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 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 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 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
April 14, 2015
“If the whole body were an eye where would the sense of hearing be?” (1Corinthians 12:17)
There’s a story about a doctor who came out of the delivery room to tell an expectant father: “I have some grave news for you. Your wife has given birth to a 7-pound eyeball.” After pausing a moment he added: “And that’s not all. It’s blind!”
If you came home one night in the dark to find a 185 pound eyeball in the corner of your front porch, would that give you a rush of anxiety?
In this verse from First Corinthians the Apostle Paul uses an illustration just as grotesque as the illustrations I just used. He does this in his inspired letter to the Corinthians because he wants to make a point: the beauty of diversity.
One of the fingerprints of the Church of Jesus Christ is that in the Church we celebrate diversity. Diversity in the body of Christ is to be celebrated rather than resolved. If two of us are exactly alike one of us is unnecessary. Some of the members of the First Church of Corinth were telling others they were not authentically spiritual unless they had the exact same spiritual gifts.
Paul remedied that kind of thinking with the hideous metaphor of a body being just one member and not a body with the beauty of many diverse parts. Other members of the body of Christ have what you do not have and you have what they do not have. That means you need them and they need you.
The body of Christ is a team sport. Are you willing to be a team player?
Step up and play your part.
Dick Woodward, 05 February 2013
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Posted by Dick Woodward
April 3, 2015
“All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way; And the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” (Isaiah 53:6)
If you want to know what is good about Good Friday this verse in Isaiah 53 will tell you. This verse describes with great clarity the meaning of the death of Jesus Christ on the cross when it begins and ends with the same word: “all.” The verse begins with what we might call “the bad news.” Isaiah tells us that all of us are like little sheep and have gone astray. We have turned, every single one of us, to our own way. If you want to know the meaning of the death of Jesus Christ on the cross, agree that you yourself are included in that first all.
The all with which this verse concludes is what we might call “the good news.” Isaiah ends this verse by telling us that the penalty for all the things we have done after turning to our own way has been laid on Him (meaning Jesus). I don’t know about you, but for me that is very, very good news! If you and I will confess that we are included in the first and the last all in this great Gospel verse then we know what we need to know and we have done all we need to do to turn our bad news into good news. And we know what is good about Good Friday.
If you want to make this Friday of Holy Week a Good Friday, believe what Isaiah has written.
Dick Woodward, 02 April 2010
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Posted by Dick Woodward
March 31, 2015
“Christ died for our sins, in accordance with the scriptures… and on the third day, He was raised to life..” (I Corinthians 15:3-4)
Have you discovered that, to the authors of the four Gospels, Easter is far more important than Christmas? Of the 89 combined Gospel chapters, 4 chapters cover the birth and first 30 years Jesus lived, while 27 chapters cover the last week He lived. Why is the last week Jesus lived so very important?
The obvious answer is during that one week Jesus died and was raised from the dead for our salvation. In I Corinthians 15, after clearly stating that the Gospel is the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, Paul focuses like a laser beam on the second Gospel fact – the resurrection of Jesus Christ. In 58 inspired verses, Paul shows us in a practical way what the resurrection of Jesus should mean to you and me.
Have you ever wondered why the apostles, who were all Jews, changed their day of worship from the Sabbath (seventh) Day to the first day of the week? If you read carefully, they never called Sunday the “Sabbath.” They called it “The Lord’s Day” because that was the day Jesus rose from the dead. Every Sunday the Church gathers for worship is a celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, because on the first day of the week Jesus demonstrated the absolute eternal value.
This is the greatest and most important eternal value: Jesus Christ died and rose from the dead for our salvation. The Good News is that when Jesus died on the cross, God laid on His only beloved Son all the chastisement we rebellious human beings rightly deserved for our sins. In this way, God exercised His perfect justice while also expressing His perfect love. The beloved Apostle John points to the cross and says, “Here is love. Not that we love God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins, and not for our sins only, but for the sins of the whole world.” (I John 2:1-2)
Isaiah showed us how to confess this eternal value – that Jesus died for our sins – when he wrote: “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” (Isaiah 53:6)
…Do you believe you are included in the first and last ‘all’ of this verse?
