up among the merchants?
7 Can you fill his skin with harpoons
or his head with fishing spears?
8 Lay your hands on him;
remember the battle—you will not do it again!
9  Behold, the hope of a man is false;
he is laid low even at the sight of him.
10 No one is so fierce that he dares to stir him up.
Who then is he who can stand before me?
11 Who has first given to me, that I should repay him?
Whatever is under the whole heaven is mine.

Leviathan is the English translator’s best guess for a difficult-to-translate Hebrew word often rendered as a large sea animal. Orcas fit the bill. They are among the hugest of the dolphin species weighing up to six tons and measuring up to the length of a school bus. Males are particularly large and aggressive. Tilikum serves the SeaWorld community for his stud services and large-splash-making capabilities  – a crowd favorite indeed.

Until this week when he took a 40 year old handler so very easily to her watery grave.

If you seek to see the world through heavenly-minded eyes, the lesson seems plain. Who dares to trifle with a killer whale? No one is so fierce that he dares to stir him up. Ms. Brancheau, I am certain, dared not in the slightest to stir up the mighty beast floating in the pool before her. Even so, her proximity to creation’s majesty cost her nothing less than her very life. Word to the wise.

Word to the wiser still. Who then is he/she who can stand before God? Let the question sink in. Who then is he/she who can stand before God? None. I say it again, none. If dear Dawn (and my heart goes out to her grieving family and friends) could not stand poolside by Leviathan and escape with her life, who among us can pretend to put God, who owns the whole of heaven, including Orcas, great white sharks, lumbering hippos, and the rest of His wondrous and fearsome creation, in the dock and claim some legitimate argument with His sovereign administrations in their life for which we might better respond, He gives and takes away; blessed be the name of the Lord (Job 1:21).

May we not miss the boat along with the masses debating the pros and cons of killer whales consigned to captivity as if the only things we should consider lie along an animal rights plane and no other. Far more can and should result from this tragedy than that. Let nature and its grandeur speak to us internally rebuking our sinful pride. Let it speak to us vertically recalibrating our hearing and seeing such that we hear and see Him and thus, along with Job, despise ourselves and repent in dust and ashes (Job 42:5-6).

He Gives Snow Like Wool

February 20, 2010 By in Personal Reflection Tags: , , , Leave a comment

Images like this make me deliriously glad I live in the tropics. At least in February.

Still we have endured our share of cold this winter in Florida. Several times lately I’ve asked various people with tongue in cheek, “When will the Lord turn the heater back on around here?”

The statement belies correct theology as evidenced by a passage like Psalm 147:12-20.

12 Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem!
Praise your God, O Zion!
13 For he strengthens the bars of your gates;
he blesses your children within you.
14 He makes peace in your borders;
he fills you with the finest of the wheat.
15 He sends out his command to the earth;
his word runs swiftly.
16 He gives snow like wool;
he scatters hoarfrost like ashes.
17 He hurls down his crystals of ice like crumbs;
who can stand before his cold?
18 He sends out his word, and melts them;
he makes his wind blow and the waters flow.
19 He declares his word to Jacob,
his statutes and rules to Israel.
20 He has not dealt thus with any other nation;
they do not know his rules. 
Praise the Lord!

Among the things the psalmist cites for reasons to give praise to God he includes the commands of His word in swift providence that send snow like wool and cold before which no one can stand. Those same snows melt when and only when He sends out His word for that purpose.

Praise God for the cold, the snow, the frost, the wind, the rains. None of them comes apart from the issuance of His word.

As wondrous as that truth is, it’s not all the truth nor the only reason to praise. God sends out His word not just as creator and sustainer of the earth but as redeemer and revealer to His people. Verse 19 says He declares his word to Jacob, his statutes and rules to Israel. No other people enjoy such a privilege according to v. 20. This is indeed reason to praise the Lord. He has given His people His word. He has revealed His truth — truth that sets us free, free indeed (John 8:32).

Charles Spurgeon wrote in his masterpiece, The Treasury of David:

He who is the Creator is also the Revealer. We are to praise the Lord above all things for his manifesting himself to us as he does not unto the world. Whatever part of his mind he discloses to us, whether it be a word of instruction, a statute of direction, or a judgment of government, we are bound to bless the Lord for it. He who causes summer to come in the place of winter has also removed the coldness and death from our hearts by the power of his word, and this is abundant cause for singing unto his name. As Jacob’s seed of old were made to know the Lord, even so are we ill these latter days; wherefore, let his name be magnified among us. By that knowledge Jacob is ennobled into Israel, and therefore let him who is made a prevailing prince in prayer be also a chief musician in praise. The elect people were bound to sing hallelujahs to their own God. Why were they so specially favoured if they did not, above all others, tell forth the glory of their God?

