The End

Two words.  They can leave us satisfied or wanting more.  Sometimes you might even be overjoyed to come to the end.  We might get to the end of a good movie and feel satisfied.   We might get to the end of a good lasagna and want more.  Or we might get to the end of a grueling backpack trip or an off-key rendition of a song and be overjoyed that it is the end.  Some have even expressed they were glad when I came to the end of a sermon.   But no matter what you are talking about, when you get to the end...that's it.  It's the end.  So whether your satisfied or wanting more or overjoyed or relieved,  really depends on where you are and what you are doing and how you feel about it when the end comes.

We all have times when the end comes and we are sad.  The end of high school.  The end of a favorite childhood dream.  The end of childhood innocence. (...and naptimes.)  The end of a job that you like.   When the end comes--that's it.  And transitions leave us just a bit unsettled.

Sometimes when the end comes, we are more ready for it.  We are anxious to move on.  Like the end of high school.  Or College.  Or a job we hate.  And suddenly we find ourselves again in transition.  Even there though, the transitions can still be unsettling. 

A few weeks ago, my uncle came to the end of his earthly journey.  And the next week, a very dear friend also came to the end of his time on earth.  And the interesting thing is, when one comes to the end, there is only a split second between life and death.  One second they are alive-the next, they aren't.  And for those left behind,  life is also split in two.  Before that moment and after that moment.  They will never be the same.  They came to the end with their loved one and then they entered the transition from normal to chaos and eventually they will come to a new normal.

But now you and I (as well as the rest of the world) are coming to another end.  The end of a year.  Some will be relieved.  Some sad.  Some overjoyed.  Some wanting more.  Your reaction to it will depend on what type of year you have had.  If you have had a great year, you probably hope things will continue on into the new year.  If you have had a bad year, you are probably looking forward to 2011 with renewed hope and higher expectations.

No matter what your view, this year will come to an end.  Gone. Behind you.  Receding into history.  It can never be lived over.  Mistakes can't be undone.  Words can't be unspoken.  And though relationships can mend over time, the damage that you cause will always leave a scar.  So the question comes: How did you live this year?  How did you respond to the good times?  What about the bad?  Did you meet them with an unshakable faith and determination to let God grow you through them or did you find yourself whining and complaining about all of your trials?  Did you grow more like Jesus in the way you learned to depend on the Father, or did you blame God and everyone around you for making you miserable?

The interesting thing about coming to the end of many things is that they often give you a chance at a new beginning.  Kindergarten ends and you move on to first grade.  Elementary ends and you start over in high school.  When that ends, you move on to a new start in college or you begin to pursue an occupation.  And the same thing happens with years.  When one ends, another starts, bringing with it a new chance to step up and meet the challenges with a new attitude and renewed determination.

As you face this new year, what things do you need to address in order to grow?  Where do you need God to step in and grow you?  What are some of your hopes, dreams and aspirations for this new year?  I'm not talking about New Year's Resolutions that won't make it past January 15.  I'm talking about real, deep, lasting life-change brought about by allowing the Spirit of God to work in and through you?  Will you grow this year?  Or will you come to the end of another year still hobbled by your habits, controlled by your lack of self-discipline, and unable to control your anger?

Here's the deal.  None of us can make decisions for the other--but I can make decisions for me.  And I want to grow.  By this time next year I want to be a better person.  I want to be a more Godly man.  I want Jesus to shine into and through me.  As I come to the end of this year, I want to leave my failures behind and press on towards my ultimate goal: knowing Jesus.   And I hope you do too, so that when the End comes and Jesus returns, you and I will together take the next natural step over the threshold of heaven into a brand new beginning.



