Category: Personal (Page 7 of 7)

We moved to Florida in 1989.  Bought a house in Palm Harbor and a small, franchise carpet dyeing and cleaning company in Tampa.  (A what?)

I had pastored two churches for 20 years in New Jersey.  The second  we planted and stayed almost 17 years.  Our congregation was never large—100-120 at its peak.  But it was alive!  All ages, mostly young marrieds.  Standing at the pulpit, SundaysI looked out at a sea of white, black and brown faces.  Some were newly saved.  Others came from “mainline” churches.  Some, like Lois and I, had a Pentecostal background.  Others came out of Catholicism.  The variety brought excitement—and also two major splits.  We developed and ran a daycare and preschool five days a week.  A variety of small groups met weeknights.  We had a worship team of guitars, drums, piano, flute (my daughter Meridith)—even a harp.

After almost 17 years the church leveled off and I was worn out.  I resigned.  We moved to Florida.  I needed a respite from pastoral ministry—3-5 years, I thought, to catch my breath, then back to pastoring.

But what would I do for work in the meantime?  I had only a B.A. degree in Bible.  Not many employers panting for that!  So I bought that carpet dyeing and cleaning company.  The only “dyeing” experience I had was at funerals.  I flew to Texas for a week of training.  Then back and began my business in Tampa.  I soon learned that the only people who wanted a carpet dyed were cat people who couldn’t afford a new one and whose lovely little pets had urinated all over the old one.  So mostly I cleaned carpets.  For awhile I had three other guys working with me, but that proved financially unfeasible.  So I became a lone wolf carpet-cleaner, except for the months my son Michael worked with me.

After six months I was miserable.  I was a pastor.  What in the world was I doing cleaning carpets and dyeing cat-urinated rugs?  I started searching for a ministry opportunity.  Nothing.  Nobody wanted me. Then I learned that the pastor of Port Richey Community Church was retiring.  I preached;  they loved me.  Or were they as desperate for a pastor as I was for being one? The rest, of course, is history.

Except I had to sell the business.  It wasn’t like I had a thriving McDonald’s  franchise to sell.   Finally I found a fool—I mean guy— who wanted it, if I would finance it.  Anything!  Eventually I lost half the selling price when he walked away.  So you see why I say buying that company was the biggest mistake I ever made.

Now:  how does Romans 8:28 fit that?

And we know that for those who love God
all things work together for good,
for those who are called according to his purpose.

That carpet-cleaning company was a bad mistake.  But part of “all things”, right?  God would make even the bad mistake of a  preacher-turned-carpet-cleaner good!  Looking back, I wonder what good?  I didn’t set any franchise records for the most urine-stained carpets dyed.  Didn’t become the carpet-cleaning king of South Tampa.  Wasn’t on a TV commercial shouting, “But wait!  If you want two rooms cleaned, I’ll do both for $19.95.  Just pay the extra shipping and handling .”  So what good did our able God bring from my bad mistake?

I don’t suppose you ever brought a carpet-dyeing company.  But I bet you did make a bad mistake and fall back on Romans 8:28.  Get any good from God?  Maybe no matter how hard you searched, you found none.

The only good I found from my monster-mistake was money to put food on the table.  No small thing, I know.  It did help us survive our first year in paradise.  But as far as I could see, that was it.

So what shall we say when Romans 8:28 doesn’t seem to work for us?

First, read Romans 8:29. 

For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son,
in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.

The “good” God promises to bring out of “all things” is our being “conformed to the image of his Son.”  Not money.  Not a promotion.  Not health.  Not a new car.  Not a long life.  Sanctification which culminates in glorification.

And those he predestined he also called,
and those whom he called he also justified,
and those whom he justified he also glorified (Romans 8:30).

