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I am so proud and appreciative of our church family for the ways in which you are all working so hard to shelter in place, social distance and live within the orders we have been given. For many of you this causes immense frustration and hardship, so thank you on behalf of us all
I was wondering how many of you have read the most recent circular for our County Health Officer Dr Scott Morrow. As I read it I think I began to appreciate the conflicted emotions that he expresses
“As I write this, I am both immensely grateful and exceedingly disappointed. We are in a grave crisis”
I am grateful that many people are taking this seriously and are doing everything they can to slow the spread of this virus. You are heroes for doing this.
I am deeply grateful for and everyone should thank God for our first responders and our front line medical and public health personnel. They are taking on personal risk to take care of you. They are heroes for doing this.
My disappointment stems from the fact that many people just aren’t taking this seriously and going about their business as if nothing has changed.
In my reading through the Bible this year this morning I began the book of Deuteronomy. Of course, this awakened so many memories of our journey through the book together at New Life last year. But what struck me this morning was the similarity between what Dr Morrow says and the message Moses decays to the Israelites. “If you want to be safe”, Dr Morrow says, “you must ALL follow the guidelines otherwise you show great disrespect for the community”. “If you want to experience a land flowing with milk and honey”, says Moses, “you must follow the laws God has set out for you.”
What a challenge this is to our cultural obsession with “independence” and what we call “freedom.” Could it be that through this difficult time God is giving us an opportunity to rethink the degree to which we both value and recognize how much we need to prioritize our communities’ needs before our own? What do you think?
Probably no coincidence that as I read “ The Daily Office” during my devotions each day this week I have come to the chapter entitled “ Growing through Grief and Loss” It has impressed on me that this is exactly what many of us are feeling right now. Here are just a couple of quotes :
“ Experiencing loss makes us confront our humanity and our limits. We quickly realize we are not in control of our lives; God is. We are creatures not the Creator”
“ We don’t become mature human beings by getting lucky or cleverly circumventing loss, and certainly not by avoidance or distraction. Learn to lament.” Eugene Peterson
Many have lost jobs, at least for the time being, with no knowledge of when work will restart. Many are feeling lonely and disconnected wondering how they can maintain relationships in any meaningful way. How will bills get paid? Will people forget me completely. All these fears and so many more are real and legitimate and need to be confronted. It’s not that the fact that God is in control and will work all things for good is not real, it’s just that it takes time for that message to travel from our heads to our hearts. And that is ok.
In the meantime we must first confront the pain and fear and feel all the emotions these unsettling circumstances bring to the surface. Express that emotion in all its raw reality to God, He can take it. Then and only then, when we have fully engaged with all that emotional reality, can we open the door to embrace the new reality with all its possibilities.
When Jesus tells repeatedly to “fear not” He does so because He knows how relentlessly fear and insecurity rises within us. He does not say we are bad or wrong to feel that way. He does not say stuff it away in a place where hopefully you can forget it. He does not say forget it and get on with life. He simply says face it and recognizing it, hand it to me. I will take it and walk with you through it. I will take you to a place where you have no need to pretend but rather have confidence and trust we can face it together.
So, as we seek to maintain contact and connection with each other, let’s encourage one another to face the challenges with honesty. Then, I believe we will experience the joy and peace that passes understanding in fresh and amazing ways. In time, our Heavenly Father will enable us to deepen our faith and trust in Him. Also, He will teach us new ways to face the future that we will, in turn, be able to share with others.
A few Sundays ago I was talking with Andy Lie about the wonderful project to build affordable housing for teachers in the Jefferson Union School District. He was observing that bond measures being offered in a number of other districts were not doing well and we were musing as to why this was.
Whereas it is not helpful to speculate as to all the reasons for the lack of progress in other places there is one distinctive the JUHSD project has that we at least suspect is unique. The site on which the housing will be built was prayer walked by a number of Christians on multiple occasions. Trash was collect form the site symbolizing the removal of opposition to the project. Whether or not this was THE reason for the success of the project we don’t know of course but I believe even the most cautious of us can be confident it was a major factor.
This reality got me thinking about the effectiveness of covering locations within our city ( or whatever location you are reading this in!) with consistent, committed, confident prayer. I am excited that members of our church family are already regularly praying together ( observing social distancing of course!!) In a number of locations. Recently the management of Casa Pacifica has said that they do not want our growth group to continue visiting once a month (This was before the virus restrictions). We have decided to make a practice of walking past Casa Pacifica regularly and praying for its residents and asking the Father to open it up to us again.
