THE STRANGER

This is a re-post of a blog from the REVIVAL List I thought was worthy of posting for you.

A few years after I was born, my Dad met a stranger who was new to our small town. From the beginning, Dad was fascinated with this enchanting newcomer and soon invited him to live with our family. The stranger was quickly accepted and was around from then on. As I grew up, I never questioned his place in my family. In my young mind, he had a special niche.

My parents were complementary instructors: Mom taught me good from evil, and Dad taught me to obey. But the stranger... he was our storyteller. He would keep us spellbound for hours on end with adventures, mysteries and comedies. If I wanted to know anything about politics, history or science, he always knew the answers about the past, understood the present and even seemed able to predict the future!

He took my family to the first major league ball game. He made me laugh, and he made me cry. The stranger never stopped talking, but Dad didn't seem to mind. Sometimes, Mom would get up quietly while the rest of us were shushing each other to listen to what he had to say, and she would go to the kitchen for peace and quiet. (I wonder now if she ever prayed for the stranger to leave.)

Dad ruled our household with certain moral convictions,but the stranger never felt obligated to honor them. Profanity, for example, was not allowed in our home - not from us, our friends or any visitors. Our long time visitor, however, got away with four-letter words that burned my ears and made my dad squirm and my mother blush. My Dad didn't permit the liberal use of alcohol but the stranger encouraged us to try it on a regular basis.  He made cigarettes look cool, cigars manly, and pipes distinguished. He talked freely (much too freely!) about sex. His comments were sometimes blatant, sometimes suggestive, and generally embarrassing.. I now know that my early concepts about relation-ships were influenced strongly by the stranger.

Time after time, he opposed the values of my parents, yet he was seldom rebuked ... And NEVER asked to leave. More than fifty years have passed since the stranger moved in with our family. He has blended right in and is not nearly as fascinating as he was at first. Still, if you could walk into my parents' den today, you would still find him sitting over in his corner, waiting for someone to listen to him talk and watch him draw his pictures. His name?.... We just call him 'TV'.

(The average Westerner watches about 12 YEARS of television in his or her lifetime. Yes - 12 YEARS. I wonder what it has done to our generation that we are not even aware of?)

It is quite an eye opener for some of us who have invited strangers into our houses. Today we have a more subtle stranger we have invited into our homes. His name is PC. 

Even more than that we have invited a stranger to travel with us wherever we go. His name is Smart Phone. 

Maybe we should do a background check on these strangers before we so readily invite them into our lives?

The Self-Seeking Christian

"Am I building up the body of Christ, or am I only concerned about my own personal development?"

A recent devotion by Oswald Chambers spoke about the church and I believe there is a lot of practical truth to what he said. Today's "church" seems to be filled with self-seeking Christians. I don't know about every church but there are plenty Christians I know that act that way.

I've been in Kenya the past couple weeks and Kenya is no different than the US in self-seeking interests being fed by the church here. Money is a popular subject. Especially the obtaining of it and preaching about obtaining it, they call it prosperity. I call it foolishness and a waste of time. 

If you read the Bible you find that it is written to the church and not simply to individuals. Especially the letters of Paul, Peter and John. That is the practical reality of it all, seeing ourselves as the body of Christ and not merely individuals looking for blessings from God.

OK, time to face the reality of your Christian life. If yours is anything like mine, you spend a lot of time doing things for yourself. Not that taking care of needs are bad but we tend to go much farther than we really need to. We are a generation of excess. Look around you and tell me that you need all the things you have collected for the purpose of survival and seeking after God. Better yet, how are those things benefiting others? What about the church? Does it benefit the body of Christ?

What we need is a rooster type wake-up call here friends. Jesus calls us to Himself as disciples and that takes more than just simply believing. It takes a working out of that calling. Jesus says you must give up all your possessions, self-interests for your life and come, follow Him.

What does that mean to us today? Does He really mean to give up everything? Does He really mean too hate our mother, father, sisters and brothers? How can anyone ever do all that and still live in this world? Is it even possible?

They are hard questions and even harder to do. Jesus spoke those words. Can you rationalize them away and just substitute something else? Maybe He really didn't mean what He said. You know how words get confused when there are translations involved. Maybe the rich young ruler came back and became one of Jesus disciples without giving up all his possessions. Maybe Jesus was just kidding when He told him that.

Well, read John chapter 17 and tell me if He was just kidding about all of those disciples and us being one. There is the best example of what His heart is. His and the Father’s heart are one. So did He really want us to be one? How in the world is that all going to work out? We can't possibly do that. Oh yeah? Try looking at some historical examples of that starting with the early church before 300 AD. Follow some of the records of the Anabaptists and other groups that were persecuted and killed for their unity and faith.

Today there is another example of that happening. This is the place I live has been practicing oneness in discipleship. They've been doing this for the past 25 years. It can be done. It isn't easy. There are times when you really doubt that this is what the early church went though. History records their lives and they had as many problems then, as we do today. The reality of it all is that, God can and is in our midst, giving us grace for one another so we can be one heart, one mind with one another, and our Lord.

