Benediction (the Launching, Not the Landing

Tuesday, May 2, 2023

Now may the God of peace—who brought up from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great Shepherd of the sheep, and ratified an eternal covenant with his blood—may he equip you with all you need for doing his will.  May he produce in you, through the power of Jesus Christ, every good thing that is pleasing to him.  All glory to him forever and ever! Amen.  

Hebrews 13:20-21

A benediction is like the familiar words of Jesus when he called himself both Alpha and Omega, not just the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, but the beginning and ending of everything good, holy, and worthwhile. 

This letter of Paul the Apostle[1] to the Hebrew Christians ends with a launch.  It’s like the shuttle lifting off the pads at Cape Canaveral – there have been thousands and thousands of work hours to get to this point, but the journey is now beginning.  

Paul wrote this long explanatory letter, proclaiming to first century Jews exactly how Jesus fulfilled every part of God’s law, and then Paul offers a benediction of grace to fill the launch thrusters that will propel them into a mission to all mankind, of being God’s lighthouse to the lost.

If you’re at all like me, the benediction used to be a pause with a yawn; the worship service is ending, let the nap begin.  Not so in the real world.  A genuine benediction is commissioning…the training and planning done…now the work!

At our church we call it Commissioning and Sending.  Sunday corporate worship lifts our praises, prayers, and open hearts to the Lord’s throne.  The sermon lays out the Word to fill open hearts, and the final act is commissioning.  It’s the act of believers committing to the Kingdom work of spreading the Good News. 

I have this mental rodeo image of benedition (our commissioning and sending); it’s that last nervous moment when the bull-riding cowboy is tightening his grip on that flank rope attached to the 2,000-pound bull under him.  He’s getting ready for the launch on the wildest of rides.  The bull-riding event has been called the most dangerous eight seconds in sports.  When the gates are opened, man and beast are at 180°-odds about staying together.  Eight seconds later the journey is over. 

Unlike the lightning-fast ride and judging of bull-riding, the results of God’s Kingdom work will only be revealed in eternity.  However, the similarities end when you start to talk about value.  In bull-riding a cowboy can get instant fame and fortune, a wisp of a high (assuming he lasts the 8 seconds), and then obscurity or a footnote in rodeo lore.  In Kingdom work a witness of Jesus Christ will receive an eternal crown of glory from the White Throne in Heaven.

For You Today 

Let’s hear again from the Apostle as we begin this day in laboring for the Master:

…may he equip you with all you need for doing his will.  May he produce in you, through the power of Jesus Christ, every good thing that is pleasing to him.  All glory to him forever and ever! Amen. 

So…be commissioned…be sent…!

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

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There are about 2,500 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library.  To dig deeper explore some of these:   White Flag of Surrender  and  May He Produce in You   

Title Image:  via Pixabay.com   Images without citation are in public domain.

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

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[1] The author is not named, but most scholars place it in Paul’s hands.

May HE Produce in You...

 

Tuesday, May 4, 2020

Now may the God of peace—who brought up from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great Shepherd of the sheep, and ratified an eternal covenant with his blood—may he equip you with all you need for doing his will.  May he produce in you, through the power of Jesus Christ, every good thing that is pleasing to him.  All glory to him forever and ever! Amen.  Hebrews 13:20-21

This certainly sounds familiar to me.  It should; I heard this prayer a long time ago, and it was prayed over me by Ralph Beshears as I was ordained to the ministry of preaching God’s good news.  Mr. Beshears was a retired postmaster from Boone, NC, and he was part of the church body to which I belonged.  Every time I heard him pray, it impressed me that he was a man of deep faith. 

As a rookie in matters of ministry, I wanted that faith pathway.  I wanted to have the kind of impact on others I saw in Ralph and those like him, who were seriously following Christ.  I knew that impact could only come from God’s hand, but when you open your heart to God’s leading you look to others who have gone before to lead you in the pathway.  God manifests himself in whatever way HE decides, but often it is through mentors who have been there, and walked through some fires. 

