8.6.13
7.6.13
And Yet, I Hope.
Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I again shall praise Him, my salvation and my God. (Ps. 42:5)
In my dark post yesterday, I highlighted the first part of this verse. Our broken hearts reflect the brokenness of our lives and the world at large. In them, we will not naturally find truth or hope, but deceit and condemnation. Our hearts are not reliable guides, but swim in the poison of human depravity. And yet, in plumbing the depths of such muck and mire, we can find hope, if we but lift our eyes to the heavens. The living God reigns, and in His wings, there is hope. The present realities of a world torn asunder and hearts that are cracked under the weight of sin need not define our lives. The future, when believers shall again praise the living God in Jesus Christ, casts its precious light upon the present darkness. That future is even now so palpable that we can call God "my salvation"--already our lives and hope are secured to Him in everlasting glory.
I wrestled over questions of hope and truth until midnight last night with a fellow extroverted soldier. His position reminds me of that of Pascal and his famous wager--he professes a belief in Jesus Christ in order to hedge his bets. It was what he was taught growing up and no one has disproved that Jesus is who He said He is. And with eternity at stake, who is this man to question what might be his only lifeline? He also has perceived miracles in the past that indicates to him that God or some other benevolent power exists.
As we are both extroverts, our conversation bounced in every direction and lacked a clear, linear, logical trajectory. My basic point was that a basic intellectual assent to Jesus Christ as a probable theory is not an adequate ground for one's hope (indeed, he has no assurance of his own salvation). In addition, miracles--whether they be authentic or not--are not ground for one's salvation, which comes by faith, not by sight. Even the demons believe, and they shudder. On the day mankind put Jesus Christ on trial in Jerusalem, we did not marvel at His miracles, but cried "Crucify Him!" Whether exposed to miracles or ordinary acts of God's benevolent providence, these signs serve only to condemn us in our hatred of God. Our only hope is to embrace Christ as the Savior of sinners--of whom we are the worst. We must embrace the fact that He took the most vile act that mankind could perpetrate against the living God and made it the foundation of God's mercy to His rebel creatures. We must forsake our false notions of self-righteousness and embrace the righteousness of Jesus Christ.
We bookmarked this conversation at midnight. This soldier is a bit surprised that I am being so tough on him, considering what he considers to be a similar position to mine, but I am not eager to baptize a counterfeit hope that will create a false sense of comfort. Christ did not claim to be "a way, a probable truth, a possible life," but claimed to be "the way, the truth, the life." This soldier believes that there was some sort of providential reason he was put on our deployment roster (all other units rejected him, though he has impeccable credentials). My hope is that he is right, and I told him this last night: "Maybe this is the year where you stop hedging your bets and actually make Christ the Lord of your life." Pray it is so.
In my dark post yesterday, I highlighted the first part of this verse. Our broken hearts reflect the brokenness of our lives and the world at large. In them, we will not naturally find truth or hope, but deceit and condemnation. Our hearts are not reliable guides, but swim in the poison of human depravity. And yet, in plumbing the depths of such muck and mire, we can find hope, if we but lift our eyes to the heavens. The living God reigns, and in His wings, there is hope. The present realities of a world torn asunder and hearts that are cracked under the weight of sin need not define our lives. The future, when believers shall again praise the living God in Jesus Christ, casts its precious light upon the present darkness. That future is even now so palpable that we can call God "my salvation"--already our lives and hope are secured to Him in everlasting glory.
I wrestled over questions of hope and truth until midnight last night with a fellow extroverted soldier. His position reminds me of that of Pascal and his famous wager--he professes a belief in Jesus Christ in order to hedge his bets. It was what he was taught growing up and no one has disproved that Jesus is who He said He is. And with eternity at stake, who is this man to question what might be his only lifeline? He also has perceived miracles in the past that indicates to him that God or some other benevolent power exists.
As we are both extroverts, our conversation bounced in every direction and lacked a clear, linear, logical trajectory. My basic point was that a basic intellectual assent to Jesus Christ as a probable theory is not an adequate ground for one's hope (indeed, he has no assurance of his own salvation). In addition, miracles--whether they be authentic or not--are not ground for one's salvation, which comes by faith, not by sight. Even the demons believe, and they shudder. On the day mankind put Jesus Christ on trial in Jerusalem, we did not marvel at His miracles, but cried "Crucify Him!" Whether exposed to miracles or ordinary acts of God's benevolent providence, these signs serve only to condemn us in our hatred of God. Our only hope is to embrace Christ as the Savior of sinners--of whom we are the worst. We must embrace the fact that He took the most vile act that mankind could perpetrate against the living God and made it the foundation of God's mercy to His rebel creatures. We must forsake our false notions of self-righteousness and embrace the righteousness of Jesus Christ.
