May 22, 2015
“I thank my God upon every remembrance of you…” (Philippians 1:3)
It is fitting in the United States of America that we set aside one day each year to memorialize our fallen warriors. In the Old Testament God regularly commanded His chosen people to erect memorials so they would never forget certain events on their journey of faith. When we study those memorials we realize that God wanted them to remember miracles He performed for them. He never wanted them to forget significant spiritual datelines. He often repeated for emphasis things He wanted them to remember. Throughout the Old and New Testaments we therefore continuously hear the exhortation to remember!
Memorials are closely linked with the attitude of gratitude and the awful sin of ingratitude. On Memorial Day are you thankful for “The Greatest Generation” of the 1940s who saved us from an unthinkable future without freedom? and throughout Cold War decades from more of the same? Does your memorial of gratitude continue through those who fell in Korea, Vietnam and now in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Do you have spiritual memorial datelines for which you are grateful as you remember them before God? Do you have a dateline of when you came to faith in what Christ did for you on the cross? Do you have spiritual datelines beyond that point of beginning your faith journey, when the risen Christ has proved Himself to you in miraculous ways? Do you have a dateline when He made you know what He wants you to do for Him? In the fulfillment of that vision has He brought very, very significant people into your life to help you bring that vision into reality?
Then have a spiritual Memorial Day and be filled with grateful worship!
Dick Woodward, 31 May 2010
Editor’s Note: My father had the utmost respect for our military. His father became a Christian while sharing his pup-tent with a Christian in the European theatre of WWI. Although my father never served in the military (he was 15 when WWII ended & then studied to be a pastor), his brothers served in the Air Force, Army, Navy and Marines during WWII, the Korean War, and Vietnam. My father always said he felt like a Navy Chaplain while ministering to so many Navy families @ the Va. Beach Community Chapel for 25 years – a great honor to him! Whether you are a peace-nik (like the Blog-Posting Elf who served overseas as a relief & development worker in conflict zones for many years) or friends & family of active military serving in today’s war zones – as my father suggested, this Memorial Day let’s remember those who have given their lives for peace, and then remember spiritually what God has done for each one of us!
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Posted by Dick Woodward
May 19, 2015
“Love knows no limit to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. It is, in fact, the one thing that still stands when all else has fallen.” (I Corinthians 13:7-8, J.B. Phillips)
We read in the book of Hebrews: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for; the evidence of things not seen.” The inspired author of the great faith chapter means that the object of faith is always unseen, and faith gives substance to our hope that the object of our faith exists. In other words, faith puts a foundation under our hope. We hope until faith gives us reason to believe. (Hebrews 11:1)
When faith cannot place a foundation under our hope for the ones we love, all we can do is hope for them. According to the love hymn of Paul, the one applying the love of Christ will hope for them. Love joyfully awaits for the fulfillment of what it prayerfully desires, imagines, dreams and hopes concerning the potential of the ones we love.
When Paul writes, “Love endures all things,” he means love perseveres while it awaits the fulfillment of what it hopes and believes to see in the lives of the ones being loved. The Greek word translated as ‘endurance’ is ‘hupomone.” It is a combination of two Greek words, to ‘abide‘ and ‘under,‘ whatever is required to love someone.
This is especially important when we love a person who is not responding to our loving, positive reinforcement. This quality of loving perseverance equips believers to love and pray loved ones through their addictions to alcohol, chemical substances, pornography, gambling, eating disorders and the seemingly endless list of compulsive habits.
These ‘chains’ of the evil one can only be broken with supernatural assistance from God, often using, as conduits, those who love with this love that hopes, believes, and endures all things. By their actions they make this statement to those they love: “Nothing you do or say can make me stop loving you because I’m loving you with the love of Christ. The love of Christ is tough love.”
Dick Woodward, from A Prescription for Love
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Posted by Dick Woodward
May 16, 2015
“… in everything… with thanksgiving present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:6-7)
In the last chapter of the letter to his favorite Church at Philippi Paul gives us a prescription for peace. The peace of God is a state of personal peace in which God keeps a believer if they meet certain conditions (Isaiah 26:3). There are twelve such conditions listed in Philippians 4.
As I seek to maintain the personal peace that comes from God, I get more mileage out of the prescription listed above than any of the others. I have discovered when I begin to thank God for all the good things in my life it’s like a switch clicks and I find my mind automatically moving from the negative to the positive.
To use another metaphor, if I placed all the bad stuff in my life on the left side of a scale – like a scale of justice – and all the good stuff on the right side of that scale, the right side will far outweigh the left side. That’s what happens when I implement what I call, “The Therapy of Thanksgiving.”
An old hymn put it this way:
“When upon life’s billows you are tempest tossed.
When you are discouraged thinking all is lost.
Count your many blessings, name them one by one
And it will surprise you what the Lord has done.”
