"Good News for Bad Times"

Junior Hill was the guest preacher this morning with an old-time traditional sermon of three points out of Psalm 37:1-4 he titled "Good News for Bad Times" and are instructions for living the Christian life: 

1. Refrain from Fretting: Fretting and worry corrupts your spirit making life miserable for yourself and all around you. Our spirit is contagious to saints and confusing to sinners (non-believers). 
2. Rely on His Provision: He supplies what we need, sustains what we already have, and satisfies what we don't have.
3. Rejoice in His Fellowship: "If you ever get your desire before your delight, then there won't be any delight in your desire." Delight in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart! 

1 Do not be agitated by evildoers;
do not envy those who do wrong.
2 For they wither quickly like grass
and wilt like tender green plants.

3 Trust in the Lord and do what is good;
dwell in the land and live securely.
4 Take delight in the Lord,
and He will give you your heart’s desires.

Psalm 37:1-4, HCSB

Thy Will Be Done

Last Monday I mentioned last Sunday's sermon installment on The Lord's Prayer about Matthew 6:10

Thy Kingdom Come, Thy Will Be Done

Monday I wrote more about His Kingdom and then today it registered that last night's post was influenced by the "Thy Will Be Done" portion of the prayer. The God's Will portion of that sermon listed these descriptions:

1. It is for all people everywhere
2. It is to be obeyed (or done by us)
3. When we do it, it is His Kingdom in action
4. It is to be done constantly, consistently, pursued as if all depends on it
5. Done cheerfully. If we do not willingly do His Will, His Kingdom and thus His Will will not come. 

So me "doing God's will" is not as much about "a call" as I used to think but more about obedience, following Jesus, being Christ-like.

Then in Sunday school today I was reminded that throughout the Bible God/Jesus tells me how to behave, relate to others, live my life wherever I am and whatever I'm doing. I need to be doing God's will (obey Him) in the particular life I live today in Nashville, Tennessee and then when I move to Costa Rica I am to continue to do God's will (obey Him), though related to different people, different culture, and different activities. I see new and exciting possibilities for an incarnational ministry in Cost Rica as I had in The Gambia, while continuing my love of nature and conservation education as part of His Will. Neighbors, friends and acquaintances will know I am a Christian by my love while becoming part of some local Christian fellowship will help me follow Christ and hopefully I will eventually contribute to their relationship to God as I found with Glory Baptist in The Gambia. The unknown there is an exciting part of the spiritual adventure and again where I trust God to lead the way and provide those providential encounters He always has in my life. Wow! I can hardly wait to get there and see what He has waiting for me! 

Weak and Wise

The devotionals I've read for the last two nights bring up an interesting contrast that appears to be a contradiction, yet in such confusion God seems to work and that is what I'm expecting from Him right now. Thursday night the Scripture verse was 2 Corinthians 12:9, HCSB,

But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” Therefore, I will most gladly boast all the more about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may reside in me.

This is a promise I have claimed many times in my weaknesses and sometimes foolishness. It means I trust Him more than myself and in so doing things tend to go much better! In other words, I seek his will and try to follow it. Then the next night I get this verse, Ephesians 5:17, HCSB, 

 So don’t be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is.

Wow! They do go together, even though some translations talk about wisdom in the second passage and that is not how I feel when I feel weak. Telling me to understand what the Lord's will is seems lacking when that is what I want, but not always sure what His will is. So I just trust Him and wait to see what happens as I try to be like Jesus in all my relationships and praise God in nature and adventure. As Henry David Thoreau said, "My profession is to always find God in nature." And that will be one of my purposes in Costa Rica!

Even though I continue to make lists and try to plan out all the details for the move to Costa Rica, as I did with the pros and cons of the decision, I still feel weak at times and pray that I am doing His will and he will renew my desire to serve him in a new land with new people. opportunities and challenges. And that is what I'm expecting as I let Him turn my weakness to wisdom, because I depend on Him more than all my planning and preparation. Wow! It's about to happen! I'm excited and enthusiasm is from God! 

