Within just a week and a half of each other we celebrated our birth and freedom as a nation and we also witnessed the landmark supreme court decision legalizing same sex marriage across our nation. Some would say that the freedom we enjoy as a nation was symbolized by this decision of the supreme court.  I disagree.  Leaving aside, momentarily, all concerns related to the Bible and the historic Christian faith I have as a pastor, this decision and the ensuing trajectory disturbs me as a citizen.  It is not a good thing, and surely the founders of our country would agree, that five people who were appointed (not elected by the people) would make a decision overturning what has been the foundation of society for millennia. 

 So as Christians what do we do in light of this decision?  Well we do what Christians who live in places hostile to biblical faith and practice have done for 2,000 years–we maintain the distinctive of our faith  even if it means persecution.   We don’t do anything to violate what we believe.  But we also love those who disagree with us.  We need to be mindful that our world is a mission field not a battle field. We do our best to live in such a way so that we don’t give anyone reason to despise us.  So, as we disagree with the sinful sexual ethic of same sex marriage and homosexuality, we had better make sure we are following God’s Word in our own lives.  We have little room to be upset by the supreme court decision if we are too tolerant of sin in our own lives.                  

And as we defend the biblical definition of marriage we need to make darn sure that our marriages are true reflections of the love between Christ and His bride, the church.   Wives do you respect your husbands and yield to his servant leadership?  Do you always speak well of him and appreciate him and do your best to serve and love him?   Husbands do you love your wives as Christ loves the church and sacrificed for her to the point of death?  Do you cherish her with tenderness and affection.  Do you make your wife’s needs and desires your priority and selflessly serve her? 

In our heterosexual marriages are we submitting to each other out of reverence for Christ as Paul instructs us in Ephesians 5? We need to make sure we are doing our best to do that if we are going to talk about the biblical definition of marriage. Marriage has long been damaged and distorted by unbiblical heterosexual marriage long before the decision on June 26^th.               

Furthermore, we need to get it through our heads once and for all that we inhabit a post Christian nation which is still by many standards a great nation-the greatest in the history of the world.  America has been a nation in which religious freedom is protected. And it is a nation for which I would die if called upon because I truly love and admire our country regardless of things about it with which I disagree.   This is the spot on the globe that God has placed me to live out my faith and I am so glad that I am here.  We are incredibly blessed and fortunate to live in this country.  

But this place is not my ultimate home.             

The church of Jesus Christ and the kingdom of God is not to be equated with any temporal country, place on the globe, form of government, or political party.  We have the right and duty as citizens and Christians to pray for our leaders and do whatever we can to influence our culture in a Christ honoring way. But let’s be done with this Idea that as our country goes so goes the kingdom of God.  God is still alive and active in our world and in our country.   We can love our country and serve our country and even give our lives in defense of it.  But this country is not our home.  We are passing through.  We are resident missionaries in what is increasingly becoming a strange and dark land.  God help us if we ever start to feel too comfortable here.  But we can still worship and serve our God in a biblically faithful and, yet, a loving way.             

What do we do? We follow in the footsteps of Jesus-Who accepted everyone but who still identified sin in a loving yet stern way.  Jesus never hesitated to call out people for their sin and hypocrisy whether the woman caught in adultery or the religious leaders who trapped her.  And if our beliefs cause us to be ridiculed or hated or despised, we rejoice that we have been counted worthy to suffer for the cause of Christ.  But let’s be sure that if we are hated or despised it’s because of our clear adherence to the Word of God and not because we are just being creepy, unloving people.             

We can and will find ways to love others with whom we disagree even as we don’t compromise God’s Word.  I would love for Christians everywhere to get as concerned about all the other things that God’s Word tells us as followers of Christ as we are about same sex marriage and homosexuality.  Things such as our priorities, what we allow into our homes, how we steward our resources, the time and priority we give to his church, whether or not we are serving and studying His Word, and sharing the hope of Christ.              

