Don't Count On It!

About 10 years ago, I was talking with a long-time member of the parish I was serving about the school ministry of that parish. I was explaining about the several different ideas I and the other members of the school board were bantering about in regards to moving forward with our school and school ministry.

He said something to the effect that we don’t really need to worry all that much about the school. It was celebrating its 110 anniversary and will pretty much always be there!

10 years and two parishes later I still cringe upon remembering that conversation.

Don’t count on it! Just because a ministry, a school, or a church has been around “forever” doesn’t mean it will be.

Just ask …

    Ephesus

Smyrna

Pergamum

Thyatira

Sardis

Philadelphia

Laodicea

I don’t think it is wise to count on something to last just because it has been around for a long time.

Jesus said to not worry about tomorrow. That’s true. In a way, Jesus was saying, “Live for today, not for tomorrow.”

I’ve been asking myself this week what I can do today in the Kingdom of God. I’ve been trying harder to focus on receiving and using my daily bread.

I have been reminding myself that I cannot count on the accomplishments or blessings of the past. I love the past, I love history, I love reading about it and learning from it. But I will not count on it as a substitute for using God’s daily bread. God’s mercies are new every morning for this very reason, I think.

Relationship and the True Man

Women are comfortable with relationships. Men, not so much.

Women have “girlfriends.” They get together to talk over coffee or tea. They go shopping together. They buy shoes together. They scrapbook together. They call each other on the phone and talk for hours.

Men do NOT have boyfriends. It just doesn’t happen that way. We have “man caves” – we like to be alone. We are more at-home sitting by ourselves watching “the game” in our underwear. We like it when we don’t have to say “excuse me” and can expel gas and pick our noses without upsetting the women-folk. (Maybe I’m revealing too much personal information here!)

To sum up, women are made for relationships, men are made to be rugged individualists.

Oh really? The oldest collection of writings in the world tell us something different.

Then the LORD God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him." – Genesis 2:18

Men and women were created to be in relationships. We were created in the image of God (Genesis 1:26) and part of the image of God is that He is in relationship (Trinity) with the Son and the Holy Spirit.

The 21st Century man has a hard time with “relationships” because the word has become entangled with scrapbooking, shopping, being open and sharing feelings – all of which make men uncomfortable.

But when we learn that relationship is really about not being alone, that relationship is about support, help, strength, purpose, and adventure – I think men can accept this concept as vitally important to who we are as men.

What do you think? Add your comments to this!

Experiencing Death

I was in high school when I first “experienced” death. A young man in my school was hit by a car and killed. I had known him, but not well. We went to a Who concert once and shared musical tastes. I was sad that he had died. But I didn’t know what to do with that sadness.

That would be only the first of many experiences with death. My maternal grandfather died while I was in high school, my paternal grandfather died during my first year of seminary. My cousin (also hit by a car) also died when I was a seminary student. And my maternal grandmother died after I had been a parish pastor for two years.

Being a parish pastor now for 17 years, I’ve experienced death quite a lot. I’ve presided or assisted at well over 200 funerals. I’ve prayed and cried with families and watched as a son, daughter, mother, father, or grandparent closed their eyes for the last time. I’ve held the hand of a brother pastor as he drew his last, labored breath. The hardest death was that of a four year old who died in a farming accident. He wasn’t a member of my parish, but his pastor was overseas on a mission trip. What made it hard was that he was the same age as my youngest son at the time and looked a lot like him.

Death is hard on the living. It seems to be easier for some who are dying. Recently I was making regular visits with a woman who was dying of a brain tumor. She constantly told me that she was ready to die. She would miss her family and husband – very much! But was more than ready to go to heaven and be with her Lord and Savior Jesus. She even exhibited a little impatience toward the end, she was that ready.

But the death of someone we love is hard on us. I’ve counseled parents, trying to comfort them in their grief, that while a parent is not built to bury their own children, we have a God who knows exactly what they are going through. And God not only knows how they feel, He actually does something about it!

God doesn’t abolish death, but rather transforms it by defeating it!

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, became of human being in order to defeat death. He defeated death by dying Himself for the sins of all the world for all time. Sure and certain defeat came through the supreme victory of His glorious resurrection from the dead. Jesus died once and for all and He will never die again.

And neither will those who have faith in Jesus! Holy Baptism is when a person is baptized in the death and resurrection of Jesus. If we have been united with Jesus in a death like His (through baptism) we can be absolutely assured that we will be united with Jesus in a resurrection like His!