I hated that carpet dyeing and cleaning work.  Maybe, then, one good thing the Lord brought out of it for me was a more persevering spirit.  (Perseverance, by the way, is the good side of stubbornness.)  It lasted “only” a (long!) year; but day after day I put on my “uniform”, drove to Tampa, cleaned carpets in homes and apartments, even a hotel, and occasionally dyed a few of those putrid pet rugs.  I tried to market my business to get new customers—all the while gritting my teeth and digging in my heels.  I kept sucking up dirty carpet water until I found another moron (I mean, entrepreneur) to buy the business.  Perseverance—a good virtue, because “the one who endures to the end will be saved” (Matthew 24:13).

Even for me—a guy who barely knows which end of a screwdriver to use and whose business experience amounted to asking my wife to handle our money—the holy God of creation and the cross was at work developing endurance in my soul.  Through my bad mistake!

Second, read Romans 5:1-5.

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand,
and we rejoice in our hope of the glory of God.
Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, (even cleaning carpets)
know that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character,
and character hope, and hope does not put us to shame,
because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

There’s the sanctification process—suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character and character produces non-disappointed hope, the hope of sharing in the glory of God.

That tells me there’s an Everest-high mountain of good God will yet bring out of our bad mistakes—a mountain of good called “glory” that God will give us in the eternal age to come.  I could find only a little good out of my bad carpet-cleaning company mistake.  But that doesn’t mean that’s all the good there is.  I’m caught up by grace into the process of sanctification (being made more like Jesus, even through my bad mistakes) which will climax in glorification forever.

So, if you’re like me, unable to find much good from God out of your bad mistakes, be encouraged.  That great good of sanctification climaxing in eternal glorification is still in process!

I’m just hoping on that day the Lord won’t say to me, “Remember that old carpet-cleaning machine you had to work with?  Look!  Here’s a golden one with resurrection power.  There’s no dirt anywhere on the new earth it can’t suck up!” (He wouldn’t do that, right?)

Advent is here—the season of celebrating the coming (“advent”) of the long-promised Christ!

But I haven’t started celebrating yet.  I’ve been depressed.

A shameful confession for an old pastor!  Where’s my faith?  Don’t I believe what I preached?  Why doesn’t the counsel I gave others work for me?  I don’t know.  I just know I’ve been depressed.

Two reasons for confession.  One:  to be honest.  If I wrote a “Christmas cheer” post, I’d feel like a hypocrite.  So I’ll tell it like it is.  Two:  to help others who read this.  At least they’ll know they’re not alone in their darkness.  (Yes, real Christians do get depressed.)

I’ve been depressed over my health.  Numbness and weakness are creeping from my feet to my neck.  I have to use a walker.  Going across a room is like a marathon.  (Okay, that’s an exaggeration.)  With this “creeping” comes pain and ache and fouled-up digestion and other body parts breaking down.  Doctors can’t diagnose it.  It’s progressive.  I pray and have been prayed for, but God stays silent  I feel 91 instead of 71.  I haven’t even been able to write a blog post for over a week.

Because many suffer far worse, I’m ashamed to confess.  Look at the news—somebody’s son gets beheaded. somebody’s teenage daughter gets burned alive, bystanders are maimed by a terrorist’s bomb, wounded warriors with artificial limbs fight to live again while some are so depressed they take their own lives.  I see and think, “What’s my suffering compared to theirs?”  But logic doesn’t cure depression.

Advent, however,  is the season of hope, of  expecting the fulfillment of what the prophets promised, of looking forward to the wonder of Jesus Messiah coming.

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone . . . For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be on his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.  Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end . . . (Isaiah 9:2,6,7a).

The day is coming, Isaiah promised (in the past tense to emphasize certainty), when a great light will shine into the darkness of a violent, corrupt, war-torn world.  A child will be born who will take over this world.  He will be known as the Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace, whose reign of shalom will never end.  This is his First Advent.

But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers . . . that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.  For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep.  For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord will not precede those who have fallen asleep, for the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command. with the voice of the archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God.  And the dead in Christ will rise first.  Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.  Therefore, encourage one another with these words (1 Thessalonians 4:13-17).

