[I first posted this on Feb. 21st, 2006, and thought it deserved another look, so enjoy! - Louie]

You’ve probably all heard about this story. Read how Yahoo News reported it, and then I want to comment on it and take a totally different slant on things (nothing too unusual there eh?).

British historian David Irving was sentenced to three years in prison Monday after admitting to an Austrian court that he denied the Holocaust — a crime in the country where Hitler was born.

Irving, who pleaded guilty and then insisted during his one-day trial that he now acknowledged the Nazis’ World War II slaughter of 6 million Jews, had faced up to 10 years behind bars. Before the verdict, Irving conceded he had erred in contending there were no gas chambers at the Auschwitz concentration camp.

“I made a mistake when I said there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz,” Irving testified, at one point expressing sorrow “for all the innocent people who died during the Second World War.”

Irving, stressing he only relied on primary sources, said he came across new information in the early 1990′s from top Nazi officials — including personal documents belonging to Adolf Eichmann — that led him to rethink certain previous assertions.

But despite his apparent epiphany, Irving, 67, maintained he had never questioned the Holocaust.

“I’ve never been a Holocaust denier and I get very angry when I’m called a Holocaust denier,” he said.

In point of fact, Irving has been a Holocaust denier, but a very clever one. I have read several of his eariler books, before he went off on this tangent of first trying to prove that Hitler didn’t have any to do with the Holocaust, and then trying to say it didn’t happen at all.

It’s incredible to me that anyone could even think about denying the Holocaust! We have film of the camps being liberated and their condition at that time. We have reams of testimony from both guards and inmates of what happened there. On top of that there are still thousands of living eye witnesses to this horrible crime.

Yet there is a growing movement seeking to deny it ever happened. Populated by an odd mixture of skin heads, closet Nazi’s and Islamofacists, they continue to lie and deny!

To find out a little truth I recommend the United States Holoucaust Museum.

But none of that is my point.

My point is simply this – what an incredible example of the power of denial in the human psyche.

We human beings have the absolutely amazing ability to look right at something, or a whole mountain of somethings – like the evidence of the Holocaust – and simply deny that any of it is there at all!

Psychologists and counselors can tell you all about this – or you can simply open your Bible. The Bible had this trait of our fallen human nature nailed thousands of years before anyone else did.

The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? Jeremiah 17:9 (NIV)

The same twisted ability can be seen every day in our lives, from denying drug or alcohol abuse problems etc. We “just say no” to reality and somehow think that’ll make it go away.

Of course it doesn’t.

Just visit the remains of Auschwitz if you don’t believe me. Or better yet, take a long look in the mirror and ask, “What truth about myself or someone I love am I denying today?”

You might even want to make that a prayer, “Lord, help me to see what ugly truth about myself or others I’m denying today; and then Lord, help me to accept it and act on it!”

That kind of prayer would be a good thing, for only God can help us to see ourselves as we really are. Not as we think we are, or want to be, or what other people tell us we are, but quite simply as we truely are!

“I the LORD search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve.” Jeremiah 17:10 (NIV)

Shall we pray – and then obey?

NOTE: Yesterday I preached on What Do I When My Heart Is Hard, so I thought I’d follow up on that by recycling a post from June of 2008 – Enjoy! – Louie

Today I finally got back to reading a great new book I bought a few months ago, The Reason for God by Timothy Keller. (My reading hasn’t been as disciplined as it ought to be, but that’s a subject for another post at another time!)

On page 48 Keller has a fantastic quote from C.S. Lewis. I’ve read this one before, but it really struck me today, and got me to thinking. So of course I decided to blog about it because – I think therefore I blog! Heres’ the quote:

“Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries, avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. the alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation.” [C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves, pg. 123]

Whoa! If that doesn’t grab your attention I’m worried about you!

It’s true of course. Our modern world offers ample proof of it in nearly every life. How many times have you been tempted to do just what Lewis describes? How many times have you done it, only to be rescued by the severe grace of God?

