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“Honor your father and mother, that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.” (Exodus 20:12) You might have only noticed because of Paul’s comments in his letter to the Ephesians, but it’s there we read that the Fifth Commandment (“Honor your father and mother…”) is the “first commandment with a promise.” (6:2) He may not have graduated High School English, because he never seems to get around to telling us about a second one with a promise. But I routinely fail to close parentheses. Nobody’s perfect (humanly speaking, anyway. If you take a look at this commandment, he’s referring to the part where God says to honor our parents, “that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.” (Exodus 20:12) But, what’s up with that? What is the big deal about length of days in the land? And what’s it got to do with us? We’re not ancient Israelites, and neither were his Ephesian hearers who he wrote this to. So, what gives? There’s a recurring theme in Scripture, appearing right from the git-go, starting in Genesis 3. Immediately following their encounter with Satan in the Garden, Adam & Eve are exiled from the garden, and God bars re-entry, setting the Cherubim with flaming swords at the gates of Eden. Later on, after the Israelites are rescued from bondage in Egypt, God causes them to wander in the wilderness for forty years, most of the original generation never entering the promised land. Just a remnant makes it. Not even Moses makes this first cut. ... Keep Reading

At our last Session meeting an Elder ask me for “my perspective on giving.” This is my response. I wish above every church door a banner would read, “No perfect people allowed; only the fallible, hypocritical, and feeble permitted to enter.” I struggle with the discipline of giving to God. I like the fact that our church considers the whole church service worship, the preaching, our public confession not just our singing. I miss the act of passing the collection plate. I like the weekly reminder mid-service to grab my checkbook to write a check and make a conscious decision to worship by giving. Although most of my adult life I have attended churches with a collection box in the back of the sanctuary, I prefer hurriedly writing my check before the plate makes it to me as a conscious way of worshipping, a reminder to give to God. I remember my dad taking the church envelope out of his coat pocket with a pre-written check. I like the weekly prompting to reflect on my giving to God. I do not utilize the box, QR codes, and phone apps as I should. Because I struggle with the practice of giving, I find myself thinking transactionally. “God, I have not given as you requested; that is why things are not going well currently.” I know this is bad theology when we treat God as the “big slot machine in the sky.” ... Keep Reading

An image flashed in my mind when Dale mentioned Election three weeks ago. I was transported to sitting in my living room and Leo, my house guest asked, “What if I am not one of the Elect? What will happen to me?” The question brought sadness to my soul. My people-pleasing-self did not want to hurt his feelings. My theological-self knew... Keep Reading

In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus is asked, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” He answers, “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and First Commandment…” There is an aspect to this answer, probably attributable to our hearing it so frequently, that seems entirely understandable, even simple in its clarity. At least, I think a lot of the time, we THINK we understand this commandment, but as you might imagine, it’s actually a profound commandment. One of the first things to notice is that, to love anyone, especially the LORD, takes a myriad of forms. Helpfully, the scripture Jesus answers with lists the ‘tools’ of love: our heart, our soul and mind. But that’s the rub, isn’t it? Our hearts are ‘desperately wicked.’ And our soul…well, how do we even start to talk about loving with our soul? And our minds…we THINK we understand how our minds work. But aren’t we all fallen creatures, whose minds are darkened by sin?... Keep Reading

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. Philippians 2:3-11 As a member of the Men’s ministry leadership team, I want to see my brothers grow to maturity in Christ. How can I stir up my brothers and sisters to love and good works? (Heb 11:24-25) How can I pray about this as part of the men’s ministry? As part of the larger church body? At Oak Hills, as the visible body of Christ, how can the men grow in fellowship? Why must we grow in fellowship? How may this year’s men’s ministry impact the Oak Hills congregation—men, women and children? How can we reach the lost for God’s Kingdom?... Keep Reading

“…I stood on the island’s ocean shore and saw what there was to see: a pile of colorless stripes. Through binoculars I could see a bigger pile of colorless stripes. It seemed reasonable to call the colorless stripe overhead ‘sky,’ and reasonable to call the colorless stripe at my feet ‘ice,’ for I could see where it began. I could distinguish, that is, my shoes, and the black gravel shore, and the nearby frozen ice the wind had smashed ashore. It was this mess of ice—ice breccia, pressure ridges, and standing floes, ice sheets upright, tilted, frozen together and jammed—which extended out to the horizon. No matter how hard I blinked, I could not put a name to any of the other stripes. Which was the horizon? Was I seeing land, or water, or their reflections in low clouds? Was I seeing the famous ‘water sky,’ the ‘frost smoke,’ or the ‘ice blink’?” It’s probably just the recent cold snap that’s bringing this to mind as I composed this. But this passage from Annie Dillard’s “An Expedition to the Pole” has stuck with me ever since first reading it some fifteen or twenty years ago. The description of her disorientation on her trip to the Pole above the Arctic Circle is evocative of our own feelings of not being entirely sure where we stand sometimes. In her account, it was physical disorientation brought about by her surroundings at the time. But this sense of disorientation can occur to us in other ways.... Keep Reading

