June 10, 2023

“What’s more important; that you are right, or your relationship is right?” That’s the question God posed to me one morning forty years ago after Linda and I had a bit of a disagreement before I was out the door for work. When I got to the office, I was reaching for the phone so I could apologize, when it rang. Linda had called to apologize to me. 

Over the years, that lesson has been reinforced many times. Like any couple, we have our moments when we’ve yielded to the temptation to press home a point. It’s amazing to me how much we are willing to lose in order to be “right.” I’ve learned the hard way that swallowing my pride goes down easier than eating crow.

Last night, to take the chill off, I had built a fire in the stove in our back room. I damped it down for the night, and all was well…or so I thought. This morning when I woke up, the whole house smelled smoky, and about 6:00 am, the CO monitor went off. I had just opened the door to the stove so the smoldering wood could fully ignite when Linda appeared, looking none too happy. She thought I had tried to start a fire without using a fire starter, a technique I had tried last winter with rather unappealing effect. I tried to explain what had happened, but really had no knowledge of why the house smelled as it did, or why the monitor was blaring throughout the house.

This afternoon, we were in Buffalo to have lunch with my brother and sister in law, my sister, and one of her daughters. We had a wonderful time, but on the way home, I wanted to stop at Home Depot to pick up a box of screws for the garden swing I’m building—a task that should have taken only a couple minutes. After picking up the box, I figured I might as well get the rest of the hardware I would need. Unfortunately, that took a bit longer, and Linda wasn’t particularly pleased when I finally got back to the car.

Fortunately for me, with two incidents in one day, Linda gets over being mad a lot more quickly than I do, but I must say that it helps for me to remember that being right isn’t nearly as important than our relationship being right, and that explanations almost always negate apologies. Four days ago, we celebrated 53 years together. That has been possible because we both learned that “us” being right is better than “me” being right. And it sure helps that I married a forgiving and patient woman. The Scripture says, “Love covers a multitude of sins.” It also covers a lot of stupidity.

Tsogoo

 June 9, 2023

“Tsogoo is going to next trip to Zavkhan province in 19th of June for 10 days and this time he is leading big group 120 people from Ulaanbaatar and team from Erdenet 60 also 20  people from Uvs province. Totally 200 believers would go door to door to share Gospel.”

The English isn’t perfect, but the message is clear, and in a small way, Linda and I get to be a part of it. 

It was 2003; I was in Colorado Springs attending two weeks of continuing education. One morning I was sitting in the hotel breakfast area when a young man approached and asked if I minded if he sat down at my table. His name was Tsogoo, and was the national director for Every Home for Christ in Mongolia. He was in town for the dedication of the new headquarters for the organization, and invited me to the weekend ceremonies where I met people from all over the world. Tsogoo decided to stay an extra week to take classes, so Linda (who had joined me for the second week of training) and I offered to shuttle Tsogoo back and forth from the hotel to the church where the classes were held. At the end of that week, Tsogoo invited us to come to Mongolia.

There we met Tsogoo’s team, which included another Tsogoo. This Tsogoo had been a thug and spent time in prison where he met Tsengel, a Christian who was a part of an evangelistic team, and whom he eventually married. During my two trips to Mongolia, Tsogoo and I became close even though we couldn’t speak each others’ language. He began calling me his “spiritual father,” beginning a friendship that has continued  these twenty years.

Over the years, we’ve supported the Mongolian ministry with our prayers and our gifts, helping Tsogoo travel all over his country preaching the Gospel and seeing hundreds come to Christ. Whenever I’ve felt a bit ineffective in ministry, I think of Tsogoo and the work he is doing, and thank God to be able to be a part of it. We have been blessed more than we deserve and with more than we need. What better use of that with which we’ve been entrusted than to know we’ve helped hundreds of evangelists spread the Good News of Jesus Christ so people we’ll never meet in this life we’ll meet in the next?

