50 Miles or Faith? by Chris White

There is a great piece of American folk wisdom which states that an expert is merely someone who happens to be more than 50 miles from home.  Mark chapter 6 offers an interesting perspective of this phenomenon in action.  It starts out with Jesus paying a visit to Nazareth where he grew up and where many of his siblings still lived.  He taught as He had done elsewhere but there the people were offended.   He prayed for people as He had done elsewhere but in Nazareth very few miracles happened.  At this point the scripture tells us that Jesus marveled at their unbelief.  After Jesus leaves Nazareth he heads towards the region around the Sea of Galilee where he teaches and miraculously feeds the multitudes with the loaves and fishes, He walks on water, and then ends with multitudes surrounding Him and bringing the sick to lay in his pathway that they might even touch Him or at least His clothing and be healed.  What a difference a few miles makes.  Jesus was more than willing to do these same astonishing things to bless the people of Nazareth but it was they who were unwilling to both believe and receive.  There is a lesson in here for all of us about underestimating and undervaluing those with whom we are most familiar which seems patently obvious.  How often have you written off the advice of a parent or sibling when in fact they said pretty much the same thing as the paid expert you consulted?  But what I find striking is how the unbelief of Nazareth seemed to restrict and hold back what God would have gladly done for them as He did elsewhere.  And this begs a question:  is there a blessing God might be desiring to give you but cannot because of unbelief?  Sometimes it’s not about a lack of asking but a lack of trusting and that’s the main point of the Christian life.  Think about it.

[An expert is] somebody who is more than 50 miles from home, has no responsibility for implementing the advice he gives, and shows slides.
ATTRIBUTION:	NY Times 24 Jan 84

A Preacher Joke and Points to Follow by Chris White

“..faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.” Romans 10:17

Then there’s the one about the minister who set out to preach a rousing sermon on the subject of temperance.  As the sermon came to its close he cried out with great emphasis, “If I had all the beer in the world right now I’d take it and pour it in the river!”  With even greater emphasis he added, “And if I had all the wine in the world, I’d take it and dump it into the river!”  Finally shaking his fist and pounding the pulpit he said, “And if I had all the whiskey and rum in the world, without the slightest hesitation I would pour it all into the river!”  As the minister wiped the sweat from his brow and took his seat, the church’s song leader immediately rose with his hymnal and said “As our closing song this morning turn to hymn #247 and let’s all sing We Shall Gather at the River….”  Have you ever noticed that preacher jokes have a common theme?  The preacher is always sanctimonious and then betrays himself with his own inconsistencies or he preaches fervently about something and the congregation or parishioner does just the opposite.  What’s funny about this is it is 100% true.  Personally I dread ever talking about any victories I have over sin because the minute I do, I always fall flat on my face the next day.  But what about a congregation who hears the Word preached every Sunday?  It seems to me that if we believe one way and then live another, our Christianity is also a joke.  Here’s three thoughts I’ve had about listening to the Word and being more active about personal application:

1. Come with a mind that what is preached is God’s teaching for you specifically today.  Though a sermon preached is a group learning experience, God has you there to listen for a specific reason.  I believe the Spirit of God uses whatever is preached to teach the individual.  In fact I have had people come up and tell me what I shared really was what they needed to hear and then they would repeat back to me a point I never even made.  I just smile.  The Lord is doing His work.
2. Resist the inner thought “wow, I wish so-and-so was hearing this right now, if they heard it maybe they would straighten up their life!”  More often than not the splinter we see in someone else’s eye is a log in our eye we don’t want to face or acknowledge.  That thought is a signal that the point being made in the sermon is cutting too close to home.  “So-and-so” isn’t there and you are.  God is speaking to you.
3. Make it a habit to be reading at home the passage being studied on Sunday and think about it during the week.  What we think about the most has a profound effect on what we do and that is why the Word teaches us to ruminate or meditate on it continually.

I hope these thoughts are helpful.  If you have some others to add, email them to me and I’ll pass them on in another article.

A Lesson From a Dead Cactus by Chris White

In the adversity of the desert God fed Israel manna

"In the day of prosperity be joyful, and in the day of adversity consider: God has made the one as well as the other, so that man may not find out anything that will be after him."   --Ecclesiastes 7:14

About ten years ago I went for a week long camp-out in Death Valley.  Most of you are aware of my opposition to camping (nature is something we are to subdue, not enjoy) but, overwhelmed with the unhealthy peer pressure that we all warned our teenagers about, I succumbed, and found myself sleeping on an air mattress in a tent in an area so remote that our only creature comfort was that we did have nice toilet paper and a shovel with us.  Of course the great surprise of the week was that the weather was fabulous and from time to time we spotted wildflowers which apparently bloom once every few years there because it is such a dry climate.  But I noticed something else that was quite shocking (and no, it wasn't that I was having such a good time that I suddenly had changed my mind about camping!): there were dead cactuses everywhere.  I thought to myself "aren't cacti perfectly adapted to this climate and able to store water for long periods of time?".  Yes, on both counts.  But in order for the cactus to live, it does have to rain sometime in order for it to store the water it needs to live.   Where we were camping it hadn't rained for quite a few years and so the  ground was so parched, even the cactuses were dying of thirst!  While the stark beauty of the desert is enjoyable, especially when it's cold and rainy here, it is a desert because it has way too many sunny days.

