NEED I SAY MORE!

Job 39:5 says,

Behold, you have made my days a few handbreadths, and my lifetime is as nothing before you. Surely all mankind stands as a mere breath!

Some handbreadths are briefer than others – a mere five days.

This is worth your time. My thanks to Timmy Brister.

This from 9.06.05’s journal:

I know I’m not, but I felt abandoned last night. I kept praying as I turned off the lights, “Please don’t abandon me, God.” It wasn’t a good day. I was more tired than usual. Slept until 1:00 PM. Felt nauseous most of the day. Threw up around dinner time. Tongue is still sore. Mouth is still sore. Cheeks are swollen. Lip is still scabbing. It just goes on forever. Mucous still forming. What a routine of drudgery. When will relief come? Lord, have mercy!

I am rebuked by Bonhoeffer’s final letter to his wife or betrothed. He never felt abandoned for all the support he had. I feel ashamed.

During treatment I read Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters & Papers from Prison. I highly recommend it to anyone traversing the twists and turns of the road called suffering.

I first posted this on my blog several weeks ago. I repeat it here now because the window of service opportunity has reopened and it’s time to get in gear. See details at the end of the post if you want to jump on board.

The old gospel tune went like this: “Give me that ole time religion, give me that ole time religion, give me that ole time religion, it’s good enough for me.”

James speaks of a kind of religion good enough for God. “Religion that is pure and undefiled BEFORE GOD, THE FATHER, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world” (James 1:27, emphasis added). The only brand of religion good enough for you and me ought to be the kind that God judges with superlatives like “pure” and “undefiled.”

The writer leaves no doubt. Two things mark religion good enough for God: merciful treatment towards the down and out and godly behavior unstained by worldliness and sin.

The down and out include orphans and widows – those who have lost their normal means of family support and now left to themselves. We are to VISIT them. That doesn’t just mean drop by the orphanage or house and say hello. It means to bring to bear resources and help that contribute to the alleviation of their misery. The same concept occurs in the Old Testament when it says God visits His people with salvation (Psalm 106:4). The term “visit” has massive implications for a robust Christianity that moves into the lives of those the world often deems as insignificant and unworthy of attention.

I have been praying for some time now that the Lord would open the door to practice some measure of this brand of priceless religion with my neighbor across the street. Darlene lost her husband to cancer a couple of years back. Months ago OGC offered to paint her house as a mercy ministry project. It didn’t work out at the time, but recently she asked me if the offer still stood. I checked with the leadership team at our last meeting and they assured me it did. Here’s is a picture of her place.

It desperately needs a paint job. My vision is to “visit” this house with an extreme makeover cosmetically speaking in two to three weeks time. I intend to canvas the neighborhood for volunteers so that some of them will prep and paint along side some of the good folks from OGC.

The plan is to prep on 9/12 and paint on 9/19 from 8:00 AM to Noon. You can sign up this Sunday at OGC using the insert in the bulletin.

ANYBODY GOT AN ADDITIONAL PRESSURE WASHER OR TWO WE MAY USE?

May the Lord allow us to let our light shine before others, so that they might see our good works and give glory to our Father who is in heaven (Matt. 5:16).

This from my journal of 9.2.05:

It is hard not to get discouraged. Last night my tongue felt swollen and sore. Fears swept over me. Will I be able to speak again, eat again, drink again? I seem trapped in the last third of this process with no ultimate relief in sight. I remain shut in by the Lord dependent upon His mercy to heal.

Discouragement is such a formidable foe! Calculating God’s sovereignty in the season sustained me but not without huge lows long the way.

If you missed Sunday’s congregational meeting, here is a summation of Chuck Mitchell’s framing of the building committee presentation.

It outlines the rationale among the elders for their unanimous consensus for building a facility on our property as opposed to some other destination location such as a shopping center, closed auto dealership, etc.

• We have explored numerous alternative options in the past by God’s leading and He has closed the door every time and feel it is important to delay a definitive direction no longer.
• We greatly value the prospect of being located in the center of a highly residential area as opposed to a commercial one for the purpose of enabling outreach to our community.
• Our property lies at the center of what has been the target area for our church from its outset.
• A facility will give us a visible, permanent, strategic base of operations making us more viable as a church entity to households in the community as well as facilitating a breadth of ministry options now problematic to impossible to entertain for lack of a facility.
• The numerical growth, Lord willing, that a facility will help generate, will enhance our capacity, increasing resources over time to continue our impact in the area of global missions.

May the Lord continue to give us wisdom as we proceed with the process of building a facility for the glory of God as He enables us to do so.

Chapter Seven of A Call to Spiritual Reformation deals with “Excuses for Not Praying.” The first is I am too busy to pray. D. A Carson offers this hard-hitting advice:

It matters little whether you are the mother of active children who drain away your energy, an important executive in a major multinational corporation, a graduate student cramming for impending comprehensives, a plumber working overtime to put your children through college, or a pastor of a large church putting in ninety-hour work weeks: at the end of the day, if you are too busy to pray, you are too busy. Cut something out (p. 114).

Amen and amen.

If you missed this on August 23 when our team reported on their trip to Kenya, here’s a chance to see some fantastic work by a gifted young lady in our church. Check it out! Note: Double click on the video and it will take you to the full size version – a must.

Several days have passed since blog posts. How pastors who do it every day keep up with it, I’ll never know.

The gist of my journal entries from the last week of August ’05 sound very much alike. The last chemo blast took a huge toll. The worst of it came with my bloated, bloody, scab covered lower lip. I looked so terrible that we didn’t allow our three grandchildren to come back to the bedroom to see me while they visited for the youngest’s birthday party.

This from 9.1.05:

I doubt few things will ever rival this healing process for its seemingly endless nature. Another long night. Scabs all over my swollen lower lip. None seem to want to loosen without bleeding. I think I still have radiation sores in my mouth. If anything should teach me patience, this process should. [And it did.] I watched “The Passion” for the second time. A reminder that my suffering is minimal compared to what my Savior endured for me. I continue to take comfort in the fact that each calendar day that passes puts me one step closer to return to a normal life – assuming cancer is gone. What a huge question that is! Only God has the answer. My times are in His hands.

What gives you joy? What gives you joy to the utmost?

The apostle John revealed his answer in 3 John 4.

I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.

It gave me great joy to receive this email from someone in our church earlier this week:

Hi, Tuesday prayer list folks…

1Corinthians 16:13
That _________ would be on the alert today, standing firm in the faith, acting like godly men (or women) and being strong.

I was among the Tuesday prayer folks in our Seven Day Prayer Directory at OGC. I was SO ENCOURAGED to know that I had been prayed for in such a substantive, biblical way.

And it gave me GREAT JOY that one of His children sought to walk in the truth of praying for one another and communicated that as I have continually sought to exhort us over these last several weeks.

Church, have you prayed for the Thursday prayer folks yet today?