Author: Don

Dear Friends

Am I the type of person with whom I would want to spend eternity? If I am honest with myself, I have to admit that there are times I wouldn’t even want to spend a weekend with me, let alone eternity. Yet, I read 2 Corinthians 5:17 – “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here.” I wonder when that new creation is going to take over.  In Romans I read, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” (Romans 12:2) Where do I go for mind renewal?

A related question has been rattling around in my head: If someone dragged me into court and accused me of being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict me? This question prompts me to become a fruit inspector – “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.“ (Galatians 5:22-23) Does my life reflect God’s love, peace, patience, and gentleness? What about self-control? Even when I’m caught in traffic on the 405?

Mind renewal? Fruitfulness? Praise God, it’s not up to me. The Apostle Paul put it this way, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.  For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ…in accordance with the riches of God’s grace.” (Ephesians 3-7)

As God’s children, we all are a work in progress.

“Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.” (2 Corinthians 3:17-18)

Are we the type of people with whom we’d want to spend eternity? Would we be found guilty if someone accused us of being a Christian? Are we progressing? All good questions. 2 Peter 1:3-8 offers hope:

“By his divine power, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life. We have received all of this by coming to know him, the one who called us to himself by means of his marvelous glory and excellence. And because of his glory and excellence, he has given us great and precious promises. These are the promises that enable you to share his divine nature and escape the world’s corruption caused by human desires. In view of all this, make every effort to respond to God’s promises. Supplement your faith with a generous provision of moral excellence, and moral excellence with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with patient endurance, and patient endurance with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love for everyone. The more you grow like this, the more productive and useful you will be in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 1:5-8)

In our journey of faith, we need to be gentle with ourselves and remember to “be confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:6)

Verse for the week: John: 13:35: “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

They Will Know We Are Christians is a hymn inspired by John 13:35, written by a Catholic priest, Peter Scholtes. (Listen at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoENAD7OCiI)

Blessings, Your friends in Christ

Imagine this: You are sitting, having a nice cup of tea, when the phone rings. You answer and are greeted by an official sounding voice, “The President of the United States is calling.” Moments later you hear the familiar voice of the President who tells you that he would like you to accept a position as a United States Ambassador.

You are shocked because nothing has prepared you for this prestigious assignment. “Please tell me more.”

“As ambassador, you will be my official voice. When you speak, it will be the same as if I myself were speaking. Your every action will be scrutinized – you will be the face of the United States to that country.”

Now it isn’t likely that our imagined scenario will ever occur, but as a Christian you have already been given an even more important position. The Apostle Paul explains it this way in 2 Corinthians 5:20: “We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.”

Baker’s Evangelical Dictionary explains reconciliation: “Reconciliation involves a change in the relationship between God and man or man and man. It assumes there has been a breakdown in the relationship, but now there has been a change from a state of enmity and fragmentation to one of harmony and fellowship.” The wall that sin has erected between man and God has been torn down.

Talk about an awesome responsibility. When we share the Gospel of Jesus Christ we are carrying a message of reconciliation. ”Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation:  that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them…” (ibid V: 17-21)

Adam and Eve chose recrimination instead of remorse and repentance. Adam blamed God (for giving him the woman) and he blamed Eve (for giving him the apple). Eve blamed the serpent. Recriminations are the antithesis to reconciliation.

Contrast the way Adam and Eve confronted their sin with the way King David confronted his. David had taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite as his own, then had Uriah killed to cover his sin. When the Lord’s ambassador Nathan confronted him with his sins, David immediately confessed, “I have sinned against the LORD.” (2 Samuel 2:13). His remorse and repentance are reflected in Psalm 51, where he pleaded, “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.” David opened the door to reconciliation with his confession.

On a more personal note, the message on our license plate lets people know that we are Christians. But, there are days, we must confess, when we are less than stellar ambassadors. Perhaps we need a license plate frame that reads,
“Not perfect – Just Forgiven.”
Jesus Christ Loves You

Verses of the week: 1 John 1:9: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”

Psalm 32:1: Blessed is the one whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered.

Blessings,
Your friends in Christ

God truly works in mysterious ways.

April 8, 1974, I unexpectedly found myself in Atlanta on a business trip.  I walked into the Howard Johnson adjacent to Fulton County Stadium and asked the desk clerk for a room. “Are you kidding? He said, “Everything is sold out around here.” Just then, the phone rang. I listened as the clerk took a cancellation. “I guess I have a room for you after all.”

“Do you think I’d be able to get tickets to tonight’s Braves game,” I asked.

“Not likely. The game is sold out.”

A woman who was standing in the lobby approached me with her young daughter. “My husband is caught in a business meeting and won’t be able to make it in time for the game. Would you like his ticket?” I offered to pay her, but she said that the ticket didn’t cost her anything, so she wouldn’t feel right selling it. I thanked her and headed for the stadium. That evening, I was one of 53,775 people who showed up for the game—a Braves attendance record – to see Hank Aaron hit homerun #715, breaking Babe Ruth’s record.

I wasn’t a regular reader of the Bible, but when I returned to my hotel room following the game, something moved me to open the Gideon Bible that was on the desk. I started to read and encountered a story about the Apostle Paul that was new to me:

Eutychus Raised From the Dead at Troas ⁷ On the first day of the week we came together to break bread. Paul spoke to the people and, because he intended to leave the next day, kept on talking until midnight. ⁸ There were many lamps in the upstairs room where we were meeting. ⁹ Seated in a window was a young man named Eutychus, who was sinking into a deep sleep as Paul talked on and on. When he was sound asleep, he fell to the ground from the third story and was picked up dead. ¹⁰ Paul went down, threw himself on the young man and put his arms around him. “Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “He’s alive!” ¹¹ Then he went upstairs again and broke bread and ate. After talking until daylight, he left. ¹² The people took the young man home alive and were greatly comforted. (Acts 20:7-12)

That story tickled my funny bone. I thought about the times I had grumbled about a preacher giving sermons that were too long…, but here was a case where someone actually got “preached to death.” The story of Eutychus made me wonder if there were other stories in the Bible I had missed. That night, something changed for me. I read on for several hours, and the more I read, the more I wanted to read.

What some call coincidences, others call miracles. Author Squire Rushnell refers to what happened to me as God Winks. I happened to be in the right place at the right time. A woman was generous, not greedy. Dodger pitcher Al Downing decided to pitch to Aaron rather than walk him. The Gideon’s left a Bible in that hotel room where I could see it. My random choice of a scripture to read was that story from Acts 20. Just an interesting series of coincidences, or was God winking at me?

Psalm 119 contains 176 verses that extol the Word of God, the most familiar being verse 105: Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path.  Many of the verses of this psalm have to do with the psalmist’s desire to follow the word of God. I, like the psalmist, have found that God’s Word is a lamp unto my feet, a light on my path. I am thankful that lamp started to burn so much brighter for me that miraculous evening in Atlanta.

Blessings, Your friends in Christ

Verse for the Week:  Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples.” (John 8:21)

This is an experiment.  We are not pastors, theologians, or bible scholars. We are simply a Christian couple that loves the Lord. Each week for the past two years, we have written a brief devotional for a select group of friends in Christ. Now, we are adding a blog with the hope that we can touch more people for Jesus.

Your friends in Christ,

Don & Bon