September 13, 2018 | Build To Last
Sustainability
Why do some last while others fall? This is one of the most important concerns in human societies. From ancient philosophers to modern business consultants, this is a driving question: why do some things that humans build endure while others leave little positive impact?

Considering all the available sources, led by the Bible, there appear to be three main requirements for building a life of positive, lasting impact:

  • Trustworthy core
  • Heart to serve
  • Humility

Whether it’s a corporation or a soul, these scriptural issues are what make the difference. I have just begun teaching on these and look forward to conversing with you about them in the coming days. To spark our thoughts, I have included a personal assessment and action guide below.

God bless,

Wayne

 

Build to Last – Assessment

How well am I building to last? Please answer T or F to each question. Note this: if my answer is mixed or uncertain, I should answer “true.” In other words, if the question is partly true for me, it is to be marked as true.

  1. I sometimes skip church when the series or teacher doesn’t interest me.
  2. I do not know the names of those who sit near me in church.
  3. I have one or more areas of sin that I just excuse as “my normal.”
  4. I am rarely convicted by a Bible text.
  5. My only buddies in life are non-Christians or unhealthy Christians.
  6. I usually feel strained when doing good deeds.
  7. There are parts of the Bible that I think are wrong and should not be studied today.
  8. I have no one with whom I am totally honest.
  9. I have little or no desire to pray, unless I am in danger.
  10. I hide the fact that I am a Bible-believing Christian.
  11. The mistakes and sins of others bother me more than my own.
  12. I frankly doubt God’s ability to lead me better than I can myself.
  13. When uncertain about meaning of a Bible text, I never seek educated help.
  14. I am not committed to a Christian life group or an ongoing position of service.
  15. I do not experience God’s empowerment.

 

Build to Last – Scoring

Note the “True” answers according to these groupings:

1, 4, 7, 10, 13 – # true _____ (questions about holding to scripture)

2, 5, 8, 11, 14 – # true _____ (questions about joining in fellowship & service)

3, 6, 9, 12, 15 – # true _____ (questions about yielding to God’s Spirit)

 

Build to Last – Plan Of Action

As is likely evident from the questions, it would be wonderful for each Christian to score false on every question. However, that is very unlikely in an honest assessment, at least according to those believers among whom I piloted this survey.

If a person scored 2 or more “true” on any section of the assessment, he or she needs to work with the Lord according to the powerful Acts 2 combination of scripture, solidarity, and the Spirit. Any “True” answer likely indicates an area of need, but 2 or more represents a serious problem if you wish yourself & your church to be built to last. Here’s what I recommend, from scripture and my own experience.

 

If I am weak at holding fast to truth: 

  1. Engage now in a genuine Bible study or a discipleship group.
  2. Commit to weekly worship at a Bible-centered church.
  3. Start a “conviction list” of areas where:
  • I am weak in execution/application.
  • I think I might be misunderstanding or misinterpreting the scripture.
  • I find myself trying to rewrite the Bible.

 

If I am weak at growing together:

  1. Engage now in a Life Group and or a ministry.
  2. Determine to stay involved even though the people are as stinky as I am.
  3. Find at least one someone appropriate & healthy for each level of human interaction:
  • Acquaintance who knows your name and notices when you are gone
  • Buddy with whom to do stuff
  • Friend with whom to share dreams, wounds, defeats, & wonders

 

If I am weak at yielding to God:

  1. Engage now in a weekly time of prayer at church. If my church lacks a prayer room, I can surely find a quiet place for prayer.
  2. Commit to a daily set time of prayer & surrender.
  3. Keep track of the areas where I am most likely to:
  • Sin
  • Attempt to do good from my own flesh instead of God’s Spirit.
  • Slip into self-reliance.
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August 9, 2018 | Miracle in Saudi
 

Miracle of Saudi
Last week, the ATD note contained Bob Green’s marvelous story “A Soldier Never Forgets North Platte,” a fantastic follow-up to his book The Miracle of North Platte. I received many moving responses, but the one below was a particularly powerful parallel. It’s from an Elder at our church, Schuyler Stuckey, who taught with Aramco in Saudi Arabia for 20+ years.

The North Platte story reminds of our experience in Saudi Arabia during Operation Desert Shield/Storm. Not long after the invasion of Kuwait on Aug 2, 1990, groups of Aramcons began serving our soldiers who were being deployed to Saudi Arabia to help free Kuwait from Iraq’s control. From mid-August to early January, convoys of private citizens made trips up north towards the Kuwait border to feed our soldiers.

