When a Past Blessing Becomes a Present Problem

Posted on August 17, 2020 by russellmckinney

He removed the high places and broke the sacred pillars, cut down the wooden image and broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made; for until those days the children of Israel burned incense to it, and called it Nehushtan. (2 Kings 18:4, N.K.J.V.)

The story of Israel’s bronze serpent begins during the Israelites’ years of wandering in the wilderness prior to their entrance into their promised land of Canaan. You’ll recall that God first brought the Israelites to the threshold of Canaan only a year or so after their exodus out of Egypt (Numbers 13:1-33). He wanted them to conquer the land at that time, but the group of twelve spies who were sent into Canaan to scout it out brought back news that the Canaanite races were fierce peoples who dwelt in fortified cities. Even worse, the spies said that some of the races were literal giants. That report convinced the people to refuse to take the land, and that cowardice and lack of faith angered God enough to cause Him to decree that the nation would put in forty years of wandering before He would bring them back to Canaan for another chance to claim it as their own (Numbers 14:26-38).

According to the closing verses of Numbers chapter 20 and the opening verses of Numbers chapter 21, one particularly busy stretch of those years saw the following events take place:

  • the death of Aaron (Moses’ brother and Israel’s first High Priest)
  • the installation of Aaron’s son Eleazar as the new High Priest
  • a pitched battle against the army of the Canaanite king Arad, a battle in which several of Israel’s soldiers were captured as prisoners of war
  • a follow-up battle against Arad and his army, a battle in which God gave the Israelites a resounding victory

On the heels of all these significant events, the Israelites became what the Bible describes as “discouraged on the way” (Numbers 21:4, N.K.J.V.). This discouragement prompted them to speak against not only their God-appointed leader Moses but also God Himself. Specifically, they were tired of eating nothing but the manna that God sent them to collect from the ground each morning. As Numbers 21:5 says:

And the people spoke against God and against Moses. “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and our soul loathes this worthless bread. (N.K.J.V.)

Such murmuring and complaining made the Israelites ripe for more chastisement from the hand of God, and He sent it by way of what the Bible calls “fiery serpents” that bit many of the Israelites and caused several of them to die (Numbers 21:6). At the very least these “fiery serpents” were some of the normal poisonous snakes of the area, but the description of them makes it sound as if they could have been somehow supernaturally energized by God. Whatever the serpents were, they had their desired effect upon the Israelites in that they caused the people to say to Moses, “We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and against you; pray to the Lord that He take away the serpents from us” (Numbers 21:7).

After Moses had prayed for the people, God did drive away the serpents. What remained, though, was the problem of all the people who still had the poison from the bites circulating through their veins. What was to become of those sick patients? God’s answer was to have Moses create a bronze serpent and set it up on a pole. Any Israelite who had been bitten by one of the fiery serpents and looked upward to the bronze serpent would be healed (Numbers 21:8-9). Centuries later Jesus used the story of the bronze serpent as a way of illustrating how He would one day be lifted up in dying on the cross (John 3:14-15).

Okay, end of story, right? Wrong. Rather than dispose of that bronze serpent as soon as all the bitten had been healed, the Israelites kept it and carried it around with them wherever they went. Even when they conquered Canaan and settled it many years later, they took the bronze serpent into the land with them. First, somewhere along the way they gave the serpent the name “Nehushtan,” which literally means “bronze thing” and is similar to nahash, the Hebrew word for “serpent.” Second, somewhere along the way the serpent was placed inside Solomon’s temple. Third, somewhere along the way they started burning incense to the serpent. We’re talking rank idolatry here! They took something good, a blessing that God had given them, and they made an idol out it.

It wasn’t until Hezekiah became the King of Judah, Israel’s southern kingdom, that the bronze serpent was finally destroyed. Hezekiah was a good king, and as part of his cleansing of his kingdom’s idolatry he broke the bronze serpent into pieces. That’s the happy part of the story. The sad part is that more than 700 years had passed between the time Hezekiah did that and the time Moses had first made the thing. Needless to say, that bronze serpent had far too long a shelf life.

The takeaway lesson for us is that we would all do well to ask God for the discernment to recognize when He is finished using some thing, some place, or some person in our lives. There’s a lesson here for our churches, too. Our congregations must resist the urge to remain chained to the past. Show me a congregation that isn’t using 21st century technology in its approach to ministry, and I’ll show you a congregation that has become far too comfortable living inside the confines of the wrong era. While our message about Jesus never changes, the methods by which we convey the message must sometimes.

