Jon's Blog

The word Relevant means “Logically connected with and important to the matter in hand; appropriate, germane, pertinent.”

To some the Word of God and the Church of Jesus Christ do not always seem “Logically connected” or “important to the matter in hand.”

They may be logical to the believer, but not to the unbeliever.

Consider Isaiah’s words in 55:6-11:

Isaiah 55:6-11
6 Seek ye the LORD while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near:
7 Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the LORD, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.
9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
10 For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater:
11 So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.

In the January 1966 edition of an American journal called The Christian Century, the editor wrote of receiving a small “assemble it yourself” package by mail.

After spending an hour in frustration trying to put the pieces together, he discovered in the box a message from the manufacturer.

Printed on a neat, white card were the words, “If all else fails, follow the directions.”

Most in our generation today are puzzled, bewildered and confused, not knowing the way to worthwhile living.

Now comes the question, “Whose directions are we to follow?”

Men once took their directions from the Bible. However, over the past fifty or so years, our nation has all but abandoned this trustworthy resource.

As a result, we are still reaping the bitter fruits that come from neglecting God’s counsel!

In the 1960s the Supreme Court ruled that prayer and Bible reading in public schools violated the Constitution.

They prohibited the teaching of Creationism and replaced it with the theory of evolution.

They removed God’s standard of truth and instead gave children the responsibility of determining right and wrong on their own.

To determine whether the Bible is relevant, one need only look back over the last 50 years of our nation’s history.

If people don’t believe the Bible is relevant today, it isn’t because we tried it and it failed, but because we have ignored it and have virtually destroyed the morality of the last generation!

2Timothy 3:16 Everything in the Scriptures is God’s Word. All of it is useful for teaching and helping people and for correcting them and showing them how to live.
2Timothy 3:17 The Scriptures train God’s servants to do all kinds of good deeds.

Any church that is founded upon the sound teaching of the Word of God is as relevant today as the Bible is.

The church is a place where we learn 1) what God’s Word says and;

2) how to appropriate those biblical principles in our lives.

The problem today is that most come to church for the music, rather than the message.

We’ve become more concerned about programs than we are about progress in our spiritual lives.

We welcome comfort and convenience, rather than conviction and confession.

People would rather have their “ears tickled”, than to be confronted with the truth of the Scriptures.

The problem lies not in the Content of the Word of God, but in the Complacency of our society!

As most of you know, I love to golf.

I have often imagined what it would be like to have Ben Hogan or Jack Nicholas, or Freddie Couples step into my body for that perfect shot down the fairway. Or that perfect wedge shot, or Gary Player with his perfect putting stroke.

Imagination can be a great thing. Someone once said, “if the mind can’t conceive it, the body can’t achieve it”.

Now imagine what your life would be like if Jesus stepped into your body and mind, flowing His perfect love and compassion into you, from His Spirit to yours.

Do you think it would make a difference in the way you treated people?

Of course it would!

Would it affect the way you respond to situations, the way you plan your day?

Yes, I truly believe it would!

As believers,we don’t have to imagine that possibility.

Jesus made that offer to anyone who was willing to trust Him and believe Him.

Before He went to the cross, He promised to send His Holy Spirit to give direction and to empower us toward faith.

John 16:13-14 says, “But when he, the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on His own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you.”

You see, Jesus promised to impart a small piece of himself, a measure of his majesty and strength, into the hearts and lives of all who put their faith in Him.

Through his Spirit, we have access to the full measure of his wisdom and strength.

The apostle Paul wrote that through Jesus we are “able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us” (Ephesians 3:20).

Jesus offers us salvation, but even more than that, he offers an empowering and personal relationship.

When we give ourselves over to him, and trust him as our Lord and Savior, he comes to live in us—and imparts his perfect strength and will into our lives.

I was having a conversation with a friend last week we talked about how strange — and yet really not so strange — it is that the more mature you become as a Christian the less worthy you feel to be a child of God.

It seems strange because the closer you come to Christ the more his character rubs off on you.
But it’s not so strange because the closer we get to the real beauty of Christ the more obvious and ugly our remaining sin appears.

My friend had a great illustration.

When you are sweeping a hall you may feel pretty good that the dirt is being cleared away;
and then suddenly you move into a beam of light coming through a window and you see the true situation.
The air is filled with dust.

So we who are Christ’s are destined for now to live with a mingling of joy and remorse.
If we walk in the light as he is in the light we really are being changed from one degree of glory to another into his likeness (2 Cor. 3:18).

But it is precisely in the light that we see with greatest clarity the remaining evil of our own hearts.
We rejoice to know Christ and to experience his dazzling fellowship and mercy.

But we also grieve over our recurrent failures to walk exactly in his footsteps.

