Wait FOR and ON Each Other

 

Tuesday, February 22, 2022

So anyone who eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord unworthily is guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord.  That is why you should examine yourself before eating the bread and drinking the cup.  For if you eat the bread or drink the cup without honoring the body of Christ, you are eating and drinking God’s judgment upon yourself.  That is why many of you are weak and sick and some have even died.  But if we would examine ourselves, we would not be judged by God in this way.  Yet when we are judged by the Lord, we are being disciplined so that we will not be condemned along with the world.  So, my dear brothers and sisters, when you gather for the Lord’s Supper, wait for each other.                          1 Corinthians 11:27-33

As a pastor, I’ve served communion to many people. 

One of the things I’ve hated about the last two years of COVID-19, is missing that holy moment of looking into the eyes of the people who come to the table.  It was always an honor and high privilege to break the bread and place it into the hands of those who loved Christ, and humbly held out a hand to receive.

I belong to a group of fellow-pastors that meets monthly for fellowship and accountability.  We share ministry ideas, discuss current events in church life, and try hard to offer each other “support space”.  We don’t solve problems or leap tall buildings in a single bound.  Of course, we DO eat!  Invariably we share the loaf and cup as the finale to our meeting.  

We serve each other, face to face, uttering those treasured words, the body of Christ, given for you; the cup of Christ shed for your healing.  And it is certainly a healing moment for spiritual strength.  I have never left such a time without a sense of renewed spiritual energy and joy. 

For that reason (among many others) I am certain the enemy, that old slew-footed serpent, Lucifer, has relished COVID-19 social distancing.  It has not only crippled the intimate nature of fellowship around the table, but in some cases derailed many local churches from meeting together for worship.

On a more positive note, I believe the church has found something exists that needed to surface…determination, perseverance – that intangible spiritual toughness that takes-on the challenges God’s enemy throws in our pathway.  It is that nearly undefinable quality of spiritual fortitude, a reserve called-forth in response to the Spirit’s bidding which says, we’re going to serve Him, no matter what!

The church of the roaring, troubled 20’s reminds me of Job, sitting in the ashes of grieving, covered with boils, ridiculed by most everyone who knew him, being questioned as to why God was punishing him, and why he would even consider continuing to breathe.  Job’s answer was a resounding stone-faced glare of steel:

Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him:                              Job 13:15

For You Today

There are two reminders for each of us in Paul’s letter to the Corinthian believers, as well as Job’s faithful response to his critics:

     1.    We need to wait FOR each other…don’t forget that the body moves together, or it comes apart.

     2.  We need to wait ON each other…the strength I need is something you exhibit and share with me…and, that which keeps you going does not entirely come from within you...thou and I share the same pulse when we consider:  one loaf, one body.  Life is in the blood, brother!

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

[1] Title & other images:  Russell Brownworth (own work)   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©    

When the Road Gets Rocky

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Friday, January 10, 2020

Now there was a believer in Damascus named Ananias.  The Lord spoke to him in a vision, calling, “Ananias!”  “Yes, Lord!” he replied.  The Lord said, “Go over to Straight Street, to the house of Judas.  When you get there, ask for a man from Tarsus named Saul.  He is praying to me right now.  I have shown him a vision of a man named Ananias coming in and laying hands on him so he can see again.”  “But Lord,” exclaimed Ananias, “I’ve heard many people talk about the terrible things this man has done to the believers in Jerusalem!  And he is authorized by the leading priests to arrest everyone who calls upon your name.”  But the Lord said, “Go, for Saul is my chosen instrument to take my message to the Gentiles and to kings, as well as to the people of Israel.  And I will show him how much he must suffer for my name’s sake.”  So Ananias went and found Saul.  He laid his hands on him and said, “Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on the road, has sent me so that you might regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.”  Instantly something like scales fell from Saul’s eyes, and he regained his sight.  Then he got up and was baptized.  Afterward he ate some food and regained his strength.  Acts 9:10-19

Ananias was a believer, and God instructed him to go help Saul, the one who was seeking to destroy the church, putting believers in jail to rot; sometimes having them killed.  Saul had just become a believer, and Ananias’ mission was to go start the process of informing Saul just how much he was going to suffer as God’s servant.  Some days it just doesn’t seem worthwhile to get out of bed!

