Borrowed Light

This is interesting, but not incredibly surprising.

A question I’ve been asked often.

I’ve been there.

Should Your Church ‘Transform’ the City?

I appreciate the admonition to “stay in your lane”, not because every square inch of the world doesn’t belong to Jesus but because we can get so distracted and fight the wrong battles.

Try to Kill Your Ideas Make Them Better

This is a great idea.

Five Ways to Help Protect Your Kids from Sexual Abuse

I wish we didn’t need tips like this.

What to Do When a Congregant Expresses Suicidal Thoughts

Another article I wish we didn’t need.

What Makes a Sermon Difficult to Listen To

This was helpful.

Great new song from Kenwood Music:

When Strange Commands Are a Means to Joy

May 6, 2019Mike Leake

⁸“Furthermore, tell the people, ‘This is what the Lord says: See, I am setting before you the way of life and the way of death. ⁹Whoever stays in this city will die by the sword, famine or plague. But whoever goes out and surrenders to the Babylonians who are besieging you will live; they will escape with their lives. ¹⁰I have determined to do this city harm and not good, declares the Lord. It will be given into the hands of the king of Babylon, and he will destroy it with fire.’ –Jeremiah 21:8-10

Can you imagine hearing this word from the Lord if you were a Jew living in the Promised Land?

If you stay and fight and try to persevere the land then you are going to die by the sword. If you go into captivity by the Babylonians…if you surrender…then you’ll live. This seems so counter-intuitive. Shouldn’t they fight for the Promised Land? Isn’t this the land that God gave them? Why would God be giving it to someone else?

But what Jeremiah is all about is whether or not folks will believe the Word of God over their tradition, culture, and intuition. Can they discern the Word of the Lord from the words of the lying prophets?

What happens is that a ton of people turn against Jeremiah. Church people. People who are absolutely confident that God would never do a thing like this. Jeremiah is a sell-out, they thought. He’s calling them to surrender everything they’ve worked for, to go back on years of tradition, and to be in a season of pain and surrender. That’s certainly not the will of God for his chosen people.

But it was.

And the message of Jeremiah (just as it also does today) exposed the two groups of people: Those who are messed up and know it and those who are messed up and deny it or are blind to it.

Every one of us is messed up. It’s just a matter of whether or not we are going to believe God’s Word on this or our culture, our feelings, our tradition, or something else. But if you realize that you’re messed up, that you’ve fallen short, that it’s not just that you aren’t perfect—but inwardly (apart from grace) every thought of your heart is evil, then you are in a position to enjoy the gospel.

On that day a fountain will be opened to the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to cleanse them from sin and impurity. –Zechariah 13:1

That’s just news if you’re clean. If you’ve got everything all put together then it’s somebody else’s news. But if you’re dirty, if you are in dire need of a fountain, then this is the best news you’ve ever heard. That’s why the people in Jeremiah’s day had to go off into exile. The good news isn’t good news if you don’t think you need it. And so that’s why Jeremiah 21 was such a strange request.

Is their heart fixated on the Promised Land or the Promised One?

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Photo source: here

While We’re Grabbing Buckets, Jesus Goes to the Source

May 3, 2019Mike Leake

³⁷And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. ³⁸But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. And they woke him and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” Mark 4:37-38

“Grab a bucket, Jesus!”

When the disciples woke Jesus from his slumber, I don’t think they were expecting him to get up and calm the storm. They wanted him to grab a bucket and start helping them bail water out of the boat.

There is time for praying or resting and there is a time for grabbing buckets and chucking water. Violent storms on the sea fall under the bucket-grabbing category. Their request of our Lord is a practical one. They could use a couple more hands to keep water out of the boat.

Manage the storm.

That’s their strategy. Keep the thing afloat until they can get safe on dry ground.

It’s a decent plan. It’s the most realistic plan. We’d call it a wisdom plan. A practical and doable plan. If they had time for a seminar they could have a session on how their goals need to be manageable, something you can realistically accomplish. Or at least you have to work with what you’ve got. And the best option—from their perspective—is to get as many people throwing water out of the boat as possible. Solid plan.

But it’s not the best plan.

Jesus has a different plan. He goes to the source. If you want to keep water out of your boat in the midst of a violent storm the best strategy is to get the winds to calm down. But because we lack the power to do this we don’t consider this much of an option. We settle for wave management. But our Lord goes straight to the root and accomplishes wave stoppage.

We’re still like those disciples. We settle for sin management while our Lord pursues sin eradication. Our prayers are so often bucket grabbing prayers. “Help me get through this one, Jesus”. We’re not bold enough to ask him to raise the dead—we’re only brave enough to ask for a little bit of strength to get through the funeral. Help us on the bucket brigade!

I’m incredibly thankful that Jesus works with our weaknesses. Yes, he rebukes their lack of faith. Did they really think God would let his Messiah drown in the ocean? Did they not think that Jesus could with a word rescue them? There is a rebuke to our weak faith in all this. But that’s not the ultimate point of the story. Our Lord tells the sea to shut up and it does.

Yes, we’re idiots bailing water out of the boat. But Jesus isn’t. He doesn’t play our silly little games. He really is stopping the storm. And this is our rescue. It’s gonna happen. Yes, at times it feels like all we can do is grab a bucket and get to work. Manage the thing. But that’s the stuff of a weak faith. The boat isn’t gonna capsize. And that’s not because of our bucket brigade. It’s because of the God “that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

Jesus always goes to the source. We’d be wise to join him there.

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Photo source: here