Monthly Archives: May 2011

“The memory of the righteous is a blessing.” Proverbs 10:7

The Memorial Day weekend has prompted me to consider the importance of remembering, and the grace God gives us to remember. Remembering is a minor feature of our early years when we see the future spread out before us and imagine all the awaiting possibilities. As we grow older the focus shifts to the past by a few percentage points each year. This is not a bad thing at all, for as we gather experiences, as families grow, and as friends sift in and out of our lives we simply have more to look back on.

The problem is that we don’t look back as much as we should. The counter-balance to the grace of remembering is the fear of the future. If we are not careful we invest far too much of ourselves in imagining the very worst circumstance and then living within the numbing shell of that fear.

The antidote is remembering, and specifically remembering all the people God has used to bless, guide, and encourage you. In the Proverb for this week’s GraceWaves, Solomon reminds us that righteous people provide us a stock of memories to sustain and cheer us. This is the way God usually works. He seldom does anything “in person” that He can do through someone else. God communicates His presence and imparts His grace to you though the people in your life. Your task is to be very intentional in taking time to remember all your saints..

I was reminded in a very special way of the importance of this grace to remember by a friend, Lamon Brown. You can hear his excellent and moving faith story at http://soundcloud.com/cbf-louisiana/04-lamon-brown. In short, he spoke of two very difficult periods in his life, the fear and depression that resulted from them, and the way God led and is leading him through.

The first challenge was a time when his wife’s health was in doubt, and she flew back to the states from their missionary home in India. During the eight-week separation Lamon said he faced the darkest time of his life, and fear became his reality. He maintained his morning devotion and in reading Philippians was reminded of a very special passage that had impressed him as a teenager. Paul wrote we can bring all of our concerns to God with thanksgiving and the incomprehensible peace of God will guard our hearts (4:6-7).

Lamon decided to take God at His word. He began thanking God for his wife, instead of only begging for her health. He thanked God for his children, for his calling as a missionary. In that litany of thanksgiving, Lamon discovered that exactly what Paul had promised happened. The peace of God filled his heart. The fear evaporated because of the grace to remember.

The second challenge is more recent and ongoing. A visit to the doctor for a supposed pinched nerve in March 2009 led to an eventual diagnosis of ALS. In his reading, Lamon learned that 3-5 years is the typical prognosis for this terminal disease. In the first few months after this staggering revelation he again felt the stab of fear and depression.

The solution, once again, was thankfulness and the means was remembering. He began a list of all the experiences for which he was thankful going back to childhood. The list numbers over 300, and the numbing fear and depression again has dissipated.

While some of those experiences, no doubt, have to do with places and adventures, they all are somehow related to persons. It is impossible for a Christian to be thankful without someone to thank. And equally impossible to feel wonder and awe without having Someone to worship. There are no inanimate blessings and no inanimate experiences. Christians know what unbelievers miss, that God is in all things. He whispers in nature and smiles through the people we love. The memory of the righteous is a blessing.

So this Memorial Day weekend, certainly take time to remember the original purpose of this holiday. Your freedom as a citizen of our country was purchased and is guarded by the blood of fellow citizens, past and present, who stand the post and guard the wall. Be thankful for our military personnel, pray for them, and honor them.

But in an even larger sense collect “memories of the righteous.” God has placed in your life people to love and encourage you. Remember them. Start your own list. The old hymn “Count Your Many Blessings” is not obsolete. It is a vital way God reminds you of His grace and assures you that the way He acted in the past is a promise for the way He will act in the future. Those blessings are almost always through people, though sometimes very privately and personally through God.

Either way, “the memory of the righteous” will always be a blessing to you.

Grace,

Terry Ellis

May 30, 2011

“But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, to show that the transcendent power belongs to God and not to us.” 2 Corinthians 4:7

When you enter the business of ministry, that is, you study and go to seminary, you take on a few role-models, people you really look up to. I have many all-time favorites, but one of them in particular illustrates Paul’s point in this verse: J. B. Phillips. Phillips was an outstanding Christian leader, a scholar of the first rank, and a marvelous author.

