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( 3 / 135 )In the middle of Old Town Square, in the heart of Prague, in the Czech Republic, there is a large statue of John Huss. He was born in 1370, studied philosophy and theology at Prague University and in 1402 he was ordained as a priest in the Catholic Church. Huss lived in a time of great political and religious upheaval. The Catholic Church was enmeshed in what is called the Great Schism in which three rival popes were vying for control of the church, and many of the problems that spurred the reformation were in common practice. Huss preached against them all. He taught that the true church was "invisible," made up of only the elect of God; that salvation did not depend on connection with the visible church, but on one's relationship to God; that priests and bishops should be held in esteem, not because of their position, but because of their character. He held that, "Not every priest is a saint, but every saint is a priest." and insisted that scripture alone were to be held as the supreme authority in life. Those were dangerous ideas to hold in his day.
In 1409, the archbishop of Prague became openly antagonistic toward Hus. A year later the archbishop excommunicated him, but Huss continued to preach. By 1412 things had gotten so dangerous for him that at the advice of the king he withdrew from Prague to southern Bohemia, but his popularity grew as he continued preaching in the fields, forests. Two years later, the Council of Constance began and with a guarantee of safe conduct there and back he was convinced to appear, but almost immediately after he arrived he was arrested and sent to prison. Several attempts were made to get Huss to recant, but he refused them all. Finally on July 6, 1415, he was placed on a high stool in the middle of the church and sentenced to death. The chronicler of the events wrote that they placed a hood over his head, with pictures of the devil on it and the word "heretic" then they committed his soul to hell.
The next day Hus was chained to the stake. Wood and hay were piled up to his chin. He was given one last chance to recant but he responded, "I shall die with joy today in the faith of the gospel which I have preached." Then they lit the flames and he died singing and praying.
Right before he went to the council he wrote the following: "What fear shall part us from God, or what death? What shall we lose if for His sake we forfeit wealth, friends, the world's honors and our poor life? It is better to die well than to live badly. We dare not sin to avoid the punishment of death. To end the present life in grace is to be banished from misery. Truth is the last conqueror. He who is slain wins, for no peril hurts him if no sin has dominion over him."
By God’s grace we may never face the same challenge that Huss confronted, to lay down his life for the sake of the gospel, but that does not mean we will avoid every kind of suffering. Christians are meant to have the same vocation as their king. We are called to be cross-bearers.
1 Peter 4:1-6 says, “Therefore, since Christ suffered in his body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude, because he who has suffered in his body is done with sin. As a result, he does not live the rest of his earthly life for evil human desires, but rather for the will of God. For you have spent enough time in the past doing what pagans choose to do-- living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing and detestable idolatry. They think it strange that you do not plunge with them into the same flood of dissipation, and they heap abuse on you. But they will have to give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead. For this is the reason the gospel was preached even to those who are now dead, so that they might be judged according to men in regard to the body, but live according to God in regard to the spirit.
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( 2.9 / 414 )I was going to do some work in my backyard the other day. So I got up early while it was still cool, before the sun came up and the heat set in, and I put on my grubby clothes that I didn’t mind getting dirty and I went out to the dry patch on my lawn. It seems like no matter how much attention I give them there is always something about my sprinklers that need attention. There is always something that needs replacing or fixing or something. Well in this case it was a 360 degree - 2 inch pop up sprinkler head, that wasn't working right, so I wrote that down and went over to Sanger Nursery and got a new one and went home to install it. I got my shovel and dug out around the sprinkler head and twisted it out but after examining it carefully I discovered that it was working just fine. It wasn't the sprinkler head at all. There was a little dirt in it, but nothing that should have prevented it from working.
So I thought if it wasn't the sprinkler head, maybe it was the pipe that lead to the sprinkler so I dug out more of the area and I found a small crack in the pipe where water was coming out and preventing the sprinkler head from working correctly so I thought I better fix that. I went to my tool bench and got my saw and cut out the part that was broken, and it was then that I realized that I didn’t have any new pipe to replace it, so I got into my car and drove to Sanger Nursery again and I bought a piece of replacement pipe and drove back to the hole in my yard.
I measured the piece I took out of the ground and cut the new piece to replace it but as I matched it up the pipe I prepared to the gap in my sprinklers I realized that I didn’t have the couplings that you need at each end to put it back together. So I got back into my car and drove to Sanger Nursery for the third time and bought two of the couplings, one for each end and went back to the hole in my yard.
Now when you add the couplings to each end of my replacement pipe it makes the pipe longer, so I had to measure it again and cut my replacement pipe again, which at this point is really a small thing, but I was getting pretty frustrated because I thought that I was going to be done with this whole job in about ten minutes, and it had turned into a nightmare. Anyway, I finished I matched it up to the part that was missing and it looked great. All I needed now was to glue the couplings in... so I went back to Sanger Nursery for the fourth time!!!