May you have a blessed and hope-filled New Year.  And may God bless you real good!
The End. (at least for now)

Vending Machine God

Dad holding my son, Donnie to get a drink

"If you let Dad die, God, I’ll quit the ministry,” I muttered to myself as I sped down I-205 towards my parent’s house in Portland, Oregon. Up to this point, my life had been one of pleasant memories, successful youth ministry and happy times with my family. To be sure, we had our moments, but now, suddenly I was faced with one of the most difficult situations of my life.  We had watched as a rather large lump under dad’s right arm had turned into an ugly, oozing, bleeding, ulcerous tumor that was approximately 7-9 inches across. The diagnosis: melanoma, the worst form of skin cancer.  The prognosis: 3 to 6 months.

We prayed. We wept.  We encouraged others to pray with us.   Thousands from all across the country, even across the world, prayed that dad would be healed.  I felt sure that healing was in the bag.  If it had to do with the amount of prayers or the sincerity of prayer, then dad should have been healed.  If it had to do with faith and seeking the Lord, then dad should have been healed. But he wasn’t.  He died.

A few Sundays before dad died, he could not stand up without two or three people helping him out of bed. I had spent the greater portion of the night praying.  I really wanted God to work a miracle.  I had read the stories in the gospels of all the people that Jesus healed. I had read the stories in Acts where Peter (Acts 5:15,16) was walking through crowds and people were clamoring to put their sick in his shadow as they passed and they were healed. I had read stories of
Paul (Acts 19:11,12) walking through crowds who were passing their handkerchiefs and aprons over to Paul so that he might touch them and send them back, and Acts declares that all of them were healed.

Then there were the proclamations of Jesus, “If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.”( Matt 21:22) “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” (Matt 7:7) “Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name.” (John 15:16)

I had believed. I had asked.  I didn’t doubt that God could do it. I had prayed hard and long that night, yet somehow, was still like the disciples in the Garden. Somewhere along the line, I had fallen asleep.  Now doubt plagued me. Would my sleeping preclude my miracle?  Never mind that I had only averaged only 3-4 hours of sleep for the previous 3 weeks as I sat by the bedside of my dying father. Never mind that I was driving 40 minutes one way to go home at least once during each 24 hour period and see my family, and that usually for only an hour or two. This particular night, I had decided that I would keep a prayer vigil and pray all night. Yet, I found myself waking up on the floor of my study at 4 am loathing the weakness of my humanity. “Lord, I believe!” I cried, “Help my unbelief!”

About 6 o’clock, I felt an impression to go to dad’s and say to him, “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and be healed.” And so now I sped down I-205 wrestling with myself and God. The struggle raged.  Inwardly, I said, “If I go and do this thing, and nothing happens, I’ll be really embarrassed.  How would that look for a pastor?”  On the other hand I thought, “But if I don’t, that could be the very thing that saves him.” I thought of Namaan’s servant saying, “If he had asked you to do a big thing, wouldn’t you have done it?” I wrestled.  I prayed.  And then the thought came, “If you let Dad die, God, I’ll quit the ministry.” The turmoil continued to rage for most of the trip down.  As I turned into dad’s neighborhood, a peace overtook me, and I was resolute that God wanted me to go in and pray and ask Him to raise dad up. I was confident that God would do that.

I entered the room. No one was with dad at the time, so I told him that I felt impressed that we should pray for his healing once again, only this time I felt that God was calling on us to demonstrate our faith in Him by actions.  Dad said, “I think you are right.  I appreciate that about you...always being a man of faith.”

I prayed. Hard.   And then I said, “in the name of Jesus Christ, I say to you, get up and be healed.” Without hesitation, dad holding on to my hand, swung his feet off the bed and began to feebly stand. About halfway up, he gathered strength from somewhere and straightened all the way up.  We both stood there holding on to each other for a magical moment wondering if indeed the healing was happening, and then he said, “Help me lay back down.  God may heal me in stages.”  I helped him back into bed and then he said, “Thanks for your faith.  Thanks for your love that would prompt you to pray for me. And don’t worry.  God will heal me.  Now or then.”

