Faith, Hope, and Love

Your Faith Hath Made You Whole

Heavenly Wisdom

A Time to Dance

Encourage Yourself In The Lord

THE SUN IS SHINING ON THE OTHER SIDE

Below I have retold one of my favorite stories of the Revolutionary War. Previously, I shared this story on the day of one of our church’s Annual Freedom Services to thank God for His providential hand in the founding of our country; however, this time I share it because I kept thinking of this Scripture: “There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.” (1Co 10:13). “God…will…make a way of escape.” No doubt, some are currently enmeshed in awful trials and tests, in the worst of circumstances, and under the fierce sustained attack of the enemy. It appears defeat is inevitably imminent. But, God has promised to make a way of escape. Take heart from this story from the war that won us the freedoms we celebrate on July 4th.: It was the first great battle of the Revolutionary War; it was also a crushing defeat for our rag-tag Continental army. General Washington and his troops had retreated and were in a dire predicament: They were trapped with the town of Brooklyn and the British army in front of them and the East River to their backs. Both armies were waiting for the wind to change from the northeast—one with horror and the other with anticipation of finishing off these rebels of the Empire. When the wind changed, the British warships would be able to sail up the river and bombard the Continental soldiers into oblivion or to total surrender. Had that happened, we would not be celebrating freedom this July 4th. There simply would be no United States of America. But, the wind did not stop blowing. The conditions worsened with the skies growing ever darker, the temperature plunging, and the rains falling. An assessment of the situation concluded that, if our army stayed put, annihilation was inevitable. The only possible but improbable option for the Continental Army was to retreat over the East River to Manhattan Island. If the storm lifted during the retreat, the British army on its front would notice and immediately attack. As the British ships moved up the East River behind colonial troops, closing off any escape attempt, the pincher movement would destroy our colonial army. The colonies would revert to the rule of tyranny. Even as the next day dawned, the storm continued. All that day in inclement conditions, arrangements were made for escape. Boats were collected. The time came to begin the retreat across the river. At that very moment, the rain stopped and the winds died making escape possible. Under the cover of the darkness of night, the hodgepodge flotilla of small, overloaded boats began ferrying the many soldiers over the river. The boatmen worked feverishly all night, but there were just so many soldiers. By daybreak, when the British would have been able to observe the retreat and attack, a prodigious part of the army was still stranded on the Brooklyn shore. But, just as the night that had concealed them was lifting, a heavy fog fell. It was as difficult to see in the morning as it had been in the night. Even as the sun climbed higher and higher and should have burned off the fog, the fog held on, enshrouding the retreat. Amazingly, just a short distance away on the other side of the East River where the Continental troops were disembarking on the bank of New York, less than a mile away, there was no fog. The sun was brightly shining. Just minutes after the last of America’s troops had escaped from Brooklyn and marched into New York, the fog lifted. The red-coated enemy could be clearly seen on the opposite shore surprised and disappointed. With the clearing weather, the British had charged the Continentals’ defensive line only to discover that all of Washington’s army had vanished to fight another day. Nine thousand American troops escaped without the loss of even one life. It is very difficult NOT to see a Providential orchestration of their escape, and, consequently, of the freedom of the United States. It simply wouldn’t have happened without Divine intervention. Likewise, none by their own ability or efforts walks away from the bondage of sin, Satan, and this world. God, through Christ’s work, orchestrates the escape. And not just from those sorts of situations. For those who trust Christ, God also orchestrates the escape from trials and temptations and various other types of untenable, stressing, and harrow of places. With God, the escape from test and trial isn’t always and only rarely a short-cut chute. It’s not Mario or Luigi facing a long stretch of attacking enemies and obstacles but is directed by a player to a secret door through which he can go and escape what was ahead. The escape in the Mario game is a bypass of what is ahead. The escape God makes isn’t a bypass. It is a way out. It’s not an escape from having to go through what is difficult. It is an escape when you are going through what is difficult. But it’s not so much a take-you-out-so-you-don’t-have-to-face-trouble kind of escape. It is a take-you-through-and bring-you-out-the-other-side escape. It is not that, as a believer, you find yourself walking a dark, arduous path through a deep valley when God taps you on the shoulder, points to the sheer cliff wall along the path through which He pushes an opening with His finger enabling you to step through, out of the dark valley onto a mountain top in bright sunlight. With God, many times it’s more like this: Though you may have to walk the whole length of the valley, suffer the whole range of the disease, endure the whole, lasting weight of grief, or fight a continuing battle, God will bring you out the other end. You will escape the valley. You will, in the end, come out victorious. God is faithful! God made an escape for the Continental Army. He will make one for you too. And the sun is shining on the other side. Pastor Clifford Hurst

