Greatest Argument In Baseball History (Happy 70th Birthday George Brett!)

A Mother’s Day Prayer

Happy Mother’s Day to you mothers out there. You deserve more than one day of fawning over you. My wife (and mother of my 3 children) deserves a medal not just for her parenting but putting up with me. Jen, you’re the best!

Now, some people aren’t having Happy Mother’s Days today for a variety of reasons. I found this prayer, copied it, and now can’t remember where I got it. But I did not write it. Pray this today:

For the married women who desire to have children and cannot. Also, for the single women who desire children yet are getting weary waiting on a spouse. God understands your situation and we care. “In the name of Jesus, we ask that the Holy Spirit will comfort your heart and give you peace and that our Father God would grant you your petition.” (1 Samuel 1:2-17)

For the single mom. God understands your challenge and we care. “In the name of Jesus, we ask that the grace of God will sustain you, the wisdom of God lead you, the love of God encompass you, and the provisions of God overtake you.” (Philipians 4:13)

For the moms with a child who has chosen a destructive lifestyle and is in a physical or spiritual prison. God understands your concern and we care. “In the name of Jesus, we ask that the Holy Spirit would convict them of sin. We ask for the perfect laborers to cross their path. We thank God for their salvation, deliverance and restoration.” (Proverbs 11:21)

For all the moms who experience grief on Mother’s Day because of miscarriage, stillbirth, abortion, or a child’s death outside the womb. For all those men and women who experience grief on Mother’s Day because of the loss of their mom. God understands and we care. “In the name of Jesus we ask that the Holy Spirit will comfort your hearts and give you peace.  Jesus bore your grief so you don’t have to. Jesus, we Thank You for removing the grief and healing the heart.” (Isaiah 53:4)

In the name of Jesus we pray for all of our mothers on Mother’s Day. May God our Father bless you and strengthen you and encourage you. May your eyes be opened that you and others may see that your price is far above rubies and may your children rise up and call you blessed.” (Proverbs 31:10-31)

3 Reasons the Cross is Offensive

It would be better to empty a church and preach the cross, than to fill it by keeping silent like a coward. It would be better to fail as Paul failed in trying to reach his own people of Jewish descent, than to succeed by being a traitor to the cross. This is why I look with uncertainty at today’s Church. Christianity is not pleasant entertainment. When the offense of the cross ceases, it is lost.

Why was the cross an offense to the Jewish people of Jesus’ day?

1. It blighted all their hopes. They waited for a triumphant Messiah and got a suffering One. Not Christ victorious, but Christ crucified. Every hope they had was contradicted. This is still true today. Written across Calvary is sacrifice; written across our age is pleasure. On the lips of Jesus, I must die. On the lips of this age of ours, I must enjoy.
2. It swept away much they took pride in. The Jewish leaders of Jesus’ day had taken the things that lead to God and let their hearts grow centered upon them. With the cross, the need for ceremonial and sacrificial laws disappeared. This is still true today for us. The offense today is that a person must come with empty hands. People today are proud of achievement that a call to unconditional surrender is an offense. Calvary cost us nothing and God everything. In a commercial age there is something suspicious or offensive there.
3. It obliterated national distinctions. Israel was called out by God to be a blessing to the world. Rather it led them to isolation and pride. They held the rest of the world in contempt. But the cross leveled all such distinctions. That made the cross offensive. Some Christians have let their relationship with God lead them to self-righteousness. They forget where their standing was before Christ and who actually earned their reconciliation.

The Extraordinary Humility of Jesus!

Psalm 138:6 says, “Though the Lord is exalted, he looks kindly on the lowly; though lofty, he sees them from afar.”

Philippians 2:6-11, Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; ⁷ rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. ⁸ And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross! ⁹ Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, ¹⁰ that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, ¹¹ and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

From his lowly birth in a stable to his criminal’s death on a cross, Jesus’ life on earth is marked by striking humility.

As he makes himself a servant and is laid low into the grave, God’s response is to raise him up out of the grave and over every tribe and nation in heaven and on earth.

In Jesus I see the upside-down, counter-intuitive pathway to flourishing in the Kingdom: that the way up is down, and the pathway to honor is humility.

Luke 18:14, “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

In a world of self-promotion, God, how might I follow in the upside-down footsteps of Jesus and pursue humility rather than applause today?

Isaiah 49:16, See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me.”

Take a moment to name and worship the exalted Christ Jesus and picture His hands and see tattooed on his palm, your name! The name above every name carries my name in his heart and on his hands.

