Category — Family

Since our son-in-law David went down with a terrible and debilitating disease a month ago, a lot of Judy and mine’s life has been dedicated to “Zach duty.”

Zachary is our grandson—David and Celia’s fat-cheeked bundle of smiles whose energy stretches my almost 60-year-old body to its limits. He’s a robust, squirmy adventurer who chafes at every limitation.

But the one attribute that’s on my mind during this season we Christians commemorate the birth of Jesus is Zach’s dependence.

Without someone to love him and care for him, he’s totally helpless. He can’t feed himself, clean himself or protect himself. He doesn’t even know how to go to sleep on his own.

Watching Zach during this season helps me appreciate the humility of our Lord Jesus.

It was love for me—love for you—that moved the Creator of heaven and earth to be born on this little marble of a planet. It was mercy that moved Him to show up in a baby’s soft skin, totally helpless, totally dependent.

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory o the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).

Brace Yourself!

As a follower of Christ, I’m preparing myself for the Christmas Season, but not in the way you might think.

I’m bracing myself against the cascade of guilt and shame flowing from the so-called evangelical community every December.

There will be the usual degrading offering of “you’re spending too much money on this or that,” with a self-righteous sprinkling of “we buy a cheap tree,” one-upped by “we don’t buy a tree at all,” but trumped by the “we only talk and think about Jesus on Christmas” crowd.

Modern-day Pharisees throughout the church will boast of their “just right” limit on individual gifts, as they look for a verse to spew at anyone spending even a dollar more than their “sanctified” amount.

So, I’m supposed to feel guilty about decorating our home to celebrate the Lord’s birth and buying presents for the people I love?

You Gotta Do Better Than That!

Hey, you feel guilty over that if you want to. I’ve got a lot better, more biblical reasons to feel guilty during Christmas:

• I believe in the Incarnation, but sometimes I have doubts. If it isn’t true I’ve wasted most of my life.

• I hope in Christ as my Good Shepherd, but sometimes I get discouraged, even depressed…especially during December.

• I love my Judy with all my heart, but sometimes during our insane holiday schedule she drives me nuts and I say mean and hurtful things…even on Christmas morning.

• I say I want to live openly and honestly, but sometimes I still manipulate people to get what I want and try to hide my shortcomings…even from my closest friends.

• I’ve made a lot of progress in the whole avoid sin thing, but sometimes I still surprise myself and sin as if I had never met Christ…even as I approach sixty!

So if you’re trying to make me feel guilty for enjoying a season that brings families together and everyone gets an extra dose of joy and grace, you’re wasting your time. If you’re trying to shame me for the small extravagances that come from my thankful and loving heart, it’s not going to work.

Here’s What I Know!

And it’s not because I’m a particularly strong or spiritual Christian. I’d have to say I’m just about average, maybe even a little below average. But I live with one Christmas truth lodged deep in my soul: The Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world (1 John 4:14).

My deepest Christmas insight is that I am seriously, profoundly and thoroughly loved by Jesus Christ; and I don’t deserve it because I have done nothing to earn His love. He just showed up in a manger in Bethlehem, lived among us, died for us, and rose again because He knew I needed something that dramatic to have any hope.

I’ve been teaching Psalm 138:8 for over three decades and telling the story of how that wonderful sentence, “The Lord will accomplish what concerns me,” became our life verse. It was a dramatic moment in 1978 when a young Lieutenant Ed Underwood thought he was saying goodbye to his bride and his little family. We thought I was marching to war from Ansbach, Germany and leaving them behind to take care of themselves as the fury of the Soviet Empire rained down on them.

We didn’t go to war, but that was the night Psalm 138:8 became our life verse.

Every time I preach that sermon, people ask me to help them find their life verse. My answer is always the same, “You don’t find your life verse; your life verse finds you.”

Our life verse found us through Judy’s unshakeable faith on that night when we thought our worst fears were coming true. Like David, she had lived a life of dependence on her God:

David’s lifelong experience with answered prayer gave him confidence in his God (Psalm 138:1-3). My Judy had trusted her Jesus through the trials of a little girl losing her daddy and watching her mommy lose herself to alcohol. Nobody had to tell Judy on that night that her God answered prayer; He had proved Himself to her many times. Her lifestyle of dependent prayer “made her bold with strength in her soul” (v 3).

David’s lifelong expectation that his God would be praised for regarding the lowly gave him confidence in His God (Psalm 138:4-6). My Judy had personal experience with a God who kept His eye on a little almost-orphaned little girl who cried out to Him on the night her mother abandoned their family. A Presbyterian pastor’s kindness invited these three homeless children into his home while her mother recovered from the crisis. Her lifestyle of trusting Him in spite of her circumstances had convinced her that “though her Lord is exalted, yet He regards the lowly” (v 6).