Life doesn’t often offer painless choices. Instead we are offered a choice between the kind of pain we wish to suffer. One kind leads to love, redemption and meaning.  The other to the grave.

God loves risk!  And we are continually commanded in the Bible to risk. We are to risk our hearts by loving the unlovely, forgiving our enemies, serving without earthly reward and turning the other cheek to those who assault us.

But, God never calls us to mindless risk! The same Bible that calls us to do the above, also says this:

Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life. Proverbs 4:23 (NIV)

What does it mean to guard your heart? Well it doesn’t mean to lock it away from all possible harm. It doesn’t mean to try and be a rock or an island apart from the world around you. Jesus wasn’t like that, and in fact commanded us to be and do just the opposite!

I think it means several things:

1. I should watch carefully what gets into my heart. Avoid putting my heart on the junk food diet that world so freely offers, and make sure I’m putting plenty of the Word of God, the love of God, the grace of God, the fellowship of believers, etc. in there as well!
2. I’ve got to know when to hold ‘em, & when to fold ‘em! There are times when for my own good and good of others I have to let go of certain things. If I fail to discern where that point is I not only damage myself, but others as well.
3. I need to know when my heart needs healing. And of course at those times I have to make sure it gets what it needs.
4. I need to be ever vigilant against any hardening of my heart. This happens so quickly, and is such a natural response of the human heart to pain, that I have to always be on guard against it

So, how’s your heart today?

[NOTE: I'm kind of brain fried tonight, so I'm putting this old post up. it was originally posted on January 30th, 2007 and it fits into what I wrote about yesterday and am stilling thinking about today.]

Change.

We love it, we hate it. We plan for it, we fight against it. We long for it, pray for it, live in fear of it and spend a great deal of time and energy running from it.

We even demand change from those who we know, our at least ought to know, can’t possibly deliver it. Check out this story:

Snowboarders in Romania blocked traffic when they converged on Romania’s national weather institute to complain about the lack of snow which have hampered their snowboarding plans. [Source]

Do these protesters really think the weather forecasters can change the weather? I sincerely hope not! Makes me think these folks have taken one to many headers into the snow!

That story does point out what most of us do regarding change however. We demand that someone else bring about the change that we want.

These days it’s usually the government that we are demanding make these changes. How many people do you know who drive big cars, live in huge houses, fly on many trips, and yet demand the government do something about global warming?

Even if you accept the whole global warming theory, which I don’t, shouldn’t you make some changes in your own life before demanding the government take money from others to do what you want done?

How often do you see this in churches? Both rank and file as well as leaders, demand someone else do something about the issue of the moment. Let’s blame the Elders, fire the Pastor or whatever.

I think we have this love/hate relationship with change because deep down in our souls we know two things:

Read more »

Yesterday morning our Worship Team did they usual excellent job!  They were really allowing God to use them to move us all closer to Him through the music.  One of the songs they did sparked a thought, that took me on a tangential journey which has resulted in this very post!

The song in question was Fields of Grace by Big Daddy Weave.  Here’s the two lines that sent me off on my own little mental journey:

There’s a place where religion finally dies
There’s a place that I lose my selfish pride [Source]

For some strange reason, as we sang those lyrics I thought of them as being different than they are.  Mind you I  know the lyrics, I didn’t misunderstand them, I just started changing them in my head.

I do this a lot actually. I’ll hear something or read something and a connection or linkage will occur to me that’s different from what the speaker or author has in mind. But it’ll grab my attention so off I go! I’m not sure if that’s wired or not, but I am sure it’s me!

Anyway, I thought about not losing my pride, but of losing myself when I allow pride to dominate me. Now I might have thought that because eariler in the song it says…

There’s a place that I lose myself within
There’s a place I find myself again

So perhaps I just took the one line, mixed it with the other one, and came up with own little mini revelation for the day!  Since I didn’t preach yesterday, I had a lot of time to think Sunday morning!  See what happens when my mind is allowed to wander?

