Jesus

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Forty Years

1973June2 - Leslie Jordan baptism closeup FredBailey KirkCummings_filteredToday is my rebirthday. Forty years ago on May 14, 1973 in a college dorm room, I prayed to ask God to forgive my sins and come live inside me.

Becoming a Christian was probably the least likely decision I ever expected to make. I was born to parents who were both raised Catholic but never met God. My mom was an atheist to her dying day, and my dad remains an agnostic (perhaps a deist) at age 91. As I grew I adopted their beliefs, and by high school I was a force to be dealt with. I was sure that science would answer all my questions. The idea of God was laughable.

Yet here I was, a freshman at a secular university, praying to “receive Jesus.” What happened?

God came and got me.

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Including a Cost-Benefit Analysis

What would we think of an army recruiter who got people to sign up for the military by telling them about the free food, free clothing, educational opportunities, and camaraderie, but never mentioned that soldiers also had to discipline themselves, obey orders, and likely go to war where they would be shot at? Not very honest, is it?

Someone considering enlisting needs to consider both the benefits and the costs of being in the military. Of course, no one would be so ignorant, at least when it comes to military service. But what about following Jesus?

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Nobody Want to Go Now

Everybody wants to go to heaven
Have a mansion high above the clouds
Everybody want to go to heaven
But nobody want to go now
…
Everybody wanna go to heaven
Hallelujah, let me hear you shout
Everybody wanna go to heaven
But nobody wanna go now
I think I speak for the crowd
Nobody want to go now

—Kenny Chesney, “Everybody Wants to go to Heaven”

As followers of Jesus, we have an incredible assurance: we’re going to spend eternity alive with him. I know a lot of Christians who are eagerly looking forward to that day when they see their Savior face to face. Yet, when presented with an opportunity to see him now—when diagnosed with a potentially terminal illness, for example—most choose to fight for life. Does that mean they lack faith?

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Resurrection Sunday

Easter is my favorite day of the year—Resurrection Sunday, the reason for my faith in Jesus and my hope of heaven. While Christmas is buried under tons of tradition, Easter has escaped relatively unscathed. Perhaps that’s why I like it best.

Sure, Easter gets mingled with the renewal of springtime. When I was small, my secular parents observed this holiest of days with jelly beans and marshmallow peeps, a chocolate bunny and perhaps an Easter egg hunt. But there are still ways to focus on the significance of the resurrection. When I became a Christian at age 18, I started attending the sunrise service held on our college campus. I can still imagine every detail of the warm spring sunshine (it was California), green leaves, singing birds. We sat on the dew-covered grass and listened to a pastor from a local church praise God for the resurrection. And we sang:

Hear the bells ringing. They’re singing that you can be born again. Hear the bells ringing. They’re singing Christ is risen from the dead.

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When Not to Believe the Bible

True or false: We can always know God’s will by reading the Bible.

True! you say. Of course that’s true. After all, doesn’t 2 Timothy 3:16 say that “[a]ll Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness”? Even more significantly, didn’t Jesus quote scripture?

Yes, he did, and that’s what’s getting me all befuddled. But maybe I’m jumping ahead of myself.

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Loving God

I felt like a failure. All around me, people were praying, weeping, wailing—overcome with love for God. I sat like a stone. Sure, I wanted to love God. I tried to love God. But never in my almost 40 years of being a believer have I ever felt the overwhelming emotion of those surrounding me at the prayer conference I was attending. Dry eyes, dry thoughts—there must be something wrong with my faith.

After all, I usually feel quite emotional when my thoughts turn to my husband. Sure, we have our moments, but overall I’m even more in love with him now, after 30+ years of marriage, than I was the day we said our vows. Why couldn’t I summon those same emotions for God?

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Uniquely You

Does he like NASCAR?

Does he like drive a truck, drink sweet tea, own a gun, and like NASCAR?

Driving in my car, listening to the radio playing Brad Paisley’s relatively new single, Southern Comfort Zone. He’s singing about how “not everyone drives a truck, not everybody drinks sweet tea, not everybody owns a gun, wears a ball cap, boots, and jeans….” The lyrics reminded me of when our kids were in high school, or when I was, even longer ago. Everyone had a label, and if you didn’t belong to a group, you were a miserable nobody.

My school had surfers, Jesus freaks, druggies, jocks, etc. My kids’ school included skaters, cowboys, nerds, and (still) jocks. Nothing much had changed in 25 years. I assumed we’d get past all this as we became adults, but I’m not sure we have.

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Love (on) Cynthia’s Blog

2heartsIn honor of Valentine’s Day, I was all set to write an interesting, well-reasoned,  and relevant post about love. Then my friend Cynthia went and beat me to it, and she did a much better job than I would have done.

Since I’m out of town and on vacation (and working on spoiling my granddaughter), I’m sending you over to Cynthia’s blog, Let’s Talk. I hope your find her thoughts on “Love with Knowledge and Discernment“ as helpful as I did. Happy Valentine’s Day.

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Are You a Bible-Believing Christian?

Which parts of the Bible do you believe?

As good Evangelicals, we like to say, “All of it!” We believe the Bible to be the inerrant, holy word of God, and we “take it literally”—it means what it says. How often do we hear someone say something along the lines of,  “We can’t be picking and choosing which verses God really meant.”

Yet, we do that all the time.

You’ve probably heard of A.J. Jacobs’ book, The Year of Living Biblically.  (If you haven’t read it, please do—it’s a fun book and I recommend it.) Then there’s Rachel Held Evans’ A Year of Biblical Womanhood. I have not yet read that one yet, although I intend to. Both of these authors point out that we don’t really do everything God says to do in the Bible. Most of the time, we don’t even try.

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Loving God

In my last post I talked about God’s Christmas wish list, and how our love for him is top priority. Here are some more ways to love God.

Trust and Obey
Another gift God appreciates is our faith. Do we trust Him? My friend Cynthia, who writes an excellent blog about prayer, recently wrote about something God told her:

When I meet you the way you ask Me to, you are blessed. You receive My grace-gifts, and you feel blessed. But when I don’t meet you the way you hoped yet you continue to trust Me anyhow—then you bless Me. You give Me your trust-gift, and I feel blessed.

Giving God our trust totally makes his day. So does our obedience. Obeying God tells him that we love him. Consider John 14:23: “Jesus replied, ‘Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.'”

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