So, tell me, are you right now hanging on to some “bronze serpent” that God would have you to move on from? I’m talking about some thing, some place, or some person that God once used as a great source of blessing in your life but now that usefulness is finished. Just as a good writer knows where to place a period and begin a new sentence, you should seek God’s wisdom in knowing where to place a period at the end of one season in your life and begin a new season. That “bronze serpent” that God once used so mightily in your life doesn’t have to become a “Nehushtan” that you worship. Like King Hezekiah, you can recognize when a leftover from your past has become a stumbling block to your future, and you can break away from the past by breaking away from the leftover.

Posted in Change, Choices, Christ's Death, Church, Church Attendance, Decisions, Discernment, God's Will, God's Work, Idolatry | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Price of a Miracle

Posted on August 15, 2020 by russellmckinney

Do you know about the popular website snopes.com? The site describes itself as “the internet’s definitive fact-checking resource.” It was founded by David Mikkelson and his wife Barbara in 1994 as a means whereby people can fact check stories and urban legends that seem a little too farfetched to be true. I have visited the site several times over the years in my attempts to verify some of the fantastical stories that permeate Christian sermons, devotional books, and websites. Sadly, I’ve found that many of the best stories, stories that a preacher or a writer could use to really make hay, simply never happened. I recently ran across one such story, called “The Price of a Miracle,” about a little girl who had a sick brother.

As the story goes, an eight-year-old girl (in some versions her name is “Tess”; in others it’s “Sally”) overhears her mother and father talking about her fatally ill little brother (in some versions he’s “Andrew”; in others he’s “Georgi”). The girl hears her father say about the brother, “Only a miracle can save him.” This prompts her to go to her bedroom, count the money in her piggybank, sneak out of the house, and carry her money down to the corner drugstore. (One version of the story goes into great detail about the drugstore being a Rexall’s Drug Store that was located six blocks away and had a big red Indian Chief sign above the door.)

After trying for several minutes to get the pharmacist’s attention, the little girl finally resorts to loudly banging a quarter on the counter. Annoyed, the pharmacist interrupts the conversation he is having with another man (in one version the other man is his brother from Chicago), walks over to the girl, and asks, “What do you want?” The little girl answers, “My brother is sick and is going to die. My daddy says only a miracle can save him. How much does a miracle cost?” With compassion in his voice, the pharmacist replies, “I’m sorry, we don’t sell miracles here.”

It is then that a well-dressed man (one version has him being the pharmacist’s brother from Chicago) who has overheard the conversation stoops down and asks the girl, “What kind of a miracle does your brother need?” “I don’t know,” she says, “I just know he’s really sick, needs a miracle, and my daddy can’t afford to pay for it.” “How much money do you have?” asks the man. “One dollar and eleven cents,” says the little girl, “but I can get more if I have to.” “What a coincidence,” says the man, “one dollar and eleven cents is the exact price for a miracle for little brothers.” The man then accompanies the little girl back to her home to see what kind of miracle the brother needs.

Then comes the grand reveal that the brother has a brain tumor, the man’s name is Dr. Carlton Armstrong, Armstrong is an imminent neurosurgeon, and he cures the boy by performing the operation for free. Later on, once the surgery is over and the brother is back home, the mother says, “That surgery was a real miracle. I wonder how much it would have cost.” The little girl just smiles because she knows exactly how much a miracle costs: one dollar and eleven cents.

If that story doesn’t tug at your heart strings, evidently you need to be restrung. I know that it tugged at mine when I first read it. I have to admit, though, that even as I read it the questions started flying in my mind: “Didn’t those parents have insurance?” “Couldn’t some type of payment plan have been worked out with the hospital?” “What kind of parents in the United States let their boy die for lack of medical treatment?” “What kind of parents let their eight-year-old girl wander through the city streets alone?” “What kind of pharmacist sees an eight-year-old girl in his pharmacy and doesn’t wonder where her parents are?” “Why did the girl assume that pharmacists sold miracles?” “Why did she associate surgery with a drugstore?”

The snopes.com staff point out that they’ve only turned up a couple of notable Carlton Armstrongs. One is a bass player for a group called the Vibe, and the other one was a man who blew up Sterling Hall (a building located on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus) thereby killing a physics researcher and injuring three other people. For the record, the latter didn’t even spell his name “Carlton” but rather “Karleton.” The site also questions why the little girl headed to a pharmacy to buy a miracle rather than head to a church to pray for one. Sarcastically, the site asks, “What denomination were these people, anyway? Pharmaceuticalian?”

Look, if “The Price of a Miracle” story pans out to be a true, I’ll happily recant this post and be the first to sing the praises of Dr. Carlton Armstrong, neurosurgeon. I’m certainly not anti little girl, anti sick brothers, or anti miracles. Furthermore, let me also say that God is plenty big enough to orchestrate events to cause such a story to occur. No one except an atheist would question that.