I left the room very bewildered and very embarrassed.  Angry with God for asking me to do that.  Angry with myself for possibly misreading His cues. Angry because it felt as if the devil was just taunting me.  Throwing my faith in my face as totally preposterous.  Was it a lack of faith?  Was I acting on what I believed God wanted me to do? Why would God have me do something that He wasn’t going to answer.

I don’t think dad ever mentioned it again and I wondered if he was embarrassed by it. He didn’t seem to be.  The thing that got me was that his trust was immediate.  He was willing to try whatever means were available because he loved us and he loved life so much.  And he truly believed that God was going to heal him.  So to him, I don’t think he was embarrassed, even though I was.

After much thought, here is what I think the point must be. (Or at least some thoughts that can be drawn from the whole experience.) First, I think that God may have been testing me to see if I would trust Him no matter what. I had thought that if dad died, I would leave the ministry.  What use would it be to serve a God who didn’t answer prayers?  Why minister to the goodness of a God that wasn’t so good?  I think God’s point was, “Hey, no matter what happens, I will still be in control and you don’t h
ave to worry. I will take care of your dad.  And I will take care of you.  So do you believe me or not?”

Second, I would have regretted never trying it if I had kept silent and dad had died. I could truly say that I had tried everything, and could rest knowing that God had another plan.  If I had never experienced that, I could never have forgiven myself, and so I think God gave me the urge to go ahead and try what I had read in the Bible. I think God wanted me to see that sometimes all of the notions that we have, or all of the “magic” words we want to speak do not hold the power. Only God does.   I figured that if those words worked in the Bible, they just might work now, and that if I didn’t try them, they might have been the words to save dad.  But such is not the case.  

God is not moved by our “magic” words. He is moved by our heart.  He isn’t interested in our notions. What He wants is to be loved freely.  With no strings attached. With no “magic” words.  And He risks being misunderstood and spurned rather than perform to my tune. The love He wants me to share with Him is not a love based on manipulation or insecurity. It is a love based on a deep abiding trust.  And the question comes back, “Do I trust Him no matter what?” If I only trust Him when things are going my way, then I have a conditional love. If I only trust Him when He responds to my “magic” words, then I have reduced Him to a vending machine God; put in the right amount, say the “magic” words and out will pop your desired outcome.  That’s not a relationship.   It’s manipulation.

When I say to God...”do this and I will love you” or “don’t do this and I will not love you,” I am basing my relationship on my own immature desire to manipulate Him to get what I want.  God has never worked that way.  Not even when it would have saved Jesus’ life.  Herod wanted Jesus to perform a miracle in exchange for Jesus’ freedom.  He didn’t yield because He wanted our love to be from a genuine response to His love, not from a manipulated response based on what we might get.

And so, I am finding a deeper relationship with God, even though dad died. Even though healing didn’t occur the way I wanted.   Why?   Because I can’t blame God for all of the misery...we chose it.  WE sinned, not God.   But He commended His love towards us in this, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8

Love only wants a genuine response.  So Love stretched out His arms and died.   To show us He loved us.  To show us that though the devil has made death to be a fearful thing, we need not fear it.  To show us that he understands even the worst of what happens to us, and yet has promised us a better day. And because of that promise, I still have something to share in the ministry. And because of that Love, I’ll stay in the ministry until that day. A day when all will be made right.   A day when we will see why things didn’t work out here.  A day for joy instead of tears.   And a day when dad will be raised up.
 

A Patch of Sunshine

“Pastor Don, it’s pouring down rain!  How are we going to paint that lady's house today?”

What do you say to a group of teens who have just posed a very pertinent question?

It was the last full day of our mission trip in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky.  The previous day we had worked on Barbara's house.  Barbara had three children she was trying to raise on her own.  Six years earlier, Barbara had returned to their small hillside shack after going to the store for her husband, only to find he had committed suicide while she was gone. 

