Tag: Fear

make it make sense, lord

I call out to you, “Violence!”
But you do not deliver!

Habakkuk 1:2

Two Fridays ago was meant to be when 9-year old Evelyn Dieckhaus was to sing “What a Wonderful World” in a play at her Nashville school. Instead, her life was cut short by a bullet from an AR-15 carried by a young woman with a demonic grudge.

A bullied thirteen year old Indiana boy recently ended his life. Before committing suicide he left a video in which he named his tormentors. They made fun of his size, his haircut, and his clothes. The seventh grader dreamed of playing for the St. Louis Cardinals someday. Tragically, all he leaves behind is a void.

Why do you force me to witness injustice?
Why do you put up with wrongdoing?

Habakkuk 1:3

In the Netherlands, a television show had transgendered adults appearing naked in front of an audience of impressionable children. Unashamedly exposed, each expressed to the 10- to 12-year olds how “euphoric” they felt about their sex change surgeries. Grooming and pedophilia aren’t even masked anymore.

You are too just to tolerate evil;
you are unable to condone wrongdoing.
So why do you put up with such treacherous people?

Habakkuk 1:13

Habakkuk speaks for all of us. How much news do we need to watch before we say, “Make it make sense, Lord!” Just when I think it’s safe to open up Twitter, I find myself needing to log off for my own emotional health.

Habakkuk, like us, reacted to the news cycle of his day. And, like many of us, he wasn’t exactly subtle with his objections:

  • HOW LONG, LORD? (v2)
  • YOU DON’T LISTEN! (v2)
  • YOU DON’T DELIVER! (v2)
  • WHY? (v3)
  • WHY DO YOU PUT UP WITH THESE PEOPLE? (v13)
  • WHY DO YOU SAY NOTHING? (v13)
  • ARE YOU GOING TO LET THEM GET AWAY WITH THIS FOREVER? (v17)

I can sing about a heavenly home and enjoy for a moment the stirrings it evokes, but a land in the “sweet by-and-by” feels a long stretch of road and many miles away. I know everything will make sense then, but how do we make sense of things now?

That was Habakkuk’s dilemma. Isaiah, a hundred years before him, lamented, “We wait for light, but see only darkness.”

What hope is there for a young mother who vomits from her second round of chemo or the college coed showering off her sexual assault or a parent standing over the grave of a child who was struck down in a drive-by? Where was God when all of this was happening to me?

In today’s world the inmates are running the asylum. We, on the other hand, are plagued with “headline stress disorder” and weighed down with laments in the key of heavy. Society is twisted and dark and getting darker by the day. A growing number believe the world has long passed its expiration date. Hope, for them, is a folly.

If you stick it out with the young prophet you’ll begin to heal, whatever your situation. While his opening remarks are freighted with anger and frustration, by chapter 2 he sees a glimmer. By the 3rd chapter, the glimmer becomes a fiery sunrise.

I will stand at my watch post; I will remain stationed on the city wall…

Habakkuk 2:1

If chapter one asks the question, “WHERE ARE YOU, GOD?” Habakkuk gets his answer in the last verse of chapter two:

the LORD is in his holy temple.

Habakkuk 2:20

The smoldering prophet gets this epiphany when he says, “I’m too worked up. I’m going to stop, watch, and listen.” I can’t tell you how many times in my journey I’ve had to take counsel with those words. Habakkuk takes a sabbath day and starts to see and think and, yes, feel differently. By the time our guy closes in prayer (chapter 3) you’re of a mind to start unlacing your shoes.

David saw the same thing. He was battling an inner urge to fly away, to flee, to find a cave and hide from everything and everyone. But he knew a few things about his God: he knew God was eyewitness to all that troubled and provoked David (Psa 11:4) and was on his side (Psa 11:5); he also knew God was “just” (Psa 11:7) and would vindicate and bless David in the end. And while all those destroyers of the foundations (Psa 11:3) suffer brimstone and fire and reap the whirlwind (Psa 11:6), he would gaze upon the beauty of the LORD.

Habakkuk leaves us with two watchwords to aid us in trusting God to make sense of our nonsensical world. He invites us to (1) remain at our post (Hab 2:1-4) and (2) go to our knees (Hab 3:1-16).

