HOPE SPRINGS

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I don’t usually publish another persons blog post in its entirety, but this one is to important to trust that you will click on a link to read it. Read this, it is dead on!

By DICK STAUB

Every day, millions of us use search engines to find what we’re looking for on the Internet. We try Google, or Yahoo, or other sites until we find what we need.

If a search engine repeatedly yields unsatisfactory results, we try different key words or use a different search engine entirely. Search-engine companies are continuously introducing ways to generate more and better results. Motivated seekers are not satisfied with seeking and not finding.

It’s not unlike America’s spiritual journey. National surveys repeatedly identify a large portion of Americans who describe themselves as spiritual seekers. In the decade I’ve been watching this phenomenon, the percentage has stayed firmly in the 82-percent range.

Which leads to an obvious question. If everybody is searching, how come nobody is finding? Why would a culture accustomed to successful searches be satisfied with always turning up empty?

One possibility is that they are not really searching. Today, being a seeker is almost more acceptable than being a finder. If you’ve found something you believe in, you are perceived as close-minded or narrow, even bigoted. This is particularly true if you share what you’ve found with others. “How dare you push your views on me?” says the earnest seeker of truth.

Another possibility is that the truth being sought is an eternally expansive reality; once you think you understand it, it reveals another complex layering. This is what St. Augustine had in mind when he said something to the effect of, “If you think you understand God, what you are understanding is not God!”

U2’s memorable lyrics in “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” are in the same vein. Both Bono and The Edge have, in fact, called it a gospel song, but it also reflects a deep unfulfilled yearning: “I believe in the Kingdom Come, you broke the bonds, you loosed the chains, you carried the cross and my shame. You know I believe it, but I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.”

Some people find this song blasphemous because they think Bono finds Jesus’ Gospel insufficient or unsatisfactory. But others find it a refreshingly honest exploration of the now and future fulfillment of the good news of Jesus. Hints of the kingdom begin now but await fulfillment in the future.

There is another explanation for self-identified seekers not finding. What if they have discovered the truth and found it too demanding? In his “Cost of Discipleship,” Dietrich Bonhoeffer observed that many people want to “come and dine” with Jesus, but are unwilling to “come and die” with Jesus. He believed you couldn’t have one without the other.

C.S. Lewis, who was once an unbeliever, caught this drift when he mocked the very notion of an unbeliever seeking God. “Amiable agnostics will talk cheerfully about `man’s search for God.’ To me, as I then was, they might as well have talked about the mouse’s search for the cat!” Since finding God inevitably means a reordering of one’s life and priorities, why voluntarily enter into a relationship that will overwhelm and consume you?

Jewish scholar Abraham Joshua Heschel raised yet another provocative possibility when he asserted that it is actually God who’s in search of humans, and not generally the other way around. That was certainly the case in the archetypal story of Adam and Eve. They ate the forbidden fruit, covered their nakedness in shame and hid in the bushes. It was God who reopened dialogue, seeking them out and asking, “Where are you?”

Though it may flatter us to think of ourselves as noble seekers of God, the ancient biblical stories clearly name humans as the fleers and God as the seeker. Noah. Jonah. Paul. “Ask and it will be given to you,”

Jesus said. “Seek and you will find; Knock and the door will be opened to you.”

Isn’t it just like us to make ourselves the hero of a story in which we are actually the obstinate rebels? No wonder why the number of seekers has held steady. If we got out of the way, we might actually find what we’re looking for.

Dick Staub is the author of “The Culturally Savvy Christian” and the host of The Kindlings Muse (www.thekindlings.com). His blog can be read at www.dickstaub.com.

Keith Price, one of my former students and a fellow Shepherd with the Troy Church of Christ in Troy Michigan has joined the blogging world.

Keith did not come to International School of Evangelism to become a minister. Keith came to prepare himself one day to be an Elder.

Keith and his wife Lora are special people and I hope you will visit his blog from time to time. Click here to take a look. The link is also listed in the blog roll on the right.

One of the major influences in my life to preach was missionaries. Whenever a missionary came through our small town he would preach on Sunday and tell of the lost and how the Gospel was saving them from an eternity without God and keeping them from a place called Hell. I admired these men and women who left their families and traveled thousands of miles away from there friends and family to tell the lost about Jesus.

Not long after I began preaching I read a copy of, “The Shadow of the Almighty” by Elizabeth Elliot. She describe the life and death of five young missionaries who sought to reach out to a tribe of people who had no contact with the outside world and were killed trying to share the message of Christ. That settled it for me. I would always be a preacher and a missionary. Missions and Missionaries was for many back then a priority…a priority that changed my life.

