Our words

Psalm 19:14 New International Version (NIV)

14 May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart

    be pleasing in your sight,

    Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.

Our words can heal or destroy. God intended for us to use our words to build up people, to teach them and to let them know God loves them.

Pastor Scott Sauls from Nashville spent five years working with Pastor Tim Keller at New York City's Redeemer Presbyterian Church. Sauls writes that there are many ways that he saw Keller model the gospel, but there is one thing that really stood out for him. Sauls writes:

Tim [Keller] is the best example I have ever seen of someone who consistently covers with the gospel.

Never once did I see Tim tearing another person down to their face, on the Internet, or through gossip. Instead, he seemed to assume the good in people. He talked about how being forgiven and affirmed by Jesus frees us for this—for "catching people doing good" instead of looking for things to criticize or be offended by. Even when someone had done wrong or been in error, Tim would respond with humble restraint and self-reflection instead of venting negativity and criticism. As the grace of God does, he covered people's flaws and sins. Sometimes he covered my flaws and sins. He did this because that's what grace does; it reminds us that in Jesus we are shielded and protected from the worst things about ourselves. Because Jesus shields us like this, we should of all people be zealous to restore reputations versus destroying reputations, to protect a good name versus calling someone a name, to shut down gossip versus feeding gossip, to restore broken relationships versus begrudging broken people.

[How to Live the Gospel: A Lesson from Tim Keller; Scott Sauls, Befriend (Tyndale, 2016), page 48]

God's gift to us

1 Peter 1:3 New International Version (NIV)

3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,

Through the death of Christ, God has offered us a gift of a new life, a rebirth, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is for us to realize our sin, have the desire to turn from it and place our belief, trust and faith in God’s free gift to us.

 In his book Unbelievable, Justin Brierley writes convincingly that the resurrection is the only adequate explanation for the historical evidence found in the Gospels:

Mike Licona and Bart Ehrman are both New Testament scholars who have very different takes on the resurrection of Jesus. Ehrman let go of his Christian faith after encountering perceived problems with the New Testament. Mike Licona had a similar crisis of faith in the early years of his academic career when his study of the New Testament didn't match what he had been taught about it while growing up. However, whereas Ehrman's study led him away from Christianity, Licona's research convinced him that the resurrection was the only adequate explanation for the historical evidence he found in the Gospels.

Other pieces of the puzzle fell into place as Licona began to appreciate how the New Testament accounts reflected the literary conventions of their day rather than the modern standards often imposed on them by both Christians and critics. During one of his dialogues with Licona on the show, Ehrman rattled off a list of differences between the Gospel accounts of the resurrection, such as the number of women and the accounts of angels at the empty tomb.

He argued that these differences give reason to doubt the reliability of the resurrection story. Naturally, Licona knows these differences just as well as Ehrman but he didn't find that they count against the overall strength of the account, saying:

It is a bit like the Titanic. There were conflicting accounts from survivors, such as whether the ship broke in half before sinking or whether it went down in its entirety. But no one called into question whether the Titanic sank or not. It was the periphery details that were in question. It is the same thing with the New Testament. They are all peripheral details that have no impact on the fundamental truth of Christianity.

1 John 2:1 (NIV) The problem with sin

1 John 2:1 New International Version (NIV)

2 My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One.

John reminds us that like Christ we are to follow His example and stay away from sin. But if we do sin, Christ himself is our advocate with the Father saying this person is a child of mine and I have taken the punishment for their sin. Since Christ forgives us of our sin, we too are to forgive ourselves.

Professor Mary Poplin from Claremont Graduate School says she met Jesus in a dream. At the time, she was teaching radical feminism, multiculturalism, and postmodernism. As a devotee of New Age spirituality, she claims she was the poster child for "spiritual but not religious." She writes:

A central image in my life was the [New Age] actress Shirley MacLaine, dancing on the beach in free-spirited fashion. I was seeking happiness, self-fulfillment, and freedom from restraint, all the while deluding myself about my own "goodness." We were children of the 60s, products of the "I'm okay, you're okay" culture.

And yet in certain moments, she said, "I could see glimpses of who I really was. I was not growing freer. My heart was growing harder, my emotions darker, and my mind more confused." Then in 1992, she had an unshakable dream in which she saw Jesus at the Last Supper. "When I got to Jesus," she wrote, "and looked into his eyes, I grasped immediately that every cell in my body was filled with filth. Weeping, I fell at his feet. But when he reached over and touched my shoulders, I suddenly felt perfect peace!"

She reached out to a friend who suggested that she needed to read the Bible. Then in January 1993, she was sitting in a small church and received an invitation to come forward. She prayed, "If you are real, please come and get me. Suddenly I felt the same peace I had known in the dream."

"To clean up my soul," she said, "God taught me what a good friend of mine calls the 'bar of soap' passage—1 John 1:9 … But forgiveness wasn't always easy to accept. I had undergone two abortions, and over three long years of prayer, I doubted whether God had truly forgiven me. Some counselors and fellow Christians had encouraged me to 'forgive myself,' but the more I searched Scripture the more confident I was that forgiveness could only come as God's gift. Like Paul, I had to learn to '[forget] what is behind and [strain] toward what is ahead' (Phil. 3:13-14)."