We bookmarked this conversation at midnight. This soldier is a bit surprised that I am being so tough on him, considering what he considers to be a similar position to mine, but I am not eager to baptize a counterfeit hope that will create a false sense of comfort. Christ did not claim to be "a way, a probable truth, a possible life," but claimed to be "the way, the truth, the life." This soldier believes that there was some sort of providential reason he was put on our deployment roster (all other units rejected him, though he has impeccable credentials). My hope is that he is right, and I told him this last night: "Maybe this is the year where you stop hedging your bets and actually make Christ the Lord of your life." Pray it is so.
6.6.13
Of God and Man (Warning: Explicit--Not for Children or Sensitive)
Psalm 42:5--Why are you downcast, O my soul? And why are you in turmoil within me?
This was a great verse to read as I finished my book Escape from Sobibor, an emotionally suffocating book on how a few people escaped from one of the worst genocides in human history (the Holocaust). It is hard to read the book with any sort of hope. Sure a few dozen people ultimately survived, but what about the unimaginable loss. At Sobibor, 250,000 men, women, and children were murdered. Certain stories stick in me like thorns (Warning: Explicit!):
*Some of the survivors were forced to cut the hair of the teenage girls before they were sent into the chambers.
*Children and babies were often swung and smashed against walls, which may have been merciful compared to clinging to their mothers' skirts in the chambers. One survivor remembered one particular child's voice coming from the chambers, crying "Mama! Mama!"
*The story that gets me most of all was of one mother who tried to leave her baby on the train, hoping he would survive. The Nazis saw the baby, and made one of the eventual survivors grab him. He picked up the baby, who noticed and smiled at him. That smiling baby was taken to the chamber.
Those who initially escaped Sobibor had watched their parents, siblings, spouses, and children walk into the chambers and never return, only to disappear into smoke and ash. When they did escape, they were hunted, not only by Nazis, but my the underground Polish forces who hated them as well, as well as normal folks who would kill them and/or turn them in for a reward of flour and sugar. There was nowhere to safe to go. One couple--perhaps the only couple to survive together--conceived while in hiding, and after the war ended, while they were on their way to Holland, their baby drank bad milk and died. They had to bury him at sea. When all of this was over, the several million Jews of Poland were reduced to a several thousand. There were few survivors; even fewer tears.
In the face of such unimaginable, inhuman pain and suffering, most of these Jews lost their belief in God. Like Elie Wiesel, they saw God hanging upon the gallows, in the place of the little boy who actually hung from the rope. Likewise, some Christian theologians, on the horns of a perceived dilemma between God's omnipotence and His goodness--denied one or the other (usually His omnipotence). Hence the rise of open-theism, which denied God's omnipotence, omniscience, and immutability (unchangingness) in order to make God a fellow-sufferer with mankind.
But the Holocaust should not be used to put God on trial (like Wiesel does in his Trial of God). Men love to point the finger at God and make matters of suffering into a matter of theodicy (the justification of God in light of evil). But what of man? Why do we not put man on trial and engage in anthropodicy (the justification of man in light of evil)? The chambers belong to man! The cross belongs to God!
It is man who brought sin and suffering into this world. Man, who made the mentally handicapped an object of experimentation and little babes into objects of destruction. As self-perceived victims, we cry out against God. As transgressors, we find the blood upon our own hands. There is only one man who God specifically appointed to suffer, and that was Jesus Christ, who did so for those who bore His blood upon their own hands. Jesus died that they might also bear it upon their souls and as salve for their wounds.
No, horrific suffering must never be used to indict God. It condemns mankind and drives us to the God-man who became our sin, so we might be the righteousness of God.
This was a great verse to read as I finished my book Escape from Sobibor, an emotionally suffocating book on how a few people escaped from one of the worst genocides in human history (the Holocaust). It is hard to read the book with any sort of hope. Sure a few dozen people ultimately survived, but what about the unimaginable loss. At Sobibor, 250,000 men, women, and children were murdered. Certain stories stick in me like thorns (Warning: Explicit!):
*Some of the survivors were forced to cut the hair of the teenage girls before they were sent into the chambers.
*Children and babies were often swung and smashed against walls, which may have been merciful compared to clinging to their mothers' skirts in the chambers. One survivor remembered one particular child's voice coming from the chambers, crying "Mama! Mama!"
