What's Good About Winter?

    Winter: it’s long, cold and dark. I know, we are still in the fun part with Christmas lights and all, but January is around the corner. The temptation is to just endure the season and long for April and May (though we had snow last April!).
    But it doesn’t have to be that way. Thinking back, some of my most memorable times in life took place during the winter. Linda and I were engaged in the winter. I built our first house in the winter. Our youngest child was born in the winter. I first came into contact with the search committee of The Bridge (then Des Plaines Bible Church) in the winter.
    Wouldn’t it be better to make the best of the season? Well, how?
    A journalist recently hit the streets and asked people what they enjoyed most about the season. Here are some of the answers:
    “Football playoffs and bowl games.”
    “Reading by the fireplace on our living room couch.”
    “Skiiing!”
    “Shoveling snow.” (You might think that was a joke, but he was serious!)
    “Putting on warm clothes.”
    “Hot cocoa or apple cider.”
    “Ice fishing.”
    “I love the excitement of a blizzard or snow storm.”
    “Going to the beach in South Florida.” (My favorite)
    “Snow days off school!”
    “Crisp, clean, fresh air and crunchy snow.”
    “Museums––we never go when it’s warm out.”
    “I don’t.” (HA!–he wouldn’t budge from his answer.)
    If you thought about it long enough, you could come up with your own list. There are a lot of good things about winter, including many of the above for me. It’s all part of God’s beautiful plan for the change of seasons. The air is cleansed, the soil is reconditioned, and life is reset to get ready for the coming spring. So rather than enduring the season, make the best of it. Here are some suggestions:
    1) Set some goals for this winter and build a task list of projects you want to get accomplished before the weather turns warm again.
    2) Plan right now (and put on your calendar) some fun things to do that you wouldn’t normally enjoy in the summer. It might be driving to Wisconsin to do a little skiing, or maybe even to take snowboarding lessons (one of our fondest family memories when we did this together). How long has it been since you went to the Chicago museums? Rent skates and give ice skating a shot.
    3) When it snows, get out there in it! Build a snow man or snow fort with the kids, or if you don’t have any, join the neighbor kids! Enjoy a good snow-ball fight with your spouse. If you can't beat the weather, join it! Sure you’ll get a little cold. But that makes coming inside and heating up the tea kettle all the more pleasurable.
    4) Finally, winter can be a great time for rejuvenation. Find a couple of books you’ve been meaning to read and get started on them. Sleep more than you usually do. Try some writing; start a journal. Use the winter to defragment your hard drive, so to speak, and to gear up for coming spring.
    If you do the above things, you might wind up saying that winter is your favorite time of the year!
    Well….let’s not get carried away. ☺

What Are You Doing for Christmas?

    Here it is….Christmas season! Are you ready? Decorations up? Gift list completed? Shopping started? Plans for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day settled? Let’s talk about that.
    While most everyone talks about Christ being left out of Christmas, I find that Christians are as guilty of that as anyone. While we say Christmas is about Jesus’ birth, we get our kids more excited about the myth of Santa than we do about the truth of Jesus (and in doing so causing a lot of later doubts–see my blog dated November 29, 2009). We cook a big meal, have extended family in, and then claim to not have enough time to honor Jesus’s birth and worship with our Christian family on Christmas Eve. We overextend ourselves with plastic credit, buying things that no one really needs for people who don’t really have needs, but give virtually nothing tangible to Him for His work at that time of the year. Yet, we still claim our celebration is all about Jesus. Is it really? Does He think it is?
    So if we are going to keep Christ in Christmas, what is that going to look like?
    First, find a way a to be Jesus to those who need Him. Look for creative ideas to be a blessing to some who are struggling. It might mean calling a couple of nursing homes to find a few people who rarely if ever have visitors. It might be volunteering for the Salvation Army or at the children’s hospital. We have a hats, mittens & scarves give-away for the homeless planned on the 17th. Join us! Maybe there are some at your workplace, neighborhood, or our church who have no family in the area and could be blessed by an invitation to join you and your family on Christmas Eve (for church as well as whatever else you have planned).
    And I do hope you are making plans to worship on either Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. It’s hard for us to say that we are celebrating Christ’s birth when we are spending all this energy, time and resources on a celebration and can’t find the time (or perhaps unwilling to make it a priority) to gather with His family to worship and remember the meaning of his birth. We have two fantastic Christmas Eve services planned here at The Bridge (4 p.m. & 6 p.m.).
    Here are a couple of other practical suggestions:

