The Secret To Super Strength

The Secret To Super Strength

I’ve got two secrets to share with you. The first one is experienced by most pastors. The second one is rarely experienced by anyone. Pastors don’t get calloused hands from pastoring. Neither do they generally puff and sweat from their normal pastoring duties. Yet at the end of a day of pastoral duties, most pastors are exhausted. But why? Personally, I found this phenomena quite confusing. While I hadn’t spent the day digging ditches or laying bricks, I had often spent the day just listening to people and praying with them. In between those appointments I’d be preparing discipleship material, getting two sermons ready for Sunday, and marking students’ assignments. Then I’d be exhausted! I eventually discovered what many pastors also come to realise. And this is where I will share my first secret with you. Pastors find pastoring physically exhausting. (This secret also somewhat applies to doctors, politicians, counsellors, therapists and others.) This secret confirms something that the Bible reveals about being human. Each of us are a unity—a composite— of a physical body, a spiritual soul, and an intellectual mind. You might scoff at me calling this a ‘secret’, but I think I have proof to back my claim.

¶ Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
First Thessalonians 5:23

I was listening to the award winning novelist, Andrew Klavan, who gave a speech at the Acton Institute describing his journey from being raised a Jew, living as an atheist, then despite his fame and acclaim, attempting suicide—only to find that the God he refused to believe in actually existed!  He said,

Multi-award winning novelist, Andrew Klavan

I was in despair. I was sitting alone in a dark room, plotting my own death. I was repeating over and over in my own mind, the mantra, the words – I don’t know how to live, I don’t know how to live.

A baseball game was playing in the background. A hero of mine, a catcher by the name of Gary Carter, he had hit a ground ball single. After the game and interviewer asked him, how he had managed to beat the throw to first base because his knees has been ruined by sitting the Catcher’s Position for so many years?

Carter was a devout and outspoken Christian. He was always talking to interviewers about ‘Jesus Christ’ this, or his Jesus that. I absolutely hated this about him. Every time he did it, it made me shudder, like someone had dropped a worm down the back of my shirt. If he’s praised Jesus that day, I would have ignored him. But oddly, he didn’t mention Christ at all. Instead as I sat there reciting to myself ‘I don’t know how to live’ – Gary Carter said simply ‘sometimes you just have to play in pain.’ Those words struck deep into my heart. I seized on them instantly. I thought, I can do that. And I made the decision to live.

Klavan went on to say that it took him another 10 years before he gave his life to Christ at the age of 40. He had believed the lies of a godless culture that human beings are nothing more than the result of a fluke in biochemistry. Humans were, as he had believed along with other cultural elites, nothing more than “meat”—soulless meat; just a bunch of chemicals. After he became a Christian, he saw things quite differently. He realised the truth of the Bible’s claim that God had made mankind in His image as a body-spirit composite, a ‘soul’. If you deny this, he realised and observed, you treat the ache in your soul as a ‘chemical problem’ needing a chemical solution. He calls this the “Materialist outlook.”

This materialist outlook is so pervasive now that it affects all of us, even those of us who have faith, treat ourselves as if we are just meat and chemistry. Listen to the way we talk. When we’re excited we say we’re having an adrenalin rush. When we are happy, we’re having a dopamine rush as if the chemicals cause the emotions. Which doesn’t even make sense when you think it through. We take medicine for depression as if our spiritual distress were a chemical event. I’m not opposed to the judicious use of medications but isn’t it odd that with all these anti-depressants available, suicide rates in the USA have risen 33% in the last 20 years?!

What Klavan is describing overlaps into the two secrets I need to share with you. The first one I’ve already introduced. Because we a body-spirit composite, when we are spiritually drained, we can simultaneously feel physically drained as well. What Klavan has alluded to is my second secret: because we are a body-spirit composite (a “soul”) we can find a source of strength that no gymnasium equipment, training drill, dumb-bell, or diet program, could ever deliver! 

HOW PETER DISCOVERED THE SOURCE OF SUPER STRENGTH

In my previous Pastor’s Desk, I wrote about Peter being challenged by the resurrected Christ three times to demonstrate his love for Jesus. Each challenge involved serving others. What I didn’t highlight was what happened to Peter before this uncomfortable series of challenges. When he realised it was Jesus on the shore, he dived into the water and swam to shore. We are not told what transpired between Peter and Jesus. Maybe not a word was exchanged. Back on the boat though, in response to the command of Christ cast their net on the other side of the boat to the frustrated fishermen who had spent all night in vain to catch a fish, they hauled in an enormous catch of large fish. Despite there being ten men in the boat, they struggled to bring their catch in to the shore. Seeing their struggle, and having just sat in the presence of Christ, Peter single-handedly goes to the shoreline and individually does what 10 men could not do—he drags the net onto the beach! (If you look closely at the page of your Bible you will notice that the apostle John’s dropped lower jaw impression is still embossed onto the page. )