*The story that gets me most of all was of one mother who tried to leave her baby on the train, hoping he would survive. The Nazis saw the baby, and made one of the eventual survivors grab him. He picked up the baby, who noticed and smiled at him. That smiling baby was taken to the chamber.
Those who initially escaped Sobibor had watched their parents, siblings, spouses, and children walk into the chambers and never return, only to disappear into smoke and ash. When they did escape, they were hunted, not only by Nazis, but my the underground Polish forces who hated them as well, as well as normal folks who would kill them and/or turn them in for a reward of flour and sugar. There was nowhere to safe to go. One couple--perhaps the only couple to survive together--conceived while in hiding, and after the war ended, while they were on their way to Holland, their baby drank bad milk and died. They had to bury him at sea. When all of this was over, the several million Jews of Poland were reduced to a several thousand. There were few survivors; even fewer tears.
In the face of such unimaginable, inhuman pain and suffering, most of these Jews lost their belief in God. Like Elie Wiesel, they saw God hanging upon the gallows, in the place of the little boy who actually hung from the rope. Likewise, some Christian theologians, on the horns of a perceived dilemma between God's omnipotence and His goodness--denied one or the other (usually His omnipotence). Hence the rise of open-theism, which denied God's omnipotence, omniscience, and immutability (unchangingness) in order to make God a fellow-sufferer with mankind.
But the Holocaust should not be used to put God on trial (like Wiesel does in his Trial of God). Men love to point the finger at God and make matters of suffering into a matter of theodicy (the justification of God in light of evil). But what of man? Why do we not put man on trial and engage in anthropodicy (the justification of man in light of evil)? The chambers belong to man! The cross belongs to God!
It is man who brought sin and suffering into this world. Man, who made the mentally handicapped an object of experimentation and little babes into objects of destruction. As self-perceived victims, we cry out against God. As transgressors, we find the blood upon our own hands. There is only one man who God specifically appointed to suffer, and that was Jesus Christ, who did so for those who bore His blood upon their own hands. Jesus died that they might also bear it upon their souls and as salve for their wounds.
No, horrific suffering must never be used to indict God. It condemns mankind and drives us to the God-man who became our sin, so we might be the righteousness of God.
5.6.13
Drawing Lines in the Right Places
There is a wide spectrum of religions and Christian denominations represented in the military chaplaincy. In this pluralistic environment, there is always a residual pressure to paper over differences between these different groups and turn pluralism from sociological fact into cherished philosophical principle. With that in mind, the goal of the evangelical (Bible-believing, Gospel-preaching) chaplain is to draw lines in the right places at the right times. Hence, my use of the term "evangelical" to describe myself, rather than the more precise "Reformed" or even "Confessional Presbyterian."
I learned this lesson in my CHBOLC (Chaplain Basic Officer Leadership Course) when I first entered the chaplaincy. Each day, the chaplain class would open and close the day with a class prayer. At first, whoever they appointed to lead class prayers would be free to pray according to their faith tradition. Over time, the cadre (teachers), who were mostly from the Mainline, put pressure on the class to strip any use of Jesus' name from prayers. They thought we'd implement their plan if it was put up to a vote by the class. We rejected their plan by an overwhelming majority, with the support of the rabbis, the Buddhist chaplain, etc.
The rationale of most of the new chaplains, regardless of religion, in opposing the plan was simple: We were consistently taught to value our diversity, and in order to do so, we wanted that diversity to remain unvarnished. We wanted the lines to be clear and individual beliefs to be unambiguous. At least in that way, we would be able to engage each other as real people with substantive differences rather than as political agents with paper mache personalities.
Immediately after that vote, I learned the painful reality that the military is not a democracy, but a dictatorship. When they didn't get the vote they liked, the cadre immediately stepped in a declared from on high that praying in Jesus' name would not be tolerated. I naively tried to raise up grassroots opposition to that measure. I wrote out a memo that I distributed to allies in the class, arguing that this new plan would turn all Christian prayers into universalist, pagan prayers. If we can all close our eyes to the same prayer and say "Amen" at the end, it is not a Christian prayer.
In cobbling together a coalition of supporters, I went developed rings of engagement. I first went to my fellow Confessionally-Reformed chaplains, followed by Reformed Baptists and Confessional Lutherans, and finally, Arminians and evangelicals of other stripes. On this issue, I even got the support of many of the minority-faith chaplains.
