The Power of God

Thursday, August 27, 2026

For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but it is the power of God to us who are being saved.  For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and I will set aside the intelligence of the intelligent.  Where is the one who is wise?  Where is the teacher of the law?  Where is the debater of this age?  Hasn’t God made the world’s wisdom foolish?  For since, in God’s wisdom, the world did not know God through wisdom, God was pleased to save those who believe through the foolishness of what is preached.  1 Corinthians 1:18-21

Gordon MacDonald, chancellor of Denver Seminary, tells the story in one of his books, about Charles Berry:        

In the late 1800s, Charles Berry, an English preacher, became the pastor of the great Plymouth Church in Brooklyn. One day Berry described how earlier he had come to Jesus Christ.  There had been a time in Berry's early ministry when he preached a very thin gospel--really no gospel at all.  As did the Corinthians, he looked upon Jesus as merely a noble teacher but not as a divine redeemer.

Late one night during his first pastorate, as he sat in his cozy study, there came a knock.  He opened the door and found a typical Lancashire girl with a shawl over her head and clogs on her feet.

Are you a minister? she asked.  Getting an affirmative answer, she went on breathlessly.  You must come with me quickly. I want you to get my mother in.  Thinking it was a case of some drunken mother out in the streets, Berry said, You must go and get a policeman.   No, said the girl, My mother is dying, and you must come and get her into heaven.

Berry got dressed and followed her for a mile and a half through lonely streets in the night.  He knelt at the woman's side, and he began telling her how good and kind Jesus was and how he'd come to show us how to live. 

Then the desperate woman cut him off.  Mister, she cried, that's no use for the likes of me.  I'm a sinner.  I've lived my life.  Can't you tell me of someone who can have mercy upon me and save my poor soul?  I stood there in the presence of a dying woman, said Berry, and I realized I had nothing to tell her.  In the midst of sin and death, I had no message.  In order to bring something to that dying woman, I leaped back to my mother's knee, to my cradle faith, and I told her the story of the Cross and of a Christ who is able to save to the uttermost.  The tears began to run down the woman's cheeks.  Now you're getting it, she said.  Now you're helping me.  Berry concluded the story by saying, I got her in, and blessed be God, I got in myself.^[1]

For You Today

Salvation is a matter of being right with God.  Do you believe the Gospel?  Do you believe Jesus is the Son of God, and that He is the only way to God? 

There are a lot of religions, and so-called spirituality out there today.  Many folks claim there are many ways…you have to find one that fits for you. 

But I say to you, with what Paul called the “foolishness of preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ”, that there is one size that fits all…His name is Jesus, and there is salvation in no other name.  It is the only name under heaven; given among men whereby ye must be saved ^{(Acts 4:12)}.

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

[1] Title and Other Image by Stefan Keller from Pixabay.  Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The Christian Standard Bible^© 

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[1] Gordon MacDonald, The Centerpiece of the Gospel, Preaching Today, Tape No. 137.

 

Hope Anew

Monday, November 13, 2023

So each generation should set its hope anew on God, not forgetting his glorious miracles and obeying his commands.  Then they will not be like their ancestors—stubborn, rebellious, and unfaithful, refusing to give their hearts to God.  Psalm 78:7-8

Asaph, the writer of this Psalm, makes a very compelling point of caution for each new generation in humankind to set its hope anew on God so we don’t forget His great power, what He’s done, and how we must not be stubborn about it. 

If there is one consistent, and nearly inviolate reality about the human family, it’s the tendency towards promising fidelity lightly, and then breaking promises in favor of a supposed better way.  Israel’s history is a microcosmic rule-of-thumb for humanity’s proclivity to agree with God today, and discard their allegiance when the road gets a little bumpy. 

From Asaph, fast-forward to Russell’s generation, raised in the 1950’s/60’s.  Yes, we’re talking about the hippy-era, free love, LSD, marijuana, or alcohol, your drug of choice, but everybody joins the march against Vietnam involvement.  Yes, THAT generation!  We were going to be different than our parent’s generation.  Everything was going to be different, and much better than the old folks.  Music changed from swing to rock.  Clothing was unimportant, and we drove VW vans, not Cadillacs.  But the truth is we were just making Asaph’s point…every new generation has its own style, but the root of Adam’s nature, rebellion against authority, puts us on a collision-course with our Creator’s authority.  Our arrogant stubbornness separates us like night and day from God’s love and care.  As the cartoon character Pogo once said:  We have met the enemy, and he is us!

