"You Will Receive Power"

Rev. Stan Moody, Ph.D.

Psalm 36:1-4

An oracle is within my heart
concerning the sinfulness of the wicked:
There is no fear of God before his eyes.
For in his own eyes he flatters himself
too much to detect or hate his sin.
The words of his mouth are wicked and deceitful;
he has ceased to be wise and to do good.
Even on his bed he plots evil;
he commits himself to a sinful course
and does not reject what is wrong (with himself).

Ezekiel 39:21-29
Acts 1:1-11

In a Peanuts comic strip, there was a conversation between Lucy and Charlie Brown. Lucy said that life is like a deck chair. Some people place it so they can see where they are going; others place it so they can see where they have been; still others place it so they can see where they are at present. Charlie Brown’s reply: “I can’t even get mine unfolded.”

According to the pollster, George Gallup, the number one need people have is “…the need to believe that life is meaningful and has a purpose.” People want their lives to count – they want to get the deck chair unfolded and pointed in the right direction. The great motivation for all of us is to leave behind something bigger than ourselves that will outlast our short time here on this earth. The bottom line for most of us is the hope that our kids will say something nice about us after we’re gone!

When Steve Jobs was trying to recruit John Sculley, the 38-year old President of Pepsi-Cola, he is said to have asked, “Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water, or do you want a chance to change the world?” Apparently it worked, albeit better initially than later. The question for us as believers in Jesus Christ, however, is whether even being the President of Apple Computer is really making a difference.

The Christian has an even greater struggle in positioning that deck chair. There is a temptation to place it facing the American Dream of prosperity and success. There is a temptation to place it facing our standing and status here on earth – to bask in the warmth of our credentials and our accomplishments. We are called by God, however, to place our deck chairs facing the eternal kingdom that becomes our destiny when this short journey has ended. From there, God calls us to get up out of our deck chairs and get moving but under His power; not ours.

Once the Apostle Paul had turned the deck chair of his life from his accomplishments and his credentials and his future as an up-and-coming Pharisee, he turned it toward the Kingdom of God and never looked back. In fact, all those credentials and accomplishments he later referred to as “dung.” How many of us would be willing to go that far?

Last week, because so many of us here are retired or about to be retired, I used the example of retirement as a test case for the Christian’s attitude toward life. I always wondered why people seemed to run faster when they got older. It may have something to do with in what direction their deck chairs are facing. Those whose deck chairs are facing their business or career accomplishments seem to work harder to make more progress – more money, more power and more legacy, even though all those things will sooner than later be left behind.

Those who have committed to Christ have the same instincts except that the conflicting demands of the Kingdom of God push us in the opposite direction. We find ourselves pressing on at the risk of our health and even our very lives to do something to the God who wants to do something through us.

We find out along the way that all those credentials – education, career, marrying the right person, raising a family and setting down roots are only incidentals to some overriding purpose in life. Singer Peggy Lee asked the mournful question, “Is that all there is?” Surely God is up to more than this!

One Christian thinker had this to say: “I am convinced that we are living in an unprecedented time of potential blessing and power and this is God’s appointed hour to liberate the Church from being a memorial society to becoming a society of movers and shakers.” That displays a focus on the power of the present rather than some fantasized clout tomorrow.

We here at the NMMH Church have struggled over the definition of what is a successful church ministry. Current wisdom has it that a successful church ministry is wall-to-wall people, programs 24/7 and a highly educated staff to run and grow the show. Instead, we have been given a bunch of veterans who, by the grace of God, have a church that is open 7 days a week and have opened their hearts to people as far away as Palestine.

This part-time pastor, instead of being a holy CEO running a big church, has been making all kinds of waves that have managed to stay clear of this little church in the woods. If this is not a testimony to the presence of the power of God in the life of His people, I don’t know what is. I look around here and can come to no other conclusion than that of the fulfillment of Acts 1: 8: “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

Who would believe that out of this little church in the boonies in Maine there would literally emerge witnesses of the living Gospel of Jesus Christ in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria? Who would believe that this little ragtag group of ordinary people would be living witnesses of Jesus Christ even unto the ends of the world – the Maine State prison? Is this not a testimony to the presence of power from on high?

What opportunities we would have missed had this little church been plagued with wall-to-wall people and 24/7 programs! We would have had the trappings without experiencing the power!

That power still lives! As with the disciples, however, there are some pre-conditions to that power coming from on high.

The first precondition is Jesus statement to His disciples in v. 4: “Do not leave Jerusalem…” In order to receive the power, they must not leave where they have been appointed. In light of our tendency to think that we can be more effective somewhere else, that is a novel idea, is it not? The second precondition relates to the first – “…wait for the gift my Father promised.” We have waited some 14 years to receive the gift, haven’t we? People have come and gone – maybe just tired of staying and waiting. They wanted it right then. Perhaps they have lost out on sharing and experiencing the power from on high.

Waiting is the hardest thing for us to do, isn’t it? The clock is always running. I have noticed that in prison, there is more impatience than on the outside and have marveled that a person who has to stay there for the next 40 years is upset that he had to wait a couple of weeks for something he wanted. Unfortunately, it is often not just a couple of weeks but a couple of years, like for the fellow who asked me to bring a certain volunteer to the Protective Custody POD. He had been asking for 2 years, apparently. Just a few days after they visited him, he was unexpectedly transferred to Bucks Harbor minimum security facility. The waiting paid off, and God’s timing was perfect!

The Psalmist, even when he was in danger of being killed, said, “Wait on the Lord; be of good cheer. Wait, I say, on the Lord” (Psalm 24:17). There are those today who are tired of waiting for God and have decided to jump start the so-called Second Coming. It is not only for power from on high that Jesus wants us to stay and wait, but it is also for His appearing that He asks us to stay and wait.

What was it that the disciples were looking for just before Jesus ascended? They were asking Him the same question they had asked right after the Triumphal Entry: “Lord, will you now, at this time, restore the kingdom to Israel?” Like a lot of Christians today, their deck chairs were facing the past – Old Testament prophecies that had already been fulfilled in the person and work of Jesus.