With these things understood, though, this post is a call for discernment. We Christians have got to start realizing that we make ourselves look foolish and cast doubt upon our Savior when we prove ourselves gullible enough to present syrupy fiction as solid fact. The lost person watches us fall for such drivel and assumes that all that jargon we present about Jesus, the cross, and heaven must be drivel, too.

Even God, in 1 Thessalonians 5:21, commands us to, “Test all things, hold fast what is good” (N.K.J.V.). Unfortunately, most Christians simply don’t want to put in the time and effort to do that testing. It is, after all, a whole lot easier to just read a tear-inducing story on the internet or in a book and run with the story as a tool to manipulate your audience into believing what you want them to believe. Of course, the problem with that is that our Savior actually called Himself, among other things, “the truth” (John 14:6). That being the case, how can we, the people who name His name, lazily traffic in untruths? How can we use made-up stories to convince others to follow Him? Asking the question bluntly, how can we expect lost people to believe what we say about Jesus when they can’t even believe what we say about little girls and doctors named Armstrong?

Posted in Communication, Discernment, Evangelism, God's Work, Lying, Preaching, Witnessing | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 12 Comments

Are You Doing What You Are Supposed to Be Doing Here?

Posted on August 12, 2020 by russellmckinney

Yogi Berra was the catcher for the New York Yankees. Hank Aaron was the right-fielder for the Milwaukee (now Atlanta) Braves. Both men would get elected to baseball’s Hall of Fame following their illustrious playing careers. As a famous story goes, though, they once had a memorable encounter during a 1957 World Series game between their teams.

Berra was well known as a talker, and his talking extended to conversations he would have with opposing batters as he sat in his catcher’s crouch. While it was true that Berra was naturally friendly, his conversations with batters had an ulterior motive. He figured that if he could keep a hitter distracted by talking, the hitter would stand less of a chance of being successful against Yankee pitching.

As the story goes, when Berra saw Aaron walking toward the batter’s box, Berra said out loud, “All right, Hank is getting ready to bat.” Berra hoped that Hank would take the bait by responding, but Hank didn’t say a word. Not deterred, Berra kept talking. He said, “Hank, you need to hold the bat so that you can read the words on the label. You’re gonna break that bat. You’ve got to be able to read the label.” Hank, however, without bothering to check the positioning of his bat, simply replied, “I didn’t come here to read.” ZING!!!

Every now and then each of us would do well to reflect upon our lives and ask, “Am I doing what I’m supposed to be doing here?” While anyone could benefit from such contemplation, the Christian actually has an exceptionally important responsibility in this area. You see, Christian, God saved you to be a servant not a sensation. If His sole purpose in saving you was to take your soul to heaven, He could have put you to death immediately following your salvation experience. But He didn’t do that. That must mean that He has work that He wants you to do for Him.

Acts 13:36 says that David “…served his own generation by the will of God…” (N.K.J.V.). In other words, David spent his time wisely. He didn’t waste it by doing stuff that wasn’t productive in terms of his service to God. The young David tended sheep, and he did that not just in service to his father but also in service to God. The teenage David played his harp, and he did that not just in service to King Saul but also in service to God. The teenage David defeated the giant Goliath, and he did that not just in service to Israel but also in service to God. King David united Israel’s twelve tribes, led the people in conquering Jerusalem, made the city Israel’s capital, and brought the Ark of the Covenant to the city, and he did all that not just in service to his nation but also in service to God. The elderly David secured the plans and the provisions that would enable Solomon to build the temple, and he did that not just in service to Solomon but also in service to God.

Was David perfect? Of course not. Did he sin? Absolutely. Not only could his resume list all his marvelous achievements, it could also list his adulterous affair with Bathsheba, his murder of Bathsheba’s husband Uriah, and his fateful decision to take a census of Israel. Each of those actions produced consequences that were absolutely devastating. Still, though, by God’s own assessment, David served his generation by the will of God. Shepherd boy? Check. Harp player? Check. Giant slayer? Check. Military conqueror? Check. King? Check. Organizer of Israel’s priestly order? Check. Organizer of Israel’s musicians and worship leaders? Check. Organizer of Israel’s military divisions? Check.  Psalm writer? Check. Temple designer? Check. Collector of the offering to fund the building of the temple? Check. The greatest human king Israel ever had? Check. Surely David couldn’t have accomplished all these things during his lifetime had he not constantly been about God’s business.

Christian, I’m not saying that you have to match David’s prolific body of service if you want your life to be pleasing to God. What I’m saying is that God has things that He wants you to do, deeds that have your personal name on them. He has “sheep” that He wants you to tend, “harps” that He wants you to play, “giants” that He wants you to defeat, “psalms” that He wants you to write, and “temples” that He wants you to envision.