“Our post” is the place where we can do the most good in the Kingdom:

  • It is where we walk by faith, not by sight (2 Cor 5:7).
  • It is where we hold fast the confession of our hope (Heb 10:23).
  • It is where we keep ourselves in the love of God (Jude 21).

“On our knees” is where we confess our reliance on the immutable God who works all things together:

In music theory notes that aren’t part of the harmonic chords in an arrangement are said to create “tension.” To move those notes back into alignment with the whole theme is called “resolution.”

Today’s headlines and clickbaits draw attention to drama that doesn’t belong in the desired intent of God’s Story. Nevertheless God knows how to bring resolution from the tension. He’s done it before; he’ll do it again.

Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.”

—Frederick Buechner

Good and bad. Horrifying and glorifying. Take it all…and put it in God’s great hands.

Selah, beloved. Peace. Be still.

A Psalm That Calms

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Welcome to Podcast #26!

 

“Psalm 23 teaches us to embrace the immensity of the adventure that takes us home. David has been there. He knows. He’s learned the twists and pitfalls, the sunny trails and the dangerous cliff edges. He knows where the forks are and the spacious green fields. He’s painted us a picture in this stanza. He’s set a table in the wilderness for us and invited us to hear his adventures by a roaring campfire…

“I’m not home yet. But I’m closer than I was 35 years ago when my dad read me this psalm that calmed my terror-stricken heart back then. Wild dogs were snarling at me from that dark valley of death but goodness and mercy were there all along, leading me home.

Every mile, every trial,
every cross, every loss,
Every step, every stop,
All has been mercy and grace.

Through every danger, toil, and snare
Mercy and grace has followed close beside, nipping at my heels.“

I could as easily have called this message “Dad and Me and Psalm 23” because the two are so intimately entwined in my life. You’ll see why.

What you’ll hear today is from a recent sermon I shared with the wonderful people of West Huntsville Baptist Church* back in late May. I pray it’s a blessing and encouragement to you…and that the calming grace of our Shepherd God will lay a blanket over your soul.

As always, thank you for listening – and by all means, please share this podcast episode with others who might need the Lord’s comfort as well.

* I absolutely LOVE these people! My wife and I had our very first date on their campus wayyyy back in 1982 – just 4 months after my life-altering, life-bettering ‘accident’ (go to the “My Story” page)! Then youth pastor Pastor Scott (whose wife’s name is also Sandra) invited me to share my very new-to-me story at their fellowship’s Valentine Banquet, so I took my future sweetheart along for the occasion. Scott has been one of my life’s most important encouragers. So, what you’ll hear today is us being with our faith family of three decades…

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Gospel Power For (Weak) Dads

[This is from a talk I was blessed to offer to some really great (weak) Dads at 6:30 yesterday morning…]

After the talk a guy walks up to me, wiping away tears, and sits down. He says "I'll be your son." We hugged, wept, and I learned his own story of addiction and recovery. He pulled out his 5-year sobriety chip and handed it to me. "I want you to have this," he said. "It'll remind you that your son's struggle is over and his chains are gone." I humbly received this amazing gift and told him, "5 years sober? Do you know how the ancient followers of God saw the number 5? They said it represented grace and redemption." This is our hope, our message, our undying belief: what the enemy means for evil, God turns it for good.
After the talk a guy walks up to me, wiping away tears, and sits down. He says “I’ll be your son.” We hugged, wept, and I learned his own story of addiction and recovery. He pulled out his 5-year sobriety chip and handed it to me. “I want you to have this,” he said. “It’ll remind you that your son’s struggle is over and his chains are gone.” I humbly received this amazing gift and told him, “5 years sober? Do you know how the ancient followers of God saw the number 5? They said it represented grace and redemption.” This is our hope, our message, our undying belief: what the enemy means for evil, God turns it for good.

I have the distinction of being a dad though childless. I had one son and I lost him to heroin. If ever you’ve known  a weak, helpless dad, I’m one. Believe me. However, 

“I am not ashamed (the Greek includes having no fear of it letting me down, no embarrassment in its being insufficient, or no guilt of my being unable to merit its blessings) of the gospel for it is the power of God to salvation…”

I had a pastor friend who consoled me years ago – at the apex of my son’s rebellion – by reminding me God had His own prodigal *children* – not just a prodigal child. His whole family was profligate!

