Close To My Heart

I know that you are discouraged at this point of your life. You may believe that your situation is hopeless and that by committing suicide you will be able to solve all your problems. But I would like you to consider some other facts.

First, just because your life ends on this earth does not mean that it is the end. You will have to face your Creator and give an account for the life that He gave you. What will you say when He asks you, “Why did you do that? I had a future planned for you. I am the God of hope. I intended to walk with you through your struggles and give you victory. I wanted you to lean on Me and learn to trust Me so that your life would be a testimony that encouraged others going through difficult times.”

Second, not all suicide attempts are successful. If one survives, there may be permanent brain or liver damage or some other debilitating injury.

Finally, God has a perfect will for each person, including you. He knows how to make your life meaningful but you will have to yield yourself to Him. Let Christ be your example. He endured pain, rejection, ridicule and a terrible death. But He did not commit suicide. He leaned on His heavenly Father for grace and strength. He was victorious! You too can be victorious over your situation.

“Old School” is a phrase that points back to a time when some things just seemed to be better. Some old school cars continue to be appreciated because of their beauty, dependability, and capability. Old school music is often appreciated due to guitar solos and vocal harmony without layered, studio reverb, and Auto-Tune pitch correction). In short, “Old School” is something we should welcome back into our fast-past contemporary lives.

For example, consider Psalm 78:5-8, “For he established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their children: That the generation to come might know them, even the children which should be born; who should arise and declare them to their children: That they might set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments: And might not be as their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation; a generation that set not their heart aright, and whose spirit was not stedfast with God.”

Way back then, discipleship started in the home. If we want our children to love and follow the one true God passionately and consistently, we would do well to keep it “old school”– go back to that ancient foundational practice in our contemporary lives. What are YOU doing to help your children “not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments”?

Here are some practical ideas to engage on a regular basis:

Talk about who God is and what God commands.

Read the Scriptures together.

Pray with your children.

Be the example of what you expect.

It is foolish to expect our children to, “Do as I say, not as I do”. Kids see right through that hypocrisy and it usually leads to following in the footsteps, “as their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation that set not their heart aright, and whose spirit was not stedfast with God.”

As parents and mentors who love Jesus, it is our great privilege and responsibility to lead them to love Him.

Former major league baseball player, Al Gallagher, once said: “There are three things in my life which I really love: God, family, and baseball. The only problem is, once baseball season starts, I change the order around a bit.”  While I hope that is not entirely correct, it is not far from the truth for me as well. I absolutely love the game of baseball. I love playing the game, watching the game, analyzing the game, talking about the game, reading about the game…I think you get the idea.

One of the reasons I love baseball so much is because it teaches a great deal about life itself. Baseball shows the value of individual contributions to a team’s success, the importance of a good work ethic (you play like you practice), and the inevitably of failure (even Hall of Fame hitters make an out 70% of the time).  At the same time, baseball always affords its participants a chance to bounce back. At best, there’s another at bat coming. At worst, wait ‘til next year!

Some of you may recall a routine made famous by stand-up comedian, George Carlin, a number of years ago. In it, he compares the two most popular sports in America (no, not NASCAR and fishin’) – baseball and football. From his observations, you may get an idea why baseball is our national pastime and my sport of choice.

• Football begins in the fall, when everything’s dying.
• Baseball begins in the spring, the season of new life.
  

• Football is concerned with downs. What down is it? It’s the last down!
• Baseball is concerned with ups. Who’s up? Oh, I’m up!
  

• In football you receive a penalty.
• In baseball you make an error…oops!
  

• In football the specialist comes in to kick something.
• In baseball the specialist comes in to relieve somebody.

• Football has hitting, clipping, spearing, piling on, late hits, and unnecessary roughness.
• Baseball has the sacrifice.

• Football has the two minute warning.
• Baseball has the seventh inning stretch.
• Football is rigidly timed, and it will end even if we’ve got to go to sudden death.
• Baseball has no time limit so we don’t know when the game is gonna end. We might even have extra innings.

And finally, the objectives of the two games are completely different:

• In football the object is for the quarterback, also known as the field general, to be on target with his aerial assault, riddling the defense by hitting his receivers with deadly accuracy in spite of the blitz, even if he has to use the shotgun. With short bullet passes and long bombs, he marches his troops into enemy territory, balancing this aerial assault with a sustained ground attack that punches holes in the forward wall of the enemy’s defensive line.
• In baseball the object is to get home! And to be safe! I hope I’ll be safe at home!  
  