I related this to what I had shared on Friday night at Celebrate Recovery. And I concluded very quickly that this is exactly what happens to me or anyone else who gives into pride. I lose myself, my real self that has been created in the image of the Risen Christ, and instead settle for that old, run down, useless old self that Jesus died to free me from!

We use pride to protect ourselves, to make sure people respect us or to keep us from some kind of loss. The irony however is that pride itself robs me of myself! It strips me of the new self and of the Spirit’s guiding power, and leaves me only with my useless flesh.

Not good!

Pride is always rearing it’s ugly head in all our lives in a myriad of fashions. Pride probably hits me in a different way that it hits you.  But the result is the same! I lose my new self when I choose pride over humbly trusting Christ.

Lord, help me lose my pride, and old self, by holding onto you, your Spirit and the new self that you’ve created for me.

If you hang around Christian circles long enough you are sure to hear people talking about how terrible it is to be selfish, how self centered our culture has become (I’ve written numerous posts on that topic myself!) and how we must do all we can to avoiding being selfish.

But then again if you hang around Recovery groups long enough you’ll hear people talk about how whatever program they are involved in is a “selfish program,” and that recovery has to be “selfish” if it’s going to work.

I’m thinking about all this because Sunday I’ll be preaching the second of a three part sermon series introducing Celebrate Recovery to the church. And I’ve heard that very thing said in many CR meetings.

So, how can you reconcile these two things?

Simple, both are right and both are wrong! What I mean by that is that most people don’t really understand what selfishness is in the first place! So it’s no wonder they erroneously call recovery selish, when it isn’t, or on the other hand think doing anything for yourself is selfish when it isn’t.

Here’s a nice test that might help me explain what I mean.  Is the following statement selfish?

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. Matthew 7:3-5 (NIV)

Here we see Jesus commanding us to take care of ourselves before we take care of anyone else! My, my, my – how selfish can you get? Why I know a lot of “church ladies” (and men too!) who would accuse someone who does that of being selfish.

But are they really?  No!  For a bit more evidence, let’s see how Jesus practiced what he preached. Look what he does in the “priestly prayer” in John 17.

And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.
“I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours; you gave them to me and they have obeyed your word. John 17:5-6 (NIV)

You really ought to read the whole thing, and when you do you’ll see that Jesus prayed for himself first, then others! He made sure there was no woodwork anywhere near his eyes, and the prayed for his disciples and finally even us!

So, the bottom line is that selfishness is more about why I’m doing things than what I’m doing. It’s not always selfish to take care of myself first, because if I’m not right I probably won’t be able to help anyone else.

But, if I always take care of every little thing for me before I do anything for you – okay – that’s selfish!

Which is why in the end it comes right back to the heart, where it all starts anyway.

So, how selfish am I really acting today?

This Sunday I won’t be preaching on Ephesians. We’re taking a brief break from my series on Authentic Spirituality so that I can introduce you to our newest ministry – Celebrate Recovery.

There’s actually an 8 week series of message that is designed to do just that. But since we don’t have time for that, I’m going to be giving you a brief look at some parts of CR, how it works, who it’s for and why you ought to be considering being a part of it.

Each week during this little 3 week mini series you’ll be hearing from someone at KCC who’s life has already been touched and changed by CR. During each sermon we’ll be featuring a short testimony about the power of CR, and you do not want to miss it!

One of the things that bothers people when you talk about recovery is the word recovery itself. It’s become something of a cliche, and doesn’t seem to be biblical at all to most people. Isn’t recovery just another form of the self-help craze that has swept our nation?

Yeah – some of it, maybe even a lot of it, is.  But CR isn’t!

Yes, CR is a 12 step program, but it’s also a Christ Centered program! The end goal of Celebrate Recovery isn’t just to get you over whatever it is your addicted too, or to help you recovery from what kind of hurt or hangup is ruining your life. The end goal of CR goes way beyond that!

The end goal of CR is to make us all more like Christ!