Initially it was cold drinks, ice and snacks. The ice & cold drinks were especially welcome in the 110 plus degree desert. As time went on the meals became more elaborate. At Thanksgiving, we took out full turkey dinners. Some even deep-fried turkeys out in the desert.  These home cooked meals were a real treat compared to the MREs they had. In exchange for the food we provided, we were treated to an MRE. We gave the soldiers magazines & books to help relieve the boredom of sitting & waiting, and Bible study with prayer were part of many of our visits.

Probably what meant the most to them was that we were there to visit and encourage these young men/women. I remember one encounter where the soldiers took turns driving my red Mustang convertible and they took us for rides in their Humvees. On many occasions we got the names and contact information of the soldiers’ families back in the U.S. We then wrote or called the family member to let them know how THEIR soldier was doing. We were also privileged to have many soldiers in our home once or twice a week. We fed them a home cooked meal, washed their dirty clothes, visited and normally had a prayer time. The soldiers really enjoyed playing with our pets and got a thrill out of playing with any little kids that might be there. Even though it was terribly expensive, we also gave them the opportunity to call home for a very short talk. This was a highlight of the evening.

Our final gathering in the desert took place after the freeing of Kuwait. Hundreds of us helped feed thousands of soldiers in the desert of Saudi Arabia.  This was the only time the military helped with the expense. They provided the meat (hamburgers & hotdogs) and we did the rest. 28 years later we are still in contact with one of those soldiers. To God be the Glory!

 
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August 2, 2018 | Restoration

 
“Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus, and Timothy our brother: To Philemon our dear friend and coworker, to Apphia our sister, to Archippus our fellow soldier, and to the church that meets in your home. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”
[Philemon 1-3 HCSB]

Restoration

I am teaching through the wonderful book of Philemon. If you would like to access my personal preparation notes, you can find them here.

 

North Platte

We received many requests for a copy of the story I recently shared. In response, here is Bob Green’s “A Soldier Never Forgets North Platte”

 

“We were overwhelmed,” said Lt. Col. Nick Jaskolski. “I don’t really have words to describe how surprised and moved we all were. I had never even heard of the town before.” Col. Jaskolski, a veteran of the Iraq war, is commander of the 142nd Field Artillery Brigade of the Arkansas Army National Guard. For three weeks earlier this summer, the 142nd had been conducting an emergency deployment readiness exercise in Wyoming, training and sleeping outdoors, subsisting on field rations.

 

Now it was time for the 700 soldiers to return to their base. A charter bus company had been hired for the 18-hour drive back to Arkansas. The Army had budgeted for a stop to get snacks. The bus company determined that the soldiers would reach North Platte, in western Nebraska, around the time they would likely be hungry. The company placed a call to the visitors’ bureau: Was there anywhere in town that could handle a succession of 21 buses, and get 700 soldiers in and out for a quick snack?

 

North Platte said yes. North Platte has always said yes.

 

During World War II, North Platte was a geographically isolated town of 12,000. Soldiers, sailors and aviators on their way to fight the war rode troop trains across the nation, bound for Europe via the East Coast or the Pacific via the West Coast. The Union Pacific Railroad trains that transported the soldiers always made 10-minute stops in North Platte to take on water. The townspeople made those 10 minutes count. Starting in December 1941, they met every train: up to 23 a day, beginning at 5 a.m. and ending after midnight. Those volunteers greeted between 3,000 and 5,000 soldiers a day. They presented them with sandwiches and gifts, played music for them, danced with them, baked birthday cakes for them.

 

Every day of the year, every day of the war, they were there at the depot. They never missed a train, never missed a soldier. They fed six million soldiers by the end of the war. Not 1 cent of government money was asked for or spent, save for a $5 bill sent by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

 

The soldiers never forgot the kindness. Most of them, and most of the townspeople who greeted them, are dead. And now, in 2018, those 21 busloads from the 142nd Field Artillery were on their way, expecting to stop at some fast-food joint.

 

“We couldn’t believe what we saw when we pulled up,” Col. Jaskolski said. As each bus arrived over a two-day period, the soldiers stepped out to be greeted by lines of cheering people holding signs of thanks. They weren’t at a fast-food restaurant: They were at North Platte’s events center, which had been opened and decorated especially for them.

 

“People just started calling our office when they heard the soldiers were on their way,” said Lisa Burke, the director of the visitors’ bureau. “Hundreds of people, who wanted to help.” The soldiers entered the events center to the aroma of steaks grilling and the sound of recorded music: current songs by Luke Bryan, Justin Timberlake, Florida Georgia Line; World War II songs by Glenn Miller, the Andrews Sisters, Jimmy Dorsey. They were served steak sandwiches, ham sandwiches, turkey sandwiches, deviled eggs, salads and fruit; local church groups baked pies, brownies and cookies.

