What's UP With This?!

Lovers of the English language might enjoy this one that is making the rounds via the internet. I’ve changed it UP some...

UP is a two-letter word in English that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word. It is listed in the dictionary as being used as an [adv], [prep], [adj], [n] or [v].

It's easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP and then get UP?

At a meeting, why does a topic come UP? Why do we speak UP, and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report? We call UP our friends and we brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver, warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen. We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car.

At other times the little word has a real special meaning. People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses. To be dressed is one thing, but to be dressed UP is special.

And this UP is confusing: A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP. We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night. We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP !

If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used. It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP you may wind UP with a hundred or more.

One could go on & on, but I'll wrap UP with a few Bible verses I came UP with.

Matthew 7:12 In everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums UP the Law and the Prophets.

Luke 7:14-15 Then he went UP and touched the coffin, and those carrying it stood still. He said, "Young man, I say to you, get UP!" The dead man sat up and began to talk...

John 4:13-14 Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling UP to eternal life."

Acts 7:55 Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked UP to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.

Acts 1:9-11 After he said this, he was taken UP before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. They were looking intently UP into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. "Men of Galilee," they said, "why do you stand here looking UP into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven."

God Speaks Through His Word

While I post on my blog less frequently than in the past, you can subscribe to my weekly e-mail and comment directly to me by navigating here.

Last week I began a series on listening to God.

Of course one of the ways God speaks is through His Word. In fact all the other ways we believe God speaks must be weighed and measured against His Word.

When we talk about God’s Word we think about the Bible. If you were on a desert island it is the one book you’d want (I will admit How to Survive on a Desert Island would be a close second!).

What book is this? It’s a best seller that most people on the planet have either read or heard about and it has touched countless people with its insights and information. Its English-language version now in over 70 countries. It opens doorways and tells us a lot about ourselves and the human race and is found in almost every library on the planet. It is available in 37 foreign languages and sales are phenomenal, somewhere near the 100 million mark worldwide.*

OK, it’s the Bible, right? No! It’s... Guinness Book of World Records! But in every measurable scale GBWR is chicken feed compared to The Bible.

The Bible is translated into over 2,200 languages and dialects (Shakespeare is translated into only 50). Bible Societies are working today in over 200 countries to produce the scriptures in 500 more languages! 100 million copies of the Good News Bible have been printed in the past twenty years alone. In China alone 2.5 million Bible distributed very year. With all its “these and thous” KJV still sells 13 million copies a year! Who knows how many are sold in bookstores around the globe every second of every day. And I haven’t even mentioned how God’s Word is available in cyberspace online.

But with all its accessibility few would argue that people these days are more familiar with God’s voice than in previous generations.

There was a sweet senior saint many years ago in the Altamesa church that some took to calling “Scripture Says” because she would always preface a Bible class comment by saying, “Scripture says...”

Betty Reese became our next “Scripture Says.” When she faced a problem, a question, a blessing, she would go to the scriptures.

We need more “Scripture Says” in the church today. Why? Because in the scriptures we read about who God is, what He’s done in the world, how much He loves us and His sense of what is just and fair. We read about how to be in a relationship with Him. We learn to recognize His voice.

I’m amazed to think of the people who never had a copy of the Bible. Before Guttenberg’s printing press in 1455 and before William Tyndale died to translate the Bible into English in 1536 there were faithful people who never saw a Bible but they still fell in love with God and His Word. They listened to God.

All those martyrs fed to the lions in the Coliseum in Rome? Never read the Bible. Never held a copy in their hands, never shopped for a new study Bible at a Family Christian Bookstore! But they lived and died convicted by God’s Word. Again, they listened to God.

Why is it that in these days when we are afforded the luxury of arguing about which translation is best it seems we don’t listen to God and take what He says as seriously as those who have gone before?

More next week...

*Thanks to Peter Downey and Ben Shaw for this information in their book Everything You Wanted to Know About the Bible

Listening is a Life's Pursuit

While I post on my blog less frequently than in the past, you can subscribe to my weekly e-mail and comment directly to me by navigating here.

Yesterday I teased a guy after our 9:30 worship assembly saying, “God told me to tell you to take me to Luby’s Cafeteria for lunch.” He wasn’t buying it. He wasn’t buying me lunch either. “Oh really,” he replied. “That’s odd. God told me you were taking me to Outback Steakhouse!”