And there’s an old word that sums that up quite nicely, sanctification.  Here’s a good description of what sanctification is (you might want to read the entire article):

But what is the work of sanctification? What does it practically mean to be “set apart”? Sanctification can be described as an inward spiritual process whereby God brings about holiness and change in the life of a Christian by means of the Holy Spirit. The effects of living in a fallen world have harmed everybody differently. We all face different issues, struggle with sin, and past hurts of varying degrees, hindering our ability to live the life God desires for us. Once we accept Jesus Christ into our lives, the Holy Spirit enters our life to start a transformation process (progressive sanctification). He convicts us on areas that need to be changed, helping us to grow in holiness.

That’s exactly what recovery is from a biblical perspective. I stop sinning, find healing for my heart and soul, etc.  all as a part of becoming like Jesus!

It’s really just that simple.

Well, the concept is simple – as for the process it’s difficult beyond belief at times.  But in the end it’s always worth it.

So I hope you’ll be with us for the next 3 Sundays, and bring anyone and everyone you know who needs to get over their “hurts, habits and hang ups!”

It’s gonna be fun!

It’s Sunday evening, and boy what a busy day we had today!

Our usual double services both of which ran long because of lots of announcements and a  mission trip report made preaching a challenge to get it all in and not take too long. Right after second service we had an Elders Meeting, followed by lots of fellowhship and helping to set up for the Men’s Ministry which met at 4:30. A pot luck and some discussion later and I’m home at last! (Oh yeah – before the Elders meeting I had two phone calls and lunch!)

We talked about the challenge of lust at our Men’s Ministry. It’s a problem just about every man faces and has to deal with. And it doesn’t matter if you’re single or married either. We usually aim most of this kind of talk at married men and women, but us singles have to struggle with it also.

One of the most powerful tools in managing your desires (since you can’t do away with them) is to be accountable. We hear a lot about accountability today, but I wonder how well we actually practice it?

Here’s a few facts about accountability:

• Accountability is Biblical! As can be seen in Ephesians 4:25 and James 5:16, God commands us to be accountable first of all to Him, and then to others.
• Accountability is Powerful! From Celebrate Recovery to Small Groups, to Accountability Partners, the power of being accountable can be clearly seen. It helps people refrain from sin, encourages them to do what’s right, and provides the love and support needed in both areas. There is really no doubt that it works.  If so, why don’t more of us stop just talking about it and start doing it?

Are you ready for the dirty little secret about accountability? I’m about to share it, and honestly – it’s no secret at all! We avoid being accountable because (drum roll please!)…

Accountability Sucks!

No, really, it does!  It sucks away all my secrets, strips me of my false pride and puts me right alongside everyone else – which just happens to be where I belong because I am just like everyone else! A sinner saved by grace!

Our pride, our love of secret sin, and the hypocrisy which lives in almost every human heart dreads accountability. But if we want to be authentic Christ followers – we’ve gotta do it!

So here’s my stab at being accountable today.

I’m back on my diet – and have got one week under my belt!

After losing 74 pounds in about a year and a half, I maintained my weight well, until the start of this year. Then I started putting the pounds back on, and it got a whole lot worse when I moved up here. For the first two months or so I was here my eating was totally out of control.

But I’m working on changing that now, and know that I can’t do it alone, and can’t do it in secret. So here I am, working on losing the 25 or 30 pounds I’ve gained, and to not just back to where I was, but below it. My new goal is 190 pounds!

So if we see me pigging out or eating junk food – you have my permission and even my encouragement to please kick my butt!

How’s that for some accountability?  Now, how about you? What do you need to be accountable about?

If this is considered a “touching love story for our time,” it goes a long way in explaining why I’m single!

Read some excerpts and weep!

It is one couple’s touching love story for our times: marriage, children, sex-change, divorce, cohabitation and, finally, civil union.

The writer Jan Morris yesterday revealed she has remarried the woman she first wed nearly sixty years ago, when she was a man.

James Humphrey Morris, as she then was, originally tied the knot with Elizabeth Tuckniss in 1949 and the couple had five children together.

Then he had a sex change and they got divorced, but continued to live together.

Now Morris has made an honest woman of his ex-wife at a civil partnership near their home in North Wales.