I eventually got my pipe put back together and the sprinkler head back on and the hole filled in but what should have taken me a few minutes took all morning, and it reminded me of the quote by the great inventor and entrepreneur, Henry Ford. He said “Before everything else, getting ready is the secret to success.”
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( 2.7 / 292 )My little Timothy is finishing up kindergarten soon and after the summer he will begin first grade. This year he has been practicing his letters. To do that his teacher would send home these pages with the letter of the week on them. At the top there would be the complete letter just like it was supposed to be drawn. Then under it there would be a line of letters in dashed lines and he was supposed to trace over those lines to form the letters correctly. The Apostle Peter writes in 1 Peter 2:21-23 – “To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps." So Jesus was a kind of writing sample for you and I, and our lives are to trace over his life the way children trace over their letters.
Or you might think about it this way. I am sure you have seen those ads on TV for exercise video’s or equipment. You can get the Bow-Flex, or the Ab Lounge, or the kickboxing videos, or any number of them during their paid programming each night. In every case the people selling the product has a beautifully sculpted body with 3-4% body fat, and chiseled abs, (kinda like me - LOL). What they are trying to communicate by doing that is to say, “What you see is what you will get. You will look like this if you use this equipment or do my exercises.” Of course it rarely works out that way. But what Peter is saying is that Jesus is our example that points us to where we are going. He is showing us what we will get if we follow Jesus. He has wounds on his hands and his feet and his side, even in his resurrected body. It is written in his very body what we can expect and what he is calling us to because he has left us this example to suffer unjustly even as he has suffered unjustly.
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( 2.8 / 199 )With two runners on base Sara Tucholsky's of the Western Oregon University's softball team did something she had never done before either in high school or college. She belted a homerun over the center-field fence. In the excitement she missed first base and started back to touch it when her knee gave way. She crawled back to first base, but the pain was so sharp that she couldn’t stand up, never mind make it all the way around the bases. The umpires ruled that the regulations forbid her from receiving any help from her teammates or she would be called out. That’s when the members of the opposing team, Central Washington University, stepped in. Even though it wound up cost them the game and knocking them out of the playoffs, they locked their arms around her and gently carried her from base to base until they reached home plate and she was handed over to her the rest of her team who were waiting in tears. I don’t know if they were believers or not, but they certainly exemplified the biblical notion of sacrificially blessing our enemies.
Romans 12:17-21 – Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," says the Lord. On the contrary: "If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head." Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
1 Peter 3:9 – Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult, but with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing.
Luke 6:27-28 – But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.
Romans 12:14 – Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse.
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( 3 / 116 )“Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith.” (Hebrews 13:7). It has often baffled me that God commands you to consider and imitate me. Why would God want you to gaze at my life or to imitate my faith? I admit I am a man filled with flaws, and at times I wonder if the church would be better off with another example of faith. Perhaps when he wrote that He didn’t realize that I was gong to be your pastor one day.
Yet, history is strewn with examples of broken and flawed servants. Consider Abraham, Isaac and Jacob or King David. All men deeply flawed and yet God intends for us to consider them and to see the beauty of the Lord through the imperfections of their lives. He does that for two reasons. First because their flaws help us to realize that we are very much like them and if God could use someone as flawed as Isaac, there is hope that he can use me as well. Second because it takes the inspiration of someone like us who has done something significant to help us break out of the humdrum of our lives and to do venture beyond the ordinary.
David Brainerd, Augustine, Jonathan Edwards, William Carey, Saint Francis, Luther, John Bunyan, George Muller, and many others were men whose faith made them tower above their peers but who were also filled with cracks through which the light of God shines. They were men like you and me who excelled by the grace of God, and the stories of their broken and flawed but blessed lives will strengthen your desire to see God glorified through you.
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( 2.8 / 269 )There used to be a TV commercial by acredit card company called Capital One, where a couple is making a purchase in a shopping center. When the clerk tells how much it will cost, the woman says she will pay the bill with her credit card and she whips it out. Suddenly hordes of barbarians begin surging into the store. They run down the aisles yelling, with weapons drawn, toward the couple that are about to making the credit card purchase. The point of the ad is that making yourself liable to the finance charges on credit cards is like bringing on the barbarians. Well, at one point in the commercial as the barbarians charge past the woman at the perfume counter, and she is spraying them with perfume, as if you can civilize a bunch of barbarians by simply getting them to smell nice.
But honestly some people do that with their lives. They make external changes thinking that will help but really all they are doing is cover over the barbarian with perfume. What God is calling us to do is to deal with the matters of our heart. To grow in our understanding and appreciation of what Christ has done, and to demonstrate our trust in him by making those truth the foundation for how we live. That’s what it means to be a saint.
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( 3 / 250 )In 1 Peter 1, the apostle wants to remind his readers that there is hope in the midst of their suffering because Christ came on a rescue mission to enter fully into our judgment and curse and death, but more than that, verse 3 tells us that after he took on himself the full agony of our punishment from God and died in our place then he rose again, so that we might be born again to a new and living hope. In other words, Easter is more than icing on the cake. Our hope and new life was won through his resurrection on Easter morning. That is how salvation is delivered to us.
