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Here’s an interesting passage I preached out of a couple of weeks ago…
In Ezekiel chapter 14, the Lord speaks through His prophet Ezekiel a message to His people. In verses 12-14, Ezekiel, speaking for God says, “The word of the LORD came to me: “Son of man, if a country sins against me by being unfaithful and I stretch out my hand against it to cut off its food supply and send famine upon it and kill its men and their animals, even if these three men—Noah, Daniel and Job—were in it, they could save only themselves by their righteousness, declares the Sovereign LORD.”
The next 6 verses of Ezekiel describe more of the same. Basically, when God gets ready to do something to Jerusalem, for their unfaithfulness to Him, it’s going to be worse than these examples, and not even the presence of Noah, Daniel and Job would stay God’s hand. Only those three men would be spared.
The scripture notes their righteousness as the cause of their salvation from these judgements from God, but my question is, why these three men? God uses these same three men each time over a course of different judgement examples.
Where is Moses on this list, the savior of God’s people from Egypt? He would have been a great example. How about Abraham, a man the Bible calls the God’s friend, he was certainly righteous in God’s eyes. Joseph is another candidate for the list. No one in the Old Testament was more a type of Christ than Joseph. In fact, the Bible does not record any sins committed by Joseph, but he’s not on the list. The list could go on and on… Isaac, Jacob, Joshua, Samuel, David (a man after God’s own heart), Elijah, Jeremiah???
There has to be something that links these men together, something that sets them apart for this example, something that we can identify as the quality that cause God, speaking through Ezekiel, to use these three men as the lone survivors of God’s wrath in His example to His people.
Faithfulness. I believe the answer is faithfulness. In there own way, each of these men proved their faithfulness to God in the face of varied and difficult circumstances.
Noah faced the test of futility. He proved faithful, even when he wasn’t sure the rains would ever come or this huge ship he built on dry ground would ever have a chance to float. He probably looked like a fool to those around him, but he didn’t waiver.
Daniel showed his faithfulness to God at the King’s table. He refused to eat things that he believed he shouldn’t eat, and the rest is history. You could say that the test he faced was the temptation to lower his standards.
You might think that God put Daniel on this list because he showed himself to be faithful to God in the lion’s den. The only problem with that, is that when God spoke this statement about Noah, Daniel and Job, it was years before Daniel would have to face the lions… His stand at the king’s table proved the faithfulness of his heart to God, well before Daniel had to face the lion’s den.
Job’s great test was the test of suffering. The Bible says that satan reached out and touched everything Job had. He killed his family and servants, flocks and herds. All was lost. His wife even told him, “Why don’t you just curse God, and when you’re done giving God a good cursing, why don’t you just die?”
Job looked it all over and said, “I was naked when I cae into this world, I’ll be naked when I go out, the Lord gives and takes away… blessed be the name of the Lord.”
When I see something in the Bible that shows me the likes/dislikes of God, I like to pick up on those cues and see where I can be more pleasing to Him. I think He was very pleased with the faithfulness of these 3 men, and they are company that I would not mind keeping!
Have you ever experienced that moment, when you are watching a movie or reading something or talking to someone, and you find something “real.” Something real about love or life or passion or intent. These are moments that bring clarity, moments that bring perspective, moments that make some things seem suddenly very important and other things seems suddenly very unimportant.
Those moments sneak up on me a lot. I’m not looking for real… I’m looking for entertainment or escape or conversation, and I find real. Often those moments are unexpected, but I’m always grateful for them. I long for those moments of clarity, I need them, I crave them. We all need them.
Last night over the course of a couple of conversations with my wife, Cheryl, I had some “clarifying” moments. Some realities about life, marriage, family and ministry made themselves evident. In that moment, I knew with a great degree of certainty, what is and isn’t important in life, and the things that are worth focusing on and the things that aren’t.
Those moments serve as road markers. They direct you and illuminate the path you are on. I don’t know how many times the insanity, cares, and pace of my life cause me to forget the direction I was called to walk, not just as a Pastor, but as a father and husband. Thank you, Lord, for those moments…
Had a great time this week visiting the Dominican Republic w/ my pastor and our missions director. We were checking things out and making plans for a couple of 2010 missions trips. The pics below are a sampling of the 275 pics I took.