So as we gather together tomorrow on the Lord’s Day, let us give thanks to the Lord and praise Him for His word that gives snow like wool and truth like keys that open sin’s prison doors and sets the captives free.

When You Can't Get Beyond the Remorse

February 6, 2010 By in Personal Reflection, prayer Tags: , , 2 Comments

Of all the components of pastor’s conferences these days, I enjoy among the most the Q & A sessions that normally come in the mix. On Wednesday of this week in Minneapolis, Pastor Clay, Kevin, and I listened to all the speakers at the Desiring God conference answer a series of questions related to the topic of the pastor and his role of promoting the joy of his people in God. You may listen to the entire session here.

One of the questions had to do with suffering that results from your own sins. What do you do when you can’t get beyond your own remorse for sins that have hard consequences?

John Piper seized the opportunity to relate how he always goes to Psalm 107:10-16 in such situations.

10 Some sat in darkness and in the shadow of death,
prisoners in affliction and in irons,
11 for they had rebelled against the words of God,
and spurned the counsel of the Most High.
12 So he bowed their hearts down with hard labor;
they fell down, with none to help.
13 Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,
and he delivered them from their distress.
14 He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death,
and burst their bonds apart.
15 Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love,
for his wondrous works to the children of man!
16 For he shatters the doors of bronze
and cuts in two the bars of iron.

Clearly these suffered due to their own rebellion. God bowed their hearts with hard labor as a result. What did they do? They cried to the Lord in their trouble. And imagine this! He delivered them from their distress.

So the counsel of God’s word when our own folly leads to grievous consequences is pray. Our gracious and compassionate God specializes in deliverances, even from our own sinfulness. And when he does deliver, give thanks for his steadfast love and his wondrous works to the children of men!

This morning’s Oxford Club study in chapter twenty one, These Inward Trials, of J. I. Packer’s book, Knowing God, dovetailed so nicely.

God can bring good out of the extremes of our own folly; God can restore the years that the locust has eaten. It is said that those who never make mistakes never make anything; certianly, these men made mistakes, but through their mistakes God taught them to know his grace and to cleave to him in a way that would never have happened otherwise. Is your trouble a sense of failure? The knowledge of having made some ghastly mistake? Go back to God; his restoring grace waits for you (IVP, 1993, p. 251).

Who of us can say that we have never erred in such a way so as to bring suffering upon our own heads? Perhaps even now you feel the sting of mistakes made that seems so gripping you can’t find a way out. Cry out to the Lord. Seek his restoring grace. And give thanks for his steadfast love and his wondrous works when the deliverance comes.

A Sometimes Fatal Omission

February 1, 2010 By in Personal Reflection, prayer Tags: , 6 Comments

We made it. Pastor Clay, Kevin Wilhoit, and I touched down in Minneapolis this afternoon. We’ve settled into our hotel, registered for this year’s pastor’s conference, and anxiously await the opening session at 7 PM local time.

We braved the cold and walked over to the convention center around 3 PM to register. As always the DG staff greeted us warmly and helped us check in. As I got my bag of conference materials, I eagerly asked, “Is the bookstore open?” Some addictions die hard. The sweet lady behind the table replied, “Yes, and the prayer room too.”

I felt an arrow pierce my heart. I’ve made my way up here to Canada masquerading as the US in Minneapolis every winter since 2003 save one, 2005 when I contracted head and neck cancer. Never once did I start my three days with the prayer room. Let me say it again. Never once did I start my three days with the prayer room.

Now I ask you. How can a pastor co-teach (the incredibly gifted Pastor Clay has agreed to alternate sessions with me) a 9:30 equpping hour on prayer, go to a conference so crucial to his entire approach to ministry as a shepherd and not start with the all-important means of grace that is prayer? For the life of me, I knoweth not.

Nonetheless I determined to repent. I suggested to my two compadres that we mosey on over to the prayer room BEFORE we went to the book store and get one of the DG volunteers to pray for us. We met Larry, a DG staff person for ten years now, who committed us to God over the next three days. Thanks be to God for this ministry and its understanding of the strategic role of prayer in making anything, anything happen of spiritual merit in the kingdom of God. Would you join him in praying for the three of us that God would mightily move in our lives as a result of attending this conference?

The whole deal made me think of various Scriptures that pertain to the folly, sometimes the fatal folly, of failing to ask God in prayer for help in the midst of our choices and directions. For example, 1 Chronicles 10:13-14 says this about King Saul, who turned to a medium for guidance rather than to the living God in prayer:

13 So Saul died for his breach of faith. He broke faith with the Lord in that he did not keep the command of the Lord, and also consulted a medium, seeking guidance. 14 He did not seek guidance from the Lord. Therefore the Lord put him to death and turned the kingdom over to David the son of Jesse.

His failure to ask of God concerning his need for guidance proved to be a fatal omission.