Funny how so often what we think God wants turns out to be exactly what we want. Hmm...

In my next few weekly messages I want to write about hearing from God. We need to be better listeners. Kind of like when God says, “Hear O Israel...” We need to hear.

The trouble is we want a formula. We want to hear God in “six easy steps.” Fewer would even be better. We’d like hearing from God to be a single CSI episode. Plot, sub-plot and conclusions all inside of 60 minutes. Lose the commercials and the Hearing from God show some people put on can run less than 45 minutes!

But paying attention to God is not like that. Listening for His voice is a life’s pursuit. So please don’t read into these ideas “easy steps to hearing from God” kind of stuff. That’s not my intent and it’s not God’s reality.

Hearing from God begins with a heart that is open to Him all the time, all the days of our lives. It is 24-7. It’s a lifestyle. Listening for God is worship, meditation, fasting, and all the spiritual disciplines with a heavy application of humility. Doesn’t mean we have to be perfect, it just means we have a heart for The One who is. You want steps? Step one is a servant heart that flows from a life dedicated to God’s Will and Word. Too hard? Sorry. You should have said you wanted easy steps.

When he first begins to hear from God Samuel is a bit confused. Boy have I ever been there! Eventually he says, “Here I am. You’re servant is listening.” Young Samuel is saying, “What Word do you have for me? What do you want me to do? I’m all yours.” You can check this story out in detail by navigating here.

“I’m listening and I’m your servant.” A humble heart that listens is a refreshing change from formula faith, where we make a plan and ask God to hurry up and bless it. Usually those plans are what we want. “Hey, God said that you ought to buy me lunch!”

And Samuel takes us in the opposite direction of the prideful attitude we often encounter when someone wants us to know they have a word from the Lord. “God told me this truth so you’d better believe it.”

Next week I’ll discuss at least four specific ways we hear from God. The whole point here is to know God better, to serve Him with more passion and commitment. We want to grow closer to Him. If that’s not the end game for listening for His voice I’m not sure it’s His voice we’re listening to.

Memorial Day

I never met or knew William A. Sims of Fort Worth. He died when I was not quite five years old, a victim of artillery action near a place called Binh Dinh, South Vietnam.

His name is on the Wall in Washington, D.C. Panel 39E, line 14.

I do know his family called him Billy. Billy Sims. He did not live into the 1970’s when he could have seen an East Texas guy with that same name play football for Oklahoma. William A. Sims did not live long enough to see many things. He was 20 on February 12, 1968, the day he died.

When I went to Washington I looked up all the people named Sims who are on The Wall. I pencil rubbed William’s name onto paper. Same last name, same hometown. I still have that paper, a personal Memorial Day moment for me each time I run across it.
Memorial Day is the day set aside to remember those who have died in service to our country. But it is not for the dead.

Memorial Day is for the living. Memorial Day is about perspective. And Memorial Day is about freedom, which of course is not free. Freedom costs. Men and women have given their lives for our freedom. That seems more real when we think about twenty year old kids dying.

May God bless the families of William A. Sims and all those who have given their lives in service to our country. May God continue to give us life, along with perspective and with a deep appreciation for freedom.

Open Our Eyes

While I post on my blog less frequently than in the past, you can subscribe to my weekly e-mail by navigating here.

My family just returned from a two week trip to Israel and Egypt.

Our Israel trip was great.

As many who have been there had advised us, you get a new feel for the places and people of the Bible. As one friend said, “Being there opens your eyes to the truth of the scriptures.”

Driving up from the Judean desert you better understand how the scripture text often speaks of Jerusalem being on a hill. Why is Zion described as a mountain? Because it is one! Standing on Zion or looking up from the Kidron Valley gives you a new point of view.

One unexpected eye opener for me was how people in Israel routinely speak of the tension of terrorism. If it’s not suicide bombers it’s the threat of Iran becoming nuclear or already nuclear Pakistan falling into the hands of radical Islamic fundamentalists. But here’s the thing: these pressures have become so routine for Israelis they almost seem numb to them. They know their enemies are all around but like a chronic toothache of the mind and soul they manage the pain.