There is something very “right” about getting out of my office and getting on a plane and meeting new people and seeing new sites. We also did a fair amount of envisioning what next Spring and Summer will look like for our missions program… good stuff!
I'm on a plane!
typical village outside of capitol, Santo Domingo
beautiful mountains... pastor and missionary Nelson de Freitas in the background
Yesterday I picked up my 6 yr. old daughter from school, b/c she threw up and didn’t feel great. She was basically fine all day. That was until last night… While attempting to use the bathroom (the other symptom of her stomach ache) she puked all over the floor. Looking back, Cap’t Crunch wasn’t a great selection for a bedtime snack. Anyhow, wow, that was a lot of vomit!
I hate to throw up, but I really hate to see my kids sick. It makes me feel pretty helpless. We prayed, gave her a Tums (hey, we didn’t have any Pepto handy) and put her back in bed w/ a trash can close at hand. That’s about all you can do. She was puke free and feeling very talkative this morning. And VERY happy to be out of school for the day!
Yesterday, April 12, 2009, was Easter. It was a good day. As a staff member at a church, Easter is far from a day off! We had morning service and then our family spent time w/ another great family in the church, and then back to church. I had the honor of preaching last night. I guess it’s no surprise that Easter evening service is not going to set any attendance records, but it was a good time, and the Lord helped me speak.
The lesson learned yesterday, for me, is that a church should never miss an opportunity to invite the community in… especially on a day like Easter. We have a great Pastor and staff, and service yesterday was powerful, w/ video, music and speaking intertwined, my only nagging feeling is that we didn’t make a push for visitors on Easter.
We have glossy cards out right now in circulation w/ our church folks and ads running in local magazines for our “Family 911″ series in May, and I think that’s going to be great, I just think we might have missed it a bit on Easter. It’s the most highly attended service/services of the year, and people are ready to be invited, people are feeling guilty about skipping the last 22 Sundays in a row, I mean, people are READY to get dressed up and come to church on Easter!
We had a great turnout, and 7 folks made decisions to follow Christ (Praise the Lord), I just left feeling like we could have reached more and touched more lives. This is one of those feelings that will be a reminder to me. I’m in student ministry and this reminds me that the end of school, the beginning of school, spring break, Christmas, these are all opportunities to blow it up and invite students in to a night of music, message and connection.
On a side note… yesterday, on Twitter, I posted, “Hey Satan – Boom, you’re roasted – Jesus is alive!” If you don’t follow The Office, that makes no sense… I crack myself up, though.
- Charles
It’s always interesting to me to go through a paradigm shift on a topic, event, etc and what was big, becomes small and I look back at it and think, “I was stressed over that?” I’m very grateful when the Lord helps me refocus on what’s BIG and what’s, well, not.
I guess naturally I tend to be a worrier, and that’s something I just have to deal with, but with proper perspective, comes proper priorities and proper stress levels. Somethings are really, truly worth stressing over. Things like, “What am I doing to touch those in my own neighborhood with the love of Christ,” or, “Am I leading the students entrusted to my care in the right direction?” Those things are worth the stress.
Some things just aren’t worth it. Fundraisers, the paint color of my office, whether I’ve lost or gained weight this week, and if I’ve blogged enough this month are examples of things that just need to know there place.
If the small things in your life are taking BIG roles, take a minute and remember what’s really BIG and what’s not. When I look at the BIGNESS of our God and His ability and the things that are really worth making BIG, I very quickly re-order those small things to their proper place. It’s not about not doing those things, or ignoring them, it’s about living w/ proper perspective!
I don’t know if this blog is ever read, and that’s OK. I like having a place to get my thoughts out. If you’re reading, maybe this thought will do to you what it is doing to me…
Yesterday Francis Chan spoke at the closing session of the Youth Pastor’s Summit in Orlando. He had 1 thought to share, 1 thought that was tearing him up personally. He shared it with us, and now I’m torn up, and I’m sure others are deep in thought on this topic. It’s one of those redefining thoughts, something that when considered gives pretty much everything in your world a different tint.
