Have No Fear

The boys and I went fishing one day last summer. We tried down at the park but had no luck. So then we crossed Third Avenue at the bridge and went back by the railroad bed. There is a deep hole there that we thought might yield a few fish. We joined Sam Holsinger, who was already fishing there. And soon, we were joined by a group of five or six boys who came to swim in the hole. They waited patiently until we were done fishing.

I said, “Go ahead boys, we’re done.” And they jumped in – from the top of the railroad culvert where the creek ran under the railroad bed.. It’s a big jump. It’s a little scary. But those boys were doing it with little or no hesitation. Now, I knew most of those boys. And most of them aren’t really right, you know? Well, they’re boys. Take Ethan Butterbaugh, for example – he was there. Not only did he jump; but he climbed up on top of the round, inch-wide metal railing on top of the culvert and then jumped. I watched him do this once or twice, and as he climbed on that thin railing in his wet sneakers I told him I wished he wouldn’t do that. He asked me why.

“Well, your feet could slip on that metal and you could fall off balance face first into that cement.”

He said no, that wouldn’t happen.

“How do you know?” I asked.

Because it hasn’t happened to me yet, he said, with supreme confidence.

And that my friends, is the invincibility of youth. No fear. Nothing will happen to me. Cause, it hasn’t happened in the last five minutes. I’m not picking on Ethan or the other boys. When I was younger I did plenty of stupid things on dares, and plenty of stupid things on my own initiative. Growing older hopefully provides us with the wisdom to refrain from not doing as many stupid things as we used to do. As we get older, there is an opposite danger from the danger of youth – we learn to play it safe whenever possible. And when life isn’t safe, we grow afraid. In fact, when things aren’t as secure as we are used to, we not only grow afraid,, but we become afraid of that feeling of being afraid. And we will do most anything to avoid feeling that way.

God tells us not to be afraid. He doesn’t say don’t take risks, because that would be saying don’t live. Life is full of risk and unknown danger. But life is also full of opportunity. God tells us that we are meant to live in a reality, not of fear, but of love.

“God is love, and those who abide in love, abide in God, and God abides in them. . .There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. . .” 1 John 4.16,18


I have often wondered what this means. . .perfect love casts out fear. How does love get rid of fear? Well, think about fear. Not all fear is bad. For example, if are walking the woods, and you come upon a bear with cubs, fear puts you on alert, and tells your brain, “Now is not the time to be stupid.” Fear has a purpose. But too often, fear ends up controlling us. I was listening to an interview on the radio with former NFL linebacker Bill Romanowski. Romanowski played most of his career for the Denver Broncos. Steelers Fans may remember the AFC title game in which “Romo” spit on Kordell Stewart. I never liked Romanowski after that game. But as I listened to this interview, I understood him a little better. He talked about always playing angry.

“Why did you play angry all the time?” he was asked.

“Because I was always afraid,” Romanowski responded. “It was either play afraid or play angry.” That choice between anger and fear makes sense if you are an undersized linebacker in the NFL. But that choice doesn’t make sense for the rest of us. Unfortunately many people do make that bargain with the devil. Many people live much of their lives angry because mostly, well, they are afraid.

The secret of conquering our fear is to know that we are not alone. We are loved.

It helps to know that you are not alone. Fear tends to separate us from others and fear magnifies are sense of loneliness. We live lives that are more isolated. Robert Putnam’s classic book on our modern society, Bowling Alone, notes that volunteerism and participation in community groups are at their lowest levels in the past fifty years. The result of our not joining is our not belonging. We feel more isolated and are prone to distrust others and distrust our future. There is a confidence that comes with serving alongside others at Kiwanis or Little League or Bowling League. There is power in community. That great theologian, Yogi Berra, put it this way, “If you don’t go to somebody’s funeral, they won’t come to yours.”

Now, just being with people helps, but it doesn’t get us all the way out of the valley of Fear. The Israelites in the Wilderness of Sin are an example for us. They had each other, and they had Moses, and they had a string of success stories in their immediate past to give them confidence – and yet they feared. Their fear manifested itself in their complaining. They complained because they feared. They were low on water, in the desert, and they were afraid. They said, “What, they’re weren’t enough graves in Egypt? You had to bring us out into this wilderness to die?”

And the people were getting angry. Moses thought they were about ready to stone him to death. Moses was beside himself.

“Moses called the place Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled and tested the Lord, saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?” Exodus 17.7

This test of water was one of three tests that came to Israel on the journey in the wilderness. Two the tests concerned water and one concerned food. At a place called Marah, they found water, but it was too bitter to drink, until God showed them how to make it sweeter. Marah is Hebrew for bitterness. Then they came to a place called Elim that had fine water and nice shade, but they were hungry. So God sent the bread from heaven called Manna. Manna is Hebrew for “what is it?”. This was fine until they got tired of bread and wanted meat. So, to recap, the places where they went they ended up calling Bitterness, What is It?, Quarreling, and Testing. Do you see a pattern here?

Was it the places themselves that were unpleasant or did the people bring their unpleasantness with them?

Their question, “Is the Lord with us or not?” reveals everything we need to know about their spirits. They were afraid. They tested God. They acted like God had never done anything for them.

I hear this attitude today. We get caught up with all the trouble on the news and the 24/7 blame game that so-called commentators play. Folks, it is possible to watch too much news and listen to too much talk radio. Because too much leaves you with the wrong attitude. Too much leads to cynicism and despair. And friends, that is simply not permissible for the believer. No matter how hellish this world appears, this world is still my Father’s world! This world is still in the hands of the Almighty, who suffers no rival gods to be in charge. Even the Devil himself bows and comes calling when the Lord God summons him. The present troubles, no matter how great and terrifying, are nothing to be afraid of.