The Jews have looked for deliverance for a long time. And that reality hit me in a new way, at a deeper level. I have not yet figured it out for sure, but my eyes were opened to pray for peace and deliverance in a more passionate way. Paul said he prayed for the salvation of the Israelites (Romans 10:1). The eyes of my heart have been opened to that prayer.

I loved the topography and the places of Palestine. I loved the people we met and all the things we did. It was great to share communion in the Garden of Gethsemane, to take a short boat ride across the Sea of Galilee, to pray at the Wailing Wall, and to catch a glimpse of people being baptized in the Jordan River. And being asked to read aloud the beatitudes on top of the very mountain where Jesus is said to have spoken them was a special honor. I stopped for a moment when I read, “Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called sons of God.”

Please join me in a prayer for us to open our eyes to pray for the peace of Jerusalem and Israel. Pray for all our enemies too. Jesus tells us to do that and if we don’t take Him seriously who will?

I really don’t think you have to go to Israel for this. I think we do have to go to God. Ask Him to open your eyes to His truth.

Three dates you CANNOT forget

1. Your anniversary
2. Your wife’s birthday
3. Texas Independence Day

You forgot #3 didn’t you?

Today is the celebration of the adoption of the Texas Declaration of Independence (March 2, 1836 at Washington-on-the-Brazos). In honor of our wonderful state, here’s a true and funny story:

Jeff Arrington (son of Joe & Karen, longtime Altamesa Church members) has been in Arizona since last June. When time came for him to get his car registered there this proud Texan hesitated doing so. Jeff just didn’t want to remove his Texas plates!

Jeff's always been a loyal Texan. But the big test came when Big Tex was hit with a warning about getting his car registered in Arizona. And the locals emphasized the word “immediately.”

You’d think that would take care it, right? Instead the notice just made Jeff all the more determined to hold onto those Texas plates and his Texan roots.

And as time went on the company Jeff is working for out there began to cut salaries. That only added to his growing dislike for everything about Arizona. He wanted nothing to do with the Grand Canyon State yet he had to register his car. So what to do?

Get this: Jeff drove to El Paso to take care of it. That drive is 6 hours each way! He even took 2 of his students (he works as a flight instructor) who wanted to see Texas. Of course he told them El Paso isn't the best representation of the state, but he took care of his plate problem and they got to cross state lines into bliss for at least a couple of hours!

Jeff has indoctrinated all of his students with Texas tales and often declares his home state to be the best state ever, even having them repeat after him, "Texas is a great state!"

Jeff is soon returning to "God's Country" (as he and his father refer to Texas). He has landed a flight instructor job in Denton. How long do you suppose it took him to take that offer?

I wonder if he thinks it’s a little too close to Oklahoma...

While I post on my blog less frequently than in the past, you can subscribe to my weekly e-mail by navigating here.

Lent God Your Heart & Soul

Lent begins Wednesday and continues for 46 days until Saturday, the 11th of April.

The season of Lent leads up to Easter. For many, it is a time to give up something like candy or smoking. Lent owes much of its spirit to the forty days Jesus spent in the desert preparing for his ministry. Of course this is where He was tested. The Jewish people thought of the desert as the home of demons, especially that part of the desert where winds howled around tall, jagged rock.

Ever spend a night in a place like that? Dark and threatening shapes, unearthly wailing of wind, alone with your thoughts, nothing and no one else. Here Jesus was confronted by the enemy and offered the opportunity to do what the enemy had done and reject God. He could anoint Himself king and become the wrong kind of messiah. Jesus rejected each possibility and basically said, “My heart and soul belong to My Father.”

My heart and soul belong to My Father.

That’s what Lent is all about. For that matter that’s what the other 319 days of this year are all about as well.

My wife heard a good friend last week explain how her priest was encouraging his church to focus not on giving something up for Lent but to instead focus on giving of themselves for Lent. I like that idea. You might volunteer at a Habitat for Humanity project (our sixth one here at Altamesa began last week) or help out at a food pantry. You could spend an evening tutoring kids or maybe gather some friends and do odd jobs for a widow.

That’s all good. And so is giving up candy or cigarettes. Whatever helps these next 46 days draw you closer to God is a good thing. If Giving Up or Giving Of during Lent helps you give your heart and soul then go for it.

Easter’s coming. And so is the rest of your life.