So how should we look at death today? This is very much at the forefront of my thinking most mornings because I wake up to this view: 

Is this a field of dead people? Well, that’s one way of looking at it. But I prefer to look at this view as Martin Luther did.

“When we die, this does not really mean death but seed sown for the coming summer. And the cemetery does not indicate a heap of the dead, but a field full of kernels, known as God’s kernels, which will verdantly blossom forth again and grow more beautifully than can be imagined.” [Martin Luther, Lectures on 1 Timothy, ed. Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald and Helmut T. Lehmann, Luther's Works 28, (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1999), 28:178.]

A field awaiting the final harvest. Death is not the end. It is a sowing of a crop that will be harvested by angels on the last day, at the last trumpet sound!

Yes, death is a sad thing. But for me and for many, many Christians it is not a devastating thing. It is a transformation from this life of tears, fears and sorrows to the eternal life with Jesus where there will be no more tears, no more sorrow, and no more death.

D-Day +24,836

Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force! You are about to embark upon a great crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers in arms on other fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.

Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle hardened, he will fight savagely.

But this is the year 1944! Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats, in open battle, man to man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our home fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men.

The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to victory!

I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full victory!

Good Luck! And let us all beseech the blessings of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.

– Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower

68 years ago, on June 6, 1944, 156,000 Allied soldiers – the bulk of which were made up of American and British forces – made amphibious and air landings on Normandy, France. Their task was to drive German forces away from the shore in order to obtain a foothold in Europe from which to win back Europe from Nazi, Germany.

Movies such as “The Longest day” and “Saving Private Ryan,” and TV shows such as “Band of Brothers” have brought the stories of D-Day to my generation.
But movies and such can only convey so much truth. There are very, very few people today who were actually there to tell their story of D-Day. The number grows smaller every day. In this regard we can be thankful for the movies, TV shows and books in order to keep the story alive so that we can never forget.
And we should not forget. Not because so many heroic things were done during the war. And certainly not because war is glamorous or a glorious adventure.

No, we should never forget for at least two reasons. One, men and women sacrificed themselves for a cause greater than themselves. Men like my grandfather who would survive D-Day and men like my great uncle who died on Iwo Jima. Whether we agree or not with why they fought in war, we should not forget their honor, their integrity, nor their sacrifice. The second reason we should not forget is so that we understand what war is all about. It is not something to be entered into lightly or inadvisdedly.

It has been said that war is hell. But is that true?

Here’s a quote from the M*A*S*H TV series (written by Burt Prelutsky):

Hawkeye: War isn’t hell. War is war and hell is hell, and of the two war is a lot worse.

Father Mulcahy: How do you figure that, Hawkeye?

Hawkeye: Simple, father. Tell me, who goes to hell?

Mulcahy: Sinners, I believe.

Hawkeye: Exactly. There are no innocent bystanders in hell. But war is chock full of them. Little kids, cripples, old ladies, in fact, except for a few of the brass almost everybody involved is an innocent bystander.

War is ugly. War is dirty. It is not an adventure to be sought out, but rather sometimes a necessary fight to overcome evil. I believe it is to be avoided if at all possible. But I also believe that sometimes it cannot be avoided.

No, war is not hell. But as bad as it is, war is not as bad as hell, because all wars come to an end eventually. Hell goes on for eternity.

But like Hawkeye says, there are no innocents in hell.

In fact, there doesn’t have to be any human in hell. It can be avoided. There is a way out. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was born, lived, died, rose again and ascended to save every human being from sin, death (hell), and the power of the devil (for whom hell was created in the first place).

As we remember the men and women who sacrificed 68 years ago on what was called “D-Day” – let us also remember that Jesus Christ sacrificed Himself for us on the cross to save us from our sins.

The True Man - King

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

For he to-day that sheds his blood with me

Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,

This day shall gentle his condition:

And gentlemen in England now a-bed

Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,

And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks

That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

-          Henry V, William Shakespeare

A king rallies his troops. He draws around himself a “band of brothers.” He has entered the season of the King!

The king is a leader. He’s a mentor. He is in a position to pass along what he has learned in all the previous seasons.

The Season of the King will be successful – as all the previous seasons – as we soak in what the other seasons give us. We cannot skip over to the Season of the King as it is a time to pass on what we know and have learned. If we haven’t learned it, then we can’t really pass it on.

Some thoughts on a “Band of Brothers.”