That’s why Paul’s prescription is that when we pray, in everything (not for everything), we should offer thankful prayers. He promises that when we do, the peace of God will stand guard over our hearts and minds.
Dick Woodward, 22 October 2010
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Posted by Dick Woodward
May 12, 2015
“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness… It will be thrown out and trampled underfoot as worthless.” (Matthew 5:13 NIV/NLT)
When Jesus told His disciples that they were the salt of the earth there are several ways to interpret and apply this metaphor. We find a clue to my favorite interpretation when we realize that the word “salary” is made up of two root words: “salt” and “money.”
Twenty centuries ago the Roman Empire wanted to control the population of the world. They knew that no human being can live without salt. So, they controlled the salt of the world. They actually paid their slaves in cubes of salt. This is where we get the expression that a person is ‘not worth his or her salt.’
This means Jesus taught that secular people do not have life. His disciples have life and they are the way the secular people of this world can find that life.
Years ago a missionary statesman said when missionaries live in a compound in a foreign country with a fortress mentality they are like manure: they stink! It’s only when God spreads them around that they do a little good. Similarly, when the followers of Jesus meet together they are like salt in a saltshaker. The only way they can have a salty influence is to come out of the saltshaker.
One way our Lord brings us out of the saltshaker is where we make a living. Be challenged by the reality that your workplace can be God’s way of placing you next to secular people who need life. Realize that you are not only there to make a living…
You are there because they need the salty impact of your life.
Dick Woodward, (21 March 2012)
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Posted by Dick Woodward
May 8, 2015
“Blessed is every one who fears the Lord, who walks in His ways. When you eat the labor of your hands, you shall be happy, and it shall be well with you. Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine in the very heart of your house, your children like olive plants all around your table.” (Psalm 128:1-3)
When you meditate on these verses in Psalm 128 that describe the role and function of a wife and mother, you can paraphrase them this way: a mother is a man-maker. She is like a fruitful vine in the very heart of her husband’s home. To borrow a metaphor from the very beginning of the Bible, she is a completer whose passion is to see that her husband becomes all that His Creator designed him to be.
She is a people-maker because she gives him children who are like fruitful plants around his table. Many people would like to put a period after the fourth word of this psalm and say that everyone is blessed or happy, but that is not the way the psalm reads. The blessing on this man comes because he meets conditions: He walks in the ways of God.
The other verses of the psalm tell us this is how God blesses and impacts the world. He finds a blessed man, joins him to a blessed woman, and gives them blessed children. They impact Zion- which is the spiritual community- and then this family unit fruitfully impacts the city and the country.
A mother is at the heart of this great strategy of God. As such she is also a home-maker and a memory-maker. What a great and noble calling!
Rise up and call your mother blessed this Sunday!
Dick Woodward, (07 May 2011)
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Posted by Dick Woodward
May 5, 2015
“… He brought Simon to Jesus, who looked at him and said, “You are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas (which is translated ‘Peter.’) (John 1:42)
When Jesus met Peter, his name was Simon and his life was characterized by instability. Yet Jesus gave him the nickname “Peter,” which means “rock” and essentially “stability.”
In Matthew 16 we have an intriguing interview between Jesus and Peter. Jesus had done the “who are you?” question in reverse. He asked the apostles, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter came up with the right answer. The Lord then said in so many words, “You’re not that smart Peter. That answer really didn’t come from you. It came from My Father.”
In this interview Jesus was telling Peter who and what Peter was, and what he was being called to be. When I had a chance to meet with Ravi Zacharias in my home, I asked him, “who is Ravi Zacharias?” He responded, “I think what really matters is how our Lord would answer that question.” In this interview with Peter, Jesus answered that question for him.
In the Gospels Peter’s life is recorded like an unstable spiritual roller coaster. But after Jesus called Peter a ‘rock’ for three years, and after Peter experienced Pentecost, we read in Acts that this unstable man became the rock-like, stable leader of the New Testament Church. When you read the Gospels and Acts, you realize Jesus was convincing Peter of what he could become because he had come to know his Lord and Savior.
Do you hear the voice of the Christ Who lives in your heart trying to give you His answer to this question, “What are you?” Is He making you know what you can become and do for Him since He has made you a new creation? Is He making you know what He can equip you to become as He is calling you and revealing what He wants you to be and do for him?
Dick Woodward, A Spiritual Compass (p. 71-72)
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Posted by Dick Woodward
May 1, 2015
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.” (Matthew 5:9-10)
As Jesus profiles what makes a disciple salty light and His solution to the problems and the problem people of this world, He declares that they will be peacemakers who get persecuted in His fourth pair of Beatitudes.
A synonym for “peacemakers” is “reconcilers.” Paul writes (in Second Corinthians 5:13-6:2), that every believer who has been reconciled to God through Christ is now committed to the message and the ministry of reconciliation. Today many people are alienated from God, from themselves, and from other people. The acute need today, therefore, is for reconciliation. To quote a theologian, who was interpreting the passage referenced above, “It is the will of the Reconciler that the reconciled are to be the vehicles of reconciliation in the lives of the un-reconciled.”
