The Steadfast Love of the Lord

Here's a note I wrote to our church this morning about our memory verse program, developed by Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, called Fighter Verses. You can access their website here. 


Dear Glory of Christ,

Whether or not you've been joining us in the effort to hide the Word of God in our hearts via the Fighter Verse Program, I want to encourage you to memorize, or at least meditate upon, the verses for this week. All of Psalm 103 is such a blessing, such rich food for the soul, but the verses for this week celebrate the very substance of our life--the steadfast love of the Lord--and the permanence of his being and Kingdom. The previous verses (15-16) remind us that people, as powerful as they may seem, are nothing more than grass, here today gone tomorrow.

"But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him, and his righteousness to children's children, to those who keep his covenant and remember to do his commandments. The Lord has established his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all" (vv 17-19).

Oh Beloved, these words are solid ground on which we can build the houses of our lives. When the wind blows and the rain falls and the lightening strikes and the hail pounds, that house will stand because it is built on everlasting things. Thank you, Father, for your everlasting love and your light-giving Word.

May the Word of Christ dwell in us richly,
Pastor Charlie

Hudson Taylor's Call to Ministry

Hudson Taylor’s spiritual secret, they say, was to draw “for every need upon ‘the fathomless wealth of Christ’” (Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret, Littleton, CO: OMF  International, 2010, page 8). He was a very fruitful man, indeed, the fruit of his life extends to our day. However, the secret of his fruitfulness is not found in him but in Christ and therefore Christ alone deserves the glory.

Having said that, we can still learn from Hudson’s example for he was utterly committed to spending time with Christ so that he could draw upon his fathomless wealth. Jesus possesses everything we need for life and godliness and he’s perfectly willing to share it with those who are in him (2 Peter 1:3), but he requires that we ask, seek, and knock. He requires that we work out our salvation with fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12).

And the reality is that it takes time to do these things and Hudson was willing to invest that time. For example, while still a teenager, he found himself with nothing to do on a given day. Instead of frittering the time away with useless things he decided to spend it with Christ, a decision that shaped the rest of his life. Here’s how he expressed what happened:

“Well do I remember how in the gladness of my heart I poured out my soul before God [that day]. Again and again, confessing my grateful love to him who had done everything or me, who had saved me when I had given up all hope and even desire for salvation, I besought him to give me some work to do for him as an outlet for love and gratitude…

“Well do I remember as I put myself, my life, my friends, my all upon the altar, the deep solemnity that came over my soul with the assurance that my offering was accepted. The presence of God became unutterably real and blessed, and I remember…stretching myself on the ground and lying there before him with unspeakable awe and unspeakable joy. For what service I was accepted I knew not, but a deep consciousness that I was not my own took possession of me which has never since been effaced” (11-12).

The repeated lesson of Hudson Taylor’s life has less to do with the particulars of life and ministry, and more to do with his spiritual secret. We will not be him. Only a handful of Christians will ever receive a call so great as his. But that’s not important. What’s important is that every believer learns to put Christ first, that we make time to be with him, that we draw for every need upon his fathomless wealth. If we will learn this lesson, we will bear all the fruit Christ has appointed us to bear for the glory of his name and the good of others.

Longing with you to bear the fruit of Christ,

Pastor Charlie

Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Conversion

Hudson Taylor’s life was characterized by prayer in large part because of the way he came to know Jesus.  

When Hudson was seventeen years old, he was spending time in his father’s library and wondering what to read. His mother was away on a journey and he was feeling lonely, so he decided to pass the time reading a particular volume “as long as it did not get dull” (Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret, Littleton, CO: OMF  International, 2010, page 9).

What he didn’t know was that at that very hour his mother felt burdened to pray for her only son, so she left the company of friends and found a quiet place to pray. There she interceded for her son, on her knees, hour after hour. Finally, at a time of the Lord’s choosing, her heart was filled with the assurance that her prayers had been heard and that her son would be converted to Christ.

As Hudson read the volume he chose, he came across a phrase that for some strange reason arrested his attention, namely, “the finished work of Christ.” He wondered why the author didn’t state this in a different way but as he pondered he realized that this phrase had to be written just in this way because it referred to a “full and perfect atonement for sin…The debt was paid by the great substitute. ‘Christ died for our sins’ and ‘not only for ours, but also for the sins of the whole world’” (10).

Hudson wondered, then, “If the whole work is finished and the whole debt is paid, what is there left for me to do?” The answer was simply to fall upon his knees, accept this great Savior, and praise him forever. By the grace of God in Christ, that’s precisely what he did.

When his mother returned in two weeks he was the first to greet her and gladly reported the news of his conversion to which she responded, “I know, my boy, I know. I have been rejoicing for two weeks in the glad news you have to tell” (10).

