Hey, everyone!
Hope you’re having an awesome Friday before the big holiday weekend! I’m getting pumped! We still have to buy all our snacks and stuff, but we’re almost ready! I don’t remember when the “Day” has landed on a Sunday but…
Huh?! Halloween?!
No way! I’m not talking about THAT awful holiday!! I’m talkin’ ‘bout Reformation Day! Every year! October thirty one!
I don’t mean to be all “opinion-y” but I think that a holiday when folks put freaky, creepy stuff in their yards and freaky, creepy stuff hanging out of their trees so that sweet little kids see all that freakiness and creepiness and wake up crying from freaky, creepy dreams, well, I think the whole thing is freaky! And creepy!
Why would you have a holiday where the whole point is to be scared?
Wanna know where Halloween comes from? Ready? Sure? Well, a long time ago…Oh, forget it. It’s not worth talkin’ about.
Speaking of a long time ago…
A long time ago, the normal lives of normal folks were scarier than ours is today. They thought there were goblins and spirits, ghosts and devils behind trees and rocks. They believed God was impossibly angry. Their best hope, after escaping this dangerous world in death, was to spend years and years in a dark and painful somewhere, waiting to make it to heaven when they were purified and qualified enough of all their lingering yuckiness.
They were scared every day of the year. Not just on one day.
Some took advantage of this and of them, promising less dark years between death and Heaven, if they’d donate money to this church or that cathedral.
But a young German monk of the Augustinian Black Cloister was reading…reading…reading the Bible…the New Testament…Paul’s letter to the Romans. And he discovered something few knew. When you believe in Jesus, you’re forgiven for good and forever! When you die, you don’t stop over for centuries in any dark place! You go home!! You don’t even really die; that’s when you really start to live! The moment you believe, the God Who loved you every second all along the way, becomes your Dad! He cares for you all the time! You never have to be afraid again! You don’t have to fear today or tomorrow!
"At last, meditating day and night, by the mercy of God, I ... began to understand that the righteousness of God is that through which the righteous live by a gift of God, namely by faith… Here I felt as if I were entirely born again and had entered paradise itself through the gates that had been flung open."-Martin Luther
On October 31, 1517 “All Hollows Eve”, the day before “All Saints Day”, he nailed 95 thoughts to the big wooden door of the Wittenburg Church. “God’s righteousness is free! You can’t buy it! You just take it! And it’s yours! And it isn’t right, true, or good that someone would make money by telling you that you could try to pay for it!” (More or less that’s what he wrote)
Those thoughts “went viral” and hearts were freed of their fears, knowing Jesus was all they needed!
When he was put on trial for writing these things, he could have been afraid, but with Jesus in his heart, he wasn’t! In front of the court and the Emperor, he said…
"Unless I can be instructed and convinced with evidence from the Holy Scriptures or with open, clear, and distinct grounds of reasoning ... then I cannot and will not recant, because it is neither safe nor wise to act against conscience. Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me! Amen."
Paul says that when you accept Jesus, you don’t have ”a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear” (Romans 8 15)
Why not dress up like Luther or Calvin this year?
Why celebrate a holiday where the whole point is being scared?
Happy Reformation Day…the holiday for those who (praise Jesus!) aren’t scared of anything!
A note from Tom: April 22nd
Hey everyone!
What an awesome day!! Usually I try to send y’all a thought or two to encourage you here toward the end of the week on these CCC emails…But as beautiful as the days have been, my bet is that praising Him is just easier to do than it was during those cold, dark, wet weeks of February! So maybe I don’t have to make these so long!
Speaking of which…
I noticed that when I started writing these little thoughts a coupla years ago, they were a lot shorter! Now, they’re a lot longer than they used to be! And longer than they need to be!
Maybe I could make these shorter by using smaller letters!
OrmaybeIcouldjustscrunchthewordstogether…
Or maybe I could work on getting to the point quicker!
Like bumper stickers! They say what they want to say in a few words and in about 13 inches! Here’s one I saw the other day…
“Keep the dream alive: Hit the snooze button.”