Jonathan Edwards has a great sensitivity to the real experience of true Christians when he said,
“The desires of the saints, however earnest, are humble desires; their hope is a humble hope; and their joy, even when it is unspeakable and full of glory, is a humble, broken-hearted joy, leaving the Christian more poor in spirit, more like a little child, and more disposed to a universal lowliness of behavior” .

So I have asked myself, what should we look for in the people as evidence that the Word is bearing fruit?

Something my friend said and something that Jonathan Edwards wrote warn me and should warn us against looking for perfection.

They warn us against looking for people who are proud of their growth;
speak highly of their spiritual attainments;
whose joy in the grace of God is not deepened by recurrent remorse because of failures to walk by the Spirit.

What should we look for to see if the message of Christ has begun to take root in our hearts?

What I would like to do to answer that question is to notice with you how there is a contrast between two mindsets.
The one is what Paul tried to drive out of the Galatian churches.
The other is the one he seeks to live by and teach.

He calls this second mindset a canon or a rule and says that those who are in sync with this rule receive God’s mercy and enjoy God’s peace.

Suppose I had the power to hold out to you two hands for your choosing.
In the one hand is the mercy of God to forgive all your sins and the peace of God for your eternal enjoyment.

And in the other hand was every desirable thing the world could offer you (money, leisure, health, popularity, big business savvy, a spouse — you name it) — but no mercy from God and no final peace with him.

Which would you want?

“What does it profit you if you gain the whole world and lose your soul?”

Only in the grip of a great Satanic delusion do people choose the world over the mercy and peace of God.

Contentment

Have you ever really wanted something? I mean wanted something so badly that you could taste it, so bad that you thought your life would be empty and meaningless until you got it.

Maybe it was a certain toy growing up, or a certain kind of car, or a relationship, maybe even a motorcycle. As you looked at the object of your desire, you realized that you’d never rest until you had it.

Have you ever felt that way?

Have you ever had the experience of finally getting what you’d wanted for so long? At first it feels so good, but gradually the newness starts to wear off.

Pretty soon we start seeing imperfections in what we once thought was perfect. If it’s a toy, it breaks the day after Christmas. If it’s a car, it breaks down, and the warranty doesn’t cover the repairs.

If it’s a relationship, we gradually start seeing that person’s character flaws and idiosyncrasies. Soon we realize that having whatever it was that we couldn’t live without isn’t all we thought it would be.

I’ve lived that story again and again in my life, and I’m sure you probably have too. When I was a child it was a new toy, perhaps a G. I. Joe or a bike or a skateboard.

During my high school years it was having a girlfriend, thinking that if I just went out with the right person, my life would be complete.

As an adult it’s been being at the right ministry, getting the fastest computer, having the right home, or even buying a new golf club.

You know exactly what I’m talking about don’t you?

Dissatisfaction with what we have is an American epidemic. Perhaps it’s an epidemic we’re susceptible to because we live in the most affluent society in the history of the human race.

Dissatisfaction is an epidemic that’s carefully fed by the advertising industry, as it promises us again and again that our dissatisfaction will disappear if we just buy this or that product.

We all know those advertising promises aren’t really true, but something deep inside our soul that’s not rational cries out, “Maybe this will make my restlessness go away.”

Dissatisfaction is what leads husbands to leave their wives after fifteen years of marriage; it’s what tempts people to max out their credit cards to buy new clothes.

This restlessness inside of each of us is especially strong at Christmas. I read an editorial in Newsweek a while back in that made this exact same point (Anna Quindlen, “Honestly–You Shouldn’t Have” NEWSWEEK 12/3/01 p. 76).

Anna Quindlen pointed out that our nation has more malls than it has high schools; that we as Americans spend more time shopping than we do reading.

She concludes, “The holidays should be a time to honor our best values, not a time to muffle them in layers of stuff.”

Muffled in layers of stuff…what a graphic description of American life today.

Be reading I Timothy 6:1-10.  We will be covering the Keys to Contentment soon!

It’s a very familiar scene. We show up at the course, do our stretches and warm-ups, spend some time on the putting green, sinking putt after putt. Our sense of expectation of that “personal best” rising with every sunk putt.

It is finally time to head to the first tee, and our anticipation at an all time high. We just know that this must be the day for that low score. After all, we’ve been logging lots of practice time on the range and putting green, so it stands to reason that the low round is right there, and we think, “today’s the day”.

We break out that brand new sleeve of Callaway balls befitting such an occasion. Then tee up for that first drive of the day. In our mind, we see that fairway splitter towering down some 300 yards center cut in the short grass.

Then it happens, instead of the fairway splitter, we top the ball and it ends up just past the ladies’ tee box. No problem we think, it’s a par five, and not too long so a good second shot, and we’re right there. We then push our 3-wood into the rough on the right, have to punch out and then we’re looking at scrambling just to save bogey. We finally get on the green in 4 and proceed to 3-putt for a double bogey.