The church today and its attitude toward missionaries is vastly different. Only once in the last seven years have I heard a missionary speak from the pulpit on Sunday morning. During my early preaching days you could pick up a phone, call an elder or preacher and schedule a meeting to talk about a mission work. Today there are so many “gatekeepers” and hoops to jump through that it takes almost an act of congress to get an audience. It has become a world of not what you know but who you know that can open a door and get you a hearing.

Part of the reason for our present reality is the result of our information age. Information overload is a term coined by Alvin Toffler which refers to an excess amount of information being provided, making processing and absorbing tasks very difficult for the individual because sometimes we cannot see the validity behind the information. Personal contact has been replaced by email, printed information and a pile of request so high it is simply overwhelming. This all results in a cursory look over the material, a “well we can’t help everybody” attitude, and into file 13 the request goes.

To use another phrase from the past, we are “shell-shocked” by so much information about so much need that we have literally become numb. We are no longer moved emotionally at the site of a starving child or people dying for lack of clean water. Much in the same way our senses have been numbed by the gore and reality on TV, we are amnestied and no longer feel emotional about what we see and hear.

The reason for our condition IMHO is that our priorities are totally out of whack. We have placed multi-million dollar building programs ahead of reaching the lost. We have been more concerned with our own comfort than the genuine life sustaining needs of the less fortunate. Our faith has been placed in the tangible and not the intangible. Those things that were “first” priority with Christ have been replaced with “our personal” priorities and His work waits until our needs are met.

We have lost the ability to sacrifice for the needs of others. Oh we buy a few groceries for the church pantry and drop a few dollars in the collection plate and then turn around and spend more on a night out than we give to God in a whole month…maybe a year. We have a whole generation in the church that has not been taught to give because we have been afraid of sounding like the charlatans on “Health and Wealth” TV.

But there is hope. The younger generation that is growing up today is seeing right through our faulty reasoning and they are walking away in favor of doing what really brings about change in the lives of people. They are turned off of our institutions and turned on by doing something with their lives that really matters. Right now most of the energy is focused on meeting people’s physical needs only, but hopefully they will come to see that as important as the physical is, it needs to be coupled with meeting the eternal needs as well. When that happens, and only when that happens, will the Great Commission be restored to its rightful place in our priorities. Then the lost will be saved and rewards will be eternal.

May the grip of His grace cause us to see that we live in a world filled with people that do not know Him. And may we repent and make His priorities ours once again.

When God established His covenant with Abram, (later Abraham), to seal His promise He “cut covenant” with Abram. The custom went something like this. An animal was cut in half and each half was placed on either side of a pathway. The two parties making the covenant would then pass together through the bloody half’s of the animal. This covenant carried with it a two fold promise. First, they promised to both walk in accord with the covenant they were making. Second, to break this covenant would mean that the person doing so would suffer the same fate as the animal they were walking between.

But this covenant between Abram and God was different. Everything was in order; the halves of the carcass had been laid out on the edges of the pathway. But God had put Abram to sleep. Gen. 15:12-21. As Abram slept, God walked the path alone.

Here is how the writer of Hebrews describes the scene, “For when God made a promise to Abraham, since he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself, saying, “Surely I will bless you and multiply you.” Heb. 6:13, 14.

There would be no chance for human failure no room for weakness or uncertainty. God would see to it that His promise was fulfilled.

In there book “Furious Pursuit” Why God Will Never Let You Go, Tim King and Frank Martin describe what this means to the security of those who follow Christ.

“When God walked between the severed animal pieces, he was saying to us, “This has never been about your faithfulness; it’s about my faithfulness. It’s not about your strength, your ability to remain in covenant with me. It’s about my strength, my ability, my love, my resolve to save you. I pledge to fight for you, to stay in relationship with you, to walk with you no matter what, from now until eternity.”

Because of the sacrifice of Christ we are heirs of this covenant and the faithfulness of God as well. Paul said this about His faithfulness, “Here is a trustworthy saying: If we died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him. If we disown him, he will also disown us; if we are faithless, he will remain faithful, for he cannot disown himself.” II Tim. 2:11f. The only way to break our relationship with Christ is to walk away from it. We can disown Him and He will disown us. But if we are unfaithful, make mistake, struggle, and more…He is faithful.

“We sit in the same padded pew, week in and week out, listening to stories about Jesus calming the wind and the waves. The disciples had a totally different experience. They were in the boat on the lake when the skies grew dark and hurricane winds started to blow. They walked beaches, climbed mountains, and trekked across the wilderness with Jesus. Their experience was four-dimensional, while ours is one-dimensional. So when we read the Bible, we tend to focus on theology, overlooking the Meteorology, the psychology, and even the geology that shaped the stories we read.” “Wild Goose Chase” by Mark Batterson.