The HBO mini-series “Band of Brothers” is a great example of men in the Season of Warrior. However, the film Henry V fits so very well to exemplify this Season of the King. But having mentioned “Band of Brothers” I must say some more about it. If you’ve seen the series or read the book, you know that the men of E Company, 506^th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101^st Airborne Division were truly a “Band of Brothers” brought together by war. As Stephen Ambrose writes, they “came from different backgrounds, different parts of the country. They were farmers and coal miners, mountain men and sons of the Deep South. Some were desperately poor, others from the middle class. One came from Harvard, one from Yale, a couple from UCLA…. They came together in the summer of 1942, by which time the Europeans had been at war for three years. By the late spring of 1944, they had become an elite company of airborne light infantry.” When the war ended in Europe in 1945, they anticipated being shipped to the Pacific Theater, but in August of 1945, the war came to an end. “The job completed, the company disbanded, the men went home.”

This “band of brothers” was made of up officers and enlisted men, certainly, but they were equals. They were not really “mentored” in the way that we are talking about in the Season of the King. And I use Easy Company to illustrate that the concept of a “band of brothers” must be understood as temporary. Vitally important, but still temporary. A “band of brothers” is formed to get a job done, to complete a quest. It isn’t meant to be a life-long fellowship like marriage is. Easy Company went through terrible times together. But when the war ended, they went their separate ways, for the most part.

In Henry V, King Harry calls his men a “band of brothers.” Again, this was a temporary group. They were together to fight a battle. Only as a band of brothers would they have any hope of survival (and even then it wasn’t guaranteed). Only as a band of brothers would they have any hope of victory – which is exactly what happened at Agincourt.

But those men, those happy few, that “band of brothers” illustrate the important point of the Season of the King. Mentoring. The man who enters the Season of the King enters to mentor. The Season of the King brings together a “band of brothers.” The man in the Season of the King passes on vitally important information and advice.

A King leads. It’s as simple as that. But there’s nothing simple about it. As Americans, we have no direct experience of a king. Truly there haven’t been real kings for a long time. Our examples today now come from movies and history. Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings, David in 1 & 2 Samuel. But those are two very good examples of the Season of the King.

When I was a fourth-year seminary student, I thought I knew it all, I thought I was ready for it all. The summer I was ordained, I was installed as a pastor in a very small parish in rural Michigan. I knew it was temporary, as I told my friends that I would be District President by the time I was 35 and Synodical President by the time I was 50. I was cautioned, however, that “a man should not seek the office, but the office should seek the man.” Now, 17 years later, I have no aspirations for either of those two offices or any others. I am content with being an Assistant Pastor on a wonderful ministry team. I am content with being a husband and father. God has a way of putting you in the positions where you will have the most influence!

It is said that when Augustine was made Bishop of Hippo he wept because he felt so inadequate for the job.

The Season of the King must be lived before it can be reached. By that I mean that we must live the character of a king before we can actually be a king. If by some freak accident of nature I had become District President at age 35, I would have destroyed that district! As it is, I’m so very thankful that God doesn’t let me damage the parishes I served as pastor too much simply because I was still learning about this Season of the King.

If young men are going to have any hope of becoming a True Man of God in this world, they will need a mentor.

Howard Hendricks’ classic speech, “A Mandate for Mentoring” makes the point that every man needs a Paul, a Barnabas, and a Timothy. In other words, a man to mentor him, a man to encourage him, and a man whom he can mentor. Any man who becomes a father automatically has a “Timothy” given to him. It’s a ready-made, God-made, mentoring relationship.

But we can also mentor in other ways:

            Being a Bible class leader for young men or teens

            Being a little league coach

            At work with your staff or even less-experienced co-workers

Keys to being a mentor:

-          Don’t just assume that you can be a mentor because you’ve had experience in some area. A mentor relationship is based on trust and trust has to be earned.

-          Don’t skip over the other seasons of life to become a mentor. You could be a mentor to a cowboy if you are in a later season, but the best mentor will be one who has successfully navigated life to get to the Season of the King.

-          Know that a mentor is a temporary thing. As a mentor, you are guiding someone younger or less experienced than you through seasons that you yourself have already gone through. But once they are ready to move on to a new season, you’re role as mentor can come to an end.

True Man - Lover

The lover stage is set up by the Warrior stage because in love we also must “fight” – work hard, not think of ourselves, put effort (a lot of effort) in our relationship with our wives.

If we’ve gone through the stages as God intended, by the time we get to the “lover” stage, we should be ready for this unique and challenging season.

To be a lover as God intends us to be, we need to have soaked in all that God would have us in both the Cowboy stage (read about that here) and the Warrior stage (read about that here).

In the season of the Cowboy we learn to take risks, have fun and adventures that will help us grow spiritually as well as physically. In the season of the Warrior, we are trained to fight the battles that come our way because we are threats to the “prince of this world” (Satan).