“Beloved do not believe every spirit, but test them to see whether they are of God. . .Little children, you are of God, and have overcome them; for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.” 1 John 4.1, 4

So the believer knows that no matter how bad things seem, God is in charge. God is here.! We may have to fight the battle, but we know the war has already been won.

Philip Yancey recounts the story of a German prison camp in World War II. Unbeknownst to the German guards, the American POWs had built a makeshift radio. One day news came that German high command had surrendered, ending the war – a fact that, because of a communication breakdown, the German guards did not yet know. As word spread among the prisoners, a loud celebration broke out. For three days, the prisoners were hardly recognizable. They sang and waved at the guards, laughed at the guard dogs and joked over meals. On the fourth day, they awoke to find that all the Germans had fled, leaving the gates unlocked. The time of waiting had come to an end.

Yancey asks this question: “As we Christians face contemporary crises, why do we respond with such fear and anxiety? Why don’t we, like the Allied prisoners, act on the Good News we say we believe? What is faith, after all, but believing in advance what will only make sense in reverse?”

Say: God is here!

Love Grows Along the Path of Obedience

There are a lot of people, more than would care to admit it, who have gotten what they know about Love and Life from pop songs and television shows. Could I suggest that maybe those are not the best sources for information on Love and Life? Most of what we hear about Love is garbage. It’s time to sift through the refuse and hold on to what is true and pure.

John the Apostle writes in chapter four of this letter,

“Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. . .”

Because we have been fed less than stellar stuff on love by our culture, we have get behind the words here. Is John telling us to be nice to each other? Is he telling us to feel a certain way? Well, he may be, but he is telling us more than that. In fact, John makes it clear what he means by loving each other.

“By this we may be sure that we know God, if we keep his commandments. He who says “I know him” but disobeys his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him.” 2.3-4

“By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments.” 5.2-3

The one who loves, obeys.
When you choose to love someone you choose to voluntarily limit yourself. You limit our options and your freedom. This is not imposed on you. You impose it on yourself, because of love. The person who will never receive correction, never compromise, never submit in obedience is a person who does not love, or maybe, loves no one but themselves.

This is a lesson that we strive to teach our children. When the parent took the paddle to the child, the old saw went, “Son, this hurts me more than it hurts you.” In other words, I’m doing this difficult thing to help you. You’ll thank me later.” We provide boundaries and rules for our kids when they are too young to provide them for themselves. Every home needs boundaries and rules.

Cesar Millan has proven that. Do you know who he is? Cesar Millan talks to dogs. He is the Dog Whisperer. Millan is called that because he seems to have an almost supernatural ability to communicate and train problem dogs. Millan says that often, where there is a problem dog, there are problem people. Millan was called into the home of a Chihuahua named Bandit. He was a little thing but he was a terror, threatening people and other dogs. His owner was Lori who had a husband and a son. Lori would let Bandit sleep under her shirt every night. Millan asked Lori if her husband was okay with that. Her reply was, “Well, he is our baby.” Lori had Bandit on her lap and her son, Tyler, was sitting next to her. Tyler reached over to try to pet Bandit and Bandit lept up and attacked the boy, snapping and growling. Lori reached out and held the dog and caressed him soothingly.

At this point, Millan took charge. “Enough with the dogs attacking humans and nobody really blocking him.. The dog is only becoming more narcissistic. It is all about him. He owns you.” Millan was angry now. “It seems like you are favoring the dog. If Tyler kicked your dog you would correct him. The dog is biting your son, and you are not correcting the dog. . .I love dogs. I’m the dog whisperer. You follow what I’m saying? But I would never choose a dog over my son.”

We’ve grown afraid of discipline. We don’t discipline ourselves and we don’t expect discipline out of others. We have a muddled notion that somehow all discipline is cruel and unloving. Discipline and obedience are not the opposites of love but in fact, when used properly, the very expression of Love. Jesus tells a story about a father and two sons. The father went to the first son and said, “Son, go work in my vineyard today.” The son answered, “No thanks dad. I have other things to do.” But then, the son later changed his mind and went and did the work. The father went to the second son and said the same and the second son answered, “Yes, certainly I will go father,” but then never showed up for the work. “Which of these two sons,” Jesus asks, “did the will of his father?”


Notice that Love and Obedience do not depend on how we feel in a given moment. Sometimes the choice of obedience is a painful one. But that is sign, not of disapproval or aggression, but of care and love.


“It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? . . . for the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant; later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.” Hebrews 12.7,11

We are trained by obedience. Sort of like a dog. But don’t let that notion offend you. Most everything that is good is worth training for. We who have been born into this nature bent on sinning have been precondition, pretrained, to be selfish and disobedient to God and to others. We need retrained in Kingdom values and Kingdom living. Eugene Peterson writes that what is needed is “a long obedience in the same direction.” He borrowed the phrase from Nietzsche, of all people. The quote is this:

“The essential thing “in heaven and earth” is. . . that there should be long obedience in the same direction; there thereby results, and has always resulted in the long run, something which has made life worth living.”

Peterson adds this from Jeremiah, “If you have raced with men on foot, and they have wearied you, how will you compete with horses?”

Our world has this assumption that anything worthwhile can be acquired at once. We assume that if something can be done at all, it can be done quickly and efficiently. Our attention spans have been conditioned by thirty-second commercials. But who will take the path of a long obedience in the direction that Jesus leads us?