Opposite the viewpoint of the “new” generation is the head-shaking disapproval of the “old” generation.  My parents didn’t like my music, and frankly I’m not too thrilled with the stuff I hear and see in the current generation’s entertainment.  And this makes Asaph’s point as well.  It isn’t the style of any generation that matters.  I can say that unreservedly because you won’t find style-police in Scripture.  What matters is not a generation’s style, but whether they will set their hope anew in God.

This brings a Scriptural focus to the so-called “worship wars” down through the generations.  There is enough criticism to fill the universe with nausea about how people worship.  The list includes music style, traditional style, contemporary style, blended style, liturgical vs. free style, fogey or edgy style, robes or skinny jeans, somber or giddy, silent or bedlam, pretribulation rapturist, or anti-rapturist.  Most everything that creates an argument is a tempest in a teapot about style.  And there is a verse in John’s Gospel that tells us what God thinks about all of it:

For You Today 

A prayer for those with whom you see wide gaps of difference, is to ask God to let the scales of criticism drop from your own eyes, and help you to ignore the style of that next (or former) generation, and pray for them to see the magnificent opportunity and blessing they have to place their hope anew in God’s love and care.  Much better to pray for someone’s blessing than against their style.

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

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There are about 2,600 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road library.

Today’s title Image from Pixabay.com  

Images without citation are in public domain or cited via weblinks.  

Unless noted, Scripture quoted from NLT^©   

Echoes of the Abandoned

Dear friends.  In case you've been wondering, last week was a vacation.  Not really...cannot say that about COVID.  It was time away from doing what I love, studying, praying, preaching, and in some/many ways sharing God's love.  Thank you for your patience and prayer.  

We now resume our regularly scheduled Rocky Road interference with the complacent life. 

Monday, December 12, 2022

Why am I discouraged?  Why is my heart so sad?  I will put my hope in God!  I will praise him again—my Savior and my God!  Now I am deeply discouraged, but I will remember you—even from distant Mount Hermon, the source of the Jordan, from the land of Mount Mizar.  I hear the tumult of the raging seas as your waves and surging tides sweep over me.  But each day the Lord pours his unfailing love upon me, and through each night I sing his songs, praying to God who gives me life.  “O God my rock,” I cry, “Why have you forgotten me?  Why must I wander around in grief, oppressed by my enemies?”  Their taunts break my bones.  They scoff, “Where is this God of yours?”  Why am I discouraged?  Why is my heart so sad?  I will put my hope in God!  I will praise him again—my Savior and my God!  Psalm 42:5-11

Six times in seven verses the Psalmist uses that piercing interrogative:  WHY? There aren’t many humans who don’t go there; many live there.  We want to know why we must suffer; the question suggests a tone of intimating God may be at fault for this injustice…Me?  ME? of all people, ME?  It’s like a raging child flinging an I HATE YOU to the parent because he’s been sent to his room.  It’s odd, isn’t it, being banished to a cheerfully-decorated suite with tech-toys, computer, personal phone, and cable-loaded Smart-TV, and imagining you’re a victim of a Siberian death sentence. 

The redeeming turn of the writer’s tone is found in both the first and last verses.  Twice in this Psalm we hear:  I will put my hope in God.  In all Biblical-era literature, and many modern genres, repetition means it’s important; it means pay attention – THIS is BIG STUFF!

To put hope in something, or someone, is to trust.  Hoping in God is the opposite of blaming God.  It is placing your full trust in His wisdom.  It is not a careless abandonment of your free will – rather, it is a considered choice to lay down the defensive victim-claiming, in favor of picking up holy hands to praise the One who created you…never doubting, even when fearing, that you acknowledge He alone is the answer, because He alone, is truly your redemption.

There are two ways (at least) to read this Psalm. 

·       The first is the blame game, with that tone that says: 

“God, what are you thinking with all this YOU are letting happen to me?” 

·       The second way is with the explanatory interrogative: 

“Father God, some people are asking why I suffer, and I want them all to know, I’m placing every egg I’ve got, my whole future, in Your basket, God, no matter what may come.”

For You Today  

It’s easy to go for the woe, despair, and agony on me choice #1 of blaming God.  Being a victim is so easy and acceptable in today’s culture.  Make your pain sound grotesque enough, and you’ll get a settlement in somebody’s court. 

For a believer, that’s nonsense.  We are not victims, no matter what the world may label us, do to us, or what any of the world’s big shots say about us.  We are, as Paul declared more than conquerors, held securely in the love and favor of the Father’s hands.[1]  We are never abandoned!