The 81-year-old, who was the first journalist to report the conquest of Everest, made the surprise announcement on BBC Radio 4′s Bookclub.

She said: ‘I haven’t told this to anybody before.

‘I’ve lived with the same person for 58 years. I married her when I was young and then this sex-change thing – so-called – happened and so we naturally had to divorce but we’ve always lived together anyway.

‘So I wanted to round this off nicely so last week Elizabeth and I went to have a civil union.’

How can anyone read this and not see the vast and utter confusion it represents? It’s the perfect mirror to our culture, and it shows just how sad and ridiculous our efforts to be “inclusive” and “open” and “accepting” end up being.

Without any real values, this is exactly what you get. People who don’t know what sex they are, people who don’t know whether or not their married, people who clearly don’t have a clue about what is right and what is wrong.

In short our modern culture of inclusion ends up excluding anything even approaching moral or spiritual clarity.

This is not a “touching love story for out time.” It is however a nearly perfect parable of how sad, confused and befuddled we are becoming. And it just might be a prophecy of where we’re all liable to end up in 30 years or so if don’t figure out how to return to some kind of unchanging moral basis in our culture.

Touching? No. Touched, as in touched in the head? Oh yeah!

Beyond that it’s just incredibly sad to me. So sad that these people are so lost that they have no moral shore at all, they just wander endlessly on the sea of changing values that is currently driving western civilization.

More than most things I’ve read lately, this story reminds me of why the Bible calls us lost without Christ.

Sunday morning I had a message waiting for me at the church office. The caller was a lady who used to attend here before moving to a town about an hour north. She called back and told me the story, a tragic story to be sure. Her husband, who’s been deep in several addictions, killed himself last night.

He shot himself in the head, right in front of her.

Believe it or not that was the second person I know who killed themselves with a gun in the past week.

I grieve for the families left behind. I grieve for the wives who have to deal with the false guilt that their husbands left behind for them to struggle with. I grieve for all the lost potential, broken hearts and shattered dreams.

But I don’t try to understand it.

I gave that up a long time ago. Far too many people waste far to much time speculating on why someone would do this. It’s a question that cannot and will not be answered in this life at any rate.

So please pray for the families left behind and everyone who’s been damaged by these awful events.

And please pray that God will move in people’s hearts and bring much good from these otherwise senseless events.

Last week I started blogging the Serenity Prayer, here’s what I’ve written up to this point:

• Part One
• Part Two
• Part Three
• Part Four

Here’s the final section of the prayer:

Taking, as Jesus did,
This sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it,
Trusting that You will make all things right,
If I surrender to Your will,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next.
Amen.

This may be the most powerful part of the prayer to me. “Taking as Jesus did this sinful world as it is.” Did Jesus really take the world as it is?

Yes! Absolutely, positively yes!

Read the NT and you’ll see Jesus dealing with the corruption of both the Jewish and Roman world in as an realistic fashion as you can imagine. If Jesus had been in denial and trying to see the world through rose colored glasses He would never have been so tough on the Pharisees and Sadducees as He was.

In that sense Jesus was the supreme realist. He saw the exactly what the world and all the people in it were like, and everything He said and did was sculpted to address the ills and evils before Him.

Yes, Jesus did indeed take this sinful world as it is – but He loved it too much to leave it that way! I tell people this all the time, in a more personal way. God loves us just as we are, but He loves us too much to leave us that way!

Which is why we must trust Him to make all things right, because only He has the power to do so!

The final phrase of this prayer is just wonderful to me. Everyone wants and hopes to be happy in this life, but we should temper this desire. We need to remember that as long as we live in a fallen world whatever happiness we find will not be perfect and never last long.

So, let us hope for a “reasonable” level of happiness, knowing that when we are in heaven, we’ll have the perfect and eternal happiness God wants for all His children.

I believe that we fail to do this most of the time. Which leads to intense frustration and even despair when we fail to find what we can never find in this world!

So, let’s have reasonable, Biblical expectations for our happiness in this world, and live, serve, struggle and sacrifice for the next.