God laments that in Isa 1:2: 

Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth; for the Lord has spoken:
“Children have I reared and brought up, but they have rebelled against me…”

David, too, had a pretty rough go at being a dad – some say he was too lenient because his dad was too hard on him and aloof because he was often overlooked. I was struck recently by the unfulfilled ‘dad-dream’ of David in 1Chron 29:19 – 

“Grant to Solomon my son a whole heart that he may keep your commandments, your testimonies, and your statutes…”

But this is what he got – 

1 Kings 11:4
“For when Solomon was old his wives turned away his heart after other gods, and his heart was not wholly true to the Lord his God…”

He wanted a son who would expand the kingdom, establish peace throughout the realm, and, chiefly, have a WHOLE HEART for God. Instead, the kingdom divided, unholy rulers would reign from Jerusalem for many generations, and the nation would always stray, come home, get restless, and leave home again.

This was pretty much the staus quo of Israel because his son couldn’t keep it in his pants. Oh, that, and Solomon became an enabler for child-sacrifice (a nation’s most heinous sin, hint, hint), plus the fact he couldn’t nurture a WHOLE HEART for God, but a HELL HEART, an EMPTY HEART due to rebellion and chasing after wind.

I remember holding my newborn adopted son alongside my wife in front of Mountain View Church in 1989 as we dedicated Graham (namesake of the great evangelist) to the Lord. If you’d told us at Sunday dinner afterward how it would turn out, I’d have taken issue.

  • He was a miracle.
  • He was a joy.
  • We could take him everywhere.
  • He was raised in church.
  • He loved being a PK.
  • He was fiercely protective of his disabled dad.
  • He volunteered for mission trips.
  • He gave his only pair of shoes on one trip to a kid in Honduras.
  • He always gravitated to the most outcast kid in the room.
  • His heart was so big, so generous, so fierce, and so alive in the moment.

But our son battled unknown, untold demons.

So…

Graham chose a harder path, one steeped in rebellion and addiction, spending the lion’s share of his youth and young adulthood in the far country of Fool’s Folly – all uphill and adventure on the ascent with the slippery slope of guilt, shame, and death on the backside.

He was found in December all alone in an abandoned parking lot, frozen, with a heroin needle in his arm. His mates had put a portable heater in the car, shut the door behind them, got another ride and left him alone there in the night. They did care enough to call 911 after they were long gone and, while there were no vitals at the scene, the doctors put him on a vascular by-pass machine in hopes to ‘jump-start’ him by warming him up, he was so cold. None of the doctors gave much chance of that happening, however.

When Sandy and I (1,123 miles away) got the news (she at work, me at home), we immediately sought the Lord.

Will our boy live?
If he dies, will he be with You?
How will we know?
Lord, HAVE MERCY!
Christ, HAVE MERCY!

I have to admit, my theology would’ve struggled to put Graham anywhere else but hell right then. It’s horrible to admit, I know. My own son! Oh Absalom, my Absalom!

God knew that, and He met my unbending dogma with – what else? – the Gospel (not easy-believism, mind you; remember, God acted in mercy to discipline my son so dramatically; Graham always had a place for Christ in his heart, no matter how covered over with sin it was). I needed the Gospel more than anything. I needed His Good News to break into my world of bad news.

In those moments – as Sandy raced through the warehouse and parking lot of UPS to her car, and as I sat in a stupor at our dining room table – with an open Bible – God preached the gospel tenderly to us in the only ways our agonized hearts would both get it. He cued a worship song on her car radio, and to me He gave a pointed scripture. Tomlin’s “Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone)” was the first thing my wife heard as her car roared to life. Psalm 85:2,3,8-10 was my portion in the exact moment He was singing over Sandy on Fulton Industrial. 

“You forgave the iniquity of your people; you covered all their sin. Selah You withdrew all your wrath;
you turned from your hot anger…

Let me hear what God the LORD will speak, for he will speak peace to his people, to his saints; but let them not turn back to folly. Surely his salvation is near to those who fear him, that glory may dwell in our land. Steadfast love and faithfulness meet;
righteousness and peace kiss each other.”

We got our answer immediately, even independently. “Graham is here with Me.”