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: 

       Afraid to Die   and   An Okra Kind of Christmas

Images:  Title Pixabay.com   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 Romans 8:35-39

The Many Faces of Hope

 

Wednesday, March 17, 2021

Some wandered in the wilderness, lost and homeless.  Hungry and thirsty, they nearly died.  “Lord, help!” they cried in their trouble, and he rescued them from their distress.  He led them straight to safety, to a city where they could live.  Psalm 107:4-7

This Psalm celebrates Israel’s history, of course.  But it is also a story told and retold throughout the generations of humanity; it is the story of distress and deliverance, rags to riches, dungeon to throne, love-lost to reunion, blindness to sight, crippled to leaping, and in a thousand other themes.  This is God’s story of the bleak impossible turned real, the ageless, magnificent story of hope and salvation.

Monday of this week the ultimate working-out of this story made its way into my line of sight…again.  We buried a church member.  Linda was not pretentious or mean-spirited.  She wasn’t over-demanding or unduly-proud (other than her love of Alabama’s Crimson Tide football team!).  She was just Linda, mother, grand & great grandmother.  She loved her family and football!

It is humbling to stand before any congregation with the awesome charge to present the Gospel of Jesus Christ…but particularly so when the charge for the preacher is to say a word of comfort to a grieving family.  The words are in the church’s worship book, about why we gather, that in pain we may find comfort, in sorrow hope, in death resurrection.  Sometimes that comfort, hope, and resurrection come in just gathering, or the preacher’s words, or a child’s reciting a memory verse.  Monday, for me, it came in the son-in-law’s song.  With a resounding baritone, Rick sang Celebrate Me Home.  The words are particularly filled with faith in God which overcome pain and sorrow.  It was almost impossible to get off my chair and continue.  Here are the words he sang:

When the time comes and I am standing at the river

That separates the two worlds that I love

Torn between my precious friends and my family

And the place of peace that's waiting up above

Hold my hand and stay there by my side, And when I finally step into the tide

Celebrate me home!  Celebrate me there

Celebrate me in that land of wonder where nothing can compare

Celebrate me in that place Celebrate me saved by grace

Don't just sit and weep because I'm gone…Celebrate me Home

I have spent most of my life on earth preparing

To take the trip from here to Heaven's throne

With the Shield and Word of God to guide me 

Its a comfort knowing I am not alone

So when I take my final fleeting breath  And fade into the gentle sleep of death

Celebrate me home!  Celebrate me there

Celebrate me in that land of wonder where nothing can compare

Celebrate me in that place  Celebrate me saved by grace

Don't just sit and weep because I'm gone  Celebrate me Home

No more broken dreams  No more tears to cry  Into my Father's arms I'll fly  Celebrate me home!  Celebrate me there

Celebrate me in that land of wonder where nothing can compare

Celebrate me in that place  Celebrate me saved by grace

Don't just sit and weep because I'm gone  Celebrate me Home![1]

This is more than just a tear-jerker, designed to create a momentary flood of emotion.  This is a Christ-centered statement of faith, and the fondest prayer I know for the ones I love.  It bridges the divide between longing for Heaven, and the connection of here.

For You Today

If you’ve lost someone, and you’ve run out of ways to stop hurting, take a few minutes to re-read the words of this song.  Listen to it sung.[2]  Discuss these words with another friend, or your pastor.  This is why God gave us The Church…so we can move beyond grieving as those who have no hope.  ^{1 Thessalonians 4:13} 

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

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

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[1] Celebrate Me Home, Joel Lindsey, Wayne Haun, performed by The Perrys, 2012, (Songlyrics.com)

[2] Go here to listen to The Perrys’ version on YouTube.com

Trusting the Tracks

 

Wednesday, February 3, 2021

Jeremiah wrote a letter from Jerusalem to the elders, priests, prophets, and all the people who had been exiled to Babylon by King Nebuchadnezzar.  This was after King Jehoiachin, the queen mother, the court officials, the other officials of Judah, and all the craftsmen and artisans had been deported from Jerusalem.  He sent the letter with Elasah son of Shaphan and Gemariah son of Hilkiah when they went to Babylon as King Zedekiah’s ambassadors to Nebuchadnezzar.  This is what Jeremiah’s letter said:  This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, the God of Israel, says to all the captives he has exiled to Babylon from Jerusalem:  “Build homes, and plan to stay.  Plant gardens, and eat the food they produce.  Marry and have children.  Then find spouses for them so that you may have many grandchildren.  Multiply!  Do not dwindle away!  And work for the peace and prosperity of the city where I sent you into exile.  Pray to the Lord for it, for its welfare will determine your welfare.”  This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, the God of Israel, says:  “Do not let your prophets and fortune-tellers who are with you in the land of Babylon trick you.  Do not listen to their dreams, because they are telling you lies in my name.  I have not sent them,” says the Lord.  This is what the Lord says:  “You will be in Babylon for seventy years.  But then I will come and do for you all the good things I have promised, and I will bring you home again.  For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord.  “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.  In those days when you pray, I will listen.  If you look for me wholeheartedly, you will find me.  I will be found by you,” says the Lord.  “I will end your captivity and restore your fortunes.  I will gather you out of the nations where I sent you and will bring you home again to your own land.”