Ezekiel 39 that we read earlier equates the restoration of Israel with the pouring out of the Spirit. Jesus had just told His disciples in Acts 1:5 that in just a few days they would be filled with the Holy Spirit. To them, this was to be the fulfillment of Ezekiel 39:29: “I will no longer hide my face from them, for I will pour out my Spirit on the house of Israel, declares the Sovereign Lord.”

When Jesus tells them that His Spirit would be poured out on them in just a few days, they wanted clarification. “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” They were undoubtedly recalling His words at the Last Supper: “I confer on you a kingdom, just as my Father conferred one on me, so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Luke 22:29, 30).

Their interpretation was that Israel would be restored as a world power and that they would sit as appointed, physical judges over the Twelve Tribes within days.

What Jesus was talking about, however, was not the timing of the event so much as the nature of the event. This is not about literal Israel; it is about the expanded tent of the Twelve Tribes that would spread out from Jerusalem into the uttermost parts of the earth. The deck chairs of the disciples needed to be re-arranged. They were facing this earth rather than eternity. They saw a physical kingdom ruled by a Messiah who would come to liberate them from the oppressive iron hand of Rome. Their reverence for the past somehow was blocking their future.

Jesus patiently answers with a startling declaration in v. 7:

…It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.

There are a couple of remarkable gems in this short passage. The disciples are asking about a concrete, definitive date and time for something cataclysmic to happen. They want to pin it down. They are restricted to the clock and the calendar. Jesus, however, is introducing them to a new dimension, where things do not begin and end in the same instant in time. He is moving them from the concrete sequential limitations of time and space into God’s eternal clock where events begin at a certain time and end at a certain time, but the time in between may be a time for staying put and waiting, stretching for as long as it takes for His plan to be fulfilled.

Jesus is introducing them to a new concept of event that has far less to do with their temporal lives and far more to do with a God for whom a “…day is with the Lord as a thousand years and a thousand years as a day” (2 Peter 3:8). Jesus is introducing them to the Kingdom of God – the tent under which the Twelve Tribes of Israel would be expanded to include you and me – the New Israel.

The disciples, even though they failed to understand it and would not understand it until given power from on high at the Day of Pentecost, were to be stripped of their Israeli national citizenship and clothed anew with citizenship in the international, multi-cultural, multi-racial and gender-blind spiritual Kingdom of God. When they received that power on the Day of Pentecost, Peter finally gets it:

Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you; listen carefully to what I say. These men are not drunk, as you suppose. It is only nine in the morning! No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel: “In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people…”

We are told that that very day, 3,000 men traded in their Israeli national citizenships for a place in the Kingdom – the true Israel; the culmination of God’s redemptive history; the exponential explosion from the fulfillment of the prophecy of Ezekiel all the way through to when time shall be no more.

The second remarkable gem in vs. 7&8 is Jesus’ answer, “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority.” First of all, it is abundantly clear that the times and dates of redemptive history have been set in concrete by the authority of the Creator God. Any attempt to move them forward or backward was not even in the power of Jesus, His Son.

Secondly, and more important perhaps, is that Jesus answers His disciples in the plural to a question they had asked in the singular. “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” “It is not for you to know the times and dates…”

From Scriptures, it was very clear to the disciples that the Kingdom of God would arrive – albeit in its fullness – with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Jesus, however, refers to that kingdom, not as an instant event but as a bundle of “times and dates” that were to be beyond our capacity or our business to know or understand.

Here is my take on that. The Kingdom of God arrives on the Day of Pentecost, continues on to the present and will be fulfilled when the last of the elect of God has been gathered in. The kingdom, then, is both a present reality and a future hope. It is and will be the fulfillment of the exponential expansion of the Twelve Tribes of Israel from Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria to the ends of the earth.

The times and dates are the periods in between as God pours out His Spirit on His people for His purposes and glory. Times and dates of the Father’s setting are probably infinite – at least as many as there are of His children who profess Jesus as Lord. Then there are those times and dates that are pivotal to every one of our lives that set the course for our witness to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Jesus wants us to love our neighbor, even when there is no indication that our neighbor’s “time and date” will even come. Love is the action that derives from not knowing but trusting God.

This great explosion of witness obviously cannot happen unless we have received power from the Holy Spirit. What Jesus has done here is tie the experience of Pentecost from the disciples to you and me. The Comforter who came at Pentecost not only has infinitely expanded our horizons but has endowed us with power as individuals and as a church to witness of Jesus Christ. That, and not some future throne in Jerusalem, is the fulfillment of a Kingdom that has already come but is not yet completed.

Our witness of Jesus Christ is a construction project in a little corner of God’s Kingdom.

I fail to see room there for Spiritual Butterflies that flit from one meeting to another, one seminar to another, one Bible study to another, sipping a little nectar here but never staying and waiting anywhere. How about you? We are called “witnesses,” and as citizens of the Kingdom, we have received the power to pull it off.

Notice, however, how that witness progresses.

It can only begin if we go home, wait and pray. Those were the instructions Jesus gave to His disciples – go to Jerusalem, wait and pray. Mission begins at home. The power to witness of Christ begins at home. A church that is not doing missions at home has no business supporting missions in foreign countries because they have not received the power. The first test of receiving the power is when it begins to work at home – where you are living, waiting and praying.

In our little corner of the world here, we have seen the power at work in the amazing little ministries that have been spawned from this seed in the wilderness. We have taken the power to witness of Jesus Christ into our homes and into our neighborhoods, if nothing more than through the way we live, the way we react and the hope that is visible to others.

Together, we have witnessed within our communities to the strength and vitality of this otherwise failed enterprise we call the NMMH Church. It yet lives, even though to the casual observer it may even look dead on the surface!

You have enabled me to carry that witness into the well of the Maine House of Representatives, into the media and into my writing. You have enabled me to carry that witness into the Maine State Prison and on into Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. This summer, we will be sending 5 young adults to Palestine to share the witness of Christ with our brothers and sisters there.

That’s power, Man! Show me any fraternal organization that can boast that kind of power without vast resources!

There are those in prison who insist that God sent them there for a purpose. God doesn’t need to murder people or rob them or rape them in order to advance His Kingdom. If, on the other hand, those in prison who declare Jesus as Lord can begin to exercise that power instead of wishing they were somewhere else – post-Rapture Jerusalem or home – things might begin to happen.