• Sit down as a family and write out your Christmas season priorities
• Decorate early and together….make it fun!
• Talk about the meaning and value of gift-giving (establish some guidelines)
• Research and tell the real story of Saint Nicholas (much better than the make-believe)
• Find a Christmas program at an area church and attend it
• Schedule time in the evenings leading up to and on Christmas Day to read portions of the prophecies of the Messiah and the story of His birth.

    More than anything keep the season as uncluttered as possible and talk about the meaning of Jesus’ birth wherever possible.
    It is a wonderful time of the year! Enjoy it!

Are Things as They Seem?

    They often are not. Really. I recently visited a couple of locations where television programs are regularly taped for the History Channel. I was surprised both times. Television can be very deceiving. Some of it is due to the nature of camera lenses and TV screens, and the way our imagination fills in what is past the camera’s periphery. But a lot of it is intentional deception written into the director’s instructions to give a desired illusion. All-in-all, these two locations were entirely different from what I had expected before arriving.
    It’s not only that way in television. I’ve known people on a professional level and became quite disillusioned as I got to know them personally. There have been some whom I respected in ministry leadership: pastors, parachurch heads, well known preachers, where I have felt completely let down once I got into their homes or got to know their close family members and found out what the person was really like. Early in ministry, and even while I was in college and seminary, I found that too often high profile people, even those in ministry, were more focused on their public persona and reputation than on who they really were.
    Who are you, really?
    Honestly, there is a little bit of hypocrisy in all of us. I think we all at times put on as though we are someone or something that we are not. But God cares about who you REALLY are. That is, who you are when no one is looking. What kind of life would you lead and what decisions would you make if you cold get away with doing whatever you wanted to do and people only found out about what you chose to reveal? Answering that question will tell you more about your character and the real you than anything else. And that’s the you that God sees and knows.
    Still, he loves the real you!
    But he doesn’t want you to stay that way. He wants to help you grow. He wants your inside, your heart, to be truly submissive to Him and focused on caring for others. He doesn’t want it to just look that way, but for it to be that way, even if no one found out about it. And that’s the you that He will reveal to the world some day.
    So who are you, really? Is your life like a television studio, arranged a certain way to show others what you want them to see? Or are you submitting your heart to God and allowing Him to mold and shape the real you? When others see who you really are, are they attracted to the Life of God in you, because it is obviously much more than a pretentious display?
    Are things as they seem?

Pardon Me

    In 1830, a man named George Wilson killed a government employee who caught him in the act of robbing the mail. He was tried and sentenced to be hanged. However, then President of the United States, Andrew Jackson, sent him a pardon. But Wilson did a strange thing. He refused to accept the pardon and no one seemed to know what to do. So the case was carried to the Supreme Court. The great Chief Justice John Marshall wrote the opinion. In it, he said, “A pardon is a slip of paper, the value of which is determined by the acceptance of the person to be pardoned. If it is refused, it is no pardon. George Wilson must be hanged.”
    And he was.
    Pretty sad. To have been given such a gift of forgiveness and to refuse it. It doesn’t make sense, does it?
    In light of our current series, “HEREAFTER,” this refusal to be pardoned becomes all the more tragic. We are all hurtling towards the end of our lives. Because we have turned away from God to live for and please ourselves, we have cut ourselves off from the only life-giving source and stand condemned for eternity. But God has intervened and through the gift of His Son, Jesus Christ, we can receive a full pardon by merely receiving his forgiveness, based on Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection. All you have to do is accept it!
    George Wilson was foolish. But when you think about it, had he not been hanged in 1830, he still would have died a long time ago. Death was inevitable for him as for us. Even more important for him than accepting President Jackson’s pardon, was whether or not he accepted God’s. His existence since that time and for all eternity was and is based on how he responded to God’s offer of forgiveness.
    You also need a pardon. God is offering it to you. But as Chief Justice Marshall commented on George Wilson’s situation, the value of it is realized only in its acceptance. Will you receive God’s gift of forgiveness? It’s not just your life that is at stake. It’s your eternal destiny!
    “This is what God has testified: He has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. So whoever has God’s Son has life; whoever does not have his Son does not have life.”  – 1 John 5: 11, 12

What's a Dead Church Like?