As we finish the front nine, the thought of the personal best is a distant memory as we haven’t made a single par. We consider stopping at the turn, but really don’t want to leave our friends that way, so we trudge on.

The misery continues on the back. The thought of walking off the course intensifies with every shot. Then it happens, we hit that fairway splitter (the one that we were expecting on the first tee), on number 16 and it leads to a birdie three. We follow that with a par and another birdie on 18. Instead of giving up the game, we’re ready to tee it up again!

Redemption. Even though, we didn’t rally sufficient enough to redeem this round, we still feel that the personal best is still out there.

This is how redemption works; it turns despair into the opposite—hope!

As Paul teaches in Romans, redemption works much the same way in the relationship with God and the world. When that relationship, which was perfect at the time of creation, was broken as soon as humans acted out their inclination to sin.

 Paul points out that this was the beginning point for the reflection on the bond between man and God: “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,…”

If that would have been it, if sin had the final word, we wouldn’t know anything but despair, because our sin would continually separate us from God.

Fortunately, God sent Jesus Christ to justify us in spite of our sin, taking HIS righteousness and replacing it with our unrighteousness which made us acceptable in God’s sight.

This is divine Redemption. And redemption literally means, “a loosing away”. Experiencing redemption is like having chains fall off.

You see, when we personally accept and lay hold of the gift of salvation, and the deliverance from sin God makes available through Jesus Christ, at that point we are redeemed.

This doesn’t mean we never sin again, or that our sin will no longer grieve the Holy Spirit OR ourselves. But what it DOES mean is that we never have to be CONTROLLED by sin.

Just like a horrible round of golf can be salvaged by a few good, closing shots, God can redeem our lives, no matter how messy, from the dominion of sin.

You may think that is too good to be true; But not for us golfers. We know the pleasure of having a rotten game turn around. It’s that shot that keeps us coming back; that those bad shots don’t make us give up in disgust proves that we have truly experienced the game’s power to redeem.

And since we golfers know that redemption is NOT too good to be true, don’t you think that God might have just some special witness for us to make to those who haven’t yet learned this wonderful lesson from our beloved game?

It all starts innocently enough…an unplayable lie, your ball behind a tree or under a bush. “Well if this tree or bush wasn’t here, or if they’d mow this rough, I’d have an open shot.” So, you use your favorite club, the foot wedge, and “move” your ball to a “playable lie”.

Or perhaps, you are playing with someone who continually uses mulligans anywhere and everywhere they see fit. Or maybe you don’t count that extra stroke for a lost ball because the rough in our opinion, isn’t cut sufficiently. Or maybe we disregard the out-of-bounds marker because of our philosophical objection to unnatural hazards.

As a good friend who was also a pastor before going to his reward once told me, “how will you know if you’re getting better if you don’t write down every stroke.” Since that time, I have done my best to always keep an accurate account of my score and take my medicine when I hit a bad shot.

So, here’s the thought…we begin giving ourselves certain exemptions from the rules of golf. Not to say that we become too obvious about it; we honor the tee markers, we don’t use the “hand wedge”, or give ourselves putts “outside the leather”. But what we DO is we slip into the habit of ever so subtly bending the rules. And the one thing we improve isn’t our game, but our skill of rationalizing, trying to justify our actions.

Sure, we don’t do it that often, and yes, we give ourselves a break every now and then…what’s the harm as long as no one gets hurt? Besides, it’s only a game, right?

Yes, it’s only a game, but more than most games, you have to ask yourself, doesn’t the way we play the game reflect the way we live off the course? And this is especially true when it comes to our rationalizing. You show me one golfer who always has ready excuses for “explaining” bad shots, and I’ll show you an accountant who doctors the books, or a contractor who inflates material costs, or a parent who doesn’t follow through on his promises.

In the game of golf, such rationalizing leads to cheating. In life, it leads to sin. You know, sin isn’t just the bad things we do or the things we don’t or fail to do. It is that subtle thought process that leads us toward that harmful behavior.

As in the rules of golf, we often twist the Christian faith to suit ourselves, and in the process warp God’s divine truth upon which our faith is founded.

Let’s talk about grace for a moment. God’s unmerited favor. God sent His son Jesus so that this grace would supplant law as the power that governs our relationships. Jesus was the perfect embodiment of God’s grace. This good news, that we call “the gospel”, is that wonderful, great gift that Jesus brought into the world.

Paul taught, “the more I sin, the more grace I get, what a deal”. But you know, he doesn’t pull any punches when he went on to say, “By no means”! If we understand God’s grace at all, and then truly receive it, we are changed! We are no longer held captive to sin.

And to accept this gift of grace is to purpose in our heart that we die to sin, and we can’t do that without first dying to the rationalizing process that comes before the sin itself.

This is all part of Paul’s theme that we are justified, or saved, not with our own efforts, but with the grace of God, which we received through faith in Jesus Christ.