There is no reason to grieve your dead as those who are without hope beyond death, wrote Paul.  For Jesus’ resurrection from the dead is the first of many resurrections.  He will come again commanding his people to rise as God’s trumpet sounds the call.   The bodies of dead believers will be raised.  The bodies of living believers will soar upwards.  Death, and all the suffering that precedes it, will be swallowed up in victory!  We’ll meet the Lord in the air and be with him forever.  This is his Second Advent.

As I read those Scriptures I see a Jewish baby boy asleep in a manger; I see people from every tribe, language, people and nation meeting Jesus Messiah in the air.  I feel a slight soul-stirring.  I hear a whisper:  “This is your hope!  Jesus, who is coming, has already come to begin the end, which is actually the Beginning.  Through him God will do more than all you can ask or even imagine!”

Depression—POOF!—gone?  No.  But there’s light in the darkness.  If I keep looking at that light, if I fix my gaze on the Scriptures, I’ll have grace to fight the darkness.  The light will reveal the breathtaking wonder of Jesus the Messiah.  It will bring me back to the wonder of his First Advent.  It will point me toward the wonder of his Second Advent.  And it will brighten the banner that flies over this entire Advent season:  “HERE IS YOUR HOPE, YOU WHO LIVE IN DARKNESS.  HIS NAME IS JESUS!”

I came across a Bible verse today I highlighted decades ago . . .

Paul was making his farewell speech to the elders of the Ephesian churches.  “I am going to Jerusalem, constrained by the Spirit, not knowing what will happen to me there, except that the Holy Spirit testifies to me  in every city that imprisonment and afflictions await me” (Acts 20:22,23).

I haven’t read through Acts for a long time.  This time it hit me how Paul was relentlessly stalked by Jews who hated to hear that Jesus is the Christ.  It reminds me of what some missionaries endure today—and how easy, by contrast, we American pastors have it.  So when Paul said, ” . . . except in every city that imprisonment and afflictions await me”, he spoke from experience.  Then came the words I highlighted decades ago . . .

“But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God” (Acts 20:24).

I pastored for 44 years.  (You must be tired of hearing that!)  I’m guessing I highlighted this verse early on.  Ah, the ignorant nobility of youth!  How easily then to identify with Paul!  No Jesus-haters stalking me.  No hostile church members plotting to take my life.  Not even a disease threatened.  So death was distant—a concept more than reality.  How easily, then, did I say with Paul, ” . . . I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus”!

I was a crusader—on a mission to build the church of Jesus Christ and equip God’s people for ministry.  I was giving my life to an eternal cause!  What was my little life compared to the eternal church of God and the name of the Lord Jesus?

Now, at 71 years old, things have changed.  I listen to younger men preach and envy their vitality and vision.  I long for those “good old days” of my vitality and vision.  But I also think to myself, “Wait, you young preachers; wait until you’re old like me.  Will your passion be the same then?  Will aging temper the ease with which you speak words that sometimes sound like platitudes?  Will it become harder for you to say with absolute conviction, “In all things God works for the good of those who love him . . . ” (Romans8:28), because you will have experienced painful things in which you cannot catch even a glimpse of good?

I’m not questioning God’s Word; I still stake my life on it.  I’m asking for two things.  First, that when us old folks hear young preachers speak with absolute conviction, that we don’t doubt the truth of God’s Word they’re speaking.  We may think, “Wait.  Wait ’til you’ve gone through some of the fires I’ve gone through.”  Or, “Wait ’til you have to sit here in pain like I do and God seems silent.”  But we must never let the preacher’s youth make us question God’s truth!  Even if his “all things” are few, it remains rock-solid Gospel that God works them all together for good.  The young preachers may be somewhat naive, but God is infinitely wise.  And it’s his Word young preachers are preaching.

