providence

THE REST OF THE GOLDEN RULE STORY

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More on Practicing What I Didn’t Get to Teach in BC

Through two previous posts–JOMO NOT FOMO and JOMO AND THE GOLDEN RULE, I promised to recount my “Golden Rule Joy” encounter with my Idaho hospital roommate. Time to deliver.

Both nights of my stay at Kootenai Health I enjoyed the “delights” of a so-called semi-private room. Two beds jammed side-by-side into a smallish space with only a flimsy draw curtain between occupants makes for relative visual privacy only. You overhear just about any and everything going on with your roomie ALL NIGHT LONG. So much for HIPAA compliance. No one sleeps particularly well in a hospital given all that must occur for patient care. I get that. But when your first night partner never turns off his TV to boot–well prospects for any decent rest suffer a nearly insurmountable challenge.

Night number two brought a glimmer of hope for a better night’s sleep. Roommate #1 got moved elsewhere, somewhere around 9 PM. Hallelujah! I prayed. Lord, please don’t let them wheel a newbie in here until tomorrow. I’m so tired. I’m sick with pneumonia. I need my rest. Have mercy on me, Father! And the Lord heard my prayer. He quickly answered with a resounding No.

By midnight roommate #2 arrived intermittently hacking, coughing, and cursing up a storm. I kid you not. Within the first fifteen minutes of entering the room, the man blasphemed the name of the Lord Jesus Christ a total of three different times. Not only that, within minutes of getting situated in his bed, he turned on his TV and you guessed it–left it on ALL NIGHT LONG. Good grief. Things went from bad to worse just like that. I lay there a mixture of emotion stewing over such inconsiderate treatment by a fellow human being.

Just then began my JOMO learning experience. The Lord brought to mind the Golden Rule in Matthew 7:12: “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” I asked myself this question. If the circumstances were reversed, what would I wish my roommate would do for me? The answer came lightning fast. Pray for me! So, by God’s grace and with the Spirit’s help, I immediately traded my complaining, unthankful spirit, for a prayerful and merciful one. I had no idea what potentially life-threatening illness the man faced nor how serious his condition. A wave of compassion swelled within me and I prayed for his body and his soul. God prevented my teaching the Golden Rule in a church camp in Canada so I might learn something about practicing the Golden Rule in a hospital in Idaho. Welcome to JOMO.

The next morning Jan and I overheard doctors talking with my roommate about his head and neck cancer. He faced surgery that day to place a peg tube in his side to meet his nutritional needs while undergoing treatment to his throat. Hearing all that jumped my compassion quotient to an even higher level given my own tongue cancer story. When the doctors left, I snagged the opportunity to peek around the curtain. I introduced my survivor self. I told him and his wife how I felt strangely moved in the night to pray for him and now I knew why. Unfortunately, there was no time to share the gospel with him. I did however encourage him that I would continue to pray for him from afar.

Who knows how the Lord might use such a small thing to do a greater thing in Steve’s heart? I covet your prayers with me for him, if he comes to mind. Thank you!

JOMO AND THE GOLDEN RULE

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Practicing What I Didn’t Get to Teach in BC

In my quiet time with the Lord this morning, I read this from William Jay’s devotional Morning Exercises:

A natural man is only concerned to escape from trouble, but the Christian is anxious to have it sanctified and improved. He is commanded to hear the rod. While God chastens he teaches. I must therefore be in a learning frame of mind. I must say unto God, “Show me wherefore thou contendest with me.” “I will hear what, by this event, God the Lord will speak.”

In my recent post JOMO NOT FOMO, I shared something of the same idea as a result of the providential curve ball which landed me in an Idaho hospital with aspiration pneumonia. Part of the joy of missing out on teaching at the church camp in Canada was the benefit of a sharpened focus on hearing what God is saying and doing in the change of events. I alluded to a conversation I engaged with my hospital roommate who just so happened to be suffering with head and neck cancer–the very same kind which afflicted me back in 2005. How my health troubles were “sanctified and improved” by that encounter centered on one of the messages I planned to give at the camp from Matthew 7:1-12.

Jesus closed his teaching on how to engage others constructively in relational conflicts with the well-known and so-called Golden Rule. “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” Before I can share about the Golden Rule joy I gained from missing out in Canada through my roommate story, I need to unpack the message content from the talk I never gave, but Jesus led me to practice.

The Golden Rule has been called “the Everest of all ethical teaching.” The Reformed Study Bible entry notes:

This principle was stated in a negative form by various ancient thinkers as, “Do not do to others what you do not want done to you.” Jesus makes it a positive obligation, a requirement to proactively do for others the good one wants for oneself. Here it appears after the discussion of God’s goodness and His willingness to give.

Because God is this good to you, go and do likewise with others! Jesus stresses the importance of embracing this Golden Rule ethic in all our relationships at the end of v. 12: “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets” (emphasis added). In other words, this MO in treating others matters so much as a professed kingdom follower of Jesus because it distills into one sentence the essence of everything taught in the Old Testament. This is Leviticus 19:18 in action: “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.” Jesus put it this way when asked which is the great commandment in Matthew 22:37-40: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” The Golden Rule puts radical greatest-of-these-is-love into action.

Ken Sande suggests asking ourselves some helpful questions to evaluate how well we do or do not embrace this: “Would I want someone else to treat me the way I have been treating him? How would I feel if I found out people were saying about me what I’ve said about her? If our positions were reversed, how would I feel if he did what I have done?”

Questions like those in application of the Golden Rule with my challenging middle-of-the night hospital roommate made all the difference in whether or not I sanctified and improved that trial and, as a result, more thoroughly experienced the joy of missing out.

Lest this turn into an interminably long post, the rest of the story must wait for the next edition!

JOMO NOT FOMO

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Choosing Joy When Plans Go South

From the get-go our Canada adventure seemed destined for surprises necessitating adjustments. It started with a 4:30 AM Delta text about a prolonged delay. I scrambled to book an alternate flight. Jan developed a sore throat soon after our arrival in Idaho. The morning we expected to drive to Kelowna, BC for my weekend speaking engagement, I succumbed to chest congestion and coughing. Off we went to an urgent care. By the end of the day, I was hospitalized with a case of aspiration pneumonia. So much for teaching peacemaking at the church camp.

I must confess my struggle with disappointment. A lot of work went into preparing the four messages I hoped to bring that weekend. I love teaching the Bible, especially when the subject focuses on my passion to promote the blessedness of peacemaking (Matthew 5:9). I looked forward to helping my host and his people with conflict coaching for their respective challenges. And Jan and I both regretted missing out on surveying the glory of God on display in the Canadian wilderness.

Providence, as it has done so often before, threw me a curve ball of changed circumstances (Ecclesiastes 7:13-14). I had a choice to make. FOMO or JOMO? The former acronym, the fear of missing out, I knew all too well. But the latter, the joy of missing out, hit my radar screen for the first time on this trip. Apparently, JOMO is a thing. Who knew? The Lord used it to keep me from wallowing in disappointment in favor of rejoicing (Philippians 4:4) and giving thanks (1 Thessalonians 5:18). He showed me at least three upsides to the change in plans.

Checked Pride

When I wrote about the prospect of this Canada engagement in my last post, I put things this way: “The next of those ministry opportunities takes place, Lord willing, this weekend.” I’ve learned over time to qualify all future plans accordingly from texts like James 4:13-17:

13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— 14 yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. 15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” 16 As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. 17 So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.

To add “Lord willing” to one’s future plans is no trivial qualifier. It reveals humility that acknowledges God’s sovereignty over every circumstance. We simply do not know what tomorrow may bring. To presume certainty in planning amounts to sinful boasting which belies the fragility and brevity of life.

Increased Contentment

The longer I live and walk with the Lord I am more convinced than ever of one thing. God cares more about what he is doing in me than what he is doing through me. That pertains particularly through cultivating what Paul calls the secret of contentment in Philippians 4:10-13:

10 I rejoiced in the Lord greatly that now at length you have revived your concern for me. You were indeed concerned for me, but you had no opportunity. 11 Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned, in whatever situation I am, to be content. 12 I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. 13 I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

I almost labeled this section “Learned Contentment.” Paul seemed to have arrived at a level of maturity wherein he actually experienced both joy in abundance and need. His JOMO secret of contentment lay in his trust in the Lord’s strength to sustain him in every providence, hard or easy. I’m not there yet, but I rejoice to be learning more along the way of life’s highs and lows.