So we do our best to love others and to be full of grace and compassion.  But we dare not compromise the clear teaching of God’s Word on this matter.  Jesus is still Lord, God is still in charge of His Kingdom and His world.  And grace is still offered freely to anyone who would come to Him in faith and repentance.   We are all sinners in big and small ways. We are all dependent on a gracious God who loves us not according to our sins but His mercy and grace in Christ.  Let’s remember that as we live out our faith as the Body of Christ in a world of broken and sinful  people of whom we are some of the worst.                                                            

In the history of the world there have been a lot of big talkers, boasters, and braggarts.  From the infomercial huckster hawking the latest, greatest gizmo to the latest guru’s incredibly awesome, life changing get rich quick system there are always those who love to strut about the world’s stage like proud peacocks.  But there is usually little substance behind all the blustery self promotion.  Such was not the case when a carpenter from an insignificant little town dared to pick up a scroll, read from it a prophecy from Isaiah, and then declare to an astonished crowd that he was the fulfillment of that prophecy.  It was a bold claim.  And, yet it was simply the truth.  Truth which has been substantiated over the last 2,000 years.  

Quoting Isaiah 61:1,2, Jesus proclaimed that he was the one on whom the Lord’s Spirit rested. He claimed to be the One anointed to preach good news to the poor, freedom for prisoners, recovery of sight for the blind, and release for the oppressed.  He ushered in a new era of God’s favor alluding to the Old Testament Year of Jubilee—a time every 50 years when people could have a fresh start.  That’s what Jesus offered back then just as he still does today—a new start.  And on every one of those counts, Jesus delivers on his claims.  Names like Charles Colson, C.S. Lewis, the apostle Paul, John Newton, William Wilberforce and many others come to mind as proof that, in Christ, people can start over as new creations.  And that, in the name of Christ, people can be set free from all manner of bondage.

But the harder question, I believe, is trying to discern why we are not always set free from such oppression and bondage. There are times when I have to say with Paul that though my sight has been restored I still struggle with spiritual darkness.  There are times when I do what I don’t want to do and don’t do what I should do.  There are still times when I’m captive in Babylon and need a Year of Jubilee.  It’s a good thing that Jesus’ claims are as true today as they were when he first unrolled the scroll and proclaimed the year of the Lord’s favor. 

Originally published in The Lookout magazine, May 2014

It’s about 2am on Tuesday morning as I write this.  I am sitting here in the stillness of the early morning trying writing this article by the glow of Christmas lights.  Normally, drinking coffee at night (or any other time) doesn’t keep me awake.  But for some reason the coffee I had three hours ago seems to be doing that—or maybe it’s the realization that Christmas is just a little over 2 weeks away and I am not ready!   So maybe I shouldn’t drink my favorite beverage—Starbuck’s Christmas Blend coffee—late at night.  But it will be hard because I love coffee!  Many of you do as well. And Christmas Blend is so good!

Speaking of coffee I love reading about the history of it.  I mean who in the world would ever think of taking this little bean and roasting it, grinding it, and pouring hot water over it.  But the history of coffee and coffee consumption is fascinating if not a little puzzling.   In 1511, an Arabic poem titled In Praise of Coffee was written.  It reads:

“This is the beverage of the friends of God.”

I couldn’t agree more, but I was interested to learn that this elixir loved by so many has had a stormy history among Christian folk.             

According to a fascinating book, The Greatest Stories Never Told, published by the folks from The History Channel, the coffee craze first gripped the world about six hundred years ago in the Middle East. Some of the earliest coffee fanatics were Muslim mystics, trying to stay awake for nighttime worship. So important was this drink that, in Turkey during the 1500s, a woman could divorce a man who did not provide her with enough coffee! I’m sure my wife would agree if I ever failed to make her morning coffee in a to go cup. I’m not taking any chances!            