Years after I began to admire and learn from him I ran across a book called The Wounded Healer. It is a compilation of letters and journal entries. I was surprised to find out that this supernova in the Christian galaxy was possessed of a dark depression he fought all his life. At one point he wrote “It is only in the last few weeks that I have been seriously assaulted by the thought that it isn’t worth trying any more, I am too tired to make further effort and I really do not see the slightest ray of hope at the end of this very long tunnel” (p. 80). Or in another place, “Take away my performance and the facade of my defenses and I am nothing. I am frightened and would do anything to feel safe” (p. 17).

How different that is from the great Christian models I had grown to expect. Rev. Joe, Christian superstar, will tell you that he has a great prayer life, has a profound spiritual encounter while pouring his Cheerios in the morning, he has a slick brochure that pictures him speaking to huge crowds. His marriage is a bonfire of commitment. He’s even still got all of his hair. These kinds of testimonies leave the impression that we should all be this way.

You do well to learn early that the ministry entrusted to all Christians is carried around by a lot of earthen vessels. Each one of us is chipped and flawed in some way. It is something we all share. But instead of thinking that your brokenness somehow disqualifies you from fulfilling service and growth in the name of the Lord, think again.

Actually it’s a fairly common attitude among many Christians I talk to. “Damaged goods” is the term I have heard many times. They feel God could better spend his time on people with a stronger résumé, work experience, and unbroken success. They believe they have been disqualified by some brokenness in their lives.

Paul probably considered it. In the two verses that follow our text for this week he listed four sets of trying circumstances that threatened to undermine him completely. He was afflicted, perplexed, persecuted and struck down. He had experienced each one of them. His was not a charmed life. He suffered. He was broken. However, Paul persevered, and in so doing learned that through all he faced he was not crushed, driven to despair, crushed, or forsaken. God was stronger than all of his brokenness.

Grace is resilient. Your brokenness becomes an opportunity for God’s grace to fill in and heal the cracks. Peter, Mary Magdalene, Paul, John, etc. were all inadequate, but through God’s grace raised to glory. In fact, God does not waste a single experience in shaping you. If you open your life more deeply to His grace, and transparently kneel before Him, then God redeems and restores and enables you to carry the ministry to other people. Nothing renders you beyond God’s grace and service. He does not throw away the broken vessels. Here we meet grace in its greatest power and beauty.

J. B. Phillips was able to continue an impressive ministry not because he was able to conquer his depression but because he allowed God to use him. In his writings you can see that the real strength, the real spirit of insight is not due to Phillips, but God. Phillips was an earthen vessel, a broken vessel, chipped and flawed, that God was able to use. God demonstrated His transcendent power in him, in the same way He wants to demonstrate it in you.

When Paul wrote 2 Corinthians he was by many measures an unimpressive man who simply recognized his earthiness. God would use him to inspire millions. At the time he was an unheralded hero. Now we look to his letters and find the fingerprints of God.

And we learn God loves chipped and flawed sons and daughters. Where might we look for the next inspiring example? Well, the way God uses broken vessels the next one is in your mirror.

Grace,

Dr. Terry Ellis

May 22, 2011

“My God shall supply every need of yours according to His glorious riches in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:19

Many Christians remind me of house finches. I speak as an expert here, both in house finches and nervous Christians. Outside one of my former offices, the lovely but nervous little birds made their annual nests and raised the next generation. Every spring I watched their courting, nest building, and fledgling-raising.

The next time you are in a pet store, notice the finches. Their eyes are on the sides of their heads. This arrangement gives them a nearly 360 degree view of the world around them. A cat or an owl has eyes that face forward. They are hunters. The finch is lunch and knows it. So with its carefully placed eyes it twitches its head from side to side, up and down, very quickly and almost unceasingly. Why? It always fears what might be creeping up on it.

Remind you of anyone?

We live in an age of fear. One reason is that we are able to see fearful things with more clarity and more camera angles than ever before. The disaster in Japan is one of the latest examples. Terrifying tsunamis have been occurring for millions of years, but never before have we had a helicopter filming it from above as it roared ashore. Camera phones give us unprecedented access to disaster as it happens.