There are many men who rush to the lover stage right out of boyhood. They are prepared physically but not even close to being prepared mentally or emotionally. That kind of preparation only comes with going through the seasons of cowboy and warrior.

John Eldredge makes a great point in Wild at Heart:
Just as every little boy is asking one question, every little girl is, as well. But her question isn’t so much about her strength. No, the deep cry of a little girl’s heart is am I lovely? Every woman needs to know that she is exquisite and exotic and chosen. This is core to her identity, the way she bears the image of God. Will you pursue me? Do you delight in me? Will you fight for me? And like every little boy, she has taken a wound as well…. A little girl looks to her father to know if she is lovely…. So many unloved women turn to boys to try to hear what they never heard from their father. [Wild at Heart, John Eldredge, page 183]

He talks about wounds that are received by boys and girls from their fathers. The wound for a boy is “You don’t have what it takes to be a man.” The wound for a girl is “You are not captivating enough for my love.” When a girl doesn’t get that question answered by her own father, then she goes looking for the answer in another male.

She will go to another man and give anything she can to hear that she is loved. And a man who has not soaked in the cowboy and warrior seasons will take advantage of that – perhaps thinking, naively enough, that it is his right.

To help understand this, let me tell you a little bit about two girls that I once taught in a seventh and eighth grade religion class.

One is abused by her mother. Grandmother is suing for custody but they don’t get along (because she is too strict).

One doesn’t know who her biological father is. Her step-father is gay, was incarcerated for several years but is now out of jail and wanting to get back into his step-daughter’s life.

Both were dating guys in a True Young Men’s group I was leading at the time. I worked with them to try to help them understand that these girls were taking their question to them and the distinct possibility is that they would do anything for these guys to get a positive answer to “Am I lovely? Am I worth fighting for?” Anything.

The Season of the Lover demands us to fight for love. To be a lover-warrior. We’ll need to know how to be a warrior from the Season of the Warrior. We will seek the adventure of love within the boundaries that God intended (marriage) because we have been trained for adventure in the Season of the Cowboy.

For men who are not married (but hope to be someday): Your future spouse has been chosen for you by God. From the day she was born, she was intended by God for you. This is His daughter. He will present her to you when you are ready – that is what He intends. As such – the daughter of God – she deserves your purity, your integrity, and your love and desire. Develop all that by living through the Seasons as God intends.

For those who are married: your wife – again as a daughter of God – deserves your protection. Her honor is in your hands. Fight for her. Don’t let anything get in the way, don’t let anything take her away. Which includes: work. The internet. Drink. Sports. “The guys.” You get the picture.

The Season of the Lover is important because it is through love that we truly begin to understand our God. 1 John 4:16 tells us that “God is love.” One of the most popular ways to express love is through poetry. However, poetry isn’t exactly the most masculine of things – at least the way we think of poetry in this day and age. But if we can just get beyond the strange cadence and all that rhyming and get to the meat that lies underneath, we’ll begin to understand the language of this season.

Now, I’m not saying we all need to go out and buy a book of poems and make that our evening reading assignments. Some guys get poetry and some don’t. God knows I’ve tried but I just haven’t found it yet (however, I’m limited in my experience at this point).

But think about this for a moment. In the Old Testament, who would you consider to be the epitome of a man – a real man’s man? If you said King David you’re tuned right in to me. Here was a guy who could kill a lion or bear with his hands, maybe a sling at the most. He faced a nine-foot-tall warrior with just a sling and a stone. He spent fourteen years on the run from a king he loved but who wanted to kill him. He was the successful soldier of who it was said, “Saul kills his thousands, but David his tens of thousands.” This is a man.

But he would be more accurately called Israel’s Warrior-Poet. He wrote poetry! And do you know what his favorite subject was? His love of God!

Take a few minutes to reflect on some of the poetry of David and as you read through these, jot down some notes about the relationship with God that David’s poetry presents.

Psalms
36:8
4:7
6:6
16:11
42:1
63:1
63:3
27:4

The True Man - Warrior

The True Man goes through seasons in life.

I’ve posted about the Season of Boyhood and the Season of the Cowboy.

Now we come to the Season of the Warrior.

This doesn’t mean we all join the Army, Marines or any other branch of service. Not that there’s anything wrong with that!

Rather, this season reinforces the reality that we are at war in this life. We are made to be warriors, to fight for what is right, to protect our wives and families.