One of the more trustworthy aspects of travelling by train is that the tracks always lead to the destination.  If you lay down tracks from Charlotte to Memphis the train will always move faithfully between those two cities.  One of the more certain terrors of travelling by train is if someone has messed with the tracks. 

The people of Jeremiah’s day must have figured someone messed with the tracks.  They were God’s favored, the chosen people; now they were defeated captives down in Babylon.  Someone had messed with the tracks of God’s promised people.

If you rewind the story a bit you find that it was God’s own people who had messed with the tracks of their journey.  They had forgotten who they were, a nation to be held close to God’s heart, obedient, faithful, and different from all others on earth.  And so the defeat by Babylonian invaders, the fall of Jerusalem, and being held as slaves in a foreign kingdom was their own doing; talk about a derailed train ride!

Against that backdrop, Jeremiah, God’s prophet, mostly viewed as an enemy because he had warned it was coming, and from a pit that was his jail cell, takes quill in hand and writes to the captives.  His message:  It’s all good, folks; hold on; this is all part of God’s good plans for you; trust the tracks; keep truckin’.

Good plans, Jeremiah?  Son, have you been in the new wine again?  We are captives, slaves, and our whole army lies bloodied and decomposing on the battlefield.  We lost, and we are doomed…what do you mean, good plans?

Ultimately God was in the process of purifying the thoughts of people who had decided they could lay tracks in any direction they wanted.  They’d come unglued in terms of honest lives, cheating one another.  They’d left off taking seriously their commission to honor and worship Jehovah God with their lives; instead, they began acting more like their worldly neighbors.  They plotted course for proclaiming their own greatness rather than trusting the tracks God had given them.  God’s tracks led straight to the Temple and the presence of God; the tracks they were laying down were for the far country.

Defeat at the hands of the Babylonian marauders was not just political, it was theological, a mirror held up for Israel (and the rest of the world) to see how derailed God’s people can get, and the consequences that inevitably follow.  This was not only a good plan, it was God’s best plan for purging the kind of thought which imagines the wages of sin can be changed.

Ultimately the good plan of God brought just what Jeremiah wrote, hope, the one innermost emotional soul nutrient which makes human existence possible.  Without hope no person (or nation, or species) can continue long.  God’s good plan showed Israel their only hope was in the God who had taken them from Egypt’s captivity into the land of promise.  The God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph was still on the throne, and the tracks that led to that throne room hadn’t changed location.

For You Today

We are still amid Covid-19’s pandemic, a captivity of sorts.  Asking where it came from might be like Jeremiah’s flock wondering how they could’ve been blind-sided by the Babylonians.  The answer is the same – it’s still God’s good plan for us.  The antidote is more than vaccines and masks; it’s time to get back to trusting the tracks.

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

For another post on Numbers 22 see God's Plan and I Know the Plans I Have for You  

 

Loved and Belonging

 

Thursday, January 14, 2021

O Lord, you have examined my heart and know everything about me.  You know when I sit down or stand up.  You know my thoughts even when I’m far away.  You see me when I travel and when I rest at home.  You know everything I do.  You know what I am going to say even before I say it, Lord.  You go before me and follow me.  You place your hand of blessing on my head.  Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too great for me to understand!

You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb.  Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex!  Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it.  You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb.  You saw me before I was born.  Every day of my life was recorded in your book.  Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.  How precious are your thoughts about me, O God.  They cannot be numbered!  I can’t even count them; they outnumber the grains of sand!  And when I wake up, you are still with me!  Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18

It’s easy to feel insignificant in this universe.  It occurred to me that may be one reason those who feign atheism do so…overwhelmed with the immensity of the cosmos, one cannot imagine God thinking of a single creature as consequential.  It’s like whistling in the dark to ignore-away the bad things that can happen.  A professing atheist feels alone and therefore without purpose or reason for existing. 

We whistle (or scream) against the night of our fear. 

And yet, for those like the Psalmist, who choose to acknowledge God as Sovereign Creator and sustainer of life, the terror of being alone is dissipated, evaporating like a morning mist…and in its stead there is a wonderful dawning of, not just significance or purpose to this existence, but an unfolding and undeniable sense of being loved; of belonging. 