“Do not love the world or the things in the world. . .for all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world passes away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides for ever.” 1 John 2.15-17


John’s letter, like Paul’s to the Corinthians, ought to be known as “the Love Letter.” John teaches us that daily obedience and responsibility to God and others is the way of love. Obedience teaches us more about love than any emotion, poem, song, card, or oath. Picking up dirty socks. Picking up milk. Extending patient courtesy, showing honor and respect – these are the building blocks of Love. These are Cupid’s arrows. A wise man once wrote, “It is not Love that sustains a marriage. It is the marriage that will sustain your Love.” Ted Haggard was a successful pastor of evangelical megachurch. He was president of the National Association of Evangelicals. Lots of important people listened to what Haggard had to say. But Haggard was living a secret life of adultery and drugs. It his sin, as sin always does, came out. Haggard’s world came crashing down. But a couple years removed from this meltdown, Haggard and his wife appeared on Oprah the other day and talked about how they have learned to love and trust each other again. Haggard said, “I don’t ask my wife to trust me blindly. I have to earn her trust.” And he went on to list some of the rules and boundaries he lives by now. He was careful to add, “these are not imposed on me by my wife, like a sentence. I freely choose to do them out of love for her and she for me.”

The point of boundaries and rules are not the rules themselves, but the kind of person they are helping us become. Dallas Willard asks these two questions when he wants to measure his spiritual health:

“Am I growing more or less easily irritated these days?”
“Am I growing more or less easily discouraged these days?”

There is a pain and duty in obedience. But the person who commits their way to the long obedience finds that duty yields deeper and richer experiences in life. Joy shines through this path. Duty becomes delight.

Build Community

Show video clip “the awe factor of God” from crazylovebook.com



“When I look at the heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast established; what is man that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that thou dost care for him? Psalm 8.3-4


I am a speck in the universe. What am I that the Creator of the Universe should notice me at all? There is an old philosophical question, “How angels can sit on the head of a pin?”. Maybe the miracle is all these people on a planet the size of a pinhead in the needle of a galaxy in the haystack of the universe. To think of the shear numbers of stars and galaxies in the universe boggles the mind. My mind is boggled.

Here’s a number – seventy. Seventy was a symbolic number for the Jews. Seventy was the number of elders chosen to help Moses with the task of leading and directing the people in the wilderness. Seventy was the number of the Sanhedrin, the supreme council of the Jews. And seventy was, at that time, held to be the number of nations in the world. The seventy disciples sent is connected in Luke with the mission of the Good News of Jesus Christ for the whole world.

There is an interesting side note here. One of the towns on which woe is pronounced is Chorazin. It is implied that Jesus did many mighty works there. Yet Chorazin is never mentioned in the gospel history outside of this reference. We do not know one thing that he did there or one word that he spoke. This vividly demonstrates that there is so much of Jesus life that we don’t know. And at the end of his gospel John says this – “You would need a world full of libraries to contain all the books that could be written on His life.” The gospels are not biographies but merely sketches of his life.

Think about how many lives Jesus impacted with his message. He started his public ministry and gathered twelve disciples, twelve men he would invest most of his time with. That number twelve is also an important number. Twelve has psychological and relational force. For example, think of a list of people whose death would leave you truly devastated. Chances are you will come up with around twelve names. At least, that’s the average answer that most people give to that question. Psychologists call that our Sympathy Group. Why isn’t that group larger? Because twelve is the number of people you can probably be very good friends with. To be a good friend to someone requires a minimum investment in time, and additionally it requires an emotional investment as well. Caring about someone deeply is exhausting. Twelve is also our Relational Group, Our Friend Group. Twelve is the number of a Small Group.

Our church has a Facebook Group. Facebook is an enormously popular social networking site. It feels like it’s been around a long time but actually only started in 2004. I know someone who has 696 “friends” on Facebook. Does this person really have 696 friends? Well, no. She probably has around 12 friends and she has many more acquaintances and people that she doesn’t have time and energy for. (When my sister created her Facebook account she got a screen that said, “You have zero friends.” That can be dispiriting. Good news – she has since found many friends.) The outsized number of friends listed on Facebook for many folks does say how connectional our lives are; how the twelve people you know are strongly connected to twelve others, and so on and so on. You can multiply the numbers out to the point where you get lost and feel insignificant. Or, you can consider how relationally potent you can be. You are the connection between so many people in your community and your world. In fact, in one sense, “your world” is you because you are the glue that holds it together. Have you heard of the game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon? The idea behind the game is to try to link any actor or actress, through the movies they’ve been in, to the actor Kevin Bacon in less than six steps. So for example, O.J. Simpson was in Naked Gun with Priscilla Presley, who was in Ford Fairlane with Gilbert Gottfried, who was in Beverly Hills Cop II with Paul Reiser, who was in Diner with Kevin Bacon. That’s four steps. You could almost play this game with yourself and the people that you know who know others who know others. It’s Six Degrees of You.

What does this matter? You are a relational force for the Kingdom. You are an army of One. And if we use the authority and power given to us in the Holy Spirit to live and proclaim the Gospel then we will impact our community.

Now, when the seventy were sent out, they went as taught, prayed for, and trained disciples. They were the beginnings of what would be realized in more fullness in the Holy Spirit-baptized Church that we find in Acts 2, of whom it was written:

“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” Acts 2.42

The Church from the very beginning was a relational force of small groups for spiritual formation and a larger worshipping community. By living in the power of the Spirit they made new converts every day – “every day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.” (2.48) These people experienced the awe and wonder of God in their midst together.

