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!

Go to VIDEO (read by author)

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

What if...?

Wednesday, November 30, 2022

What if the Lord had not been on our side?  Let all Israel repeat:  What if the Lord had not been on our side when people attacked us?  They would have swallowed us alive in their burning anger.  The waters would have engulfed us; a torrent would have overwhelmed us.  Yes, the raging waters of their fury would have overwhelmed our very lives.  Praise the Lord, who did not let their teeth tear us apart!  We escaped like a bird from a hunter’s trap.  The trap is broken, and we are free!  Our help is from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.  Psalm 124:1-8

I think Advent is my kind of season.  As an introspective sort, I naturally turn towards the inner self, thinking, evaluating, wondering, and (too-often) overthinking!  But, it is what it is; we are hardwired one way or another.

As much trouble as I can get into by keeping my mouth closed, and mind working, and, therefore open to criticism of being moody, or uncaring, I do sense I stay out of trouble more that way than the other.  Two sayings come to mind:

1.    Open mouth, insert foot…and

2.    Better to keep mouth closed and be thought a fool, than to open mouth and remove all doubt.

Advent was built with the thinker in mind.  To relfect is to consider deeply about what you’re doing, or what happened, or, perhaps most importantly, what’s coming.  In the Christian life, there is no larger consideration upon which to reflect than that last one…what’s coming is Jesus!

The “thinker” of Psalm 124 does all three:

He looks back:  What if the Lord had not been on our side?  The result of life in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria would’ve been a catastrophe.  The blood would have run neck-deep to a horse for miles. 

He looks at what he does now in light of what happened:  The trap is broken, and we are free!  Freedom carries responsibility; the Psalmist doesn’t want to waste this gift of opportunity to reflect positively on God’s great kindness.

He looks very deeply at what’s coming:  Our help is from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.  To consider every last nook and cranny of creation takes a long time.  Somehow, the sober moment of escaping the tragedy of an enemy attack, has driven this thoughtful one to remember not only where he (and all Israel) would be without God’s divine favor and grace, but resolve to trust in no other strength, save the lovingkindness of JHWH, Jehovah-Jirah, the God who is I Am.

For You Today  

There is enough emotion at this time of year.  Hallmark sees to that detail.  For believers, it is a time to think, carefully, deeply, and with the very-pointed purpose of engaging where we’ve been, what we’re doing, and what’s coming. 

Advent is the stuff of life time.  What hangs in the balance for you and me is to either being engulfed by this world’s system, or released like a bird from a cage.  Prison of sin, or release to the Kingdom.  That’s Advent; that’s today!

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

Go to VIDEO (read by author)

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: 

       Rescue   and   Committing Advent

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^©   

 

The Quintessential Rearview Mirror

Friday, September 30, 2022

The thought of my suffering and homelessness is bitter beyond words.  I will never forget this awful time, as I grieve over my loss.  Yet I still dare to hope when I remember this:  The faithful love of the Lord never ends!  His mercies never cease.  Great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each morning.  I say to myself, “The Lord is my inheritance; therefore, I will hope in him!”  The Lord is good to those who depend on him, to those who search for him.  So it is good to wait quietly for salvation from the Lord.  Lamentations 3:19-26

When you’ve either been through, or going through a rough patch (COVID, War, Divorce, Prison, or a thousand other nightmares), the tendency is usually to stare into one of two places – the road ahead, or the rearview mirror.  To be glued to the rearview mirror is to hold on to the anguish and pain of the past, embracing the rough patch as the future.  To dwell on the past means you are driving blindly into the future, and we know where failing to keep your eyes on the road will lead.  (Laws against texting while driving were placed on the books for a reason!).

However painful the rearview mirror can be, at times we must shoot a quick look there, to be sure of two things:

1.    We are aware of what we left behind.

2.    We are still progressing away from the road that led to the rough patch.

If knowledge is power, running on a low battery is a dumb thing.  It is foolish to not remember what got you into the rough patch, or the dangers that might lead you back there.  Real wisdom is the common sense that puts knowledge (good or evil) to good use.  As the wise person once said:  if we fail to remember the mistakes of the past, we are doomed to repeat them in the future.

Even an ostrich in a hurricane has enough sense to look above the storm to chart his course.

For You Today

So, to be (at least) as wise as a bird-brain, use the rearview mirror to poke your head out of the hole in the ground so you can get above the harsh conditions, and get a bead on where you need to go.  In short, look above, you’ll find plenty of answers as the Lord leads you out of the rough patch, even if the road seems rocky.

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

Go to VIDEO (read by author)

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: 

Has God Forgotten to Be Gracious? and Hard Times & Growing Churches   

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

An Act of Perfecting Grace

Wednesday, July 27, 2022

“You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbor’ and hate your enemy.  But I say, love your enemies!  Pray for those who persecute you!  In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven.  For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike.  If you love only those who love you, what reward is there for that?  Even corrupt tax collectors do that much.  If you are kind only to your friends, how are you different from anyone else?  Even pagans do that.  But you are to be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.  Matthew 5:43-48

Sisyphus is a notable in Greek mythology.  He was a king, so clever, his schemes to  increase his power and wealth are common to this world’s ways.  In the myth, chief god, Zeus, sentenced Sisyphus to rolling a rock up a mountain, only to have it escape his grip each time he neared the top, rolling down to the base of the mountain.  The dethroned king had to roll it up again and again, for all eternity.  The teaching of the myth was the pointlessness of avarice and power…it only leads to the mindless task of increasing effort to maintain what is, in the end, neverending worthlessness.  It’s empty, unable to slake even the slightest thirst.