Sharpened Focus

Not more than two days after returning from our trip, this passage jumped off the page in my daily Bible reading in 1 Corinthians 16:5-9:

5 I will visit you after passing through Macedonia, for I intend to pass through Macedonia, 6 and perhaps I will stay with you or even spend the winter, so that you may help me on my journey, wherever I go. 7 For I do not want to see you now just in passing. I hope to spend some time with you, if the Lord permits. 8 But I will stay in Ephesus until Pentecost, 9 for a wide door for effective work has opened to me, and there are many adversaries.

Paul clearly looked forward to the prospect of an extended visit with the church at Corinth. But he knew better than to presume upon the Father’s will for the future–hence “if the Lord permits.” Besides, he had no doubt about God’s will for the present–a wide door for effective work in Ephesus! JOMO happens when we ask the Father, What doors will you open for my service now that these others have closed? Perhaps in another post I will write about my interaction with my hospital roommate who it just so happens was suffering from head and neck cancer just like I have!

God is always working through every kind of providence that we may even embrace JOMO. Choose joy for the plans he has to transform us more and more into the likeness of our older brother, King Jesus (Romans 8:29).

WHO MADE THIS MOUTH?

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Reflections on Being a Dull-of-Speech Preacher

Some anniversaries on the calendar mark more significant milestones than others. Ever since 2005, March 8 reminds me how dramatically and increasingly challenging my pastoral vocation became from that day on. It took five hours on the table that Tuesday for a surgeon to excise an egg-sized cancerous tumor along with one-third of my tongue. Never again would I step into a pulpit without acknowledging that an already tough task had become even harder because of the new speech impairments.

Also vivid in my memory that year is the Sunday just five days after my surgery. Surprisingly, I felt well enough to attend church. Nancy, my late wife, and I occupied the front row as usual. A fellow elder, slated to give the pastoral prayer that day, sat supportively beside me. As the time approached in the service for that prayer, I felt strongly impressed that the Lord actually wanted me to do it. Much to my surprise and to the congregation’s, there I, their teaching pastor, stood before them to pray, with 33% less of a tongue and sporting a hockey-stick shaped, still-sutured scar running from my right ear to my Adam’s apple.

I don’t remember what I prayed. But I do recall exactly how I started. I slowly read this text from Exodus 4:10-12:

10 But Moses said to the Lord, “Oh, my Lord, I am not eloquent, either in the past or since you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and of tongue.” 11 Then the Lord said to him, “Who has made man’s mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? 12 Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak.”

Our guest preacher of the day, Dr. Bruce Waltke, called that extraordinary God-moment a sermon all its own. He was right. I’ve never forgotten that day, or the day of my surgery, which marked me for good ever since.

Ten years later my slow-of-speech-and-tongue mouth got even worse. Downstream effects of radiation treatment in ‘05 eventually fried my mandible requiring jaw reconstruction in 2016 (see image above). Multiple surgeries added to my frustration and difficulty with articulation throughout the last six years of my vocational ministry. Thankfully the Lord continued to help me all the way to the pastoral finish line. Retirement in 2022 brought a measure of welcomed relief from weekly pulpit demands. And yet . . . I’ve wrestled often with what usefulness in retirement looks like for me. Could I or should I still preach occasionally, as humbling as it is, or chalk it up to “that was then, this is now”? Over the last few years, I had all but given up on the prospect. After all, who wants to listen to Preacher Dull/Heavy/Slow of Speech and Tongue (literal meaning of the Hebrew kabed)? Or so I thought.

But recently the Lord has been working in some unexpected ways. Last month I found myself officiating a wedding including a personal charge to the couple. This Sunday evening I will preach my first sermon in three years at our local church. And Lord willing, this September I will bring four messages on fighting for peace and unity for a church camp in British Columbia. Go figure! The Lord seems to have more for me to do.

Whatever speech issues plagued Moses enough for him to balk at his calling, mine make me sympathetic to his reluctance. I’m so thankful this exchange between him and the Lord made it into the biblical record. It serves as a continual encouragement in my retirement to welcome any further calling he may require of me, no matter how surprising.

Who has made this man’s mouth? Is it not the Lord? It is. How will this man speak no matter however, wherever called upon to do so? Same answer as always. Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak.

I believe Lord, help my unbelief.

DIFFERENT DAYS & ASSIGNMENTS

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How Ecclesiastes 7:14 Informs Choices in Plenty & Want

In recent years I have returned to this text time and again:

In the day of prosperity be joyful, and in the day of adversity consider: God has made the one as well as the other, so that man may not find out anything that will be after him.