We had some media insulation from the two greatest American tragedies of the 20^th century, The Great Depression and WW II. Unsettling news took days, or even weeks to reach the general population, and even then only in grainy black and white. Today catastrophe and apocalypse sell, and we have plenty of each in real time. I was watching the recent tornado hit Tuscaloosa while I was talking to my son who lives on the University of Alabama campus. With all of the catastrophe coverage, it’s no wonder we tend to worry about what might be creeping up on us.

Against this unsettling apprehension the Bible presents us with God’s fierce desire to provide everything we need. Eden was perfectly suited for Adam and Eve. God’s provision of animal skin clothing (Gen. 3:21) assures us that even after The Breaking God still takes care of us. Throughout the Bible we find consistent reminders of God’s desire to bless, nurture, and supply our every need. Jesus said God knows what you need before you ask. He included a petition for daily bread in the Lord’s Prayer. The examples are too numerous to cite here.

Without question all of the people in the Bible, about whom we know anything in detail, faced extraordinarily difficult times. Yet in its honesty and transparency the scripture records their stories as examples of intertwining faith and Providence. Have faith God will provide and you will walk with calm in midst of calamity.

The idea of God’s provision for us has suffered, for many thoughtful Christians, at the hands of the prosperity peddlers. That kind of proclamation is simplistic and always seems to me to make God sound like the customer service center at a Wal-Mart. To borrow a line from Morgan freeman in Bucket List, “I’ve had baths that are deeper.” I’ve never quite understood how so many people can fall for an assurance of health and wealth when the very founder of our faith ended up on a cross.

But we must never let the abuse of a truth prevent us from accepting the truth, and the truth is God really does supply every need. It’s a very good thing to remember Paul wrote this verse when he was in prison. He had discovered depths of provision the American dream can never provide.

You must occasionally take out and look again at important propositions and decide if you really believe them. God’s meeting your needs is one of those propositions. Do you believe He will supply all your needs? And if so, are you going to live today and every day with that assurance?

Certainly this conviction is one of those “battles that does not stay won.” You have to fight for it, and push back against the fear of failure, or loss, or other forms of tribulation. But God truly is always better and stronger than the worst the world can do to you. He will supply your needs. Now for all you nervous finches, live like you believe it.

Grace,

Dr. Terry Ellis

May 15, 2011

“This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.” Psalm 118:24

As you read the above scripture, you are in the beginning, middle, or end of a day. Does Psalm 118:24 apply? Of course it does.

You may object that you have had a hard day, or you are anticipating a hard day. Things are not going the way you planned. In fact, this day may be tougher than the previous few. The road ahead looks equally hard. Some people, even some Christians, would say it’s unrealistic to rejoice in a difficult day.

You can rejoice in this day because joy is not a product of circumstances. It is a gift from God, a part of His grace. Remember, joy is the second fruit of the Spirit, a product of His mysterious breath in your life. I do not think Paul listed the fruit of the Spirit in any particular order, but to have joy right after love says something about how accessible and important it is for Christians. Joy is your birthright, a part of what it means to bear the image of our joyful God.

Also remember that nothing has happened to you today that God did not anticipate and provide for. He has given you, or He will give you, the resources you need for this day. That is part of the promise of the Lord’s Prayer when you pray, “give me this day my daily bread.” He will provide, and nothing catches Him off guard. Trust Him and rejoice in this day. If your day is hard look for an insight, a phone call or other encounter with a friend who brings an encouraging word. Look for a reminder of God’s perfection and beauty and remember that those things are eternal, not the bad things that have spoiled your day.

Last week I heard a Christian lady speak about her faith and how God had helped her during a very difficult time in her life. She had been a runner, one of those strange folks who genuinely love to run. Then she contracted spinal meningitis that left her dependent on a cane. She would never run again.

At one point in her story she held up her cane. It was decorated with flowers. An otherwise mechanical and harsh reminder of a lifestyle lost, became a more tender reminder of a deeper grace learned. She said her husband was responsible for the decorations. With each new season he came up with a new theme.

She said she did not believe God gave her the disease, and that she didn’t subscribe to the bad theology that all the terrors of life come from His hand. I was grateful to hear that. Then she added simply, “I am now handicapped. And that’s all right. It’s all right.” That little phrase contains a lot of very good theology. In her love for the Lord and in her confidence of His abiding presence she found something they can’t teach you in seminary. She learned what real joy is. A flower-decorated cane serves as a reminder that God is in the business of transforming the worst of life into an occasion to look more deeply into His grace. That cane is a visible pledge of her determination to rejoice each day.