Ultimately, I got squashed like a bug in that conflict. The class leader told me that "if I didn't like the plan, I should get out of the military" and I was referred to higher commanders to talk some sense into me, with the implication that unless I got myself right quickly, I would be out. I backed down and decided to save my ammunition for another day. Yet I learned several lessons that day:
1) The first question I should ask a fellow chaplain who will be working with me is "Do you believe that Jesus Christ is who He says He is and that He is your Savior from sin?" If he says "Yes," I rejoice and we begin planning our evangelical approach to engaging our soldiers. I will, of course, bring Reformed beliefs to all I say and do. If he says "No," I will befriend him and make sure he has the resources he needs to be fulfill his role, but will know that we are pursuing different goals and aims (Shorter Catechism #1).
2) Fellow evangelicals, regardless of denomination, are my allies, not my opponents. The first chaplain I worked with since arriving here is United Methodist, but is evangelical. We had wonderful discussions and will keep up with one another on our respective deployments. The chaplain I currently work with is a Baptist, and though I know we already disagree on some significant issues (i.e., women ordination), he is a fellow Christian and an ally. Like me, he is a young Captain with a wife and firstborn baby at home but heeded the call to serve his country, love his soldiers, proclaim the Gospel and glorify God, and pray for the family he loves at home. Except that he is black and from Alabama, our stories are remarkably similar.
3) As I draw these lines, I do not forget for a second that Reformed Christianity is biblical Christianity. I do not compromise my beliefs or mince words. My sermons are Christ-centered, as Christ and His apostles declared they should be (i.e., Luke 24 and Acts 20). I see the Scriptures as fundamentally covenantal and closely follow the lines of redemptive-history in my preaching. I take the depravity of man and utter sovereignty of God seriously in my counseling. I even maintain a Reformed ecclesiology in practices like using a liturgy in worship and fencing the Lord's table (though a consistent ecclesiology isn't possible in the military context).
As I do not make any attempt to blur the lines between different religions and denominations, I enjoy a remarkable evangelical unity, while maintaining an unvarnished Reformed witness to my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. In this way, I fight the pragmatism of our day (which reduces truth to its practical effects) and the linguistic relativism that allows people to define concepts like "faith" in diametrically-opposed ways and still claim agreement. I feel that in my own humble, sin-stained way, I am following in the footsteps of my homeboy, Machen, who would stand side-to-side with the fundamentalists against liberal "Christians" (who is claiming Christianity, but denying its claims, are the worst enemies of the cross), but would confess and proclaim an unvarnished biblical (Reformed) Christianity. Soli Deo gloria!
I learned this lesson in my CHBOLC (Chaplain Basic Officer Leadership Course) when I first entered the chaplaincy. Each day, the chaplain class would open and close the day with a class prayer. At first, whoever they appointed to lead class prayers would be free to pray according to their faith tradition. Over time, the cadre (teachers), who were mostly from the Mainline, put pressure on the class to strip any use of Jesus' name from prayers. They thought we'd implement their plan if it was put up to a vote by the class. We rejected their plan by an overwhelming majority, with the support of the rabbis, the Buddhist chaplain, etc.
The rationale of most of the new chaplains, regardless of religion, in opposing the plan was simple: We were consistently taught to value our diversity, and in order to do so, we wanted that diversity to remain unvarnished. We wanted the lines to be clear and individual beliefs to be unambiguous. At least in that way, we would be able to engage each other as real people with substantive differences rather than as political agents with paper mache personalities.
Immediately after that vote, I learned the painful reality that the military is not a democracy, but a dictatorship. When they didn't get the vote they liked, the cadre immediately stepped in a declared from on high that praying in Jesus' name would not be tolerated. I naively tried to raise up grassroots opposition to that measure. I wrote out a memo that I distributed to allies in the class, arguing that this new plan would turn all Christian prayers into universalist, pagan prayers. If we can all close our eyes to the same prayer and say "Amen" at the end, it is not a Christian prayer.
In cobbling together a coalition of supporters, I went developed rings of engagement. I first went to my fellow Confessionally-Reformed chaplains, followed by Reformed Baptists and Confessional Lutherans, and finally, Arminians and evangelicals of other stripes. On this issue, I even got the support of many of the minority-faith chaplains.
