A Christian Worldview from Silicon Valley

A friend of mine called the other day to tell me that he had started an organization called IOP — International Organization for Peace — that he had written a white paper outlining his approach to bringing peace to Israel and Palestine, and that he would like for me to read it and respond and possibly even get involved in some way.

Then Omer, who is a devout Muslim, paused and asked, quite sincerely but with some trepidation, “Pastor Lewis, are you in favor of peace between Israel and Palestine?”

My immediate reaction, partly because of the timing of the question and partly because of the depth of the question, was to laugh.

I followed that up quickly with the statement that I was certainly in favor of peace there, but I wasn’t sure it could ever happen.

Omer was relieved. Perhaps he has met a number of Christians and Jews who think war is more desirable than peace, or that war is the way to peace. Obviously there are enough “hawks” on both sides of that conflict to have kept it going for much longer than I’ve been alive.

Now excited that he had found another Christian who might stand beside him, he told me more about his plans and goals. As I write this, he is in Israel trying to gain even more support. I hope he succeeds, and if God uses him in some way, he just might succeed.

I say that because of a scripture I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, 1 Samuel 14.6. In the NASB, it reads like this: Then Jonathan said to the young man who was carrying his armor, “Come and let us cross over to the garrison of these uncircumcised; perhaps the LORD will work for us, for the LORD is not restrained to save by many or by few.”

You should read that in context, of course, but you will find the principle is the same. Overwhelming odds can sometimes be more apparent than real. If God is on your side, other numbers don’t matter.

I’m praying for Omer and his mission. Perhaps he and the few who are with him will be able to accomplish what presidents and princes, armies and artillery, bombs and bombastic language, have not.

Assuming, naturally, that God is for peace between Israel and Palestine.

In 1 Corinthians 14 Paul is finishing a section on spiritual gifts and their use in the church when he writes: “When you assemble, each one has a psalm, has a teaching, has a revelation, has a tongue, has an interpretation. Let all things be done for edification.”

There are many lessons to be learned in that simple sentence, but one idea I infer from it was that the early church — or at least the church in Corinth, which Paul had a lot to do with — shared with and learned from each other when they assembled. Most of today’s churches, including ours, are much more practitioners of assembling and being led by full time pastors/teachers, people I sometimes jokingly call “professional Christians.”

Being one of those people, I’m clearly not opposed to that. Those who have particular gifts, especially gifts of teaching, ought to use them for the building up of the body of Christ (see Ephesians 4.11ff). But we should remember that the gifts we normally see used on Sunday are not the only gifts, and that even those who do have those gifts in abundance do not have them exclusively.

And so it was, with all that in mind, that we had a “One Another” service at PACC yesterday. We sang to God and to one another, we shared our struggles and joys with one another, we prayed for one another, we served communion to one another and passed the offering basket to one another, and we taught one another. Everyone who was there participated actively in at least one way, and most participated actively in multiple ways.

Perhaps when we post this e-mail on our PACC blog, people will comment on how they felt about that particular service, but I get to tell you now. I loved it.

It was an encouragement to me to hear the lessons that people shared, whether from a personal experience, from scripture, or from a God-honoring insight. It was heart-warming for me to observe a number of small groups of Christians sharing with each other and praying for each other. It was humbling to watch parents serve communion to their children, husbands serve their wives, wives serve their husbands, and friends serve their friends. Every part of the service touched me in a positive way.

So thank you, church, those of you who were able to be there, for being the church, for building up the body of Christ and for loving one another. The tender moments, the funny moments, the thoughtful moments, the moments of celebration, all worked together for the glory of God. And he must have been pleased.

Denny's Grand Slam

On February 3, 2009, Denny’s restaurants gave away an estimated 2,000,000 “Grand Slam” meals. I ate one of them.

“You Have Arrived”

How do you know when you get there?

That sounds like a simple enough question to answer, assuming you know the destination. And that isn’t always obvious.

Take my adventures during this past week, for instance. My wife and I, along with her mother and her brother and his wife, all planned on going on vacation together in Hawaii. You will note there are two destinations in that statement, and we only arrived at one of them.

The good news is, the one we failed to reach was the least important. We tried for two days to find adequate space on one of United Airlines‘ flights to Kauai, even traveling to Los Angeles in hopes of getting on a plane there. But we didn’t have any success, and the odds did not look good for the next day, either.

Realizing that our real destination was vacation, and not Hawaii, we selected a different geographical location — one that could be reached by car — and the next day found ourselves enjoying the beauty and relaxation of California’s Gold Country. (We might have headed east sooner, but our luggage did make it to Hawaii, so we made one more trip to San Francisco International Airport to retrieve it before leaving. That was the closest we came to the Islands, with the possible exception of using some Hawaiian Tropic sunscreen one day.)

