Tomato Theology
Six pots of pampered tomato plants line the east side of our patio. The joy of harvesting the rich red fruit of the vine increases exponentially this month in Southern California. But the joy follows months of careful nurturing.
I’m the nurturer and vinedresser of these six vines. Those of you who know me well can imagine what my intensity brings to the process.
I’m a mess.
The websites don’t help by offering vague advice coupled with doomsday warnings.
“Don’t overwater or your tomatoes won’t ripen. But whatever you do, don’t let them go too long without water during the hot days of August and September!”
“Fertilize your plants or they will soon stop producing fruit. But whatever you do, don’t use too much fertilizer or you’ll burn the vines!”
“Prune your tomatoes to induce fruit production. But whatever you do, don’t over-prune or you’ll traumatize the plants!”
Like I said, “I’m a mess!”
Every time I obsess and worry over my care of my vines I think about the One who cares for me.
His name is Jesus, the Son of God.
He told me plainly that His Father is the Vinedresser of my life—never under or over pruning. He assures me that His Father knows exactly how to produce maximum fruit in my life, even when the pruning may hurt a little.
His word tells me plainly that He is full of grace and truth. I think of grace as the water that satiates my thirsty soul with love and mercy. I think of truth as the fertilizer that stimulates growth through His Word and His community.
Sometimes I try to take that responsibility from the Vinedresser and His Son. You know, the responsibility of caring for me, of stimulating growth in my life, of soothing my thirsty soul.
When I do that, I’m really a mess. Because then I’m not just trying to grow some fruit to make my sandwiches better, I’m trying to grow the fruit that everyone I love desperately needs.
Are you a mess today? Could it be that your failure to trust in the Vinedresser and His Son to care for you is the reason?
August 6, 2010 3 Comments
Satan’s Favorite Place
Do you have a place in your home that you just don’t want to think about because it’s so full of junk that even opening the door makes you tired? Maybe it’s that garage, closet or spare room you’ve been promising yourself you’d clean up someday, but you just keep throwing the stuff you don’t know what to do with in there.
When you throw something else in there, you pause for a minute, feel a little guilt and a lot of shame, but turn off the lights and close the door.
“I’ll take care of that later,” you promise yourself.
Most of us would have to admit that there are places in our lives that are the equivalent of those dark rooms full of junk. Junk we don’t know what to do with, so we just turn out the lights and close the door.
“I’ll take care of that later!”
You may hate that room, but there is a being in the universe that absolutely loves that room.
The devil.
It’s his favorite place in your life because it’s the place he can hang out as he screams his lies into your heart:
“You’re just a piece of garbage, no wonder God doesn’t let you do something important for Him.”
“See, I told you you’d never measure up. Do you imagine Jesus really loves you anymore? If I were you, I’d just give up. Come on in here with me, we can party and it’s going to feel really good.”
“Whatever you do, don’t turn on the lights! If your Christian friends ever knew what you were really doing in here, they’d abandon you like a stray dog in a war zone.”
For a lot of men and the wives and children who love them, the dark place in their lives is sexual addiction—more specifically, pornography.
Recently God moved powerfully in our church through my friend, Kevin Butcher, at our men’s retreat. His messages exposed the source of shame and documented how grace in community can turn on the lights of mercy and hope. Some of our men, their hearts encouraged enough to trust Jesus and us with their “dark room,” disclosed their secret life.
One of our pastors, Colin McDougall, accurately captured what God has done with their courage in a recent letter, begging people to pray for us and them:
Dear prayer partners, America’s critics are in the hundreds of millions, but those who are willing to pay the price in prayer are numbered by handfuls. Thank you for your commitment to pray with me for the revival of our nation. And please continue to pray that some portion of this revival would begin here with us.
This month I need to be more specific and beg you to join me in prayer for our men, many of whom have been caught in the undertow of the pornographic addiction sweeping our nation. Lust has always been a favorite trap employed by the devil, but our generation’s inventions for digitizing and transmitting images have turned an unfair fight into a rout in homes across our country. While we keep Satan’s secret for him, we are vulnerable and exposed, in the dark and on his terms; but when we walk in the light, Jesus promises to restore our fellowship with God and with one another, to forgive our sins and to cleanse us by His blood from all unrighteousness. The message of First John reminds us that we can’t successfully compartmentalize: there is no way to serve Christ in public while we compromise with a hidden life in private. Hypocrisy in us does not somehow save face for Him.
At our retreat in May several courageous men from this congregation came into the light with various hidden sins, and we got to experience firsthand that Jesus keeps His promise. We discovered that pornography, especially pornography on the internet was part of the darkness restraining our fellowship with one another and with Him. Though the sins were secret, the effect was a cascade of destruction. But now this band of brothers is experiencing fellowship and serving Christ like never before (even if this has cost some of our men the lost respect of a handful of people who would rather glory in appearances than in the new life). Their testimony of grace has encouraged others to join them in the light.
Well, now you know: pornography is a problem among the men in our church. I hope that doesn’t cause you to lose respect for us. I hope that instead you will pray that the first steps of confession and restoration of fellowship will spread across the congregation and will blossom into that authentic holiness without which no one will see the Lord. You can be even more specific, because we have asked a friend of our church, Dr. Mark Laaser, to meet with us on August 14 while he is on the west coast. Dr. Laaser wrote “Healing the Wounds of Sexual Addiction” the book that we have found most beneficial for men who are serious about getting free from this sin, and his wife Debra wrote the book we are using to encourage their wives. Pray for freedom and deliverance but also that we will be a community that doesn’t just talk about God’s grace; we want to regularly bathe in it!