That power is not for our own amusement. Soaking in somebody else’s preaching; praising through worship and song; going to Bible studies are examples of inflow into our lives. We are called to have an outflow. Otherwise, we become a stagnant swamp like the Dead Sea. A stagnant swamp just sits there and percolates, while life goes on, or teems on, around it. There are too many in prison who want private experiences of the Spirit without pouring themselves out for people or giving themselves away to touch the human suffering around them.

“Stay where you are, physically and emotionally; wait and pray, and you will be given power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. Begin at home – in your POD; in your community; in your neighborhood – and be my witness. The witness that you are at home will expand out into all the earth because you have been given power.”

It is a rare Christian these days who can get beyond what God is doing for him to what God can do through him. Instead, they come like Spiritual Butterflies to one meeting after another. The closest they seem to come to witnessing is to witness that by the grace of God they are not like other men – “like that homosexual or that pedophile over there.”

A couple of weeks ago, an inmate in the chapel came to me greatly disturbed and wanting me to kick the homosexuals out of the church. “Let’s do that,” I thought. “Then let’s kick out the murderers, the sexual offenders, the thieves and the sinners. When we get to the sinners, and you see me leaving, please turn out the lights and lock the doors.”

“You shall be, not my ‘whipping boys,’ but my witnesses to the homosexuals, the sex offenders, the abortionists, the murderers, the thieves, the sinners because you have received the power to do so.”

And you will do that, not by thanking God that you are not like “those sinners over there,” but by reflecting the life-giving transformation that comes from, “God be merciful to me a sinner.”

Knowing the Will of God

Romans 12:1-3, 9-13
Ephesians 5:15-21

We talk much, as Christians, about the value of prayer within the body of believers for those who are sick or needy or both. We conclude that our prayers need to factor in the will of God but that God’s will may conflict with the answers we want for each other and for ourselves. We talk about the danger of prayer being used as a whip to challenge God to do what we want Him to do, rather than accepting His time and His way. The words of Jesus at Gethsemane are most helpful: “If it be possible, Father, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will but thine be done.”

Most of the time – perhaps as much as 99% of the time – we are not faced with the kind of life or death situation with which Jesus and the later Christian martyrs were faced. Most of the time we operate on instinct and do reasonably well. Instinct, however, is different for every one of us – honed in cultural setting from the time we were born to the time we die.

I used to consider instinct to be some kind of measure of common sense, as though common sense were an objective standard consistent everywhere. Unfortunately, common sense is inconsistent and dependent on too many sinful human factors. That’s why God’s will is critical to our lives.

Working in the prison has caused me to think through a bit more carefully about common sense and God’s will. Every one of us has at one time or another stepped over some imaginary line in the sand and perhaps paid a painful price, swept away by the moment under the influence of something other than God’s will.

Theologians and pastors commonly divide God’s will into two segments. Some call those segments the “general will of God” and the “specific will” of God. Others call them the “sovereign will of God” and the “permissive will” of God. Still others, like John Piper, call them the “decree will” of God and the “command will” of God. What all of this suggests is that God somehow has an overarching will that cannot be violated as well as a will that can be disobeyed and violated, the obedience of which leads to an understanding of His overarching will.

In the case of Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, God’s sovereign will was that Jesus was to die. That was His plan – His decree. In the process, Jesus’ death required the sins of certain key figures – Herod, Pilate, the soldiers, the Jewish leaders and even Peter in denying Him twice. They all sinned in fulfilling God’s sovereign will that His Son be crucified – that His plan – His decree – be carried out.

God sometimes wills things to happen that He hates, such as the sin that was necessary to bring to pass the death of His Son. Sometimes, suffering serves the same purpose. It may be God’s will that Christians suffer for doing good. 1 Peter 3:17: “It is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God’s will, than for doing evil.”

The Apostle Paul is insistent on God’s sovereign and inviolable will being carried out no matter what it takes. Ephesians 1:11: “In him (Christ) we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will.” The will of God is His sovereign governance over all that comes to pass. If not one sparrow falls to the ground without His knowledge; if “The plans of the heart belong to man, but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord” (Prov, 16:33); if “The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will” (Prov. 21:1), then we can come to no other conclusion but that God has sovereign control over all things.

What that says to us is that even in those things on which we look back over our lives with horror, God allowed them to happen in order that His sovereign will might be carried out – including our sins and our sicknesses. God’s sovereign will cannot be broken.

That leads to that part of God’s that we can disobey and fail to carry out – His “command will.” Remember the words of Jesus in Matthew 7:21: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” We have many examples of the “command will” of God. 1 Thessalonians 4:3: “This is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality.” He hits us where we live, but we can add to that any number of commands – gossip, anger, pride, covetousness, anxiety, jealousy, envy – those things that rise up in the heart with no conscience reflection or intention. We sometimes refer to obedience to disobedience of God’s “command will” as instinct.

The “command will” of God is a catalyst for His sovereign will which comes to pass whether we believe in it or not, even though the catalyst may be deep hurt or great loss. The assurance for us as believers is belief in a God who is strong enough and sovereign enough to turn our sorrow to good, while, on the other hand, empathizing and grieving with us. The flip side is belief in a God who is willing to forgive when we grievously break His commands.

The will referred to in the 12^th chapter of Romans is God’s “command will”: “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and discern what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will.”

I often pray publicly that God will help us to be faithful in the little things so that we may be entrusted with the big things of His sovereign Kingdom. God’s sovereign will is made clearer to us in stages and in accordance with our desire to obey His “will of command.”

In the movie, “What About Bob,” psychological progress is made in “baby steps.” That’s the way it is with knowledge of the will of God – baby steps.

God’s first stage is that His will of command is revealed with final, decisive authority in the Bible. Without a renewed mind, however, there is no transformation of our and very little knowledge of God’s will. Without a renewed mind, we will distort the Scriptures to avoid those radical demands for self—denial, love, purity and satisfaction in Christ alone. God’s Holy Spirit speaks through these commands and enables us, through time and experience, to obey these commands.

Romans 12:2 tells us that the more we move away from the behavior and thought patterns of this world, the more we will be transformed by the renewing of our minds – transformed into people who will be able to test for and to discern the perfect, sovereign will of God.

