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Today would have been my Dad’s 83^rd Birthday! It was because of him that I became the passionate Baseball and New York Mets Fan that I am today. It seems only appropriate then that I should share such an amazing story as I remember such a wonderful man! He graduated to Heaven back in 2000, but I still miss him every day and dream of him every night!

This tale gets to be told all because of the kindness and thoughtfulness of one of my Friends from my Philadelphia College of Bible Days named Ginny McDonald Tadrzynski. On Friday, April 17th, she mailed a package to me that included a New York Mets Cap signed by Mets Shortstop Wilmer Flores, Mets Outfielder Kirk Nieuwenhuis and former Omaha Royals Player and current Mets Coach Tom Goodwin. It also included a Mets Spring Training Yearbook from Port St. Luce, Florida.

I was so moved by this act of thoughtfulness and was very appreciative and that is even before Ginny told me the whole story behind it all. This is where it gets almost miraculous! I’ll let Ginny tell it in her own words!

“Okay, here’s the deal. We have been studying Esther in the Ladies Bible Study I go to and today’s emphasis was on Esther Chapter 4 and verse 14 which says, “For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?” Mostly dwelling on the ‘such a time as this’ as God has His timing and who are we to question it? We also went further in the book  and studied about where Haman knew his goose was cooked and the guards showed up to ‘help him get to Esther’s banquet’ before he could cause any more chaos- which again was also clearly pointing to God’s perfect timing. Well, this whole Bible Study has been a ‘just a time as this’ for me. God’s timing is everything.

In the beginning of our Study together, we always have a time of prayer requests, and since I drive a school bus, I offered prayer of gratitude that the snow storm on 2/24/15 missed us, but added that you, dear soul, and I named you by name, would be over the moon as Cape May got 8″ of snow that day and the only thing you loved more than snow was God, your family and the New York Mets. That sentence was met with a hearty chuckle from the other ladies in the room and that is when something else happened. Remember when I said on your birthday that patience is a virtue and I had something up my sleeve? Well, it fell out of my sleeve today.

And now like Paul Harvey of old- today I will tell you ‘The Rest of the Story!’  When I said ‘the only thing my friend Rudy loves more than snow was God, his family and the New York Mets it was met with a chuckle and the lady who was sitting beside me said ‘he and my husband too!’ I asked her, ‘Oh is your husband a Mets fan as well?’ And one of the other ladies asked if I knew who she was and who her husband was. I told them I knew her as ‘Mari’ and her husband, Cali, was a minister. She said, ‘Oh, he’s not just a minister, but he is a chaplain, and he works in baseball! Now, tell me about your friend, Rudy.’ So I go on and wax eloquent about how you love your Mets, always have, and being a man of God, you not only know their stats from way back when, you have also prayed for them as a team and individuals. One of the other ladies says ‘Yeah, Sure…’ So I proceed to pull up your church bio page, and they all ‘Ooh and Aah’ over your love for the Mets. Then Mari drops this one on me and informs me that her husband is not only a chaplain for a Major League Baseball Team but he is the chaplain for the Mets and that he would be so moved that you love and pray for these guys. I asked her, if I could be so presumptuous, could Cali ask the ‘guys’ to pray for you? This all transpired over a two to three week period and the prayer request was for you while you were actually being hospitalized. The big ‘surprise’ was to be me telling you that after all the years you have prayed for the Mets, the Mets were now praying for you! This past Thursday, not only did I get the confirmation that they were indeed lifting you in prayer at their chapel, but were so moved by your love for them, the items I sent you were gifted, not by me, my beloved brother, but by the New York Mets to you, for your love and dedication. And that, My Friend, is the rest of the story.”

After Ginny finished writing this unbelievable occurrence of events to me, I had tears pouring out of my eyes because after these last six months of physical hell that I have been going through- what a fresh breeze from Heaven this turned out to be. God has a way of making us smile and reminding us that His love is personal and unique to each and every one of us and He pours these unexpected packages upon us just when we need them the most! After all the years that I have prayed for the Mets- I can actually say honestly and truthfully- My Mets have been praying for me and a million dollars wouldn’t have been received any better than this surprise orchestrated from above!

Thanks Ginny! Thanks Mets! Thanks God! Now the Mets are off to their best start in years and I am feeling better than I have been in months and maybe the times they are a changing but though it all- God always gives us just what we need at just the right time! For such a time as this! And there couldn’t have been a better time than now! Happy Birthday Dad! Keep saving me a place because someday I will be crossing Home Plate to join you- but not yet! I feel like I have a few more hits left in this old body of mine! Play ball!

Back in the 1970’s Comedienne Gilda Radner created a character for Saturday Night Live that was actually based upon a real newswoman from New York Channel 7 Television. Radner’s Roseanne Roseannadanna would appear during the Weekend Update segment. One of her  most popular catch phrases was when Roseannadanna’s quirky, “Well it just goes to show you- it’s always something.” And as she would wax eloquent with her rambling editorials that hardly ever made logical sense, we would also eventually hear her shouting, “I thought I was gonna die!” Well if you bid me permission- there are a few things I would just like to vent about today because it happens to be behavior that just goes to show you- you can’t assume proper etiquette in this selfie society and it makes me at times so ill- I just want to throw up my hands in the air and give up hope!

For example, you would think that I would have learned by now that no matter how much good you do for others; there will still always be some people who flat out don’t like you! I don’t get it but I know it is reality. Hard to wrap my brain around how anyone can make judgments about another without ever making an effort to get to know them. First impressions are not always accurate. Just like you can’t judge a book by only reading random pages out of context; neither should anyone stir up animosity towards a person that they really know very little about. The Broadway classic “The King and I” featured a song that should be a rule of thumb before any false commentary is spread down the gossip line and that is “Getting to Know You.” Even if you summarize that I may not be your cup of tea gives you no reason to poison the pot.