Since reconcilers go where the conflict is happening they are often in great danger. Such is the case with disciples who are living the fourth pair of Beatitudes. You would think that if a person had the eight blessed attitudes in their lives others would gather around him or her and sing, “For he’s (or she’s) a jolly good fellow!” But the opposite is often true. They attack and persecute such a person.
The reason being when they meet such a person they have two choices: They can realize that this is what I should be like, or they can attack that person and try to prove that they’re really not what they appear to be. Those who are the salt of the earth irritate and burn the moral sores of those who are lost.
So let me ask you, two men (people) in a pew, which one are you?
Dick Woodward, 16 April 2010
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Posted by Dick Woodward
April 28, 2015
“Is Christ divided?” (1 Corinthians 1:13)
In the great prayer our Lord prayed for His Church in the Gospel of John, Chapter 17, Jesus asked His Father five times that we all might be one. In light of this great prayer priority of our Lord, is it not evidence of the work of the evil one when we consider all the “sects and insects and isms and spasms” claiming to be His true Church today?
The risen, living Christ can be known by His followers. The authors of the New Testament identify authentic followers of Jesus when they refer to them as being “in Christ.” When the church in Corinth was hopelessly divided the Apostle Paul asked a very appropriate question: “Is Christ divided?”
If thinking people really track with the authors of the New Testament would they not think it strange if people who profess to be in Christ cannot agree on anything? There is, however, a supernatural oneness and agreement among people who are truly in Christ today.
Decades ago when African American believers petitioned white churches in the southern part of our country to integrate I discovered that it didn’t matter whether the people in my church were born in the northern or southern United States. What mattered in my congregation was whether or not they were born again. Christ does not feel more than one way about civil rights. Neither will we if we are born again and in Christ.
Paul concludes the second chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians by claiming that we have the mind of Christ. If we in fact do have the mind of Christ we will agree.
Dick Woodward, 25 April 2012
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Posted by Dick Woodward
April 24, 2015
“Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and wonderful results.” (James 5:16 NLT)
When Alcoholics Anonymous started it was called “The Saint James Fellowship” because it was founded on this verse. The founders later changed the name to include people of all faiths and those with no faith. While millions of secular people in AA apply the truths of this Scripture and experience healing, it is a shame that many believers never make these healing applications.
When you meet with another believer do you keep your sins in the closet? Do you give the impression that you don’t have a problem in the world? Do they do the same? That does not burden you to pray for each other. But if you can trust them and share some of your sins with them they would be burdened to pray for you. They would also more than likely have what I call “reality contact” with you by sharing their sins and that would burden you to pray for them. The result of these mutual prayers would be mutual healing.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who wrote extensively about spiritual community, put it this way: “Many Christians are unthinkably horrified when a real sinner is suddenly discovered among the righteous. So they remain alone with their sins, living in lies and hypocrisy… He who is alone with his sins is utterly alone.”
A paraphrase of James 5:16 is that honest prayers explode with power! It is a strategy of the evil one to isolate us into self imposed solitary confinement. Never let him isolate you into being a closet sinner; instead, find healing in confessing your sins and praying for one another.
Dick Woodward, 14 April 2013
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Posted by Dick Woodward
April 21, 2015
“…For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.” (Matthew 6:13)
[In the “Our Father” Disciples Prayer] Our Lord teaches us to begin our prayers with a God first mindset and conclude our prayers with that same focus. We begin our prayers looking through the grid: “Your name be reverenced, Your Kingdom come,” and “Your will be done (in earth and) on earth, just as it is willed and done in heaven.” We are to conclude our prayers the same way.
Jesus wants us to conclude our prayers by making this commitment to our Heavenly Father: “Yours is the Kingdom.” By this confession, He means for us to pledge to God that the results of our Heavenly Father’s continuously answering our prayers will always belong to Him.
As we face challenges of life every day, we should be poor in spirit enough to confess that we need the power of God: “Yours is the power.” When I have entered into a challenging day, I have confessed this thousands of times in my journey of faith and ministry by saying, “I can’t, but He can.”
Finally, we are to conclude our prayers by confessing: “Yours is the glory.” When we apply this third providential benediction, we are simply confessing, “Because I didn’t but He did, all the glory goes to Him.” Jesus prescribes that we conclude our prayers every time we pray by making this solemn commitment to God: The glory for everything that happens in my life because You have answered my prayer(s), will always go to You.”
The essence of this benediction is: “Because the power always comes from You, the result will always belong to You, and the glory will always go to You.”
“Amen” simply means, “So be it.”
Dick Woodward, from A Prescription for Prayer
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Posted by Dick Woodward
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