Passing the Baton

Monday, January 9, 2023

When I think of all this, I fall to my knees and pray to the Father, the Creator of everything in heaven and on earth.  I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit.  Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him.  Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong.  And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is.  May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully.  Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.  Ephesians 3:14-19

Paul is writing final letters to his dear friends.  His days as a prisoner were coming to an end, and it was not to be a parole; Paul was under a sentence of death.  One of the purposes of the letter was to absolve from any guilt this  group of believers in Ephesus whom he loved deeply, and doing so, to draw them more deeply into Christ’s love.  Paul’s singular charge from God was to spread the Gospel to the Gentiles.  He had developed a reptutation as a heretic among the Jews, a traitor for saying God’s love was for everyone.[1]  The Jewish leaders pulled every string they could to silence the apostle.

This letter was a last testament of his love for his Ephesian family.  And in this text Paul’s prayer for them is for spiritual insight, that God would reveal the scope of God’s love to them, developing in that body of believers the kind of fullness of the Christian life they would need to carry-on the work Paul had begun with them.  The apostle was passing the baton to the next generation!

Mentors do that.  There are many people who influence your life, folks who reveal important things.  But, truth be told, there are fewer mentors, people who go out of their way to befriend, teach, counsel, and inspire.  This is passing the Good News baton to the next generation. 

Being a mentor, a passer of the baton, means several things are in place: 

First, some valuable learning must have taken hold in your life, if you’re going to pass along truth.  If you don’t have a baton to pass on, your leg of the race is worthless.  And before you just give up because you judge your ministry…that’s not up to you…that’s God’s prerogative.   

Second, there must be a longing beyond your reach.  As effective a missionary as Paul was, his most lasting dynamic was his willingness to leave it all on the field for someone else to pick up.

Third, you must be willing to let go of the reins.  Let’s face it…nobody drives like anybody else.  If you won’t trust God to work in the life of someone who looks up to you as mentor, you didn’t have a ministry, you had an agenda.

Most of us will not have to face the executioner’s axe, like Paul did, to realize the time of passing the baton was at hand.  Letting go to trust God’s hand is the supreme act of faith. 

For You Today  

To move into being a mentor for the next generation takes some experience, much vision, and a heart that is willing to reach the finish line.  Let’s give Paul the last word on that today:

I focus on this one thing:  Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us.  Philippians 3:13b-14

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

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There are about 2,000 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library.  To dig deeper on today’s topic, explore some of these: 

Understanding the Danger of Peanut Butter  and  Measuring the Love of God

Images:  Title Wikimedia Commons - public domain   Images without citation are either personal property of the author, or in public domain.

Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©  

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[1] See Galatians 3:28

Be the Change

 

Friday, April 8, 2022

God is not a man, so he does not lie. He is not human, so he does not change his mind.  Has he ever spoken and failed to act?  Has he ever promised and not carried it through?  Numbers 23:19

Every time I turn around these days the word change invades my hearing or seeing, and presses my nausea gland.  I suppose it is a knee-jerk, some visceral repugnancy to another less-than-thought-out-what-it-means mantra being paraded as some moral high-ground, when, in all probability, it’s just another foolish mantra spawned by somebody’s social engineering agenda to gain a few more hits on social media low territory.

“Be the Change” is presumably intended to, uhh, change our minds with some inspired thinking that reframes and reshapes the future to agree with a group’s (or even a single person’s) moral outrage.  It takes minor deficiencies in the behavior of a previous generation and exchanges them for a new set of equally (if not greater) flawed social, moral, or economic sociological preferences. 

I am not against change.  Indeed, every sermon I preach CALLS for it.  Conversely, invoking the change mantra because the newest idea needs an emotional hanger to start a revolution is hardly more than self-agrandizing sociological rearranging.  Simply put, it’s a matter of tearing down what has been, because that is a quick way to get one’s way.  It’s what happens in the nursery, when that other kid has something that you want.  Framing a mantra for that would be:  He (or she) has it, I don’t, and that’s not fair.  I believe that was Cain’s motive concerning Abel. 

So, if we are not to replicate Cain’s flawed and detestable behavior, perhaps we ought hold up the creepy crawly ugliness of it to the light.  That is the way to make bugs of the night scatter, isn’t it?  How shall we do that?  How shall we put “change” back into its’ rightful place?  I believe it starts with listening to our Creator…the one who changed everything (or, more accurately changed nothing INTO everything).  God inspired the apostle Paul to put it this way:

Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.  Romans 12:2

The whole notion of change, given from the Author of Life, begins with our transformation from those who prefer darkness, to becoming persons who are light-bearing, will-of-God-seeking, lovers of truth.  And, when there is nothing more important than God’s truth, the prospect of being set-free from old lies, and new ones alike, becomes more than a possibility; it is a done deal.

For You Today

“Being change” is a step-down from that for which you were created.  After all, isn’t change what you have left over after the whole has been dismembered? 

So…is it Be the Change for you….or Be Transformed?

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!  

[1] Title image: Pixabay.com   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©   

But Someday

 

Ascension Thursday, May 21, 2020

Acts 1:6-11

So when the apostles were with Jesus, they kept asking him, “Lord, has the time come for you to free Israel and restore our kingdom?”  He replied, “The Father alone has the authority to set those dates and times, and they are not for you to know.  But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you.  And you will be my witnesses, telling people about me everywhere—in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”  After saying this, he was taken up into a cloud while they were watching, and they could no longer see him.  As they strained to see him rising into heaven, two white-robed men suddenly stood among them.  “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why are you standing here staring into heaven?  Jesus has been taken from you into heaven, but someday he will return from heaven in the same way you saw him go!”