Blessing God

 June 8, 2023

“Behold, bless the Lord, 

All you servants of the Lord, 

Who by night stand in the house of the Lord! 

Lift up your hands in the sanctuary, 

And bless the Lord. 

The Lord who made heaven and earth 

Bless you from Zion!”

—Psalm 134:1-3 

The Bible is like a diamond mine. The most precious gems aren’t lying around on the surface. You have to dig for them. Sometimes I have to look at a Scripture for awhile before it yields its treasures to me. I think that’s why every so often before something important, we read, “Behold…” In other words, “pay attention!” Sometimes, Linda thinks I needed such a word, but that’s another story.

This psalm is short and to the point; simply put, it’s an admonition to praise God, especially when coming to his house to worship. Our praise and worship actually blesses God, but we don’t do it nearly as much or as often as we imagine. We come to church, sing a few songs, listen to a sermon and some prayers, receive communion, and go home. And on the drive home, we discuss whether or not the music “spoke” to us or the sermon moved us. The underlying presumption to that a kind of talk is that such is the purpose of our gathering. That presumption is completely wrong. We haven’t necessarily worshipped when we are moved emotionally; if it’s all about emotion, the focus of our attention is ourselves. We can hardly call it worship when we ourselves are the center of attention.

This psalm gives us the remedy for such false notions: Start by shifting your focus to God—“Bless the Lord!” Twice we are told to do so. The message is clear: Worship precedes blessing. Let me say it again: Worship precedes blessing! Seeking the blessing is not the same as seeking God himself, and doing the former can prevent us from doing the latter. In such a situation, any “blessing” we receive is only an illusion, a caricature of reality. Start by blessing God; his blessing will then come to you.

God is Good!

 June 7, 2023

God is so good! I was going to write about another subject, but our son posted about his visit to Roswell Cancer Center this morning, and his news was so good, I have to share it. In February, we learned that two of the five tumors in his brain had disappeared, and on his last visit, the news was that the others were as he put it, “dead.” I was tempted to ask whether that term referred to the cancer cells or his other brain cells, but decided to be nice.

Tonight I thank God for immunotherapy; for the researchers, the doctors, nurses, and staff at Roswell and other research centers who have studied things I cannot comprehend, and who have turned what used to be a short-term death sentence into something manageable and perhaps even curable. A few short years ago, Nate’s diagnosis would have meant that by now he would no longer be with us. Today, if you hadn’t been told of his condition, you would never guess anything was amiss. As I said at the beginning, God is so good!

On top of it all, we thank God for giving us Jessie those years ago. When Linda found out she was pregnant, she cried. She had just accepted a job as a school social worker, and had to turn right around and quit. It didn’t take long for her tears to turn to joy as God gave us an unexpected, but unparalleled gift in her. As executive director of Options Care Center, God is using her to save babies and assist young parents who often have neither the resources nor the skills to raise a child. Happy birthday, Jess! AYFL. As I said, God is SO good!

Agreement

June 5, 2023

Some years ago, I was listening to a younger father who was concerned about the choices his son was making. I knew enough about the situation to know that his concerns were not unfounded. He and his wife prayed fervently for their son, seemingly with little effect. He asked me what more they could do.

Having observed and listened to both husband and wife, I had an inkling of where at least part of the problem lay. The boy was in his late teens, feeling his oats and spreading his wings, and mom and dad had very divergent ways of dealing with it. He saw a young man careening into adulthood like an out-of-control car, and like a driving instructor, was desperately trying to apply just enough brakes to keep from crashing without putting them both through the windshield.

Mom wasn’t able to see her son as a young man. “I just want my little boy back,” was her plaintive cry. I had the unpleasant task of telling her he was a young man and didn’t want to be her little boy anymore.

Both mom and dad were praying faithfully. So why weren’t their prayers being answered? There are many reasons God delays his answers; sometimes it’s because there is growth we need that can only happen with time. Sometimes, it’s because God is patiently molding and shaping life, gently (and sometimes not-so-gently) guiding till we come to repentance and salvation. But sometimes it’s as simple as our neglect of one of the foundational tenets of prayer. 