So I ask again, what are you doing to build up the body of Christ, or are you only concerned about your own personal development? If you go to church on Sunday and Wednesday you are in the majority of Christian believers who do likewise. Do you live outside of the church building and its activities the way you act at the church building, in front of the people that come there each week? Or do you have a double life, one for church and one for the rest of the time?

If your Christian faith is divided into AT CHURCH behavior and NOT AT CHURCH behavior (which is completely different) then I propose you are living a hypocritical life. Why not just choose one and live it all the time? Be real about your life. That's what Jesus was saying when He called people to follow him. He wants all or nothing. Just believing is not what He required for the church. He required disciples who were committed and consistent in their lives of following him. Making mistakes is understandable. For that there is forgiveness. Being wish-washy and living a dual life style is not.

 

Joshua said, "Choose this day whom you will serve. For me and my family, we will serve the Lord." Can you say that and really mean it 100 percent of the time? Joshua did. He made mistakes and God forgave him, but he kept his course straight towards the Lord and was consistent with his behavior. 

It can be done. You can follow Christ. You can be His disciple and live out the life of Christ for Him and the church. It's all there in the Bible. Just read it and you will see. Here's a good place to start. Click Here.

The Rooster Crows

All three gospels record the denial of Christ by Peter but only Mark says before the rooster crows twice you will deny me three times. The other three say that “before the rooster crows” you will deny me three times. I’m not sure that makes a lot of difference but it was a thought that was brought on by the rooster that crows here in Nakuru, Kenya. However, this rooster crows at odd times of the night and morning.

Usually roosters crow at daybreak. So we assume that the rooster crowed at daybreak on the morning of Peter’s denial. If the rooster there was anything like the rooster in Peter’s day it could have been at 2 AM in the morning. That was the pattern when we first got here in Nakuru. Nellie has a rooster that crows whenever it feels so inclined to crow. And yes, it crows several times at night and through the morning hours as well.

Abba and Amma said that it probably knew we were new to the house (we’ve been here before) and so it was welcoming us. Good try but I know better I believe. I believe it was reminding us that we were here for the Lord and not our own plans or desires. This is perfectly fine with me. I have gotten used to the rooster crowing now and I don’t hear it when I am suppose to be sleeping. I hear it at about 5:30 when Beatie starts the pump and that’s ok because I need to get up and get moving soon after that.

There are roosters back in the village. They seem to do better at keeping time than this rooster. Sunrise is an appropriate time to crow. I don’t think I was as aware of them as I am this one. This one stays in a garage all the time. He lives in a cage. Maybe he is disgruntled about the living arrangements. I would be. So I guess I shouldn’t be too hard on him about the crowing. His hip or legs probably get cramped like mine and he is just showing his disapproval and discomfort from time to time.

The thing I most felt was important about the rooster crowing is that we associate the rooster with a wakeup call. You get those at Motels when you travel. But you get those from God, too. He wakes us up to things that are not right in our lives.

Sometimes it’s a rooster. Sometimes it’s your spouse. Other times it’s a friend or even a stranger. He can use difficult times and boring times to give us a wakeup call. Whatever the case may be, He does call us up to a higher place with him. To walk a higher walk: to be careful about the way we walk in this life He has given us.

Lately he has been working on me and my methods of communication. Emails are not my strong points. Chat seems to be very frustrating. Phone calls work so far. I’m not sure how God is going to help me in those areas or if he is intending to. What he has given me so far is a wakeup call. Let’s call it “The Rooster Crows”. I have a way of writing and texting and chatting that does not fulfill the needs of others or me in the line of communication. I no longer have a FaceBook account and I am being careful about who I chat with.

My recent failure at email has been a double-header, maybe even a triple with my friends and brothers in Christ. I sincerely hope that God’s grace can fill them up for the lack in me. I really love them and want them to be able to communicate with me via letters and chat often. I am sure God will find me a way through all this bungling of words. Thank God for spell check. It would be ten times worse if it were not for that. None-the-less, I am praying that this post will not confuse anyone and be plainly speaking to hearts that need a wakeup call from God.

Why do I say that? Because I believe each and every one of us needs a wakeup call from time to time. The rooster crows and we may be sleeping through it. God may be trying to get our attention and we are not paying attention. We may be too busy living our own lives, filled with our own dreams and desires to hear Him.

So I leave you with this. Pay attention to the circumstances around you. Things happen for a reason. Maybe you are being sloppy about the way you are living your life, maybe you are caught up in some fleshly desire that is occupying all your time you should be using for God. Movies, music, eating out, video games, consumption of elements that alter your thinking or other things that just plain waste your time away from accomplishing the living of God’s life. Pay attention.

A good exercise for a week or so would be to write down what you spend your time doing and how much of that time is consumed with that activity. It can give you a heads up on where you are at with your thinking and doing. If that doesn’t seem practical, ask your friends, housemates, spouse or kids what they think you do the most. Things are more real when you look through the eyes of others. Don’t be afraid to take a good look and let God wake you up to some things.

OK, I have to go now. I hear the Rooster Crowing again. Time to post this and remind you that I am asking for your prayers and input. May God bless you and give you His rest.