You can think about it this way. If you were a POW in Vietnam, chained to a wall, the only way you could escape is if someone was able to burst through enemy lines, and shoot their way into your camp, and come all the way to your cell, break your chains and then protect you under fire all the way back to safety. In order to do that Jesus became flesh and blood, to know our sorrows, to suffer our punishment, to die and to break the bonds of the curse of death that we were under. If he had not been raised from the dead then he would not be able to impart that life to us.
You see it is not just that Jesus laid down his life for you, or that he can now sympathize with you because he became a man. It wouldn’t help if you were a prisoner and your rescuer was shot by machine gun fire right as he enters your cell and falls at your feet. Sure he would have died for you but that wouldn’t help you at all. It wouldn’t help if he were captured and put in a cell with you. Sure, he could sympathize with you but he couldn’t save you. The salvation that Jesus brings to us is dependent on Easter morning. It requires the resurrection. Jesus had to leave the camp of death and take his people with him into life.
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( 2.9 / 224 )At the end of the book of Hebrews the author is giving some final thoughts and encouragements to his readers. He has already discussed the greatness of Christ over the law, the prophets and the angels. He has expounded the role of Christ as our eternal high priest in the order of Melchizedek and the superiority of the covenant of grace. In detail he has described our redemption which Christ purchased through his perfect once and for all sacrifice and the full assurance we can now have because of our faith. He has even encouraged us by listing off the saints who have gone before us as examples. And now he is closing his letter with a series of final encouragements and he says, Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, "Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you." (Hebrews 13:5)
How often have I quoted the last part of verse 5 without taking it in context. I remember sharing the four spiritual laws with students on the college campus and reciting the end of verse 5 to assure them of their standing. And it is true, they are secure in Christ, but we have a tendency to grab onto that without connecting it to what comes before it. You see the author of Hebrews purposefully mentions finances before he says God will never leave us. Why, what’s he trying to say? What is the connection? He is saying – don’t love money because Christ will never leave you?
The point is that money cares nothing for you. It will come and go without any concern for you at all. If you don’t believe me check your 401k. Money will leave you and forsake you, but Christ is better. He will not leave you. He will not forsake you. So hold onto him instead of money and you will never be disappointed.
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( 2.8 / 200 )“Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.” 1 Thess 5:16-18
Some people get turned off when Paul says things like this because there are some who stretch it to utterly ridiculous proportions. He does not mean that every situation is joyful. But some folks misunderstand that and say things like “I was driving along and I got in an accident and I broke my arm and I was bleeding everywhere and I was waiting for the ambulance but I was praising Jesus the whole time.” Don’t twist Paul's words and make it mean nonsense.
When he says to pray without ceasing he doesn’t mean that you are always supposed to be in prayer, but he is thinking in terms of in the normal run of your daily life. That all day you are resorting to prayer. He doesn’t say in verse 18 that you give thanks FOR all things, but that you give thanks IN every circumstance. It is not that Paul is saying that every circumstance is wonderful.
In other words, joy and prayer and thankfulness are supposed to be the tone of our lives. They may not be there at every moment, but they are supposed to be the trademarks of those who have Christ as their own, but it is not a denial of reality.
In Decision magazine Amy Chapman tells about a time she was at a woman’s conference with 500 women. Most of the women had already left and she was gathering up her things when she noticed a person sitting at the back of the auditorium with her shoulders drooping and her head hung low, so she went over to see what was the matter and the woman began to tell her story.
She was the mother of three. Her oldest son, who suffered from muscular dystrophy, had been confined to a wheelchair for most of his 17 years. Her other two children had a variety of learning and emotional challenges. With her head still bent, she whispered, "I'm married to a mean, hateful man who makes my life miserable. He won't help me even to hold our son when he goes to the bathroom. I buried my father this week, and at the funeral I learned that my father had disinherited me from his estate because he hated my husband.
She went on, “I came this weekend with one prayer. I asked God to kill my husband. I prayed, 'Lord, I need a way out! I feel like a bird in a cage. But when I prayed that prayer, it was as if God spoke to me and said, “Even a bird in a cage sings.” Then with tears running down her face she turned to Amy and asked, "What am I supposed to do with that? How do I live with that answer?"
Feeling utterly impotent, Amy replied, "If God says, 'sing,' you need to find your song."
In the same way in the midst of our circumstances we need to find our song. That is the kind of people we should be. How can we realistically do that? Especially in light of the difficulties we all experience,how is something like that really possible?
I think the help we need to do it is in that little phrase “in Christ Jesus.” In other words, by God's design we receive strength and life and vitality and grace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ and because we are in God the Father and in the Lord Christ Jesus and we have the grace and power to do these things which seem impossible.
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