    A paramedic was asked on a local TV talk-show program: "What was your most unusual and challenging 911 call?"
    "Recently we got a call from that big white church at 11th and Walnut," the paramedic said. "A frantic usher was very concerned that during the sermon an elderly man passed out in a pew and appeared to be dead. The usher could find no pulse and there was no noticeable breathing."
    "What was so unusual and demanding about this particular call?" the interviewer asked.
    "Well," the paramedic said, "we carried out four guys before we found the one who was dead."
    Sadly, that is the state of many churches. I fear that a lot of people attend church out of obligation, habit, or because they think they are earning religious brownie points with God. All around this area, people will be starting to dread this Sunday morning on Saturday and will be thinking up reasons to skip. Others became tired of the boredom and wasted time and energy it took to go to church and gave up attending a long time ago, except on Christmas and Easter, of course.
    Honestly, too many churches aren’t worth going to. That may serve as a shocker coming from a pastor who often declares, “The local church is the hope of the world!” Yes, I do believe that. Jesus himself established the local church to manifest Him in a broken world and to give people hope and fulfillment through the Gospel. But, sadly, not very many churches are actually doing that. Too many strayed from their purpose generations ago and exist now only to perpetuate their own continued existence. The influence and power of God’s Spirit having long departed, lives are no longer changed, people are rarely challenged, and the church accomplishes little. It is the tragic result of drifting from the truth of God’s Word and the power and life given by the Holy Spirit.
    And that cold happen here at The Bridge, as well.
    Here at The Bridge, we are enjoying the work of the Holy Spirit in people’s lives at the Bible is being applied every week, every day, among us. We are seeing people’s lives changed as they receive Christ. People are growing daily in their relationship with God. All of this is exciting, and refreshing if you have ever been part of a church described above.
    But it is up to us to not only keep it that way, but to pursue growth in every aspect of our church’s life, as well as our individual walk with God. Things are wonderful at church now, because God is at work and active in our midst. But the moment we lose our awe of Him and appreciation for what He is doing, as well as dependence on Him for this ministry and our spiritual sustenance, is the moment we will begin to decline.
    We’ve had the paramedics here. But thankfully, they haven’t had to take the pulse of several people to find out who was alive or dead! Here at The Bridge, we are alive and well! And I don’t think anyone would describe our services, ministries, or people as being lifeless. So let’s enjoy it, and trust God to keep us moving forward for generations to come!

What Stage Are You In?

