Worthwhile December 20, 2019
Oh my you can almost taste it. Christmas is so close. The presents round the tree. The warm family time together. The singing. The laughing. May it be so.
Tomorrow I have the pleasure of adding another year under my belt, 42 I shall be. Let's begin celebrating now shall we?!
A couple of items today since I know your weekend is busy...
First up is the ruckus coming from our friends in Northern California at a little church named Bethel. You may not be aware, but this last week the daughter of a worship-leading couple passed away unexpectedly. In light of this the church has been holding several days of resurrection meetings calling on little Olive to wake up.
Erik Reed, whose son recently passed away, has a pastoral response to the events.
"The pain this family and church feel over the loss of Olive punches you in the stomach and leaves you cleaving for air. The death of a child hurts. It shatters your heart in a million pieces and prompts your mind to replay endless scenes of times with your child. The permanence of it is heavy. Each day is a reminder that their laugh, their smile, their touch, and their smell are gone."
"My heart aches for this family. I grieve about how badly they are hurting. It’s terrible."
"But the pain Olive’s death has brought this family and church will soon lead to another one. It is the pain and confusion that bad theology ushers in. Their response is only compounding the pain. Disillusionment awaits those who pray now for something God has not promised."
God can absolutely resurrect whom he chooses, but the danger is in the demanding of it. Read his whole post here.
Keeping in the light-hearted tone of today's articles... Sorry I don't mean to be a downer... We turn to impeachment.
It is historical, it happened, and we should think about it. Sadly, as has always been the case, impeachment of a president is a rancorous, partisan affair. No one looks good through the process and regular folks like you and I just become more entrenched in our party or perspective.
But there is also something else going on here. Those of you who know me have experienced my displeasure with the current political environment and what I think is a significant failure of those professing faith in Christ making decisions in the public sphere that align with that profession. But I won't convince you, the dragon goes too deep.
Enter Christianity Today. Neither the most influential instrument in the Christian world nor an entity that can be ignored. The magazine's editorial board, being consistent with the calls they made twenty years ago for Bill Clinton to be removed from office, have called for President Trump to likewise be removed.
Their article is measured, reasoned, and thoroughly Christian. The problem is, those that could benefit from the dialogue simple won't read it. We will keep getting our news from narrow sources and only listen to influencers that echo what we already believe. That is terribly unChristian.
So I put it before you, be bold, take up and read. Pray and wrestle. What would Jesus have us do?
If you are hesitant to to click the link, maybe just engage with this paragraph from the piece:
"To the many evangelicals who continue to support Mr. Trump in spite of his blackened moral record, we might say this: Remember who you are and whom you serve. Consider how your justification of Mr. Trump influences your witness to your Lord and Savior. Consider what an unbelieving world will say if you continue to brush off Mr. Trump’s immoral words and behavior in the cause of political expediency. If we don’t reverse course now, will anyone take anything we say about justice and righteousness with any seriousness for decades to come? Can we say with a straight face that abortion is a great evil that cannot be tolerated and, with the same straight face, say that the bent and broken character of our nation’s leader doesn’t really matter in the end?"
May we prayerfully walk out our faith and life before a watching world. Read it here.
That's it for today. Enough really. I do hope you will come back! And please enjoy the wonderful Christmas holiday. Be reminded that Jesus came for a wretch like you and the light he brings changes everything.
Pastor Jon- I have read your devotional this year and appreciate it very much. Just read your blog this morning for the first time. My concern RE your comments about our President is that we know most of our Presidents have been immoral in their office in a variety of ways. God has used unsaved leaders to work His plan in the Bible, why wouldn’t he do that today? The political ruling class needs to fall. they get into office and enrich themselves from lobbyists. How else could they? For all of the leaders we support, whichever party, why now do you admonish Christians supporting Pres Trump when you didn’t before, in the case of past presidents such as Johnson, Kennedy, even Obama when he attended a church that supported the fall of America??? And so many other situations with past Presidents. If you’re judging Trump, spiritually, we have all come short.
ReplyDeleteLook, take a New Yorker and a construction guy and you’ll get a gruff, course-talking man that is rude and justifies himself. If we don’t support him, our nation is going to fall to socialism, one step from communism. You must consider the God we love may be working behind the scenes of President Trump’s life, he has given his quarterly salary to charities and gave up his leadership role in his companies. he chose a VP in Mike Pence and he won’t even lunch alone with another woman due to the appearance of impropriety. Trump has appointed over 134 conservative judges! Also, he has signed an Executive that demands healthcare companies reveal their prices in the marketplace. This is just the tip of the good things he’s done. Look it up!
As a final note, your devotional has many spelling and grammatical errors. Does that make your devotional less worthy of reading? I would say no. But there are those that cannot bare to read such material riddled with errors. I loved reading it and didn’t mind overlooking errors just as I love supporting our President.
I hope you will learn the truth about his decisions for the good of our country and steer readers to pray for this man. I appreciate your deep commitment to the Lord. You have a gift with your writing but you are wrong on this point. I never answer blogs but when I read this, I had to reach out.
Ps: Billy Graham started the magazine. Do you know what Franklin Graham said in response to the editor’s article? That’s right. You don’t watch Fox News, do you so you may not know. I take it with a grain of salt but would never watch the lies and opinion leaders of the left on CNN.
Hi Lisa, thanks for reading. I posted the article because I thought it asked important questions about Christian support of the president. I think you are fine doing so but when it seems all of our hope is set on a political victory or power than we might be missing what we are called to as believers, citizens of heaven.
ReplyDeleteSorry about the errors in the devotional. My editor worked hard to correct them all but that was an ambitious task!