Another area of concern is how many adults now feel comfortable with outright lying to others. Just because you speak a fib with sincerity and conviction doesn’t instantly make it genuine. Why would somebody look you in the eye and twist the truth? Situational ethics makes a fragile floor to strand upon. Trying to rationalize stretching reality to make you look good is rather ugly. Honesty is not only the best policy; it is the only pathway to integrity. Fudging in even the smallest areas sets a lousy example for a watching audience. The truth sets you free and keeps your conscience in the clear from ever having to worry about another discovering a false face and faulty façade. Are you a man or woman of your word cause it just goes to show you that too many people who make up our everyday world are not who they claim to be!

On a different note, whatever happened to teaching our children to respect authority? I refuse to allow children to call me by my first name no matter what their parents may allow. If you are a peer, I don’t mind other adults calling me Rudy rather than Pastor Rudy. But I will not permit kids to speak like I am one of their pals! They may call me Pastor Rudy, Rev. Sheptock, Mr. Sheptock, Coach Rudy- but not just Rudy. I recently tried to correct a child in our church gymnasium and was met with this smart remark, “Who do you think you are?” As Roseanna would shoot back, “I thought I was gonna die!” If I ever spoke to anybody like that growing up, I wouldn’t have been able to sit down for a week! As Aretha Franklin sang back in the 1960’s in that classic soul song- we could all use a little more R-E-S-P-E-C-T! But it must be modeled and not just assumed!

Finally, what happened to having a teachable spirit? Nobody knows it all but that doesn’t stop many from behaving as if they were above being taught anything! I have never seen so many incidents of a Coach, Teacher, Parent, Spiritual Leader or Supervisor taking the time to instruct others in what to do and how to improve in the way they are doing it; only to be outright ignored and the student going right back to the bad approach and form that they began with. Is this the fruit of the “Everybody Gets a Trophy” Generation? Because we live amongst a generation where everybody makes the team and all students get an A and confrontation has become an accursed activity- is improving even a value that is championed anymore? As long as we are alive and breathing we should cultivate the following nuggets of human nature: “Faithfulness”- “Availability”- “Teachability” and “Reachability!” We are all responsible for the gifts that we have been given in this life and to comfortably camp in the corner of complacency should be anathema! Listen and you might just learn something new. Be humble and you might just discover that it is a whole lot better when another lifts you up rather than you having to constantly toot your own horn!

To end this article with a smile, I want to leave you with one of Roseanne Roseannadanna’s classic editorials! One Saturday Night Live many she years ago, she narrates a story about eating a hamburger in a restaurant and feeling something hard in it. Roseannadanna spits it out to find it was white and looked like a toenail and she says, “I thought I was gonna die! I mean, what was a toenail doing in my hamburger?” Then she goes to the restroom and on the way to the restroom she sees Princess Lee Radziwill who she describes as the “classy lady that no one knows where she’s the princess of.” However, what the Princess doesn’t know is she has a tiny piece of toilet paper hanging off her shoe and she is walking around and the toilet paper just won’t fall off. “I thought I was gonna be sick. So I say to her, ‘Hey Princess Lee—what are ya tryin’ to do, make me sick?’ Weekend Update’s Jane Curtin with her trademark confused face asks her what this has to do with anything, and Roseannadanna says, “Well it just goes to show you Jane, it’s always something! You either got a toenail in your hamburger or toilet paper stuck on your shoe.”

Let’s do something about the areas that we can improve and pray for God to intervene in the instances that may be beyond our control. One thing I won’t do is just accept bad behavior and unhealthy habits!  Let’s make a difference rather than become part of a defiant and apathetic population!       

The story is told of a man who was stranded on a deserted island. Like Robinson Crusoe before him, he began to use his knowledge and ingenuity to harness the surrounding resources to not only survive, but to also carve out a rather nice life for himself. Eventually, he decided that he needed a place to worship so he built himself a humble little chapel so that he could regularly come and meet with God.

After months passed, the man built himself a second church. When the time came that he was eventually rescued, the question came up of why he had built two churches. His answer was simple. He pointed to the one and said, “That’s where I go to church now.” And to the one that stood right next to it, he quipped, “That’s where I used to go to church until I found out that it had problems!”

What a creative way to identify a troubling truth that I believe holds back the positive testimony of today’s church of Jesus. The Lord’s Body should be a force of love, grace and mercy to be reckoned with but more often than not it becomes nothing more than a glorified social club where the proud politics of people still rule the day.

The last I checked in Scripture, there was nothing in it about us finding the perfect church that would be completely trouble proof. God’s Word does tell us that Jesus is willing and able to work in us so that we may become His perfected church!

Submitting regularly to the Lord as a corporate unit – we should always be in the process of making progress in displaying the fruit of Christ shining through us – but this much I know is sure, there is no such place as a perfect church this side of heaven.
No perfect people allowed! I hear so often, “I stopped going to church because of all of the hypocrites!” To that I reply, “Come back and jump in once again! I can guarantee that you will feel right at home!” We humans are all guilty of being disingenuous at one time or another. We may mean well in desiring to keep our promises and refrain from gossiping and staying true and faithful to one another, but in the natural we all fall short. This is why we all need a place of forgiveness in the first place.

We need a Savior who will do for us and in us what we are not able to do for ourselves or accomplish by ourselves. Jesus will take us as we are and recreate in us the kind of person that we all need to be. Eventually, if we stop fighting with one another and start battling for one another, the outside world would know that we are Jesus followers by our love! But you and I must be committed to hanging around long enough to make that miracle happen.

God never meant for his church to be a marketplace, a social club or an entertainment hall. You don’t go to church with an event mentality thinking that you are only there to see a good show; or worse yet, to just put on an act for the others in attendance. We should all attend with a willing spirit so that God can write in us an amazing and wonderful story! You show up weekly so that you can be energized by the Lord and are an encouragement in the lives of those beloved Brothers and special Sisters that you see all around you.