    I was standing in line registering for a college class when two life-changing events occurred. First, my wife Linda and I had our first extended conversation (we were in line together). Second, I saw my first personal computer.
    Don’t get me wrong. Meeting Linda and getting to know her was a big deal. But that would be a different blog. This one is about computer that computer.
    So while standing in line waiting to enter the Academic Dean’s office to get permission to take more credits than what was normally allowed, I saw his secretary typing on what looked to me like a typewriter with a TV screen where the paper usually went through the rollers. Before this time, a keyboard to me was a piano and a monitor was the guy who enforced the rules in the hallway at high school. I looked intently at this newfangled device and said, “What is that?” The dean was just coming out of his office and he said matter-of-factly, as though I should have known, “A computer! You’ve never seen one before?”
    A lot of things have changed since then. That little PC at my college had only 16 kilobytes of internal memory. It didn’t have a hard drive but wrote all its information to a tape drive that took forever to retrieve.
    Today, I have a phone that sends megabits of information to space and back in a matter of seconds and transmits and receives images that the best digital cameras, ten years ago, couldn’t even take. I recently read that any cell phone with internet capability has more computing power and internal memory than the massive network of room-sized computers that engineered Apollo 11’s landing on the moon!
    How did all of this happen?
    It seems like it was near instantaneous, doesn’t it? From PCs to computer cell phones? But it wasn’t.
    Personal computers came on the scene for the general public in the early 80s. By the end of the decade, many households had one, but they were a far cry from what we have today. Most of them didn’t have hard drives until near the end of the decade, and those that did held only 20 megabytes or so. In the 80s, you had to memorize codes to make the computer do anything. With my first computer, I had to buy a book of codes and authored my own programs to create simple databases and calendars. Apple introduced the mouse and menus, but most didn’t use it until Microsoft came out with Windows 3.1, a dinosaur by today’s standards.
    And printers. Printing from a computer used to be awful! We had a choice between daisy wheel (a glorified typewriter head) and dot matrix (slower than molasses and very poor quality). Laser printers weren’t introduced to the public until the late 80s and ink jets didn’t come out until the 90s.
    For many years, being “on line” meant that your computer was plugged into the wall. Most of us didn’t know what the internet was until the mid 90s and even then, few people had email. It was too slow to be all that useful. You had to use your phone line to get on the web and it took forever for simple pictures to load. Residential “high speed” is less than ten years old!
    So all that we have didn’t happen over night. It developed. Each technology was built on something before it. And when some of the most useful devices that we depend on today were at one time impractical. Technology (knowledge) is cumulative.
    And so it is with spiritual growth. Peter said this, “For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love.” (2 Peter 1:5-7).
    Becoming like Christ will not happen overnight. But God wants you to continually develop, always ready to take the next step of faith, each stage in your spiritual life building on the last.
    Where are you in this journey? What is the next “development” that God has for you? Take that step. It will lead you to bigger and better things!

Are You Leaving Anything Behind?

    Last week, a man in Gallatin, Tennessee, walked into a Wal-Mart dressing room with a new pair of designer jeans. (They have designer jeans at Wal-Mart?). Anyway, he took off his old tattered jeans and put on the new ones from off the rack. They fit good! So, he ripped off the tags and walked out…..all they way out of the store. Thinking he got away with it, he met up with his girlfriend in the parking lot and the two of them headed to the nearby Longhorn Steakhouse. After a good dinner, they slipped out of the restaurant without paying the bill. “What a great night!” he thought. A brand new pair of jeans and a free steak dinner!
    But there was a problem. When he took his old jeans off, he left his wallet, with lots of money (more than the value of the jeans and the steak dinner) and all of his ID inside. A suspicious clerk had seen him leave the dressing room without carrying anything, and checking the room, she found his old pants. The police came, got his ID, ran his license plate, and getting a call from the Longhorn nearby of a “walk-out” customer, spotted his license plate as he was attempting to drive out of the parking lot!
    Where did that new pair of jeans get him? In reality, he left a lot more behind than he took out of the store. He left his money. But worse, he left his identity.
    We do that every time we give into temptation. While sin promises to give us something, we always leave behind more than the short-termed pleasure we get from doing wrong. We leave behind a portion of our net-worth. And we leave behind our identity!
    When you are rude to a coworker, you might feel good for a few moments for “speaking your mind.” But you leave behind things that are more valuable, an opportunity to express graciousness, the fulfillment that comes from forgiving someone, and your reputation. Worse yet, you leave behind your identity in Christ (Ephesians 4:1). Every sin is this way. We leave behind more than what we gain!
    That was Paul’s point in the book of Ephesians. He reminded the readers of all the riches that they have in Christ, and how they are living a new and eternal life that they have in Christ. He then says in 4:1, that with all you have received, live like it! That’s what the author of Hebrews was talking about in Hebrews 2:3 when he speaks of what we lose when we neglect the salvation we have been given in Christ!
    Hang on to your identity! Protect those things that are most valuable! Let people see who you are and what you have in Christ by the way you talk and live!
    The dressing room thief is sitting in a jail cell today, without his new or old pair of jeans, and his identity bagged away in an evidence locker. I don’t think it was worth it. Do you?