Open Mike

Fragile People, like Jerry West

Everyone you encounter today is so much more fragile than you know.

Jesus lived and taught, "Love your neighbor...they will know you belong to me by your love...I came to serve, do likewise."  This means that every conversation is a mission-from-God for those who follow Jesus.  To serve fragile people by loving them with words and deeds in the moment.  Jesus knows the mental, physical, emotional, self-esteem, and spiritual fragility of every human being.  Its hard to live in this fallen world.
 Case-in-point.  Jerry West has always been the epitome to me of the strong, successful, stoic white male.  From afar.  He was so good in the NBA that its his actual image that makes the NBA logo today.  He wasn't just ridiculously good as a player (numerous championships), but as an NBA team executive he's overseen multiple championships for the Lakers.Yet here's a bit of what he revealed in a recent autobiography. 

"Jerry West says he has battled depression since childhood, when his father would beat the future Hall of Famer, causing low self-esteem that has plagued him despite a successful career as one of the NBA's biggest influences.  West says his West Virginia childhood was devoid of love and filled with anger as a result of his abusive father, who left him feeling tormented and worthless.

"I would go to bed feeling like I didn't even want to live," West says,"I've been so low sometimes and when everyone else would be so high because I didn't like myself." During 14 seasons with the Los Angeles Lakers he was...driven by a fear of failure...Once the season ended, he would dwell on the defeats, including the Lakers' six NBA finals losses to the Boston Celtics. "He wouldn't speak for days at a time ... It worried me," Karen West says, adding that "Jerry doesn't say `I love you.'... Maybe once a year.""

As pastor, people let me see this fragile part of themselves more readily.  Its everybody, the whole human race, in one way or another.  So love people.  Today.  In every encounter.  Get your eyes off of yourself and how someone didn't quite measure up to what you wanted/needed from them in the moment.

Keep learning to do as the Bible teaches us and go to Jesus for the limitless, unconditional, divine love that your fragile soul needs today and every day.  'Quiet times/devotions' are no mere religious duty, they are the human spirit's daily bread, like the body needs sleep, the stomach needs food, the spirit needs to synch with Love.  Then pour it out to every person you encounter today.  Because they are so much more fragile than you know.

(read more about Jerry West http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/19/sports/basketball/in-autobiography-jerry-west-looks-deep-into-mirror.html?ref=sports )

Is the Bible finished?

A while back, Mitch White and I did an entire sermon based on questions people in the congregation gave us about the Bible, via texting.  I promised to every now and then circle back to those questions.  Here was one we didn't get to in the q and a that day:

"Why do we know the Bible is fnished?"

The primary answer is that the New Testament writings that are authoritative are all ‘apostolic’ in authorship and/or content.  They are each demonstrably, historically connected to an original apostle (one of the 12 closest to Jesus during his ministry, who remained unified in witness to Jesus during their lifetimes), or to someone in that generation recapitulating what the apostles were already teaching.  When the apostles all died, and those who knew them, so was ended the burst of special revelation giving us the New Testament.

Other ‘writings’ that some have put up as supposedly belonging to further Christian revelation (such as the Gospel of Thomas and other 'Gnostic Gospels,' which contemporary church critics like Dan Brown love to throw out there, etc) were known clearly in that early church time to represent completely different directions from the unified teaching and doctrine of the apostles.  In the way that today we know that, for instance, Rick Warren and Joel Osteen have different emphases of ministry, but both agree on essential Christianity (orthodox belief); but we also know that David Koresh of the Branch Davidian cult a few years ago was heretical and did not represent the true teachings of Christianity.  So did the early church 'know' that writings such as the gnostic gospels completely departed from true, apostolic Christian faith.  Also, those writings were almost all written multiple decades (hundreds of years, in most cases) after all of the new testament writings.

So – the standard was and is ‘apostolic’ in authorship or content.

Michael Flake’s concluding sermon on Revelation (on the Sunday that was canceled last December because of weather) was going to address some of the final words in Revelation in which the Apostle John said ‘do not add anything to the words of this book.’  In other words, the Bible as we have it is complete!

Now – YES the Holy Spirit speaks, all the time, to believers and in this world!  God is not muzzled by the closing of the Bible to new content.  But we gauge the Spirit’s voice today and recognize it when we hear something consistent with Scripture.  If a message is not consistent with Scripture, that’s a way to know its not from the Holy Spirit.

That’s a quick – but I hope helpful – answer.

How Far or How Close?

Yesterday, Lake Forest Huntersville and Davidson began a new sermon series, Closing Loopholes. So many of you responded with 'thank you for addressing this whole subject,' that I thought I'd prompt you to begin your week thinking about, and praying, the central question from this series.  Here is the intro we gave at both campuses:

"When you invite Christ into your life, when you decide to follow Christ, that is only the beginning. Jesus Christ heals you so that he can heal others through you. And Jesus gives you a new life of unbelievable freedom. Because of this, we need to ask ourselves the question: Because the Christian life is a life of freedom, how do we view God’s boundaries and how do we use our freedom?

Jesus is the Good Shepherd, we are his sheep, and he places fences that we need to stay inside of in order to enjoy the abundant life Jesus promises he gives. Well-placed fences strengthen our freedom and represent well cared-for sheep. But, if Jesus is at the center of your life or if you ever put him there, there will come a time when you get this itch, this urge to wander out to the fence and to look for a hole in the fence. And if there’s not a hole, you will knock into the fence until you make a hole. You have to find a loophole. You don’t want the freedom Jesus gives. You want the freedom on the other side of the fence.