The logical conclusion from this is that as our minds are renewed, we can learn to accept pain, suffering and loss because of an assurance that God’s sovereign will is being played out through our pain, suffering and loss.

The more discipline we can direct toward those actions and attitudes that are commanded by God of His people in their daily walk, the more we can discern His ultimate, sovereign will in our lives and accept those things that happen to us that are beyond our control. The more we can learn to control, through the direct action of the HS, our thoughts and behaviors, the more we can grasp the big picture.

We will not become transformed unless our minds have become renewed. If we are not transformed, we will react to our circumstances the same as the world reacts – “Why me, Lord,” or “Why would a loving God allow bad things to happen to people?” “Lord I thank you that I am not like that sinner over there!” Those shallow reactions indicate a failure of the renewed mind and the transformed life – the first step toward acceptance.

I performed a committal service recently for a person for whom I have no idea of her faith experience. However, it was clear to me that she had done something that was life-changing. She had taken care of a severely disabled daughter for 64 years with no complaint. What that said to me is that in order to do that, she must have had in mind a higher goal than this life. How many of us, even as Christians, would consign our lives to such a task unless our minds were renewed and we had become transformed to such a degree that we could see this as the unfolding of the sovereign will of a God who cries over our pain and suffering?

More to the point, how many of us would sacrifice even an hour for a person who offends our Christian sensibilities?

When we get to Ephesians 5, we find a more specific cautionary note as to how we might be transformed by the renewing of our minds. Paul is telling us not to be foolish and do things irrationally and unthinkingly. He makes the clear distinction in verse 17 between being foolish and understanding what the Lord’s will is. There are two paths – foolishness and God’s will.

A story is told of a middle-aged farmer who always wondered in the back of his mind whether God really wanted him to be a great evangelist. One day he took a break and lay down under a tree. Looking up into the sky, he saw in the clouds what seemed to be the letters P and C. He hopped up, sold his farm and went out to P-reach C-hrist.

The problem was that he was a terrible preacher.

Finally a compassionate friend said to him one day, “Could it be that God was just asking you to “P-lant C-orn”?

Most of our questions about God’s will come not from the sovereign will of God but from specific circumstances in our lives: “Who should I marry? Should I take this job or that? Should I move somewhere else? Should I continue chemotherapy or not?” We get worked into a tizzy over God’s incremental or permissive will for us, while we fail to ground ourselves in perceiving His sovereign will for our lives in permit us to share in the unfolding of His sovereign will for His Kingdom.

I get a lot of that in prison. Many Christian inmates come to rationalize their incarceration on the grounds that God has a mission or a purpose for their lives. It gets pretty bizarre when you can assume that you killed somebody or raped somebody in order that God might bring you to prison for a purpose.

The fact is that if you had paid attention to becoming transformed by the renewing of your mind, you would not have landed in prison in the first place. Your instincts, or common sense, would have, instead, been Godly instincts. You would have been able to test and discern God’s sovereign will. Now that you are in prison, God’s sovereign will remains in place, but you will never be able to test it nor discern it unless and until your mind is renewed to the place where it should have been before you committed your crime.

Thinking that God put you in prison for a higher mission is fatalism rather than transformation. It is rationalization rather than brokenness. It is the foolishness that stands foursquare against understanding and accepting the will of the Lord. You are there because you disobeyed the God’s “will of command” and were therefore not renewed and transformed to the place where you could or can test and discern God’s sovereign will.

That does not mean that it is too late. But unless and until you seek transformation through renewal of the mind, even in prison, your actions and reactions will be foolishness rather than based on an understanding of the Lord’s will.

At the top of the list, Paul begins with: “Be very careful how you live.” The Christian is to live, not as unwise, but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. That doesn’t leave much room for rape, pillage and plunder, does it? Neither does conniving to embarrass the prison administration by demanding pseudo rights. “Be very careful how you live.”

Paul is telling us that the most practical way toward transformation of our lives is through how we spend our time – how we respond to every opportunity.

If you are like me, you have been asking all your lives, “Am I in God’s will in this area or in that area?” That is at it should be. Paul begins his answer, however, with the words, “Be very careful how you live.”

One of the features of this care in how we live is the 18^th verse, “Don’t get drunk.” This addresses a pattern of the world that is pervasive in America. That pattern is escapism. As Christians, we are supposed to deal with reality. We are not to run away from our problems – even our bad marriages, or our illnesses or our financial problems. We are not to try and anesthetize pain in our lives, be it with drugs, alcohol, illicit sex, denial, religion or running off into a fantasy world out there somewhere.

It is a chain reaction. When we don’t deal with reality, we are not obeying God’s will of command. When we don’t deal with God’s will of command, we are not being transformed by the renewing of our minds. When we are not being transformed by the renewing of our minds, we cannot know or understand God’s sovereign will.

Nowhere in Scripture does it say that it is God’s will for you and me to be happy or pain free. It does say, however, that it is God’s will that you and I deal with reality. That is what it means not to be conformed to the pattern of this world. That is what it means when He tells us that we cannot love both Him and the world. That is what it means to be a resident of the world but a citizen of the Kingdom.

Instead of finding ways of escaping reality through sex, drugs and rock and roll, Paul tells us, we are to be filled with the Holy Spirit. To be filled with the HS is to open my life to Him – not just up to my waist where it only appears that I am walking with Christ; not just up to my neck, where my heart is usually in the right place; but up to the very top of my head. It is only there that my heart and mind and entire being is being shaped toward the mind of Christ.

That is the essence of transformation – knowing God’s will of command, obeying God’s will of command as the Spirit gives us ability and thereby learning to think like God.

Socrates once said that the unexamined life is not worth living. People are in prison because they are paying the consequences of living the unexamined life. That is why people get married too soon and divorced too readily, as well. That is why all too many Christians, in prison or outside prison, are failing to redeem the time – failing to make the most of every opportunity – by focusing on the Lord’s return rather than living in His presence now.

Martin Luther once said, “If it were the will of God, I would plant an oak tree today, even if I knew Christ were coming tomorrow.”

Somebody once published an article entitled, “If You Are 35, You Have 500 Days to Live.” The article went on to say that when you subtract the time you spend sleeping, working, tending to personal matters, eating, traveling, doing chores, attending to personal hygiene in the next 36 years you will have only 500 days to spend as you wish.

