Refocus

After our son Johnny passed away from cancer, I was asked to attend a youth summit conference in his place that he had hoped to go to. It was led by our oldest son who was our youth pastor at the time.

I was delighted to be able to go and hang out with all of John’s friends and be a youth sponsor for the event. It was fun and exciting!

We were exhausted from our trip - it took much longer than anticipated and none of our luggage made it to the carousel. It was delayed, but should catch up with us in the next 24 - 48 hours. We cleaned up the best we could wearing our travel clothes and looking a bit worse for wear and went to the first session.

The speaker was already talking out of John 21 when we settled in our seats. It was difficult to stay alert because we were so tired from traveling. But my ears perked up when I heard the speaker ask, “Do you love me?” from the text in John 21. “Peter do you love me?”

It was at that moment, I heard the Lord’s voice. “Peggy, do you love me?”

I looked around, and answered quietly, “Yes, Lord, I love you! With all of my heart! I’m serving You, and here I am at this conference and . . . I’ve given you my all . . . even the life of our son!”

I heard the whisper of the Holy Spirit, “Peggy, do you still love me?”

I immediately thought of our 3 other sons and I saw myself clinging to them – “I love you Lord but you can’t have these boys!”

I realized God was asking me to let go – let all our sons go into His loving care. To trust Him for their well-being. I cried and let God have my grief, and my disappointment that Johnny wasn’t healed. We had dedicated all of our boys to the Lord when they were young, but I realized it was time to release my grip and give them back to the Lord once again. Saying to Him, “Yes, Lord. Not my will, but Your will be done for each one of our sons.”

What about you? Do you love Him? Do you still love Him after what you’ve gone through? Whether it’s loss of job, a family fracture, divorce, or death, whatever it is . . . it’s time to let go, and trust God again.

John 21:15-17

“When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?” “Yes, Lord,” he said, “you know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.” Again Jesus said, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” He answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Take care of my sheep.” The third time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, “Do you love me?” He said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Feed my sheep.”

Before I came to faith in Christ, I read several self-help books. I knew I had a lot of issues that needed dealing with and I was determined to get started.

But my own efforts, wisdom and insight only got me so far.

If I’m being totally honest, my world view was a mess. I was full of pain and brokenness which were really what was dictating my decisions, and so leading MYSELF out of it all wasn’t going to work.

Fortunately after years of dabbling in various practices, sampling different religious philosophies, and trying things my own way, I heard the gospel of Jesus and received His gift of grace.

I wish I could say that it was smooth sailing and I immediately set myself on the right path, made all the right decisions and matured as a Christian with no setbacks.

I can’t say that.

But I can tell you that through my setbacks and challenges, I came to understand the vital importance of reading God’s Word and letting HIM transform me.

There are many verses that reference the importance of God’s Word in scripture, and today I wanted to highlight Psalm 119: 9 - 11.

These verses point out how we keep our way pure by living according to God’s Word.

I especially like the Amplified translation where it says in verse 10, “oh, let me not wander or step aside (either in ignorance or willfully) from Your commandments”

I think we often think of straying or sinning as something that we do INTENTIONALLY, out of rebellion, and sometimes that’s true.

But friends, let us be diligent to ask God to help us with our blind spots -- places we may step aside or stray out of ignorance.

In my experience, those are often the places we are most vulnerable, yet unaware.

Remember how I said I was full of brokenness and pain when I began my relationship with Jesus?

Well, I’m not totally healed up yet, though I’ve come a long way.

Like all other believers, I am in the process of being sanctified -- my soul is under construction.

And although I may have healed up wounds from years past, like everyone else, I continue to experience new ones along the way.

One of my routine prayers is to ask God to help me live according to His Word and to conform my life to it. I ask Him to search my heart and help me see where I need Him.

I’m no longer trying to do it on my own, and my hope is that you wouldn’t either.

The good news is that because of the sacrifice of Jesus, we now have Holy Spirit to help us, lead us, and guide us along the way.

There is no timeline for grief.

After the untimely death of our 17 year old son, Johnny, from lymphoma cancer in 1990, we became all too familiar with grief. Only later did we discover that grief is a miraculous gift that is given to us by God to help us to heal the pain . . . if we allow it.

Grief always works. Grief always heals.

It had been over a year after Johnny’s home-going, when a dear friend said, ‘You can’t hurry the healing. You are right where you are supposed to be.’ It was a relief for us to know that we weren’t stuck in grief but that we were in process of being healed. We still are. We are a lot further along now these many years later, but we won’t be completely free of grief until we see our beloved son again in heaven.

What advice can I give for those who grieve?

First, * Honor your own loss. Take the time to remember, reflect, and miss them. Our youngest son at the time of his brother’s passing was 8 years old. He was worried

we would forget Johnny. We made a collage of photos of all the boys on the walls of our home. Every time we look at those photos – it’s all our boys. We won’t ever forget any of our sons.

Secondly, * Don’t Judge. Other people’s feelings are not our business. Everyone grieves differently; there’s no right or wrong way to grieve. It doesn’t always play out in orderly, predictable stages. Try not to take angry outbursts personally or try to force someone to open up. We grieve because we love.

Lastly, * Strengthen yourself in Lord. We can strengthen ourselves in the Lord by fixing our thoughts on Jesus, being anchored in God’s Word and promises; knowing that as we hope in God, we can experience His joy on the other side of suffering.

God’s Word says in Lamentations 3:20-24

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!”

No, you will never forget the awful time of grieving over loss. But dare to hope in God in the midst of pain and grief and allow His great love and grace to cover you, and bring you comfort as only He can give.