As a rule, you meet nice people at church; they are doing nice things and have a smile for you.  It’s not hard to understand why the thought develops that life as a Christian disciple is easy; why would all those people be smiling unless it was so?  The problem with this thinking is that life is not easy, no matter what your circumstances – wealthy, poor, healthy, sickly, tall, short, skinny, fat, wise, simple, race, gender, sexual orientation, location, opportunities, or any other twist or quirk of nature, the common thread of every life is that, sometimes, it is a really hard rocky road!  Just ask Ananias and Saul!

There are reasons we fall into the trap of developing a false view of life.  It’s usually expressed in the form of lament, such as:  oh, life for him/her is so easy; I wish I had their life; I deserve happiness.  Money, sex, freedom from responsibility, a better hairstyle and complexion (or whatever…just fill in the blank) …THAT would do it for me!

There are at least two reasons we all long for that to be true:

#1. Self-delusion

We want an easy life, and so we hunt for signs of where that might happen for us.  Now, it’s a natural tendency to want better than we have.  When it becomes an obsession, we are prone to accept the self-lie that we deserve whatever makes us happy.  Theologically that is the worst kind of lie, because it makes us in charge of our life, calling the shots, captain of our ship, master of our fate.  And that places us squarely in opposition to reality; it is God who is sovereign.  God is our Creator and, as such, we worship Him, not our plans and desires!

#2. Preachers.

There are many preachers whose message tends to support the self-happiness delusion over the rocky road reality.  A simple check of the most popular media megachurch moguls unveils the base of the message constantly – here’s how to manipulate the circumstances to get what you want from God.  It’s called many things, but the prosperity Gospel (an oxymoron if ever one existed, considering Jesus said blessed are the poor) is a life pathway to serve self, not follow Jesus.  Preachers that feed this poison to God’s people will suffer God’s judgment!

For You Today

Life’s pathway choices:  delusion or discipleship.  The road will be rocky either way, but I’d rather follow the One who laid out the road in the first place.

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

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[1] Title Image:  Rocky Road Devotion (permission)    Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©

Mennace & Ministry

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Thursday, April 4, 2019

If the Lord Jesus is willing, I hope to send Timothy to you soon for a visit.  Then he can cheer me up by telling me how you are getting along.  I have no one else like Timothy, who genuinely cares about your welfare.  All the others care only for themselves and not for what matters to Jesus Christ.  But you know how Timothy has proved himself.  Like a son with his father, he has served with me in preaching the Good News.  I hope to send him to you just as soon as I find out what is going to happen to me here.  And I have confidence from the Lord that I myself will come to see you soon.  Philippians 2:19-24

Elizabeth and I have had a somewhat strained relationship with yellow jackets.  When I had just entered my teens one summer, I was assisting my dad by climbing up in the oak tree near our house to cut down a dead branch that was hanging by a thread.  As I chopped-away at the dead wood the yellow jackets objected; the swarm attacked and when I jumped out of the tree, my dad said he couldn’t see my face, only yellow and black…and stingers!  I got stung over 100 times on my head and neck.  In 10 minutes I couldn’t breathe, because bee venom makes you swell…on the inside as well as the outside.  My air passage was closing.  Fortunately, we lived only a few miles from our doctor, and he saved my hide with an injection (that was the only sharp point I appreciated that day!).

Fast forward a half-century to another back yard.  Elizabeth is raking up the pine needles around our cherry tree, and the North Carolina yellow jackets weren’t any more hospitable than those of my New York youth.  She only got stung by a couple of them, but the signs of a severe reaction came rushing on her like a tsunami.  Within about 30 seconds my bride was unconscious, collapsed on the kitchen floor and I was injecting her with anti-venom while dialing 911.  The ER doctor told us we made it by not more than a couple of minutes.

For the last several years Elizabeth has been carrying her epi-pen, and Russell knows where it is!  She has also been undergoing venom therapy to develop a stronger immunity to the little mayhem bringers.  In retrospect, having had the same kind of episode in my youth made me more alert to the danger Elizabeth faced.  It made me more able to understand what was happening and act quickly when she couldn’t help herself.