One of the things we CAN do during the current restrictions is to get outside and walk in the fresh Pacifica air. What if we saw this as an opportunity to regularly take time to pray all over our city? What if we asked God where He would have us pray, maybe for a local business or at some other local landmark and we walk in that location as part of our routine. Is it to much to think that our Father might fulfill for us the promise He made to Israel “ “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land”.2 Chronicles 7:14 ?
Well, we are now into the second day of our shelter in place order. How are you doing? It struck me this morning that the focus of so much of our thinking and reading is what we can’t or should not do. Wouldn’t it be better to change that focus on what we can and should do?
At New Life we had our first fully live-streamed service last Sunday and it was great. We still have a lot to learn of course but we were able to act fast and say “We Can” because God has given us the technology to make it possible and we have some amazing staff who have worked on that technology for a long time and we have been streaming our sermons for a while now.
We have had a Zoom account for some time now and experimented with meetings in the past so I was so excited to do discipleship with three other guys over zoom last night and see that one of our growth groups used the platform to meet last night as well. By the end of this week we will have held at least four gatherings on zoom and I am sure there will be many more to come. We discovered “We Can”
This morning I read in (Mark 8:1-8) about the time when Jesus fed the five thousand. If ever an occasion when it was obvious to say “we can’t” it was then and of course the disciples said just that. However they discover that with Jesus there is no “can’t” and He uses the little they had to feed everyone and have an abundance of leftovers.
I am convinced that in these strange and confusing times if we keep our eyes fixed on Jesus He will show us that “ He can” and through Him “We can”. The outcomes will be “ greater than we could ask or imagine.(Ephesians 3:20) Let’s remember to support and encourage each other, keep in contact especially with those who may be lonely and vulnerable. Let’s prepare to be amazed at what our God will do!
Recently I went to see the movie “Just Mercy.” The story is based on the book with the same name in which Brian Stevenson recounts how, after law school at Harvard, he follows his heart and sets up a law center serving death row prisoners in Alabama. The community he plans to serve is similar to the one in which he grew up. As he packs up his rather dilapidated car to drive to his new home, his mother expresses dismay that he is putting so much, including his life, at risk by embarking on this project. But he is resolute even when the office they have rented breaks their agreement when they learn of the work they are doing. Undeterred they begin work in a front room in the house of his administrator.
I don’t want to spoil the excellent movie by revealing too much of the plot, but the movie focuses on one particular death row inmate, Johnny-D, who is on death row simply because he, ” looks like someone who could kill someone.” As the story unfolds we learn that the evidence on which he was convicted is a tissue of falsehood, intentionally created. Little attempt is made to hide the blatant manipulation perpetrated and coordinated by the police department and the state’s attorney. I will stop there to ensure that I do not spoil the movie, but I want to share with you some of the thoughts about the movie I have had subsequent to seeing it.
I was interested to note that the events portrayed in the movie occurred in or around 1993 which was the year I came to the United States with my family. I was shaken to see how recently unapologetic racism was rampant in that community; how fear and hatred of “those people” justified behavior so far from justice in a part of this nation that has become my home, and we proudly claim to be the leader of the free world.
One of the most significant moments in the movie for me came as the credits were giving updates on the characters in the story. A caption reported that the sheriff, who was personally responsible for much of the egregious conduct had been subsequently re-elected to head the police department multiple times and had only retired relatively recently. Does that mean that similar racial injustices were still, and maybe continue to be perpetrated by law enforcement in that community?
But there was one more devastating thought that came to mind as I contemplated the treatment given to “these people” motivated by fear and consequent hatred. Time and time again they (African Americans) are characterized as being “criminals and drug addicts and a danger to our children”! But wait, have I not heard those words recently here in Pacifica? Of course, in politically correct California, it is unthinkable that this could be said about anyone ethnically different than ourselves (forgive my sarcasm!). No, but this is exactly the judgment that is being passed on the homeless by many right here in our city. Could it be that, although we have made a great deal of progress in our attitude to those of different races, we have turned our blanket, uninformed rejection on another segment of our community? What do you think? How can we, as followers of Jesus, be seen to be different?
At New Life Christian Fellowship in Pacifica we begin each year with 21days of Prayer and Fasting. During this time we are encouraged to find ways to set things aside and find time to focus on things that God might want to impress upon us for the new year. Often the sacrifices that release the most time to spend with God are related to media, no TV or Social media! However, fasting from food in some way has the additional element of allowing real hunger to remind us of our need to hunger after God.