The Seventy in Luke’s Gospel experienced the same kind of thing on a smaller scale. They came back to Jesus lit up with joy. They never expected such power to change lives and to affect the spiritual and eternal realm. Jesus confirms that they are doing Kingdom work, cosmic work.

“I watched Satan fall from heaven like lightning. See I have given you authority. . .over all the power of the enemy; and nothing will hurt you.” Luke 10.19


We have the power to change lives. We have the power to affect eternity. But do we have the urgency that lives are at stake? Will we commit to the training and the doing that it takes to become a relational force for the Kingdom? Or will we be like the people of Chorazin who ignored the visitation of Christ among them?

Are you in a class or small group where you are learning and growing and serving? We’ve made it pretty easy for you to be in one. We now average roughly 100 people involved in small groups. That’s about half of our worshipping attendance. Our goal is to have every one in the church be in a small group. We can do it. It’s achievable. But we need the disconnected to connect. We need you to carve out an hour in your week to give to a group of fellow travelers on the Journey. See what happens if you do it. See what happens if we get a hundred percent participation. I know what will happen – people will come to Jesus; lives will be changed. We’ll experience Awe and Wonder. Didn’t Jesus come to bring us a sense of wonder about life?

I want to close with a testimony that perhaps you’ve heard before. It’s called One Solitary Life.

He was born in an obscure village, a child of a peasant woman.
He worked in a carpenter shop until he was thirty.
Then he became an itinerant preacher.
He never wrote a book.
He never held an office.
He never did one thing that usually accompanies greatness.
He had no credentials but himself.
While still a young man, public opinion turned against him.
His friends ran away.
One denied him.
He went through the mockery of a trial.
He was nailed to a cross between two thieves.
His executioners gambled for his only piece of property – his coat.
He was laid in a borrowed grave.
Nineteen wide centuries have come and gone.
Today he is the centerpiece of the human race.
All the armies that ever marched,
All the navies that ever sailed,
All the parliaments that ever sat,
And all the kings that ever reigned put together,
Have not affected the life man upon this earth as powerfully as that
One solitary life.

Rebuilding Trust: Trust Others

I went over to the Altoona Hospital the other day to see someone. I drove into the parking garage and I could tell it was a busy day. I ascended the levels looking for the first open space. I got about midway up the garage when I thought I spied an open space ahead on the left. As I pulled closer I saw there was no car in the space but there was something in the space - an old lady was standing at the head of the space. She stood there firm and proud, reserving the space for someone. She stood with her cane firmly in spot, like a climber planting a flag on the top of some mountain peak. Have you ever watched a show or movie where someone is driving a car but they look at something on the sidewalk and the camera slows the action down so whatever is on the sidewalk can been seen clearly – as I drove slowly by the space and looked at the old lady, she did this (eyes close, shaking her head no).

Apparently she looked at me and decided it wasn’t enough that she was standing in the space, she felt she needed to do this. She didn’t like the look of me. So I keep driving up the garage to the top, turn around and start back down and find a guy pulling out of a space. I sit there and wait and then start to pull when someone tears around the corner and slides into the space ahead of me! When it comes to spaces in a parking garage, courtesy and trust, well, they have to wait their turn like everyone else.

We’ve been talking about trust this month. When trust is broken - and we’ve all broken trust and had trust broken with us – we must change to become trustworthy persons. That’s the first step. The next step is to take steps to trust others. It’s been said that liars are always accusing others of lying. Likewise, untrustworthy people often have trouble trusting others; because they know what they themselves have done.

It’s not easy to learn to trust again. When things have been broken it’s hard to see how they can be whole again. G.K. Chesterton said, “When you break the Big Laws, you don’t get freedom. You don’t even get anarchy. You get the small laws.”

He is saying that our first response to distrust is to make more rules, rules that were once not necessary. When I registered for annual conference the other year, Jason Garman was going as a youth delegate. I inquired if I could have Jason Garman room with me. The lady in charge of room arrangements said that we couldn’t do that because of Jason’s age. Because of Safe Sanctuary Policy Jason couldn’t room with me, an adult, but had to stay with the youth delegation. I understood the policy. Because Big Laws had been broken, I had to abide by small laws.

In Matthew 7 Jesus is reaching the climax of his teaching opus, the Sermon on the Mount. In this sermon he is teaching what the kingdom is and how to live in it. As Stanley Hauerwas notes, there is no difference between what Jesus teaches and who He is. And clearly, to be his person and live in the kingdom, you have to forgive and trust.

“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get.” Matt. 7.1-2

Jesus is diagnosing the human condition in which we habitually respond to critique and judgment with a counterattack of criticism and judgment. On American Idol the other night a man was interviewed just before he auditioned for the judges and in this interview the man expressed his excitement and his admiration for the judges, especially for Mary J. Blige, was a great singer and star she was. The contestant also said he welcomed their suggestions and he was a person that was very accepting of constructive criticism. Well, you know where this is going. His audition for the judges didn’t do very well, and when they suggested he wasn’t good enough and had work to do, he got very defensive and angry. And cursed the judges and went on to say they didn’t know what they were talking about. He said Mary J. Blige couldn’t sing herself!

Most people have responded to criticism this way at one time or another. The only way to avoid the “reciprocity of condemnation” as Dallas Willard puts it, is to refuse to play the game. This is what Jesus is telling us. Forget about the character faults you see in your sister until you get a new heart for yourself. Families can be particularly hard on one another.

“Most families would be healthier and happier if their members treated one another with the respect they would give to a perfect stranger.” Dallas Willard

The decision to trust another person is a decision not only to put away vengeance and anger, (which are best left up to God), but a decision to extend yourself in love. Love extends outward. Love becomes vulnerable.

“Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.” 1 Corinthians 13.7-8

Jesus taught and modeled this. He shared his life with his disciples. He trusted the witness of the gospel and his mission with seventy disciples. In Matthew 10 you can read how he sent them out.

“See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” Matthew 10.16

What does it mean to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves? You extend yourself in Love and make yourself vulnerable, knowing that you may suffer because of it. You risk something because you believe that people that Jesus died for are worth the risk for you too. Trusting others doesn’t mean you become foolish. You don’t loan money to a compulsive gambler. You don’t bare your soul in confidence to a gossip. Be wise (as serpents) in the ways of people in this world. Don’t rashly throw your pearls before swine.

But having said this, remember the power of Love. And remember that Love trusts. Steven Covey tells about a hotdog vendor in a city who did a good business in the busy downtown. People stood in lines at lunchtime waiting to buy a couple hot ones and hurry on their way. The vendor noticed that at times the lines were so long that people would leave. He was losing business because he couldn’t keep up. So he came up with an answer. He wouldn’t worry about taking their money. He put out a basket with a sign that asked them to make their own change. He would just focus on cooking and serving the product. He trusted his customers. And what happened? His profits soared. He found that often people would leave more than the cost of the hotdog. People responded generously to his trust.

Dallas Willard talks about the Unity of Spiritual Orientation. He says that we must realize that deep in our spirits we cannot have one posture toward God a different one toward other people.

“There are few one-way streets in the kingdom: for example, God forgives me but I do not forgive, or Jesus confesses his friendship to me before the heavenly company but I do not own him before those less glorious ones around me, and so on.”

The same applies to trust. Trust can not long stay a one-way street. It must run both ways. The great news is our experience of trust can be like what that hotdog vendor experienced only much more personally with much greater reward than mere money. I’m talking about healed relationships and changed lives. We can rebuild trust and see the power of love in new ways. The God of love works to make this happen. And his love never fails.

Trust Yourself

Show the Fray video “You Found Me.”

We live in a culture of seeming contradictions. People consider themselves spiritual and yet don’t want anything to do with church. Rick Richardson talks about a pastor friend of his who went to work at a Starbucks simply to meet unchurched people. What he found out surprised him. The first surprise was that all twenty-one people he worked with believed in God. They all considered themselves spiritual persons. The second surprise was that they were all interested in spiritual things but not in Christians, Christianity, or the church. Rick’s friend soon found out that all of these people had experienced a breach of trust somewhere along the way in relation to Christianity.

One day Rick’s friend asked a coworker about her feelings about a relationship with God. She looked at him and then blurted out: “I want to know where God was when I was fourteen and somebody raped me.”

What can you say in a moment like that? Nothing. But, we can learn that rebuilding trust in God, in Christians, in the church, in ourselves requires time and patience and effort. And that’s what I want to talk about today.

Begin rebuilding trust by trusting yourself. Let’s pause a moment. Let’s be still and know that I’m not God. When I said, “trust yourself,” some of you may have thought, yeah that’s true; I need to trust myself. But others of you thought that’s the stupidest things I ever heard. I got into most of the junk in my life because I trusted myself. And myself is the wrong person to trust. You are right, of course. Our fundamental problem is that we can’t be trusted, as we are. But the hope of the Gospel is that we can be changed. We can be changed into persons that are trustworthy.

We begin this process of change by keeping commitments to ourselves and to God. We must shape our souls and persons with the practices and disciplines that will produce not just superficial or even felt change, but real change.

Homer Simpson, that thoroughly contemporary man, has faced this problem countless times in his life. He wants a better life but realizes that he is the biggest obstacle in the way. In one episode of the Simpsons, Homer is having chest pains and Dr. Hibbert tells him that there is a serious concern. “Mr. Simpson you need to lose weight, start eating right, and start exercising.” Homer’s response to this is classic:

“Yeah, but whaddya gonna do?”

Nobody, I mean nobody changes into the person they can be without practices and disciplines. This is especially true of the so-called “spiritual life.” In Acts 10 we read about a Roman soldier named Cornelius. We are told that Cornelius is,

“a devout man who fears God, as does his whole family.” Acts 10.2

Cornelius is a Gentile, a non-Jew. And yet he is exemplary in his religious devotion, a devotion to rival that of many Jews. We are told that he is a soldier, but not just any soldier. He is a member of an elite unit called the Italian Cohort. So he was accomplished. He was disciplined in his life. And this discipline was also evident in his religious devotion. By “devout”, the scripture doesn’t only mean that he “went to church” or that he felt spiritual but that he “gave alms (charitable giving) generously to the people and he prayed constantly to God.”

One day, Cornelius is praying. It’s about three in the afternoon. And he has this vision of an angel from God who speaks to him. Cornelius is probably almost as surprised as you or I would be.

“What is it, Lord?”

The angel answers – your prayers and your giving has not gone unnoticed before God.

This is an excellent word – when we enter into the way of seeking God intentionally through prayer and other spiritual practices, God notices. God does things. Do we believe this?

When we pray and read scripture and give and serve, well, what happens? God changes us and invites us into the work he is doing. In Cornelius case, he becomes the one who helps change Peter’s mind about the mission of the Gospel. It’s the most extensive story in the book of Acts. Without Cornelius, Peter never takes the Gospel beyond the Jews. Maybe there is no missionary Church. Maybe you and I aren’t sitting here today. All because one man decided it was important to pray and to give, day after day, year after year.