That’s a frightening thought, isn’t it?

In closing, this matter of the will of God has far less to do with epiphanies and handwriting on the wall than it does with how we face life daily.

If you could go back and change the past, how would you have better used your time? The things we regret are precisely the things that probably would have turned out quite differently had we paid attention to God’s commands – His will of command. The fact is that every single day, time and time again, there is a replay of the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. We are presented with the option of either conforming to the pattern of the world or being transformed by the renewing of our minds.

The will of God is that we be transformed by the renewing of our minds in order that we might test and discern His good, pleasing and perfect will.

Conformity to this world, on the other hand, is acting and reacting in a way that brings us pleasure – sex, TV, the books we read, the gossip about others that we so enjoy – any number of things. The most apparent result of this pattern is the terrible harvest of crime and divorce. The pattern of this world – especially America – is to make our own worldly comforts the primary focus of our lives, forgetting that at the end of the day, the death rate is still 100%.

When this life is over, all our power is gone, all our material possessions are gone and all our pleasures will be forgotten.

“How, then, can I know God’s will?” You cannot know God’s sovereign will for your life until you have committed to being transformed by the renewing of your minds. You cannot be transformed by the renewing of your minds until you have determined to know God’s commands and to strive through the HS to obey them – all of them; not just the easy ones for most of us, like homosexuality and abortion. Only then can we understand what is God’s good, pleasing and perfect will for us.

Down With the "You've Got To's..."

James 5:7-20

Our little congregation is being forced, through circumstances beyond our control, as they say in Maine, “to fish or cut bait.” For 14 years, we have been learning what it means to be in fellowship with each other – to be a church. For 14 years, we have studied the Scriptures and gone through the duties of doing church, struggling to find the balance between tradition and our changing needs.

I have reminded you many times of Gideon’s army – carved smaller and smaller and yet mighty in battle. We have explored what it means to live in the presence of Jesus and be citizens of the Kingdom of God in the here and now. To explore these things is one thing; to live them daily is another.

Two issues have become clear to me.

The first is that I cannot seek to build a big church with big programs and big stories of success. It is my hope to that God will build here a people with a big heart – a heart of flesh tuned to the power and presence of a God who has taken up His dwelling place with us and within us.

The second issue that has become clear to me is that because of our small numbers, we are not able to hide our own faith behind people and programs. It is right out front here for all of us to see and to experience.

That is both a beautiful thing and a scary thing. In the background is the gnawing thought that our faith might not work. James 5:16 tells us that the “…fervent prayer of the righteous availeth much.” Sometimes it is easier and more comfortable to avail little! This verse puts the onus directly on the individual, doesn’t it? So often we are tempted to tell others what they must do – the “You’ve Got to’s…”

I also should like to dispose, once and for all, of the “You’ve got to’s…” It is the fervent prayer of the “righteous,” not the unrighteous or self-righteous that availeth much. There is no place among the “righteous” for the “You’ve got to’s…”

We talked a bit last week about the “You’ve got to’s…” “In order to get this or that, you’ve got to do this or that.” “In order to be happy, you’ve got to get in the Word.” “In order to be filled with joy, you’ve got to stay in prayer.” More to the point of where I am going this morning, “In order to be healed, you’ve got to have enough faith and there cannot be any sin in your life.”

To all of the above, I will offer the politically-correct response – “Malarkey!” in the place of a more poignant but less comfortable phrase.

We suddenly are faced with some daunting realities in our little congregation. There are loved ones here who have been diagnosed with very serious illnesses. I should like to consider this morning whether or not God, through those among us who are suffering from physical disease or emotional trauma, has presented us with an opportunity to decide whether or not we really are a church. The answer to that question will have nothing to do with whether or not God heals in our time or His. It has to do with testing the authenticity of our fellowship.

That is a scary thing. What if our prayers, our faith and our love aare not enough – don’t produce the results we want?

To begin, we must put those verses, James 5:14, 15, into context. We cannot read them and insist that in order for there to be healing in our congregation, we need elders, some kind of magical oil and enough faith on the part of ourselves or the person afflicted to make our dreams come true.

First of all, we have no elders here for any number of reasons or excuses. We can’t convene a hurry-up meeting and anoint some in order to follow the letter of the Gospel. That is both foolish and unnecessary. Secondly, there is no magical oil anywhere. Oil is a physical and spiritual symbol of God’s balm of healing over both our bodies and our souls. Finally, we cannot conjure up any more faith than what we have been given by God.

Jesus reminds us that faith no bigger than a mustard seed can remove the mountains of sin in our lives and the doubt we often feel about the power and presence of God. “Fervent faith” is not “frothing faith.” It is belief in and the application of what we have been given, just as our community of worship is belief in and the application of God’s ability to add to our numbers according to His desire and plan.

Here is what those verses in James say:

Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up.

The theme of the entire Book of James is to expose hypocrisy within the church and to teach right Christian behavior among congregations such as ours here at the NMMH. The purpose is to get rid of the “You’ve got to’s…” by shifting the focus from our neighbor’s faith and practice and toward our own deficiencies. James is telling us that it is not enough to talk the Christian faith. We must try it and live it. He writes about backing up genuine faith with good works – “faith without works is dead!” He writes about controlling our speech, seeking spiritual wisdom, turning away from evil desires, turning away from trusting in our own plans and possessions. He teaches patience; taking care not to make false promises; tapping into the power of prayer and faithfulness to each other and to God.

James has left us a how-to book on Christian living.

In the immediate context of the 5^th chapter, we note that we are to be patient in suffering. What this tells us is that the Christian is not immune to suffering. He gives as an example the suffering of Job. The Apostle Paul makes it clear that suffering is often the lot of the Christian:

(Romans 5:1-5) Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance character and character hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the HS, whom he has given.

Paul is telling us that because we have been justified by faith, we have peace no matter what our circumstances. Not only do we have peace, but we look forward in hope to the glory of God that is now just beyond our physical reach. Suffering, Paul tells us, is a natural condition of growth in Christ. Its disastrous effects, however, are moderated by the peace that faith comes to give and by the hope that is ours.