 When I first began my ministry I spent a lot of time studying proof texts for what I believed. I wanted to be prepared to take on all comers and be able to wow them with my rapid fire quoting of scripture. I love to read those of our fellowship who seem to have all questions answered and knew exactly the right way to present their case for their cause. For a while I missed the real power of Scripture. I missed the experience of Scripture.

 Today my study is very different. I have such a hunger to taste, feel and experience the world in which this powerful book was written.  I want to try to see what they saw and feel what they felt. I know this has it limitations, but there is a wealth of information out there for anyone who wants to add new dimensions to their study.

 Ray Vander Laan has done a wonderful job putting together study helps that bring the scripture alive. There are wonderful videos where he takes you to the places the scripture speaks about and brings them alive. If you are not aware of his site you need to go there and spend some time looking around. It is called “Follow the Rabbi”.

 I am presently teaching the Gospel of John on Wednesday nights. One of the helps I am using in class is the movie, The Gospel of John. This movie is word for word based on the Good News Bible translation of the American Bible Society. The acting is filled with reality and very well done. While obviously not perfect (I didn’t direct it (-:), it is a great help to add another dimension to your teaching. Many in the class have bought their own personal copy. (I bought one for $5.00 at a local Family Christian Book Store.) We are becoming more and more a visual society. People learn more and more quickly when you can allow them to experience the scripture and not just see it as words on paper.

 I still remember my early days growing up in church. The teacher gave us a booklet with a story for each week. We were to read the story and then fill in the blanks at the end. More often than not, I would give the story a quick read on Sunday morning as I was getting dressed and then filled in the blanks as quickly as I could. When class time came I was ready. The teacher then proceeded to ask each question and if discussions arose they were often not about the story at all, but some rabbit someone wanted to chase.

 We live at a great time in history with so much at our disposal. Let me encourage you to take advantage of it. It will truly add new dimensions to your study and understanding of the Scripture.

Phil Barnes came to Madison to fill the Senior Minister position late in 2004. Madison has been blessed by his teaching and leadership in faith. In the estimation of this shepherd one of Phil’s greatest qualities is his transparency, but that is only one of the qualities that have endured him to the Madison family. Phil has now entered the blogging world. I can assure you that you will be blessed by his writing. His blog is called Madison Church of Christ, were we Worship God – Connect People – Reach the World.

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Dick and Rick Hoyt are a father-and-son team from Massachusetts who together compete just about continuously in marathon races. And if they’re not in a marathon they are in a triathlon — that daunting, almost superhuman, combination of 26.2 miles of running, 112 miles of bicycling, and 2.4 miles of swimming. Together they have climbed mountains, and once trekked 3,735 miles across America.

It’s a remarkable record of exertion — all the more so when you consider that Rick can’t walk or talk.

For the past twenty five years or more Dick, who is 65, has pushed and pulled his son across the country and over hundreds of finish lines. When Dick runs, Rick is in a wheelchair that Dick is pushing. When Dick cycles, Rick is in the seat-pod from his wheelchair, attached to the front of the bike. When Dick swims, Rick is in a small but heavy, firmly stabilized boat being pulled by Dick.

This is not a new story to most of you. You have probably seen news reports or specials about the closeness of this father and son team. Below is a video that I hope you will take a few minutes to look at and listen to. It is not just the retelling of their story. The music uses their visual images to teach a much greater lesson. It is a lesson about our own redemption. It tells your story and my story. As I looked at this video a verse from an old song came to mind.

“Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to the cross I cling; naked, come to thee for dress; helpless, look to thee for grace; foul, I to the fountain fly; wash me, Savior, or I die.”

In the tradition of Hal Lindsey, Jack Van Impy, and a multitude of other dooms day end time preachers David Wilkerson has renewed his cry from years ago (that never came to pass) that calamity is on its way. Here it is from his blog in his own words.

“I am compelled by the Holy Spirit to send out an urgent message to all on our mailing list, and to friends and to bishops we have met all over the world.

AN EARTH-SHATTERING CALAMITY IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN. IT IS GOING TO BE SO FRIGHTENING, WE ARE ALL GOING TO TREMBLE – EVEN THE GODLIEST AMONG US.

For ten years I have been warning about a thousand fires coming to New York City. It will engulf the whole megaplex, including areas of New Jersey and Connecticut. Major cities all across America will experience riots and blazing fires—such as we saw in Watts, Los Angeles, years ago.

There will be riots and fires in cities worldwide. There will be looting—including Times Square, New York City.”

God said through Hosea that “my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge”. I might add they are also gullible and deceived. Scare tactics fill coffers and make many of these guys rich, and people never learn. “Buy this book, listen to this CD or watch this DVD for all the facts”, they tell us. Time passes, nothing happens and before long they are back with more books, CDs and DVD and the deception continues.

I guess Forest Gump would say, “ Gullible is as gullible does.”