So, on the night when our family was “walking in the midst of trouble,” my Judy knew “that He would revive us…that His right hand would save us…and that He would accomplish what concerns us” (vv7-8).

You want a life verse? Then live a life of dependence on your God, and when your worst fears come true, I believe your life verse will find you!”

“The Lord will accomplish what concerns me” (Psalm 138:8, NASB).

Before I almost died ten years ago, Christians who actually asked God for something in faith and expected Him to answer made me feel uncomfortable. Like most Christians, my role had always been to pray for others who may have lost perspective in a tragedy.

But on that day I realized the enormous difference between standing at someone’s deathbed and lying in your own.

Stop telling God what He already knows! I wanted to shout. Look at my wife, my children. I’m dying and you’re preaching on the sovereignty of God? Somebody ask Him for something. There’s not enough faith in this room to heal a bunny rabbit!

Time was running out.

Today our family returns to this desperate place of prayer. My son-in-law, David Newkirk lies in a hospital bed in Pasadena, and he is very, very sick with Gillian Barre Syndrome. An excerpt from my book, When God Breaks Your Heart, summarizes our feelings, our request, and the man who taught us how to pray dangerous prayers of faith:

Just then our elders walked into the room. Even they were shaken by the tortured figure in the bed that eerily resembled their pastor.

Charlie White, mentor to most of us in the room and friend to all, taught us all a lesson in prayer at that moment. Leaning across my bed like a prophet of old, this dear brother cried out to His God:

Father, we are frail and foolish. There is little here we comprehend. But we remember Your love for us and hear the words of Your Son who taught us to pray. He promised us You would listen to our prayers and that He would remind You that we are weak. He told us to pray with the faith of a mustard seed, to believe that You are able to answer our prayers. He told us that with You all things are possible. And so, our Father, we come now to Your throne of grace with this one request: Please heal our pastor. O Lord, we love him and do not want him to die. There is so much to do. Our church needs him; his family needs Him. Please let him live. We beg You, in Jesus’ name.

And then, his own private appeal: “Lord, I love Ed. Please let this boy live and serve. Amen.”

The fear and doubt drained from my heart as this old saint and retired pastor spoke his mighty prayer. His bold words gave us hope. His faith kindled a fire of courageous faith that spread around the world. By the next day, over ten thousand Christians were repeating Charlie’s simple request: Please let Ed live and serve.

There’s a young man I love more than life, my Celia’s David. Yesterday he asked her to tell people to just pray for healing, and “not all that other stuff.”

I know how he feels.

Please kneel with Celia, Judy, and me at the throne of grace and beg our Father in heaven: “Please heal David Newkirk.”

If you believe, you will see the glory of God (John 11:40).

The television celebrity impressed me deeply. I couldn’t help thinking that if he and I had grown up together or had served together in the military, we would have been good friends. I liked him in spite of all the rumors about his lifestyle. He joked about being a “backslidden” worshiper from his childhood church. God had cycled our lives together for one fascinating afternoon when he introduced me to his media world and I talked with him about the history of Church of the Open Door.

Just before our day ended he looked off and asked of no one in particular, “When did the church become so mean?”

I said, “We’re not mean, why don’t you come here and give us a chance?”

He laughed uncomfortably, and said, “I might just come and visit you some Sunday, Ed.”

I prayed for him and we shook hands. As I watched him drive away with his cameraman, his question haunted me.

On the drive home that night I turned my radio dial to Christian talk radio. Appalled by the snarling arrogance of the host, I prayed that the man I had met that day wasn’t listening. Whether he knew it or not, his “we’ll show those sinners when this bill gets passed” and “just wait until God deals with these idiots” sent a message to those outside of God’s grace: God’s on our side and He hates you.

The Bible teaches that God is on the side of the righteous and emphasizes that ultimately our side will win. But our victory will not come through favorable voting returns but at the return of Jesus Christ to rule and reign on earth.

What the Bible does not teach is that God hates sinners. The New Testament says that the message of the church is the Good News of reconciliation “who has reconciled us to himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation.” (2 Corinthians 5:18)

If God hated sinners—those unreconciled to Him—this verse tells us He would have to start with us. Instead, He loves sinners and sent His Son to die in order to reconcile sinners like us. To us, the reconciled sinners, He has given this ministry of reconciliation, “that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and his commit to us the world of reconciliation.” (2 Corinthians 5:19)

So how would your non-Christian friends and acquaintances classify you? Do your life and words scream condemnation or do they whisper reconciliation?

Excerpt from my new book, Reborn to Be Wild: Reviving Our Radical Pursuit of Jesus

Release Date May 2010

David C. Cook Publishers