And…
“Well, this day was a total waste of makeup.”
Or…
“Karaoke bars combine two of the nation's greatest evils — people who shouldn't drink with people who shouldn't sing.”
How ‘bout…
“Gravity: It's not just a good idea. It's the law.”
Lance Armstrong has made $25,100,000 for cancer research with a one-word slogan (that’s really two words pushed together) written on yellow wristbands. You know the ones….They say, “LIVESTRONG”
There are 70 million of those little slogans on arms around the world! It’s awesome that so much has been made for cancer research!!
Just a couple of problems…
70,000,000 of those might not be awesome for the environment…
In one hospital they have to cut them off people being admitted because they look too much like their “Do not resusitate” bands they put on patients.
And I think that God’s heart might have different advice!
In Isaiah 41, Isaiah says that lots of people go around and, “each helps the other and says to his brother, ‘Be strong!’ “ Only thing is…Isaiah’s talking about people who don’t know or rely on God! He says it’s not good to try to be strong…or livestrong!...without God!
Paul says in 2 Cor 12 that it’s a whooooole lot better to be weak!!
Check this out…
“…He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me...For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
When you’re weak…when you can’t take it any more…when you just can’t make it on your own…when you can’t face it another day…when you have a problems (or problems!) and you don’t feel strong at all…that’s when you really start to rely on Him!! When you feel weak, you trust in the One Who is strongest of all! Weak is the best way to go through your week!
Here’s some awesome advice…
“LIVEWEAK”
Put that on your wristband!!
A note from Tom: April 15th
Hope you’re having an awesome, praise-filled day! How could you not?! Has there ever been a spring like this one!? Dogwoods, redbuds, tulips, azaleas, weeping cherries, tulip trees…all together!
“Praise the LORD from the earth…you mountains and all hills, fruit trees…” (Psalm 148)
Praise is bustin’ out all over! Shhh…listen….hear it?
Speaking of praise, I was praising God when I got to the end of that Knoxville marathon I ran in the other week! For a while I thought I was going to see Him face to face and not just praise Him! We ended up in Neyland Stadium on the 50 yard line, up on the jumbotron…45 feet tall and lookin’ worse than ever!
There were times before the gun went off that I wondered, “Why’d I sigh up for this?” During the race, I’d ask myself, “Why’m I doing this?” At the end, I went home with this question, “Why’d I do that!?”
Kinda like Columbus. They say he left, not knowing where he was going. He arrived not knowing where he was. He returned home, not knowing where he’d been.
After the first confusing few miles running in the dark, drowsiness, and drizzle, I heard a friendly voice…Bill Boucher! It was soooo awesome to have someone to run with! We talked, laughed, and kept each other encouraged! Only problem-Bill was just running the half marathon. At 13.1, he was checkin’ out. In fact, at about 10 miles, the finish line was calling, and he headed for the home stretch.
At 14 miles…running alone…alone…getting tired…
”Do my feet hurt? You guys OK down there?...Yikes! Is that a blister? What if I get a blister?...Oops! ‘Scuse me, dude!”
Near Broadway and Central, I had kind of bumped into someone I didn’t notice behind me. Jeff Matlock from Nashville. A real-estate agent and member of Belmont Baptist Church. Married with three growing kids…two are twins. Runs fifteen marathons a year with his wife. Used to be an assistant with Pat Summit.
How do I know all this?
We ran the whole rest of the way together! I thought I’d bumped him. We got talking and I asked him how fast we were going …He had one of those new GPS watched that looks like a small TV and tells you where you are, how fast you’re going, how far you’ve been, how hard your heart is beating…it tells you everything except why you shouldn’t quit!
I asked him how fast he was hoping to run this thing. His answer was about what I hoped to do.
“Do you mind if I just run with you? It’ll sure make it easier to have some company!” I asked.
“Sure!” he said.
“Tell me if I’m talking your head off,” I told him
“Doesn’t bother me!” he assured me.
We talked, shared, laughed the rest of the way! Couple o’ times I had to tie my shoes, but I caught up with him again. I’m not sure how that race would have come out without someone to run it with! It just made it go by faster.