Never forget that we are all a work in progress. Every church, no matter how long the building has been in existence, should bear a sign out front that reads, “Under Construction.” The church is not a place as much as it is a people! The church is actually a living organism created to operate as a family and not like a business.

In a family, if we want to be successful, we are forced to come together and work with each other’s positive and negative traits because we love one another. We are not supposed to abandon the family at the first sign of conflict. Hey, any time you get more than one person in the room, you are eventually going to have some conflict. But the good news is that if we allow the Lord to do so, God can use the friction and heat between us to actually sharpen one another and in the long run bring us closer together and show the world around us what Heaven’s handiwork really looks like.

I share all of this to encourage you to jump in with both feet at the church you presently attend. Church is not a place you go to be a spectator but expect to be a practicing participant. We are all gathered together not for ourselves but for God. The music that we sing should be offered as a gift of praise and worship to our God. The teaching that we receive is to prepare us to better love and serve our God. The community that we build is so that we can be Jesus in skin, active and growing followers of God. The church was never meant to have been built up by human hands. Too many times we have gotten our fingerprints all over something that only God’s Holy Touch should be upon. The Bible makes it very clear who the real architect of the church truly is. Jesus said, “I will build my church!” And what He uses for materials is not brick and mortar, but you and I!

What do we look like to those around us? Do others on the outside looking in say, “I want what they have? Or do they say, “No way!” Maybe the answer is not to go church hopping but better to go church stopping. Stop the merry-go-round rotation and find a garden you enjoy and plant yourself there and then let God make you grow with those around you!

It is my prayer that all over Cape May County, Jesus will be allowed to build His church using you and I in such a way that the watching world will not run away from us, but they will be tearing down the doors to be with us. Let’s show our neighbors that what we have going with the Lord will never be discovered or experienced anyplace else! Make it happen, Lord Jesus and let it all begin with us! Amen.

If you have no church home and sense a hunger to reconnect with the God who made you and loves you so, you are more than welcome to join us in worship at The Lighthouse Church. We have weekly Celebration Services Saturdays at 6 p.m. and Sundays at 9 and 10:45 a.m.

There is probably not a day that goes by that you don’t have to plug in your smart phone, iPad or laptop so that it stays powered up. Unfortunately, even though you invest the adequate time to refill the empty energy bank, the device will only last so long before you have to go through the process all over again and again and again. It would be wonderful if one connection lasted indefinitely but that is just not the case. Unless you don’t want to be seeing the battery going dead red just when you need it most, you must be proactive in making sure that you invest the time to replenish the potency pump.

You and I are like that. We’re not wired to wander far from our omnipotent outlet. We are not as independent as we might think we are. We were created by a Living God and we actually need to link in to our Lord if we want to keep on going, growing and glowing as were designed to do so! But when we act like we don’t need God and become alienated from our Maker, the bulb that was conditioned to be bright becomes as dull as a lightning bug that has bought into the darkness.

There is never a day that we don’t need God! And if we get complacent and too casual about our coming to Him daily, our hearts end up getting filled to the brim with all the wrong fuel and it drains the daylights out of the fuse box of our soul!

You see man’s problem is not that he has come down with a disease. It is not because he has become trapped knee deep in dysfunction. It is not because he has received a diagnosis that displays there has been a deficit in his education. Man’s trouble is that on his own he can’t do any better than doing what he does as a dead body walking. Outwardly we are wasting away and we need a love resurrection and a little divine intervention to bring the human race back to life again!

Sinful man has chosen his own path and rejected walking in the way of the Master. And if we keep that agenda up, we will forfeit forever in exchange for a few feeble years of doing it our own way!

So today I warn you because I love you. Some of you are not operating at your full capacity because you have refused the Lord’s offer of transforming your heart and providing you with a brand new spirit. You are just a matter of time away from running on empty. And God wants to change all that! He knows that we can’t make something dead come alive again. So the Father intervened by sending us His son to pass a test that we were destined to flunk.

All it takes is one sin to shut off the lifeline forever. Jesus lived the perfect life that we could not live and then died the death to give us a gift that we could not give. God’s holy wrath is necessary to judge the rebelliousness of mankind. This includes both the times that we have defiantly done what was wrong and the seasons where we did not choose to do what was right. People sometimes cry out, “A loving God would never punish sin,” but where is the logic or the wisdom of that kind of behavior?

If you are a parent, do you just let all the bad behavior of your children go undisciplined? In the name of love, do you never correct or call out your kids for their deliberate disobedience? Of course not! And God knowing that our sin needed to be properly paid for allowed his son Jesus to take the test for us and he got an A+ on our behalf. All you have to do is accept his work done on your behalf. All you have to do is trust him and receive his benefits and you will be spared the judgment you deserved because Jesus did for us what we could have never accomplished ourselves.

Life is rebooted when we believe; and God’s promise is that if we trust his grace and mercy that was provided in all that Jesus did on our behalf, we will never be dead again! We have allowed Jesus to rescue us from the sins we were stuck in. We are restored by God to a brand new everlasting life because of his abounding love, grace and mercy. And we are rendered a new purpose that leads to God’s power being done in us and through us and those are eternal rewards.

God can provide a spark in any life during any circumstance at any time. Some people learn this and they never experience a blank screen again. Abandon your old ways. Believe God’s promises are true for you! Commit to the new adventure that the Lord has called you to and provided all the necessary wiring to! And Heaven’s Package comes with more than just a two-year promise. And the service is amazing no matter where you end up being. And there is no need to upgrade because God is renewing us minute-by-minute and day-by-day. Under God’s plan it gets sweeter as the years go by and the guarantee is that we never become obsolete.

What is placed in the hands of God becomes an eternal masterpiece and that can be true for me and you! So who are you connected to? And how is the reception? Don’t wait until it is too late to sign the contract. Put your name on his dotted line today! And then watch and see what happens.