There is a scene in the film, Behind Enemy Lines, in which a navy pilot by the name of Burnett turns in a request for transfer to his superior officer. The Admiral, played by Gene Hackman, calls him into his office and asks him why. Burnett responds that he thinks all the endless drills and schedules and preparations are boring and meaningless. He signed up to go fight somebody. But nothing is happening. He wants out.

The Admiral responds that the drills and discipline that he calls boring is the very thing that prepares him and makes him ready when the real fight comes.

Not much good happens without practice and discipline. We know this is true in the military. We know this is true in sports, in music, in academics. But for some reason we don’t give it much due when it comes to religion and spirituality. We want everything to be mystery and forgiveness and feel good story. Religion, at least the Christian religion, contains those things, but is essentially more than those things. C.S. Lewis uses the example of nature. Most spiritual people get a mystical feeling from nature. But Lewis writes:


We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us
Fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all
The leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it
Will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in. When
Human souls have become as perfect in voluntary obedience as the
Inaminate creation is in its lifeless obedience, then they will put on its glory
, or rather the great glory of which Nature is only the first sketch.


Lewis says that we are on the outside looking in when it comes to how things ought to be. We can be inspired by nature or music or books; but it is the practicing of the presence of God, the living of a devout life, that helps us enter into the life of the Holy Spirit. What did John the Baptist say? Hey, I’m baptizing you with water but He, He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.

Following Jesus by engaging in regular spiritual practices immerses us in the life of the Spirit. We get in tune with what God is doing around us and in us. Don’t you think God is rooting for us to live this way? Don’t you think his Holy Spirit power is at the ready, waiting for us to pray, just like Cornelius did?

We maybe have wasted a lot time and opportunity in our lives. Maybe we should be a lot further along in this spiritual journey than we are. But we can’t go back and get that. We start where we are. We start by doing. Maybe we don’t feel it. Maybe we only half believe it. But if we start doing it, we may just find a person that we can trust.

Will you begin to arrange your life around the activities that Jesus did? Will you begin to do the things that every spiritually mature Christian has always done? Will you immerse yourself in the Jesus Way? Will you put in the effort it takes to become trustworthy again?

Rebuilding Trust: Something’s Broken

Gallup just came out with their poll for 2009 of most trusted professions. Nurses top the list again, followed by pharmacists, high school teachers, medical doctors, policemen, clergy, and . . .who cares after that. I just wanted to say clergy. That was pretty much the top tier. The middle tier includes journalists, contractors, and real estate agents. The bottom tier has the usual suspects – lawyers, congressmen, used car salesmen, and below that, telemarketers and lobbyists.

Keep in mind, this poll is the results of a phone survey asking for people’s opinions and perceptions. This doesn’t mean that car salesmen or telemarketers are untrustworthy. And it doesn’t mean that all nurses or pharmacists are highly ethical. But the poll does say a lot about our perceived level of trust in different professions. Do you know which profession took the biggest hit in trust from last year to this year? Bankers. The events of the last year or two continue to have ramifications.

Who do you trust? I asked this question on Christmas Eve because it’s an important one. Trust begins and ends with God. The question is not just, “Do we believe in God?” but, “Do we trust in God?” Trust is stronger than belief. Because our understanding of belief is often no more than “give mental assent to.” Our idea of belief is watered down from what the Bible says believing is. It’s probably more helpful to us if we talk about trust. Trust is really what the Lord is asking of us.

But as we also mentioned, trust gets broken in this broken-down world. You don’t have to look to a national villain like Bernie Madoff or Eliot Spitzer – we can find broken trust in our own lives. What do we do when someone breaks trust?

Last week we mentioned how Jacob, son of Isaac, went to his kinsman Laban’s country and there saw Laban’s daughter Rachel and instantly fell in love. Rachel was the most beautiful woman Jacob had ever seen. Jacob told himself that he was going to marry this girl. And indeed he did. But it didn’t happen the way he planned. Laban manipulated young Jacob, mostly because he could. Jacob was so full of raging desire that he would do anything. We have a saying for someone who has fallen in love: “he worships the ground she walks on.” How destructive this can be when it is literally true. Jacob was looking to Rachel to be his Savior. So Laban tricked him into working seven years to earn the right to marry Rachel, and then Laban tricked him into marrying Rachel’s older sister, Leah, first.

Don’t pity Jacob too much. Remember who he was and what he had done. Jacob had himself tricked his brother and father out of the family inheritance. Jacob had lied and tricked his way to get advantage. Sometimes we read the Bible very simplistically. We look for the Bible heroes and we declare them utterly good or utterly bad. But our Bible heroes do some bad things sometimes, like lie, cheat, steal, kill, commit adultery. We shouldn’t consider that these things are now good because Bible people did them. We should understand the Bible tells the story because it happened. And then the Bible shows us how God will redeem and bless, not the sin, but the sinners. Jacob and his family had some problems that would continue to fester in the next generation.

The best thing that could have happened to young Jacob was for his parents, Isaac and Rebekah, to say Stop – you lied and cheated. We don’t do things that way. We are a family. Let’s try this again. But they didn’t say that because Rebekah had been complicit in the trickery.

Are there lies and wrong behavior that we tolerate in our own families? The effect of lies swept under the rug is to chip away at the foundation of trust that families and relationships absolutely need. Weakened trust in relationships is like a weakened immune system in the body – we become more susceptible to all kinds of sickness.

Frederick Buechner is known as a great writer who happens to be a Christian. Buechner’s faith comes through his writing, especially when he talks about his own life. And it is also clear that his faith has been hard won. Buechner’s father was an alcoholic who committed suicide. Immediately after his father’s death, his mother whisked him out of state to start somewhere else. They didn’t even stay for the funeral. What’s more, Buechner’s mother didn’t talk about his father and wouldn’t allow him to do so either. Buechner soon realized that his father was not the only one in the family who had problems. He looks back on what he couldn’t have understood as a child, that covering up problems only makes them worse.