It just made it….easier!
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us…” (Heb 12.1)
We all have a race to run. It may be a while before the finish. There may be some hills. We may have to run in the rain. We might even have dogs chasing us. We may be fast. We may be slow. We just can’t quit.
One of the things that makes this looooong run easier, is having someone running with you. Someone to share with. Someone to run beside you. Someone to keep you encouraged. Someone who may need you to encourage them sometimes. Someone who is determined to make it to the end.
Without quitting.
Someone like you.
It just makes it…easier.
Community groups…every Sunday at 9:30…
Run to one!
A note from Tom: April 1st
Hey, everyone!
Hope you’re having an awesome day….on this Maundy Thursday of Holy Week, when brothers and sisters in Christ around the world stop to remember the price that was paid so that they COULD be brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus, our Risen Lord! Some times I think it’s tough for some people to know how to have an awesome week on this the holiest of weeks because they don’t know what they are supposed to feel. Easter Sunday is a day filled with PRAIIIISSSEEE! …because we remember our Lord is alive!! But what about the days before…?
“How am I supposed to feel on Maundy Thursday? What does it even mean?”
“Maundy” comes the Latin phrase “mandatum novum” which means “a new commandment”. It’s to remind us of the night Jesus shared that Supper in the upper room with His guys…the night He said, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another…”
Love for people would be good to feel on that day…and every day.
“But what about Good Friday? Why do they call it ‘good’ if you have to remember the saddest hours of all of time? How can you have a ‘good Friday’ on the saddest day?”
Actually, the phrase, “Good Friday” comes from “God’s Friday” because it was the day God bought and paid for us so we could be “God’s on Friday”…and everyday! And that’s a reason to be glad!
But at the same time, it’s easy to feel like, “Y’know, I’m hesitant to celebrate anything on that day because it was so, so, so sad for Him. It was the day that darkness was over all the earth. I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel on Good Fridays…or what I will feel when this Good Friday comes.”
One Who was not in any way confused about what He would feel on that awful, awesome day, was the One Whose suffering put out the lights of the world.
Mark 10 says, “They were on their way up to Jerusalem, with Jesus leading the way, and the disciples were astonished, while those who followed were afraid. Again he took the Twelve aside and told them what was going to happen to him…”
Luke 9 says, “As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem…”
The old King James puts it like this…”he stedfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem…”
Isaiah predicted that He would be resolved, resolute, in no way tentative or hesitant to do what He came to do.
“I offered my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard; I did not hide my face from mocking and spitting. Because the Sovereign LORD helps me, I will not be confused. Therefore have I set my face like flint…”
A flint was an arrowhead. The cross was His target and He was soaring toward it!
He had no hesitation or confusion about that day. He felt the same way about it from the day He was born in Bethlehem. Hebrews 10 says that on that first Christmas morning, in His tiny, baby heart these words from Psalm 40 were ringing:
“Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said: ‘Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me…Here I am—it is written about me in the scroll-I have come to do your will, O God!' "
No confusion. No hesitation. He came to buy you. His whole heart was it…in doing what the Father sent Him to do.
“This is why the Father loves me: because I freely lay down my life…No one takes it from me. I lay it down of my own free will…”
At 2:00 pm on January 1, 1863 as President Lincoln was getting ready to sign the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing three and a half million people in one bold move … a move many bitterly and unmercifully criticized him for… thousands waited “in agony…for the first flash of the electric wires”…for the news that he had done it. “Every moment of waiting chilled our hopes and strengthened our fears” that it might not happen…that the President might turn back.
They had to wait just one moment longer.
The President was so emotional…and he was so tired from shaking hands all day…that his own hand was trembling.
He stopped and put the freshly dipped pen down on the desk. “I never, in my life, felt more certain that I was doing right, than I do in signing this paper. If my name ever goes into history, it will be for this act, and my whole soul is in it. If my hand trembles when I sign the Proclamation, all who examine the document hereafter will say, ‘He hesitated.’”