God Has Not Been Fashioned By Us

The God of Isaiah 6 blows away the comfortable, manageable God we’ve fashioned for ourselves. It reminds us of how small we are and how great He is.

In Isaiah 6, Isaiah sees God sitting on a throne. Not pacing. Sitting. He is in control. He knows it. No one is worried. What problem would seem too large for the One sitting on the throne?

Maybe the reason the Church has lost its moral vision is because it has lost its high and exalted view of God. We have embraced the comfort of His nearness at the expense of His transcendence.

The Seraphim chant “holy, holy, holy,” never ceasing. When the truth is significant there is great power in repetition, especially if the subject is an attribute of God.

The Reason for Christ’s Death

Isaiah 53:10,

…the Lord makes his life an offering for sin…

God is holy. And God is just. That is the necessity of His nature. But His heart desires to forgive. So, Jesus was sent to stand in our place, to face our punishment.

For our sin we were condemned to eternal separation from God and all things good. God did not send Christ forever into hell but He placed on Christ a punishment that was equivalent to that.

What better testimony can we bear to the love and faithfulness of God than the testimony of a substitution eminently satisfactory for all who believe in Christ?

The Cause of Christ’s Death

Isaiah 53:10,

Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer.

By just reading history we would trace the death of Jesus to the hatred of Jewish leaders and to fickle Roman leaders. The crime and sin of Jesus’ death lies at the feet of humankind.

But when we read the Bible with eyes of faith, we see the solemn decree of God fulfilled by men who were ignorant but guilty (see Acts 2:23).

Jesus Christ did not die to make God loving. He died because God was loving. Christ was sent into the world by His Father as the consequence of the Father’s affection for His people.

Underneath the Church are the everlasting arms; but underneath Christ there are no arms at all.

When Christ Seems Lost

There are seasons when Christ seems to be lost. Just like Jesus was absent for his disciples in death before his resurrection, there are times when there is no peace, no rest, no beauty because the Lord seems lost.

There are times when Christ seems absent from the world and evil triumphs without hindrance. In those times Christ seems absent from the Church and absent from the soul. Faith seems dead and comfort has departed and we’re ready to cry like Mary, “They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him” (John 20:13). Then we pray and it mocks us. The Bible seems dry. Such seasons are hard to bear.

I beg you not to misjudge Christ. When He seems lost, He is not far away. We may be adrift, but He is on the shore. Only it takes a little love to see Him and to cry in the dawn, “It is the Lord!” (John 21:7).

Resist Uniformity; Insist on Individuality

1 Samuel 17:38-39 says,

Then Saul dressed David in his own tunic. He put a coat of armor on him and a bronze helmet on his head. David fastened on his sword over the tunic and tried walking around, because he was not used to them.

“I cannot go in these,” he said to Saul, “because I am not used to them.” So he took them off.

Saul stands for the desire for uniformity. David stands for the assertion of individuality. We must resist the tendency to uniformity and insist on individuality if we want to serve Christ.

Saul thought there was only one method of fighting, one equipment for war. He sought to dress David up in his own armor. He wanted to make David into a second Saul.

The whole tendency of society is to destroy individuality and to produce a level and monstrous uniformity. Every child who comes into this world from the hand of God is unique, an original. But society has its forms and conventions and standards, and these it seeks to impose upon every living person. It distrusts the innovator. The person it loves is the correct, respectable, orthodox person who respects traditions, worships convention, and falls in with established customs and ways.

David declined to be an imitation Saul. If he had not, there would have been no victory over Goliath.

So be yourself!

Work in your own way.

Listen to mentors and elders in your life but think your own thoughts and believe your own beliefs.

What blessings followed David’s assertion of his own individuality!

How would the Church have grown if we had two Peters and no Paul or vice versa?

It is as we are that God wants us. With our poor sling and five stones, let us offer ourselves to Him. He will use the weak things of the world to put to shame the things that are strong.

Could any but a Crucified Savior?

Hebrews 2:10

In bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what he suffered.

A sublime paradox. A great crime; a great love. The world’s worst; heaven’s best.

Could any but a crucified Savior reveal our sins? Whenever you feel tempted to feel that it’s only a “white lie,” whenever you are greedy, slanderous, selfish…look at the cross.

Could any but a crucified Savior save us from our sins? Without the shedding of blood there is no remission. It is death that gives life. The New Testament has the atonement–but not an explanation.

Could any but a crucified Savior meet us in our agony? If I had no crucified Savior with which to greet those who had been broken by the tragedies of life I would not know what to say and even do for my own sake. Those pierced hands says, “I have suffered.”

In bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what he suffered.