The Giving of Thanks

It is November, and we are looking forward to Thanksgiving.  But thanksgiving—the giving of thanks—is appropriate and indeed vital every day of every year.  The topic of expressing gratitude and/or appreciation has countless facets.  Feeling and expressing appreciation releases “happiness” hormones, particularly dopamine and serotonin, and we feel good.  It serves our physical, mental, and emotional health.  The giving of thanks is good for our spiritual health as well, turning our focus where it belongs, on our Creator, Savior, and Lord.  When we give thanks and praise Him, we are far better able to see the Lord’s hand in our lives.  And finally, God’s Word calls us to give thanks in all times, in all places, for all things, to the Giver of all good gifts.  (James 1:17).

 

The giving of thanks is also crucial in the development of relationship.  When we give anything, we take something of substance from ourselves and turn outward with it toward someone.  It becomes a means of connection.  So when we express gratitude to God, we reinforce our faith relationship and strengthen our connection with our Creator, Savior, and Lord.  But as we give thanks to God for others, it also turns our hearts toward them.  We promote relationship as we affirm their value.  The Apostle Paul provides numerous examples in his epistles of thanking the Lord for those to whom he was ministering long-distance.  I have often wondered at the breadth and depth of Paul’s relationships with countless members of countless churches sprawled across a good portion of the known world.  I suspect that Paul’s attitude of gratitude toward others and the quantity and quality of his relationships were closely related.  

 

What might this mean for us as we walk in faith as the body of Christ?  In our rushed, competitive, and performance-focused culture, it is tempting to become self-focused and operate from a platform of expedience rather than to be led and fueled by the indwelling Holy Spirit.  It can be easy to choose independence over faith, missing precious opportunities to become more deeply connected to one another.  And connection is crucial if we are to become a unified, fully functional body unit that is able to participate in the Lord’s kingdom work among us and through us and to manifest Christ to an unbelieving world by our love and unity.

 

May we be continually mindful that the Lord has blessed us with one another!

 

We ought always to give thanks to God for you, brethren, as is only fitting, because your faith is greatly enlarged, and the love of each one of you toward one another grows ever greater.  

                                                                                                   II Thessalonians 1:3

 

Lessons in September

 September: Back to School!  For children across the country and their parents, September represents a transition in life that goes well beyond the weather.  And with that transition often come doubts and concerns.  Parents schedule sports physicals, study school supply lists, and fill out form after form after form.  Their children have other things to think about: “Am I ready for this grade?”  “What if I can’t find my classroom?”  “I hope so and so is not in my class.”  But often the top concern is: “Will my teacher be nice?”  “Will he/she like me?”  

 

We at Windsor Chapel are entering a time of transition as well.  Under the leadership of Pastor Jame, we are looking to grow as a body of Christ and reach those in our community who need to hear the Gospel.  We need to pray and seek the Lord; we also need to come together and use our gifts as the coordinated limbs and organs of a body.  With all of this, it is easy to have questions, doubts, and concerns.  And just like students returning to school, we can worry about meeting expectations and having to work with difficult people.  But the one thing we do not need to worry about is our Teacher….

 

Our Teacher is also our Creator, Lord, Savior, Redeemer, Friend, and our Good Shepherd.  He loves us and delights in us!  Since He has created us with the gifts we need to accomplish the good works for which He has created us, we need not worry about having what it takes to do what He calls us to do.  And as His Holy Spirit does His work in us and among us, we can look forward to becoming increasingly coordinated as we learn to work together to further the Gospel.  

 

Manifesting Christ to our neighbors is a challenge to be sure.  It requires faith, obedience, and perseverance.  We will need to encourage one another and sometimes admonish and gracefully confront one another.  But following the Lord and His undershepherd, Pastor Jame, is not something we have to do.  It is something we get to do: As we participate in the Lord’s work, we get to witness and experience the power of God in our lives and the lives of others.  And the blessing doesn’t stop there.  As we walk through this transition in faith, we will become better able and better equipped to face all the challenges we encounter in this world.  And this experience gives us an even stronger witness that can encourage continuing church growth.  And the cycle continues as our participation in strengthening the body equips us for continued and expanding good works….

 

Welcome, September!

 

 

 

Gardening and the Kingdom of God

 I am not a gardener.  I very much appreciate the creativity and provision that the glorious plant life the Lord has given us represents.  But I prefer to engage with the animal kingdom component of God’s creation.  But just as God intended, animal life cannot live and thrive without plant life.  And so I have become a reluctant gardener in order to provide an inviting oasis for the wildlife in our neighborhood.

 

I am still not a gardener!  My efforts are amateur at best.  One of the challenges I have encountered is distinguishing weeds from plants.  My expectation that it should be obvious and easy has not proven to always be the case.  Some weeds are attractive!

 

So while I am still not a gardener, I have come to appreciate the lessons that gardening can offer.  Weeds can compromise the growth of the plants I want to grow by stealing nutrients from the soil.  So attractive or not, I need to learn to recognize them and remove them.  The same is true of spiritual weeds, the lies that Satan would have me believe, that would erode the truths that are the foundation of my life of faith.  