We have just journeyed through another Easter Season but that doesn’t mean we have to pack up the lessons that the Lord attempted to teach us on the way to the cross and resurrection. One of those examples has to do with forgiveness. On the cross, Jesus prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

Now this raises a question: Why forgive a person for what he does not know he is doing? Wouldn’t we say: “Father, since they don’t know what they are doing, they are not guilty and don’t need to be forgiven?” Isn’t it either-or? Either you know what you are doing and need to be forgiven. Or you don’t know what you are doing and you don’t need to be forgiven. Why does Jesus draw attention to their ignorance of what they are doing and ask God to forgive them? The correct answer is because they were guilty for not knowing what they were doing.

Forgiveness is only needed for the guilty. Nobody can forgive an innocent person. That’s why all this talk these days about people needing to forgive God borders on the ludicrous. What is God guilty of? Maybe his biggest crime is being misunderstood. Forgiveness is really for the guilty and if that is the case, we have made plenty mistakes and fully fit the description of needing what God is offering us!

I want to make something clear because forgiveness is not cheap. When we choose to forgive others, we are not letting the offender off the hook or allowing them to get away with anything. By the act of forgiveness alone, we are agreeing they are guilty! But by the act of forgiveness we are humbly handing the judgment and sentence over to the only One who could do something worthwhile about it anyway. Only God can handle the weight and the explosiveness of that package!

When Jesus says from the cross, “Father, forgive them,” he means all those present are guilty. Love doesn’t ignore the guilt, it does something positive about it! When Jesus says, “For they don’t know what they are doing,” the Lord is implying that, “They should know what they are doing. And they are guilty for not knowing what they are doing.” In other words, they have so much evidence of the truth that the only explanation for their ignorance is they choose to refuse to see it.

They are proud and hard and resistant and hold on to a stubborn and rebellious stance. They should have seen what they were doing but they became blind by their bold and blundering belligerence. That is why they needed to be forgiven. And we need that forgiveness also!

So here are Gentiles and Jews killing the Son of God and the Messiah of Israel and the most innocent and loving man that ever came upon our planet. But they did not know whom they were killing. For this ignorance they were guilty and in need of forgiveness. And amazingly, Jesus is praying for them that his Father would open their eyes and help them to see their sin, repent, and be forgiven. That is the beautiful thing about this prayer of Jesus: it declares guilt and offers forgiveness at the same time. So if you are rejecting Jesus as Son of God and Lord and Savior of your life, he declares that you are still guilty and he still offers himself as the sacrifice to pay for your sins and forgive all the sins you have ever done and ever will do.

“Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.” But they should have known what they were doing. They should have been objective, but life can twist matters so absurdly that when things don’t go our way, we humans are oblivious to the obvious! Some of you reading this article today are in an unpleasant present circumstance. You are not at your best to make wise choices.

You will ignore even the truth to justify your tantrums!

There was evidence, and there is evidence, that Jesus is the Messiah and Son of God who he claimed to be. For example: his supernatural healings; his authority over nature; his power over demons; his compassion for outcasts and his association with the lowly; his simplicity of life and indifference to wealth; his unparalleled wisdom and his seeing through hypocrisy; his indifference to human praise and devotion to the good of others; his living for the glory of God; and his willingness to die for others just to name a few! Those are some of the evidences that made the ignorance of his killers a foolish but still a guilty ignorance. Therefore, they needed to be forgiven even if they did not know what they were doing, because they should have known.

Some of you today are withholding forgiveness because you are choosing to ignore the example and command of our Savior when he told us, “For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.”

The literal meaning of this verse is “Forgive us our sins, in proportion with, as we forgive those who have sinned against us.” Jesus is saying in the plainest language possible that if we forgive others, God will forgive us but if we refuse to forgive others, God will refuse to forgive us! It is therefore quite clear that if we ask God to forgive us while we still have an unsettled and unforgiven issue in our life, we might be saying God forgive us with our lips but our behavior is saying, God don’t forgive me!
I have heard many a Christian say that I could never forgive or forget what so and so has done to me. You might as well be saying to God, “And I don’t expect your forgiveness either!” Our forgiveness of one another and God’s forgiveness of us is intertwined and can’t be separated.

I want you to hear this also today loud and clear – forgiveness has nothing to do with condoning what the other person did! Forgiveness simply means that we are choosing to not allow the wrong behavior of another individual to batter everything that should be right in our world. Forgiveness prevents the sin of another to poison our wells from drinking life. When we choose not to forgive, we open the door of our hearts to hatred, bitterness, malice, resentment, jealousy, pride and a long list of other not so goodies!

Some of you today need to forgive so that you can give bitterness a big kick to the curb. Bitterness will always open the gates wide to all the garbage that prevents you seeing clearly what God is doing and where life is and isn’t found. It’s not discovered in holding a grudge. But giving it to God.

The offended Christian must release the offender to God, or the grace of God becomes blocked and blurred. When we forgive like Jesus did on the cross, we are actually unlocking the door for God’s Spirit to work freely in that person! So the very first word of Jesus on the cross is the very first invitation we receive to leave the godless life behind and come to him.

Even as he was being creamed by the chaos of the cancer of vile hatred, Jesus opened up the door to God’s Grace by saying “Father Forgive them.” If we want to open the door for God to move freely in the lives of our families, our friends, our flocks and our fair county, we must practice forgiveness. I say practice because it will never come easy. Jesus modeled it, we must follow it and we must experience it in all of its freeing fullness.

Who will you forgive today just like the Father forgave you?

Sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason. One of the things that Easter has taught me is that we don’t always have to be in charge. If we always take matters into our own hands, we will miss out on the surprises that God has in store for those who remain faithfully in tow.