When coffee hit Europe in the late 1500s, priests at the Vatican argued that it was a satanic concoction of Islamic infidels. Accordingly, they thought it should be banned. That’s when Pope Clement VIII stepped in.  After giving coffee a taste, he gave his blessing to the bean.  “This Satan’s drink is so delicious,” he supposedly said, “it would be a pity to let the infidels have exclusive use of it. We shall fool Satan by baptizing it.”  With his blessing, coffee soon began to conquer Europe, and become the morning necessity it remains for many people today.             

I love that—“We shall fool Satan by baptizing it.”  I don’t agree too often with the Medieval Catholic Church, but old Pope Clement had this one right.  Too often Christians get all worked up over things which, though not explicitly Christian, can be used for the greater glory of God and point to His gifts.  I think of the many, non-salvation issues Christians have fussed and fumed about: Harry Potter, Contemporary Christian music, praise choruses, different instruments in church, Halloween, Bible versions, Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and, yes, even Christmas.              

We all know that the presents, lights, decorations, much of the music, etc. are not part of the real meaning of Christmas.  But let’s baptize them for the glory of God and enjoy them as we celebrate the real meaning of Christmas.  Christians should be the most joyous of all people at this time of the year. Yet how many sermons have we all had to endure in which some grim faced preacher lamented the external, cultural trappings of the season as if we didn’t all know that already.  We should be discerning of our culture, but I suspect that Satan does a lot more of his work among the things, beliefs, and attitudes that would never occur to us.  As for Christmas?  Let’s baptize every cookie, carol,  light, plastic Frosty, present, and Christmas tree for God’s glory!  I do hope that your Christmas plans do include our Christmas Eve Candle light worship and communion service.  This is always a special time filled with warmth, light, love, music, and worship.  If you have never participated, you would do well to begin a new tradition.

Our daughter, Becca, will soon begin her 7th grade year.  It’s so hard to believe how quickly the past 12 years have gone by.  My mind goes back 13 years to the summer of 2000 when we first learned that Lori was expecting.  It was a hard time.  We lived in Indiana and had been pastoring the church there for about 9 years but things were not going well.  Things were pretty much coming to a head at the church. Yet Lori had a great job she loved and we loved our church family and  we thought we were done having kids and had settled in a nice routine with our two young sons.  

But one day around May she told me that she thought she was pregnant.  I have to say that I was not happy about the prospect.  God forgive me but I just didn’t want to go through that all again especially with things uncertain at church.  I walked around in a daze for a couple of days.  I remember one late night in particular I had to go to Kmart to get something.  I found myself in the baby stuff aisle looking at the diapers and formula and car seats and strollers and a bunch of new stuff they had invented since our last round of babies.  I was miserable.   Then a reprieve as the next day she told me that it had been a false alarm and she wasn’t with child.  I was pretty relieved.  I’m not saying my attitude was right.  It’s just how it was.

Well, then the next day she told me the false alarm had been a false alarm.  She was pretty sure she was pregnant.  I know it’s a woman’s prerogative to change her mind, but this was ridiculous.   I recall telling God “I know this is supposed to be a blessing and I know I’m supposed to worship you, but I’m just not there.”  About this time Lori and I had plans to attend a concert by Scott Krypanne at a local church with some friends of ours, Tim and Leigh Hansen.  But Lori couldn’t go because that weekend her aunt and uncle were brutally murdered at night in their suburban Indianapolis home.  A crazy thing you hear about but never think will happen in your own family.  So Lori went to be with her family in Indianapolis.  I told our friends that I just didn’t want to go to the concert.  The murders, the unexpected baby, the church–it was just too much and I really didn’t feel like going to a Christian concert without Lori and listening to someone sing about God.  

I wasn’t angry at God I just didn’t feel like it.  Well, they insisted and pretty much kidnapped me.  If you have ever seen Scott Krypanne, his concerts are more worship service than concert.  And about half way through God just broke me down and laid me bare and convicted me of my shallowness and my lack of faith in Him.  And a sense of worship came over me.  I will have to say it was one of the most profound senses of God’s presence and awesomeness and sovereignty I have ever had.  My brokenness was the door through which God was able to get into a deeper place in my heart.