¶ Just as day was breaking, Jesus stood on the shore; yet the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to them, “Children, do you have any fish?” They answered him, “No.” He said to them, “Cast the net on the right side of the boat, and you will find some.” So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in, because of the quantity of fish. That disciple whom Jesus loved therefore said to Peter, “It is the Lord!” When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on his outer garment, for he was stripped for work, and threw himself into the sea. The other disciples came in the boat, dragging the net full of fish, for they were not far from the land, but about a hundred yards off. ¶ When they got out on land, they saw a charcoal fire in place, with fish laid out on it, and bread. Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish that you have just caught.” So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, 153 of them. And although there were so many, the net was not torn.
John 21:4-11

Because we are a body-spirit composite, or to put in the same terms as C.S. Lewis, “You do not have a soul—you are a soul!” it is possible to be physically strengthened by being spiritually strengthened! Just Peter experienced a physical super-strength by being still in the presence of Christ, we can too. This strength not only applies to our physical well-being. The same principle can strengthen a family, who come together to be in the presence of God.

Seek the LORD and His strength;
seek his presence continually!
Psalm 105:4

The New Testament reveals this secret source of strength over and over again. Notice how the Book of Acts describes the early believers being strengthened.

When they had preached the gospel to that city and had made many disciples, they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch, strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.
Acts 14:21-22

The early Christians, who faced enormous pressure and trials, were repeatedly strengthened by the preaching of God’s Word—the Gospel. There were strengthened by their mutual encouragement as they gathered together. They were strengthened by God’s grace as they worshiped together. They were strengthened through prayer and in particular through the prayerful laying on of hands (Rom. 1:11). 

Could you use some extra strength? How about some secret super-strength? It’s my hope that this becomes one of the worst kept secrets in our valley! There you have it. I’ve shared my two secrets with you. Now, make sure you do tell it to someone.

Pastor Andrew

LOVE, What and Why

LOVE, What and Why

¶ When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love Me more than these?” He said to Him, “Yes, Lord; You know that I love You.” He said to him, “Feed My lambs.”
John 21:15

 Jesus asked a question, that I’m pretty sure every wife frequently asks her husband, “Do you love Me?” But the question Jesus asked of Peter was not the same as the similar sounding question that wives ask their husbands. The kind of ‘love’ that Jesus was asking of His disciple was extremely odd. And while many a sermon down through the centuries has claimed that Peter’s answer to the Christ was not satisfactory, I think they may have missed the point of this profound exchange between the Saviour and one of His servants. It is from this exchange that we are gifted one of the greatest insights into what love really is and why it requires something in particular.   

He said to him a second time, “Simon, son of John, do you love Me?” He said to Him, “Yes, Lord; You know that I love You.” He said to him, “Tend My sheep.”
John 21:16

 How would you have answered Jesus? It seems that Christianity is the only religion that involves love in every aspect of its expression. Devotees of other religions often offer their forms of worship in the hope of appeasing their deity/ies. In these religions there is often a lot of fear on the part of the worshiper. The ancient Incas and Aztecs would offer thousands of human sacrifices to appease their concept of the Supreme Being—lest that Supreme Being smite them with some disastrous calamity. When the Conquistadors arrived in the land of the Aztecs in 1511 they discovered mounds of human remains which they came to realise were the result of their murderous worship practices. 

 While this might be an extreme example of how many religions are grounded in fear, it stands in stark contrast to the way Jesus revealed we can find mercy, peace and acceptance from GOD. The apostle John noted this contrast in First John 4:18-

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.
First John 4:18

LOVE IS NOT LOVE

He said to him the third time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Peter was grieved because He said to him the third time, “Do you love Me?” and he said to Him, “Lord, You know everything; You know that I love You.” Jesus said to him, “Feed My sheep.
John 21:17

 Nearly every sermon I have ever heard preached on this passage points out that Jesus used the word ‘agape’ in His question to Peter while in Peter’s response to Jesus he responded with another Greek word, ‘phileo’. In Biblical (Koiné) Greek, there are four words that can be translated into English as love. Both of these words are best translated into English as ‘love’. Most preachers I have heard preach on this text have pointed out that Christ used the Greek word for ‘supreme love’ (agapé) while Peter responded with the Greek word for ‘human love’ (phileo). Thus, they claim, Christ was asking something of Peter that Peter was not prepared to agree to. There are, however, two problems with this understanding of what was happening on this beach—and when we solve these problems we discover one of the most amazing insights into what real love is, and why we should make it our goal.   