When Jesus was taken into trial to set the stage for his crucifixion and resurrection, only two of the 12 disciples attempted to see what was going on with their Lord by staying with him. Peter didn’t make it very far, for he denied three times when a slave girl confronted him. Only John is mentioned being at the cross. All the rest were already trying to put the pieces of their world back together because they assumed that the Jesus stage had come to a crashing end.

Jesus never called us to go out ahead of the power. While God did commission us to go into the world and preach the gospel, he never commanded us to make up the ways we do it as we go. Jesus said clearly, I am the way and the truth and the life and if you ever want to get to graduation day in good standing, you best depend upon God for the details!

Jesus told all of his followers many times that he was sent to die but on the third day he was going to be risen from the grave. This was no top secret news. He said it in public and he taught it in private. Yet, how many of the disciples followed the leader all the way to the last exciting moment? The correct answer is: None of them! And they missed witnessing what they were invited to see with their own eyes.

If I were to ask you how you are doing with your faith, you might just want to start with your lists of all the things that you might be doing for God. But Christianity is all about following Jesus. You might conclude that you are doing pretty well, but if you are not smack dab right behind the Savior, it is time to change positions!

If we are willing to follow Jesus all the way, then nothing will ever get in the way of us becoming the very people that God always designed us to be. The problem is that we are living in a generation where everybody “does,” but very few listen before they get busy “doing.”

Where is Jesus calling you today? What would you answer if I asked you, “What does the Lord want you to be doing with this one and only precious life?” Just like with his first batch of apostles, we should not be in the dark about how we should behave in the light!

Every invitation to faith begins with God’s bid to come and follow. It does matter who you follow! How many of you are spinning your wheels putting forth lots of effort and energy only to discover that you aren’t getting very far on the pilgrimage?

This reminds me of a story that I will be telling this weekend during our Easter Services. If you are coming, and I do hope you will, you are getting a jump on the rest of those in attendance! It reminds me of this true story that I read this past winter:

A young man was traveling from Washington D.C. to Morgantown, West Virginia. He was leaving the D.C. area as the snow was blizzard-like, coming down in a blinding fashion. He stopped at the local shopping mall just before closing time to pick up a few supplies and then jumped into his car as the mall was closing.

As soon as he turned his key in the ignition, he realized that he had zero visibility through his windshield. So what he did next seemed logical as he got his car right behind a big old snow plow truck thinking that this would help him make some progress! He followed that plow for 45 minutes through each and every turn. He could see nothing but the red taillights in front of him. It was a tough ride but at least he was given a clear path to follow!

Suddenly he jerked to a stop because the snowplow had slammed on its brakes and the driver actually got out of the car and walked back to the young man’s car behind him. “Where are you going?” the plowman asked. “You’ve been following me for almost an hour!”

The young man blurted out, “Morgantown, West Virginia.”

“Well you will never get there by following me,” retorted the plowman. “I am plowing out the Mall Parking Lot!”

Lots of gas and lots of movement but no new ground gained. He had voluntarily put himself behind a man who was taking him absolutely nowhere. As we approach this Easter Season, you may not like where Jesus is taking you, and you may not have a clue why he has asked you to do what he did, but Resurrection Day proves that at least you know you are going somewhere worth arriving.

A follower does not need credentials or recognition. A follower does not need to be the trained lifeguard or the seasoned CEO. A follower only needs to show up and be with his leader, his Lord, and you have the guarantee that he will be with you all the way!

“Where is there?” you may ask. There is actually the spot right behind Jesus.

And Easter proves that life lasts a whole lot longer than the years that we sweat it out here on earth. Jesus doesn’t just take us to the grave. Because he lives, he leads us right through the grave. Eternal life is not about quantity of days but about the quality of discovery we receive as we stay in step with our Savior.

I close with a great story by author Leonard Sweet. Nothing says spring like seeing Mama Duck out and about with her fuzzy little babies falling in line behind her. But these little ones are so devoted to do what the duck in front is doing that they will go anywhere, even right out into dangerous traffic if so led.

We learn from science that it isn’t love that keeps them so obediently in line. Flocking birds such as ducks and those dreaded geese are designed with the sense of “imprint” to stay glued to the first creature they see upon coming out of their shell. If all goes right, the hatchling will stick with Daisy Duck but if it goes wrong, the ducklings have been known to bond with anything and everything from humans to beagles.

What I am trying to say is that you best be sure that you are actually following Jesus and not just the crowd following God. Jesus will take you to go against the flow. Jesus will ask you to do impossible things that can’t be accomplished without him. Jesus will lead you to lay your life down so that it will forever be held by the Father who won’t let you go!

Easter points us to make sure that we know who we are following. For a believer, death is not the end of the line, but the beginning of their launch into paradise. Even though we have never been there yet, we can be sure that Jesus has already conquered that course and as we follow we are safe behind him and we will begin again!

I once counseled a couple and to be perfectly honest, they had to be two of the most self-centered individuals that I ever met. It was hard for me to even like them never mind love them. They had once told me that they were having a hard time keeping their faith because they were mad at God for being bumped out of first class on their last vacation. Life should be so tough!
Never mind having to experience any real problems. If somebody is ready to throw away their relationship with God because their BMW is on the blitz, something tells me that their faith wasn’t built on very strong relational ties to begin with.

As the two of them sat in my office, the wife boasted of the fact that she and her husband had everything that money could buy. Her diamond ring cost more than my salary. He boasted of their big house and the summer home on the lake. They bragged that all of their kids were in the finest private school in the city. Luxury was their label. Money was their moniker. But God was just along for their ride and that was the problem. They might have had everything that you could purchase with cash and credit, but they were missing all the intangibles that no amount of currency can acquire. This is one of the times that the Beatles got it right when they sang, “Money can’t buy you love.” And they were looking for stuff to provide a satisfaction that only a Savior could deliver!