In John chapter 1 verses 35 through 37, it talks about John – who had previously described himself as the voice of one crying in the wilderness – standing with two of his disciples. He saw Jesus and said to them, "Behold the Lamb of God!" And then it says his two disciples – John’s two disciples – followed Jesus. And just like that, the voice took a backseat to the Word. And from then on, the ministry of John the Baptist faded to the background, and the ministry of Jesus took the foreground. And that’s as it should be.

I travel frequently to a suburb of Taipei, Taiwan, called Danshui. And when I’m there, I’m reminded of the fact that it’s really the word that’s the important thing, not the voice. I don’t speak Mandarin Chinese. And so, my attempts to communicate with locals is not very elegant. I kind of point and grunt and use exaggerated gestures hoping they will understand what I’m trying to say. But in the end, it’s what I’m trying to say that’s the important thing not the way I say it. And that’s true for us as believers. But we kind of forget that sometimes.

We become very enamored with the voice. We record it, we video it, we film it, we publish it, we platform it with smoke and lights and guitars. And we market it, and distribute it, and promote it. And sometimes we forget that it’s not the voice that matters. It’s the Word that matters.

May we remember what’s important: Jesus, the Word of God. Let’s be careful as we seek to communicate Him that we don’t promote the voice over the Word.

I believe what the Bible says of itself, that it is God speaking to us. And because I’m convinced the Almighty is never superfluous, I find myself drawn with curiosity to passages containing words that don’t at first glance seem necessary. Over the years, I’ve learned that these are usually designed to attract our attention and reveal rich meaning when carefully considered.

John 10:22 and 23 contain one of these. They open a section describing a confrontation of Jesus by the Jewish leaders that took place about two and a half months after his parable of the Good Shepherd. They provide us with the time of year, location, reason for his being there, and a description of the weather. That’s the one that gets me. Why do we need to know what the weather was like?

I’ll come back to that in a minute, but first let’s note that this showdown took place in Solomon’s porch, a covered, outer corridor on the east side of the temple complex. But it would also become the meeting hall of the first Christians following the birth of the church on the Day of Pentecost. And I think it’s super cool to contemplate that Jesus would so thoroughly triumph over his opposition that this location where the Jewish elite tried to rhetorically and literally ambush him would become the fountainhead of his gospel’s global triumph as his followers took the good news from there to the ends of the earth.

The text also informs us that this event occurred during the Feast of Dedication which was celebrated in mid-December. That lets us know when Jesus was there, but it also explains part of the reason why. This feast was an annual commemoration of the cleansing of the temple by the Maccabees in 167 B.C. and the restoration of worship there after it had been very purposefully desecrated by Antiochus Epiphanes. It was an event worth celebrating for sure, but this was not one of the feasts prescribed by God in the Old Testament and requiring a Jerusalem pilgrimage. So why did Jesus visit the temple during that time and why is his attendance noted?

I think he was using the occasion of this celebration of temple-cleansing as a not-so-subtle announcement that he would soon be offering his life’s blood as the ultimate agent of cleansing for all the ways sin has desecrated our lives so that he could make it possible for us to become temples of the Holy Spirit as described in 1 Corinthians 6:19.

And that brings me back to the weather report.

The fixed date of the Feast of Dedication already established the time of year as the month of December, so why add the phrase, “it was winter,” unless God wanted us to notice something else?

The Greek word translated as “winter” here literally means storm or tempest. So, the Bible is calling attention to the fact that Jesus had entered Jerusalem that day during a rainstorm. I’m sure you’ve noticed that good novelists often set the mood for dark scenes in their stories by using vivid descriptions of bad weather. And although I’m certainly not equating this passage from the Gospel of John with a work of fiction, I do think God has included this phrase to evoke a feeling.

As Jesus’ earthly ministry was about to enter its final months, I think God intended us to engage our spiritual imaginations at this point by visualizing him in an open portico, exposed to a cold rain, bracing for another round of harassment by the religious elite, but advancing steadily toward the cross.

It’s way too easy to read the Bible dispassionately like a textbook. But this simple phrase calls to us, inviting us to reconnect with the narrative in a deeper, more emotional way and to feel something we may have lost touch with – gratitude.

As we read the account of our savior moving through the gathering spiritual storm toward our redemption, let’s not forget that although fully God, he was also truly human and experiencing all of this from that perspective. And let’s allow this simple image of Jesus in the rain to fill our hearts with renewed reverence and grateful worship.

In The Old Testament there was a king named David.

and he was known as a “man after God’s own heart”.

In 1 Chronicles 14 we see David going to war with the Philistines

but instead of David doing what he thinks is right he seeks out God first.

In Verses 8-10

The Philistines are searching for him and raiding places.

David asks God if he should go up against them and God responds giving him permission to do so and he guarantees a victory.

In the same chapter, verses 13-16, the Philistines are raiding again.

and David prays to God again if he should go up against them and God gives a different answer from the first time. Instead of God saying to face them head on, He says to go to a certain place and wait for them to pass by to attack.

we can learn a couple things from this-

First, David did not let his position remove his dependence on God.

He was king.

He was top of the top, but he knew he was still a servant of God.

I think no matter what our status is in life, we need that humility to always know that we are human and God is God and He knows infinitely more than we do.

Secondly, when he got the answer for the first battle, he didn’t assume it was the same solution for the second battle.

Usually when God helps us with something, we can assume that is the same solution for every problem.

but David still went to God and good thing he did because it happened to be a very different solution.

I think what we can learn from this is that we need to go to God for everything.

it’s easy for us to see prayer and waiting as God as an inconvenience but it is not.

it should be how we approach things every day.

Prayer and waiting on God should be seen as essential and never as an inconvenience.