“We not only have secrets,” Buechner writes, “we are our secrets.”

Every family and relationship has problems and areas to work on. And it would be a big mistake to think that you can fix people like you can fix a car. That is the way of legalism. And it is deadly.

I get tired realizing that the “work” of spiritual growth in myself and in my family never ends. The need to grow doesn’t end with the year. It doesn’t take a holiday. We must be persistent especially with the poor attitudes and behaviors that seem rooted in us.

One mother decreed to her family that she was no longer writing thank you notes on their behalf. They could write their own. The immediate impact of this was that grandmother didn’t receive thank you notes for the generous checks she had written to her grandchildren. The next year, things were different

“The children came over in person to thank me,” grandma enthusiastically told a friend. “How wonderful!” the friend replied. “What brought on that change?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” grandma responded. “This year I didn’t sign their checks.”

Naming the problem and refusing to enable the problem can have remarkable results. But our problems are rarely solved this easily.



Look at what Jacob did to his new family. He has two wives but not enough wisdom and love for even one. Leah, especially, suffered for this. She was used to being ignored by people as they fawned over her beautiful sister Rachel. But that couldn’t have lessened the sting as her father bartered to get her thrown in the deal of Jacob and Rachel’s marriage. Leah was the girl nobody wanted.

“Jacob loved Rachel more than Leah.” Genesis 29.30

Leah had a hole in her heart as big as the one Jacob had. And just as Jacob idolized the beautiful Rachel, and pinned all his hopes on her, Leah began to do the same with Jacob. She made her life trying to get her husband to love her. Listen to what is surely one of the most plaintive passages in the Bible.

“When the Lord saw that Leah was unloved, he opened her womb; but Rachel was barren. Leah conceived and bore a son, and she named him Reuben; for she said, “Because the Lord has looked on my affliction; surely now my husband will love me.”

Leah kept on bearing children, having sons, each time thinking that this time, Jacob will love me instead of Rachel. But Jacob never does. Leah experiences a lesson we all must learn in life, and that is that this life is bound to disappoint. Leah was made with a heart to love and be loved, but life broke trust with Leah. It happened with her father. And it happened with her husband. The men in her life kept letting her down. Few could blame her if she ended up bitter and angry at her lot.

But Leah chose a different way. She learned something. She is the only person in this story to show spiritual growth. When she had her fourth son her attitude was different.

She said, “This time I will praise the Lord.” No more praise for Jacob. No more pleading and longing for his love. This time Leah will look to the God of her hope who is personal and gracious. She gave her heart finally to the Lord. And in so doing she got her life back. God not only changed Leah but did something very significant for her. She may have had an intuition that God had done something special with the gift of this child. The writer of Genesis knew it. This child was Judah and in Genesis 49 we are told that through Judah the true King and Messiah will someday come. God had come to the girl nobody wanted, the unloved, and made her the ancestral mother of Jesus.

As Timothy Keller writes, “Salvation came into the world, not through beautiful Rachel, but through the unwanted one, the unloved one.” God loved Leah. He is saying I am the real bridegroom. I am the husband of the husbandless. I am the father of the fatherless.


When trust has been broken, can it be rebuilt again? God says yes.
When we realize that something is broken in us then we are ready to take the first steps with him.

Trust

Here is a picture of a hopeful, innocent child. He’s a good-looking guy, isn’t he? I look at this picture and think of all the potential that was there. What could he have been? How could he have used his time when the years were stretching out before him, inviting him like a new found friend?

I probably will never know what could have been. But instead of regret, I give gratitude for what is. Who can wash away my sin? Who can make me whole again? That boy is gone and all that remains is a man in middle age. What happened to me and I think what happens to all of us to some degree is that we experience love and loss, trust and distrust. We succeed and we fail. We let people down. People let us down.

Growing up on Newberry Street we didn’t have a lot and it seemed like the things we asked for as kids were mostly out of reach. Our requests were most often met with this answer by my mother, “Well, we’ll see.” Can we ask the neighbor to let us swim in their pool? We’ll see. Can we get pizza tonight? We’ll see. It used to exasperate my siblings and me. Sometimes we got what we wanted. Many times we didn’t. The unintended lesson that we were taught about life was Don’t Get Your Hopes Up.

Ray Romano tells the story of how he started out doing stand-up comedy. He was in his late twenties, living in his parent’s basement in Jersey when he went to a comedy club in the city that was having amateur night. Romano tried it and he was a hit. So he went to another club and did it again. But this time he bombed. He said it was one-thirty in the morning and the last two people in his audience got up and walked out on him. He felt humiliated. So he went home and woke his mom and dad and asked them, “How could you guys walk out on me like that?”

Life humbles you. People disappoint. And somewhere in there we start to lose trust.

There is something about Christmas that reveals this broken trust. I just heard somewhere that divorce lawyers experience their busiest time right after Christmas. Maybe Christmas builds our hopes up too much – maybe we shouldn’t get our hopes up. Maybe we shouldn’t trust.

But something bad happens to us when we lose the ability to trust. We find cheap substitutes. When we stop trusting God and hoping in life, we begin to make idols instead. The Bible teaches us that the human heart is an idol factory. We can make idols out of money, people, sex, power, anything. Timothy Keller writes, “Anything can be an idol and everything has been.” What is an idol? It is anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give.