The second thing I ask is of the young preachers:  that you remember your congregation includes some old folks whose experiences in life have made some of what you preach sound like pie-in-the sky.  Perhaps you could acknowledge that.  Perhaps you might say, “I know some of you who are older than I have gone through things in your life that make Romans 8:28 a fantasy.  You lost your wife to cancer after years of suffering.  Your teenage son was killed by a drunk driver.  I haven’t had to endure anything like that.  Not yet, anyway.  But think of what Paul had gone through when he wrote those words!”  I suggest that, not to save face for you, but to highlight God’s unchanging, gracious Gospel for them.  And to assure them that questioning God’s promises isn’t the unpardonable sin.

When I read Acts 20:24 today in a new Bible, I highlighted it again.  This time because I don’t know if I can honestly say it with Paul.  This time you see, I’m closer to death.  It’s not as distant—more reality than concept.  And even though I’m disabled, I do count my life as precious to me.  But I want—no matter what— to be able to stand with Paul and say honestly from my heart with the vitality and vision of a young man . . .

I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself,
if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus,
to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.

Because deep inside, underneath all the junk in me, lies this unshakeable conviction:  my life amounts to little compared to the spread of the glory of the gospel of the grace of God in Christ.

If anything is sure to turn off readers, it’s these two statements.  One, a key term in Proverbs is “wisdom.”  Two, wisdom refers to “skill in the art of godly living”.

Who wants to hear about wisdom?  (Hey, can I just get an app for my phone, so I don’t have to read the Bible or go through painful discipline?)  And what’s this about “skill in the art of godly living”?  Isn’t godly living all about keeping rules that ruin your freedom?  And since when is godly living an “art” that you have to become skillful at?

Let’s juice this up a bit.  I want to talk about sex.  Now because Proverbs was probably written in the 900’s B.C., it doesn’t refer to all the “advanced” sex-stuff we have today.  No proverb about Internet pornography, for example.  But where Proverbs says “adulterer” or “prostitute”, substitute any God-prohibited sex-thing you’re tempted by.

In the first seven chapters of Proverbs a father is urging his son to be wise.  He wants his son to learn “skill in the art of godly living.”  So these are not God-thundered words from a smoking mountain top to a knees-shaking people below.  These are loving words from a father’s heart–wisdom he may very well have learned from an experience that nearly cost him his life.  Come to think of it, it comes from the Father whose love for us cost his Son his life.  I pray the Spirit of our Father will use his words to make you (and me) wise.  Let’s read thoughtfully . . .

“When from the window of my house, from behind the screen, I gazed down.  I looked among the naive young men and noticed among the youth, one who had no sense.  He was crossing the street at her corner and walked down the path to her house in the early evening, at the onset of night and darkness.

“All of sudden a woman approaches him, dressed like a prostitute and with a cunning mind.  She is noisy and defiant; her feet don’t stay long in her own house.  She has one foot in the streets, one foot in the public square.  She lies in wait at every corner.  She grabs him and kisses him.  Her face is brazen as she speaks to him:  ‘I’ve offered sacrifices; today I’ve fulfilled my solemn promises.  So I’ve come out to meet you, seeking you, and I have found you.  I’ve spread my bed with luxurious covers, with colored linens from Egypt.  I’ve sprinkled my bed with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon.  Come, let’s drink deep of love until morning; let’s savor our lovemaking.  For my husband isn’t home; he’s gone far away.  He took a pouch of money with him; he won’t come home till full moon.’

“She seduces him with all her talk.  She entices him with her flattery.  He goes headlong after her, like an ox to the slaughter, like a deer leaping into a trap, until an arrow pierces his liver, like a bird hurrying to the snare, not aware that it will cost him his life” (Proverbs 7:6-23, CEB).