The rise of what is sometimes referred to as the “second wave feminist” movement in the 1960’s brought a change to this season in a man’s life by trying to eliminate it. Fighting for such rights as abortion, pushing an agenda that has at is foundation that there is no real difference between a man and a woman.

While I agree that in Christ there is no “male or female, slave or free,” that all are equally loved in the heart of God, I disagree that there is no difference between men and women. There’s huge differences, for which we should thank God!

Men, we were made to be warriors.

In Genesis it says we are created in the image of God. In Exodus it says, “The Lord is a Warrior, the Lord is his name.”

From Genesis chapter 3 on, we live in a world at war. All the wars that have happened since then have been pale comparisons to the War that is being waged against us. As Paul says in Ephesians

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Ephesians 6:12

This we know. We are at war. But this war plays out in different ways.

Steve Farrar writes in Point Man, “Gentlemen, this is no imaginary situation. It is reality. If you are a husband/father, than you are in a war. War has been declared upon the family, on your family and mine. Leading a family through the chaos of American culture is like leading a small patrol through enemy-occupied territory. And the casualties in this war are as real as the names etched on the Vietnam Memorial.” (Point Man, page 22).

You see, Satan has moved his focus away from the church and to the family because if he can destroy the family, the Church is that much weaker! The first church a child will know about, the first place he will hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ, is at home from mom and dad. If Satan can destroy that, the Church has a much harder time getting the Gospel message out to the world.

Once we understand that we are at war and that his war’s battlefronts are all around us (and not just “out there” in the mission field or where Christians are persecuted), then we will be in a much better position to fight those battles.

Where are the battle lines? Everywhere!

There’s a great scene about this from a somewhat  unusual source – the movie “You’ve Got Mail” (click here to watch it).

Warriors are not just found on the battlefields of the world. We are at war every day! In every day life – at the office, in the bedroom, in front of the classroom, on the football field.

The Season of the Warrior is its own specific season. But there are elements of the Warrior in all seasons, starting with boyhood. Like I said before, it is because we are made in the image of God and the Lord is a warrior, the Lord is his name.

All our movies that we love have a warrior theme to them. Even a movie like “You’ve Got Mail.” We fight in all areas of life because in all areas of life, there are still things worthy fighting for.

“When Alexander the Great died, his massive empire was divided among several high-ranking officers in his cabinet. What we would refer to as the Middle East, including Israel, came under the rule of the Seluecids, who continued Alexander’s mission to Hellenize the locals, making all the world Greek in its customs and values. What began as the seemingly innocent importation of Greek culture became increasingly hostile, and eventually violent. The Seleucid overlords took a special hatred of the Jewish insistence on worshipping one God, seeing it—as so many dictatorships since—as a threat to their regime. In 165 BC a Greek officer holding command over the village of Modiin—not too far from Jerusalem—ordered the Jewish villagers to bow to an idol and eat the flesh of a slaughtered pig, acts that struck at the heart of Judaism, at the heart of the people for whom such a command was unthinkable. Blasphemy.

“The people refused, an argument ensued, and the Jewish high priest Mattathias killed the officer with a sword. The villagers—led by Mattathias’ five sons—took up arms against the rest of the soldiers and killed them as well. Mattathias and a growing number of his followers fled to the hills, from there launching a resistance movement against their Hellenistic oppressors. Meanwhile, Antiochus IV (current heir to the Seleucid Empire and a cruel enemy of the Jews) seized control of the temple in Jerusalem, set up in the Holy of Holies a satue of Zeus, and commanded the Jews to worship him. Those who refused to abandon God and his commands—included circumcision—were persecuted, mothers put to the sword with their infants hanging round their necks.

“Meanwhile, Mattathias had died, leaving command of his growing forces to his son Judah Maccabee, who led his outnumbered and outarmed troops against a far superior force (ten thousand Jews against more than sixty thousand Greeks and Hellenized Syrians) and eventually routed their enemies from Jerusalem. They cleansed the temple, tore down the desecrated altar (including the idol) and rebuilt one from uncut stones, after which they held a feast of worship and dedication. Of course, I am referring to the origin of the Jewish Festival of Lights, Hanukkah. Historian Thomas Cahill observed that ‘there are humiliations a proud people—even one oppressed for generations—cannot abide.’

“Indeed. It may take time, and require repeated provocation, but eventually a man must come to realize that there are certain things in life worth fighting for. Perhaps, when we appreciate the truth of this, we can better understand the heart of God.” [The Way of the Wild Heart, John Eldredge, pages 136-37]

It may take the battle hitting close to home to rouse the warrior in a man, but maybe that is exactly why God allows the battle to hit close to home.