You ask, “But how do I know what these things are?” Your answers naturally flow out of your prayer life. As you pray, make a regular point of asking God to burden you about the acts of service that He has in mind for you, and then look for the doors He opens so that you can perform those acts. Like David, do what you are on this earth to do: serve God according to His will. I assure you that the masses aren’t lining up to do that, and your generation needs every bit of help it can get from you.

Posted in Commitment, Discipleship, Doing Good, Faithfulness, God's Will, God's Work, Individuality, Ministry, Obedience, Prayer, Prayer Requests, Service, Spiritual Gifts, Talents | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

How to Jump Start Spiritual Life

Posted on August 10, 2020 by russellmckinney

I have an aunt named Betty Jean who was married to a man named Bill. Bill passed away several years ago, but I’ll always be indebted to him for doing me a great favor one day. For some reason that incident recently came to my mind, and I’d like to use it as a way of illustrating an important spiritual truth.

The year was 1987 or somewhere thereabouts, and my car at the time was a white 1978 Camaro Z28. That was a great car, one that I wish I still had, but it wasn’t without its periodic mechanical problems. That day those problems took on the form of a dead battery.

As many of you know, the answer for a dead battery is a set of jumper cables whereby you use the electrical juice from the battery in another car to “rejuice” (I just made that word up) the dead battery in your car. The process is pretty straightforward. The jumper cables have two attachment devices located at each end, and you attach the two devices of one end to the battery terminals of your dead battery and the two devices of the opposite end to the battery terminals in the other car. And since I owned a set of jumper cables, I didn’t think it was going to be too hard to use another car to get mine started.

I pulled the other car up close to mine, kept it running, popped the hoods on both cars, attached the cables to the batteries of both cars, and waited a minute or so. Then I tried to start my car. I figured that it would fire right up, but it didn’t. It wouldn’t even grunt. I thought, “That’s odd. My battery must be REALLY dead.” So, I decided to keep the cables hooked up, leave the other car running, and go back into the house for a while to allow the battery in my car to have ample time to charge. By now I was getting annoyed with the whole process, but I was still figuring that it would be just a matter of time before I got my car started.

I hadn’t been in the house long when Bill just happened to come along and out of nothing but curiosity check out the situation involving the two cars and the jumper cables. He made a slight adjustment regarding how one of the cable ends was attached to one of the terminals and then came to get me in the house. He said, “Russell, you never would have gotten your car started because the way you had that one end attached wasn’t pulling any charge to your battery. But go try it now. It should start.” He spoke the assessment with such authoritative expertise that I knew he was right before I ever walked out of the house and tried to start my car. That’s why it didn’t surprise me one bit when I barely turned the keys in my Z28 and heard that big 350 V8 motor roar to life.

Since Bill had walked out there with me to make sure that he had told me the truth, he was standing there while I unhooked the jumper cables and closed the hoods on both cars. I looked at him and gave him a sincere, “Thanks.” He just smiled and warmly said again, “It never would have worked the way you had it.” He wasn’t rubbing my mechanical inadequacy in my face. He was just glad that he’d been able to help.

The spiritual application of this story has to do with nothing less than salvation itself, and that application isn’t hard to understand. It goes like this: If you aren’t attached correctly to the right source, your spiritual life will never get charged and you will die lost. That right source, of course, is Jesus Christ, and you attach yourself to Him by placing saving belief in Him. That attachment allows you to pull His limitless power into your spiritually dead self and thereby experience salvation. Consider the following passages (all from the N.K.J.V.):

For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive. (1 Corinthians 15:22)

And you He (Jesus) made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins… (Ephesians 2:1)

And you, being dead in your trespasses the uncircumcision of your flesh, He (Jesus) has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses… (Colossians 2:13)

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:23)

But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)… (Ephesians 2:4-5)

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” (John 14:6)

You see, there is spiritual life to be found in Jesus, but the key is that you must be correctly attached to Him. Being almost attached to Him by knowing about Him but not really knowing Him as Savior won’t get the job done. Being correctly attached to the wrong source won’t either, and even mere religion itself is a wrong source. I say that because authentic Christianity isn’t actually a religion but is, instead, an eternal relationship with Jesus Christ.

So, in closing, what I’m trying to do here is get you to examine your spiritual connection (or lack of it) to Jesus. Are you truly connected to Him in a soul-saving, life-changing way that has spiritually charged your life by drawing from His power? Or is your connection to Him somehow lacking and leaving you to remain spiritually dead in your trespasses and sins? A good man named Bill helped me fix a bad connection one day, and maybe, just maybe, I can play that same role for you right now. All my bad connection cost me was a few minutes delay in getting my car started, but that bad connection of yours will cost you eternal separation from God if you don’t get the connection fixed. Remember, spiritual life is not the same thing as physical life, and there are a whole lot of people walking around who are physically alive but spiritually dead.