I can hear the uproar from NOW (National Organization for Women) now. “So the woman’s the bad guy, huh?”  No, you’re missing the point.  Make the young man the bad guy.  Let him seduce her.  It doesn’t matter.  The point is in the last paragraph . . .

“He goes headlong after her, like an ox to the slaughter, like a deer leaping into a trap, until an arrow pierces his liver, like a bird hurrying to the snare, NOT AWARE THAT IT WILL COST HIM HIS LIFE.”

. . . not aware that it will cost us our life.

Be warned. young men.  Be wise.  It will cost more than you know.  Far more than it’s worth.

I’ve known it a long time.  But now, 70 years old with a wearing-out body,  I’ve never been hit in the face with it like this.  ” . . .it is appointed for man to die . . . ” (Hebrews 9:27).  No avoiding it.  God made the appointment for me–and you.

Why?  Sin.  (Yes, sin’s that bad.) Death entered God’s death-free world through Adam’s sin.  ” . . . just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, death spread to all men because all sinned” (Romans 5:12).  Sin is the culprit.  And death is the holy Creator’s necessary curse of our sinning against him.  Kind of makes you mad at Adam, doesn’t it!  Except, if we’re honest, had we been there, we would have gobbled down that fruit against God’s command, too, wouldn’t we!  No?  Come on, look at our lives.  We’ve all “gobbled down” at lot of what God said “No!” to.  We’ve all disbelieved him and disobeyed him and disgraced his holy name.

So one day soon, I’m going to die.  I dread it.  Not so much death, more the process.  My wonderful father-in law had a heart attack at a red light and died a few days later.  Never woke up.  If God gave me a choice, that’s the box I’d check.  I dread death, too, because it means leaving my loved ones.  How can I begin to say goodbye to my beautiful wife and best friend of 50+ years?  To my three flesh-of-my-own-flesh children?  To my eight precious grandchildren?  My heart will break.  Even so, death will come.

Sound like the Grim Reaper, don’t I!  Note, though, there’s a “but” there.  “I’m going to die, but . . . ”  The “but” is due to the Gospel.  ” . . . Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures . . . he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:3,4). Connected by nature to Adam, you and I die.  Connected by faith to Christ, we will live.  “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:22).

Dying is often quiet, funerals often somber.  Being made alive with Christ will be anything but.  ” . . . we shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of any eye, at the last trumpet.  For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.  For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality.  When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:  ‘Death is swallowed up in victory'”  (1 Corinthians 15:51-54).  What a triumphant praise-celebration that will be!  Above and beyond anything we could ask or imagine (Ephesian 3:20)!

The key is Christ.  Before his crucifixion, he promised his disciples, “Because I live, you also will live” (John 14:19b).  After his burial, the women found his tomb  empty.  He had risen, just as he said (Matthew 28:6).  And, if we trust ourselves to him, our grave will be empty too, just as he said.

One of my precious daughters sent me the song at the link below.  Contemporary Christian music usually isn’t my music of choice.  But this is celebration.  This is worship.  This is why a 70-year-old who knows he’s going to die joins the young and celebrates as if he were.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mv4LRl2KI2M

I received a greeting card yesterday from a beautiful Christian lady in our church.  (Not the one with me in this photo.)  It encouraged me beyond words, and humbled me.

I have a progressively worsening physical disability.   Dark discouragement sometimes weighs heavily on me.  Yesterday was the worst.  So when her card arrived in the mail it was as if she was hiding in my house and peeking into my heart.  (Actually the Lord was!)

These words gleamed on the front of the card:  “THE LORD SHALL GUIDE THEE CONTINUALLY–Isaiah 58:11.  ”  Inside she wrote, ” . . . I just wanted to encourage you to remember that God is using you now in ways you may not see.  You may not realize how the picture of your steadfastness and endurance encourages the rest of us to keep pushing on.”  She enclosed part of a sermon from Charles Spurgeon . . .