Eight years ago when I first asked you to pray with me for revival that would start here, this was not what I had in mind. But today I am praying that this deep conviction of sin would take root in our corner of LA County and spread wide. Would you please join me?
July 27, 2010 2 Comments
Arms’ Length, Hands and Feet
If you’re a devoted follower of Christ, you can’t avoid it: Conflict with this pagan world we live in.
The New Testament teaches us that we’re privileged pilgrims. We don’t fit into this evil world system. We’re citizens of another Kingdom and we serve another King.
And until He comes for us or returns with us, we live as aliens and sojourners in a world set against us and our coming King.
Still, He commands us to engage with this evil world and the people He so dearly loves.
So how do we walk that tightrope, engaging in a world that hates us without embracing its godless values?
Two verses in 1 Peter answer that question:
Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.
The word translated “abstain” literally means to “hold yourself away from.” It’s not really speaking of an all or nothing dynamic, but a distancing. We’re surrounded by the values, priorities, indulgences, and wickedness of this pagan world. Our responsibility is to keep it all at arms’ distance. When you and I begin to embrace this stuff that the world says will make us happy or fulfill us, we’re holding it too close.
Rather than aggressive behaviors condemning and battling this evil world system, we need to overwhelm our enemies with good works—kindness, justice, and love—that force them to admit that God may have shown up in their lives. It’s not just the words of our mouth about Jesus that will win them over, but also our actions as His hands and feet in this hurtful world.
This gives me two clear truths to carry in my heart that will serve me well in any and every circumstance as I try to relate to this evil world in ways that honor my Savior:
Keep this world’s values and comforts of this alien world at arms length. This doesn’t mean that I live like a monk in a cave. Neither does it mean that I abstain from a dirty dozen or terrible ten list that the so-called Christian culture has decided Christians must avoid. What it means is that when I begin to pull anything this world offers close to my heart, it’s too close.
Become the hands and feet of Jesus in this hurtful world. This doesn’t mean that I don’t tell people about Jesus. Neither does it mean that I have to sell everything and move to Madagascar. What it means is that when I when I see a need I meet it or an injustice I stand against it…in the name of Jesus.
“Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21).
July 21, 2010 No Comments
Why Does She Sweep?
Sex, Not Words
Hers was the first cabin on the right down the most desperate street I have ever walked. Like her neighbors, she hurried onto her “porch” at the sound of men’s voices. And, like her neighbors, the hard eyes in her young face stared disappointment when she recognized our missionaries.
In the few weeks she had occupied her shack of a bungalow on this lonely island in a forgotten corner of Lake Victoria, she had learned from her “coworkers” that these missionaries only wanted to talk. She didn’t come here to make conversation with men. This was a street where lonely fishermen with fast money came to pay for sex, not for words.
Just One More Whore
As our friends who had dedicated their lives to the hopeless citizens of these island fishing villages described the deep injustice of the place, she reached back into her one-bed-room for something—a straw broom. Slow mechanical strokes brushed cigarette butts, candy wrappers, and small wads of filth into the street. She never looked up; never spoke. Just one more whore living on a street of whores until the aids virus erases her from the scene.
And then, in the cruel rhythm of life on this exploited frontier, her brutalized replacement will take up housekeeping.
When we came to the end of the street, I wondered aloud for our group, “Why was she sweeping?”
Someone’s Little Girl
On the long boat ride back to our missionary’s home in Kahunda, Tanzania on the southern shore of Lake Victoria, I thought about when and where the little girl-turned prostitute learned to sweep.
Who taught her? Was it her mother, her grandmother?
What were they imagining for her when her little hands grasped the handle for the first time?
What pictures came to her little mind as she swept the dirt floor of the little house she grew up in?
What ordinary innocent dreams of husband, home, and children?
Hate Sin; Beg God
I hated sin more than ever before, begged God for her soul, and asked Him to please break the cycle of generational sin in that evil place.
And I thanked God for the privilege of sending Andy and Margaret Anderson to her world.
“But when He saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion for them, because they were weary and scattered, like sheep having no shepherd. Then He said to His disciples, ‘The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest’” (Matthew 9:36-38).
June 24, 2010 No Comments
Purified to Love!
One of the reasons I believe the Jesus Movement stopped moving is that we didn’t love one another well.
We divided over theology, spiritual gifts, politics, and the just plain “I don’t like him or her” sins most believers are all too familiar with.
Sometimes our excuse for divisiveness is, “I just can’t get along with that kind of Christian!”
Really?
Peter would disagree. In his first letter he says that when we obeyed the truth of the Gospel by believing in Jesus our hearts were purified (1 Peter 1:22). He uses the perfect tense when he speaks of this purification of our souls. The perfect tense means that the work was completed the moment we believed.
His application?
Our souls were purified so that we could “love one another fervently with a pure heart.”
The next time you begin to think you can’t love that “extra grace required” Christian in your world, picture Peter standing next to you and saying, “Yes you can! God made it possible the moment you believed in His Son!”
June 15, 2010 No Comments