Monthly Archives: April 2012

His name is Ken Brandt. He lives in Delafield Wisconsin in a lovely little house and property that he bought shortly before he retired around ten years ago. When he bought the property it was over run with weeds and bushes from years of neglect by whoever owned it before him. He started working on making a garden and beautifying the place but was struck with a severe stroke several years ago that put his work to a halt. While he was in the hospital receiving care for the effects of his stroke, he had to have a stint put in an artery leading to his heart to allow the blood flow in the way it was originally designed to do. Three weeks after that his appendix exploded and he had to have surgery to save his life from the effects of that. His life was in danger of ending right then. The stroke severely hampered his ability to move and he was placed in a nursing home for long term care. He began pining for his home in Delafield and for the garden that he wanted to finish. At some point during his care he was allowed home for a day to visit. The home visits grew into two and three days and before long he was allowed to go home for good. He testifies that it was doing a little bit of work in his garden each time he went home and the insatiable desire to get it finished in the manner he wanted, that hastened, even permitted, his healing to take place. He so wanted to make that garden a thing of beauty and was so taken up with wanting to get it finished that it aided in his recovery. Something to look forward to. Something to hope for. The walker eventually gave way to a cane and now he still puts in flower and vegetable gardens every year from seed he saves from his plants and keeps over the winter. He hasn’t purchased a seed in years.

The thing that attracted our attention to his property as Heather and I walked past his house was the number and variety of plants and flowers. The planning and layout is remarkable. Then we noticed the sign that this garden has been recognized as a natural habitat. We were in Delafield to spend the week at a Pastor’s Retreat Network retreat centre for pastors needing a break. We had arrived quite early and had decided to take a walk around the town. As we strolled past Ken’s house he noticed us from inside his house and came out to greet us. “Come to the back and see some more”, he said. He showed us the “banzai” trees he had formed by trimming back his cedar bushes. He showed us the artificial pond stocked with gold fish and the miniature waterfall, the bird houses and feeders. He told us of the joy he gets watching, from the bathroom window, the mother birds feeding their young. Robins this year.

Ken’s father came to the U.S as a World War I refugee in 1917 and settled in Appleton Wisconsin. Ken would grow up there and owned and operated a store in Appleton until his retirement. Most of his father’s family had stayed in Germany and he grew up seeing his father package up provisions to send to his family there. After World War II his relatives were trapped behind the iron curtain and the packages kept being sent. He still speaks German fluently even though he has never lived there.

He spent years helping a close friend who had Parkinson’s disease get over the trauma of that affliction by getting him working in his garden. His friend would tell Ken what to do and Ken would reply “This is your garden, not mine. You do it”. His friend would grumble, but  he eventually did it himself.  When his friend finally succumbed to the disease he left Ken some money and a note thanking him for getting him out of his bitterness and isolation by creating in him a love for beautifying a place with plants.

Ken loves Cocker Spaniels and the three he has in the house now are a grandmother, mother and daughter. The great grandmother died last December. One of his dogs is a “therapy dog”. He takes the dog to seniors homes to spend time with the residents there. Ken was warned not to try to do anything with a certain lady at the home but the dog gravitated to her and she started asking for him to come and visit. She improved so dramatically from the therapy offered by the dog that she was able to leave the home and live in her own with her daughter again.

Ken simply beams with delight as he tells Heather and I these and stories. He speaks of the value of community and that if everyone would simply use their abilities for the good of their neighbours then what a much better world it would be. He should know. He has helped make some people’s world a little better. A few years ago he convinced the ruling council of his church to turn a piece of their property into a community garden. People from Delafield are welcome to use a patch as their garden and as long as they work it, they are welcome to garden it as their own. Neglect it and it will be given to someone else who will use it. “The Good Lord gave us abilities to be used and if we don’t use them the way they are meant to be used then we are mistreating the world.”