The problem with this logic is simple: there is no freedom on the other side of the fence. There are wolves (spiritual evil whose mission is to steal, kill, and destroy the abundant life in people). You’re trying to figure out how far from your shepherd you can get without the wolves eating you. And you will find that place but only after you’ve wandered past it and a wolf is eating you. If you are a Christian, we need to reset our thinking. As a Christian, you will grow, experience full life, and be truly free by asking “How close to my Shepherd can I stay” instead of “How far from my Shepherd can I stray?” Instead of looking for loopholes, we need to close loopholes and stay close to the One who gives us life and freedom.

If you are here and you’re not a Christian, I hope the Closing Loopholes series will help you better understand God’s heart and mind – what does God care about enough to make him put these boundaries in place?" (primarily penned by our Davidson Campus Pastor, Michael Flake)

We began this series by looking at I Corinthians 8 & 10, and Paul's teaching that 'everything is permissable, but not everything is beneficial.'  The next few weeks, we're going to dive into a few areas of life that need biblical examination regarding our central question.  This week, let's live with the question and prayer: “How close to my Shepherd can I stay” instead of “How far from my Shepherd can I stray?”

The Discipler of My Imagination

My imagination has been most stretched and discipled by my immersion into worlds created by J.R.R. Tolkien (Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, The Silmarillion). The way Tolkien imagines the creation moment as song, the inclusion of humans, and The Fall, is honestly my favorite disciplined study of Genesis 1-3, better than any commentary I've ever read (its in the early chapters of The Silmarillion).  I have a large movie poster in my office featuring Aragorn ("the coming king"), as the most potent and dignified literary image I know for what it is to be a Christian.  Here's a brief biography of Tolkien, written on Donald Miller's blog www.donmilleris.com :

September 2, 1973, J.R.R. Tolkien passed. He was a philologist, a student and professor of language, and indeed created something like his own language, and his own world, the adventures within which are chronicled in his fantasy works The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and Simarillion.

He was raised by his mother as his father died when he was young. Born in South Africa but he moved to England as a child and stayed when his father died. His mother taught him botany and languages including Latin, which the child enjoyed. He could read by the age of four, and began writing shortly thereafter. He was raised with the help of his grandparents, who were Baptists, but when his mother became Catholic, the family stopped all financial assistance to her and the children and essentially disowned the young man. His mother died of diabetes when the young writer was only twelve. She left him to be cared for by the church, specifically Fr. Francis Xavier Morgan, in the shadow of church towers and in the presence of medievalist paintings all of which seem to have influenced his work.

He married the sweetheart of his youth, another orphan named Edith Mary whom he met at sixteen. He was forbidden to see her because she was a protestant. He obeyed his guardian, but when he turned twenty-one, and was set free to pursue her, he wrote her and declared his l0ve. She was engaged to another man, and had agreed to marry the man because she believed Tolkien had forgotten her. When he assured her he hadn’t, she returned her fiance’s ring. The two were married and produced four children. They are buried together in Wolvercote Cemetery in Oxford.

He was a staunch catholic his entire life. He disdained the industrialized age, including cars. He rode a bike all his life. He was friends with C.S. Lewis but did not like that the writer overtly used religious allegory. His own religious imagery was simply that of fantasy, which he claimed borrowed from reality, which he also claimed was Christianity and therefore had Christian themes.

He, made in the image of God, was a creator of worlds.

An interview with Tolkien:

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House of Prayer

When we built our church building, we did NOT want the building to become the main thing, but we did ask the LORD to increasingly set it aside as sacred space, where as many people as possible would experience it as a 'thin place' (to use a Celtic Christian discovery).  A thin place is somewhere, for various reasons, it is somehow easier to find an awareness of and connection to the presence of God.  We've tried to follow through on that hope and prayer in a few ways, symbolically from the start with neo-sacred art (front 30' cross sculpture, some pieces in our gathering space from various artists in our church), instead of trying to make the church building look like an office building or shopping mall.

Recently, a number of LFC folks who care about prayer have upped the ante of asking the LORD to make our building a more 'thin place' throughout the week.  They have lovingly and artfully built a prayer garden and prayer refuge room.  These prayer leaders at LFC are taking Jesus at his word, when he describes God's heart for the gathering place for God's people in these words: “It is written,” he said to them, “‘My house will be called a house of prayer...’ -Matthew 21:13 (Above is a picture of the prayer garden)

Recently, the Community Group led by Angela Fletcher and Brian Palmer refurbished the prayer garden built by Eagle Scout Sam Hunter (way to go, all!).  I want you to know its there!  Go check it out sometime, and use it for a devotional time (especially in this beautiful fall weather).  Here's the entrance, to the right, up the berm, just before you drive into the parking lot:

And here is how it looks as you come over the berm:

This follows on the heels of a team effort (led by Corinne Kologe, Jaye Soss, Ginger Eklund, Dave VanWingerden and MANY MORE) to establish a permanent, inviting prayer spot inside our building.  Its called The Well:

You can use it for personal prayer anytime during office hours, or even for a small prayerful meeting.  In addition to that, after the massive response at the prayer stations during the last sermon series, Tracy Grubbs (our self-described 'Creative Worship Arts Chick') is in the process of making two permanent stations in the worship center, designed for you to lead yourself in active prayer at any point you are led in any worship service (on your way in, way out, during the singing, the sermon - whenever) (she's gonna kill me for posting this picture before the station is completely done - ahh, artistic types!):

Lord, may Lake Forest Church fulfill your desire, your statement, YOUR Prayer - that your house will be a house of prayer...