[This series of articles is taken from a sermon I've preached several times on Psalm 27. It's part of a series I call, "Getting Real." Years ago I actually wrote them up as a book, which was rejected by every major and many minor Christian publishing houses!

I hope you find it helpful.]

THE PRACTICE OF FAITH (Ps. 27: 7-13)

Hear my voice when I call, O LORD; be merciful to me and answer me. My heart says of you, “Seek his face!” Your face, LORD, I will seek. Do not hide your face from me, do not turn your servant away in anger; you have been my helper. Do not reject me or forsake me, O God my Savior. Though my father and mother forsake me, the LORD will receive me. Teach me your way, O LORD; lead me in a straight path because of my oppressors. Do not turn me over to the desire of my foes, for false witnesses rise up against me, breathing out violence. I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living. Psalms 27:7-13 (NIV)

It is important to note that practical faith beings in the same place theoretical faith does: seeking God.

These two verses show us how vital it is to seek the Lord. We all have inner urges to pray more, or study our Bibles, or to share the love of Christ with someone. David is telling us that practical faith – which is the key to walking with God daily – begins with doing these things.

Verses nine through twelve show us the second step in the practice of faith. It may be the most important step of all, it’s certainly the most difficult one! It is also the one that is ignored or denied by many in the church today. Yet without learning this vital lesson we will never become mature men and women of faith.

What is this step? Learning to endure contradictions by faith!

Read verses nine through twelve carefully. Now don’t forget what David had just written. Only a moment before he said he wouldn’t fear, that he knew God would defeat his foes and lift him up, and that in the most difficult of circumstances (war) he would be confident.

Yet now he writes: “Do not hide your face from me, do not turn your servant away in anger…Do not reject me or forsake me, O God my Savior. Though my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will receive me…Do not turn me over to the desire of my foes…” (vs. 9-10,12a)

What’s going on here? How can we reconcile the seeming contradiction between what David wrote in the first few verses with what we’ve just read?

Let’s first look at our own lives. Honestly now, haven’t you had this type of experience yourself? I have. I’ve gone from being confident in God one moment to being afraid He’s left me the next.

Does it shock you to think that the Holy Spirit would inspire the confession of doubt and fear? Well this isn’t the only place in Scripture where He does so. Jeremiah wrote these words about his relationship with God, “Why is my pain unending and my wound grievous and incurable? Will you be to me like a deceptive brook, like a spring that fails?” (Jeremiah 15:18)

What is that but a statement of doubt? Not a statement of unbelief or of forsaking God but rather a cry of doubt about what God is doing and will do in the future. Written in the Holy Scriptures and preserved by God for our edification.

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[This series of articles is taken from a sermon I've preached several times on Psalm 27. It's part of a series I call, "Getting Real." Years ago I actually wrote them up as a book, which was rejected by every major and many minor Christian publishing houses!

I hope you find it helpful.]

THE THEORY OF FAITH (Ps. 27: 1-6)

The LORD is my light and my salvation– whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life– of whom shall I be afraid? When evil men advance against me to devour my flesh, when my enemies and my foes attack me, they will stumble and fall. Though an army besiege me, my heart will not fear; though war break out against me, even then will I be confident. One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple. For in the day of trouble he will keep me safe in his dwelling; he will hide me in the shelter of his tabernacle and set me high upon a rock. Then my head will be exalted above the enemies who surround me; at his tabernacle will I sacrifice with shouts of joy; I will sing and make music to the LORD. Psalms 27:1-6 (NIV)

The first six verses of Psalm 27 are well known to many Christians and constitute a wonderful statement of faith. Here David expounds for us what our faith can and ought to be like.

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[This series of articles is taken from a sermon I've preached several times on Psalm 27. It's part of a series I call, "Getting Real." Years ago I actually wrote them up as a book, which was rejected by every major and many minor Christian publishing houses!

This series of posts will be a modified version of how I translated the spoken word into the written. I hope you find it helpful.]

“Well you know what I think the President should do…”

How many times have you heard or said something like that? Several times a day at least! It’s called theorizing and it’s fun and easy too. Fun and easy because usually we aren’t responsible for seeing if our grand theories will work. Far to often theories don’t survive their first collision with reality.