James is not writing about immediate deliverance from sickness. He is writing about the attitude of the church toward sickness and any number of other trials. He is addressing our attitudes within the church. “Is any in trouble? He should pray. Is anyone happy? He should sing. Is anyone sad? He should be quiet and contemplative, waiting patiently on the Lord. Is anyone broke? He should make adjustments and be thankful, giving praise to God for his circumstances. Is anyone sick? He should share his hurt with his family of believers, trusting God.”

This is about attitudes that confirm for us that the church is our family of God. Our long-range goal is to systematically wring out distrust so that we can dare to share both our joys and our sorrows without fear of rejection.

That immediately cuts out the “You’ve got to’s…” What is left are the “We’ve got to’s…”

We’ve got to decide as a congregation whether to take the risk of practicing the belief that God is in our midst or whether to decide that He is in the ozone out there somewhere. If God is in our midst, He is well aware of the joys and the sufferings of every one of us and has a plan for every one of us. If God has a plan for my life or your life, it is clearly our mission to take peace in the knowledge that God’s plan for your life and for mine is also part of His plan for our little church here. That is the chain of hope that stretches from the empty tomb to our own resurrections.

Let me make this very clear. It is not the arithmetic of our prayers – how many they are, nor how eloquent they may be nor how long a period they span nor how sweet our voices may be nor how orderly they may be that determines their effectiveness. It is God’s will and our righteousness endowed by God alone that come together to bring peace and sometimes even healing.

By the same token, it is not the faith of the sick person that triggers the healing. You will remember that beggar at the temple gate. He wanted money from Peter and John. Peter said to him, “Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have I give to you, in the name of Jesus of Nazareth, rise up and walk.” There was no faith on the part of the beggar. By the same token, Jesus had walked by that man any number of times, and there was no healing. There was healing only in God’s time and by virtue of a simple faith the size of a grain of mustardseed.

And yet, Peter and John went out on a limb for him. They didn’t tell him what he must do. They told him what they would offer for his benefit.

What we are pointed to in these passages of Scripture concerning faith is the life-changing power of Jesus Christ. Through the Holy Spirit and in the name of Jesus, that life-changing power is every bit as powerful today as it was 2,000 years ago.

While it is ours to claim, however, it is God’s to dispense in His time and according to His pleasure. Do we dare claim God’s will for any one of us? Or are we bound up in what we want to see happen and therefore would prefer to sit quietly on the sidelines rather than take a chance?

What if the healing does not come? Will we embarrass ourselves?

There are no guarantees. God is not a vending machine for healing. He does not operate on our timetable. Faith requires of us a very simple belief – that God does hear our prayers.

We have had healings in this congregation in the past. We saw the healing of anxiety in Lendall and Carol’s adoption of Madeline through very trying circumstances. We have seen a healing of Barbara and her mysterious malady. We have gone through trials within our little church and have come out on the other end with a new hope and stronger than ever. There have been a number of us who have been raised up from critical illnesses such as heart disease and cancer. Sometimes in our grief or in our insistence that God do something right now, we forget what He has already done and, in fact, is doing.

If God is present with us, His very presence insists that He hears and answers our prayers. Faith, then, is about submission to the sovereign grace and power of God and belief in His abiding presence with us. Faith is not complete, however, until it accepts that God’s plan for us remains shrouded in mystery and that no rain dance can invoke His intervention. He is God; we are not.

I believe that the 5^th chapter of James is about three things – restoration, resurrection and reconciliation. Restoration comes from knowing that God will, both now and in the future, confirm our mustard seed of faith. We will be restored to the perfect image of God originally intended for His human creation.

Resurrection is the promise that, even though God may choose to permit decline and death instead of a miracle of healing, He does so in order that His glory be revealed. In fact, our Christian belief insists that death for the believer has been defeated in Jesus Christ.

Reconciliation is the process of being brought together as individuals in a community of worship. In fact, it is often illness, trial and suffering that draw us together. We are most open to seeking God and each other when we are broken.

There is much I could say about God’s abiding presence and His healing hand. I have experienced personally the task of having to believe in healing while failing to witness it happen. Had God answered prayer for healing in my family circumstances in the 1980’s, I would not be standing before you today. I would not be a chaplain at the Maine State Prison. Jonathan would never have been born. I would never have lived in Manchester nor known Barbara and this patient, loving congregation.

Everything that has happened in my life over the past 20 or so years has happened because God did not answer fervent prayers for healing here and now. I will have to say that the death of which I speak happened so that God might demonstrate His glory through these rather unusual and often bizarre circumstances that have intertwined my life with yours.

As a final note, I want to pass on an indictment of the modern faith movement that has given rise to charlatans and phonies.

Our God has, in fact, become too small. Our most pressing need is not deliverance from physical suffering or sickness but from spiritual malaise. Our obsession with pain-free living is a happiness theology that turns God into the Great Gargoyle in the Sky. It stands in the way of our willingness to submit, confess and take up our cross daily. What cross could it be that we insist be removed so that we might be pain free?

We have no obligation to demonstrate a powerful faith here at the NMMH so that people will flock to us to see miracles of healing. In fact, the day that happens will probably be the day I will leave you on your own. Our obligation is to seek how to become righteous. The definition given to righteousness is best summed up in the Gospels: “Seek first the Kingdom of God and the righteousness of Christ, and all these things will be added unto you.”

In the Garden, Jesus prayed, “Father, if it be possible, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but Thine be done.”

That is the prayer of faith, is it not? If the prayer of a righteous man availeth much, how much more righteous can you get than was Jesus? His faith stretched way beyond happiness theology of getting His answers now. Some say that at the cross Jesus took on Himself not only our sin but our sickness and therefore God intends for us to be sickness-free, a condition we can invoke right now if we follow the rules of prayer, anointing and faith.

I say again, “Malarkey!” Our sickness was indeed defeated at the cross, guaranteeing that we will be fully restored beyond the veil of this life. In the interim, Jesus calls us to the role of suffering servant by asking us to pick up our crosses daily and follow in His footsteps, with or without instant healing.

Finally, it is not our actions or special touch that brings spiritual or physical healing. It is the abiding presence of a sovereign Lord who answers the fervent prayers of the faithful in His timing and according to His plan.