About halfway through the concert I looked over across the aisle and this guy, probably a few years younger than I, was holding on his lap a little girl with blonde hair and blue eyes and who looked to be about three.  I remember thinking and daring to pray “Lord, if we are going to have another child, please let it be a girl.”  I love my boys and wouldn’t trade that for anything, but how perfect would it be during this difficult time that God would give us a little girl. That perhaps He wasn’t going to give us what we thought we wanted, but he would give us what we needed.  I now believe as I looked at that man and his little blue eyed, blond haired girl and dared to pray my selfish prayer God just smiled.  

Rewind this to a few years before all this took place.  Lori and I are sitting in a parking lot having a heart wrenching discussion about the future of our family: Me wanting to be done with kids and desiring to make it official and final (if you get my drift), Her in tears not wanting to give up the dream of one day having a girl.  Lori won obviously and I’m so, so glad. 

Fast Forward back to the time in question.  We (or, rather, I–Lori never had a problem with it) adjusted to the idea of having a baby and I tried to not be too sinful in my pleas to God for a little girl.  I know that this may be hard to believe, but I do have a pretty strong pessimistic streak in me.  I just thought it would be too perfect for this to be a girl.  So I insisted on knowing the gender of this little serendipitous blessing.  Two times we had ultrasounds to determine the sex.  Both times the doctor would not even venture a guess.  The little one just wouldn’t give us a good view.  Looking back, that should have been my first clue that it was a girl.  The story is now well told to anyone who allowed me to tell it of how early on a Sunday morning I’m getting ready for church and Lori calls to me that her water broke.  This was a good three weeks before the due date. And so we fly off to the hospital where a few hours later we meet our daughter.  I simply could not believe it was a girl.  And, in many ways, still can’t.   The words of  Jeremiah immediately came to my mind as it dawned on me that God gave us the desire of our hearts: “I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you.  Plans to give you hope and a future.”  And though I like to hassle her because that’s my job as her dad, Becca has been nothing but a blessing, a delight, and a constant reminder of God’s perfect timing. 

I have to say also, that my main worries were alleviated after the concert when I went to get something to eat with our friends.  We were in such a position that Lori had to continue to work after the baby was born.  So we had to find a good child care situation and I fretted a lot about this.   Leigh had done babysitting for our boys when they were younger, and somehow we got on the subject of babies while we were eating. Tim and Leigh had three kids. Their two older were girls each roughly the same age as our boys.  And then they had just had a third child, a little boy.  And they were sure that IF Lori and I were to try again we would have a girl.  So I kind of baited them a little bit with the child care quandary  IF Lori were to get pregnant.  And Tim, being a man, volunteered Leigh to babysit the baby in their home.  And she said she would.  So I cautiously explored this with Leigh and even, jokingly, got it in writing that IF we were to have another child she would be our childcare provider.  Finally, I couldn’t take it any longer and I told them the secret.  They were the first to know, even before our families.  But I was so relieved that Leigh would watch the baby.  Before the concert I was a bundle of doom, gloom, stress, and anxiety.  But by the end of the evening I was praising God, had received a glimpse of hope that perhaps God was up to something in the form of a little blue eyed blond haired girl, and had the biggest burden relieved with the promise of an awesome child care provider.  And for the first year of Becca’s life, until we moved to MI, Leigh (and daughters, Aubrey and Mandie) gave Becca the best care.  

At that Scott Krippayne concert he sang a song that I had never heard before, but it just spoke to my heart at that difficult time and really helped turn the tide of my heart.  And it pretty much sums up that entire period in our life.  It’s a song called “You Have Been Good.” 
 