 Here’s the first problem we need to resolve as we seek to understand what Jesus was actually asking, and how Peter responded. Of the three times that Jesus questioned Peter’s love for Him, only in the first two times did He use the Greek word ‘agapé’. The second problem is that the Greek word agapé at that time meant a cold, formal, theoretical love for another (often where there was no intimacy or relationship). No wonder then that Peter responded with the commonly used word phileowhich was the word people ordinarily used when they felt an emotional connection with another person. From Peter’s perspective he may have felt that he was expressing a higher love for Christ than what Jesus was asking for. But over time, Peter realised what Jesus was doing. Christ was taking the word used for a sense of loyalty to an authority (agapé) and redefining it as the word Christians would come to see was the kind of love that God shows His people and expects His people to show Him.

¶ Love (Gr. agapé) is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. ¶ Love never ends.
First Corinthians 13:4-8a

 When Peter swam to shore to be with Christ, what was he expecting the One whom he had just betrayed days earlier to say to him? Remember Peter had just publicly denied even knowing Jesus three times. When Christ was taken and crucified, Peter had fled (only John, the author of this account, remained with Christ till His death). If you were in Christ’s place and the one you had just invested years of your life into had just denied knowing you in your hour of greatest trial, how would you have felt if you now sat alone with them on a beach? But Jesus did not speak to Peter in a way we might have expected. While I find this scene somewhat comical in the sense that the disciples had almost given up on Christ and had gone out fishing (returning to their old way of life) perhaps to find some breakfast, they find Jesus on the shores of Galilee cooking fish for breakfast. This itself was a subtle statement that they need not doubt how their needs would be met as long as they remained faithful to Him. It also reveals that God’s kind of love is a humble and forgiving love. The fact that Jesus, the Invincible-Omnipotent Creator of the Universe would stoop into the sands of Galilee and act as their servant is the second shocking insight we get into what God’s kind of love looks like: God’s kind of love is selfless serving kind of love. 

 Christ’s questioning of Peter’s love for Him reveals that God’s kind of love is a demonstrated-love that strives for the highest welfare of others. “Peter, if you really love Me, feed My lambs, tend My sheep, and feed My sheep.” While this might sound like the stuff of Renaissance religious oil painters, Christ’s injunction to Peter to get up close with lambs and sheep and pick them up; carry them; lead them; protect them from predators; and to feed them, would have conjured up all kinds of smells to a first century Jew (although I’m not sure who smelled better – a fisherman or a shepherd?). Loving others the God kind of way involves getting down and dirty, so to speak. But also notice that Christ starts His love challenge with lambs, and ends with sheep. Agapé love, God’s kind of love, involves commitment! Each of these aspects of love have enormous implications for marriages, families, and churches. There was one more lesson Peter received about God’s love on that beach. 

Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go.” (This He said to show by what kind of death he was to glorify God.) And after saying this He said to him, “Follow Me.”
John 21:18-19

 “Do you love Me?” Jesus asked Peter three times. Each time Peter replied that he did. “Then lay down your life for Me” Jesus tells him in John 21:18-19. Peter could hardly look Christ in the eye and say, “Now You’ve gone too far!” since everyone of Christ’s love-challenges to him, Jesus Himself had demonstrated. Just days before this beach exchange, Jesus had laid down His life for Peter (and for you, and for me). 

WHY DO YOU LOVE WHO YOU LOVE?

Loveable people are attractive. Spend time with Jesus and you will be attracted to Him. Isaiah the prophet tells us that there was nothing physically appealing about Jesus. While someone who presents themselves well is going to be initially ‘attractive’, being truly attractive is not merely skin-deep. What made Jesus attractive was how He spoke to people, who He spoke to, how He treated people, and the kind of people He associated with. I’ve often heard that the only people Jesus didn’t like were the ‘religious types’, but this is not true. Jesus had a problem with those people who used religion as a veil to deceive, oppress, or abuse people! There is a kind of religion that is sincere, kind, generous, and God-honouring (James 1:26-27). Religion is not the problem that Jesus called out. 

¶ “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.
Matthew 23:13-15

 If Jesus asked you “Do you love Me?” how would you respond? The reason we might give is not the same reason God loves us! God’s love for us is undeserved, lavish, extravagant, and gracious. But our love for God is grounded in gratitude and demonstrated by how we love others on His behalf.

¶ Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
First John 4:7-8 

This exchange on a Galilean beach between two Galileans has revealed to us what real, true, authentic love is. Love is not love! God’s love is love; and, it never rejoices in wrong-doing (1Cor. 13:6). God’s kind of love is humble, selfless, serving, others-focused, and sacrificial. It begins by loving God and then loving on behalf of God. This exchange between Peter and the Supreme-Being veiled in human flesh also why we should love God (and others). Put simply, it is out of deep gratitude for what God has done for us through Christ.

We love because He first loved us.
First John 4:19

Can you imagine how this revelation would transform singles, marriages, families, and churches? I pray that we would not merely have to imagine it, but that increasingly we will witness it.