In 1979, four years after I recorded a re-enactment of Jonah for school, I was in a stadium listening to John Stott expound on Jonah declaring in his perfect London accent, “Our God is a missionary God.” In fact, both Nancy and I, along with 17,000 other students attending Urbana 79, learned of Jonah the reluctant messenger. That was the first time we were in the same room. It only took me 9 years to meet her. Urbana is a tri-annual mission conference. We can’t think about that conference without hearing John Stott repeat the phrase, “Our God is a missionary God” in a proper British accent. God’s heart for all nations and cultural groups is woven through out all of Scripture from Genesis to Revelation. It starts with the Abrahamic Covenant and continues on to Revelation 7:9 where John describes heaven, saying there will be “a great multitude, that no one could number; from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands” praising God. God wants to use Abraham’s physical and spiritual descendants to bless the cultural groups of the world so that they will know that the Creator is merciful, gracious, slow to anger abounding in steadfast love from generation to generation. Yes, God will use reluctant missionaries like Jonah, you, and me, as we seek to expand the Kingdom of God. The Psalms are not just poetry for Israel, about Israel, but are also an expression of God’s heart for all nations and all cultural groups.... Keep Reading

I first discovered that our God is a missionary God in high school. When I found myself talking into the cassette recorder mic, I was re-enacting seaweed wrapping around Jonah’s head; the salt water washed over me as I descended to the ocean depths. As a 15 year old boy, I was attracted to the gritty detail of Jonah. This was my final project as a high school sophomore in “Bible as Literature” in my public-school class. Growing up by the sea, I knew the smell, taste and texture of seaweed wrapping around my head. God’s heart for all nations and peoples is infused throughout all scriptures and is not limited to just the book of Jonah. God used Jonah, even though he got on the wrong ship heading away from Ninevah, his God-ordained destination. The Ninevites responded to God’s disobedient messenger. I can see Jonah stepping out from the shade God provided him, with his fist raised in anger at God because God spared Jonah’s mortal enemies the, Ninevites. The Ninevites responded favorably to God’s warning. Jonah would have been all too happy to see his political enemies smitten and judged by God. The book of Jonah demonstrates that it is not the messenger that people respond to, but the Holy Spirit in the individual that draws us to God the Father through the sacrifice of his Son.... Keep Reading

Many of us, whether we’ve been following Jesus for four years or forty, have experienced periods in our Christian life of stagnation, weariness, apathy, or even burnout. Sometimes the busyness and burdens of life make it challenging to serve our brothers and sisters in the church as actively or eagerly as we’d like. Sometimes we lack the motivation to spend time in fellowship or even in corporate worship. This may not be the norm, but it is normal. It may not feel good, but it can still bring God glory, especially when it brings us to realize the limitations of our own strength and energy. We’re only human after all. Paul, perhaps the busiest and most active servant of the Lord in the first century church, recognized this. There’s no way he could have accomplished all that he did in his own strength, apart from God’s energizing and sustaining grace. In his words, “Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.” (Colossians 1:28-29). This paradox provides some insight into how we should be leading the Christian life and serving in our church community. Paul is indeed working hard – the words toil and struggle tell us that he's the one sweating in his gospel-proclaiming, disciple-making ministry – and yet he's not working in his own strength, but with the energy that God works within him. There's no faster way to get burned out on Christianity than by trying to "do enough" in your own strength. So how do we serve in the Lord's strength and not our own? Practically, what does that look like, and how do we discern if we're doing it? I want to suggest two ways to examine ourselves to be sure we're serving in the Lord's strength: faithfulness and fruitfulness.... Keep Reading

In my previous article, I wrote about the necessity for God’s children to actively cultivate an affection for him through scripture meditation and memorization. God gives his children both a command and strong encouragement to ask for his supernatural wisdom (Ja. 1:5) and strength (Is. 41:10) to enable us to both resist sin and delight in him. To accomplish this, God has given us the means of grace to ‘build us up in holiness and comfort’ (as the Westminster Confession puts it) for the glory of Christ. One of these means to which we must apply ourselves is the meditation on and memorization of his word. To this end, let me encourage you, reader, with three practical ways that I have found helpful in making scripture memorization and meditation a part of your lifelong walk with Christ. Decide today to memorize scripture and record your decision. This may seem like it goes without saying, but the act of deciding to do a thing is very different from knowing that one should do something, or even of wanting to do something. There’s something special about deciding to do a thing and writing that decision down. First, pray. Pray for wisdom from the Holy Spirit to enable you to increase your affection and delight for scripture. Then—since we are forgetful creatures—record your decision as a reminder to your future self. Handwrite a note card and tape it on your mirror, or set a weekly reminder on your phone (or both). Write “By God’s strength, I will learn to love memorizing scripture” or “I will trust and obey God by meditating on his holy word” or something similar. By all means, be thoughtful in what you write and expect an answer to your prayer (Ja. 1:6) …but keep it as simple as possible, and work quickly. Start memorizing scripture as soon as possible.... Keep Reading