God’s great desire for his people is that they feel secure in his love and safe in his power. Everything else in life may be unstable. Our health, our family, our job, our possessions, our circumstances, our society and our world can be upended in a moment. There have been many times these last few months as I have battled my own physical issues that I have felt like I am out standing on the ledge of a building about 60 stories up with the wild wind blowing and even when I reach out to hold on, the very bricks I grab on to come loose from the mortar.

I have come to realize that being a Believer does not exempt me from trials and trouble. My relationship with God does assure me that when the hardships and persecution and danger and loss come rolling in, I can be more than just a survivor. I can be certain amidst the surrounding uncertainty that nothing this world throws at me can separate me from the love of God given to me by grace through faith in Jesus. He is the only sure thing when I can’t be sure of anything else!

To attempt to obtain safety and security apart from a strong connection to the Lord is ludicrous. If you try to find your security in your health, what happens when you get diagnosed with a sickness beyond your control? If your safety net is your spouse, what would you do if you lost them? If your world turning is dependent upon the job you have, what happens if your position get terminated? If you say that you couldn’t live without your kids, what if you suddenly found yourself having to do just that? What about those who lost their furnishings, their memories and their very homes in the last super storm? As everything they owned was being bulldozed from their curbs, is there any possible way they could ever experience an inner peace that life could go on and would go on from that horrific moment?

Everything but God will be threatened by time and time alone. A good definition of sin is when we make an effort to feel secure in anything other than the Lord. Unless you stand upon the rock of salvation, every other footing has the potential to quickly turn into sinking sand. So when life threatens to rob from you all the things that money can buy here on earth, do you have a genuine faith that can’t be bought because you have committed and surrendered your soul to be sold out to heaven?

What profits a man or woman if he or she gains the whole world but loses their soul? But if you have allowed God to get his hands all over you, nothing can touch what he has determined to be off limits! My body may be burned but I’m still going to live forever! My stuff may be destroyed, but God will still provide all my needs. I could lose everyone I love this side of heaven, but the one who loves me is never going to lose me! And it is there that I find everything that my heart has been looking for.

God gave to us his Holy Spirit as a guarantee that he will come through on every promise that he has ever made to us. The Greek word for guarantee is the “arrabon.” The arrabon was a regular feature in the business world of ancient times. It was part of the purchasing price of anything. It was the deposit paid in advance as a sure promise that the rest of the bill would in due course be fully taken care of. No bankruptcy from above! No repossessions and no returns! There are many ancient Greek documents still in existence today in which the arrabon is written clearly on the bill of sale. A man sells his cow and receives so many drachmae in advance as the arrabon.

The Holy Spirit in our hearts is our eternal security that we can’t lose what God has promised to fulfill. The salvation that we are presently tasting of right now is because of the fact that the Father through the Son has given us the Holy Spirit in our lives and all of that is still just an appetizer of the amazing feast that still await all those who believe. This is actually still just the first act, the opening number, the first portion of what is ultimately promised to all those that love the Lord.

Do you know that the word “arrabona” is the Modern Greek word for engagement ring? An engagement ring promises marriage but is still not the marriage itself. The Holy Spirit is God’s engagement ring to us assuring us that he is coming back to take us away to be with him forever. At The Marriage Feast of the Lamb in the book of Revelation 19, we will receive our wedding ring and that will be a forever union with Jesus! And even if you have tasted of the unconditional love of God here on earth- you still haven’t seen anything yet!

So how safe and secure are you today? Do you know the security that comes with not owning everything that money can buy but by experiencing the love of God that no human fortune could have purchased but still comes upon us because Jesus paid it all when he shed his blood on Calvary for you and for me? Have you felt the safety that comes when you know that if God be for you then nothing can overtake you? In his strength, I am strong. In his love, I belong. Safe and secure and it doesn’t cost me a dime. It all comes when I am willing to lose myself only to discover that I finally find my truest self in him.

Years ago while serving as a Youth Pastor in a church in Dayton, Ohio- my Senior Pastor Pete Schwalm gave me a great gift that I don’t think I would have ever grasped in the traditional classroom setting. He would every now and then take the entire Pastoral Staff of Fairhaven Church to the local Movie Theater to observe films that he discerned paralleled what we did as Ministers in ministry. One of the presentations that we attended together was a story called ‘The Doctor” starring William Hurt. In the Picture, Hurt plays a successful physician who is suddenly diagnosed with cancer and now must experience treatment from the position of patient! Needless to say, he quickly discovered that being on the other side of the clipboard was not the spot of strength!

As the one who was now ill, he had to endure the all business-like approach and non-personal treatment of so many of the medical professionals. When you are sick beyond your control, you become very vulnerable. And more than just the proper medications, you actually need the time and the touches from those you want to believe really care about you! But with no eye contact and the lack of any courtesy to even listen to you given, you end up feeling like nothing more than just another insurance number- and a burden that must be tolerated rather than a real live human being that needs to know that in the hour of need, they matter!

Seeing that movie all those years ago still has an effect on how I pastor my flock! I never want to feel like people are imposing upon me but that I consider it an honor and privilege to be able to walk with them in this ferocious valley of life. And I always try to correct and cut off others when they say, “I know you are busy Pastor,” I interject “Never too busy for you.” Jesus had a way of loving the lepers and treating children like royalty. I wish Believers would do more than asking, “What would Jesus do?” I pray that we would do what Jesus did!

Let’s face facts- the hardest seasons to trust God in is when you absolutely have no power or control to fix or change the circumstances and situations that you find yourself in. When you must wait on the Lord and be still in His Presence and humbly accept His timing and His tactics to remedy and redeem our lives is enough to push any of us to our limits! I found myself in the hospital over the last several days because I could not tame the virus or curb the infection wreaking havoc in my body. This has been such a hard time for me because I have been assigned a position where I must be put flat on my back! I don’t sit still and I am stubborn when it comes to following directions!