Adversity has characterized the better part of my last three years. Great loss, grief, physical sufferings and more have visited my household.

assignment

The wisdom writer calls for different responses for different days. Adversity necessitates reflection.  Consider is the assignment. God brings both plenty and want into our lives. He is sovereign over all. We ponder this truth that we may not find out anything that will be after us.

Puritan commentator Matthew Henry observed:

Day and night, summer and winter, are set the one over against the other, that in prosperity we may rejoice as though we rejoiced not, and in adversity may weep as though we wept not, for we may plainly see the one from the other and quickly exchange the one for the other; and it is to the end that man may find nothing after him, that he may not be at any certainty concerning future events or the continuance of the present scene, but may live in a dependence upon Providence and be ready for whatever happens. Or that man may find nothing in the work of God which he can pretend to amend.

I have done my fair share of considering of late. That has been true even most recently as well. It explains in part the absence of blog posts for more than a month.

I developed a post-op infection in my hip following my November 2016 jaw reconstruction surgery. A draining wound has plagued me ever since. Doctors finally determined the need to debride the hip on March 10. They feared the presence of bone infection that would necessitate continuous IV antibiotics for six to eight weeks.

This past Tuesday proved an occasion for rejoicing. Frankly, I prefer this assignment. Who doesn’t? My Miami surgeon gave me a good report about the incision. He removed the stitches. He does not think I have any lingering infection. I should be fine. Talk about a day of prosperity!

That, in conjunction with my marriage last Saturday to Lady Jan, has brought me into a season of great joy. I’ve not been this happy for a long time. Thanks be to God.

Still, I remain mindful that I don’t know what providence will bring in the future. Different days will require different responses.

May God give grace to rejoice or consider as assigned.

God of the Hard Thing

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Death of Ezekiel's wife

I’ve read through the entire Bible each year for over a decade now. That’s not to impress anyone. When Jesus quotes the Old Testament while under Satan’s temptation that man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God (Matt. 4:4), I figure that behooves me to make a priority of reading all the word of God on a regular basis. One of the benefits of this discipline among others is that you come across otherwise obscure passages you might never read and that you rarely hear preached.

A prime example for me, which never ceases to astonish me as a smitten, taken, covenant-bound married man, shows up each year in Ezekiel 24:15-18.

The word of the Lord came to me: “Son of man, behold, I am about to take the delight of your eyes away from you at a stroke; yet you shall not mourn or weep, nor shall your tears run down. Sigh, but not aloud; make no mourning for the dead. Bind on your turban, and put your shoes on your feet; do not cover your lips, nor eat the bread of men.” So I spoke to the people in the morning, and at evening my wife died. And on the next morning I did as I was commanded.

Good grief. Really? Apparently Ezekiel felt the same away about his bride as I do mine. And God knew it. The Lord referred to her as the delight of his eyes. Just like that. All it takes is a sovereign stroke and she’s gone. On top of such a blow comes the prohibition of grief. No mourning. No weeping. No tears. OK, you can sigh, but under your breath only. Customarily an Israelite mourning a loved one would have put on sackcloth, lain on the ground, tosses ashes on his head, and so on. No emotion allowed whatsoever. I can hardly begin to imagine how excruciating the prophet would have found the Lord’s will in this instance.

Tell me God doesn’t require hard things of His servants! This sobers me when I think about what makes men faithful pastors of their people. It sobers me when I think about what makes faithful servants of God’s people period. This week a colleague of mine in the gospel lost his son to suicide. A month ago dear friends of mine lost their twenty-year old daughter after weeks watching her languish on life support. When people ask me if such things are God will, all I can do is point them to texts like this in Ezekiel and words like Job’s after he suffered the loss of all his children – “Naked I cam from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21). There are more examples of course, but you get the point.

Take away? God’s ultimate purposes trump anyone’s personal agenda. End of story. Ligonier Ministries explains the big picture well:

Such a death seems to be a drastic, almost “desperate” step for the Lord to take to get His point across. Of course, in reality, God never finds Himself in a desperate situation. But from a human perspective, the covenant community’s refusal to believe that the Lord would let Jerusalem fall was a desperate situation, and desperate times required desperate measures. The death of Ezekiel’s wife prefigured the loss of the temple, which was “the delight of [the Jews’] eyes.” God strove to make His intent clear so that the people would have no excuse. Despite the hardship in the loss of Ezekiel’s wife and temple, however, all would be for the good of Israel (vv. 19–27). Through the trouble, the people would come to know that He is the Lord.