We were with him for an hour or so and it was one of the best hours of my life. A complete stranger came out to encourage two wanderers who were admiring the fruit of his labours. When we left, which was not easy to do,  he thanked us for “making my day”. I tell him that my name is Ken as well and that gets him going on some new stories. “You know what Ken means?” I do, and I tell him – knowledge, intelligence. “Understanding” Ken adds. He is thrilled that I knew that and off he starts again. I suspect that the neighbours are watching him and us talking and saying “Ken’s found some fresh meat to chew on”. We know that he probably does this a lot. We know that some of the stories may be embellished a little. We know that this is a lonely old man who longs to tell his story to anyone who will listen. If they have to be visitors from over a thousand kilometres away then that is fine. Ken doesn’t ask us any questions about who we are or what we are up to. It isn’t important to him although he does seem impressed when Heather tells him that I am a pastor of a church. The language gets a little less colourful after that.

Ken wants to talk. He wants to tell people about himself. Call this selfishness and self-importance if you like, but you would be wrong. It is a desire to be heard. It is a longing for company. It is wanting to pass on a few of the lessons that seventy-five years of living have given a man and feeling the waste if no one else gets to benefit from them. It is having a sense of accomplishment about some of the things that have been accomplished and wanting others to know it. It would be a shame for no one else but the few in Delafield to know about Ken Brandt. So, I share a little bit of his story with you. We are planning to write Ken when we get back home. Maybe we’ll send him pictures of our garden or just get to know him better through correspondence. Kind of nice to have to write a letter with a pen and paper to a man who has no computer and will have the excitement of picking a real letter out of his mail box. And it is thrilling to think that we just might make it into one of his stories as he comes out of his house to greet some passers by who have stopped to admire his garden.

What seniors do you know who up until now you have never spent quality time with and just sat at their feet as they told stories that will be gone from the planet when they die? Let me encourage you to ask them questions about their life’s adventures, their accomplishments and failures, their joys and their sorrows. You won’t be disappointed. And you will do more for them than you will ever know.

I’m going away with my wife for a week. We are going here and if you are a pastor you need to go. If you care about your pastor arrange for him to go. A tonic for the soul. This does Heather and I more good than anything else we do for R&R.

In any case, Pastor Bell might do some posts. He might not. I guess I have to ask him. Have a great week. Talk to you when I get back.

Luke 9:62 (ESV)
Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.

Don’t Quit

When things go wrong as they sometimes will,
When the road you’re trudging seems all up hill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high,
and you want to smile but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit -
Rest if you must, but don’t you quit.

Life is queer with its twists and turns,
As every one of us sometimes learns,
and many a failure turns about
when he might have won had he stuck it out.
Don’t give up though the pace seems slow.
You may succeed with another blow.
Often the goal is nearer than
it seems to a faint and faltering man.
Often the struggler has given up
When he might have captured the victor’s cup,
And he learned too late when the night slipped down
How close he was to the golden crown.

Success is failure turned inside out -
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt,
And you never can tell how close you are.
It may be near when it seems afar.
So stick to the light when you’re hardest hit -
It’s when things seem worst that you mustn’t quit.

Anonymous

Why did David repent? David had committed adultery with Bathsheba and then had Bathsheba’s husband killed. He did that because he had gotten Bathsheba  pregnant and wanted to legitimize the pregnancy. When he couldn’t orchestrate Uriah, the husband, into having sex with his wife, then he arranged for him to be killed in battle so that he could marry Bathsheba and make the pregnancy look right. One can wonder if there weren’t just a few people in the kingdom, and especially in the immediate neighbourhood, whose tongues were already wagging.  And he was the king to boot.
In any case, in the progress of time David eventually repented of all the sins connected to this tragedy. He repented because he got gripped with his sin and what it was doing to him. This is clearly illustrated in Psalm 51:1-5. He finally came to his senses and realized that he was guilty of very grievous sins that had put serious distance between him and his God. In his word to Nathan, when Nathan had confronted him with his sin “I have sinned against the LORD (II Samuel 12:13).” All these things are true about why David repented. But that is not what I am getting at.
What got him to the point that he was willing to repent? At the spiritual level we can note that God is the Hound of Heaven and He loses none of all that He gives the Son. David was God’s and God had no intention of letting David get away, despite all of David’s efforts to do just that. But that is not what I am getting at either.
In short – David repented because he got caught. He repented because he was confronted with his sin. He repented because he was preached to. The prophet Nathan gets an audience with David and Nathan tells him this parable:

2 Samuel 12:1-6 – “… There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor.  [2] The rich man had very many flocks and herds,  [3] but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought. And he brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children. It used to eat of his morsel and drink from his cup and lie in his arms, and it was like a daughter to him.  [4] Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was unwilling to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the guest who had come to him, but he took the poor man’s lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him.”  [5] Then David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man, and he said to Nathan, “As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die,  [6] and he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity.”