If I never get to see another rainbow;  or share another laugh with a friend.  If I never stand barefoot by the ocean or get to kiss my child goodnight again.   If I never have another prayer that’s answered; or have another blessing come my way.   If this is all I know of heaven’s kindness, Father I would still have to say.  You have been good.  You have been good.  And I am in wonder how could it be. You have been good, You’ve been so good.  In so many ways you’ve been good to me. You have shown me mercy upon mercy; grace upon grace time after time.  and I don’t deserve it, but you have been so patient and kind. If suddenly it all were ended.  And your blessings disappear. Looking back over a lifetime the evidence is clear.  
You have been good.  You have been good.  And I am in wonder how could it be. You have been good, You’ve been so good.  In so many ways you’ve been good to me. 

I recently ​heard that they are reviving the great show 24 for a limited run next year.  I don’t know if you were a fan of the show or not when it ran for several seasons.  But I will admit I was hooked.   Each of the 24 episodes in each season represented an hour of one day in the life of Jack Bauer.  Bauer and his associates worked for the fictional government agency, Counter Terrorism Unit (CTU), striving to thwart a range of national terrorist disasters.  In my favorite season the main culprit was the president himself. About midway through the season (or day in the show’s time) it became apparent that the president was behind the terrorist activity.  And so the rest of the season built toward a climactic showdown between Jack Bauer and president Logan. Finally, Logan would get what he deserved, and the tension that had been building all season would be resolved.

It was a satisfying moment when the secret service carted Logan off in the middle of a speech.  And seeing Jack Bauer finally get to relax a little—America and her citizenry safe once again—was great.  Yet the moment of resolution was short lived.  The season ended with Jack taking a call from his daughter at a pay phone in an empty building only to be kidnapped by terrorists from the last season and stowed on a boat bound for China.  This is how the show was—24 hours or episodes of tension followed by a moment of resolution quickly followed by another crisis and agonizing tension.  After suffering through a season with Jack, you just want to see the guy kick back in his recliner and take a well deserved nap.  But that’s not how the show works.  And, in reality, that’s not how this life works.  

Maybe that’s why the show was such an addicting hit.  We see a little of ourselves in Jack Bauer.  We don’t have to rescue the Secretary of Defense or prevent any number of disasters or save the free world from nuclear extinction.  But the terrorists that rob us of sleep and add unresolved tension to our lives are just as real.  We long for the day when there will no longer be any unexpected twists and turns to our lives. No cliffhangers. No waiting for the other shoe to drop. There will come a day, proclaims Scripture, of perfect peace and rest.  Until then we live in a world of unresolved suspended cords.

In his book, Blue Like Jazz, Donald Miller contends that life is like jazz.  Life, specifically the life of faith, is like jazz because so much of it seems disjointed and full of unresolved tension. Being a jazz lover, I was drawn to the title of the book and find it full of truth. I think this is what Paul is getting at in Romans 8 when he writes “The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration . . . We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves . . . wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.”  The symphony of this creation is building toward a grand, climactic resolution. Paul here is referring to the Second Coming of Christ.  Yet, we also think of Heaven in terms of finally being at peace and free from threat.

It use to be said (with some justification) that Christians were so heavenly minded they weren’t any earthly good.  Today, I think it’s the opposite—we’re so earthly minded we’re of no heavenly good.  Yet, as believers, we need to live our lives in the hope of Heaven’s promise.  When life feels too much like an episode of 24, we need to stay rooted in our ultimate hope and destination.  In Romans 8:24&25 Paul writes “Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.” Our hope lies in that which Scripture promises is yet to come.

Many years ago, when I was taking guitar lessons and studying jazz improvisation, my teacher always told me “when playing jazz the note you just played isn’t as important as the note you play next.  Even if you play a wrong note, but follow it with the right note—that’s jazz.”  Maybe that’s why I love jazz so much—it’s the music of the second chance.  What has happened or is happening isn’t as important as how we respond and what we do next.  We don’t hope for what we already have, says Paul, but for what we know is still coming.

As for poor old Jack Bauer, though, I’m sure he doesn’t have a clue what another day will hold for him.  So much for retirement, Jack.  Your mission should you choose to accept it is to save the world yet again.  And you only have 24 hours to do . . . minus time for commercial breaks