I think God does that a lot, preparing us in our difficult times for times when others need us.  I believe that is the definition of ministry – bringing what’s needed to the table.  If my experience at the wrong end of 100 yellow jackets hadn’t taken place, my wife suffering a few stings wouldn’t have stirred the kind of alarm needed to act.

This is how I see Paul’s life of hardship and opposition.  The beatings, imprisonments, and opposition to spreading the Good News prepared this Apostle with the kind of compassionate heart he needed to minister to the church at Philippi, even from prison!

Paul understood, because of his hardship, the kind of person he needed to send to comfort the people who were worried about him.  Paul entrusted Timothy to be the shepherd to the Philippian believers, because he had worked long and hard with Timothy, and seen how the young man had developed a heart for ministry.

For You Today

Take a few moments to think about some of the difficulties you’ve faced.  Then imagine how God has prepared you to be a minister to those who might be facing the same challenges, and how your difficulties will give you confidence to be salt and light to someone groping in the darkness.  You might be a Timothy whom God has prepared to bring relief to someone going through deep waters.

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

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[i] Title Image:   Pixabay.com

[ii] Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are from The New Living Translation©

The Silk Purse in the Sow's Ear

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Thursday, August 30, 2018

This letter is from James, a slave of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ.  I am writing to the “twelve tribes”—Jewish believers scattered abroad.  Greetings!  Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy.  For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow.  So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing.  If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and he will give it to you.  He will not rebuke you for asking.  But when you ask him, be sure that your faith is in God alone.  Do not waver, for a person with divided loyalty is as unsettled as a wave of the sea that is blown and tossed by the wind.  Such people should not expect to receive anything from the Lord.  Their loyalty is divided between God and the world, and they are unstable in everything they do.  James 1:1-8^(NLT)

The followers of Jesus were chased from Jerusalem; the church was in hiding.  Persecution had scattered the believers like water poured on a grease fire spreads it everywhere.  And, James, their praying pastor, told them to look at their displacement as an opportunity for great joy; you gotta love his optimism!

It’s just like James to give us the answer before he poses the question.  The reason the disciples’ trials and hardship were to be considered great joy isn’t that we are supposed to love getting clobbered for the faith, but that suffering any kind of humiliation grows our faithful endurance.  James was comparing their experience to what a fighter goes through in rigorous, determined, physical training, pushing the development of his stamina to the limit, so that when he enters the ring, his body is conditioned, strong and resilient, ready to prevail in the fight, whatever the enemy throws at him.

To tell you the truth I have never been partial to that kind of conditioning.  In high school I decided to try out for the football team.  That first day I never saw a football stadium, or even a football; there was only pushups, wind sprints and something the coach called up/downs.  It was a grueling 15 minutes of running in place until coach blew the whistle, and you were supposed to drop to the dust, landing on all fours.  But it wasn’t nap time; you had to spring to your feet and keep running to nowhere.  Up – down – up – down…up/downs!  It didn’t take too long before I wanted to go home!

But, for three weeks we conditioned our bodies.  Then we finally got to play a little football.  For me the emphasis there was on the word “little”.  I got clobbered (in practice, of all things) and wound up on the operating table with a ruptured spleen, bleeding internally.  After the operation the surgeon (bless that man) told my parents my young body’s muscle-tone was well-developed, and that conditioning I’d received in football helped control the bleeding, so I hadn’t needed a transfusion.  This turned out to be significant, because the nearest blood bank that had my type was in New Jersey.

The point – those wind sprints, pushups, and…heaven help me…up/downs contributed to the kind of endurance I would need to survive 11^th grade.

So, this is the great benefit of accepting life’s hardships and trials with great joy – God is blessing us with a growing, faithful endurance, which conditions followers of Jesus Christ for spiritual warfare.  It may not be the kind of fun, or easy ride you envisioned when you became a disciple, but the up/downs, and running for the sake of endurance build a faith that cannot divide your loyalty from Christ; and that is the whole point of what you need…not what you wanted.

For You Today

It may look like you’ve been handed a sow’s ear with what you’re going through…but God has a way of making a silk purse out of the strangest circumstances!

So…rejoice today…greatly!

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

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[1] Title Image: Photo Courtesy of Pixabay.com