WHY WOULD YOU EXPECT ANYTHING, YOU HYPOCRITE?

For almost forty years I have been happily married. I have no interest in dating. But, as I was reading the newspaper, a headline caught my attention. I read it and swiped to the next page; but, as the page disappeared, transmogrified into the following, one of the enumerated points caught my eye. I swiped back to the previous page. The headline was, “What You Are Doing Wrong In Dating—And How To Fix It.” The point was number 3. “You’re not holding yourself to the standard of the person you’re looking for.” Immediately, I thought of a reality I have encountered again and again while pastoring. “That’s exactly it,” I thought as I read the explanation of that point. Basically, it said, “You want someone that stays fit and trim, but do you exercise to stay fit and trim?” “You want someone that reads fifteen books a year, but do you read any books?” The reality is, the writer was calling such a person a hypocrite. In other words, she was saying to the date-hunter, “You expect from others what you yourself do not offer, you hypocrite.” Some folks expect to be visited when sick in the hospital. But when others are sick in the hospital, they do not visit them. Folks expect to be included in a social gathering. But they do not invite those same folk to their social gathering. Folks expect others to take the initiative to include them in their activities, but they include no one in theirs. Folks expect others to encourage them, but they seek to encourage no one. Folks expect others to pray for them, but they pray for no others. Speaking of being happily married, this reminds me of what my wife, a pastor’s wife, did once. Before church one Sunday evening, she was going around the sanctuary shaking hands with folks greeting them with her warm smile and friendly words. She shook one elderly man’s hand and greeted him. He was poutingly piled up on the pew frowning gloweringly. Ignoring her welcoming words, the crotchety old curmudgeon croaked out, “This is the most unfriendly church I’ve ever been in. Nobody comes by and shakes my hand.” My wife had had enough of this frequently encountered attitude. That Sweet Thing cut his complaining short with “Well, Brother, you’ve been going to this church for five years, and I have never seen you make any effort to go around and shake anybody else’s hand and be friendly.” Touche, Babe! She stuck him and nailed it. (Mixed metaphor intended). Bottomline: He expected from others what he himself did not give them. He expected others to be to him what he never was to them. There are other things wrong with his complaint too. If he had been there for five years, he would have been a part of the Church he criticized. But that is how it works. To criticize the family of God, one has to separate himself from it. He has to make out the people of the church as a separate entity. What my wife was saying was, “You are a part of the Church you are criticizing. Thus, you are really criticizing yourself. If our church isn’t friendly, it is because you are not friendly.” And, of course, such criticism is rarely accurate. Truth is, many folks had initiated a conversation with this man. Many had every service shaken his hand. And his accusation ironically belied the fact that his hand was being shaken simultaneously to his saying no one shook his hand. Another brother who had attended quite a few years left. I phoned him to ask him why, “Well, that church doesn’t worship fervently and demonstratively enough.” (We are Pentecostal. He used the expression “shout enough.”). I protested, “But, Brother, you never worship that way!” The hypocrisy of such carping is thick. If you’ll indulge me, let me give you the recipe for contentment with the church, contentment with your home, and contentment with life: Seek to be to others what you expect them to be to you. Since we started with an analogy from dating, let me end with one: Back when I was a young minister, I used to do workshops and seminars on dating and marriage. I remember so often emphasizing this point: “I know you want to find the right person for you. The right person to marry. But, quit trying to find the right person. Focus on being the right person and you will—by doing that--find the right person. If more would seek to be what they should be to others, if they would seek to be what they expect others to be to them, they might find that the others aren’t quite as bad as they thought. In fact, they will find them far better. Their previously unfulfilled expectations will be met or substituted for the ones they should have. However, if you are not to others what you expect of them, why would you expect anything of them, you hypocrite*? --Pastor Clifford Hurst *Such strong language is a reference to the analogy above from the article on dating. P.S.: Oh, by the way. If you expect folks to like your posts, you will like mine. If you don’t, don’t ever complain—if even to yourself—that others don’t like yours. Just joking. But, since, I’m rambling on, if you claim you have done and done to others and it has all been to no avail and your efforts have been unrequited, first, take another look. Perhaps, there is more coming your way than you have given credit for. And, if not, you are still in better shape than those who never reach out to others--until you complain about others not reciprocating your efforts.