Posted in Belief, Eternity, God's Wrath, Grace, Heaven, Hell, Personal, Salvation, The Gospel | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Seeing Him Who Is Invisible

Posted on August 7, 2020 by russellmckinney

By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king; for he endured as seeing Him who is invisible. (Hebrews 11:27, N.K.J.V.)

Moses was the adopted son of Pharaoh’s daughter. As such, he was Egyptian royalty. That’s not the kind of societal rank that one casually or logically abandons. No, if he was going to forsake Egypt, his motivation was going to have to come from his faith in the unseen Hebrew God whom his biological family served.

But how did Moses acquire that faith? While it’s true that his mother, Jochebed (Numbers 26:59), served as his nursemaid throughout the days of his weening (Exodus 2:1-10), there is no Biblical record of their relationship continuing once Moses officially became the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. To the contrary, what the Bible says is that Moses was raised as nothing less than Pharaoh’s grandson and that he was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians (Acts 7:21-22). As best we can tell, he didn’t even visit his brethren, the people of Israel, until he was forty years old (Acts 7:23). That was the day that he, for all intents and purposes, ended his life in Egypt by killing an Egyptian who was oppressing an Israelite (Exodus 2:11-15; Acts 7:23-29). Following that murder he was forced to flee to Midian and build a new life for himself there.

Perhaps during the three or so years when Jochebed was weening Moses, she was able to teach him enough about Israel’s God to stick with him in his adult years. Furthermore, it could have been that Moses continued to have some kind of a relationship with her, his father Amram, his sister Miriam, and his brother Aaron during the decades when he was enjoying life as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. We do know that at the age of eighty (Acts 7:30-34) Moses joined forces with his brother Aaron to take on Pharaoh (Exodus 4:10-17, 27-31), and since the Bible doesn’t describe the brothers needing to be formally introduced, that might imply that the family had kept up some type of relationship over the years.

Still, though, the question of what compelled Moses to initially forsake Egypt by killing that Egyptian is a good one. Acts 7:25 says that he supposed that his fellow Israelites would understand that he was attempting to become their deliverer. That fills in some of the gaps about why Moses did what he did, but the actual question of why he felt a burden to deliver the Israelites remains.

One thing that is irrefutable is that Moses met God, in the form of the Angel of the Lord, firsthand at that burning bush on the backside of the Midian desert (Exodus 3:1-6). That was an encounter to which the rest of us simply can’t relate. Whatever the drop was that first launched Moses’ trickle of faith in God, the meeting at the burning bush transformed that trickle into a mighty river. No matter what else would happen to Moses over the remaining forty years of his life (Deuteronomy 34:7), his faith in God would remain firm.

The takeaway for us in all this is that if you want to live victoriously for God, you must learn to see the invisible through eyes of faith. You must become heavenly sighted in order to do the most worldly good. While the masses live by the motto “Seeing is believing,” you must counter with, “No, believing is seeing.”

As the close to this post, I’ll offer an extended quote from Andrew Murray. In The Holiest of All, which is Murray’s commentary on the book of Hebrews, he talks about the indispensable role that faith plays in seeing the invisible God. May Murray’s words find a lodging place in our hearts and serve as a motivation for our deeds. He writes:

Here is the mighty power of faith; it sees what others cannot see. It sees, amid the thousand things others see and are guided by, something infinitely greater — it sees God. No wonder it leads a man to act different from other men. On everything it looks at, the bright light of eternity, of God, is shining. No wonder that under the inspiration of that Vision it can do mighty deeds, for it sees God as its helper and strength.

Let me here say to every believer that just as, in any pursuit, the eye by practice can be trained to see what others cannot see, so the eye of faith can be trained to see God everywhere. Abide in His presence till the heart is filled with it. Recognize Him in every thing that happens. Seek to walk in the light of His countenance. Seeing the Invisible will make it easy to forsake the world and do the will of God.

Posted in Attitude, Belief, Doing Good, Eternity, Faith, God's Will, God's Work, Heaven, Trusting In God | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Praying with Expectancy

Posted on August 3, 2020 by russellmckinney

The great evangelist D.L. Moody once said, “If you pray for bread and bring no basket to carry it, you prove the doubting spirit which may be the only hindrance to the boon you ask.” Obviously, Moody knew his Bible. Over and over again in scripture, we find on full display the importance of actually expecting God to answer your prayer. For example, James 1:5-8 says:

If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways. (N.K.J.V.)

Notice how God describes the person whose prayer requests are marked by doubt and a lack of faith. He calls that person “a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind,” “double-minded,” and “unstable.” Get the picture?

Anyone who has been to the ocean knows what a wave that is driven and tossed by the wind looks like. Such a wave has its course dictated by the wind. The wave rolls whichever way the wind pushes it. Basically, the wave is a victim of its circumstance. If the wind turns violent, so does the wave. If the wind turns calm, so does the wave.

