Love?

This year I've started a new Bible reading plan. I will take the year to read through the Old Testament. While I am doing that I will read following a different plan for the New Testament. I'll read the same passage for a month. If it's a short book I'll read the entire book each day for a month. The longer books I'll divide into five or six chapters and read that section for a month. I figure it will take me about two and a half years to read through the New Testament that way, but I'll have a greater understanding of the New Testament.

Right now I am reading the book of 1 John. Reading it every day has been enlightening. I have been impressed anew at the importance of love. It is the hallmark of Christian faith. John reminds us that God is love, and that one who loves God must love others. Failure to love others is an indication that one does not know Jesus as Lord and does not love God.

As I re-read 1 John each day I cannot escape that simple truth, and I find myself examining my life. Do I really love others, regardless of who they are? Am I demonstrating the love of God each day? I pray daily that God will love others through me and that I may be a living demonstration of His love for others.

Celebrating Christmas

I just finished writing an article on my website about celebrating Christmas. In that article I suggested that the best way to celebrate the birth of our Lord was to share His love with others. I wanted to follow up on it here.

One of the greatest themes of the Bible is God's abiding love for us. Even though we do not deserve His love, He loves us. Celebrating the birth of Christ is best expressed in having a Christ-like love for others.

There are a couple passages of Scripture that bear quoting at this point.

John 13:34-35 (NASB) 34 "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. 35 "By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another."

Luke 6:35 (NASB) "But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for He Himself is kind to ungrateful and evil men.

I've found that it is not easy to love other believers and it is not easy to love unbelievers. At least, not with the love that God would have. God's love is unconditional. It doesn't require anything of us. It often is beaten, trampled, and rejected. Yet, God continues to love.

My greatest desire is to be able to love like my Father. I want to love unconditionally. When other believers hurt me, I want to be able to love them. When the unbeliever I am most prejudiced against confronts me I want to be able to love them like my Father.

The only way I know to do that is to let Father love them through me. When I allow His love to fill my life I will be able to love as does He. As I celebrate the birth of my Savior I want to do so by allowing my Father's love to fill me so that I can love like Him. I want to share His love with others.

Home, Really!

My last blog entry was about home. I was getting ready to travel and lamented how much I really enjoy being home. After I wrote it I began thinking about home. My Father impressed upon me that when I got home again I would not really be home.

You see, since I have become a follower of Jesus, the Christ, my Heavenly Father has a home for me in heaven. My Bible tells me that Jesus returned to heaven to prepare a home for me there. My Bible also reminds me that I am an alien here. That means this is not really my home. Instead, I am a pilgrim passing through a foreign land.

While I am here, though, I am my Father's ambassador, telling others about Jesus, who died on the cross for them. I am here on business --- my Father's business. My greatest challenge is to remember that this is only a temporary home for me.

In fact, the physical place I live on this earth is really just a motel suite where my Father allows me to stay (and covers the expenses for me) while I am about His business.

So, though I am back at that physical place I call home, I'm not really home yet. And, I find myself longing to be home, really home. I'm like the Apostle Paul at that point. I am certainly happy to enjoy the blessings of this world and I am blessed that God has chosen to use me as His witness. But, I am also desirous of leaving this place and finally arriving home.

Home

I'm getting ready for another road trip. In a couple of days I'll leave home to drive about two hundred miles to attend a pastor's conference and an annual meeting of our Baptist state association. As I've gotten older I'm not as big a fan of road trips as I used to be. Now I think more about the effort it takes to pack and the time I'm away from home. By the second day I'm always ready to return home.



Several times in recent years I've had the opportunity of considering a change in ministry. At least two of those opportunities would have involved a lot of road trips. When the last opportunity presented itself I was sure of one thing: I didn't want to pursue it.



There are some things that make some trips more enjoyable than others. One of those is when my wife can travel with me. On this occasion she'll be going with me for my trip. It makes my time away from home much more bearable. The other thing that makes some trips more enjoyable is when I have time to visit with family. This trip, on the way home, my wife and I will have time to visit with our parents, our children, and our grandchildren.



I'll enjoy my time at the pastor's conference and at the state annual meeting. I'm happy my wife will get to go with me. And I'm looking forward to spending time with family. Still, it will be good to get home again. At this point in my life I'm a little like Dorothy in the movie, "The Wizard of Oz." I want to join her in saying, "There's no place like home. There's no place like home."