May the same not be said of us. Where do you need guidance? Where do you need the Lord to direct you as to His will? If we fail to ask Him through prayer for His wisdom,we run the risk of a potentially fatal omission.

Don’t go there.

Swifter than a Weaver’s Shuttle

January 26, 2010 By in Personal Reflection Tags: , , 4 Comments

With the sudden loss of one of our own today, a flood of thoughts has swept through my mind and heart. One reminded me of the words of him who suffered grievous loss in Job 7:6 – My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle. I’ve never seen it in action, but I rather guess an accomplished weaver can fly on his shuttle. For those acquainted with such things the word picture must have drove the truth home with added force.

Turns out Job returns to this theme a lot in the book. Job 7:7 – Remember that my life is but a breath. Job 9:25-26 – Now my days are swifter than a runner; they flee away, they see no good. They slip by like reed boats, like an eagle that swoops on its prey. Job 14:1-2 – Man, who is born of woman, is short-lived and full of turmoil. Like a flower he comes forth and withers. He also flees like a shadow and does not remain. There is nothing like the staggering blow of grief to bring the brevity of life into exacting focus.

How should we live in light of such truth? First, we should avoid presumption about the future and subjugate all our dreams and plans to the sovereign will of God. James 4:13-15 says, Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow, we shall go into such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.” Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live and also do this or that.”

Second, we must learn to keep affliction in perspective against the backdrop of eternity’s endless ages. We learned this from 2 Cor. 4:17 – For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.

Third, we should pray for grace to make every day count so that whatever the duration of our years we go before the King with more wisdom than folly. Consider Psalm 90:10-12 – The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away. Who considers the power of your anger, and your wrath according to the fear of you? So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.

Finally, whether our days amount to seventy years or only seven months, we should rest in the decree of God that numbers our days to the precise millisecond. Psalm 139:16 puts it this way: Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written every one of them; the days that were formed for me, when as yet there were none of them.

Life is short. The days are decreed. The griefs are many. The reality is clear: And the world is passing away along with its desires; but whoever does the will of God abides forever (1 John 2:17). Give your days with reckless abandon to the world to come. It will be here before you know it.

God Most Gracious in Guidance

January 12, 2010 By in Exposition, Personal Reflection Tags: , Leave a comment

Turns out I am a lot like Gideon.

As our growth group works its way through Judges, Gideon came on the radar screen recently in chapters 6-8. I was mega-encouraged by an insight I hadn’t seen before. God takes great pains to bring confirmation to Gideon as to His direction for him as a warrior against Midian, Israel’s oppressor.

Gideon, to say the least, stands in Scripture as a reluctant conscript for God’s purposes. He pleads a poor self-image in Judges 6:15. Nonetheless God assures him that He will be with him (v. 16). Gideon requires not just one fleece confirmation but two in Judges 6:36-40. God graciously accommodates him.

Then, after taking his army down in numbers to a paltry 300 so that they would not take credit for the pending victory, but rather boast in God their deliverer in Judges 7:1-8, God comes to Gideon in v. 9 of that same chapter with His command to go down against the camp, for I have given it into your hand.  And then, without any solicitation at all from Gideon, the Lord in His condescending grace adds this in vv. 10-11:

10 But if you are afraid to go down, go down to the camp with Purah your servant. 11 And you shall hear what they say, and afterward your hands shall be strengthened to go down against the camp.” Then he went down with Purah his servant to the outposts of the armed men who were in the camp.

What happens in the camp does strengthen Gideon and he goes on to lead God’s people in a glorious rout of the enemy.

I read that and thought, how incredibly gracious of God! He knows the frame of His weak-kneed servants. He condescends to offer multiple confirmations to His will in a given situation.

Upon surveying all the biblical evidence for God’s commitment to offer guidance to His children, J. I. Packer concludes, in his book Knowing God:

The point is sufficiently established. It is impossible to doubt that guidance is a reality intended for, and promised to every child of God. Christians who miss it thereby show only that they did not seek it as they should (p. 233).

Where do you need to believe God as most gracious in guidance? Where do we as a church need to believe God as most gracious in guidance? Let you/me count the ways! He who gave Israel the pillar of cloud by day and fire by night (Exodus 13:21-22) and who gave His church Jesus, the light of the world (John 8:12), will not fail us.

Adoption – Our Fountain Privilege

January 3, 2010 By in Exposition, Personal Reflection Tags: , 5 Comments

I worked hard this morning in my message to persuade that adoption is the highest privilege afforded by the gospel.

It might be easier for me than some to embrace that, since I am an adopted son in the earthly realm.

I mentioned today that Nancy and I spent yesterday with my extended family to celebrate my mother’s 80th birthday. That’s her along side my stepdad.

I never stop marveling at the alien love that causes a man to make someone else’s child his son and heir. See what kind of love is this!