Scuba divers, however, will tell you that the deeper you dive into the water, the less effect the wind has on the water. This fact of nature illustrates the secret to a victorious prayer life. It’s faith that allows you to dive deep enough into your wave to break free from that wave’s turbulence. When you pray in faith, expecting God to answer your prayer, a great calm comes over you. The Bible describes this calm as “the peace of God, which passes all understanding” (Philippians 4:7). While it’s true that this particular phrase gets used a lot in Christian circles, contextually in scripture it is named as a specific byproduct of prayer.

Even Jesus Himself spoke of the importance of praying in faith-filled expectancy. In Mark 11:22-24, He says:

Have faith in God. For assuredly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be removed and be cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says. Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them. (N.K.J.V.)

Admittedly, it’s easy to see how the “name-it-and-claim-it” preachers of today can run wild with this passage. The fact is, though, that the Bible is the best commentary on itself, and there are other passages that place certain governors on which prayer requests God will actually grant. For example, if something lies outside His will, God won’t grant that request no matter how much faith accompanies it. As 1 John 5:14-15 says:

Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him. (N.K.J.V., emphasis mine)

Likewise, God doesn’t obligate Himself to grant the prayer requests of rebels who don’t keep His commandments. As 1 John 3:21-22 says:

Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence toward God. And whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do those things that are pleasing in His sight. (N.K.J.V., emphasis mine)

Still, though, with these types of mitigating factors understood, let’s not make the mistake of watering Jesus’ promise down so much as to make it completely useless. His point is that believing — truly, genuinely, sincerely believing — produces major results in prayer. It’s doubt in the heart that ties God’s hands in so many situations. Why couldn’t Jesus do many mighty works in His hometown of Nazareth when He returned there as an adult to minister? It was purely and simply because of the people’s unbelief (Matthew 13:58; Mark 6:5). He willed to do many miracles there, but the people just didn’t have the level of belief/faith that would unleash Him to do those miracles.

I don’t know what it is that you’ve been asking God to do, but you’d do well to check your faith level in regards to how much expectancy you are coupling up with your request. Coaches are always asking their players to “buy into” the program of training and instruction those coaches are selling. Well, God asks the same thing of each of us. He wants us to buy into His program of training and instruction. But buying into anyone’s program requires a tangible level of faith that the person really will produce positive results in your life. Here again, the same is true of God. To borrow from D.L. Moody’s quote, it does you no good to pray for bread empty-handed. You must, instead, bring a basket with you when you make your request for bread. That is the type of prayer that God honors and the type of request that He freely grants.

Posted in Belief, Commitment, Desires, Discipleship, Doubt, Faith, God's Provision, God's Will, Inner Peace, Needs, Prayer, Prayer Requests, Rebellion, Trusting In God | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Day Mitchell Page Ended My Childhood (repost)

Posted on July 31, 2020 by russellmckinney

(I’m off this week, and so I thought I’d take the opportunity to reuse some old posts rather than write new ones. The reused posts will be ones that have never received a lot of views. Maybe God will use them in greater ways this time around.)

Today is one of those hot, sultry, late July days. The temperatures are in the 80s, and there is a slight chance of the thunderstorms that are such a classic trademark of summer in the mountains of western North Carolina. The trees are as full as they get. The grass has a tinge of brown here and there from the summer heat. Bees, gnats, and mosquitoes are everywhere. Ants are working themselves in double shifts.

School has been out since the middle of May, which means that the boys have gotten quite used to sitting up past midnight and sleeping in late. The summer trips have all be taken. Most of the calendar dates have been met and scratched off. The next major event on the horizon is the return to school. It was on just such a day, almost thirty-five years ago now, that the last second of my “innocent little boy” era was snatched away and I lost one of the dearest things in the world to me: the wonder, safety, and insulation of my backyard sanctuary.

When I was a kid, my backyard served as the epicenter of the sports universe. It was a football field, a basketball court, and a baseball stadium all rolled into one. How it was used depended upon which sport was in season. Far and away, though, my favorite season was baseball and my favorite time of the year was summer. Virtually every day my schedule was the same: sleep till noon, get up and eat some cereal, and then head out to play the big game. For me, stepping out the door onto our carport and then out into the backyard was akin to running out of the tunnel and onto the field at a Major League ballpark. I’d even do pregame shows in my head, complete with announcers, before hitting the door.

The layout of my field was simple. Home plate was in front of the side of my swing set. The third base line was the pole of my basketball goal. The first base line was the middle support of our carport. And the canopy of huge trees that encircled our house was the outfield fence. Any ball hit high enough into any of those trees was a home run. All other balls were either fielded for outs by the imaginary players that manned each position or went for singles, doubles, or triples.