“You look at the weather-beaten sailor, the man who is at home on the sea–he has a bronzed face and mahogany-colored flesh.  He looks as tough as an oak and as hardy as if he were made of iron . . . How did the man become so accustomed to hardship, so able to breast the storm, so that he does not care [from where the wind blows]? . . . how did he come to have such strength?  By doing business in great waters! . . . Now trial works in the saints that spiritual hardihood which cannot be learned in ease!  You may go to school forever, but you cannot learn endurance there! . . . Strong faith and brave patience come of trouble and a few men in the Church who have thus been prepared are worth anything in times of tempest . . .

“Moreover, our trials, when blessed of God to make us patient, ripen us . . . there is a sort of mellowness about Believers who have endured a great deal of affliction that you never see in other people . . . A certain measure of sunlight is needed to bring out the real flavor of fruits–and when a fruit has felt its measure of burning sun, it develops a lusciousness which we all delight in.  So is it in men and women–a certain amount of trouble appears to be necessary to create a certain sugar of graciousness in them . . . You must have known such men and such women, and have said to yourselves, ‘I wish I could be like they are–so calm so quiet, so self-contained, so happy–and when not happy, yet so content not to be happy, so mature in judgment, so spiritual in conversation, so truly ripe.’  This only comes to those in whom the proof of their faith works experience and then experience brings forth the fruits of the Spirit.”

Retirement from pastoral ministry driven by a progressively-worsening disability makes me often feel useless.  You see then why this dear lady’s card encouraged me.  (And even more so because she has long had to cope with physical pain of her own.)  It also humbled me, because I know often I feel anything but steadfast and enduring and fruitful and strong in faith and patience!  To God be the glory for the fruit he grows in us which often is seen only by others!

Our churches and neighborhoods are filled with discouraged people.  This is why we are told . . .

” . . . encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness (Hebrews 3:13).

“Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another–and all the more as you see the Day approaching” (Hebrews 10:25).

It’s why Paul and Barnabas returned to the new churches “strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22).

And it’s why we can be assured that behind whatever little encouragement we feel we may have to give is the LORD who “[hears] the desire of the afflicted [ and encourages] them and [listens] to their cry” (Psalm 10:17).  Yesterday the Lord spoke through this dear lady to encourage me.  The Lord used her, at least in part, because she fills her mind with God’s Word and spends time praying in his presence–and because she herself bears the fruit of faith and patience grown only in weathering the storm of suffering.

So thank you, dear friend in Christ, for encouraging me with the truth of Christ.  May your example move us all to encourage one another so that the testing of our faith in suffering will produce endurance and character and hope until the day of Christ’s coming when death itself will be swallowed in victory!

As fatherhood changes with time, so, of course, does motherhood.

During those young years, anyone watching silently from the sidelines  would have assumed you’d  trained for years.  A Masters in Motherhood?  Know-how picked up from your mother?  I always felt I was learning fatherhood in the doing–or maybe after the doing.  You, on the other hand, seemed to intuitively know what a mother should do and say in every situation.  It was as if God put a “mother gene” in you from the start.

But you were never–what should I say–an old-fashioned mother baking pies and sewing diapers and saying things like, “Land sakes alive!”  You did bake great pies and cook delicious meals, but, Land Sakes Alive what stress in the doing and what mess in the clean-up!  What you produced was always wonderful, but Kitchen was never your God-gifted room.

You were always beautiful, attractive, classy.  Never the kind of mother to be mistaken for Aunt Henrietta from Kansas or Elizabeth Taylor with a face-lift.

You were always godly, Christ-devoted.  Our children surely knew where you stood with Jesus–behind him, following him.  You talked about that.  You taught them that.  And you lived that before them.  You have been a fine instrument in the hand of the Master shaping the lives of your children.  Did you blunder sometimes?  Of course.  But the Master even used those blunders for his good.  (By the way, in the process you’ve been a fine instrument in the Master’s hand shaping me, too.)