Baseball lover or not, we all like to be safe at home. Maybe that’s why I love Christ’s Church even more than the game of baseball. It gives me a safe place to call home where I can learn and live the Christian faith. That’s why I agree with the writer of Hebrews when he says, “Let us think about each other and help each other to show love and do good deeds. You should not stay away from church meetings…you should meet together and encourage each other.” (Hebrews 10:24-25a ICB) I hope and pray you have found and frequent a church that keeps you “safe at home!”

In my opening statement I would like to ask the following questions, could it be that the old is past and the new has arrived? Has the calendar itself, turned the page into the new millennium where it seems that nothing is wrong? Have we lost sight of the message of the cross and the price that Jesus paid for our sins? These are questions that I believe that need to be answered truthfully, through the word of God. Paul said that we the children of God should come out from among the world and be a separate people and touch not any unclean thing.

But in reality, it’s very hard to determine the difference between the world and the church today because of the lack of separation. And the reason is conviction. Knowing what to do, why to do it, and how to do it is worthless if you don’t have convictions. Jesus’ lived his life under total conviction doing the will of his father. He completely separated himself from the world. John said, “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the father, but is of the world”.

When John makes reference to the word world, he’s not talking about the grass, the trees, the flowers, etc.… He’s talking about the world system that is under the complete control of Satan. When we as children of God excepted Jesus as our personal savior, according to the scripture, old things passed away and behold all things become new. What we once loved, we will now hate and what we once hated we will now love. There should be a difference in one’s life after excepting Jesus as their savior. Our talk should change, our walk should change, our actions should change, but sadly in today’s society you don’t see that change because we’ve lost our conviction.

Let me ask this question, if you can live any way you want, do anything you want, say anything you want and still be saved, then why did Jesus have to pay such an awful price at Calvary? The answer is, you can’t. There must be a separation from this world in the life of a child of God. You cannot mix the two together, a house divided cannot stand! Jesus said, you cannot put new wine in old vessels. So, let me encourage all of us today to stop, and take a good look at the church and ourselves and see if we measure up to the church that was in the book of Acts and see if the church is being added to daily, and if signs and wonders are following. Remember, Jesus is not coming back for anything less than he left.

Once some declared himself to be an atheist, I would probably try to engage him/her in a conversation to help me understand why he/she is an atheist. The conversation might go something like this:

“I am sure there is a reason you consider yourself to be an atheist. Would you mind sharing that with me? Following their answer I would ask another question.

“I consider you to be an intelligent person. Would you say that you know everything there is to know about the universe?” If they are honest, he/she will admit they do not know everything about this universe.

“Is it possible, then, that in the section you don’t know about the universe, there just might be God? If they don’t cut the discussion short at this point, I would continue.

“Since you don’t know everything that is in this universe, and if God might be in the section that you don’t know, then it seems to me that you really don’t know if there is a God or not. I think you would be classified as an agnostic rather than an atheist. An atheist states there is no God. An agnostic doesn’t know for sure.

If the person is willing to continue the conversation, I would suggest that since he/she really doesn’t know if there is a God or not, he/she should investigate the issue with those are convinced there is a God and ask why they believe the way they do.

When the fear of giving up is overwhelmed by the stress and pain of the current, well, what do you do? When you feel closed off, boxed in and utterly alone. When you are talking to others, trying to cry out in the midst of your sentences but none are attuned to your pain, what do you do? When your soul and spirit are so vexed and weighted down, drowning in the blustery sea of your emotional despair, when every waking hour is filled with darkness of soul and your spirit entombed in pain of utter loneliness, what do you do? Hopelessness is all that rolls through your mind, your soul and your spirit, just hopelessness, what do you do? Surely all this will end if I just put an end to it. One slip of the blade, one pull of the trigger, one swallow of pills and the pain will end.

Regardless of what your theological persuasion is on the destination of one who commits suicide, lets look at some realities. To the person experiencing these emotions, it is absolutely real. No pat “Christianese” answer will pull one from such depths of despair nor will any pill you give them. No, they need real answers and real answers are found in the Bible and they need real loving friends.

King David was a realist. In several Psalms you see him crying out in despair, “God why have you forsaken me?!” Yet in the next breath he grounded himself in reality, “Why so downcast O my soul, put your hope in God.” So we too need to help those who are suicidal ground themselves in the reality that God is always there. The reality that others in the Bible experienced what they are facing and they made it through and so can they, IF they want to.

One reality that those who are in the throws of contemplating suicide rarely think of is this; suicide is the most selfish act you can ever do. Yes, you read right, suicide is the most selfish act you can ever do. Oh there are many vile selfish acts people can do but suicide is the most selfish. Suicide focuses all your attention on yourself. You assume, wrongly, that your death will affect no one and/or you fail to think through the consequences your selfish act will bring. Yes there maybe those in your life that distain you but there are people who indeed love you and your death will utterly break their hearts to the core. Nothing you leave in a suicide note will bring them any relief of your death. They will carry for life the unnecessary scars your suicide will bring.

