Happy New Year!

Blessings, and Happy New Year!

The Open Door church of Christ is beginning its second year as a congregation of the Lord's people. The past year has been a blur - and full of peaks and valleys - but, we are greatly encouraged as we continue to build strong relationships with each other.

Our focus has not changed. As individuals, we are committed to "living a life worthy of the calling [we] have received," a phrase taken from Paul's letter to the Ephesians (Eph. 4:1). As a congregation, we are committed to enriching the community of Broken Arrow. As a family, we are committed to encouraging and building up each other. As members of the kingdom of God, we are committed to seeking His will first in our everyday lives.

Our resolve has not changed. We seek to serve as He served, love as He loved, and honor the Father as He honored the Father. We seek to create transparent Biblical leadership through our ministers and recently appointed deacons. We seek to add people-focused shepherds as soon as possible. We seek to find those works He "has prepared in advance for us to do (Eph.2:10)".

Our spirit has not changed. We will strive to build intimate spiritual relationships with one another. We will strive to resolve conflict directly and in love. We will "make every effort" to grow in goodness, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, kindness, and love (2 Peter 1).

Our hope is that we will identify and confront our failures at every turn, forgive and ask forgiveness in every circumstance, and petition the Father in prayer at every opportunity. We ask for your prayers...and encourage you to join us in service to the King!

Feeling a Connection with God

We've all been there, if we're honest with ourselves and each other: times when we just don't feel a connection with God. The lack of a connection can be discouraging and most certainly leads to a lapse in our prayer life, our church attendance, our Bible reading, and most things that are spiritual. It opens us up to temptation, wrong priorities, shortsightedness, and emptiness.

When you feel no connection with God, what to do?

1) Admit it to yourself. The most important step in solving any problem is to fully recognize it. King David certainly struggled with his connection with God from time to time. One thing that David had going for him is this: he valued his relationship with God and when he felt disconnected, he urgently pursued God until he felt connected again.

Here is some encouragement for you: David was a man who committed every sin that a person could commit, including murder! Yet, he was described as a "man after [God's] own heart!" (Acts 13:22). David could admit his faults, express sorrow for them, and turn to God for healing. David was able to say, "The Lord is MY shepherd, I shall not want..." Connection re-established!!

2) Admit it to a friend(s). Fortunately, I have numbers of spiritual friends that I can turn to when I feel disconnected from God. I will tell them how I'm feeling, what's lacking, and what's hurting, and often admit that I really don't know how to express my emptiness. Having a real close friend that will hold me accountable and will allow me to hold him accountable is a difference maker. Many times, during these talks, I will feel the need to pray, but not feel the ability or worthiness to pray. My friend will pray for me. A man named Simon, formerly a magician, found himself in this predicament. He requested that Peter pray for him to help re-establish a connection with God (Acts 8).

Find a friend that you can talk to and admit your broken connection with God. Let him help.

3) Admit your disconnect to God Himself. This is often the most difficult part, but not because God wants it that way! For most of us, it is difficult to admit our faults, our weaknesses and our relationship difficulties to anyone, much less a Divine being that we can't see. Yet, despite His majesty, His sovereignty, and His position as the Supreme Creator and Ruler of the universe, God wants very much to have a relationship with us. He has taken it upon Himself to reach out to us and make Himself known to us through nature, through science, and through the Bible.

Our struggle with a relationship with God is often the same as our struggles with any other broken relationship - we just don't know what to say!

Why not simply say to God something along these lines:

"God, I don't know what to say to you. So let me just be direct. Please bear with me and be merciful to me. I want to improve my relationship with you. I want to feel a connection. I want to get to know you. I don't know where to start. But, since you've gone to all the trouble to try and communicate with me, I'll make a feeble attempt at a response. Be patient with me as I get better at talking with you. I recognize you for what You are and for what I am. I will become a better listener. I will try this again soon. I'm reaching out to you because of the door opened by Christ. In Jesus' name, Amen."

We all need that connection with God. It's the only guarantee for improving our immediate spiritual health and ensuring our eternal well being.

The Sentencing

They say you might have to die, Oscar.

It won’t be much longer now. Then we’ll know. You seem pretty calm considering the stakes, I’ve got to say. Maintaining such an unruffled demeanor is no small achievement, what with all those eyes, 12 pair to be exact, taking turns zeroing in on you from across the room, trying to read your mind from your manner. But nothing seems to phase you.

There’s something about your eyes, though. They look almost lidless. They stick out like billiard balls, as if maybe your tie is too tight. I guess maybe they’ve seen more than eyes were ever meant to see. And what they saw, no mind was ever meant to replay – but yours has, over and over again.

Conscience bites hard and it doesn’t let go, just like those pit bulls you spent your spare time raising and fighting. What did you say to it after that first time to get it to heel? Did you tell it not to worry, that it wasn’t that big a deal? It wasn’t like she was your real daughter after all. She was your stepdaughter. No flesh, no blood, no relation. Did it help to tell yourself that? But then she said she was going to tell on you and you had to keep that from happening. And you did. So here we are.

They say you might have to die, Oscar. It’ll make for good copy, you know. That’s why I’m here. This is a story people will want to read about.

But it’s not the one I want to tell. Telling your story has been humbling and has reminded me of things; it has reminded me that while the choices I’ve made in life have been different from yours and in most cases better, the net effect has been the same: alienation from God and a sentence of death. That’s what I need to tell: how I’d be sitting right where you are, condemned for crimes too numerous to recount, against Creator and creation alike, if not for a curious fact -- that my judge and my advocate are one and the same. And if not for an even stranger fact -- that my judge, the dignity of his position notwithstanding, gave it all up and took my punishment upon himself -- my eternal prospects would be worth even less than your temporal ones are now.