In my youth the prospect of staking it all on trust that a god I could not see would deign to love one like me, small and insignificant…well, it was more than I could bear to face.  So, I hid in the security blanket of agnosticism, a denial that anyone can know the truth about where we come from, and therefore, without definitive understanding about meaning or purpose, I could not be blamed for bumbling around about God.  In time, I realized that would not do; it was much like a stay of execution for a man on death row, or a baby sucking on a pacifier – it passed the time but did nothing for the sense that time would eventually run out on ignoring God.

And then God once again spoke through the Psalmist to my childish excuses:

When I look at the night sky and see the work of your fingers—the moon and the stars you set in place—what are mere mortals that you should think about them, human beings that you should care for them?  Yet you made them only a little lower than God and crowned them with glory and honor.  You gave them charge of everything you made, putting all things under their authority—the flocks and the herds and all the wild animals, the birds in the sky, the fish in the sea, and everything that swims the ocean currents.  O Lord, our Lord, your majestic name fills the earth!  Psalm 8:3-9

God spoke significance into my heart.  He told me I was with consequence in His eternal existence, crowned with a Godly glory and honor; I bore His image, and I have purpose in His will and plans for everything created.  I, the dust speck, born to a simple, unremarkable family…was on His mind.  Frankly, the thought still leaves me breathless.  But I have discovered, in the passing of time, that, along with John Wesley’s famous last words, that the best of all God is with us, He is still with me. 

For You Today

Faith, the journey upon which we all explore our relationship to everything, is only possible when one takes the leap of moving forward…not whistling – worshipping.

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

Calvin and Hobbes (cartoon) by Bill Watterson

For other posts on this text see Still There and The Doily      

 

How to Cure a Cosmic Headache

 

Thursday, June 4, 2020

Psalm 8:1-9

O Lord, our Lord, your majestic name fills the earth!  Your glory is higher than the heavens.  You have taught children and infants to tell of your strength, silencing your enemies and all who oppose you.  When I look at the night sky and see the work of your fingers—the moon and the stars you set in place—what are mere mortals that you should think about them, human beings that you should care for them?  Yet you made them only a little lower than God and crowned them with glory and honor.  You gave them charge of everything you made, putting all things under their authority—the flocks and the herds and all the wild animals, the birds in the sky, the fish in the sea, and everything that swims the ocean currents.  O Lord, our Lord, your majestic name fills the earth!

Your head can hurt (a lot) when you start thinking of eternity and the vastness of creation.  How can you wrap your mere mortal mind around a universe which, from the moment it was created, has been expanding at a blinding rate of about 4 million miles a day.  What’s interesting to me is how much impartial, non-agenda-driven science corroborates Scripture, as opposed to stilted pseudo-science, which attempts to disprove God’s presence.  Sometimes the connections are amazing.  In the case of the Big Bang, scientists of integrity have opined that the universe appeared all at once.  In the following scientific explanation it not only says that, but also tacitly affirms the wording of Scripture, that God created ex-nihilo; meaning there wasn’t anything in existance until God spoke it into being:

The universe did not expand into space, as space did not exist before the universe, according to NASA.  Instead, it is better to think of the Big Bang as the simultaneous appearance of space everywhere in the universe.  The universe has not expanded from any one spot since the Big Bang — rather, space itself has been stretching, and carrying matter with it.[1]

Nothing existed; God spoke; everything existed and is growing.  How majestic, and consistent with let there be…and there was…and is…and ever shall be!

If there is any empirical evidence to cure the kind of cosmic headache you get when you try to expain-away God, this is it; believe Scripture, and watch the day’s events, not through the eyes and ears of CNN and 21^st century full of itself culture, but the eyes of one who has the balcony seat and sees more than just the big picture, but also Who sees the beginning from the end!

Let’s Pray Together:

Father, You are majestic, all-seeing, all-knowing, and all-powerful.  How excellent is Your name!  And though Your glory overspreads and oversees the entirety of Your expanding universe, you have chosen to be mindful of us.  As the heavens declare Your glory, Your Son, Jesus declares Your mercy and grace.

For You Today

It’s my prayer that, having intentionally drawn your attention to the infinite Lord, creator of a universe none of us can begin to comprehend, I will have messed with your comfort zone in which you imagine you have possessions, property, power, or whatever you consider your treasure.  I pray I’ve meddled enough, so as to plant in your soul the thought of letting go of all of it, in favor of praising Eternal God, the one who can cure a cosmic headache!

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

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Title Image:  Space.com  Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©

For other posts on Psalm 8 see Wondering About the Big Stuff Part 1 and Part 2 and Part 3  and  We Mortals

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[1] Our Expanding Universe: Age, History & Other Facts