As we headed for the hills, my brother-in-law put the address where we were staying into his GPS unit, and as we pulled up in front of the house the unit announced, “You have arrived.”

“Good to know,” I remarked. And I silently wondered if one day I would hear similar words from God.

But there are destinations to be reached before the ultimate destination, and one of those, the destination of spiritual maturity, is spoken of in Hebrews 5 and 6, especially in 6.1 which says, “Therefore leaving the elementary teaching about the Christ, let us press on to maturity….”

Will you know when you get there? Will it be the place you thought you were going?

On Sunday, October 12, 2008, a significant part of the Palo Alto Church of Christ participated in worship service.

We often call — as do other churches — a “normal” Sunday morning gathering of the members a “worship service,” but it isn’t, really. We might be closer if we called it “a time of worship,” or “a gathering for worship,” but there is seldom any service to it.

In fact, there is so little actual service that the word service has come to mean (and this is the third meaning in my little dictionary) “a ceremony of religious worship according to a prescribed form; the prescribed form for such a ceremony : a funeral service.”

Now that describes most of our Sunday mornings. No, I don’t meant the funeral service, I mean the “worship according to a prescribed form” part. Ten songs, five from The Red Book, five from The Blue Book, three linked prayers (two for communion, one for offering), two prescribed prayers (opening and closing), one sermon (not too long), and a partridge in a pear tree.

We are not unique in doing almost exactly the same thing on one Sunday that we did the previous Sunday and that we will do the next Sunday. Many churches fall into a pattern, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. At least not until the form becomes more important than the content, or the outcome.

But this past Sunday, as I wrote earlier, we participated in worship service. How? We served people, and in doing so we worshiped God.

Would that all our worship were that genuine, that it would put us in such proximity with God.

I was supposed to leave tomorrow for Miami to enjoy a short visit with my brother and our two cousins, but instead when I got up this morning I sent them all this note:

It started Thursday night, picked up steam on Friday night, kept building through Saturday and, even though I slept 12 hours Friday night and Saturday night and left church right after the sermon on Sunday, hit me like a freight train last night.

After 14 hours (mostly) in bed last night, my chest is still rattling like a toy in a playpen, and my breathing is as shallow as the thinking of a philosophy freshman. Food turns to ashes in my mouth, I can count every pore on my arms and legs as they stand at attention every time I touch something even mildly cool, and I have the energy of a triple-A battery that’s been running the Hoover Dam for a day.

The good news is that I’ve lost about 3 pounds in water weight, although my sheets last night looked like someone had mistakenly watered them instead of the four potted flowers on our patio.

Every time I have a bad cold, or the flu, or whatever combination of things I have, I think about these words: “The foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” That is 1 Corinthians 1.25, and Paul goes on to write, “God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong.”

As humans, we think of ourselves as being quite strong, very wise, and able to accomplish all we can dream through our cleverness, perseverance and strength. And we certainly can do a lot, but we cannot cure a common cold.

I know that Paul’s words have a deeper meaning than that, but I think they apply to my condition — being human. And once again I am humbled by the wisdom and strength of God.

May God give you wisdom and strength this day that are not of this world and not of your own doing, but are straight from the source.

And, if you feel like I do at the moment, may he also give you some chicken-noodle soup.

I think a lot about thinking. Or at least I think I do, although in thinking about that I know that my perspective may be just a little bit skewed. Part of the reason I think about thinking is that God has blessed me with a good mind, and on the journey of life I have discovered that having a good mind can overcome many other weaknesses — with which I have also been blessed.

I suppose that most any strength can do the same, so I don’t mean to elevate one gift over another, but I do want to share some things about thinking that may surprise you.

Many of us have heard stories of people with cancer, or some other potentially terminal illness, who “thought themselves well.” While such instances are rare, they have been documented. The “thinking healing” that always amazed me, though, was not life threatening at all — it was a cavity. The professional volleyball player who had the cavity was so shocked that she told her dentist he must be wrong. He responded by showing her the X-ray. She came back a week later to have the cavity repaired, but it was already gone. A new X-ray showed no signs of decay.

Athletes, actors, extraordinary business leaders, great wives (great husbands, too), and the very best Christians I know all practice the principles of positive thinking.

Conversely, the very reason many people don’t succeed in Christianity, in marriage, in sports, in business, and in life in general is that they think primarily in negative terms — what could go wrong?, who could be hurt?, how could I fail?, I’ll never be that good.

This is not some psycho-babble or pop-psychology, it is how we are made. The Bible says (Proverbs 23.7, KJV) “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he.” That is true for individuals, and it is also true for a church.

I’m positive.

P.S. The Bible also says, “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind…” (Romans 12.2). Imagine all of us doing that together!