Watching our justice system at work has a way of reminding me of this story. But unfortunately it’s not the story they pay me to tell. I’ll have to tell it on my time. In the meantime, it looks like they are filing back in. All rise. Their eyes are avoiding you now.

It’s time, Oscar. It’s time.

The Greatest Commands?

It is humbling to know that the entirety of the Law is wrapped up in two commands from God: to love the LORD with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself. Later, Jesus would say that we should love our neighbor as He loved us - raising the stakes, if you will.

At the same time, keeping the Father's commands is how we demonstrate our love for Him (John 14). And His commands, you see, are fully wrapped up in loving Him and loving each other.

Sadly, in many cases we are guilty of actually scorning those that God asks us to love - no, not those outside the kingdom, but those IN the kingdom! Often, this scorn is over issues elevated to an importance that does not exist in the Scripture.

Scorn for a brother or sister in Christ...!

Can we really afford to treat each other in ways we KNOW are sinful over issues that remain in constant and irreconcilable debate? Is that the goal of New Testament Christianity?

If we learn absolutely nothing else from our journey through the Old Testament, it should be clear that the only thing that is important to the Creator is the dedication of our hearts to Him - and Him alone. That, of course, is not just a verbal exercise, but is exemplified in a genuine and sincere service to the King and His kingdom.

Remember, even Jesus himself admitted that the hypocritical Pharisees knew the Law (Matthew 23:1). It was the condition of their hearts that earned the Lord's disdain.

Election Blues

I know a lot of good Christians are concerned about the November presidential election and I’m right there with them. I sometimes wonder, though, whether the country would really be the better for it, whether the cause of the Kingdom would be any better served, if everything turns out the way we’d like.

When we have “our people” in power don’t we tend to relax a bit? It’s an unstated assumption, I think, that if we can just get our party in, the group that we think best represents our values and makes policy accordingly, then it can turn our country around and reverse our culture’s moral decline. When this happens, when it goes the way we deem as “ours,” the sense of urgency seems to ebb. It’s a natural tendency. (We show it in our fellowships even. We hire a team of qualified ministers, then kick back in our designated pew, write our weekly check and leave the rest to our professionals.)

This all ties in with something I wrote recently about how political action is truly powerless to bring change in the place where change must occur if it’s going to work its way through the culture – the hearts of individuals.

Make no mistake. I shudder to think that a President of the United States could believe it is morally acceptable to take a premature baby who has survived an unsuccessful abortion, even as it cries for its mother, its tiny lungs filling with new air, and toss it aside to die. For a President to hold this position, invoking the so-called “right” to choose as including its protection, the practical consequences may not be great. We’ve so perfected this cruelest of expedients that it seldom fails the first time. What does this belief say, though, of a candidate’s underlying worldview? It’s frightening. Chilling, really.

But again, God often gave wayward Israel the bad leaders it deserved, men who indulged their own and the people’s lusts for all manner of pagan excess, even child sacrifice. As a nation, we’ve become practised in similar rituals. We sacrifice our children to the god Choice. The altars are built by black-robed men, but to our own specs -- all to ringing chants of “rights” and “freedom.”

The point: If we don’t like our leaders, it may be that we’re getting our just desserts as a nation. As Christians, we should certainly pray for our country. Come November, we should go to the polls and do our duty as good citizens, voting as our consciences guide us. Then, whether we get the outcome we want or otherwise, we should forget about it. Put it out of our minds, for all practical purposes, rejoin our brothers and sisters and get on with the hard task of taking Christ to a country that no longer knows its right hand from its left.

Because it’s in the trenches of everyday life, not the marble halls of power, where souls are won and cultures are changed.

LORD!

God is Lord…Lord of all…heaven and earth. There is nothing that is outside His reach or vision or power. He is before all things, the start and the finish, and everything in between. Nothing happens to you, in you, through you or around you that He doesn’t know. And, there is nothing He can’t control. He is, and He is Lord.

Do you believe this? It’s easy to nod your head at this screen. I did as I typed the words. But, do you live by it?

If God is in control, if He is truly Lord – specifically, Lord of my life – why do I feel stress? Why do I worry? Why do I race through each day and forget to count the blessing of it? Why do I battle the same temptation again and again and again…alone?

The sun rises at God’s command. It sets because that’s what He decides. He blesses what He blesses and He punishes what He punishes; this is the lesson in Israel’s fall. He is, and always is, Lord. He just wasn’t their Lord.

Is He your Lord? Are you accepting His command over your life, your specific situations? He is Lord over your problems at work. He is Lord over your strained relationship with your child. He is Lord over your finance and your marriage. He is Lord.

He is Lord. You need only to declare it.

Shoe-Polish Epitaphs

“Rest in Peace. You will be missed.”

Teenagers scrawl various sophomoric proclamations on their car windows with shoe polish, but I noticed a couple recently of a more sobering sort – memorial messages to fallen classmates. Some kids apparently had died in a tragic car accident and their friends honored their memories with a few words in white shoe polish on their windshields.

The thing about shoe polish, of course, is that it doesn’t last. It washes away after a while and is gone forever. Most of the statements that can be made about our lives, truth be told, are little more than shoe-polish epitaphs – remarks that are doomed to fade away because they have little significance in the eternal scheme. The only statements about us that will really matter in the end are those describing our relationship to the eternal.

Enoch’s epitaph was simple and moving: He walked with God. That’s the only kind of epitaph, the only summing-up statement, that can transcend its ephemeral medium and last through all tomorrows.