Living had been meager since then.  It had also grown more violent.  A friend of her late husband had decided that Barbara was going to be his woman whether she wanted to be or not. Whenever he got drunk and decided that he needed a woman, he would head up to the hillside shack and break down a door, or bust a window or even tear off boards from the side of the shack and break through the inner sheetrock and then brutally rape her as her three children cowered in one of the other rooms of the small house. Repeated calls to the police yielded no results since they "didn't really see nothin' happen, so how do we know ya ain't lyin'"? These episodes were repeated about two or three times per month.

Day one, we fixed a hole in her foundation that allowed the floor to droop downward away from the wall, leaving a gaping 12—inch hole for the rats to run in and out at will.  We re-roofed her sagging, leaking roof, and fixed her chimney and stovepipe to reduce the risk of this becoming a fire hazard. We re-floored her bedroom and patched sheetrock throughout the house. We painted the inside of the house and even fixed the bare—wired electrical outlets. We worked as hard as we could, but somehow, it seemed that every time we finished one project there were two more that we still needed to do.  We decided that we would have to come back and finish the exterior the next day.  We would fix all of the holes on the exterior and broken windows and then paint the house.

I was up at 5:30 am and looked outside.  Rain.  Pouring rain. Instantly, I panicked.  How would we finish Barbara's house?  A small voice reminded me that Jesus had controlled the storm on the lake and if I would just trust, He could do it again.  I relaxed and began my personal devotions.  By the time I had finished reviewing the story in scripture, I was sure that God would work a miracle for us.  During my prayer time, I asked God for a miracle.

I stepped out of my room and headed for the kitchen. One of the staff came into the dining area and informed me that the weatherman was calling for 100% chance of rain.  So far, he was right.  But the weatherman forgot to talk to my God about it.  Each time a student asked me what we were going to do, I simply answered, "We are going to pray and ask God not to let the weather interfere with our work and then go for it." 

They gave me that look that only teenagers can give.  That look that says,  "I think you'd be better off in a straight jacket," but simply shrugged their shoulders and just said, "OK, whatever".

At the close of worship, I asked everyone to join me in a prayer session where we claimed the promise found in John 14:13,14 "And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father.  You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it."

"Lord", I prayed, "You've given us Your promise, and we believe that we are doing Your will.  Please don't let the rain interfere with our work.  May we show Your love to Barbara and her family today.  In Jesus name, Amen."

"All right, load up."  We headed out the door into the pouring rain.  The farther up the valley we drove, the harder it rained. "Um, Pastor Don," one teen ventured, "it's still raining."

Without thinking, I shot back, "We're not there yet!  He doesn't need for it to stop yet."  We drove on in silence.  Finally we turned onto the little road that led up the hillside to Barbara's little shack.  Amazingly, the higher we drove, the less it rained, until we finally turned off into her little driveway.  Just a mist now.  "All right, guys,"  I said, "God's done His part, let's do ours!"  By the time we finished unloading ladders and tools, the sun was beginning to peek out.  Our whole group was pumped!  God had performed a miracle just for us!

It was about an hour later, as I finished pounding a nail into some siding that I happened to look off the side of the mountain down to the main road that wound through the little town of Pineville, Kentucky.  It was then that I realized that we had a bigger miracle than we had at first realized.  I called the whole group together.

"Look down there.  What do you see?" I asked.  "Why, it's raining hard down there," someone exclaimed.  "Look, you can even see trucks and cars with their windshield wipers going." 

Another joined in, “Look, it’s raining so hard down there that the road almost looks white!”

"Hey guys, look over there to the left,” someone else exclaimed. 

Another yelled, “Hey, look to the right.” 

Everyone spun around to look behind us up over the mountain.  Sure enough.  Rain.  We had rain on every side!  We were under God's umbrella as we stood there in that little patch of bright sunshine looking 500 yards in every direction at the pouring rain.

John 14:13,14 "And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father.  You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it."