If you still need convincing on this idea of the uniqueness of adoption as a gospel blessing, Wayne Grudem offers his take in his systematic theology:

God could have given us justification without the privileges of adoption into his family, for he could have forgiven our sins and given us right legal standing before him without making us his children. It is important to realize this because it helps us to recognize how great are our privileges in adoption. Regeneration has to do with our spiritual life within. Justification has to do with our standing before God’s law. But adoption has to do with our relationship with God as our Father, and in adoption we are given many of the greatest blessings that we will know for all eternity. When we begin to realize the excellence of these blessings, and when we appreciate that God has no obligation to give us any of them, then we will be able to exclaim with the apostle John, “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are” (1 John 3:1).

It’s true. It’s really true. We are beloved children of our heavenly Father. See it. Savor it. Secure it by faith.

The Need for My Pastoral Best

December 30, 2009 By in Personal Reflection Tags: , , 4 Comments

Apparently I need to do better at ducking snowballs. We woke up to the white stuff this morning. Before Bible study we slipped outside for some fun and frolic. One of the sheep got a little frisky and pelted me in the noggin. Good thing I had my hat on.

But I’m not referring to my need to move with greater quickness in this post. Rather I have a far more serious matter of required excellence in mind as it pertains to the role of the pastor of a local church. Paul speaks to it in 2 Timothy 2:15.

Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.

The Lord brought this verse to mind this morning as I heard yet another teacher here at Urbana handle the Scriptures in a less-than-tidy manner. Frankly, it has alarmed me how loose so many have been in their handling of their presenting duties. We have heard good things (this morning’s presentation of the gospel hit a doctrinally sound home run), but some of the ways the text has been manipulated at times to serve a foisted agenda in this conference has left me shivering in my already cold boots.

At that moment this morning I quietly heard the Lord say, not audibly, but intuitively, Curt, do your best as a teacher. Work hard in the study. When you stand in the pulpit for Me, do so prepared to drive a straight furrow through the field of any given text that I might may be glorified and each listener may have joy.

Lord, you make me want to be a better pastor.

When the Light of the World Will Really Be Marveled At

December 25, 2009 By in Church Year, Personal Reflection Tags: , , , 2 Comments

menorahs

Last night in my Christmas Eve message on John 8:12 I spoke of Jesus as “being so full of Himself.” I continue to imagine what it would have been like to have heard Him say sentences like “I am the light of the world.” The Jews listening to His words beneath the menorahs in the temple that day would have connected the historical dots. Jesus claimed to be the fulfillment of everything the Feast of Booths typified, including the shekinah glory of God that led the Israelites faithfully through their wilderness wanderings (Exodus 13:21-22). When He said, “I am the light of the world,” He was claiming to be the splendid radiance of God’s glory on display in a human body. Full of Himself, indeed, and rightly so.

As bright as that glory did shine in our Lord’s earthly ministry, it was a glory veiled by the humiliation of His incarnation. We celebrate this mystery, Immanuel, God with us, each Christmas, beholding the glory of the only begotten, full of grace and truth (John 1:17-18). Each Christmas Eve when I preach I try to strip back something of the curtain of our fleshly existence that dims that glory before our eyes that we might see it more clearly with eyes of faith. We marvel, but as those who look through a glass darkly.

It shall not always be so. 2 Thessalonians 1:10 speaks of a day when Christ shall come again “to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at among all who have believed.”

Isaac Ambrose (1604-1664), the Presbyterian minister known for his exceptionally holy life, described the day of Christ’s coming this way:

When the saints shall but look upon Christ, the Sun of Righteousness, they exceedingly admire Him. . . . All that believe shall break out into admiration of Jesus Christ. At the first sight, they shall observe such excellence in Jesus Christ that they shall be infinitely taken with it. Here [on earth] we speak of Christ, and in speaking, we admire. But how they will admire [Him] when they shall not only speak or hear, but also see and behold Him, Who is the express image of God, and the brightness of His Father’s glory (Heb. 1:3)! O the luster that He casts forth each way! Is not His very body more sparkling than the diamond before the sun? Yea, more than the sun itself now shining at noonday? How should the saints but wonder at this sight? Oh! There is more beauty and glory in Jesus Christ than ever their thoughts and imaginations could possibly reach! There is more weight of sweetness, joy, and delight in Jesus Christ than either the seeing eye, hearing ear, or the vast understanding heart (which can multiply and add still to any former thoughts) can possibly conceive (1Co 2:9)! Every soul will cry out then, “I believed [I would] see much glory in Jesus Christ when I saw Him.  I had some twilight or moonlight glances of Christ on earth: but—O blind I! O narrow I!—[I] could never have faith, opinion, thought, or imagination to fathom the thousand thousandth part of the worth and incomparable excellence that I now see in Him!”

Even so, come quickly Lord Jesus!