I would say to anyone here this morning who needs healing of body and spirit, “If it be possible, Lord, remove this cup of suffering from our brother or sister. Nevertheless, not our will, but Thine be done.”

"'Dem Bones Get Up and They Walk Around"

Ezekiel 37:1-14
1 Peter 1:13-21

In January, 1992, I walked on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea at Haifa in Northern Israel. At that time, I was struggling with a lot of things, not the least of which was my Christian faith and its relevance to my personal life which was somewhat in chaos at that moment. I was 53 years old and could see very little difference between my life and that of any other person in pursuit of the Great American Dream.

Complicating my thoughts was the experience that I was having in the Holy Land. I was visiting what one friend calls the “Jesus sites” that have questionable historical authenticity but draw thousands of American tourists every year who see themselves as walking through the pages of the Bible.

Imagine me on a bus with seminary students half my age who were singing, “I walked today where Jesus walked.” This was so much of what one friend called “Wookie Christianity” that I was ready to bail out the first week.

Have you ever felt like that before? It comes when you spend too much time around people who are exulting in what they refer to as the “joy of the Lord.” If you don’t happen to have that joy at the moment, you are made to feel guilty or inadequate.

You don’t need to be a churchgoer to get that feeling. It comes by hanging around people who do aerobic exercise, for example, or people who have made and saved a lot of money.

You get those feelings by hanging with Christians who use sentences like, “You’ve got to be in the Word.” “You’ve got to just rest in the Lord.” All that is true enough, I guess, but I have found that people who begin sentences with “You’ve got to…” usually wind up in the ditch at one time or another. When that happens, the last thing they want to hear from anyone is the “You’ve got to’s…”

At any rate, it occurred to me in 1992 that there may have been a whole vast sea of humanity out there that had quietly left the church because of too many “You’ve got to’s…” I began to call this the “Church in Exile.”

Since that time, I have refined my thought of this Church in Exile to include those who claim Jesus Christ as Lord but who have found themselves, for one reason or another, living in the margins. In order to dig them out or even to identify them, we have to go to where they are. These are not middle class people who have just somehow decided to keep their faith a private matter and go snowmobiling or skiing on Sundays. These are people who have been pushed to the margins and can’t find their way out.

During that first trip to Israel, I became far less interested in where Jesus had been and far more interested in where He might be right then and there. I have never lost that gnawing need to find the presence of Jesus among the people in exile. As prison chaplain, I find myself always on the hunt for Jesus. Often He is very hard to find.

You might say that we here at the NMMH Church were a people in exile. There was no Christian community in which our people would find a warm welcome for long. We filled a void by coming together in search of the living Lord. Since that time, when you think about it, we have had nothing but a congregation of people in exile from the traditional church – some by choice and others by default.

Palestine is also a place where God’s people live in exile. Prison is another. The homeless have among them God’s people in exile. Christians in exile are among those living on the garbage dumps of Manila. The list is endless, I suspect. Imagine how much in exile are Christians who are very wealthy, Christians who have no health insurance and Christians who are in wheelchairs or nursing homes. What does God have to say to such people?

More to the point, how do we minister to such people without going where they are?

Ministering to Christians in exile is a tough assignment. They tend to be out of the mainstream, restless, broken and hurting. We are going to see this morning a graphic example in Ezekiel of what it is like to be one of God’s people in exile and how we can use that experience to spiritually come out of our self-imposed exile.

I like to think that we are here this morning because we are all in a restless search for Jesus, hoping to find Him in this community of worship. Those who have been here a long time know that this is a long and painful process. Don Smith has lately been encouraging us to pray for one another. That seems like a no-brainer, but it is a lot more complicated than it looks on the surface. Trust is built in baby steps and often through times in the desert, where relationships go dry and unresponsive.

Ezekiel was born at the time of the divided kingdom of Israel but at a high spiritual time for the two tribes of Judah. Faithful King Josiah had repaired the Temple, discovered the Book of the Law in the Ark of the Covenant, torn down the idols and restored the worship of God. One of the things he had to do was to clear the Temple of the living quarters of the male shrine prostitutes.

After his death, Israel went right back into idolatry and eventually was exiled into Babylon. Among the exiles was the prophet Ezekiel. While in exile, the Jewish people held onto the hope of returning to their Temple worship. That hope was dashed when they heard, twenty years into the exile, that Nebuchadnezzar had destroyed the city and leveled the Temple.

Ezekiel gets this vision from the Lord. He finds himself in the middle of a valley. It is a dismal place, full of dry human bones baked white and dry and lying on the desert floor. Buzzards had done their work, and now all signs of life had gone.

If God asked you or me, “Son of man, can those bones live?” the answer would be an emphatic “No.” Ezekiel’s answer was, “I don’t know, Lord. Only You know.” That is Ezekiel’s testimony to the sovereignty of God when all appears to have been lost.

God says to Ezekiel, “Preach to those bones.” The bones begin to rattle and come together into skeletons – but still no life: “I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them.”

That may have been enough for most Churches today. Fill it full of bodies, and it is a success! But where’s the life? There was more to be done: “Preach, Son of man, and say to this valley, ‘Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe into these slain, that they may live.’ They came to life and stood on their feet – a vast army.”

There is a key verse in the Book of Ezekiel that explains what God is going to do with His people. It is found in Chapter 36, vs. 26-28:

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.

When the Temple was leveled, the people of Israel lost their hope. They lost their hope because the very purpose of Israel was to make a nation of a people. The Temple and the Law were the essence of the Messianic promises. To lose those meant to the Jews in exile that the promises were gone as well. The valley was scattered with the dry bones of a people and a promise.

What God is telling them through this prophecy is that He can raise the hope of Israel in its deadest moment.

That should be hopeful to us as well this morning as we wonder at the church of Jesus Christ in America and its seeming deadness. We know that a church can be full of people and still be dead – a valley of dry bones. Life becomes something breathed into it by the Holy Spirit.

That is the life that each of us longs for and the reason we meet together in this place.