Abraham was a man called by God who left home and family to go to another country. According to the Bible, God came to Abraham and made him a huge promise, if you follow me faithfully I will bless all the nations of the earth through you and your descendants. This suited Abraham just fine. Like any patriarch of his day he wanted a son and heir to carry on the family name. But as the years stretched into decades, Abraham and his wife Sarah experienced the pain that any couple struggling with infertility can attest to. God’s spectacular promise became difficult to believe. Finally, after Abraham was over 100 years old and Sarah was over 90, she gave birth to a son, Isaac. It was pretty miraculous. And so, his name meant laughter, referring to their difficulty in believing the promise and their joy in seeing the promise fulfilled. It’s safe to say, both Abraham and Sarah loved Isaac, but especially Abraham. Abraham’s years of waiting had been rewarded. His patience had refined him in crucial ways.

But there was this question – had Abraham been waiting and sacrificing for God or for the boy? Was God just a means to an end? Had he learned to trust God alone, and love God for himself, not just for what he could get out of God? No, not yet.

Many couples think that having a child will bring unremitting happiness, love to a rocky marriage, the answer to all their problems. Abraham must have thought, I will be happy for the rest of my life. But God was about to call on Abraham again, and it could not have been more shocking.

“Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.”
Genesis 22.2

God could not have asked for anything more precious to Abraham. Isaac was everything to him. His happiness and meaning in life were bound up in his son. Was God saying to Abraham you can’t love your son? No, not at all. But you must not make an idol of your son. Any parent who does that hurts themselves and smothers their child. Many people have objected to this story over the years, saying it is irrational, it makes no sense. But in a certain sense, it does. In an individualistic culture like ours, a person’s sense of worth is often bound up in skills and achievements. But in ancient times, all the hopes and dreams of a family rested in the firstborn son. The call to give up a firstborn son is like a surgeon giving up the use of his hands or an artist losing their sight. That’s why God’s judgment on Egypt in the time of Israel’s captivity would be so severe. The firstborn’s lives were forfeit because of the sins of the families and nations. Why? The firstborn was the family.

So when Abraham heard God this time, he was shocked, knocked over. But he was not uncomprehending. God was not asking him to go over to Isaac’s tent and murder him. God was saying make a burnt offering of him. God was calling in Abraham’s sin debt. His son was going to die for the sins of the family. Abraham comprehended but that did not make the command less horrible. Abraham must have been thinking, God promised to bless all nations through my descendants. But if I do this thing, how will this be? How can God be both holy and just and still graciously fulfill his promise to me. Abraham didn’t know. But he went. He was like another Old Testament figure, Job, who was tested in countless ways with no explanation. Job says this about the Lord,
“He knows what he is doing with me, and when he has tested me, I will come forth as pure gold.” Job 23.10

Abraham went up that mountain with his son. It wasn’t with willpower. It wasn’t with crazy, blind faith. He didn’t say I can do it. He said rather, God will do it, though I don’t know how. He said to himself, “I know God is both holy and gracious. I don’t know how he is going to be both – but I know he will.”

“When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son.” Genesis 22.9-10

And the voice of God called out in that moment - Abraham! Abraham! Stop. Do not touch the boy. Now I know you fear God.

What is this all about? It is a test, not of fear, but of love. That’s really what “fear of God” in the Bible means. To fear God is to be whole-heartedly committed to Him. Abraham proved more to himself maybe than needed to be proved to God, that he truly loved God above all. Walking up that mountain with Isaac was the last agonizing stage in a journey that God had used to turn Abraham from an average man to a great man, a man from whom over half of the human race would claim as their spiritual father.

Is coming to church a pure expression of our love and trust in God? Or is God a means to some other end for us? These are murky waters.

To say you ought to love God too is not the freshest message you ever heard. You know this. The problem is many people cannot find any feeling of love for God in them selves. And they don’t know what to do. As C.S. Lewis writes:

“The answer is the same as before. Act as if you did. Do not sit trying to manufacture feelings. Ask yourself, ‘If I were sure that I loved God, what would I do? When you have found the answer, go and do it. . .He will give us feelings of love if He pleases. We cannot create them for ourselves, and we must demand them as a right. But the great thing to remember is that, though our feelings come and go, His love for us does not. It is not wearied by our sins, or our indifference; and, therefore, it is quite relentless in its determination that we shall be cured of those sins, at whatever cost to us, at whatever cost to Him.” Lewis, Mere Christianity

But what happened to Abraham’s sin and the sin of the family? A substitute for Isaac was provided in the form of a ram. But did the ram’s blood wash away Abraham’s sin. No. Many years later, in those same mountains, another firstborn son was stretched out on wood to die. But there on Mount Calvary, when the beloved son of God cried out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” there was no voice from heaven announcing deliverance. God paid the price for everyone’s sin by giving up his own son.

Before that son died, he was born to a young virgin who was not expecting to have a child so soon. And when she was told the manner in which she would conceive, surely, this was even harder to believe for her than the promise made to Abraham and Sarah. But that young virgin believed and treasured those things in her heart. And then she obeyed. She trusted. She said, I don’t know how God is going to do this, but I know he will.

I don’t know how you have been disappointed in life. I don’t know when you lost trust. But I know that we must begin and end by trusting God. Maybe you need to take your own walk up into the mountains. Maybe you need to identify your “Isaacs.” Maybe you need to say to God, “I see that you may be calling me to live my life without something I never thought I could live without. But if I have you, I have the only wealth, health, love, honor, and security I really need and cannot lose.”

You don’t realize Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have. My Christmas wish for all of you is Jesus. Nothing more, nothing less.