HE TOUCHES THE PAIN

Southern Gospel Saturdays are what I call them. As many do, I like to listen to music during personal prayer times. I listen to an eclectic plethora of songs across the days of the week. On Saturday, it’s Southern Gospel. Sometimes the algorithm throws in some Country Gospel music. I never heard of the singer, Iris DeMent. Or the song, “He Reached Down”. * But last Saturday, just as I was praying for some families enduring unbearable grief of an unimaginable tragedy, Iris, the writer, began to sing this song: Well, he reached down, he reached down He got right there on the ground He reached down, he reached down And he touched the pain Sometimes a song captures profound theology. This one does. He touched the pain. Two verses are a retelling of stories from the Gospel. From these the conclusion in the chorus is drawn, “He touched the pain.” The first story is about the man on the Jericho road who was ambushed by thieves who beat him within an inch of life, robbed him, stripped him, and left him to die. The priest and the Levite heard his groans, saw his suffering, and passed him by. Not the Samaritan. He climbed into the ditch with the bludgeoned and bleeding man. He dressed his wounds. He picked him up and carried him to an inn for convalescent care. “He reached down, he reached down, and he touched the pain.” The second: The scribes and the Pharisees, seeking to entrap Jesus, dragged a woman caught in adultery and threw her at Jesus' feet trying to get Him to condemn her or condemn Himself by not condemning her. He turned a spotlight on their own sin, “Whichever one of you that is without sin, let him cast the first stone to kill her.” Her accusers melted away. Only the weeping, guilty, shamed woman, bowed in the dust of the street, and Jesus remained. Then Jesus spoke, “I don’t condemn you either. Go and sin no more.” And with those words, “He reached down, He reached down and touched the pain.” Another story, not included in the song, is the story of the leprosy-eaten man who came to Jesus asking Him to cure him. A leper. An ostracized outcast. An untouchable. “Lord, if you would, you could heal me.” Jesus moved with compassion, reached for His hand, and—to the gasps of the crowd--touched the leper. Right on his leprosy. “He reached down, He reached down and touched the pain.” This is mindboggling. Jesus touched the leprosy. But think: If Jesus, moved with compassion of the man’s outward physical condition, reached out and touched the awful, putrid, outward effects of disease, will not He who can perceive thoughts, read minds, and see the inner turmoil, just as likely, if not more so, reach out and touch the inward suffering? Will He not touch the pain? That leper did not have leprosy because he was a bad person. Leprosy was not, as we can tell, a punishment for doing wrong. Some things come upon people for no fault of their own. Sickness. Tragic loss. Abandonment. Sexual abuse. Betrayal. But. as certainly has Jesus touched the leprosy on the skin of the leper, He will touch the pain in a person’s heart. Jesus touched the pain of the man beaten on the Jericho road knowing He Himself would be beaten at His crucifixion. Jesus touched the guilt and shame of the adulterous woman knowing He would bear her guilt and shame in the sufferings of the cross. Jesus touched the leprosy knowing the coming pain when the Lord would lay on Him the iniquity of us all. The Beaten touched the beaten. The Guilt-bearer touched the guilty. The Sin offering touched the leprosy that symbolizes sin and all its consequences. No one has suffered pain like Jesus did on the cross. When He touches our pain, it is Pain that is touching the pain. This is the great truth--Jesus is the Wounded Healer. The Wounded heals our wounds. The Sufferer takes our suffering. The Burdened unburdens us. The Hurt assuages our hurt. Pain touches our pain. Hanging suffering on the cross, “He reached down, He reached down and touched the pain. “ Pain touched pain. It is an enigma, but it is in Pain’s touching our pain, that comfort and healing take place. "By His stripes, we are healed." That’s what happens when Pain touches pain. Jesus reaches down and touches the pain. Yours. Whatever caused it. However deep. However long. However senseless. He reaches down, He reaches down, and touches the pain. --Pastor Clifford Hurst