When David heard this parable it did nothing to bring him to repentance. His response shows us just what sin does to us. We are blinded to our own sins and very harsh on the same, or smaller sins, in others (See Matthew 18:23-35). There is not a hint of repentance in David when he states that the man who would steal a sheep is deserving of death. David is willing to execute a sheep stealer and when he says that to Nathan we find no repentance emanating from him about his own murder of a fellow human being. It does not occur to him that he has done something much worse. Not until Nathan says (and most preachers, at this point will say that Nathan pointed his finger right at David), “You are the man” and then explains to David how he is the man, that David comes to his senses and repents.

When Nathan explains to David that he is the man in the parable because of his adultery and murder, David says “I have sinned against the LORD”, Nathan responds with “The LORD also has put away your sin; you shall not die. Nevertheless, because by this deed you have utterly scorned the LORD, the child who is born to you shall die.”

That can’t be right. Surely we shouldn’t believe a man who half an hour ago was content to keep his sin hidden and now that he has been exposed says he’s sorry. Where is the proof of repentance? Where are the works of restoration? There will be consequences on David for the rest of his life. The baby died. God does not erase the results of our sins in this life. But Nathan is very clear. David has been forgiven. He is forgiven because of his repentance. Forgiveness is granted and pronounced before any proof of repentance takes place. Just like when you were saved.

When we were saved we prayed for Jesus to forgive us and He did. This is stunning grace. And it will not lead to sinful living. Grace like this leads to a repentant life. It leads to holiness. It leads to dependence upon God. It leads to gratitude.

What a thing God has done.

1 Thes. 2:1-12 – For you yourselves know, brothers, that our coming to you was not in vain.  [2] But though we had already suffered and been shamefully treated at Philippi, as you know, we had boldness in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in the midst of much conflict.  [3] For our appeal does not spring from error or impurity or any attempt to deceive,  [4] but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not to please man, but to please God who tests our hearts.  [5] For we never came with words of flattery, as you know, nor with a pretext for greed— God is witness.  [6] Nor did we seek glory from people, whether from you or from others, though we could have made demands as apostles of Christ.  [7] But we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children.  [8] So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us. [9] For you remember, brothers, our labor and toil: we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you, while we proclaimed to you the gospel of God.  [10] You are witnesses, and God also, how holy and righteous and blameless was our conduct toward you believers.  [11] For you know how, like a father with his children,  [12] we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory.

I think the quintessential biblical passage regarding success is found in I Thessalonians 2:1-12. God does not call us to fail. He does not send us on fool’s errands that cannot accomplish their desired end. But He also does not allow us to determine what the desired end is. Churches are not businesses and they are not headed up by  CEOs, or franchise operators. We are servants. We are bond slaves of Jesus Christ. We are a purchased possession and as such, we do not get to say what our task is, what the goals of the task are and what constitutes success. Our call is obedience and faithfulness. This is such a cliche that it barely gets more than a passing thought for most of us in the evangelical camp. But even those who know it to be true and agree with it can be deceived into believing otherwise. It is easy for us to fall into believing that we set the goals and we determine when it has been reached. It is particularly tempting to do this in a culture that weighs things by its own values. Success is measured in our culture in dollars, numbers, influence, power. It is incredibly difficult to maintain faithfulness to a biblical world view in the midst of a thousand voices screaming that they know what our goals should be. It is very tempting to measure our success in corporate measurements. But it is also forbidden. It is not wrong, it needs to be pointed out, to rejoice in great numbers being converted. But it is wrong to conclude that if there are not, that this is failure.  It also should be noted that no one who is seeing great numbers come to Christ will ever write anything like what I am writing right now and people can be forgiven for thinking that my grapes are a little sour. And maybe I do have issues with my lifelong record of success as churches measure such things. But maybe it’s only because I am too influenced by a culture that gets most things Christian, wrong.