Four years earlier, God told us to stop fretting, toiling, enabling, bearing guilt, hearing the accuser say “if you had only…if you didn’t…if you never…if you hadn’t” and trying to “fix” our son. I was tired of failing as a Dad. Harsh words and illogical punishments were clearly not working. I was weak, helpless, and totally out of options. Hope was elusive. My wife pulled away from life and cried, prayed, pled, and begged. We were both at a loss.

LORD, SAVE US!
REDEEM THIS!

The Father asked us to do a very hard thing: let go. To do this was to admit we couldn’t. We were ‘failures’ at parenting. While learning to trust God to parent our boy was humbling, sure, but it was also one of the most freeing things we ever imagined. So we did, and that mercy gave my wife and I four whole years to heal and prepare for December 16, 2013. It was during this time God spoke clearly to my broken-down Dad heart: “from now on, when your son calls for money, give it to him – NO QUESTIONS ASKED. When he needs an emergency place to crash, you are not to refuse him. Kill him with kindness.”

On the last night we ever saw him, because the next day he would move to Minnesota to live with his birth-mom and get away from the mean streets of Atlanta, my wife took him shopping and bought him a whole new “Minnesota wardrobe.” Her only child, whom she was sending to live with the mother who didn’t raise him – with no guarantees she’d ever see him again – she took him out and spoiled her boy one last time. She mercifully killed him with kindness.

In the end, it was the Gospel that saved our family. And it was the Gospel that rescued my son from his hell on earth.

“I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for salvation…”

The Gospel that got us through was:

  • “I am for you.”
  • “I will not leave you alone in this mess.”
  • “Trust Me to redeem this and bring you through.”

Paul, a weak, suffering apostle, said:

“The Gospel is the POWER – the δυναμις – of God for salvation…”

Then he proceeds to develop what salvation is throughout his long letter. He says it’s sufficient to forgive, cleanse, and justify us before a holy and vengeful God. He further says it brings us into Life with God, not only saving us from sin and hell, but empowering us for holy living and fitting us for glory. Finally, he blows us away with the future hope of our ultimate glorification and eternal joy as “sons of God”!

  • Paul says it’s all predicated on the Gospel.
  • Paul says our daily survival is grounded in the Gospel.
  • Paul said our only power comes from the Gospel
  • Paul says our only hope is…the Gospel.

Scott Sauls wrote “the gospel isn’t merely a message but a power because it’ll change you.”

Of the 6 words for power, Paul chose the one that best describes divine energy. He says the Gospel is “dynamic”! (Dynamite comes from this word – Rome, you know, was all about power – Paul said the Gospel was more powerful still!)

Dictionary.com:
1. pertaining to or characterized by energy or effective action; vigorously active or forceful; energetic.

What does the Gospel mean for weak, helpless Dads?

The Gospel is our daily power:

as men in this culture,
husbands to our wives,
and dads to our kids!

What does the Gospel tell us?

• How lost we are.
• How loved we are.

(“You’re a good, good Father,
that’s who You are
And I’m loved by You
that’s who I am”)

It also tells us:

• How weak and helpless we are.
• How strong and capable He is.

Tell me something: is the Gospel only useful and powerful to get us to heaven? Or is it the power of God to get us through this life?
This day?
This trial?
This heartache?
This situation?

Take it from me:
GOD IS GOOD.
Take it from me:
GOD LOVES WEAK DADS
Take it from me:
HE STILL WORKS EVERYTHING – EVERYTHING! – TOGETHER FOR OUR GOOD AND HIS GLORY
Take it from me:
HE’S STILL MAKING ALL THINGS – YOUR THINGS, MY THINGS – NEW
Take it from me:
THE GOSPEL IS STILL GOOD NEWS
Take it from me:
THE GOSPEL IS STILL THE POWER OF GOD – THE δυναμις – FOR SALVATION OF ANY AND EVERY SITUATION

So Let’s light this candle. How can we see Gospel power move in us, through us, for us?

Three words:

LIGHT.

THE.

FUSE.

  1. Fill your personal universe with the gospel (Rom 1:16,17)
  2. Unilaterally surrender to the kind demands of the gospel (Rom 4:13-26; 6:1-4)
  3. Stand in His gospel grace that equips you for everything…and anything (Rom 5:1-4)
  4. Encourage yourself in the gospel promise He works everything together for our good and His glory (Rom 8:28,29)