Of course, I hope the Lord never requires such a thing or anything near it of me or you as his servant. He has asked me in the past, or at least I have interpreted things this way, to do hard things and I have sought to do them however imperfectly. But I would like to think, God have mercy, that if so required, I would take my cue from the prophet and do as commanded.

Would you?

ABLE for the Journey from Bitter to Blessed

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On Sunday toward the close of my Mother’s Day message, I inserted an acrostic using the word ABLE to help crystallize four practical application principles for making the journey from a place of resentment in our spiritual lives to one of true blessed contentment. Naomi (means pleasant or sweet) suffered so greatly from a battle with bitterness over all the hard providences of  Ruth chapter one that she requested a name change to Mara (means bitter) in keeping with her frame of mind. A root of bitterness springing up does cause trouble (Heb. 12:15).

I went over it fairly fast due to the time. Also, it wasn’t in the notes as I only came up with the idea early that morning. I thought I would review it here in the blog in case someone might have missed some or all of it.

A – admit your struggle. There is something of Mara/Naomi in all of us. This was a godly woman. She struggled as we all do. I personally find this encouraging. The Lord loved her enough to bring her through it graciously over time. It doesn’t do any good to deny feelings of resentment. Rather than run from the Lord, take those feelings to the Lord for His help.

B – believe the truth. Begin with the truth of the gospel. I love J. D. Greear’s gospel prayer that he unpacks in his book on the gospel. The first point goes like this: In Christ, there is nothing I could do to make You love me more; nothing I have done that makes You love me less. That last phrase is particularly applicable. Satan loves to accuse us when ingratitude and other sins take hold. When he does we must cling to the gospel and remember that our standing with God in Christ is not about our performance; it’s about His provision. We have become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Cor. 5:21).

Beyond that, believe the truth of exceedingly great and precious promises of God’s word that reveal His continual plotting for His glory and our good in every circumstance, even the difficult ones. Romans 8:31 stands out among them. If God is for us, who can be against us? Psalm 118:6 is a good one to wage the fight for joy against unbelief and resentment as well: The Lord is on my side; I will not fear.

L – look for the sweet providences a midst the hard. I spent a good bit of the message demonstrating how Naomi’s bitterness blinded her to all the good things God was doing even in the midst of her struggles. Calling herself empty when she had such a treasure in the partnership of Ruth was only one but perhaps the most obvious. Ask the Lord to help your eyes to be open to signs of His goodness that you might not be noticing, like perhaps a good friend sticking with you through your trial. I failed to mention this on Sunday but one way to help cultivate that discipline is to write your thoughts down in a journal. That can tend to focus concentration on things in a marvelous way.

E – engage in thanksgiving. There is no room for bitterness in a thankful heart. If you practice the art of giving thanks for the many providence of your life, it tends to keep resentment at bay. And when you can’t find even one, as a believer you can always give thanks for the gospel and the fact that God has made you part of His greater story of redemption and that, in the words of John Piper, your life and mine in Him is not given over to trifles.

His words were on this matter were so good, I will quote them once more here:

The book of Ruth wants to teach us that God’s purpose for the life of his people is to connect us to something far greater than ourselves. God wants us to know that when we follow him, our lives always mean more than we think they do. For the Christian there is always a connection between the ordinary events of life and the stupendous work of God in history. Everything we do in obedience to God, no matter how small, is significant. It is part of a cosmic mosaic which God is painting to display the greatness of his power and wisdom to the world and to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places (Ephesians 3:10). The deep satisfaction of the Christian life is that it is not given over to trifles. Serving a widowed mother-in-law, gleaning in a field, falling in love, having a baby—for the Christian these things are all connected to eternity. They are part of something so much bigger than they seem.

Are you able to make the journey from bitter to blessed? Neither am I. But He is.

The VOM Voice Gone Silent

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The letter came today.

Voice of the Martyrs (Nancy and I receive their monthly newsletter and give as led to their ministry from time to time), fiercely devoted to serving the persecuted church across the globe since 1967, confirmed what I had already heard via the internet.

Executive Director, Tom White, took his own life last month. This husband, father, grandfather, and articulate voice for the persecuted (I know, I’ve read many an editorial by the man), himself once imprisoned for his faith in Cuba, did what to many, especially Christians, can only be described as the unthinkable. He committed suicide.