 

In II Corinthians 11:14, the Apostle Paul tells us that Satan can disguise himself as an angel of light.  He has been the master of deceit from the time he arrived in the Garden of Eden to initiate the fateful conversation with Eve.  We would be wise to pay attention to his strategy.  The serpent does not directly contradict God’s command to not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil until well into the conversation.  Instead, he questions Eve in such as way as to encourage her to question her knowledge of and trust in the LORD.  Then he contradicts God; he assures her that not only will she not die if she eats the fruit, she will become wise like God!  And when he finally offers the fruit to Eve she sees that it is beautiful and tasty—irresistable!

 

The lies Satan would throw before us are no different.  Satan’s lies are attractive: they tell us what we want to hear, and they appear harmless and even good.  Worse yet, they make us feel good about ourselves, important and powerful.  It is easy to mistake them for God’s truth, and even easier to want them to be true.  This is why it is so important for us to be walking in faith, pursuing an ever-growing personal relationship with our Lord and Savior.  We must be fully convinced in our heart of God’s sovereign righteousness and goodness and of His redemptive purposes if we are to withstand the lies that Satan would have put before us, lies that look good, offer a “quick fix,” and make us feel good.  We must learn to distinguish Satan’s lies from God’s truth and mercilessly uproot them from our minds and hearts.

 

Fortunately, God Almighty is on our side.  The Lord who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life has died for our sins.  He has blessed us with His Word and with His indwelling Holy Spirit.  He has given us one another to encourage and correct us should we be tempted to stray from His truth.  And best of all, He has promised to complete the work He has begun in us.  May we live gratefully and joyfully in the Truth….

 

Wings of Eagles

 Spring is—finally—here.  We toss aside our jackets, put away our sweaters and head out to enjoy the sunshine.  Like most people, I love to see the grass become green again, flowers bloom, and trees come back to life.  But what I most enjoy about spring is the return of migrating birds and the resurgence of activity at our feeders and bird houses.

 

As I watch the birds do their Spring thing, I often admire their ability to fly.  I think how lucky they are that the Lord gave them the ability to fly, and I wish the Lord had created us humans with wings….  But as I have thought about this, I have come to recognize that the gift of flight comes with a stiff price: flight is hard work, and in order to facilitate flight, the body of birds is light and quite frail.  

 

While gliding on air currents requires little energy, take-off and wing-flapping are high calorie endeavors.  While there is a great variation in energy expenditure among different species of birds and in different activities involved in flight, estimates for general flight can be as high as 10,000 calories/day.  Along with flight comes the need for a continual search for food and rest.  Flight also involves risk.  Hollow bones and light bodies make flight possible but also make broken wings and crushed bodies a common occurrence.

 

It seems to me that the ability of birds to fly presents a wonderful parable for us as some of God’s wingless creatures.  Whatever gifts and abilities the Lord has given us requires continual, focused, and prolonged effort on our part if we are to use those gifts and abilities as He intends and to experience His deep and genuine joy in doing so.  There is risk involved as well: our sin-sick bodies are arguably as frail as those of birds.  But most of all, it requires trust and dependence on the Lord for His protection as He guards and guides us with His staff.  But it is worth it beyond measure!  

 

Please consider with me Isaiah’s proclamation about spiritual flight:

            Yet those who wait for the LORD

            Will gain new strength;

            They will mount up with wings like eagles,

            They will run and not get tired,

            They will walk and not become weary.

 

In his Gospel, John records these words of Jesus: I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.  C.S. Lewis observed that contrary to what we might think, the Lord finds our desires not too strong but too weak.  May we learn to depend upon Him more and more as we deeply desire and energetically pursue the spiritual flight that He would have for us.

 

 

Resurrection Power!

 April has come, and Easter is coming…. This is the ideal time to consider, again, the magnitude of what Christ has done, and done for us.  Christ’s death and resurrection means that by faith, we are freed from our old life of sin and death and walk in newness of life (Romans 6:4).  Our celebration of Easter is a reminder to us that our loving Lord died for us so that we may live with Him in eternity; and it is a proclamation to the world that Christianity is not merely out of the ordinary, it is extraordinary.  God taking on flesh to live among us, dying to pay for our sins, and then being resurrected to return to heaven to await the arrival of the saints.

 

There are limitless aspects to the events commemorated on Easter weekend.  There are two, though, that I find particularly compelling.  The first is the unfathomable power of the resurrection.  Death is unavoidable, irrevocable, and irreversible in this fallen world.  But the Bible tells us that God—and God alone—has the power to overcome death, to reverse it.  There are a few instances in the Old Testament where we see prophets raise someone who has died by the power of the LORD.  Christ, when He walked on earth as God Incarnate, raised some victims of death back to life.  And then.  Christ Himself—the Creator and Sustainer of the universe—died on behalf of mankind and then was raised in power and glory.  The plot of the story is so familiar that we often do not give it much attention.  But we would do well to take time to consider the absolutely incomprehensible power represented by the resurrection.