To add to his amazement, he soon picked up a notebook he thought was his own but turned out to belong to his sister. By the grace of God, he turned to a page whereupon his sister had vowed to the Lord, only a month before, to pray for her brother daily until he was converted.

Hudson Taylor was born again by the power of the Holy Spirit but the Spirit’s chosen midwife was the prayer of other precious saints. Let us learn from this, Beloved, and let us pray for the lost with faith. Let us lift them up before the glorious and gracious throne of Jesus Christ, hour upon hour, until we too have assurance that our prayers have been heard.

Soli Deo Gloria (Glory to God Alone),

      Pastor Charlie

Prayer & Power

The following quote has impacted me over the last year. I read it in a book entitled The Kneeling Christian (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1971) that was written by an anonymous author. I don't want to get in the way of what the Lord might do in your heart with it so I will simply quote it and leave you to pray and ponder. It can be found on page 83:

"It would seem an undoubted fact that with God's saints in all ages nights of prayer with God have been followed by days of power with men."

Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret

I love the way God works. He’s such a kind and benevolent Father.

The week before Sarah Weber left Minnesota to serve Jesus Christ at Beracha House in India, she mentioned that she had been reading a book entitled Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret. Each day I read a chapter or part of a chapter of a devotional book as part of my personal quite time. I was just about to the end of the book I was reading and had already been praying about what I should read next. I thought about buying the book Sarah mentioned but given the pile of unread books on my shelf I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. “That’s not good stewardship,” I thought. “If the Lord wills, I’ll read that book in due time.”

A couple days later, I finished the book I was reading and then walked over to my bookshelf to decide what would come next. Starting from the right, I prayerfully scanned each volume, making a mental list along the way, and what do you know, there it was: a brand new copy of Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret (Littleton, CO: OMF International, 2010). I must have picked it up at a Bethlehem event or something, but whatever the case may be, I knew it was the book our Father would have me read.

Although I had already finished my quiet time for the day, I couldn’t wait until the next, so I excitedly sat on the couch and read every word of the Table of Contents, the Foreword, and the first chapter which is only two pages long. And that’s all I it took for me to find the answer to the question, What is Hudson Taylor’s spiritual secret?

“What was the secret of such a life? Hudson Taylor had many secrets, for he was always in communion with God, yet it came down to one—the simple, profound secret of drawing for every need upon the ‘fathomless wealth of Christ’” (8).

Hudson Taylor’s spiritual secret is not to be found in him but in Christ. As he faithfully sought his Savior, Jesus conceived the ministry in his heart and birthed it through his life. Jesus is solely responsible for the spread, the breadth, the longevity, and the fruitfulness of the ministry which, by the way, still exists today under the name of Operation Mobilization.

Hudson Taylor simply abode in the vine, communed with his Savior, and surrender himself wholly to his will. In this way, he bore all the fruit the Savior appointed him to bear and, therefore, the glory belongs to God alone. We will not bear Hudson Taylor’s fruit but we too can abide in the Savior and bear the fruit he’s appointed for us. May we, then, look to our brother’s example and draw “for every need upon the fathomless wealth of Christ.”

Soli Deo Gloria (Glory to God Alone),

      Pastor Charlie

The Widsom of God in a Sinking Ship

A friend of mine forwarded this article to me and I was so moved by it that I thought I'd pass it on to you all. Blessings on your day!
Charlie

Wisdom Cries out From a Sinking Ship
by Pastor Bill Randles

January 25, 2012

Wisdom Cries out in the streets... (Proverbs 1)

God's wisdom is always crying out to every generation, whether it be through the Scriptures, the church, or Israel, there is always a Divine witness to truth trying to get people's attention as life pushes them on to their final destination. I believe that one of the ways God's wisdom cries out to this generation is in certain current events.

It is true that for the most part the real message is lost on most people, due to  the cacophony of other incidents, or the urgency of the mundane. Many of these events are like the writing on the wall in the book of Daniel, people know they are significant but not how to interpret them. I believe that God is speaking to this generation very specifically through the recent sinking of the Concordia, off the coast of Italy. What a statement it is to us about where we as a civilization have come from and where we are headed.

The way to hear Wisdom's message is by contrasting this event with another famous maritime disaster, the sinking of the Titanic, which is just three months short of a hundred years ago,  April 14,  1912. Before we begin though, it is necessary  to banish from your mind director James Cameron's anachronistic version of the Titanic.