[Mary Poplin, "As a New Age Enthusiast, I Fancied Myself a Free Spirit and a Good Person," Christianity Today (12-21-17)]

Destructive words

Ephesians 4:29 New International Version (NIV)

29 Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.

Our words should be used to build people up, not tear people down. But it’s obvious in today’s political world that comments are meant to demean, damage, damn, and destroy.

Evan Williams, a Twitter founder and co-creator of Blogger—wanted to set everyone free to express their emotions and opinions on line. So how's it going? A recent (May 2017) article in The New York Times offered the following answer to that question:

"I think the internet is broken," Williams said." He has believed this for a few years, actually. But things are getting worse. "And it's a lot more obvious to a lot of people that it's broken."

[The article continued]: People are using Facebook to showcase suicides, beatings and murder, in real time. Twitter is a hive of trolling and abuse that it seems unable to stop. Fake news, whether created for ideology or profit, runs rampant. Four out of 10 adult internet users said in a Pew survey that they had been harassed online. And that was before the presidential campaign heated up last year.

"I thought once everybody could speak freely and exchange information and ideas, the world is automatically going to be a better place," Mr. Williams says. "I was wrong about that."

[David Streitfeldmay, "'The Internet Is Broken': @ev Is Trying to Salvage It," The New York Times (5-20-17)]

Little children

Ephesians 5:1 New International Version (NIV)

5 Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children

Children are innocent and so easily pick up the examples of their parents. As children of God we are to learn from God our Father and follow the examples He has set for us.

My 4 year old granddaughter was watching TV with her other grandfather. Then something on the TV surprised her and she blurted out, “What the hell!” Her other grandfather said, Ava that’s not a nice word, where did you hear it? She replied, I heard mama say it.

Children absorb the examples of their parents. It’s why The Bible tells us to absorb the examples of God the Father. It’s also a good reminded for us as parents to be good examples to our children.

The light of Christ

1 Peter 3:8 New Living Translation (NLT)

8 Finally, all of you should be of one mind. Sympathize with each other. Love each other as brothers and sisters. Be tenderhearted, and keep a humble attitude.

Peter gives us a reminder to remember and sympathize with one another. We are to keep a humble attitude towards others using a tender heart to love and encourage each other. For many are standing in the dark and need to be reminded of the light of Christ’s love.

In his latest book, John Ortberg writes about our need to meaningfully connect with others:

In 2015, researchers at the University of California at Berkeley announced they would be part of a $100 million dollar project for space travel to see if there's intelligent life in the universe. The plan was to send tiny nanocrafts—like spaceship butterflies—traveling at one-fifth the speed of light to Alpha Centauri. Stephen Hawking expressed the purpose poignantly: "It is important to know if we are alone in the dark."

The folks at Berkeley are not the only ones who want to know. We're all constantly sending out tiny little probes, emotional nanocrafts, to find out whether we're alone in the dark. They travel at high speeds, and it's easy to miss them. They can be small: "Did you see the game last night?" They can be poignant: "I don't think I'll ever call my dad again." They can be deep: "I'm not sure my wife loves me anymore." They can be urgent: "I have no one else to talk to; can I speak to you confidentially?"

These emotional nanocrafts are what researcher John Gottman calls "bids" for emotional connection." We start issuing these bids before we can talk. A baby's cry is a bid to connect. As we grow older, these bids—or invitations—for intimacy take other forms. "A bid can be a question, a gesture, a look, a touch—any single expression that says, 'I want to feel connected to you.'" Intimacy of every kind is either built up or eroded, based on how well we handle the subtle little nanocrafts of relational life.

Christ with us

Matthew 28:18-20 New International Version (NIV)

18 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

In these verses Jesus speaks of His authority, both on earth and in heaven. And He speaks to us saying to make disciples of all nations in the name of The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit. Then He gives us a promise, a promise that Christ Himself will be with us through life and death.

Most people know about the passion of Martin Luther King Jr. for racial justice and nonviolent resistance. However, some people aren't as familiar with King's deep personal faith in Christ. In his book Welcoming Justice, Charles Marsh describes one of King's profound encounters with the Risen Christ.

[In January 1956, Martin Luther King Jr.] returned home around midnight after a long day of organizational meetings. His wife and young daughter were already in bed, and King was eager to join them. But a threatening call—the kind of call he was getting as many as 30 to 40 times a day—interrupted his attempt to get some much-needed rest. When he tried to go back to bed, he could not shake the menacing voice that kept repeating the hateful words in his head.

King got up, made a pot of coffee, and sat down at his kitchen table. With his head buried in his hands, he cried out to God. There in his kitchen in the middle of the night, when he had come to the end of strength, King met the living Christ in an experience that would carry him through the remainder of his life. "I heard the voice of Jesus saying still to fight on," King later recalled. "He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone … He promised never to leave me, no never alone."

In the stillness of the Alabama night, the voice of Jesus proved more convincing than the threatening voice of the anonymous caller. The voice of Jesus gave him the courage to press through the tumultuous year of 1956 to the victorious end of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. More than that, it gave him a vision for ministry that would drive him for the rest of his life.