The second reality of suicide is this; suicide is a permanent solution to something, which in the scope of life is really temporary. The emotional throws you are in are not permanent unless you choose to stay there.

To chat with a Christian about your suicidal thoughts go to https://chatnow.org/suicide/

At least once in his life every man needs the experience of coaching little league baseball or pee-wee football. It’s an endeavor that will bring you both tears of joy and tears of frustration. Like one day at football practice, when a little 9 year-old told me, “Coach, tell them not to tackle me. I’m allergic to grass.” My response, “Well son, maybe you should try basketball.” Or another kid who complained, “Coach, every time the ball is snapped that kid on the other side knocks me down.” My response, “Yes he does, and he’s going to keep doing it until you stop him.” Tears of laughter and tears of frustration.

I remember our first pee-wee football victory. The Buccaneers had just started a pee-wee football program and we were not much of a threat. We were playing 3rd and 4th graders against 5th and 6th grade teams. We were so bad that when we would ask a player, “Are you ready to go in?!” They would often reply, “Not really.” We took more than our share of lumps. In those first two seasons, not only did we not win a game, we only scored a single TD and that was by accident. The cheerleaders gave the boys a cake inscribed with buttercream frosting, “Congratulations on your Touchdown!” It was hard to stay positive, but we kept telling our boys, wait until you get in the 6th grade and we can play an evenly matched game. Keep working hard and things will be different.

That third year, we finally had a legitimate team. The boys pushed themselves in the pre-season and we were ecstatic to travel to Columbia, Mississippi for our first battle. And a battle it was. There hasn’t been a Super Bowl played to this day with that much heart and rugged determination. Midway through the 4th quarter the score was tied 0-0. You can imagine the eruption of emotion when one of our defensive backs picked off a pass and returned it for a TD! We went on to our first victory ever with a score of 6-0.

We won plenty of other games after that, but none were as sweet as that one. I still have a picture with my son Christian on the sideline after the game, both of us drenched in sweat. Our boys knew that night, their hard work had paid off…they were becoming a football team.

As a believer, it’s easy to get discouraged with fellow Christians. We have much in common with my little football team. But by God’s grace we get to experience that same exhilaration time and time again as we stand on the sidelines watching God’s people become what God has called us to be. When we see Christ-followers reaching out to the broken and the forgotten people in our community, we feel victory. When we see people sharing burdens and caring for one another sacrificially and generously, we feel victory. When we see people offering God’s hope to the hopeless and God’s love to the loveless, we feel victory. So, don’t lose heart…we are becoming the Church.

Pollsters ask Americans, “Do you believe in God?” 80% to 90% say, “Yes.” But David Wells observed, “Those who assure the pollsters of their belief in God’s existence may nonetheless consider him less interesting than television, his commands less authoritative than their appetites for affluence and influence, his judgment no more awe-inspiring than the evening news, and his truth less compelling than the advertisers’ sweet fog of flattery and lies. That is weightlessness” (God in the Wasteland, p. 88). In other words, many Americans believe in a weightless God, who sits on them like a feather.

A weightless God is a figment of our imagination, a false god, a man-made idol. In our Bibles, the Hebrew word translated “glory” is kavod and means “heavy, weighty.” That means to sin against the holy God is a very big deal. In Isaiah 6 we see the angels around the throne of the King of heaven, high and lifted up. The greatness of the King can be measured by the length of his train and this King’s train fills the temple of heaven! How great, mighty, holy and weighty is He! The angels are singing around His throne, “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of your glory [kavod]!” Isaiah says that when this King of heaven spoke, the very foundations of the temple thresholds shook and the whole heavenly temple was filled with smoke. He is “weighty”!

So what was this godly prophet’s response to this vision of God’s “heavy” holiness and “weighty” glory? Did he say, “Groovy, man!” Or, “That’s cool!” Or, “Whatever.” Absolutely not! This godly man cries out, “Woe is me! [That means, Damned is me! I will perish!] For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!” So who is that holy, weighty, glorious King who did not sit on Isaiah like a feather but caused him to become completely undone and cry out as a desperate sinner? The Apostle John tells us who Isaiah saw: “he saw [King Jesus’] glory and spoke of him” (John 12:41). Jesus is not a weightless feather because God is not a feather. Jesus is God. He is heavy, weighty. And Jesus will either drink the wrath and judgment of God for your sins in your place, or you will bear His judgment yourself under “the wrath of the Lamb” (Rev. 6:16).