I used a plastic bat and ball and batted for each player in each team’s lineup. I batted right-handed for the righties and left-handed for the lefties. I swung somewhat weakly for the weak hitters and came out of my shoes swinging for the big studs. Over the years, I must have gone through fifty balls and a dozen bats hitting for the lineups of Major League teams. I wrote the batting lineups out on sheets of notebook paper, played regular innings, and kept precise score. Of course, my beloved Philadelphia Phillies rarely lost.

I wish I was a good enough writer to adequately convey just how important my backyard stadium was to me. It was my refuge from a world that didn’t always go to suit me. It was my empire where I ruled as undisputed king. It was my personal fantasy land where all my athletic dreams could come true. Even today if a psychiatrist asked me to go to a “happy place” in my mind, I’d find myself standing at home plate of that stadium, at the height of summertime, plastic bat in one hand, plastic ball in the other, just about to toss up the ball and cut loose with a mighty swing. No site from my warehouse of memories is safer or more magical.

Ah, but then came that one summer’s day, that one game, and that one swing. I remember it like it was yesterday. I was batting for the order of the Oakland As, and the specific guy at the plate was a player named Mitchell Page. That name has long since been lost to baseball history, but in 1977 Page finished second in the American League’s Rookie of the Year voting to future hall of famer Eddie Murray. I knew all about Page because I had his baseball card from that year, complete with all the information that I would ever need about the man.

Since Page was a left-handed power hitter, I switched over to the left side of the plate and mustered my strength to do his swing justice. I tossed the ball up into the air, paused for just a moment to get the timing right, and then cut loose with all I had in a left-handed swing. To my surprise the ball jumped off the bat in a way I’d never seen one do. I remember that it started off on a much higher plane than usual, a fact that caused me to first assume that I had hit the backyard equivalent of a mile-high Major League popup that would land somewhere between the infield and the outfield for an easy out.

The strange thing was, though, rather than the ball reaching an apex and coming down, the ball kept climbing higher and higher as it soared toward the canopy of trees. I stood there and watched it, thinking to myself, “Man, Mitchell Page shouldn’t have this kind of power.” I was having real trouble getting my logical mind wrapped around the illogical reality that was playing out before me. Higher and higher, farther and farther the ball sailed until suddenly, in a flash, just as surely as it had been headed toward the highest point of those trees, it disappeared completely from my sight!

I stood there for a while looking confused and puzzled, like one of those guys who thinks he just caught a second’s glimpse of Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster. I was thinking, “Did what I think just happened really happen? Could it be possible? Would the laws of the universe allow for such a thing? Did I just step out of time and space and enter into some parallel dimension like those I’ve seen on those t.v. shows The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits? Did Mitchell Page just hit a baseball over the trees and, thus, completely out of the stadium?”

With my mind still racing I threw down my bat, forsook all pretense of the game, and headed off to find exactly where that ball had landed. I went through our back yard, down the bank, and into the woods. My eyes scanned every known place where any previous ball had ever landed, but there was nothing white to be seen anywhere.

So, then I made my way further out into the trees, out toward our neighbor’s gravel driveway. That driveway ran along the edge of the backside of that big canopy of trees, with the trees basically separating our property from hers. And that’s when I saw it, that white plastic baseball lying there in the middle of that driveway. I remember how the white of the ball stood out so vividly against the backdrop of the dark gray of the gravel. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the unimaginable had happened: Mitchell Page had hit a ball completely out of the greatest backyard stadium of all time.

How did I feel at that moment? Well, would you believe that I literally had to hold back the tears? Rather than being ecstatic over such an awesome feat, I was devastated. I felt like a baby bird that had just been pushed out the nest where it had been nurtured and protected for so long. I was now living in a brand-new world and there was no going back to how things had been.

I didn’t even finish that game. As a matter of fact, I only tried playing a couple of times after that day, but my heart wasn’t even in those. I had grown too old and too strong for my own good. Now I needed a bigger stadium, and deep down I knew that such a place didn’t exist. Life would come hard and fast from here on out, and my safe place was no more. The yard, landmarks, and trees were still there, but they’d never hold the same fairy dust they’d once held.

Needless to say, after all these years my mind still makes occasional trips back to my backyard baseball stadium. Of course, I can never stay there for long. The past is the past and the demands of the present must constantly be met. But those fleeting memories serve as the lenses through which I personally view those words from Ecclesiastes 11:9:

Rejoice, O young man, in your youth, and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth. (N.K.J.V.)

My youth is long gone now, and there’s a certain brand of cheer, let’s call it “little boy” cheer, that I’ll never know again. It’s not that my life is bad now. To the contrary, I’d say that in God’s eyes it’s better than it’s ever been. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t sometimes miss those imaginary big-league games in my backyard.