Not much is known about the circumstances. But, to VOM’s credit, they revealed that the day before his fatal choice, “allegations were made to authorities that Tom had inappropriate contact with a young girl.” Here’s what the writer of the letter speaking on behalf of VOM gave as his settled-upon explanation: “I personally believe that rather than face those allegations and the resulting fallout for his family and this ministry, Tom chose to end his life.”

What are we to make of this? How are we to respond?

I say let there be compassion. Only days ago I read in 1 Kings 19:4 of the great prophet Elijah’s plea, gripped with fear, for God to take his life as he fled into the wilderness to escape the threats of the evil Jezebel. God’s servants can and do know cavernous depths of depression. William Cowper, poet and hymn writer (he gave us, among others, God Moves in Mysterious Ways His Wonders to Perform) made multiple attempts on his angst-filled life. Believers do not escape the slough of despair.

I say let there be perspective. By that I mean providence perspective. I have no earthly idea if Tom White did anything untoward the girl in question. Of course that is possible. I admit, it doesn’t look good. But what if he didn’t? What if he was entirely innocent? What if the truth lies somewhere in between? Only eternity will tell.

But one thing is for sure. In interpreting the hard providence of dreadfully incriminating accusation, Tom White, who, from what I can tell, no one believes was a false professor of Christianity but rather a true believer, failed to count Romans 8:31 ultimately true for him – If God is for us, who can be against us?

Who knows how God was plotting for the man’s good through a Romans 8:28 kind of working out of things? And this cancer survivor and pastor of four churches over time does not say such a thing flippantly.

Naomi made the same mistake, an incomplete and inadequate interpreting of providence in her crushing circumstances in the book of Ruth. That is the subject of my Mother’s Day message this Sunday. I wish I didn’t have such a pertinent and recent illustration with which to work. But the truth is I do.

I trust the Lord will use it, the text, and my words somewhat to serve us all on the journey from bitter to blessed that will keep us from such a fate and oh so much more – deep, abiding, exquisite, even-in-the-hard-providences joy in Him.

Dealing with Delays

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You can see by the sign our latest thinking. Hopes are high for a CO by the end of April, CW – city willing. We should close out construction relatively soon. Then everything depends on passing all the necessary inspections. Please continue to pray for favor.

Even so, we don’t expect to publicize an official opening or hold a dedication service until we have a few weeks or so in the building to get established and work out the bugs. I suspect we may well draft a tentative schedule for soft opening dates leading up to an all-systems-go at our leadership team meeting set for the end of the month. We will keep you posted along the way.

In total, our delay will have dragged on for two months. I thought my disappointment quotient might have run higher. Maybe it hasn’t because ever since that sign on the property went up we’ve included the initials LW at the end. Lord willing. For good reason. James says in chapter 4 of his epistle that we don’t have any idea about what will happen tomorrow. Life is nothing more than a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. His counsel in v. 15? You ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that. Opening new church buildings definitely falls under the broad category of this or that. Plan, but hold everything loosely.

Do you find yourself experiencing delay on some front? Remember who is in control. Our capacity to go anywhere, do anything, be any place, accomplish any objective either sooner or later rests ultimately not with any city or person(s) but with Him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of His will (Eph. 1:11). He’s never late but always right on schedule. Wait on Him.

How Our Extraordinary God Deploys Ordinary People for His Extraordinary Purposes

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Yesterday’s message in Acts 18:1-28 is now on the web. You can listen to the audio here.

Here’s a summary of the message:

Our extraordinary God specializes in deploying/using ordinary people for His extraordinary gospel purposes. He guides them by providence in circumstances. He galvanizes them for mission through the gospel. And He grounds them in truth for discipleship. How about you, ordinary Joe or Jane, Jim or Janice? Do you know this extraordinary Jesus in terms of His glorious saving Gospel? If you aren’t certain about that, let us know and we will get you some resources to help you. If you do, do you realize He means to deploy you in His mission where you live, work, and play, maybe even beyond at some point in a short term mission or even long term relocation/? Don’t rule out something quite surprising from this God! How mobile are you for the sake of Christ? You never know when and where providence might point you in a missional direction. Be ready! Start praying J. D. Greear’s gospel prayer daily (I’ll post it on my blog – see above) and buckle your seat belt and keep your arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times.

May God give us grace to grow as a people on mission among peoples near and far!