But two things I want to share from my journey. First is I have such a hard time with those fluffy and plastic “Positive Thinker Preachers” or the ones who spout from their pulpits that God always wants us healthy and happy and prosperous! Baloney! No amount of my ability to write down lofty goals and think happy thoughts is going to take away my inflictions and change my lot in life today. It is not up to the amount of faith that I have because I know God needs to only say the word and I could and would be healed. It cracks me up that some believers are doubting their faith at this moment and they are mad at their God today because their Lexus didn’t start or their first-class seats on their last flight were cancelled.  But we must come to God in our genuine brokenness and in all of our glorious helplessness and admit to Him our utter inability to change a thing. Life being lousy has not a thing to do with the fact that “God Loves You” and will make a masterpiece in the midst of the misery!

Secondly, I want to say “Thank You” to several Nurses and Doctors who treated me with genuine respect and raw compassion just when I needed it most! My Nurses Gail and Cindy made me feel like I mattered and they looked out for me and helped me do what I needed to do even though they both knew I didn’t want to be there or do it! My Infectious Disease Physician Dr. Eric Hansen is the absolute best and offered his ear and his heart and not just his excellence and knowledge. There are times that people aren’t impressed so much with your education and degrees- as much as they cling to your ability to sympathize, commune, communicate and be merciful and kind. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for giving me more than the ten necessary minutes that satisfies your duty to me! You didn’t look to get out but rather you dove in to my swirling sea where I was doing more sinking than swimming! If you are a Doctor, Teacher, Pastor, Nurse, in Law Enforcement, a Salesperson or you do your work with human beings in any capacity- you need more than just the proper know how! I am begging you to put yourself in the shoes or even the “Hospital Socks” of the other individual. Answers are needed but attention is a must! We must never forget that no matter what side of the crisis we discover ourselves on!

So as I write this from my painful posture, I still look up and know that God is not finished with me yet and this bruised reed He will not break nor this smoldering wick will He snuff out. I anticipate that soon I will once again be able to jump and shout and sing and smile- even if it is not today. I pray my words will comfort someone who has been told a pack of lies that they are the cause of their chaos when nothing could be further from reality! Love has been and always will be the answer and the greatest gift we can ever give another is the promise made and kept- “I will be there!”

It always cracks me up when well-meaning people try to tell me that real Christians don’t battle with depression and discouragement! Supposedly we are supposed to be always smiling, happy and sweet with never a sour word to be heard from our lips. I just have to ask, “What planet are you living on?” While God has cemented true joy in the hearts of his children, there are times of sincere and severe tears this side of Glory!

If you are a true student of the Scriptures- you will recognize rather quickly that there are many references within its pages of those dedicated men and women who were undoubtedly committed to the service of the Lord and yet amidst the colors that they wore- blue still inhabited their wardrobes! Moses wondered why God had given him such an overwhelming responsibility of having to babysit millions through the wilderness. Jonah after the greatest revival in the history of mankind where an entire city came to the Lord in repentance sat under a tree and hoped to die. Job for obvious reasons did not sing and dance his way through one atrocity after another. While he never stopped believing, he did curse the very day that his Mother gave him birth. And even the Super Apostle, Paul, despaired his own life while he was trying to defend himself before the petty Church in Corinth.

But the king of the emotional roller coaster had to be the Prophet Elijah! After one of the most daring displays of amazing faith on the mountain top of Carmel, in a contest that had him take on 850 evil men who had murder on their minds and blood on their lips- Elijah bottomed out in record time when a cranky idol worshiping woman named Jezebel threatened to take him out! After a moment of surreal spiritual exhilaration that most of us just imagine and dream, Elijah couldn’t sustain his spiritual adrenaline. Exhausted, spent, lonely and afraid- our hero doesn’t run to the light of a palace- but he escapes in panic and confusion to hide out in a cave of darkness.

I don’t know about you but I for one am so thankful that God didn’t edit out the warts from his heroes and keeps the good, the bad and the extremely ugly in the finished production. It gives me hope that I can make it! There are days that I sense that I am kissing the very Face of God and couldn’t get any higher in the euphoria of knowing the Lord. There are other seasons when I feel like pond scum on the pond scum and can’t fathom what God would ever see in a loser like me. 

But the more you get to know the process that God uses to manuscript masterpieces, He takes our weaknesses that we surrender to Him, and instead of trashing them- sculpts something so wonderful that it must be treasured! I don’t have to pretend that I am somebody that I am not. I just need to be the one that God is constructing me to become.

And so we watch God not reaming Elijah out when He discovers His servant with his tail between his legs. As a matter of fact, before there are any words of wisdom at all- God gets practical and allows Elijah to get some sleep. Do you know that we human beings do not operate very well when we don’t have healthy sleeping patterns? The absolute worst time to ever try to make a major decision is when your brain is fried! Maybe the smartest thing you can do today is not wear your workaholic pin as a badge of honor- but turn out the lights, pull down the shades and take a nap!

God then feeds Elijah a nice heaven cooked meal. Again, not eating right messes with our metabolism in such a way that we don’t think straight, we don’t behave well and we make dumb moves along the way. Why do we act like running restlessly without resting regularly and eating righteously is a standard to be proud of? Go to bed! Eat healthy. And then- get out of the cave! I love how God lovingly and compassionately reminds His boy that he wasn’t made to dwell in the dark places. So the Lord draws him slowly out of his depression back to a place where Elijah is lovingly reminded of who he is and why he matters and also why it is too soon to quit! No yelling! No shaming! No sermons! God shows up and cares and lets Elijah feel real love!

