Do Overs - Hannah’s 2nd Chance

Have you ever prayed about something continually, season after season, and still your prayers seemingly go unheard or at least there has been no response? What if you later discovered that the reason your prayers have been un-answered wasn’t about you or anything you had said or done. Instead you find out that God was the reason for the empty results. Specifically, that what you were asking of Him wasn’t God’s will for you. That’s a gut-wrenching discovery to make and one that, for many, would shake their faith to the core.

That’s the story of Hannah in 1st Samuel, Chapter 1 when she discovers that God, “closed her womb,” from being able to have any children. However there was something that was about to alter the will of God for Hannah that we’ll discover together on Sunday during the second edition of Do Overs as we look at Hannah’s 2nd Chance.

This coming Sunday is also Mother’s Day, a day of appreciation and gratitude for all the things our mothers are and all the things our moms have done for us and in us. Why don’t you consider inviting your mom to join you as we worship together this Sunday and celebrate who she is. I wish I could invite my mom, who has already gone to be with Jesus, to be there but I know she would rather be where she is than where we are, I know I would. My point is that most moms don’t really care as much about your presents as they do your presence. So be there... all there. Turn your phone off and listen. You just might learn something.

Do Overs - Peter’s 2nd Chance

It was near the end of Algebra class and the bell was about to ring when the teacher started handing out the most recent tests with the grades in the upper right corner. I looked at mine and immediately folded it up and stuck it in my Algebra book. Let’s just say I didn’t do so well. It was the last period of the day so I stuck around after class to see if the teacher would let me take the test again. She looked at me long and hard, then said she had somewhere to be that day right after school but that she could stay the following day after school so that I could take the test again. I didn’t care much for math, especially the kind I thought I would never use again like Algebra, and she knew it. So for her to grant me a Do Over that I certainly didn’t deserve was generous and believe me I knew that. (I fully expected her to turn me down flat when I asked) I took my book home (which I seldom did) and studied the material that was included on the test. I did have a better score the second time around and thanked her for giving me a 2nd chance but I was then and am now no Algebra whiz kid.

Sooner or later we all will eventually find ourselves in need of a Do Over. Whether we knowingly head in the wrong direction or do so by accident, when we are on the receiving end of grace that we know for certain that we didn’t deserve, it’s both humbling and gratifying. Perhaps you still carry the pain from a Do Over you thought you deserved but didn’t receive sometime in your past. Can I give you a little advice? Move on. The more time and room we give the enemy to keep reminding us of what we think we deserve the more we miss seeing the 2nd, 3rd and even 4th chances we’ve been given but can’t see for the albatross of entitlement hanging around our necks. The scripture has a lot of examples of Do Overs because our God is a 2nd chance God. If you haven’t seen that side of His nature, I encourage you not to miss a single Sunday in May since we’ll be unpacking the experiences of folks just like you and me who didn’t deserve but received a Do Over in spite of their failures.

Foundational Things - The Call

We were sitting on the couch watching TV around 9:30 at night and got The Call. You know, the call no parent wants to get, that their son or daughter is in trouble or has been hurt somehow. In this case it was our daughter, who was living in Nashville, that had been in a serious auto accident and had been taken, via ambulance, to Vanderbilt ER. A work colleague and friend was the one calling us as she was on her way to the hospital to see how serious the situation was. We told her that we would leave immediately and be there as quickly as we could. The normally 3 hour drive to Nashville was probably closer to 2, our minds racing the entire drive wondering and preparing for what we would be walking into and praying continually that God would take care of our young daughter. As it turned out, God did indeed take care of her by putting an angel, in the form of a nurse, driving behind her that saw her hydroplane and lose control of her vehicle, crashing head-on into a power pole in the median of the road on a rainy night. She immediately stopped her car and provided compression on a serious wound on our daughter’s forehead until the ambulance arrived, in all likelihood, saving her life.