Pastor Andrew

FOR LOVE’S SAKE

FOR LOVE’S SAKE

Whenever I prepare a couple for their marriage, I stress several critical things that will help them build a happily-ever-after-marriage. The first thing I stress is that our preparation is going to focus on their life together—their marriage—rather than focusing on their wedding. The second thing I stress is that for them to have a happily-ever-after-marriage they need to learn how to love. Interestingly, what many couples come to realise is that these principles don’t just help improve their relationship—it also helps to improve their other relationships as well. 

¶ Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.
Colossians 3:12-14

LEARNING TO LOVE

When Paul wrote these words to the Colossians, it was at a time when there wasn’t much of what he was talking about: compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, forbearance, forgiveness, and harmonious love. His entire epistle to the Colossians is grounded in who Christ is. As he brings his epistle to its application section, he gives the Colossians these radical instructions. Upon reflection, we can see that each of these injunctions was emulated by Christ. We might summarise what Paul had told the Colossians as, draw near to Christ, worship Him, and you’ll begin to treat others the way He treated others.

¶ Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.
Colossians 2:6-7

Paul seems to sum up these loving virtues (compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, forbearance, forgiveness, and harmonious love) as being achieved when we are committed to love like Jesus. Each of these virtues can be learned and developed.One of the best ways to do this is to practice good listening. I usually tell a couple in their pre-marriage preparation that there are threetypes of listening they must develop to become good listeners. 

I recently heard an example of one of these types of listening as I was listening to Dr. J.P. Moreland give a lecture on Apologetics in Canada. At the end of his lecture he took questions. A young lady asked a tricky question about God’s goodness and human suffering. Instead jumping in and giving a sound theological answer, the veteran apologist paused, then asked the young lady, “Is there something behind this question?” She paused and then shared how her mother had been recently diagnosed with terminal cancer and was experiencing a lot of associated pain. Dr. Moreland spoke tenderly to her and expressed his sympathies for what her mother was enduring. (Some deep questions don’t really need an answer as much as they need a hug!) When we learn to listen to others we hear their heart, their story, and perhaps their hurt. (How we respond to what we hear is another category of listening which I might write about another day if anyone is interested.)

Following on from this list love-virtues, the apostle then discusses how this applies within our homes – marriages, parenting, childrening, and then within our workplaces. Christian love is not just intended for those we should love. 

BECAUSE WE CARE

Several years ago I began to pray and ask God to help me to see and hear better, but to especially feel better. I particularly wanted to see what He saw, and to be sensitive enough to hear what He needed me to hear. But I felt that I really needed to feel as He felt. I found myself watching movies and more often than not being brought to tears. I found that when I would be driving into town that there were other people also driving into town as well who may not know Christ. I would feel compelled to pray for them to see their need for a Saviour and to come to see that Jesus the Christ was that Saviour. The same thing happened when I entered into a shop. I saw people. I prayed for people. The same thing happens on a Sunday. I see people. I pray for people. I wrote in this weekly pastor’s desk some time ago that this developed into something quite mysterious where I began to manifest the very conditions that blighted those I was praying for. This dramatically happened again two weeks (this is what I alluded to in last week’s eNews when Iasked for prayer for my health). 

We all have people in our world for whom we care. We care about them and their now, but we especially care them and their eternities. As we pray for each other to be more effective in reaching out to these precious folk, we might never know the effect our prayers are privately having on them. Some of us want to do more than just pray for them. We want to share the love of Christ with them in the hope that they too will come to experience His saving grace and forgiveness. Sometimes this requires intentionally starting a conversation with them about spiritual things. These conversations might commence with – 

• “Have I ever told you why I became a Christian?” 
• “Have you ever wondered why I go to church each Sunday?”
• “Getting married was the second most important thing I’ve ever done with my life.” (Then wait for their question about what the most important thing was, then share your testimony—this only works if you’re actually married by the way.)
• “What do you think happens to a person after they die?” … “How do you know?”
• “How do you think life began?”

You may have found your own conversation starters that have worked for you. For some of us, starting such conversations seems too awkward. When we consider how the early Christians shared Jesus with others we see that often it was a “Come and see” approach.

Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.”
John 1:46 

“Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?”
John 4:29

“Come and see” was what many of the original disciples asked their families, friends and neighbours. And they did come, and they did see, and they too were convinced that this Jesus was no ordinary man. Come and see still works today. It’s because we care that we invite others to church so that they can come and see. Perhaps this Sunday there will be more coming to see. I pray that we all see them! I hope you’ll join me in prayer and pray that as we work together on Sunday to worship Jesus that they will indeed see Him who loves them and want to forgive them and become their heavenly father. I pray that we can love like Jesus. As we consider the fifteen greatest description of love ever given, I pray that it will challenge each of us to ask God for the help we need to love Him and to love others.

¶ Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
First Corinthians 13:4-7

 Pastor Andrew