Take for example our attitude towards a possible war with Japan in the months before their attack on Pearl Harbor. The theory went that the Japanese would never dare attack the United States and that if they did it would take very little effort to defeat them. Some so–called experts even said that the Japanese were not racially suited to fly combat aircraft!

A lot of good men paid for that false theory with their lives in the wrecked ships of Pearl Harbor. In much the same way many Christians today have suffered shipwreck of their faith because of a false theory of what faith really is.

For as most of us have learned the ideal and the real don’t always seem to match up. All to often what sounds good to us while we’re sitting in our comfortable pews or watching T.V. simply doesn’t meet the demands of real life.

Psalm 27 was written with just such a dilemma in mind. It was written by David, a man who surely knew what it was like to be faced with a dilemma.

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Hey Everyone –

I know you are busy, but the latest edition of the Carnival is up and running, with a link to me natch! Check it out here!

This post was inspired by something I read over at Leadership Blog, called The Jaded Driven Church. Being someone who’s trying to develop a Purpose Driven Church the title attracted my attention. Reading it made me think both of a past ministry and my present situation.

It was written by Dave Terpstra, teaching pastor of The Next Level Church. He shares his own struggles with the church, nearly leaving it but being drawn back into the ministry with a passion to recch those who are jaded about the church.

He writes in part…

So, is it wise to continue wandering the countryside in search of the increasingly rare church virgin, or should we be finding strategies to reach the herds of church divorcés roaming our culture? At The Next Level Church we have chosen to go after those who are jaded, not only because of their number, but because most of us in leadership were in that place not too long ago.

There are some dangers to this strategy, however. Like marital divorcés, many people who have been burned by the church in the past come needing spiritual, emotional, and even psychological healing. It takes a lot of time to help them sort through it. It’s not an easy calling, and along the way I’m aware that TNL has burned people and become the very sort of church some people had left in the past. But our failures cannot deter us from reaching out to church divorcés; there are just too many to ignore.

I couldn’t agree more! In fact back in the 80′s I was Pastoring (or attempting too at any rate) a small church in Longmont Colorado with the ironic name, “Good News Christian Church.”

It’s long gone now, but during the 3 1/2 years I was there it was more like “Bad News!” or “A Night At The Fights!” We ended up driving people away from the church because of some of the founding members were over controling, insecure, and legalistic. They would have made great candidates for Pharasee School!

On the other hand there were some wonderful people there who I still look up to and love today.

During that time we had several all night prayer vigils, where people would sign up and come to the church to pray for an hour. Trying to be a leader I always picked the worst time slots, like 3 AM!

Once while I was at the church praying and reading the Scriptures during that early morning time slot, I came across a chapter of the Bible that spoke loudly to me. So loud in fact that I just knew this was what God was calling our church to do!

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Okay, this wasn’t exactly what I had wanted to write about the week before Christmas! But events made me decide that I ought to take some time and think in print (otherwise known as blog) about this.

Joe Carter, over at the Evangelical Outpost (a must read Christian blog IMHO, and one of the most thoughtful Christian bloggers I know of) and Justin Taylor are hosting an online symposium responding to Charles Krauthammer’s essay, “The Truth About Torture”, in The Weekly Standard.

I read over some of the entries and was impressed and challenged and a bit frustrated as well. I encourage you to check them out if you are interested and willing to do some deep thinking on a troubling issue.

Just so you’ll know I’m no theologian, ethicist, Dr. of anything etc. I’m just a simple Pastor of a small town church with a BA in Christian Ministries, which I recieved in 1975 for heaven’s sake!

If you think that this disqualifies me from the discussion so be it.

My take on this issue is multifaceted because it is a complex issue. I say this dispite people on both sides who will tell you it’s obvious what’s right and wrong!

The problem is that you’ll find intelligent believers and non-believers on both sides of this issue!

The first thing to remember is that, as I pointed out in my post on the death penalty, there’s a huge difference between what individuals can and ought to do, and what the government is commanded to do.

So while Christians shouldn’t be going around knocking off people who murder, the government has the right to do so. Of course whether or not that’s wise is a subject of much disagreement. But Biblically (see Romans 13)there’s little doubt God created government to keep order in a disorderly fallen world.