Those kinds of calls have a way of immediately shuffling our world and re-prioritizing what’s important and what’s not, what is immediate, and what can wait. God’s call in our lives can have that kind of effect as well, whether it’s immediate and obvious to us or whether it begins a process, a journey of our finding the specifics of why He has placed us here, of why we were born, then born again. I believe the scripture teaches us that God has a unique call for every believer. The journey then becomes putting ourselves in a position to hear it, heed it, and begin moving in the direction His Spirit takes us.

Foundational Things - The Resurrection

We are drawn, as humans, to the “I Can’t Believe It” stories. Think about it, when you hear phrases in conversations around you at work, at the store, among friends like, “are you kidding me?”, “that’s incredible”, or “get out!!”, don’t you want to scoot a little closer to that conversation to see what they’re talking about? If it’s incredible, astounding, stupendous, (well.. you get the point) news, we want to not only hear it, but be the one telling it. Whether that’s natural or culturally learned behavior, we all find ourselves being drawn in to the “extraordinary” around us. When was the last time something extraordinary happened to you and did you see it coming ahead of time or were you surprised when it happened?

This Easter Sunday, we’ll look at John’s account of the death, burial, and resurrection of our Lord and even though He told them what was about to happen while they were all around the table in the upper room, they still couldn’t believe He was really alive. In fact, when most of them first heard the news, instead of being ecstatic, they were afraid. Why? Because it was all way too hard to believe. Sometimes we resemble those early followers today. We know God said He could and would do the incredible, the miraculous, the astounding in us, for us and through us but, when it really gets down to it, we wonder whether or not He can really come through. The secret to walking in that confident place we all want to walk has to do with whether or not we are making the choice to walk out our faith in light of the fact that not only do we know and serve a resurrected Lord, but because He conquered death, we will too. You see, that’s Foundational truth for every Christ-follower to believe, to understand, to live, and to tell.

Foundational Things - The Crucifixion

Palm Sunday starts what has been traditionally been referred to as Holy Week. It’s the week in which Jesus shared Passover together around the Lord’s table in the upper room with His disciples. The week in which He prayed for deliverance, was arrested, betrayed, mocked, beaten and crucified. Quite an eventful week wouldn’t you say? Yet, everything that happened that week happened by design. Though men were involved at every juncture, none of it was man-made. God was ultimately in control.

Why do I point that out? As a reminder that whatever we’re involved in, whatever we’re walking through, wherever circumstances seem to be carrying us, God is in control. Saying that is pretty easy. Living that is something altogether different. If God is in control why are over 40% of Americans on anti-anxiety meds? If He is in control why are we in the culture wars over race, gender, equity, environmentalism and the like? Can I share with you what I think? God hasn’t moved away from us, we are generationally and tragically moving away from Him, and from the foundational things that have informed and carried our faith in Him. Most Christ-followers sadly don’t give much thought to The Crucifixion until it comes to Holy Week. Then we’re thankful and move on. However, if we could get a glimpse of it daily, I believe it would make a difference in our day, week, year, life. Why? Because it’s foundational, it matters above all else since it’s the pathway to our relationship with Jesus. The difference between Holy week just being dates on a calendar and our walking out a holy lifestyle is how deeply and how often we embrace the cross. Because it’s either a delusional story, or it changes everything.

Foundational Things - Divine Conception

They really shouldn’t be, but those “Only God” moments or situations that happen in our lives where God shows up to do what only God can do or could have done are usually rare occurrences. They may involve healing of a physical or mental condition, rescue from a bad financial situation or protection from a disastrous outcome when it comes to those or other circumstances. The more that we exercise our faith and actually put it to the test, the more frequently those moments occur. Scripture, of course, is full of those moments and stories from the garden to the Great White Throne and everywhere in between but when they become a part of our own story, we begin to see our relationship with God through a much different, much more hopeful, even expectant lens. Depending on the timing and circumstances that surround those occurrences, that can not only buoy our spirits but literally seem to pick us up and carry us through to the other side of that problem.