Josh Hamilton, outfielder for the Texas Rangers, battled drug addiction for many years. His habit threatened his life and career. He gave his life to Christ, and has been sober and in recovery for several years but knows that he can never let down his guard. In a visit several years ago with then-president Bush to discuss a anti-drug abuse program, the former president offered this encouragement: “There are some good days and there are some bad days, but every day is a joyous day.”

I offer you the same encouragement. From one perspective today will be good for some of you and bad for others. But for all of you in Christ it will be a joyous day.

Grace,

Dr. Terry Ellis

May 8, 2011

“So the tongue is a little member and boasts of great things. How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! And the tongue is a fire!” James 3:5-6

This week’s text contains a good measure of warning, but also great comfort. We all need to hear the warning, and all of us need the comfort. James repeatedly wrote of the dangers of the way we speak. This theme in his book of wisdom echoes a major topic in the Old Testament book of wisdom, Proverbs.

Proverbs contains humorous warnings about speech: “A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion” (18:2). And very practical exhortations: “When words are many, transgression is not lacking, but he who restrains his lips is prudent” (10:19). Or “A perverse man spreads strife, and a whisperer separates close friends” (16:28). The book also contains dire warnings such as “Seven things the Lord hates . . . a false witness who breathes out lies, and a man who sows discord among brothers” (6:19).

A few years ago I catalogued every Proverb and the subject of speech filled three pages. The verdict is quite clear. Our speech can be a blessing (“a gentle tongue is a tree of life,” 15:4) or a curse (“the speech of a perverse man is like a scorching fire,” 16:27). Or as James put it “From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brethren, this ought not to be so” (3:10). At the very least let this week’s GraceWaves serve as a reminder, warning, and encouragement to use wisely this great gift of speech.

Now we have all done our share of flame-throwing, and goodness knows with cell phones, texting, e-mail, and twitter we can spread the fire very quickly. “A lie can get halfway around the world before truth gets out of bed” has never been truer (that’s probably from The Farmer’s Almanac). What used to be rather limited to a weekly Bunko game now flits around much more quickly. Let us all pledge to listen to the Word and turn down the heat of our words.

But what about when you are scorched? How do you respond when the gift has become a curse to you? What do you do when someone tries to set you ablaze with gossip?

First, remain silent and, when you do speak, remain positive. If you respond in kind to someone who has slandered you, you become equally small. The only thing that grows by fighting fire with fire is the fire. I know this kind of quiet response is hard and risky, but though evil wins some battles, good wins the war. Never do the wrong thing no matter how justified you feel.

Further, remember that Jesus told us to bless when we are cursed. This “inconvenient truth” consists simply of praying for an enemy. I can honestly say I have never known anyone I consider an enemy, but every time I have prayed for someone stirring up mischief God has shared my burden and helped me to live lighter. Jesus never taught us anything that harms us. All Christians have to make a basic decision about whether to take seriously the teaching of the One we call Lord. Simply pray a blessing on the gossiper and try to move on.

Second, make a conscious decision about which voices you listen to. You have three voices, or sets of voices, constantly calling to you. First, the critics’ voices seek to tear you down. Though we all need legitimate critics to provide for our correction, you do need to remember that if a critic is not acting Christ-like, he or she did not come from God. Ignore that critic. Second, the voices of your supporters seek to build you up. God never leaves you without someone to believe in you and encourage you. Seek them out. Third, God always speaks to you, and He reminds you of your value. Look at the cross any time you wonder about your value. God dearly loves you.

Now which voices do you listen to? Almost all of us give the greatest weight to the “unChrist-like” critic. Unwittingly we are letting the most unqualified and meanest people determine our sense of value. You will probably never silence a critic, for gossip likely has become part of their nature. You can resolve, perhaps daily if necessary, not to listen to them.

Turn your ears to God and to the people God speaks through. Those voices are a blessing to you. They probably also will help you to cool your tongue.

Grace,

Dr. Terry Ellis

May 1, 2011