Government is also supposed to bring peace and to keep the people under it’s authority safe. Obviously terrorists are dedicated to destroy not just governing authorities, but as many of the people in our nation as well.

Therefore God’s Word would give full authority to a government to fight a war against terror and those who support and enable it.

So far so good, but the real rub is in how that war ought to be fought? Can we condone torture, or brutal mistreatment of prisoners inorder to save the lives of the innocent victims of terror?

Or as Christians must we stick to our principles even if doing so will allow terror to not only exist but to flourish and slaughter the innocent?

As Dr. Krauthammer points out both terror and torture are bad. So in the classic scenario of a terrorist prisoner who knows where the atomic bomb is located, do you torture him to get the information? Or do you let the bomb go off killing and maiming hundreds of thousands if not millions?

So can a government torture in this scenario? After all there is no such thing as a “Christian government anymore than there are Christian buildings, music, food, books, science or Christian Cows!

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Welcome to another edition of Short Rounds, which is a collection of interesting sites, articles etc. that I’ve found around that Net. Enjoy and have a great weekend!

The Demise of Sunday School:

For over 200 years Sunday School has been an institution in the church. Starting in the western church it has spread around the world. But this article points out that it’s showing it’s age and is in decline.

Will it make a comeback? Who know – but this is another sign of the changing times we face in the new millennium.

Victor Davis Hanson:

Here’s the offical website of Victor Davis Hanson, one of my new favorite Military History authors. I reviewed his book Carnage and Culture here, and am currently reading The Soul of Battle and loving it!

I’ll review it when I’m finished – but can tell you already it’s GREAT!

He’s got a lot of good things to say – check him out!

Biblical Diets?

An interesting article about eating, dieting and our faith. As you may inow I’ve been struggling with my weight for all of my adult life. In the last two years I lost 74 pounds and am now struggling to maintain my weight! So this issue is near and dear to my heart. I’m still waiting for someone besides me to show the powerful link between dieting and recovery. Maybe I ought to write more about it myself?

Read more »

This week’s Christian Carnival is online here!

Read it and enjoy!

I saw this little test on Marla Swoffer’s site, where I’ve found all the others as well, so I decided to take it.

Like her I ended up as French Food!

YUCK-O!! The fix is in, this test must have been sent over here by the French to undermine our morale and plunge us into intense self-loathing at the mere thought of being linked to them!

*Sob!!*

You Are French Food

Snobby yet ubiquitous. People act like they understand you more than they actually do.

A couple of things happened yesterday that got me to thinking about the different seasons of life, and how quickly it all seems to go.

I got a phone call from some family members of one of this church’s founding members named Ruth. She moved back east years ago to be with her family after spending years living here alone as a widow.

She’s nearly 90, is going strong and recently had a book published. (I wasn’t told but assume it’s a children’s book, she had many published years ago.)

According to the call she “wants to make one more trip to the desert,” so if she’s up to it we might be seeing her at Easter.

How amazing! She’s another role model for me at least! I talk a lot about finishing strong and what a great example this is. 90 years old and still writing! She wants to send us a poem as well!

God bless you Ruth!

This time of year, as the calander year draws to a close, most of us being thinking about life and time and how it passes away. What does it mean? Where does it go? Where are we going?

All good questions that the Bible offers much hope and enlightenment about.

Today I don’t have much to say – amazing isn’t it!

I just want to encourage all of us to ask those questions, and then to get off our butts and go after the answers!

Fight, scratch and claw your way forward if you have too – but don’t quit till you find the answers that are consistent with the Scriptures and that satisfy your soul.

That’s the bottom line isn’t it? We must do both or we end up not doing much of anything at all.

It has to be Biblical because if it isn’t then it’s not true. And anything false is an untrustworthy foundation to base your life upon.

But that’s not the end of it. We talk like it is a lot, and that’s a mistake. An even bigger mistake is to believe ourselves when we do!

We must find that ministry, that purpose, that place in life that not only conforms to Biblical teaching, but that resonates deep within our souls.

For only then can what we do and who we are bring us the kind of deep peace we all seek. Only then can we finish strong knowing beyond doubt that we are, in our a limited and sinful way to be sure, acting in concert with the purpose of our Creator.

Amen!