“But someday” is a reminder of being 5 years old and hearing my Father or Mother’s answer to my question whether I could do this or that; they said we’ll see.  And, with that began the waiting game, often accompanied by the whining of why, when, and it’s not fair!  Russell was never a “silent sufferer”.  However, I always absolved myself of being a brat by quoting Scripture loud enough so my parents could hear:

How long will you delay?  Psalm 90:13b

My use of Scripture was more a display of preschooler’s selfishness than piety.  But it probably isn’t any more unthinkable than the disciples’ asking Jesus, Who was fresh from the grave, if the Romans and the ruling Jewish elders who crucified him were now going to get what was coming to them.  The not-so-thinly-veiled agenda behind their question was more like, are we finally going to sit on thrones with you?  Further underneath were hidden hopes and dreams…how big are those thrones…are they gold-plated…silver…and are there jewels…how many crowns do you suppose we’ll have…and servants…and, and, and…

The white-robed men who suddenly stood among the disciples answered the question of how long, but it was inconclusive to human ears…someday; we’ll see.

And, just what does it mean for us?  We, of the instant gratification generation, would be even less satisfied than the first-century disciples.  But, Scripture and history both reveal that the disciples went to work figuring out what it meant to them, and what God wanted them to do about it.  They started mulling-over what Jesus had said to them the previous 3½ years…about the Kingdom of God.  And, about loving, serving, giving, worshipping, and being busy in God’s vineyard.  It was in that season of mulling they began to understand what living the surrendered life was all about.  Scripture’s account (along with the general sweeps of history the past two thousand years) affirm that the disciples got it; how long is the question of impatience, not faith.  Believers walk by faith.

Still, the angels didn’t equivocate; their statement to the gathered disciples who had just witnessed Jesus lifted up to the sky and out of their sight, ascending to His Father in Heaven, was that, in the same way they’d just seen, He would be back.

If Scripture’s track-record on prediction and fulfillment bears any credibility, there IS a “someday” coming, and our business, as followers of Jesus, isn’t to question when that day might be, or how long before we get to sit on thrones with Him; our question is what’s the next task for these hands, O Lord?

For You Today

In earthly kingdoms there are no shortages of pretenders to the thrones, nor wannabe’s in the fame department.  In the kingdom of God there is (on this planet, and in this day), a huge vineyard to harvest, and a woeful supply of workers.

Let’s Pray

Father, forgive us for hunting promotions when our focus ought to be on  the lost sheep you care about.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road today.  Have a blessed day!

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Title Image:  Hans Rosenhagen (1908). Public Domain (via Widimedia Commons) 

Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©

For another post on Courage see Serving God in a Hostile World

The Trouble With Mud

[1]

Tuesday, November 6, 2018

“One day when Moses was forty years old, he decided to visit his relatives, the people of Israel.  He saw an Egyptian mistreating an Israelite.  So Moses came to the man’s defense and avenged him, killing the Egyptian.  Moses assumed his fellow Israelites would realize that God had sent him to rescue them, but they didn’t.  “The next day he visited them again and saw two men of Israel fighting.  He tried to be a peacemaker.  ‘Men,’ he said, ‘you are brothers. Why are you fighting each other?’  “But the man in the wrong pushed Moses aside.  ‘Who made you a ruler and judge over us?’ he asked.  ‘Are you going to kill me as you killed that Egyptian yesterday?’  When Moses heard that, he fled the country and lived as a foreigner in the land of Midian.  There his two sons were born.  Acts 7:23-29(NLT)

Moses had a good idea; sometimes that’s not enough.  Having recently found out that he was born an Israelite, this prince of Egypt was trying to find his true pathway in life and visited the people who were his people by birth, but who were slaves to the nation that had adopted him.  It went badly.

Moses had a knee-jerk reaction to a fellow Egyptian’s barbaric treatment of an Israelite, who (in Moses’ mind) could have been a relative.  This highlighted Moses’ own dilemma; he was powerful, and at the same time, a slave by birth in a borrowed princely robe.  The warring indignation within became the roaring fire of self-righteous anger without; Moses killed the man.  When he went back the next day to check on the results of his saving act of mercy-killing, his deed was named by his kinsman; Moses was now a murderer.  He did what villains do; he ran away.

The idea to protect the powerless Israelite was a good idea; acting as judge, jury and executioner was not.  If we look ahead, we find Moses hiding out in obscurity for the next forty years until that burning bush encounter with God would draw him back to Egypt.

So, what does this have to do with mud?

It’s bound up in the old expression about choosing which battles are yours, and how you should fight.  The expression begins:  Never wrestle with a pig….  The imagery of that kind of combat takes you to the mud wallow; both you and the pig will get covered in mud, and the only noticeable difference between you and Porky is that the pig loves it.

Which brings us to the trouble with mud.  As a believer/disciple of Jesus Christ, you were never intended to run in the mud; your place is walking the narrow path and soaring with the eagles.

But those who trust in the Lord will find new strength. They will soar high on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not faint.  Isaiah 40:31(NLT)

Sometimes it takes a truckload of restraint, and not a little biting of the lip to resist being drawn into the mudhole over a pig-type of issue.  It takes winsomeness and calmness from thoughtful people to let cooler heads prevail in the kind of climate to which our culture has turned.  That turning is towards the mudhole of drama, pushed agendas, and severe lack of respect. 

It is the opposite of Christian graciousness.

For You Today

A bit of Max Ehrmann’s wisdom to start today in a prayer for dialogue and communion with others to replace the shouting matches:

Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.[2]

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day.

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[1] Title Image: Courtesy of Pixabay.com

[2] Max Ehrmann, Desiderata, 1952