 

The second aspect of Easter weekend that I find helpful to ponder is that the death and resurrection of Christ signifies and signals that He has made a way for newness of life for those who would believe in Him.  And the newness of life that He offers is characterized by the same resurrecting power that raised Jesus (and others) from the dead.  Believers have an abiding relationship with the indwelling Holy Spirit.  We have resurrection power within us, to strengthen us (Ephesians 3:16-20), and to equip and empower us to minister in the name of Christ (Colossians 1:28-29)!

 

There is a common denominator of these two aspects of Easter weekend: both demonstrate conclusively that God is God and we are not!  Only God has resurrection power.  Christ died and rose to do for us what we could not do for ourselves—restore our relationship with holy and glorious Godhead.  We now have resurrection power, by the Holy Spirit, to minister in the name of Christ.  And we look forward to our own resurrection, again by the power and grace of God.  Christ has done—and is doing—what we cannot do for ourselves.

 

 

But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves.  II Corinthians 4:7.

 

The Lion and the Lamb

 March: In like a lion, out like a lamb.  We all know this saying.  March generally begins with cold temperatures and icy winds and then then often ends with warmer temperatures and gentle conditions.  The saying marks well the contrast represented by March as the transition month from winter to spring.

 

But from a Biblical perspective, the lion and lamb are not descriptions of opposites in the spectrum of weather conditions.  Instead, we read of Jesus as the Lion of Judah and the Lamb God who was slain for the redemption of the world.  The Lion and Lamb are not opposites but rather two aspects of the character of the second member of the Triune Godhead.  It is vitally important to keep those two aspects in balance as we walk before Christ in faith.

 

It is easy and understandable that each of us is inclined to emphasize one aspect of the Lord over the other.  Some find it easier and/or more natural to view Christ as the Lion: fearfully powerful and dangerous.  They carefully define and then obey the Bible’s commands to stay out of trouble and sometimes find comfort that those who are less obedient will encounter the strong winds of God’s judgment.  

 

On the other hand, there are those who focus on the Lord as the meek and gentle Lamb, led to the cross without protest, dying to redeem us.  They take comfort that Jesus is approachable and unthreatening and sometimes ignore or neglect His commands.

 

We know that Jesus is both Lion and Lamb: the all-powerful God of creation and final Judge as well as the meek God Incarnate who freely offered His life as a sacrifice for our sins.  These aspects of the Son of God are not opposites, and they are not in tension.  Rather, they give us binocular vision, so to speak, of our Lord and Savior.  He is the Mighty God who uses His incomprehensible power to love those whom He has created, to become the Lamb of God who freely offers Himself as a sacrifice for the sins of His creatures.  The sacrifice made by the Lamb of God then circles back, coming before the Lion of Judah’s judgement seat and acquitting believers of the sin charges against them.

 

Jesus is so much bigger than our minds can comprehend that He encompasses several apparent opposites: He is the Lion and the Lamb; the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End; He is full of grace and truth.  How can we live faithfully in that truth?  I believe that it is important to once again follow King David’s advice and ask the Lord to search us and know us, to reveal to us any way in which we serve ourselves rather than Him as Master.  Do we favor the imagery of the Lion of Judah or the Lamb of God as a self-serving shortcut in our walk of faith?  Can we seek to grow to embrace all aspects of our Lord and Savior?  May it be so….

 

Love in February

 February is a rather dreary month, which most likely contributes to the attention given to Valentine’s day.  As a celebration of romantic love, Valentine’s Day in February leaves something to be desired.  February is generally chilly and damp—not ideal for romantic walks and picnics!  Why do we celebrate Valentine’s Day in February?  And is it only about romantic love?  A very brief look at ancient history will help us understand a bit how we got here.   

 

St. Valentine was a priest or bishop who lived in Italy in the third century.  He is known for his efforts to evangelize folks in the Roman Empire and his ministry to believers who were being persecuted by the Roman government.  While visiting Rome, he was arrested for his evangelizing, tortured, and executed.  According to our sources, Valentine died on February 14.

 

If we return to Valentine’s Day, 2025, we have a couple of things to consider.  While the focus of modern Valentine’s Day (and even in history) has been on romantic love, St. Valentine himself is remembered for the agape God-love that he manifested to believers and nonbelievers alike.  Both romantic love and agape love have value, but it is easy to argue that agape love is the more significant and eternal.  The good news is that we can pursue and exercise our “love muscles” in both directions, taking time to love a special someone in a special way even as we pursue loving others as Christ loves them.

 

The calendar position of Valentine’s Day need not be disappointing or frustrating.  It can be an invitation to recognize that all forms of love are from God and go beyond circumstances.  Love is not confined to warm, sunny days.  We can love in all circumstances, all weather.  May we know the joy of the Lord as we do so.