He told the story about a guy in California named Vaughn. He was a youth worker and Christ-follower. Francis has never met Vaughn, but a friend of his said that to be with Vaughn made you feel like you were WITH Jesus. This guy said that after spending a day with Vaughn, he though to himself, “this is probably the closest thing I’ve ever experienced to being with Jesus…”
Francis heard that statement from his friend a number of years ago, and it’s never left him. Lately, he’s been redefining and re-examining all the things he does in his life in the light of the question… “do people say that being w/ Francis is the closest they’ve ever come to being with Jesus?” He thinks not!
I can do lots of good things for students, I can minister to families, I can preach excellent and powerful sermons and never be in danger of resembling Jesus that much. We can learn to do things, and accomplish things we set our minds to and never be Christ to someone. Francis Chan said, “you can be a best-selling author and sought after conference speaker and not really be like Jesus…” He would know.
All I know, is that I too want to be like Jesus. I fear that all my hopes and aspirations and former definitions of “success” in ministry are now lying in the ditch on the side of the road and in their place I have one goal… BE LIKE JESUS!
That seems like a pretty obvious goal, shouldn’t we all want to be like Jesus? Yes, we should, but I no longer want to “look” like I’m being like Jesus. I want people to hang out with me and leave and say, “man, the love/peace/forgiveness/patience/hope I feel when I’m with Greenaway makes me feel like I’ve been w/ Jesus!”
I guess my real fear resides in how well I know myself, and how un-Christ-like I really am, everyday, all day long. I’m not just sort of not like Christ, I’m really not like him. Where there should be love, I have anger. Where there should be patience, I have annoyance. You get the idea. I guess it shouldn’t really scare me that much, b/c no one has a shot at being like Jesus apart from His help.
I was raised, like many of you, to believe that if I did certain things and didn’t do other things, that was what it meant to be a Christian. It’s more. It has to be more. Like Francis Chan, I have to read my Bible and then look at life and think, there has to be more to life. Where are the miracles, where is my faith to see miracles, where are the dead rising, where is the church that so loves that NO ONE has need of anything?
Jesus, I want to be like you. Not for my glory or fame, but for yours!
2 nights ago, we began a new small group experiment in Alpha (our student ministry… iheartalpha.com)
Not all went smoothly, but hey, what ever goes great the first time! We are attempting to break out into small groups every Wed. night DURING our service. We’re certainly not the first to do this, but it’s our first time around the block w/ this idea. In fact, all credit for the idea go to Al Force from Crave HS Ministry in Ormond Beach, FL (doyoucrave.com)
We’re breaking them down by age/gender, trying to keep the groups to 10 students or under. The idea is that the “groups” portion of the night will be 10 minutes and cover attendance, prayer, event promotion and discussion questions…
The first night, small groups went about 25 minutes, they started slowly because the soda/chips line was backed up, and the guys finished like 8 minutes before any of the ladies groups were nearly finished… yeah, it could have been better.
I said all that to say this. I think there is great value in small groups, and I’m hoping that we’ll be able to fine tune this idea into a model that will achieve the intimate student and leader time that I think many of them are missing. I want to stop letting students come in, stand, clap, sit, listen and leave. I want that middle or high school student to weekly have someone sit across a chair-circle from them and ask them how they are doing and talk and pray with them.
Check back for results…
The start of a new year is a great thing. You can end the year depleted of energy, ideas, will to live (j/k), but when that new year starts, you just feel a surge of fresh energy! I know it’s really the Lord, re-energizing and refreshing my spirit! Thanks God, I really needed a “new year” and I think this one (2009) came at a great time.
If you’re new year didn’t come w/ a supply of new energy, take a few minutes and ask the Lord to give you a fresh round of strength, energy and excitement for what He’s doing and going to do in your New Year!
Get ready Alpha... it's gonna be a great year!
I think this is an awesome comic. I found it @ www.toothpastefordinner.com Not all of their stuff is totally family friendly, but it’s almost all funny!
It took me a minute, but I got it!