All that said, I Thessalonians 2:1-12 is a wonderful description of what the true marks of success are. Here goes: Verse 1 -

 For you yourselves know, brothers, that our coming to you was not in vain.

How did they know that Paul’s work was not in vain?

i.            Verse 2 – “But though we had already suffered and been shamefully treated at Philippi, as you know, we had boldness in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in the midst of much conflict.” – Boldness to declare the Gospel despite suffering, shameful treatment and conflict.
ii.     Verse 3 – “For our appeal does not spring from error” – The appeal of the Gospel does not come from error – they delivered the one true Gospel
iii.    Verse 3 – “…or impurity” – They lived morally upright lives. Their lives were consistent with their words. (See verse 10)
iv.    Verse 3 – “…or any attempt to deceive” – They did not try to hide bad motives for the purpose of convincing people they were better than they really were. Their lives were transparent.
v.    Verse 4 -  “…we speak, not to please man, but to please God who tests our hearts” – They were not men pleasers. They made it their goal to please God, whether this pleased people or not. They remained conscious of the fact that God is the one to whom they were accountable.
vi.    Verse 5 – “For we never came with words of flattery,…” – They didn’t try to butter their hearers up.
vii.    Verse 5 – “..nor with a pretext for greed…” – Flattery is often for the purpose of getting something out of people and Paul and his companions were successful because they were not greedy. Their audience was not for them. They were for their audience.
viii.    Verse 6 – “…Nor did we seek glory from people, whether from you or from others, though we could have made demands as apostles of Christ” – They did not use their work as an avenue to win applause form people. They could have made demands since they were Apostles but the Gospel was more important to them than whatever payments they could have garnered.
ix.    Verse 7 – “But we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children” – They were gentle, not harsh. Very gentle. Just consider the analogy Paul makes.
x.    Verse 8 – “…we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves” – Success in Gospel work is not only the giving of information, or the winning of many converts. It is the giving of oneself.
xi.    Verse 9 – “…we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you…” – they refused to burden their hearers financially. Paul and his companions were not full time missionaries. They had day jobs so they could keep body and soul together and so that their hearers wouldn’t have to give money for their support.
xii.    Verse 11-12 -  “For you know how, like a father with his children,  [12] we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory” – They were like a good father who teaches his children in the right way and with the right things.

I want to be very successful. I have some of these marks of success, as do most of the Christians and pastors and evangelists I know. I also am lacking in some of them as are others. Oh Lord, thank you for this needed instruction. Thank you that you are the father who teaches His children. And thank you for telling us what it means to be a real success in a culture that has it all turned around backwards.

Luke 17:1-2 (ESV)
And he said to his disciples, “Temptations to sin are sure to come, but woe to the one through whom they come!  [2] It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were cast into the sea than that he should cause one of these little ones to sin.

Quote of the month, maybe even for the whole year. It’s from my wife and its based upon the above verse.

“I think there must be angels in heaven whose full time job is making millstones.”

Came across this the other day. Just a very nice  heartwarming story.

If you insist on something more intentionally Christian then have a look at this. I haven’t listened to it yet but the subject matter and preacher lend themselves to recommending it regardless. In any case, here it is:

have-you-lost-your-mind

Luke 12:32 (ESV)
“Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.

We are a small church as churches get measured. We are referred to as an inner city church as demographics get measured, even though we are not in the inner city. Our numbers for most of what we do, are small. We believe that God desires us to pray and hears us when we do. We believe that He is more willing to give than we are to ask, that He is more willing to listen than we are to speak and that He is more willing to forgive than we are to repent. In the run of a week at Thistletown we have several prayer meetings and Bible Study/prayer meetings. There is the prayer and fasting group once a month on Monday evenings. There is the weekly Tuesday afternoon Ladies Bible Study, the Tuesday evening small group prayer and Bible Study, Wednesday evening Prayer Meetings at the church and at the same time in a home in one of the burbs where some of our people live. Probably an attendance of twelve (Tuesday evening small group meeting) is the most well attended.The elders meet for prayer every two weeks and there are several informal gatherings of people who get together and talk and read the Bible and pray.