I see a great life lesson here because our own lives oscillate between the sunshine and storm, blessing and adversity.  Its not too big of a reach to say all of us have a preference for things going well for us and trials kept to a minimum.  But too many days of sunshine tend to create spiritual deserts in us or at the least a severe sunburn.  I am of the mind that one of the things we all need to learn (and accept) is that adversity has an important place in God's plan for your life.  We need never seek it out (as we do happiness) for it just naturally comes as a fruit of living in a broken world full of broken people.  To date, I've never met or known anyone who isn't hurt or hurting about something in their lives.  But for some reason when it is not someone else, but ourselves, we are shocked, even appalled, that God would allow such a thing to come our way. Such things are there for a good purpose in the end, no matter how hard in the living.  For it is usually in the trial of life that faith is both tested and strengthened and proven to be real.

Where We Must Not Look by Chris White

 ^“The LORD said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him, “Now lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward; for all the land which you see, I will give it to you and to your descendants forever.”  Genesis 13:14-15

The Lord had brought Abraham and Lot into great prosperity; so much so that the two of them needed to separate because the land could no longer support both of them living in the same place at the same time.  It is an interesting exchange that goes on between them.  The elder defers to the younger, the younger gets what he wants and heads straight into moral ruin, the elder trusts in providence and ends up receiving Canaan which was his destiny in the first place.  One trusts what he sees and goes to destruction, the other trusts in God’s directing hand and receives the Promised Land.  But I also find the words of the Lord quite instructive in this setting.  Do you notice where the Lord tells Abraham to direct his sight?  He tells him to look to what is right in front of him for that will be the family inheritance forever.  How often we want to look ahead, or as we age, more often behind us to our past because somehow those were better days (at least we are certain they turned out for us alright).  But I have a certainty in my soul that the Lord desires that we all learn to look and live in the present.  The present is what He is doing now in our lives.  The past brought us here but that is finished.  The future will eventually become the present, but it is always ahead of us.  The present is a moment of learning and struggle that prepares us for what lies ahead.  Our job is to live and learn the present time in a skillful manner.  What folly there is in constantly looking so far ahead as to miss the joys of what the Lord is doing now.

When the Soul is Dry by Chris White

^“And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”   James 1:4

I’ve heard the drought has gotten so bad in Texas that the Baptists are starting to baptize by sprinkling, the Methodists are using wet-wipes, the Presbyterians are giving out rain-checks, and the Catholics are praying for the wine to turn back into water.  Now that is what I call pretty darn dry!  Have you ever gone through a spiritual drought in your own life?  If you haven’t yet chances are you will in due time.  Back in the early days of the Christian faith believers called this phenomena acidie or “the demon of the noon-day sun”.  It’s the idea of the soul languishing in the heat with no relief in sight.  In this case heat is a metaphor for the protracted trial, a besetting sin that keeps hanging on, a sense of depression, even an indifference towards the things of God.  I think it is interesting that while this situation is certainly implied in scripture, there is not a comprehensive block of teaching in any one place about what to do about it.  I would suggest that this is so at least in part because such times are not entirely unhealthy and may actually be to our benefit.  The ‘tree planted by steams of water’ is never thirsty but usually has a very shallow root system and may actually become weakened structurally by too rapid of growth.  The tree that lives on rainwater alone gets distressed in some years but also sinks much deeper roots making it more stable.  Another cause of these drought times is testing by God.  When I think of Job’s testing, he wasn’t even let in on the reason why.  That was a conversation between God and the devil that left him completely out.  It was a horribly difficult situation and tested Job to the breaking point, but his faith was proven to be real in the process.  Joseph too went through the desert experience first a slave, then a prisoner and finally a prime minister!  His testing had to have made him feel forgotten and God forsaken at the time and yet it prepared him for a greater work that could not be done with a huge ego.  This to say that if you find yourself fighting the noon-day demon hang on to the Lord no matter how you feel, do what’s right in His eyes, and entrust your soul to his loving care day to day.  You are here and in this place for a good purpose though not readily understood.  In the end though you will find God’s grace to be greater than all you have endured.  May His Rain be in your forecast!