It's kind of like paying a mortgage, month, after month, after month, ad nauseum.  But in this case, the only deed you have is the assurance of a place in hell.

Jesus turned Sisyphus’ status-climbing on its’ ear, telling His disciples to bend lower, rather than climb higher.  Loving requires lifting…most often heavy lifting.  To lift another who is struggling is heavy enough, but Jesus points to doing the heaviest of lifting, loving those who struggle against you.  We are instructed to love our enemies.  Now THAT is rolling some huge kind of rock uphill.  And it would seem a Sisyphean task, because you KNOW it’s gonna slip right through your hands and end up in the valley.  And you’ll be left with nothing but bruises.

And that’s just the point, Jesus says:  Do it anyway!

And, as with Sisyphus, we wonder – why?  Why love them when it’s just going to turn out bad? 

And Jesus’ punch-line is a jaw-dropper:  …you are to be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.  The purpose, meaning, and cause of all this loving your enemies, is to draw closer to the fellowship we seek with our Creator.  Against all human wisdom, we are to trust God’s ways, not our feelings (especially that anger against our enemies).  That is what God did, knowing infinitely well how much pain it would cost Him on the cross. 

John Wesley called it going on to perfection in love.  We are not going to be perfect in all our attitudes and actions in this life, but we can move in the direction of loving perfectly.  And, like it or not, that includes treating our enemies with respect, and the kindness we all crave.

For You Today

You may never develop a fondness for an enemy, especially when he’s got you by the throat, or picking your pocket.  But God doesn’t require you to have fond feelings; He expects you to remember how to treat your enemy:

Do to others as you would like them to do to you.  Luke 6:31

THAT is an act of perfecting grace, possibly for your enemy; definitely for you!

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

Go to VIDEO (read by author)

There are about 2,000 devotional posts in the Rocky Road Devotions library. 

To dig deeper on today’s topic read:

  Wikipedia Commons on Sisyphus   and 

 What Did John Wesley Mean? and  A Life of Polar Opposites

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

UnBroken

[1]

Thursday, October 3, 2019

The thought of my suffering and homelessness is bitter beyond words.  I will never forget this awful time, as I grieve over my loss.  Yet I still dare to hope when I remember this:  The faithful love of the Lord never ends!  His mercies never cease.  Great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each morning.  I say to myself, “The Lord is my inheritance; therefore, I will hope in him!”  The Lord is good to those who depend on him, to those who search for him.  So it is good to wait quietly for salvation from the Lord.  Lamentations 3:19-26[2]

Jeremiah, fierce, sword-wielding prophet, is the author of Lamentations.  He is the one we find wallowing in his suffering and homelessness, grieving over his loss.  Jeremiah’s homelessness is not what we’d picture in our time, sleeping on park benches, begging on street corners, tents in the woods or nights huddled in an old abandoned car.  Jeremiah was in prison; his home and the entire nation was occupied by the enemy.  His was a broken nation.  His conclusion, that it is good to wait quietly for salvation from the Lord was not a spiritual high ground…Jeremiah had no choice. 

Suffering, and what you do with it, have filled libraries of books for generations.  Ever since Job’s loss of his family, wealth, friends, and place in the community, coupled with the boils that covered his body in torment, humankind has searched for the why of suffering, and the what of how to deal with it.

My friend, Bert Cavaletto learned to deal with Jeremiah and Job’s suffering.  Bert was a pilot in World War 2 who spent a long time in a prison camp.  Among a myriad of coping skills developed to ward off despair, Bert constructed a model ship which he completed while hiding it from his captors.  I saw the ship just before Bert died in 2014.  There was such painstaking detail; each plank of the deck, turnbuckle, stanchion and battens were either carved or fashioned with tools that would have been seen as weapons by the guards.  While it was a diversion from the reality of being a prisoner, this ship was also Bert’s sanity project, and the expression of genuine hope in salvation.  Like Jeremiah, who purchased a piece of property while in prison against the day when he might be released to a freed homeland – something which he never got to see, however – Bert’s ship represented the freedom one experiences on open seas.  It was his statement of hope!  It was his unbroken spirit claiming the promise of God that he was not forgotten.

I have come to understand that unforgotten and unbroken go together.  They belong and hold to one another like night frames day, and young meets old.  They are as integral to understanding God’s love as breathing is to staying alive in a prison camp, whether it be a military prison, or the prison of our thoughts and unrequited dreams.

From the mouth of Jesus (by way of John the Revelator) we hear the words of our Creator’s promise that suffering faithfully leads to the strength that only brokenness brings, a crown of life to wear long after a dying world passes away:

Don’t be afraid of what you are about to suffer.  The devil will throw some of you into prison to test you.  You will suffer for ten days.  But if you remain faithful even when facing death, I will give you the crown of life.  “Anyone with ears to hear must listen to the Spirit and understand what he is saying to the churches.  Whoever is victorious will not be harmed by the second death.  Revelation 2:10-11

For You Today

How else can you genuinely face and overcome the brokenness, emptiness, hurt and crushing blows of lost hope, except to trust that God has not lied?  This was the experience of the apostle Paul and my friend, Bert:

We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed.  We are perplexed, but not driven to despair.  We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God.  We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed.  Through suffering, our bodies continue to share in the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be seen in our bodies.  2 Corinthians 4:8-10

This is what it means to be battered, and yet unbroken!

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

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[1] Title Image:  Russell Brownworth photographs     Unless noted, Scripture used from The New Living Translation©

[2] For another post on this text and the topic of grieving see:  Hard Thoughts