With Ray Waddle Today & Glimmers of Hope Yesterday

Ray Waddle, freelance writer and former Religion Writer for The Tennessean newspaper has always been a favorite short article writer. That is probably because he seems to think like me a lot!  :-)  He spoke at a senior adult luncheon at First Baptist today and kind of rambled, mostly about his new book, Undistorted God, from Abingdon Press. I bought one and had him autograph it and look forward to reading it. Not tonight though. It is time for The Roosevelts by Ken Burns!



Yesterday the Sunday school class discussion kind of confirmed my belief that we need to depend on God and trust Him to provide for us in every situation which is what I'm doing on this overseas move thing. Then in worship Pastor Frank continued his series on the Lord's Prayer,

Your kingdom come.Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Matthew 6:10 HCSB  -  Which again confirmed my strong feelings that "His Kingdom" is really in us or happening by us as we are incarnate with Jesus acting through us in our daily lives. It is to me more about how we live our lives following Jesus than some future earthly kingdom or heaven. And this is what I want to happen with my life in a new country, regardless of which fellowship of believers I find to relate to. "God help me to be your kingdom that your will may be done in me on earth.  Amen"

Where Am I Spiritually?

Sometimes I don't know. Going to church now-a-days I often feel like a third thumb, not really a part of things beyond being a greeter and usher which younger people are generally not interested in. This empty-nest mid-life church crises for older people is very well described in this online Christianity Today article:

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2014/september/midlife-church-crisis.html?utm_source=ctweekly-html&utm_medium=Newsletter&utm_term=12017377&utm_content=299016903&utm_campaign=2013

All of the above makes me so much more open to a totally new spiritual adventure if I move to Costa Rica. Who knows what kind of church or fellowship or channels of service? And my love of nature and how it puts me right beside God in so many ways was partially spoken to by my favorite newspaper religion writer, Ray Waddle, in today's Tennessean:


Earth saves room for human delights

For The Tennessean

Last week in Montana, my wife and friends and I encountered three grizzly bears walking across our narrow trail, hardly 40 feet away. My group was naturally thrilled. I naturally worried: We could be killed. It was a mother grizz and two cubs. The scene would turn bad if mama bear felt threatened.

Human domination of nature suddenly meant nothing. We were at the bear’s mercy. But she had other things on her mind — raising a family, getting home. We weren’t worth a second thought. She disappeared with her cubs into the brush without a trace, ignoring our cameras and good intentions.

Immersion in a mountainous wilderness (in this case, Glacier National Park) reveals the silent prehistoric earth as it was before human commentary, sacred texts or gasoline. Out there, it’s hard to see how we fit in, except as disrupters.

Scripture says we were made to rule over Earth’s creatures. So we assume we came along early enough to name everything and organize the place, and it’s been our plantation ever since.

Yet science (for the moment) says the Earth is 4.5 billion years old, and homo sapiens are maybe 200,000 years old, and we got civilized (started writing) about 5,000 years ago. Which means we arrived late to the banquet. How did God get along without us for 4 billion years? Did God put us on the map only recently because there’s no way we could inhabit the planet for billions of years without destroying it? That’s my guess.

The secret complaint against evolutionary science, I suspect, is not the science but the insult to human ego that a Creator could manage for so long without our companionship. Seen from geologic time, God’s intentions are a bottomless enigma. Yet a miracle abides: our capacity for the poetry of belief, words knitted together against time and chaos in order to bring us closer to the divine spirit. This gift is laid at our doorstep every morning in the golden sunrise.

On this trip I read poet William Stafford, whose verse suggests nature is always watching and waiting, ready to reveal its mind, its balanced economy, its implacable will, its majestic creatures. “The slow current of the life below tugs at me all day,” he once wrote. “When I dream at night, they save a place for me.”

Fierce and patient Earth saves room for human delights — a Tennessee stream, a Kansas plain, a Connecticut autumn, a Montana bear and her cubs, watched from a safe distance.

Columnist Ray Waddle is a former Tennessean religion editor and author of a new book, “ Undistorted God” (Abingdon Press). Reach him at ray@raywaddle.com.