Ultimately, I got squashed like a bug in that conflict. The class leader told me that "if I didn't like the plan, I should get out of the military" and I was referred to higher commanders to talk some sense into me, with the implication that unless I got myself right quickly, I would be out. I backed down and decided to save my ammunition for another day. Yet I learned several lessons that day:
1) The first question I should ask a fellow chaplain who will be working with me is "Do you believe that Jesus Christ is who He says He is and that He is your Savior from sin?" If he says "Yes," I rejoice and we begin planning our evangelical approach to engaging our soldiers. I will, of course, bring Reformed beliefs to all I say and do. If he says "No," I will befriend him and make sure he has the resources he needs to be fulfill his role, but will know that we are pursuing different goals and aims (Shorter Catechism #1).
2) Fellow evangelicals, regardless of denomination, are my allies, not my opponents. The first chaplain I worked with since arriving here is United Methodist, but is evangelical. We had wonderful discussions and will keep up with one another on our respective deployments. The chaplain I currently work with is a Baptist, and though I know we already disagree on some significant issues (i.e., women ordination), he is a fellow Christian and an ally. Like me, he is a young Captain with a wife and firstborn baby at home but heeded the call to serve his country, love his soldiers, proclaim the Gospel and glorify God, and pray for the family he loves at home. Except that he is black and from Alabama, our stories are remarkably similar.
3) As I draw these lines, I do not forget for a second that Reformed Christianity is biblical Christianity. I do not compromise my beliefs or mince words. My sermons are Christ-centered, as Christ and His apostles declared they should be (i.e., Luke 24 and Acts 20). I see the Scriptures as fundamentally covenantal and closely follow the lines of redemptive-history in my preaching. I take the depravity of man and utter sovereignty of God seriously in my counseling. I even maintain a Reformed ecclesiology in practices like using a liturgy in worship and fencing the Lord's table (though a consistent ecclesiology isn't possible in the military context).
As I do not make any attempt to blur the lines between different religions and denominations, I enjoy a remarkable evangelical unity, while maintaining an unvarnished Reformed witness to my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. In this way, I fight the pragmatism of our day (which reduces truth to its practical effects) and the linguistic relativism that allows people to define concepts like "faith" in diametrically-opposed ways and still claim agreement. I feel that in my own humble, sin-stained way, I am following in the footsteps of my homeboy, Machen, who would stand side-to-side with the fundamentalists against liberal "Christians" (who is claiming Christianity, but denying its claims, are the worst enemies of the cross), but would confess and proclaim an unvarnished biblical (Reformed) Christianity. Soli Deo gloria!
4.6.13
Chaplain's Library
Every so often, I will let you know what I'm reading and why...
1) The Bible (Ps. 42)--this is the passage that I'm currently working to hide in my heart. I'll be working to memorize about ten Psalms over my deployment, knowing that they carry profound thoughts and span the emotional spectrum. They sound the deepest notes of those broken by sin and clinging to the promised Savior, by grace through faith.
2) Lectures to My Students (Spurgeon)--a pastoral classic addressed from the one of the greatest preachers of the modern era to those who would eventually serve in the pastoral ministry. The wisdom and biblical insight is withering to those who normally acquit themselves of their sin or feel that they have a right to the pulpit. It is a must read (and multiple read) for the pastor/chaplain.
3) Escape From Sobibor (Rashke)--the true story of the largest Jewish escape from a death camp during the time of the Holocaust. Some 250,000 men, women, and children were murdered at this site. Knowing that as the allies closed in, the Nazis planned to liquidize the survivors, a band of Jews decided to fight back.
I love to read stories like this last one for several reasons. First, I long ago had to make friends with the darkness. I cannot escape pain and suffering, nor am I able to look away. I read stories of babies like my own being unknowingly led to the slaughter and want to weep and fight. That leads to the second reason, I read of genocides and the most ugly manifestations of this world's brokenness and want to fight. I want to protect life, beauty, truth, and love. I know my enemy and know that the days of sin, death, and the devil's tyranny are numbered. And that leads to my third reason--I have hope. Not hopeful thinking, but the assured hope spoken of in Scripture. The hope bound to the person and work of Jesus Christ, who will one day put sin, death, and Satan himself under His feet.
With all of this in mind, please continue to pray for me. Sin not only afflicts me from without, but from within as well. Paraphrasing Luther, we can't enter a monastery (even of our own minds) to escape from the devil--we merely bring him with us wherever we go. Pray that I'd continue to engage my own heart, as well as the hearts of my soldiers, unabashed toward sin and all of its manifestations and ready to fight it, with hope that the Savior who has freed me from its guilt is gradually releasing me from its power by His Spirit. To Him be the glory!