I received an e-mail this afternoon from a group called the 168 Hour Film Project. I’ve written some things about them before, but this was not about them. This was a call for prayers for a fellow who is a friend of 168, whose voice you have all heard, whose face you may have seen, who is the king of the voice-over artists, a man named Don LaFontaine.

Don has a blood clot lodged in his lung, something that happened the day after he had been taken to the hospital for shortness of breath. Apparently he is making some progress, but he is far from out of the woods, according to the note, so use your breath to say a little prayer for Don.

Interestingly, many people have said that Don’s voice is “the voice of God.” Some have even gone so far as to say that God would *like* to have a voice as rich as Don’s, though I’m guessing God doesn’t have to worry about that. But here is a man now who is using whatever voice he has, audible or not, to cry out to God for mercy and healing. And here is a man who is not straining his voice to speak, but is straining his ears to hear the real voice of God.

How will he know when he hears it? Will it be the canyon-like depths of the tone? Will it be the amazing resonance? Will it be the precise expression and inflection? Elijah may have thought so at first, but he taught us that those qualities may not indicate God is speaking. The quality that will be present, however, whether the voice is like thunder or like a soft breeze, is authority.

There is a certainty in God’s voice, a knowing, a truth, a beauty not based on sound, but based on the source. When you hear that voice, you will know it is the voice of God.

May your ears, and heart, be open to it.

It is entirely possible to build a house on a foundation that seems solid, that will hold in most circumstances, and in fact may hold the house for decades. Likewise, it is possible to build a life on a foundation that has some good properties, but isn’t sufficient for the trials of life. Jesus knew both of those truths, and he combined them in one of the most famous illustrations of all time: building a house on rock, or building a house on sand.

That story is found in both Matthew 7 and Luke 6. The Bible in Basic English translates the Matthew passage this way:

Everyone, then, to whom my words come and who does them, will be like a wise man who made his house on a rock; and the rain came down and there was a rush of waters and the winds were driving against that house, but it was not moved; because it was based on the rock. And everyone to whom my words come and who does them not, will be like a foolish man who made his house on sand; and the rain came down and there was a rush of waters and the winds were driving against that house; and it came down and great was its fall.” (Matthew 7:24-27)

What does a life built on sand look like? In the world, it looks like relying on natural talent without adding hard work. As a former tennis professional, and even as someone who has a bit of natural talent, I know something about that. Natural talent — some people might call it a gift — is great fun at first. People praise you, you win quickly, and the sky seems to be the limit. But the missing link, the failure to work, keeps many naturals on the ground.

The corollary in Christianity is the one who has been in the church for a long time, for whom Christianity is “natural,” but who fails to work at following the teachings of Christ. As a minister — and a long time Christian myself — I know something about that, too. Jesus can be part of your life, you can be a declared Christian, and you may be able to quote a lot of the Bible. But the missing link is that you don’t consciously work at applying the teachings of Jesus in your daily life, because your “natural” Christianity already makes you better than most, and that is good enough for you.

If that sound like you, here’s the good news: the link doesn’t have to stay missing. Find it and you can be part of a modern day miracle — the miracle of turning sand into rock.

Praying that you do…

Did you ever have one of those days when you felt like Satan was getting through your e-mail spam filters, causing static on your phone calls, and stopping the mail man to hand him a few extra bills for the day’s delivery?

I had a day kind of like that today, and I thought all that was a bit ironic given that yesterday’s sermon was about the causes and cures for anxiety. “Oh yeah, Greer? Let’s see how you like a little bit of this.” Well, I don’t like it. Satan is craftier and stronger than I am, and he has a lot of resources he can draw on to remind me of all that, which he did today with, I suppose, great delight.

To be fair to the spiritual warfare going on in this part of Palo Alto today, God’s warriors got in some pretty good shots as well. I got a video mail message from our great-nieces that was delightful (I’ve watched it at least seven times already), I had a great conversation about church and church related things with a good friend and was able (I hope) to help him with some challenges that he is dealing with, and I got to fix and mail a card to some dear friends who are about to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary.

Does the day balance out? No, God wins. Even when it doesn’t look like it, God wins. But I recognize that I have a part in the battle, too, and not just as a punching bag, but also as a fighter. I have to leave it up to the Holy Spirit and God’s angels to be the real fighters, but one thing I can fight i the anxiety that is so easily created in my life. I’m not going to do that, because I’m choosing the best portion (fellowship with Jesus), the best conversation (talking with God), and the best priority (seeking first God’s kingdom and his righteousness).

My goal is not just to preach God’s way of fighting anxiety, but to practice it, and I’m thankful that I’m getting this chance. Not that I’m asking for more chances, mind you.

Under the mercy…