Dick Woodward, In Step with Eternal Values
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Posted by Dick Woodward
March 27, 2015
“Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful.” (I Corinthians 4:2)
Paul declared that one of the greatest virtues of a servant of the Lord is faithfulness.
There’s a story about a man told by God to push against a huge rock as the primary work for his lifetime. For many years the man did that. Exhausted, burned out and discouraged he told the Lord that the rock had not moved a centimeter. The Lord responded that He had not told the man to move the rock, but to push against it. He made the observation that pushing against the rock had given him a strong healthy and muscular body. God knew all along that only He could move that rock.
This leads to an acrostic based on the word push:
P- Pray
U– Until
S– Something
H– Happens
I am now living in my 82nd year. One of the observations I’ve made in my long life is that God is our Mentor. He is always teaching us and is fiercely committed to the proposition that we are going to grow spiritually and in every other way. He deliberately assigns us tasks that are not only difficult, but impossible, knowing that those tasks will grow and mature us into faithful servants He can use to do through us what only He can do in this world.
Another observation without which I could not function as a human being, especially as a pastor, is what I call Four Spiritual Secrets. Concisely put: I’m not, I can’t, I don’t even want to — but He is, He can, He wants to, and He does.
Trusting God push and pray, so God can do His work in and through you.
Dick Woodward, 20 June 2012
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Posted by Dick Woodward
March 20, 2015
“… I have come into this world, that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may be made blind.” (John 9:39)
Jesus claimed that He is the light of the world. He also commissioned His followers with the exhortation that we are the light of the world. From the verses above we learn that the light of which our Lord speaks is a very strange quality of light. It makes it possible for those who are blind to see and it reveals the blindness of those who think they see.
When I was a child I lived near coal mines. One day a terrible explosion rocked a coal mine where 20 miners were trapped and isolated for three days in a small pocket of that mine. When they were rescued there was great jubilation and celebration among the rescued miners and those who had broken through to them. The celebration grew quiet when one of the rescued miners asked the question: “Why didn’t you guys bring any lights?” The rescuers had actually brought many lights. The miner who asked the question had been blinded by the flash when the explosion happened. He had been blind for three days, but in the pitch black darkness of the mine he didn’t know he was blind until the light came.
The light that Jesus is – and the light He tells us that we are – has that purpose and function. It reveals the spiritual blindness of those who think they see and it gives sight to those who know they are spiritually blind. Jesus told us we are that light. Are you willing to let the light of Jesus shine through you?
Dick Woodward, 21 May 2010
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Posted by Dick Woodward
March 10, 2015
“And he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” I will all the more gladly boast of my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities; for when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2Corinthians 12:9-10)
I shall never forget an afternoon in the late 1970s when I discovered that I was not able to lift the set of weights I regularly lifted. I then tried to mow my lawn and realized I was too weak to cut the grass. Finally, I tried to replace the license plates on my car and learned to my horror that I was too weak to do even that.
Although it was two years before I could accept the awful reality that I would never feel full strength again, my weakness made it possible to resonate with Paul in a deeper way when he described the way his weakness drove him to access the strength and power of the living risen Christ.
I’ve had times of such great weakness, especially while ministering, when I’ve thought: There is absolutely nothing coming from me; everything is coming from God! In spite of his great weakness, as God used Paul to make the Church a worldwide force, he put into words what I have felt many times: “Not that we are competent of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our competence is from God!” (2Corinthians 3:5. italics added)
These were merely familiar Scripture verses until I had no strength of my own. There is a dimension of the power and strength of the risen Christ I did not discover until I was powerless. The vehicle that brings the grace of God to me which outweighs my challenges is the strength of the risen, living Christ. Paul’s experience of weakness, recorded for us in the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, directed me to that miracle.
When we have no strength of our own, we simply must learn that is possible to tap into the strength of the living Christ. I now thank God for my experience of weakness that forced me to discover the strength of the risen living Christ that outweighs my weakness – and helped me discover the happiness that doesn’t make good sense.
Dick Woodward, Happiness That Doesn’t Make Good Sense
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Posted by Dick Woodward
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