Certainly one of the most significant, not to mention controversial, “Only God” stories in the Bible is found in the first chapter of Luke’s gospel that tells us of the Divine Conception of Jesus into the womb of an ordinary Jewish girl. I find it amazing about any time in the scriptures that God steps in to involve Himself in the life of any human whatsoever. The fact that Deity even engages at all with broken, messed up, sinful humanity blows my small mind in the first place. Then that He would choose to find “favor” with a nobody from Nazareth and do something miraculous in her and for me at the same time... hard for me to fathom.

Over the years many have called into question the Divine Conception of Jesus, skeptical that the physical and molecular impossibility of impregnating a woman with a baby could ever be true since it is... well unexplainable. Unexplainable that is, unless it’s yet another example of something Only God could have done.

Foundational Things - Priesthood of the Believer

Several months ago I walked into the kitchen and heard my wife talking on the phone to who was, at that time, our propane provider. Her voice was getting louder, slower and she was articulating every syllable of every word as she said, “I need to speak to your supervisor.” I shared in her frustration because I had been there before myself, trying to communicate with someone at a “customer service” call center on the other side of the globe who struggled with the English language. After getting the supervisor on the phone and pretty much experiencing the same song, second verse, she then said to the supervisor, “I need to speak to your supervisor.” While she was on hold I could see the frustration on her face and knew that her blood pressure was likely spiking. Finally, she got someone on the other end of the line that she could understand and began her quest to get our issues resolved. By the way, that quest was never realized and we are doing business with someone else now but it took her over an hour to get to talk to someone that actually had the authority to solve the problem we were having. I have reminded her and our kids dozens of times over the years of what my dad told me decades ago, “If you have a problem, don’t waste your time talking to someone who doesn’t have the authority to solve it.”

If you are not familiar with the term “Priesthood of the Believer,” it has to do with the access that every child of God has to the One that can actually solve the problem. When Jesus was on the cross and finally died there, simultaneously the fabric veil, that was woven to be about an inch thick, that separated the Holy Place from the Holy of Holies in the temple was torn in two top to bottom. What was that about? It was about our personal and immediate access to God instead of having to go through a priest, rabbi, bishop or pastor and that my friend is some significant stuff.

Foundational Things - Eternal Security

Last Friday night as the 40-50 mph winds began to whip against my house, we sat on our love seat in the dark with our phones and a couple of lanterns waiting on our power to be turned back on. I got up a couple of times to check to see how my porch furniture was holding up. A couple of hours before that I had grabbed a few tie-downs to secure the 2 swings on my porch. I secured our long nap swing to the eye bolts I had installed into the porch deck years ago for that very purpose. Then I ratcheted our 2nd swing to the porch railing as tightly as I could. After that, we turned all the rocking chairs face down, took the pillows and cushions inside and hoped for the best. So, as I got up to check on the furniture during the blackout, I was pretty confident that the swings would be okay but, as the winds got stronger I was more concerned about the chairs. What I had no concerns about whatsoever was the antique church pew that a friend and I had carried onto the porch and sat in the corner 3 or 4 weeks ago. I knew by the effort it took to get it out of the truck and up the steps onto the porch that any wind strong enough to pick it up and carry it off would likely take the house with it.

As I sat there hoping that we had everything on the porch secured well enough to withstand the beating that the winds and rain were giving it, I thought about this week’s message about eternal security. Just as there are those in our world that think everybody goes to heaven when they die, there are also those that believe a Christian can lose their salvation if the wrongs outnumber the rights. So, are either of those positions true? I invite you to join us this Sunday as we see what an inerrant scripture has to say about those things because if the first one is true, we’ve got nothing to worry about, and if the second one is true then we’ve got everything to worry about. The storms are coming. Are you the porch cushions or the pew?