1) The Bible (Ps. 42)--this is the passage that I'm currently working to hide in my heart. I'll be working to memorize about ten Psalms over my deployment, knowing that they carry profound thoughts and span the emotional spectrum. They sound the deepest notes of those broken by sin and clinging to the promised Savior, by grace through faith.
2) Lectures to My Students (Spurgeon)--a pastoral classic addressed from the one of the greatest preachers of the modern era to those who would eventually serve in the pastoral ministry. The wisdom and biblical insight is withering to those who normally acquit themselves of their sin or feel that they have a right to the pulpit. It is a must read (and multiple read) for the pastor/chaplain.
3) Escape From Sobibor (Rashke)--the true story of the largest Jewish escape from a death camp during the time of the Holocaust. Some 250,000 men, women, and children were murdered at this site. Knowing that as the allies closed in, the Nazis planned to liquidize the survivors, a band of Jews decided to fight back.
I love to read stories like this last one for several reasons. First, I long ago had to make friends with the darkness. I cannot escape pain and suffering, nor am I able to look away. I read stories of babies like my own being unknowingly led to the slaughter and want to weep and fight. That leads to the second reason, I read of genocides and the most ugly manifestations of this world's brokenness and want to fight. I want to protect life, beauty, truth, and love. I know my enemy and know that the days of sin, death, and the devil's tyranny are numbered. And that leads to my third reason--I have hope. Not hopeful thinking, but the assured hope spoken of in Scripture. The hope bound to the person and work of Jesus Christ, who will one day put sin, death, and Satan himself under His feet.
With all of this in mind, please continue to pray for me. Sin not only afflicts me from without, but from within as well. Paraphrasing Luther, we can't enter a monastery (even of our own minds) to escape from the devil--we merely bring him with us wherever we go. Pray that I'd continue to engage my own heart, as well as the hearts of my soldiers, unabashed toward sin and all of its manifestations and ready to fight it, with hope that the Savior who has freed me from its guilt is gradually releasing me from its power by His Spirit. To Him be the glory!
3.6.13
Burning Hearts
Recently, I created a blog for our soldiers who I may not be able to visit for a time or are unable to attend chapel services in a given week: http://sustainedbyforce.blogspot.com/
One thing I rejoice to see is the power of God's Word, which make hearts burn for the Gospel (like those of the disciples on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24). I'm perpetually caught in the preacher's spin-cycle of sin. As I preach, and afterward, I hear Satan telling me either that I'm a horrible preacher who is defaming the Gospel or that I'm a wonderful preacher who doesn't need the Gospel. My sin-softened heart is readily receptive to verbal and visual cues to reinforce this demonic soundtrack and am tossed about by the set of weary eyes in the pews or the profuse praise offered afterward. Back and forth, Satan condemns my heart in its guilt or arrogance.
Yet, in this I rejoice: God's grace is sufficient, and His Word--in all of its truth, power, and beauty--makes hearts burn. Whether there are 30 attendees at chapel (morning) or 3 (evening), whether they be believer or unbeliever--I see hearts respond to God's Word. It becomes honey to their lips, nourishment to their parched souls.
As a result, I was asked to do something to meet the needs of soldiers in need of such refreshment, so I created a blog. And in such hunger for the Word, I am reminded that "though I am bound to the point of chains as a criminal, the Word is not bound!" (2 Tim. 2:7-10). Praise God that I too get to enjoy that Word.
One thing I rejoice to see is the power of God's Word, which make hearts burn for the Gospel (like those of the disciples on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24). I'm perpetually caught in the preacher's spin-cycle of sin. As I preach, and afterward, I hear Satan telling me either that I'm a horrible preacher who is defaming the Gospel or that I'm a wonderful preacher who doesn't need the Gospel. My sin-softened heart is readily receptive to verbal and visual cues to reinforce this demonic soundtrack and am tossed about by the set of weary eyes in the pews or the profuse praise offered afterward. Back and forth, Satan condemns my heart in its guilt or arrogance.
Yet, in this I rejoice: God's grace is sufficient, and His Word--in all of its truth, power, and beauty--makes hearts burn. Whether there are 30 attendees at chapel (morning) or 3 (evening), whether they be believer or unbeliever--I see hearts respond to God's Word. It becomes honey to their lips, nourishment to their parched souls.
As a result, I was asked to do something to meet the needs of soldiers in need of such refreshment, so I created a blog. And in such hunger for the Word, I am reminded that "though I am bound to the point of chains as a criminal, the Word is not bound!" (2 Tim. 2:7-10). Praise God that I too get to enjoy that Word.
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