Now we’re both 70.  (It’s okay, nobody reads this.)  Our three children are adults with their own children, making you “Grammy” to eight ranging from 20 years old to five.  So motherhood has changed.  Yet your “mother gene” keeps working.  You know how to be a mother to adult children.  A tricky tightrope to walk!  Mother and friend and intercessor before the Father.  You know how to be a grandmother–loving, sacrificing, giving, wise, faithful and above all godly.  Blunders?  Sure, still some.  But God still turns them into good.  And you still are so beautiful to me–and, I think if they thought about it, to our children and grandchildren too.  Beautiful outside, even more on the inside.

I know.  I’m your husband.  I’ve stood silently (and sometimes not so silently) on the sidelines and seen.  So today I’m so thankful that my children and grandchildren have had you.  And that I have you.  A gift from our Father in whom his Son is gracefully reflected.  Happy Mother’s Day, honey.  I love you.

In Philippians 3:13, 14 the apostle Paul writes . . .

        . . . one thing I do:  forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I     press on toward the goal for the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

” . . . forgetting what lies behind . . . ”  Should we?  Is Paul’s testimony a model for us?  Does the Lord want us to disregard our personal history and only “strain toward what lies ahead”?

He certainly didn’t want the Hebrews to forget their rescue from Egyptian slavery.  Every year they were to remember by celebrating Passover (Leviticus 23:5; Deuteronomy 16:1).  The Lord didn’t want them to forget how he enabled them to cross the Jordan into the Promised Land (Joshua 4:1-5).  They were to erect memorial stones at the spot.  And Jesus certainly doesn’t want us to forget his death and its covenant significance (1 Corinthians 11:23-27).  We are to regularly eat and drink the Lord’s Supper.

What “behind” is Paul forgetting then?  Probably his past righteous “credentials”–circumcision as an Israelite of the tribe of Benjamin, a zealous Pharisee who’d persecuted the church for its blasphemy, and  blamelessness in keeping God’s law–“credentials” he thought merited him right-standing with the holy God (Philippians 3:4-6).  But then Christ Jesus “took hold” of him and he “counted as loss” all those credentials “for the sake of knowing Christ” by faith (Philippians 3:7,8).  Perhaps, too, Paul is forgetting anything that might hold him back from “straining forward to what lies ahead” (Philippians 3:13,14).

So we should recall past precious blessings.  At this stage of my life I remember praying as a child to receive Christ as my Lord and Savior, being baptized in water before the congregation of Bethany Church in Paterson, N.J., falling in love with the beautiful girl who would become my bride, sensing the Lord calling me into pastoral ministry, driving off to Springfield, Mo. for Bible college, being a young father of three growing children, going off on family vacations and celebrating holidays, pastoring two churches in New Jersey and one in Florida, baptizing each of my three children in water and performing their weddings, welcoming with great joy each of my eight grandchildren, walking with my wife on the beach at Hilton Head Island–the memories are many and more than I can mention here.

But there is “behind” stuff to forget–foolish choices, temptations surrendered to, wasted hours, regrets that I didn’t do some things differently or better, sins that shamed my Lord and pained my life.  Yet there’s value in occasionally recalling even these things, because they remind me of how God graciously works all things for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28).

But we should disregard any “behind” stuff that holds us back from pressing on toward the goal of Christ.  We could call that living in the past.  Sitting here I recall those good old days when I was young and healthy and our children were under our roof and the full-of-promise future stretched before us.  There’s a fine line between thankfully counting precious past blessings and being distracted by them from straining toward what lies ahead with Christ.  The lead runner in a race must remember who and where his opponents are behind him, while always pressing on with the goal in sight.

Thank you, Jesus, for a life of past blessings behind me, that I remember with tears of joy.  And thank you, Jesus, that you are my goal waiting just ahead.  To be with you will be better–by far.  Trusting your promise and relying on your grace, please keep me going hard after you.