This prayer of the writer to the Hebrews[1] invokes the blessing of God for whatever is needed to accomplish God’s will.  It reminds me of the saying that wherever God leads, God will empower you to accomplish whatever He wanted when He led you there.  Accomplishing God’s will – whatever it is, and whatever situation to which it is addressed – is always the prerogative of God’s desiring.

There is only one phrase I choose to describe this sense of choosing this pathway of being ready to follow God’s will as a disciple of Jesus Christ; I call it

The Surrendered Life

Everything about following God requires a humble heart that approaches, listens attentively, and then acts accordingly to what God has declared.  I must admit that in 1981, on the day I was ordained, I imagined ministry was going to be much different than it turned out….MUCH different. 

For You Today

If you imagined serving God would mean living your best life, experiencing the kind of prosperity you hear about that could be compared to winning lotteries, or the success stories of obstacles falling by the wayside like wilted weeds…perhaps it’s time to reevaluate whether you’re serving the Almighty Holy God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Peter and John.  Or if it’s been your desire to get what you wanted.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road today!

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Title Image:  Flicker      Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©

For another post on Psalm 100 see White Flag of Surrender

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[1] Most likely Paul the apostle.

White Flag of Surrender

[i]

Tuesday, May 9, 2017

Now may the God of peace—who brought up from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great Shepherd of the sheep, and ratified an eternal covenant with his blood—may he equip you with all you need for doing his will.  May he produce in you, through the power of Jesus Christ, every good thing that is pleasing to him.  All glory to him forever and ever! Amen.  Hebrews 13:20-21^(NLT)

A white surrender flag is usually associated with a struggle between two sides at war, where one has finally recognized the outcome is going to be against them, and they give up rather than lose everything.

The spirit of fighting to the bitter end runs deep in human beings.  Winston Churchill’s iconic speech to a graduating class was a simple three-word phrase repeated three times:  Never give up; Never give up; Never give up!  Then he sat down.  While most preachers’ lengthy sermons are forgotten over Sunday’s lunch, that ultra-short speech is still remembered more than a half-century later!

The writer of Hebrews ended his letter with a benedictory prayer that God would produce in the recipients of that letter an ability to surrender; to become resigned to do God’s will entirely; that they would thus please God and bring all glory to him forever and ever!  And that’s a huge rub; mostly all the struggle human beings have ever had with God has had to do with not wanting to do God’s will.  We abuse free will, preferring to do our own thing.  But that is mostly because we misunderstand the nature of God’s will as being prohibitive, rather than beneficial.  We think God is trying to rain on our party when, in fact, He’s offering us the best life possible.

This is much like the struggle between parents and children who are coming of age.  The struggle of wills is sometimes epic, tragic and so totally unnecessary.  Parents (like God) do not wish harm towards their children; they want a fulfilled, happy, and useful life for them.  Parents make mistakes in communicating this to the children (none of us are perfect), but often the children interpret the mistakes as meanness.

Sunday afternoon Elizabeth and I had the joy of spending time at a restaurant with our daughter Jen, and her husband Ken.  We were celebrating Jen’s birthday, and that always recalls memories of the past years and events.  In her childhood we experienced times of laughter, joy, difficulties and testing, as most parents know.  In back of it all there was always the strongest hopes and prayers we offered up to God that our daughter would find that place in God’s will that He had waiting for her.  In many ways we see evidence that that prayer is being worked out as she serves God with her gifts in music and her willingness to engage in ministry with others.  We are so proud of the woman of God, wife, mother, and grandmother she has become.

A white flag of surrender isn’t always because one side has won, and the other is a loser.  Surrendering to God’s will means victory for everybody!

For You Today

With all respect to Mr. Churchill, when it comes to God’s will, always give up; always give up; always give up!

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

Go to VIDEO

NOTES

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 ^I Title image:  By עברית: אין מידע [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons