Saturday, November 26, 2011

Troop Carrier or Luxury Liner?



This next post is a lengthy story from the book Radical by David Platt.  It was too good to leave out of these posts so I have copied it in its entirety.

************************************************************

The language of Matthew 10 envisions Jesus as a military commander sending soldiers out on a mission.  He summoned his disciples, and then he sent them out.  In light of the needs before them and the danger around them, the disciples knew they were entering the battle.

In the late 1940’s, the United States government commissioned William Francis Gibbs to work with the United States Lines to construct an eighty-million-dollar troop carrier for the navy.  The purpose was to design a ship that would speedily carry fifteen thousand troops during times of war.  By 1952, construction on the SS United States was complete.  The ship could travel at forty-four knots (about fifty-one miles per hour), and she could steam ten thousand miles without stopping for fuel or supplies.  She could outrun any other ship and travel nonstop anywhere in the world in less than ten days.  The SS United States was the fastest and most reliable troop carrier in the world.

The only catch is, she never carried troops.  At least not in any official capacity.  The ship was put on standby once during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, but otherwise she was never used in all her capacity by the U. S. Navy.

Instead the SS United States became a luxury liner for presidents, heads of state, and a variety of other celebrities who traveled on her during her seventeen years of service.  As a luxury liner, she couldn’t carry fifteen thousand people.  Instead she could house just under two thousand passengers.  Those passengers could enjoy the luxuries of 695 staterooms, 4 dining salons, 3 bars, 2 theaters, 5 acres of open deck with a heated pool, 19 elevators, and the comfort of the world’s first fully air-conditioned passenger ship.  Instead of a vessel used for battle during wartime, the SS United States became a means of indulgence for wealthy patrons who desired to coast peacefully across the Atlantic.

Things look radically different on a luxury liner than they do on a troop carrier.  The faces of soldiers preparing for battle and those of patrons enjoying their bonbons are radically different.  The conservation of resources on a troop carrier contrasts sharply with the opulence that characterizes the luxury liner.  And the pace at which the troop carrier moves is by necessity much faster than that of the luxury liner.  After all, the troop carrier has an urgent task to accomplish; the luxury liner, on the other hand, is free to casually enjoy the trip.

When I think about the history of the SS United States, I wonder if she has something to teach us about the history of the church.  The church, like the SS United States, has been designed for battle.  The purpose of the church is to mobilize a people to accomplish a mission.  Yet we seem to have turned the church as troop carrier into the church as luxury liner.  We seem to have organized ourselves, not to engage in battle for the souls of peoples around the world, but to indulge ourselves in the peaceful comforts of the world.  This makes me wonder what would happen if we looked squarely in the face of a world with 4.5 billion people going to hell and twenty-six thousand children dying every day of starvation and preventable diseases, and we decided it was time to move this ship into battle instead of sitting back on the pool deck while we wait for the staff to serve us more hors d’oeuvre.

Are we willing to obey the orders of Christ?  Are we willing to be like him?  Are we willing to risk our lives to go to great need and to great danger—whether it’s in the inner cities around us, the difficult neighbor across the street, the disease-ridden communities in Africa, or the hostile regions in the Middle East?  Are we willing to fundamentally alter our understanding of Christianity from a luxury-liner approach that seeks more comforts in the world to a troop-carrier approach that forsakes comforts in the world to accomplish an eternally significant task and achieve an eternally satisfying reward?

Friday, November 25, 2011

My Shield




Last year our choir sang this song.  The chorus is taken from Scripture and this is what it says:

But thou, oh Lord are a shield for me
My glory and the lifter of my head
Thou, oh Lord are shield for me
My glory and the lifter of my head


I still have the CD in my car and I was listening to it and singing my heart out on a trip to Chattanooga today.  Of all the things I'm thankful for this season, the truth of these words has to be at the top of the list.

In the past year there have been trials in my life that Satan wanted to use to destroy my faith.  But because the Lord was a shield to me, those things were just glancing blows.  They bruised me; they left a scab, but they were not lethal.

Sometimes I feel ashamed, disgraced or discouraged.  I pick at the scab, and it bleeds.

And that is when the Lord is the lifter of my head.  He speaks to me, and I know He is there.  He tells me that this is not over, that time will bring healing, that He is always in control.

Praise God!  Just wanted you to know that I shouted "Hallelujah!" a few times today.  And it felt really good.

Monday, November 21, 2011

The Long Way Home


We took the long way home today.

After spending the weekend in Indiana visiting relatives with my parents we made one last stop this morning.  We went to Mitchell, Indiana, to eat breakfast with my aunt Mary.  Mary is the only one in Dad’s family who still lives in their hometown.  Mitchell has it own claim to fame.  Not only does it host the annual Persimmon Festival complete with a Persimmon Queen; it also is the hometown of Mercury astronaut, Gus Grissom. (I think my Uncle Ralph went to school with him.)



After breakfast we headed south.  Our usual route home is straight down I-65.  But the detour to Mitchell took us south on the two-lane back roads of southern Indiana.  And as we rolled along toward home my dad recollected his younger days when he had traveled those roads as a kid.  I heard about how:

*his older brother John had taken him for rides in on these hilly roads at speeds of 80-90 mph.  I asked, “Were you scared or did you think it was fun?”  He said, “I just thought it was stupid.”  He said John would even drive a loaded dump truck so fast he thought it would roll over.

*his mother was a saint, full of compassion and love.  She was a hard worker even after being burned over half her body.  The fire also badly burned her toddler son, my dad.

*his dad, just like most dads, had his good points and his bad points.   Although he was not a Christian at the time, he never worked on Sunday (aside from milking and feeding that had to be done).  He didn’t go to church, but the rest of the family walked to the church just down the road.  On the other had, his son Norman was in the Navy and sent money home for his dad to save for him.  His dad bought a cow with the money.

*Uncle John owned an excavating business and was the first president of the Lions Club of Orleans.  He lived near my Uncle Norman who laid gas lines for a living.  These two brothers married sisters.  I still remember going to their house where we saw color TV for the first time.

*the fields we were passing were ones that my dad had farmed with his dad.  He said he would drive the tractor, which would bundle shocks of wheat.  Sometimes Dad would forget to pull the lever and the shock would get too big, which would cause it to jam.  He would have to get down and pull the wheat out by hand.  It sounded dangerous to me.

*the roads we were traveling were the same ones they rode to take hogs to market in Louisville.  On the way home dad said they would stop in Palmyra to look at tractors.  We saw the tractor dealership there.  Dad still loves to look at tractors.


The route we took made our trip a couple of hours longer than it should have been, but it was time well spent.  I was happy to be there to listen to my dad share a piece of his childhood with me. 

Friday, November 4, 2011

Radical by David Platt

Last month I had several posts from books by Richard Foster.  This month I am beginning with excerpts from Radical by David Platt.  The sub-title of the book is Taking Back Your Faith From the American Dream.  It has been a challenging book and I'll share several ideas from the book here.



The first chapter is called "Someone Worth Losing Everything For."  It's about how much we should love Jesus.  The second chapter is "Too Hungry for Words," and it deals with how much we love God's Word.  Here are some excerpts:


“This is the picture of Jesus in the gospel.  He is something—someone—worth losing everything for.  And if we walk away from the Jesus of the gospel, we walk away from eternal riches.  The cost of nondiscipleship is profoundly greater for us than the cost of discipleship.  For when we abandon the trinkets of this world and respond to the radical invitation of Jesus, we discover the infinite treasure of knowing and experiencing him.

“But is his Word enough for us?

"This is the question that often haunts me when I stand before a crowd of thousands of people in the church I pastor.  What if we take away the cool music and the cushioned chairs?  What if the screens are gone and the stage is no longer decorated?  What if the air conditioning is off and the comforts are removed?  Would his Word still be enough for his people to come together?

"[We did an experiment.]  We called it Secret Church.
We set a date—one Friday night—when we could gather from six o’clock in the evening until midnight, and for six hours we would do nothing but study the Word and pray.  We would interrupt the six-hour Bible study periodically to pray for our brothers and sisters around the world who are forced to gather secretly.  We would also pray for ourselves, that we would learn to love the Word as they do.
(I'd love to do this sometime.)

"What is it about God’s Word that creates a hunger to hear more?  And not just to hear the Word but to long for it, study it, memorize it, and follow it?  What causes followers of Christ around the world literally to risk their lives in order to know it?

"We are afraid that if we stop and really look at God in the Word, we might discover that he evokes greater awe and demands deeper worship than we are ready to give him.
(I think this is SO true!)

"An old preaching professor used to take his students to a cemetery every semester.  Standing on the perimeter overlooking scores of headstones, he would ask his students in all sincerity to speak over the graves and call people from the ground to rise up and live.  With some embarrassment and an awkward chuckle or two, they would try it.  Of course, one by one they would fail.  The professor would then look at his students and remind them of a core truth in the gospel: people are spiritually dead, and only words from God can bring them to spiritual life.
(How often do I forget the power of God's Word?)

"And salvation now consists of a deep wrestling in our souls with the sinfulness of our hearts, the depth of our depravity, and the desperation of our need for his grace.  Jesus is no longer one to be accepted or invited in, but one who is infinitely worthy of our immediate and total surrender.
(This is addressing how we word our invitations to salvation..."invite Him in"...Accept Him as your Savior.)

"But that gift of grace involves the gift of a new heart.  New desires.  New longings.  For the first time, we want God.  We see our need for him, and we love him."