During this time it can be helpful to find something new to read or meditate upon. This year one of the things I decided to do was to read very slowly and meditate on John Ch 14-17 as these where Jesus’s final conversations with his closest friends before his death, “Final instructions before…” He is preparing them to found the church following his ascension. I am particularly trying to focus on what it must have been like to actually be there and listen to Jesus talk. What did they understand? What did He hope they would understand.?
The first passage I spent time thinking about was Ch 14:1-5 and I noticed that, first, Jesus reassures them and encourages them to trust him. Then He says something that must have been pretty mysterious to them. It seems he must have realized that they would need that trust to accept those things they did not really understand yet. When He stated that they “knew where He was going” I think I would have had said as Thomas did ” we have no idea where you are going so how can we know the way?“, (v5). As I thought about it for a while I could not help wondering what were the things that Jesus had taught them that made Him say v4 ” you know the way to where I am going‘? Did they miss them or just misunderstand them?
So for me, this was a good reminder often there are aspects of our walk with Jesus that are mysterious and we need simply to trust Him. It also made me want to take some time to contemplate lessons I have learned in my walk with Jesus and ask if there are parts of those lessons that have still more significance for the future. For that day I stopped my meditation there and made some notes in my journal knowing there was more to come in these pivotal chapters.
Do you have any thoughts on this passage or are you reading anything specific during these 21days that you would like to share?
When I recently preached on Psalm 32 I was really struck by the significance of confession in the life of a Christian. For many, the word is significantly misunderstood and simply carries the implication of focussing on what we have done wrong and ‘fessing up! The images from the Catholic faith of wooden closets with little windows through which you recount your deepest dark secrets are not I suggest very helpful.
So what does the word mean? Well, at its simplest, it means to acknowledge or confront and can be used in both positive and negative contexts. In his epistle, John urges us to confess our sin but Paul in Romans similarly encourages us to confess that Jesus is Lord (Romans 10:9)*. James, however, suggests that we confess our sin to one another (James 5:16). Given all these different uses of the word in scripture I believe it warrants us looking more carefully at what this should mean for us.
Each of the uses above suggests a different response. The acknowledgment [confession] of having done something wrong, according to David, results in not the burden of shame and guilt but the freedom of forgiveness (Ps 32:5). The confession of Jesus as Lord brings salvation (Rom 10:9) and James tells us that confession of sin to one another results in the prayer support (James 5:16)
In his book “Breathing Under Water” Richard Rohr looks at the parallels between the gospel and the twelve-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous. When he comes to Step 5, Admit to God, to ourselves and another human being the exact nature of our wrongs” makes some really powerful observations:
” Any good therapist will tell you, you cannot heal what you do not acknowledge, and what you do not acknowledge will remain in control of you from within, festering and destroying you and those around you”
“When human beings” admit” to one another” the exact nature of their wrongs” we invariably have a human and humanizing encounter that deeply enriches both sides”
So it seems that a fresh and broader look at the concept of confession as “confrontation” or “acknowledgment” can bring us rather and discouragement and depression a wonderful sense of release and freedom. Those who attend liturgical churches are often taken through the routine of confession during each service. Perhaps those of us not familiar with such practices might benefit from thinking about somehow adopting not simply the practice of confession but consider what might be called a confessional lifestyle and then bask in the blessing of Ps 32:2 the joy of lives “lived in complete honesty”
*The KJV actually uses the word “confess”, other versions use “openly declare”
In studying Psalm 1 recently I was struck by two words in particular. David tells us that joy (happiness, blessing) comes from “delighting” and “mediating“ on the law. Now of course the law for him was the Torah, the first five books of the bible and in all honesty at first glance there does not seem a lot of fuel for delight. Genesis and Exodus are great stories but after that we are in deep trouble… or are we?
A little investigation reveals the delight is a word with rather deeper and stronger meaning than might at first appear. Merriam Webster defines it as “something that makes you very happy; something that gives you deep satisfaction” So maybe the significance of David putting “delight” in the same verse at “meditation” is important.
Meditation is a word that carries a considerable amount of cultural baggage. It is associated with all forms of mysticism. Our yearning for instant gratification resists anything that demands time, which none of us have! However Merriam Webster again helps us by defining the word a little more clearly; ”to focus one’s thought on: reflect or ponder over”
What might happen then if we took a few minutes to ponder the first five books of the bible. If we asked why they were written, and to whom. Minimal research would reveal that one of their principle purposes was simply that the nation of Israel might know the God who had chosen them. What sort of a God was He and what did it mean to be nation?