Notice the angel came back to Isaiah with a burning coal from the altar of sacrifice, hot from the wrath of God for man’s sin, and touched Isaiah’s unclean lips with it and said, “your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.” Believe in that God, the real One, and Jesus will take the guilt of your sin away, too, and you can face the Judgment of God in peace. Amen.

That’s right. I said it.  What!?   A pastor telling me to stop going to church? Yep, you guessed it.  If there was anything our Lord would not have wanted of us, it is to GO to church.

Have I got your attention now?  That’s right.  We Christians get all huddled together IN a place called “church.”  There we get most of the “church” out of us.  We sing “Just As I AM” then often leave just as we were.

Why doesn’t the church make a bigger impact on its community?  Because we tend to huddle all together only inside the building we affectionately call, “OUR church.” Brothers and sisters in Christ, we don’t HAVE a church, and there is no church that is “ours.”  Or … if there were, then we are worshiping ourselves.

The unintentional co-founder of the branch of the church that set me apart for ministry, left the building, just like Jesus left the synagogue, under great scrutiny as back then, and still today through much of the UK, the church literally is the building.  He left to bring the gospel out of “sacred buildings” and into highways and byways.  4K miles a year on horse or feet.  Billy Graham, whose loss we have been mourning, led communities and even countries to the cross, and rarely from inside a church building.

Wesley joined Whitfield in preaching outdoors under GREAT scrutiny.  “You can’t do that!” they were ordered. There is a sense in which “going” to church is exactly opposite to where we should be going: to the people, to the world, the needy, the orphan, the widowed, the homeless, the lost, the hopeless.

Going “to” church, connotes that we can leave the church, or that the worship is done IN the church.  You know this.

Of course I wouldn’t mind at all if any of you chose to come by the building that serves as MY “lighthouse” or post for ministry.  But, I’d be most proud if when you did, you were impassioned to leave it to transform your world. For many years I served as an “extension minister,” extended from the church to serve airmen and their families around the world.  Aren’t we all to be extensions of the ministry of Christ where we live, work, play, sleep.  Always. Everywhere?  We gather AS the church, then dispatch AS the church to give hope to our hurting world.

Check it. IN the 3 times or so the word “church” is spoken by Jesus’ and the 100 or so by his disciples, you’d be hard pressed to show that a single time they are referring to a building.

Let’s join Marsh and Avery (1972) in singing: “The church is not a building. The church is not a steeple. The church is not a resting place. The church is a people… I am the church. YOU are the church. WE are the church together. All who follow Jesus! All around the world! Yes, we’re the church together!”

When I was growing up I remember going to the movie theatre and seeing “Rocky”. I can remember thinking it was the greatest movie I ever saw. Then when I was in college I saw it again on a black and white portable TV. Of the two, which one do you think I got the most out of? Which one was I more involved? The answer is obvious. It’s the same way in life. If you really want to get involved in the life that God has given you, you have to learn to see the big picture.

We tend to think in terms of NOW. We see the mundane details of our life as urgent…as “do or die”. This kind of thinking is counter-productive, and creates unnecessary stress. Most of our problems are not a matter of life and death, and there’s no point in blowing them out of proportion. Dean Smith, the former basketball coach at University of North Carolina once said, “If you make every game a matter of life and death, you’ll be dead a lot.”

In order to keep things in perspective, we should condition ourselves to ask the following question: Will this make a difference in 2500 years? For most of the things we allow ourselves to get stressed about, the answer would be “no”. In 2500 years will it matter if the waiter messes up our order? In 2500 years will it matter if I don’t make this sale? Will it matter what kind of car I drive? Will it matter if someone is rude to me? Will it matter if the Seminoles beat the Gators? Will these things matter in 2500 years?

On the other hand, if you share Christ’s love with someone, will that matter in 2500 years? If you take time to disciple a new believer, encourage someone, or give financially to a worthwhile cause. Will that make a difference in 2500 years? The answer is obvious. While there are many things we do that have no eternal significance, there are other areas of our lives where we have the opportunity to make a contribution that will last forever.

As we go about our daily business, we need to get in the habit of thinking in terms of eternity. In 2 Peter 3:8, Peter said, “Do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” These words remind us that there is a big picture to all of this.

The few years we are here on earth, the small circle in which we live, these are only a tiny part of all that is and we must remind ourselves that we are not the center of the universe; the world, the team, or the job does not revolve around you or me. We must also remind ourselves that there is more to life than just money, possessions, and materialistic pursuits. There is an eternal aspect of life that cannot be ignored.