When the Titanic began to sink, and it was discovered that there were half as many life boats as needed. Women and children were put into them first, as this survivor recounts:

No laughing throng, but on either side [of the staircases] stand quietly, bravely, the stewards, all equipped with the white, ghostly life-preservers. Always the thing one tries not to see even crossing a ferry. Now only pale faces, each form strapped about with those white bars. So gruesome a scene. We passed on. The awful good-byes. The quiet look of hope in the brave men's eyes as the wives were put into the lifeboats. Nothing escaped one at this fearful moment. We left from the sun deck, seventy-five feet above the water. Mr. Case and Mr. Roebling, brave American men, saw us to the lifeboat, made no effort to save themselves, but stepped back on deck. Later they went to an honoured grave.(Elizabeth Shutes,  The Sinking of The Titanic)  

The world of the Titanic crew and passengers was yet steeped in a Judeo Christian outlook. The self sacrificial actions of the men on the ship were informed by the chivalric ideal of  the strong bearing the burden for the weak and helpless.  These ideals came straight out of  the Bible and Christianity. Women and children first, even to death!

Again from Shutes,

Sitting by me in the lifeboat were a mother and daughter. The mother had left a husband on the Titanic, and the daughter had left a father and a husband, and while we were near the other boats those two stricken women would call out a name and ask, 'Are you there?' 'No,' would come back the awful answer, but these brave women never lost courage, forgot their own sorrow, telling me to sit close to them to keep warm... The life-preservers helped to keep us warm, but the night was bitter cold, and it grew colder and colder, and just before dawn, the coldest, darkest hour of all, no help seemed possible...(ibid)

Contrast this with the reactions of our feminist, post Christian passengers on board the sinking Costa Concordia, from an excellent article by Mark Steyn:

On the Titanic, the male passengers gave their lives for the women and would never have considered doing otherwise. On the Costa Concordia, in the words of a female passenger, "There were big men, crew members, pushing their way past us to get into the lifeboat." After similar scenes on the MV Estonia a few years ago, Roger Kohen of the International Maritime Organization told Time magazine: "There is no law that says women and children first. That is something from the age of chivalry."

If, by "the age of chivalry," you mean our great-grandparents' time.

In fact, "women and children first" can be dated very precisely. On Feb. 26, 1852, HMS Birkenhead was wrecked off the coast of Cape Town while transporting British troops to South Africa. There were, as on the Titanic, insufficient lifeboats. The women and children were escorted to the ship's cutter. The men mustered on deck. They were ordered not to dive in the water lest they risk endangering the ladies and their young charges by swamping the boats. So they stood stiffly at their posts as the ship disappeared beneath the waves. (Mark Steyn,The Sinking of The West)  

Once again these are people steeped in a Judeo Christian worldview. I am not saying they were all Christians in the truest sense of the word, but that the western ideals, leadership, sacrifice, heroism, the male as the protector, the female as someone to be protected all come out of the gospel, and the Torah of God's Word. These virtues are routinely scoffed at by our cultural influencers.

Modern people vainly imagine that we through our science and technology and our recent social revolution (i.e., the rejection of the old moral and religious constraints),  have constructed for ourselves a much more just, equal and compassionate world.  That illusion can be maintained as long as the ship of  life is cruising, the buffet table is open, tennis and yoga classes are in session, and the sun is shining on the deck. But what happens when the ship starts sinking?

There isn't anything sacred about a woman in post Christian society. Motherhood is just one option among many, a woman can be anything a man can be, for our cultural shapers have constructed an allegedly 'gender neutral' society.  In the new, godless society there will be no more, "women in the life boats first."  It is now, "only the strong survive." As another eyewitness on the Concordia reported, "Big, strong men were knocking over women and teenage girls to get in the lifeboats."

Children also have been debased in this 'brave new world." The acceptance and practice of abortion alone has murdered the sense that children are special and worthy of special protection that Jesus insisted upon in his warning about millstones.  Of course there were in the Costa Concordia some exceptions to the rule, for the Christian ethic hasn't been completely eradicated. Witnesses observed a Hungarian violinist who took the time to help several crying  children get their life vests on. He was not able to make it off the ship because of it.

There is much more to this such as the absurd behavior of the captain -- who sent people to their rooms knowing his recklessness had caused him to strike the rock that ruined the ship -- who ordered dinner as the ship sank, and who eventually jumped ship leaving the ship and passengers to their fate. Could this be some kind of metaphor about our reckless, unprincipled leaders these days?

Perhaps we should consider Lady Wisdom's full admonition:

Wisdom crieth without; she uttereth her voice in the streets: She crieth in the chief place of concourse, in the openings of the gates: in the city she uttereth her words, saying, How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity? and the scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge?

 Turn you at my reproof: behold, I will pour out my spirit unto you, I will make known my words unto you. Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded; But ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would none of my reproof:

I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh; When your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you.

 Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me: For that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the LORD:(Proverbs 1:20-29)