YOU ARE A GIFT TO JESUS

It will matter to but few, but I must attach a spoiler alert to this blog. This below comes straight from Sunday morning’s message I will preach later today. I was so stunned by an amazing truth as I prepared an exposition of a section of Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer in John 17, that I set aside the blog I was working on to jot this down. Never do I fail to be amazed at the truths that I have missed in the Bible, though I have been reading and studying it for over fifty-five years. Here is one of those truths. And it is incredible. And it has such ramifications: We get it, or should get the Good News that Jesus is the Father’s gift to us—“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.” It is stunning! The Father gave His Son to us to save us. Jesus is the Father’s gift to us. But—here’s the truth I missed, Jesus as He prayed revealed that it’s not just that Jesus is the Father’s gift to us, we are the Father’s gift to Jesus! Think about that. Don’t believe it? Here it is. Here is what the disciples heard Jesus say about them as they listened to Him pray to the Father: “I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and THOU GAVEST THEM ME, and they have kept thy word.” (Joh 17:6). The disciples heard Jesus say that the Father had given them to Him. They were the Father’s gift to Jesus. There’s no way they could not at that moment have felt loved. Valued. Treasured. Not for anything about them. They knew they were frightened. Flawed. Failing. Foible ladened. Yet, the Father had given them to Jesus! They were a gift to Jesus! They were valued both because of Who had given them and because of to Whom they were given. Gifts may not have a lot of intrinsic value. But, if they are given by someone of importance, or to someone of importance, they are valuable because of that. Recently, I heard a pastor friend of mine exhorting his congregation using, as an illustration, a guitar he had. He said, “I wouldn’t take a million dollars for it. Why?" He answered his question. "Because my father gave it to me.” It was valuable because of who had given it. A father gave a guitar to his son, and its price became more than a million dollars because of how much the son valued it. The Father gave the disciples (and by proxy every believer ever) to the Son. That makes them, to the Son, of inestimable value. Wow! Believer, You are the Father’s gift to Jesus! There is something else amazing about this: Jesus is the Father’s gift to us. But the Father had to pay an exorbitant price to give us that gift. And the Son had to pay the ultimate price to receive us as a gift. Think of the contrast: We had to pay nothing to receive Jesus as the Father’s gift to us. However, Jesus had to pay the high price of His death to receive us as the Father’s gift to Him. The Father pays for Jesus to be His gift to us. Jesus pays for us to be the Father’s gift to Him. In both cases, it is we, and not the Father or the Son, who are the beneficiaries. In both cases, God pays and we benefit beyond imagination. Not to mention we can walk about life thinking, “I am God’s gift to Jesus.” We have this expression to describe someone intoxicated with self-importance: “He thinks he is God’s gift to humanity.” That type of hubris is nauseatingly repugnant. But there is only a humble gratitude and a meaningful affirmation in hearing and repeating, “I am God’s gift to Jesus.” We know we are a gift for nothing we have done and for everything He has. So, those of my dear flock who read this today and listen to this morning’s message will have to hear it twice. But—and it is worth hearing twice--an amazing, mindboggling truth for each believer is this: You are a gift to Jesus. --Pastor Clifford Hurst