For those who think that the only way to bring those spiritually dead bones to life is to do something, I would remind you that in those couple of verses we just read, God is saying that it is He who will do the raising up. “I will give you a new heart and I will put a new spirit in you. I will remove from you your heart of stone, and I will give you a heart of flesh. I will put my Spirit in you, and I will move you to follow my decrees. I will be your God.” In v. 32, God reminds then that there is nothing that they have done that deserves His mercy: “I want you to know that I am not doing this for your sake…Be ashamed and disgraced for your conduct, O house of Israel.”

With the return of the exiles to Jerusalem 50 years later, the Messianic promise was restored to Israel. The Temple was rebuilt by Nehemiah and Ezra. Israel again became prosperous. A people who were dead like dry bones were once again made alive through the power of the Spirit. This was the first fulfillment of Ezekiel’s prophecy.

God had bigger things in mind, however. This was just the beginning. With the Resurrection of Jesus, those dry bones of religiosity came together. The Spirit breathed on them, and they came to life as the Church of Jesus Christ. Each one of us was brought from a pile of dry bones to a people called of God to bring life to this world. Easter became the second fulfillment of Ezekiel’s prophecy.

There are those today who are waiting for the third fulfillment of Ezekiel’s prophecy – the Resurrection of the dead on the last day. The fact is that the Kingdom of God is the third fulfillment of Ezekiel’s prophecy of “’Dem bones, ‘Dem bones, “Dem dry bones, now hear the word of the Lord.” This world is a valley of dry bones, rising one person at a time as called by God. Can you picture it? The Kingdom of God, filled with those saints who have gone before and those saints now walking among the living dead, is the fulfillment of Ezekiel’s prophecy, one citizen at a time.

They say that there will be final fulfillment. It will be that last day when the Lord Himself comes down from Heaven with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead will rise (1 Thess 4:16). There will be a noise, a rattling sound, perhaps, and bones will come together, bone to bone. Tendons and flesh will appear on them and skin will cover them. God will put into them the breath of life, and they will come to life and stand on their feet, a vast army of them.

We, however, are here today wondering and eager to come more fully to life – how to have life and have it more abundantly. We often talk about how spiritually dry are these times in our day. People are not as committed to church as they used to be. I was reading an article recently about how the number of Christians in Palestine has declined precipitously so that in Bethlehem, for example, it is considered to be less than 15% and 2% throughout Palestine.

Does it ever occur to us that maybe the remnant that is left in Palestine is the resurrected Church in Exile? How many saints are needed for God to raise up a valley of dry bones?

Our church is small, but our hearts are full. We don’t have the numbers that other churches have; likewise, we don’t have their problems, either. We are getting older, and our future here as a church body is uncertain. Given a choice, I will take our plight over that of others. What we represent here is not another pile of dry bones in the desert. What we represent here is the makings of a great army. Ezekiel tells us a little about what it takes to rise up and live.

First, before anything can happen, the vision must come. “Without the vision, the people perish” (Prov. 29:18). I think we have the vision here – not of programs but of what God can do with the weak and the vulnerable and the unlikely.

Theologian Walter Brueggemann lists 6 qualities of a people in exile:

1. They are a community of sadness over the loss of what used to be…

2. They have lost the old family place – the sense of familiarity, the old hymns, the old church traditions, even what we call Christian morality.

3. They are keenly aware of the power of despair: “Are we moving forward, or are we just spinning our wheels?”

4. They question whether or not God is absent. Maybe we have driven Him out with our church growth plans that never factor in God and His sovereign will.

5. They play the blame game. You hear about busy families, mass media, video games, apathy, hurt feelings, sports events and any other number of excuses. The source of the problem must be outside the church, we think, since we, as the body of Christ, are so nearly perfect.

6. They are preoccupied with self. We need; we hope for; we want – all those things that make God secondary in our plans.

Here is Ezekiel, a disenfranchised priest without a temple. God shows up and says, “I want you to be a priest to the exiles.” Think about this. Ezekiel is called to generate confidence and hope in a people empty of life and to breathe fresh air into a people who had been crushed by history. What we forget is that even in exile, and especially in exile, God is in our midst: “Lo I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

God goes into exile with us, for it is only in exile that we can minister the love of Christ to others who are lost in exile.

If God is in exile with us, then surely He can show us a way out. “Don’t be afraid, Joseph, when your brothers stuff you down a well. I am with you; I’ll get you home. And David, when the odds are stacked against you and you have to face a giant with a rag and five stones, don’t be afraid, for I am with you. Daniel, don’t worry about those hungry lions. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, don’t fret when Nebuchadnezzar throws you into the fiery furnace. Paul and Peter, don’t worry when they throw you into prison for your preaching.”

“NMMH Church, don’t despair when your numbers decline and you seem to be getting too old to light the fire anymore. I am with you. I have already raised up this bunch of dry bones and will lead you home.” “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.”

The raising up of the dry bones to create the church is not an outward activity but an inward reality. “I will place in you a new heart.” This is not about how we feel or what we do. It is about who we are. The way out of exile is not cosmetic surgery. It is transplant surgery in God’s time and in His manner. God is not interested in adjusting the way we do church. He is interested in adjusting our identities.

Our heart of stone may be our inability to let go. In order to receive that heart of flesh, there is often much that must be taken away. God will not take it until we are willing to let it go.

Our heart of stone may well be our lack of passion. Can we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land – our places of work, our families, in our neighborhoods? Peter thinks we can.

“Since you call on a Father who judges each man’s work impartially, live your lives as strangers here in reverent fear…In Christ you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God.”

This is a direct address to us when we are tempted to join the great unwashed masses out there because it is more comfortable and because we don’t like that feeling of being in exile. “Live your lives as strangers in reverent fear.” I don’t see anything there about buttonholing people to get them to come to church or to begin each sentence with, “You’ve got to…” Do you?

As God raised Christ from the dead, so also will His church rise up as a great army from the valley of dry bones, one saint at a time; one little congregation at a time.

The question for our time is, “Can the Church live?” I read all the time about strategies to revive a dead church, as though God somehow is on vacation. The answer to the question, “Can the Church live?” is not a program or a defeatist attitude. It is, “Only you know, God.” To which God replies, “Prophesy; preach – speak my word, find your place in my body, exercise your faith and the talents I have given you, pray for one another, and allow my Spirit to breathe new life in you.”

We are a great army waiting to happen. Are we ready to rise up and be restored?