Getting to know someone really does give me delight. Learning to appreciate their distinctive qualities and grow to love them for who they are. But doing this requires the investment of time. How many people have you come to know deeply through passing conversations in the gym or the super market?
The secret of delighting in God’s word then comes from knowing God Taking time to reflect on and ponder over scripture. I wonder what “deep satisfaction” is there waiting for us if we will risk the experiment by carving out some time in our calendar to “reflect and ponder.” Could it be the “delight” of getting get to know our Heavenly Father better?
At our church we are beginning an extensive discussion of our values. This was prompted by a podcast from Craig Groeschel, along with the realization that 2017 will be our 10th birthday. This significant milestone provides a wonderful opportunity to celebrate the past and look to the future. Our observations of our church currently indicate that it is a healthy and an interesting and exciting place, one where we can confidently invite others. However we recognize that we are, for the most part, “insiders” and so biased. In addition we lack clarity on the “why” of our current perceived well being, hence the need to articulate, not just the values we would like to have, but more importantly the one others would identify in our activities and behaviors.
In the course of this discussion we listed ” service” as an important value. As I thought about this I wondered if “service” alone was sufficient to express our value. After all multitudes of people , people of faith and no faith would say that serving others and community involvement was important to them and for everyone service is often hard, inconvenient and even painful.
However if we list “service” as a value for our church family perhaps we need to dig a little deeper to describe the uniqueness of Christian service. As I pondered this I remembered that Jesus himself said the he came “not to be served but to serve and give His life as a ransom for many.” Mark 10:45 This struck me in a new way with the emphasis on the first and last parts “not to be served” and “give his life …”. If we are to follow our Savior’s example then the special qualities of our service are not what, we do but how and why we do it. In seeking “ not to be served” and ” to give” we act solely in response to the amazing sacrifice of love made for us by Jesus. We do this joyfully and at the expense of our our own wants and desires because, once again, this was the pattern that He gave us.
This is important because it provides a distinct contrast to what Lyons and Kinnaman (Good Faith – Being a Christian when Society thinks you are Irrelevant and Extreme) describe as the “new morality of self fulfillment.” Tragically the prevailing cultural values are leaking into the Christian community. Recent research indicates that more than 60% of “practicing Christians” agree with statements that “the highest goals in life are to enjoy it as much a possible’ and ” to be fulfilled in life you should pursue the things you desire most.” Serving others can fall within either of these objectives. However as Christians we are called to serve because He served and sacrificed for us. To do so we must frequently and joyfully set aside our own desires. So how then should we express the value of service in a way that is uniquely applicable to followers of Jesus… any suggestions?
A while ago someone I respect asked me if, given my emphatically stated position on keeping politics out of the church, I thought a pastor had any responsibility in advising their congregations on their involvement in the political process. This caused me to think very carefully over recent months and to read fairly widely on the subject of Christians in culture and the public square. The current electoral season has generated a rash of blogs, articles and podcasts on the subject and as a consequence I have reached the conclusion that I should share four principles I believe are firmly based in scripture and that people might find helpful:
1 God is still in charge! Presidents, Prime Ministers, politicians, pastors and the rest of us come and go but God remains entirely and eternally in control. His plan remains unchanged, as it has through the ages, and nothing can deviate Him from its fulfillment.
2 The phrase ” lesser of two evils” is not found or implied anywhere in scripture (to my knowledge). The Bible is clear that all forms of evil come from the forces of darkness and are to be resisted Ephesians 6:10-12. James 4:7
3. The scripture is full of applicable principles and I trust you will search them prayerfully as you ponder these things. In this context I want to share just one:
Know, O people, the Lord has told you what is good,
and this is what he requires of you:
to do what is right, to love mercy,
and to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8
4. The fact that someone comes to a different conclusion than you about the application of these, and other biblical principles, does not mean they are bad people neither does it call their relationship with Jesus into question. By God’s grace you will share heaven with many of them, and remember, when the time comes, we will stand before almighty God alone!
I am aware I have on many occasions expressed my relief at not having to make political choices since I am not s citizen. However I have no wish to use this as an excuse not to think and pray for each of you as you think and pray about the choices you must make. To finish I return to where I started, remember, in politics, as in every other aspect of life, God is still in charge and He always will be!
From the Zebra Bag 