Mountain top experiences are amazing but learning how to live in the valley is essential. Even Jesus had to endure the desert after an amazing baptism event that featured the entire Trinity in attendance. What makes us think that we are going to always escape bad feelings? Cancer, the death of loved ones, disappointments, undeserved attacks, unjust decisions- you’d have to be a robot to not battle the blues at all through the war zones of life. But God never leaves us. God doesn’t watch us from a safe seat far from it all in the balcony. Jesus moved right into our neighborhood. He enters the mess with us and is not afraid to get his hands dirty. It was the great Baptist Preacher Charles Spurgeon who said, “Poor human nature cannot bear such strains as heavenly triumphs bring to it; there must come a reaction. Excess of joy or excitement must be paid for by subsequent depressions. While the trial lasts, the strength is equal to the emergency; but when it is over, natural weakness claims the right to show itself.” Spurgeon knew that Christ followers had to go through the training which would allow their skin to toughen! He added, “Let no man who looks for ease of mind and seeks the quietude of life enter into the ministry. If he does, he will flee from it in disgust.” And all God’s people said, “Amen!”

Will you allow God to minister to you within your pain? Will you be willing to walk with somebody who has had their heart broken? Avoid the temptation of trying to fix what can’t be fixed. Learn that your presence with another might be just the ticket and words not so necessary after all. And the good news is that while weeping may last for a night, joy does return in the morning. Thank you Lord that we aren’t dead yet! And when we finally are whole enough to have our faculties come in strength, God invites us to go and get with Him. We come to a place that you know we have experienced the Lord in before. And there we forget Jezebel and finally focus on Jesus! Fixing our eyes upon the Author and the Finisher of our faith! We are affirmed and released into new ministry for we know that we are alive again. But none of this is ever grasped without having traversed through the woods of loneliness and discouragement! You are not alone! You are not the only one. Look up and be reminded that you are loved and God will walk with you all the way until an authentic smile returns to your lips once again. Selah!

The Lighthouse Church has a Grief Support Group that meets the first and third Tuesdays at 6:30pm. Call the Church office, 609-465-6690 for more information.

It is late Sunday night and I am watching the Western Channel on television as the debonair Errol Flynn plays the role of Sherriff Wade Hatton, the man who single handedly stood up to the evil bullying of a bad guy named Jeff Surrett played by Bruce Cabot.  Surrett and his gang held Dodge City, Kansas under a reign of terror as they killed, stole, cheated and intimidated their way to the top defining their own brand of crooked justice. But have no fear movie fans because Flynn cleans up Dodge by riding tall in the saddle and exposing corruption and punishing the guilty. He even ends up getting the girl, in this case a woman named Abbie Irving played by the beautiful actress Olivia de Haviland.

We all live within our own Dodge City. There are many who make up the spheres of our everyday world and they want to do nothing more than to press our buttons, stress us out, sidestep the rules and ridicule our values. They use insults and threats to try to thwart our best intentions. They play unfair mind games with our psyche in the hope of clogging our clear thinking. If truth sets us free, then their motive is to get us to buy into the lies which in the long run render us paralyzed from becoming the heroes that God has created every single one of us to be. Rather than saddling up our horses to join in the battle at the OK Corral, we whimper and hem and haw our way back into the shadows hoping we can avoid any confrontation at all. Instead of adventure- we compromise our morals and rationalize our way into settling for a business as usual which is as crooked as Rocky Balboa’s punched in nose!

When are we going to wake up and strengthen the good that remains? How can we be silent when God gave us a mouth to communicate our convictions? How can we behave with such indifference when real love drives us to act in a life changing manner? And if isn’t you and me then who? And if we don’t intervene, how can we complain? This is the day for us to grab our gospel guns and our badges of honor and begin to put an end to turning a blind eye when chaos threatens the safety on the streets that our own dear loved ones daily walk upon.

So it is time to imprison that which needs to be locked up and set free that which for too long has been stuck behind bars. Prejudice and racial biasness must go. You can hate what people do, but to hate the person is never right. We need to stop treating others as props, numbers, projects, and a means to our own ends. Every individual that the Lord puts in your path must be treated with respect and value. Again it doesn’t mean condoning everything another does, but you can’t use people and love things! It has got to be the other way around.

Faith cannot be kept in private. A belief that doesn’t transform a behavior for the better is not worth practicing at all. If it was only just a personal matter then God would have beamed us up to glory at the moment of conversion. Yet the Lord chooses to leave us here so we can be his hands, his feet, his heart and his words to those all around us. Jesus told his disciples that if they had seen him they were seeing the Father. Because we have the Holy Spirit living right inside of us, when people see us they are supposed to be able to know who Jesus is. How are we doing? Jesus wouldn’t just stand there deaf, dumb and blind when a positive impact that could alter eternity needed to be accomplished. God moved! And a goal to fly way below the radar is not on the flight plan of any committed heart to Jesus! If we see an opportunity to do good- we need to move. Silence is never golden if it causes us to swallow our tongues of holy fire!   

What will we do if we wait too late to stop the insanity. Jesus didn’t call us to be peacekeepers but peacemakers. You can’t pretend to have a harmony if the notes are all clashing together. Somebody has got to restore order. Somebody has got to have the guts to call sin for what it is and meet it out for a showdown in the street. Running away is not an option. Closing our eyes won’t tame the potential nightmare. Only to do justly and love mercy and walking humbly with our God will birth thriving over just surviving in our confused culture. Will you take a stand for the light in the middle of the night? Will you let your voice be heard and your vote against mob mentality be counted?

History is made when a faithful man or woman is courageous enough to go against the flow. We need you Errol Flynn to ride into Dodge again. Will you risk the ridicule and right a wrong while you may? See the unborn child that has no voice of his or her own? Will you speak up for that little one? How about those kids being used and abused? Will you rescue the young ones and let them come to you as Jesus did? How about mentoring the teens that have lost their way? If you see somebody trying to stretch the rules for their own selfish gain, will you make it your business to be a part of whatever it takes to get the situation back to its designed size? No people, we can’t do whatever we want! God didn’t make us that way. Your choices affect us all and your choice to do nothing is deadly and has horrible consequences. We would not have had much of a movie if Errol Flynn did not answer the call to restore law and order to Dodge. We won’t have much a future unless you and I answer God’s call to do the very same! It’s time that we can no longer dodge our city!