 

Mayor Dwight Livingston stood at the door for two days and shook every soldier’s hand. Mr. Livingston served in the Air Force in Vietnam and came home to no words of thanks. Now, he said, as he shook the hands and welcomed the soldiers, “I don’t know whether those moments were more important for them, or for me. I knew I had to be there.”

 

“It was one soldier’s 21st birthday,” Lisa Burke said. “When I gave him his cake, he told me it was the first birthday cake he’d ever had in his life.” Not wanting to pry, she didn’t ask him how that could possibly be. “I was able to hold my emotions together,” she said. “Until later.”

 

When it became time to settle up—the Army, after all, had that money budgeted for snacks—the 142nd Field Artillery was told: Nope. You’re not spending a penny here. This is on us. This is on North Platte. – Bob Greene July 22, 2018 WSJ

[Mr. Greene’s books include Once Upon a Town: The Miracle of the North Platte Canteen.]

 

God bless,

Wayne
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July 12, 2018 | An Ancient Reminder On Contentment

An Ancient Reminder On Contentment
Forgotten wisdom
Ecclesiastes says a great deal about engaging with God through both prosperity and poverty. Solomon relates the ideas quite intricately and memorably, which leaves me no excuse for so often forgetting them.Another author, writing about halfway between our day and Solomon’s, shared similar brilliance about contentment with money. While not scripture, Boethius’ The Consolation of Philosophy is also worthy of remembrance. Written ca. A.D. 524, the book is frankly fabulous. Nonetheless, I am embarrassed to relate that I had forgotten all about Boethius until I received this note following a lesson I taught in Ecclesiastes. My fellow Elder Randall Satchell wrote:

Wayne, below are a few quotes from the 1897 translation of Boethius’ The Consolation of Philosophy (old school English!) by H.R. James, which I read a few years ago. Following the quotes are some notes on the work itself, including a comment on it by C.S. Lewis from his book The Discarded Image (which is where I first learned about Boethius). The language is decidedly dated, but it shows how poor, wise Boethius was acquainted with Ecclesiastes.

What though Plenty pour her gifts
With a lavish hand,
Numberless as are the stars,
Countless as the sand,
Will the race of man, content,
Cease to murmur and lament?

Nay, though God, all-bounteous, give
Gold at man’s desire—
Honours, rank, and fame—content
Not a whit is nigher;
But an all-devouring greed
Yawns with ever-widening need.

Then what bounds can e’er restrain
This wild lust of having,
When with each new bounty fed
Grows the frantic craving?
He is never rich whose fear
Sees grim Want forever near.
(Book II, Song II)

One law only standeth fast:
Things created may not last.
(Book II, Song III)

So true is it that nothing is wretched, but thinking makes it so, and conversely every lot is happy if borne with equanimity.
(Book II, IV)

And though thou knowest not the causes on which this great system depends, yet forasmuch as a good ruler governs the world, doubt not for thy part that all is rightly done.
(Book IV, V)

Our hopes and prayers also are not fixed on God in vain, and when they are rightly directed cannot fail of effect. Therefore, withstand vice, practise virtue, lift up your souls to right hopes, offer humble prayers to Heaven. Great is the necessity of righteousness laid upon you if ye will not hide it from yourselves, seeing that all your actions are done before the eyes of a Judge who seeth all things.
(Book V, VI)

Notes
The Consolation of Philosophy was written by Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius near the end of his life, which occurred in A.D. 524. He was a Roman who had fallen from great social and political heights to a life of arrest, exile, and execution. In this book, he pens a reasoned approach to the questions of the vagaries, and seeming injustices, of Fortune. The text is in the form of a dialogue between Boethius and a female personification of Philosophy; and it regularly alternates between sections of prose and poetry.

De Consolatione Philosophiae, according to C.S. Lewis, “was for centuries one of the most influential books ever written in Latin. It was translated into Old High German, Italian, Spanish, and Greek; into French by Jean de Meung; into English by Alfred, Chaucer, Elizabeth I, and others. Until about two hundred years ago it would, I think, have been hard to find an educated man in any European country who did not love it.” (from The Discarded Image)

The influence of this book can be seen in many later authors including Dante, Milton, and Chaucer. For example, Boethius’ “So true is it that nothing is wretched but thinking makes it so, and conversely every lot is happy if borne with equanimity.” is echoed by Shakespeare’s Hamlet who claims, “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.”