This post got me to thinking about Mitchell Page, and so I did a little internet research on him. I learned that he died in his sleep on March 11, 2011 at the age of 59. Something in me was saddened by that news. All I’ll say is that I hope he was a Christian. If he was then one day we’ll have an awesome conversation in heaven, and I’ll tell him what a profound influence he unknowingly had on my life.

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How To Be a UCLA Basketball Player (repost)

Posted on July 29, 2020 by russellmckinney

(I’m off this week, and so I thought I’d take the opportunity to reuse some old posts rather than write new ones. The reused posts will be ones that have never received a lot of views. Maybe God will use them in greater ways this time around.)

Dr. Paul Chappell is the founding pastor of Lancaster Baptist Church in Lancaster, California. He tells the following story:

Last week we took our singles on a retreat up to beautiful Yosemite National Park. As we got back in for the evening service where I was to preach, one of our men said, “Pastor, I met a doctor who had brought a group of multiple-handicapped children to Yosemite. For many months they had studied about Yosemite. They began dreaming that somehow they might be able to go up the Bridal Veil Trail and see some of the park. So the doctor brought them.

As they came to this particular trail, it was very, very difficult for them. In fact, they were really just inching their way along. But they had this dream and wanted somehow to make their way up.

The doctor said as they were just inching their way up this trail, down from the mountaintop came a tremendous group of young men – tall men. As it turned out, the basketball team from UCLA had run up and down the trail, getting ready for their season. As those basketball players went by those young children with their multiple handicaps, the doctor said it was as if hope just fell out of their hearts and the actuality of their handicaps seemed to settle in, in a very significant way.

But the doctor said something wonderful happened about an hour later. That same team came running back up the trail, but this time each player picked up one of the handicapped children, put him on his back and ran him all the way up to the top of that mountain, then all the way back down to the bottom of the mountain.

Today, it might just be in your power to give someone a much needed lift. Even if the lift isn’t a literal one (as in the story), it can be an emotional or spiritual one. If such an opportunity presents itself, don’t hesitate to embrace it. It could be that somebody out there right now really needs you. Don’t let them face their mountain alone.

And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all, especially to those who are of the household of faith. (Galatians 6:9-10, N.K.J.V.)

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Genuine Pearls

Posted on July 27, 2020 by russellmckinney

Pearls have historically commanded high prices. Their expensiveness is the result of their rarity. Thousands upon thousands of oysters are examined each year, but only a small percentage of them contain genuine pearls. I’ve read that out of every three tons of pearl-producing oysters, on average only three of the oysters have pearls inside them.

At one point, however, the market began to be atypically flooded with large quantities of pearls. As a matter of fact, there were so many pearls available that merchants began to seriously question the pearls’ authenticity. Were these new pearls merely well done imitations produced by man? No. Upon examination, the pearls were found to have actually been made by oysters.

Finally, after further investigation, the mystery was solved. As it turned out, the Japanese merchants had figured out a way to cause almost every pearl oyster to produce a pearl. You see, the merchants knew that a pearl is formed when some kind of foreign substance (a parasite, a grain of sand, etc.) gets lodged in a certain part of the oyster. To ease the irritation caused by the substance, the oyster begins to secrete a protective fluid called nacre that covers over the substance. This process continues and the nacre eventually hardens into a glorious pearl. Of course, all this takes a few years to happen. So, what the merchants were doing was harvesting oysters, purposely inserting artificial substances into them (substances such as beads or tiny bits of shell or buckshot), placing the oysters back into the ocean by means of nets, and then harvesting them again a few years later to retrieve the pearls. The larger the artificial substance, the larger the pearl.

When the market became glutted with pearls, wealthy buyers began to demand that each pearl be put to a special test to see whether or not it had been artificially created. This test involved the use of X-ray. Under X-ray, the false “hearts” created by the implanted substances could be seen. In this way, the genuine pearls could be identified and priced accordingly.

This illustration reminds us that, sadly, our churches are home to some fake Christians. On the outside, these people look saved. They carry Bibles, know the lingo, pray, sing the hymns, put money in the offering plates, etc. But on the inside their hearts are false. They don’t truly know Christ as Savior. They aren’t born again (John 3:3). God the Holy Spirit does not dwell inside them (Romans 8:9). They aren’t in the family of God (John 1:9-13).

I have no delusions that we will ever get it all sorted out this side of eternity. For one thing, lost people don’t always act lost. For another, saved people don’t always act saved. We can rest assured, though, that Jesus knows how to X-ray each person’s heart and there simply is no fooling Him. I can honestly say that being placed under His X-ray doesn’t frighten me. But can you say the same thing? If you can’t, you really need to ask yourself why that is.

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