Divine Intervention

It must be the nature of our society. We want to control every little thing about what we do and where we go. I recently had to fly to Austin for a conference. I booked my passage both ways, with layovers in Memphis. The trip to Austin went without a hitch. Coming home was a different story.

I arrived at the Austin airport in plenty of time and hurried through the security check so I could get to the gate and have some time to read and study. I no sooner sat down than a message flashed on the monitor in front of me: my departure was going to be delayed by thirty minutes. No! That would make me miss my flight from Memphis to St. Louis. I searched for an agent of the airline I would be flying on and nobody was in sight. I finally gave up and went to eat an early lunch.

Arriving back at the gate an agent was there and booked me out of Austin on another airline about twenty minutes later. Unfortunately, it took me to Dallas, where I would have a three hour layover before catching a flight home. I worried about transportation problems in St. Louis because of the changed schedule. My daughter could no longer pick me up and my son was on his way to New Jersey. However, my daughter-in-law made arrangements to pick me up at the airport.

Now, here's where it gets really cool. I arrived in Dallas and spent my three hours reading and window shopping in the terminal. As I was getting ready to board the plane I looked up and saw a friend I had not seen in over fifteen years. He was in Dallas for a meeting and would be flying back to St. Louis, too. I had a great opportunity to visit with him as we waited to board our plane.

I was switched to another airline and routed through a different airport because of a mechanical problem that put my original plane a half hour late. Was it fate or a coincidence? I don't think so. I think it was divine intervention. My heavenly Father made it possible for me to meet up with an old friend. Now I think that's pretty cool.

What Might Have Been

Recently I did some thinking about the past. I began to think about decisions I had made in my life. I came up with several decisions I made that, had I taken a different road, would most probably have seriously altered my life. A couple of decisions would have led me away from vocational ministry. A few would have changed the direction of my ministry.

I wonder what my life would have been like had I taken one of those other roads? Where would they have taken me? That's not to say I wish I would have taken one of those roads. I'm pleased and at peace about the path I've taken. It's been great.

But it does bring to mind one of my favorite Bible verses. Jeremiah 29:11 (NIV) says, " 'For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the Lord, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.' "

I don't pine for the "road not traveled," as I believe I am right where God wants me. He's led me throughout my life. At every fork in the road God has directed my path. It's been a great ride and it's not over yet.

Asking the Wrong Questions

Let's see. I've served in eight different ministry positions. I've been interviewed for several others in churches or Christian organizations. Recently I had the opportunity to reflect on the process of being interviewed. I've been reading a book by Gregory Frizzell, Seeking God to Seek A Pastor. Dr. Frizzell makes the point that search committees often start with the wrong questions. They never seem to ask about the pastor's personal spiritual qualifications.

So, as I reflected I realized that I've not once been asked about my personal time in prayer and Bible study. I've been asked to tell when I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior and about God's call on my life for vocational ministry. I've been asked to discuss the growth in my last ministry position. I've been asked all the regular questions, but I'm convinced I've not been asked the important questions. In short, there have been no probing questions about my daily relationship with the Lord. I guess those doing the interview have assumed that I had a good daily relationship with the Lord because I was in vocational ministry.

I've come to the conclusion that this is a faulty assumption. Depending upon which survey you read the average pastor spends, on average, someplace between fifteen minutes and thirty minutes in prayer each day. How can one who will be the spiritual leader of a church do so without spending time with the Lord?

We have a host of writers telling us the most important thing in the church is leadership. They take a passing stab at the importance of spiritual leadership and then move on to talk about leadership qualities that could easily be divorced from spiritual leadership. Two of the greatest leaders mentioned in the Bible are Moses and David. Yet, neither of them read the latest John Maxwell book on leadership or one of Thom Rainer's contributions to leadership. They simply spent time with God and allowed Him to direct them.

Maybe that's why the church is struggling so much today. Without leaders who spend vast amounts of time alone with God how will they provide the spiritual leadership necessary to lead our Lord's church?

It's time we stop asking the wrong questions and start answering the right questions about those who would lead our churches and Christian organizations. Tell me about your private time with the Lord each day? What has the Lord said personally to you today? How much time do you spend in personal Bible study and prayer?

How would you answer those questions?