So, he waited. Then, when his hand was calm and steady, he took up the pen, “slowly and carefully” signing his name. And “the signature proved to be unusually bold, clear, and firm, even for him.”
“A. Lincoln”
Jesus had no hesitation or confusion. He was resolute. He would do what it would take to set you free and make you His. He would sign our emancipation in His sacred blood…”bold, clear and firm”.
So, what am I supposed to feel? Maybe I’m still not sure if I should happy or sad on Friday.
But I will love Him! And I’ll praise Him.
A note from Tom: March 25th
Hey everyone!
Wow! What an awesome day! What a day to praise God’s goodness to us all! Sunshine, warmin’ up, $3,330 on their way to Compassion International Haiti from Triple C (Jesus turned water to wine and rummage to rice!), daffadils every where, tulips almost here, dogwood buds swellin’…what a day!
What a day to have joy in our heart! “Cept that…
Lots a people are super upset today!…Seems like all over our country folks everywhere REALLLLY disagree over what should or shouldn’t have been done about health-care. Much of it is complicated.
So much of this involves words…Words that I personally struggle to understand! Like…
the “public option”
“market-based exchanges”
insurance purchasing pools
the “Cadillac tax”
a “reconciliation bill”…
I may not be alone in trying to get my mind around these terms. I know there are really smart people who understand all these words. But apparently many people are convinced that at least they know what all these words mean, because there is a lot of anger, bitterness, yelling, screaming, threatening, even spitting over these words (I read about congressmen who were spit on this week). I know these issues are very serious. I know it’s important for us to try to understand these words. I know it’s our right to have our own heart-felt opinions about what they mean to each of us.
But to me it’s so sad that so many smart men and women can’t talk to each other about these problems in ways that seek to understand what is important to the other side. I don’t understand why smart people don’t try to understand each other better.
Another thing grieves me. I don’t remember a recent time when our country was so full of anger, bitterness, hurtfulness and hate.
Maybe being smart isn’t the same as being wise. Maybe smart people don’t know words that wise people know.
The Letter of James is full of words about “wisdom” …what it is…what wise people are like. No matter where people stand on these difficult questions, there are words that only wise people know. Check it out. Really. Read this slowly…how many wise people do you know?
(James 3:13-18) “(13) Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show it by his good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. But (14) if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth.
(15) Such ‘wisdom’ does not come down from heaven… (16) For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice.
(17) But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. (18) Peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness.”
That Scripture is full of lots of words wise people need to know!
Ready for a vocab lesson? Pencils ready?
If you have…(verse 14) “bitter evil”- (Greek) “zelon pikron”…zeal or passion that leaves a hurtful bitterness, a bitter taste…
“selfish ambition” (Greek) “erithea”…(according to A.T. Robertson, Baptist scholar 1863-1934) ” a pushing forward for personal ends, partisanship…”
That kind of attitude leads to (verse 16)”…disorder…” (Greek) “akatastasia”, “a state of disorder, confusion…”
Sound familiar?
Here’s what God’s wisdom looks like…No matter where you stand on the issues, according to God, wise people stand like this. Wisdom is (and wise people are)…
“peacable” (Greek) “ereinike”…” loving peace… bringing peace…”
“considerate, gentle”…(Greek) “epieike”…kind, gentle, sweet, reasonable, meek, fair…”
“submissive”…(Greek) “eupeithe”…”easily persuadable, approachable, compliant, good at listening, not a ‘know-it-all’…”
“merciful”…(Greek) “eleou”…”full of mercy, doing good…”
James adds that wise people are “peace-makers who sow seeds of peace…”
Sure wish more people knew those words!
Wish there were more wise people around!
Wish we could all have our opinions…firm, strong opinions…but with Jesus’s peace-ableness, meekness, gentleness, sweetness, approachableness, mercifulness…
It’s tough to do. Maybe only those who know Jesus CAN do this. I know that those who love Jesus SHOULD do this.
Wisdom. Let it start with those who love the Prince of Prince, Who is “meek and lowly of heart”.
Let it start with us!
“Sowing seeds of peace”…What a beautiful spring day for that!