In Matthew 18, Jesus said, “If “two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in heaven.” (Matthew 18:19) I believe many of our prayers go unanswered because we are not in prayerful agreement. In the case of my friends, they both wanted to see their son saved and delivered from the lifestyle he was pursuing, but they were unable to come to agreement on how that should happen. They were praying and working at cross-purposes. 

If this is true in family matters, it is no less true in the Church, in education, in politics, or business. Disunity disarms our prayers, making them ineffective. When we gather to pray together, one of our first orders of business ought to be, “What do we agree we are going to ask God to do on our behalf?” Scattered priorities and divided loyalties can never muster enough capital to win the very real spiritual battles we face.

Focus

June 4, 2023

“Give me THIS mountain!” So said Caleb to Joshua when the Promised Land had finally been conquered. Forty-five years earlier, Caleb and Joshua were the only two spies who brought back a favorable report about the land God was giving them. The others saw the problems, the obstacles; these two saw through all that to the opportunities. 

It was (and still is) a matter of perspective. We see life not in terms of what is “out there,” but what is “in here,” in our hearts. The others saw themselves as “grasshoppers before giants” (Numbers 13:33). Joshua and Caleb saw that the inhabitants’ protection was gone (Numbers 14:9).. Caleb revealed the reason for the difference: “I brought back word as was in my heart” (Joshua 14:7). What was inside him was more important than what was around him.

His dream was delayed 45 years because of other peoples’ unbelief. Through all the years of wandering, he kept that dream fresh in his heart. Instead of nurturing bitterness against them, for Caleb, the wait just sharpened his thirst. 

It did something else, too. Forty five years earlier, Caleb just wanted to get into the Promised Land—a pretty generic goal. The forty years of waiting coupled with five years of conquest had sharpened his focus to a single place: “Give me THIS mountain!” Sometimes it takes a protracted struggle to know what you really want to get from God. The challenge is God’s way of cutting through all the distractions and disorienting fog of this world so we can see more clearly the goal to which God is calling us.

I’m close to Caleb’s age. I’ve been going to my Promised Land of Cuba for nearly fifteen years, but my mountain is coming into focus, and I’m saying to God, “Give me THIS mountain!”

Linda

June 2, 2023

My wife is an amazing woman! Almost from the first time we met, I realized there was something special about her, and it had to do with her self-sacrificing and giving nature. I remember in college how she would stay up most of the night listening to a friends who were having a hard time with a boyfriend, parent, or some other problem. She refused to sit the bench of her basketball team even though she had injured her hip. More than once I would have to remind her to take care of herself, too.

Today, she spent the day in the kitchen cooking pasta for our granddaughters’ graduation party tomorrow. Knowing how much she likes to be outside, I know this was a labor of love, both for the girls, and for their mothers. While waiting for the pasta to cook, she worked on her womens’ Bible study lessons, did laundry, and paid bills. The only reason she wasn’t also vacuuming the floor or working in her garden is because she had done that earlier in the week. I would starve to death if it weren’t for the meals she prepares. The list could go on, but you get the idea. 

After the gift of forgiveness and salvation, Linda is the best gift God has given me. Tonight, she went to our dinner group even though she was tired and plagued with a headache. When others would throw in the towel, she soldiers on. The number of people on her “to call” list just keeps growing, and she is constantly calling this or that one, just checking up on them. It matters not whether such attention is reciprocated; for her, “it’s just the right thing to do.” She has often said how much she appreciates my spiritual leadership in the home, but in truth, when it comes to living out the faith, I am constantly eating her dust. Tuesday, it will be 53 years I’ve been playing catch-up, and I don’t expect that to change anytime soon. I am simply grateful that God gave me far better than I deserved. My life would be infinitely poorer without her in it.