I pray that we truly remember how to do all through Christ who strengthens. It might help to write on our minds that “every lot is happy if borne with equanimity, [and] all your actions are done before the eyes of a Judge who seeth all things.”

God bless,
Wayne
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June 28, 2018 | Suffering And Purpose

 

On Purpose
I have been working through parts of Job, learning from that mighty book as part of a series about “When Life Hurts.” In my reading, I was blessed by this reminder from Ray Stedman:

The book of Job teaches us a difficult truth about suffering: Sometimes we suffer because our affliction accomplishes God’s purposes. This principle always seems to catch us by surprise, even though it should be obvious to us all. After all, the New Testament makes it abundantly clear that God allows the innocent to suffer in order to achieve His purposes. The most innocent man to ever live was Jesus of Nazareth. He suffered and died on the cross not because He was an evildoer, not because He deserved to suffer, but because He was carrying out God’s purpose in the world.

Job teaches us that suffering is a means by which Satan is silenced and God is vindicated. It’s a high and holy privilege to uphold the glory of God against the accusations of the devil. If we will learn to see our sufferings in light of the spiritual war that has been raging since before the creation of the human race, it will transform our lives and our pain. It will awaken us to the high and holy privilege of (as Paul says in Philippians 3:10) sharing in the sufferings of our Lord Jesus Christ.
– Ray Stedman, Let God Be God

God bless,
Wayne
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June 14, 2018 | Blessings Of Affliction

And not only that, but we also rejoice in our afflictions, because we know that affliction produces endurance, endurance produces proven character, and proven character produces hope. [Romans 5:3-4 HCSB]
Affliction

I recently taught about affliction and the blessings the Sovereign Lord embeds in them. In response I received a lot of fascinating mail. Here are a few of the insightful notes:

Christlikeness

Pastor Wayne, I am floored at the reality – which I have experienced many times – that in life’s pains we are shaped to better resemble Jesus. Paul’s reminder in Philippians 3:10-11 always motivates me, “My goal is to know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, assuming that I will somehow reach the resurrection from among the dead.” [HCSB WB note; the “assuming” in verse 11 is a first class condition in Greek, meaning it’s something that is certain.]

Trusted gardener

Wayne, Amy Carmichael referring to her suffering in India thusly, “What a prodigal waste it appears to see scattered on the floor the bright green leaves and the bare stem bleeding in a hundred places from the sharp knife. But with a tried and trusted husbandman there is not a random stroke in it all, nothing cut away which it would not have been a loss to keep and gain to lose.”

Think it through

Wayne, I have lots of thoughts on this topic!

The question “How can a good God can allow suffering?” presupposes three things and sets one condition for the debate. The condition inherent in the question is that God exists, is good, and is almighty (only an almighty God could allow or prevent suffering). The asker is attempting to invalidate this condition by asking about suffering. But the presuppositions must be exposed. First, the question assumes that the asker has a better innate sense of good and justice than a good and almighty God. That’s pretty bold. Secondly, it assumes that the asker has the omniscience to know what is the greatest possible good. That’s brazen. If we stop right there, the question itself, consciously or not, has at its root an enormous arrogance and self-worship.

But there is one more presupposition. The question assumes that a life free of suffering is better for every human than a life with suffering. That is simply childish thinking. What benefit would there be from an endless sunny day? What advantage could there possibly be of no night, no rain, no cold? Even popular psychology understands this at some level. “No pain, no gain.” “The greatest lessons come when we fail.” “Winning teaches us nothing, but losing can elicit great wisdom.” The essence of these sentiments is incompatible with the question, “How can a good God allow suffering?”

For those who deny God, suffering only magnifies despair, because those who believe that the material world is all that exists worship and hope for nothing greater than the comforts of this life. But the Christian understands that such a materialistic worldview is spiritual deception. “For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and the pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world” (1 John 2:16 ESV). For the Christian, suffering teaches us to not trust the things of this world, to magnify our hope in God, and to daily live out our joy—namely, that Christ is much greater than this present darkness, which is so quickly passing away!

Hope

Pastor Wayne, at first I wanted to write and ask how suffering could possibly cause hope. Then, as I thought about it, I began to see some glimpses of how that can be. I understand a bit of the hope founded in eternal reality – something brought to the fore when people are forced to think beyond today. There is a hopefulness when I know that I am being shaped, even if the shaping hurts. It’s even hope producing that God is big enough to handle my complaints and accessible enough that He welcomes them.
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