Last night we gathered together for prayer at the church, while the children’s programme went ahead downstairs and the Arab church worshipped in the sanctuary. Both those groups had far more people than gathered for prayer. Probably the other group meeting for prayer had more than we had. There were two of us.  Just a lady from the church and me. There would have been more, but our Associate and his wife, Hassan and Kathy, are in Louisville Kentucky for some small gathering themselves.(For you uninitiated – the meeting Kathy and Hassan are at is currently clocked at 8000 in attendance)

So the two of us talked and then we read some Scripture and went through the prayer list and prayed. She went first (the pastor always goes last – that way we know when it’s over).

“Thank you Lord that there are only two of us here tonight so that I can talk to my pastor and get some help”. I don’t remember much else of her prayer. It was enough for me to hear that. While I was secretly licking my wounds for being in a prayer meeting where only two showed up, half of them me, and wondering if the glory had departed and inwardly asking if I am the reason for this kind of turnout, my prayer partner was rejoicing that God had orchestrated the meeting in such a way that she could do a little unloading without the embarrassment of having others get in on what was being said.

Thank you Lord, for putting me in a meeting last night where you helped one of your children and did it using me. And thank you for teaching me, through her, what really matters.

Psalm 93:1 (ESV)
The Lord reigns; he is robed in majesty;
the Lord is robed; he has put on strength as his belt.
Yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved.

What did the writer of Psalm 93 know about the size of the world? When he wrote “the world is established”, did he have any idea about how big the world was? Probably not, although it is probably true that the ancients knew more science than we currently give them credit for. He probably did not know that the solar system,  was helio centric not terra centric. He probably did not know that the universe is well over 10,000,000,000 light years wide and ever expanding. (That’s 186,000 miles every second x 60 seconds every minute x 60 minutes every hour x 24 hours every day x 365 days every year x 10,000,000,000). He probably did not know that there are millions of other galaxies and even more planets and suns and solar systems. He likely did not know the depths of the oceans and the vast number of species that exist on the earth and in the sea. Given that we are still discovering new species all the time it is unlikely that we know this either. But God did. God knew it all. And God is the One who inspired the Psalmist to write this Psalm and all the rest of the Bible.

Some people credit the ignorance of the ancients for the reason they ascribe sovereignty to God. If they had known the vastness of space and the intricacies of earth they would never have said that God was over it all. It is easier, so the thinking goes, to believe in a God who is in charge of everything, when there is not very much to be in charge of. But get educated and consider the wonders there are and the vastness of the universe and you will give up on believing in a sovereign God. But the vastness of the universe makes the possibility of it all coming into being by chance all the more incredulous. If something this big, this complicated, this intricate could not have come into being spontaneously then what does that say about the Being that created it? The knowledge that mankind has accumulated in its history has not been given to us so that we can say “No God could have made all this”. Its purpose is to say, from the heart “What kind of God is it who could fashion something as vast and complicated and precise as all this?” A stunningly incredible God who deserves far more worship than we can ever give. Couple this with the main truth about God that the Bible gives us, that we actually rebel against this incredible Being, as if we could overcome Him, and that His response has been to come into the world to die to redeem mankind, and this is truly stunning, truly mind warping. Such a God deserves all the praise that we can give Him and much more.

This story appeared in the Toronto Star yesterday. It tells us that a school board in Ontario has banned the Gideons from giving out New Testaments in their schools. What made the headline was not the ban. School Boards are increasingly banning Christianity in one form or another. No. What made this a story was the response of those in favour of the Gideons being allowed to enter the schools and distribute the Scriptures. School Board members are saying that they feel threatened and one said a phone call amounted to a death threat.

I think that handing out Bibles wherever and whenever we have the opportunity is a great idea. We have a Gideon in our church who gives them out on the public sidewalk since they cannot be distributed in the schools. Do whatever you can to propagate the Gospel and have the smile of God upon you.

But never expect the approval of the world and do not think that the success of the Gospel depends on the culture’s acceptance of such things. What is the response of the Christian community to rejection of the Message and its messengers? It is not death threats and name calling. It certainly is not revenge. It is not even a class action law suit and whining about how other groups get better treatment than Bible believing Christians do.

The Apostle Peter, in just one place where he dealt with the matter of suffering for the sake of the Gospel said :