The Accidental Message

My mother-in-law called. She was laughing. “For the last twenty minutes I’ve been listening to the message you left on my answering machine,” she said. I had to agree that it was a funny message that my wife had left. I was sitting right beside her when she made the call. The funniest part about it, I thought, was that my wife couldn’t stop laughing as she left the recording on the voice mail. It was one of those times when you say something and realize how ridiculous it must sound and you laugh at yourself and you can’t stop as silliness feeds silliness. But for my mother-in-law to listen to that brief message over and over for twenty minutes? Wow. I wasn’t sure it was that entertaining, but then again, I wasn’t on the receiving end.

Turns out my mother-in-law wasn’t laughing at a 45 second message. Our cordless handset hadn’t succeeded in telling the base to end the call and so we accidentally produced an extended audio recording of our home life. Oh no! What had we said? What did she hear? I instantly felt exposed. Had she caught me lecturing my teenage son? Was I short with my wife about something? Did I utter some thoughtless complaint? Had I said something negative about my parents or parents-in-law? (Not that I ever do any of those things, mind you – but, just in case I had – my brain was frantically doing the instant replay of the last hour of my life.) And then I remembered. Soon after the phone message should have ended, I had picked up a book and was quietly reading and then I took a short nap – pretty benign stuff. I hesitantly concluded that I had squeaked by and that other members of my family had entertained my mother-in-law – at least I hoped so.

Several years ago I was at a party. I had struck up a conversation with a stranger, asked him what he did for a living, how long he lived in the area – that sort of thing. After freely answering all my questions he returned the favor and asked what I did for a living. As soon as the words came out of my mouth I could see the panic in his eyes. Unknowingly he had been talking with a “minister.” Oh no! What had he just told me? Did he include some off-color remark? Had he thrown in some four-letter word or spoken some irreligious thing? Had he exposed himself? Now, years later, I understood what that poor fellow had gone through.

I’m a transparent guy. I tend to be fairly vulnerable. Right now I’m sharing my thoughts for everyone to see. Right? Not exactly! I’m in control of what I choose to share. The thought of being the star of “The Truman Show” or having a camera constantly on me as a member of the “Jon and Kate plus 8” family – No Thanks! And yet, the “reality” is…

“Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.” Heb 4:13 (NIV)

“There’s a Father up above and he’s looking down in love. So be careful…” He is listening in. He is watching. Does that comfort us or make us squirm? Does it thrill us to think of all He sees in us? Probably not that!

The implication of Hebrews 4:13 is simple, yet profound: If we were to consciously and consistently keep in mind that everything about us is exposed before God, at the very least we might take a little more responsibility for our lives. Or this “practice of His presence” may be transformational. We might be led to call on Him who can cause all old things to pass away and in His mercy He would give each of us a new heart.

Ron Denlinger (pastor of Lincoln Bible Church)

Let God borrow your boat…he’ll fill it with fish!

Nobody is on top of the world every day. Everyone had ups and downs. Sometimes the world is sweet and sometimes it is sour. Sometimes life moves along briskly, we accomplish what we set out to do and we meet our personal goals. And sometimes things get stuck. Life comes to a halt.
In Luke 5:1-11, we meet three discouraged men. They were fishermen – not recreational fishermen, but workers whose families went hungry if there was no catch. They had fished all night and caught nothing. Now it was morning and the men were washing their nets.
There was a crowd on the beach near where they were working. A big crowd! They were listening to Jesus – pressing in upon him. Jesus steps in the water – out away from the crowd. Suddenly Jesus steps into Simon’s boat. “Put out a little way from shore,” he asks Peter, and he does. From the boat Jesus continues to teach the crowds. Jesus then turned to Simon. “Put out into the deep water,” he tells him, “and let your nets down for a catch.”

It was really quite audacious for Jesus, a landsman, to tell a professional fisherman how to do his business. Very audacious – and Peter answers Jesus immediately explaining the facts to him. “It won’t do any good,” he says, “We have worked all night – and have caught nothing. There is no point to it.”
Have you ever been there? You do your best. You work hard. And the results are zero. An important relationship goes sour and there is nothing you can do. You watch a marriage dissolve and you can’t save it. A project you have worked on just will not pan out. The harder you try – the less you produce.
Have you ever been in the place where all your wisdom tells you – just give up? I have, and the last thing you want to hear when you are in this position are the words “try harder.”
These fishermen were not stupid men. They knew the lake, the ledges where the fish congregated, the kind of weather you had to have to bring in a good catch. They knew the time to fish – and where to fish – and they had gone fishing – at the right time – and at the right place – and come up empty.
“Try over there,” Jesus says. “Over there in the deep water – let your nets down for a catch over there.”
Peter replies, “We have done everything we should have done, everything we were taught to do by our fathers and their fathers before them, we know our business here Jesus, and we have caught nothing … YET – if you say so – I will let down the nets.”
You know the story from here – They threw the nets out from Simon’s boat and engulfed such a great score of fish that the nets began to break. Indeed they caught so many fish that the boats began to sink. It was an amazing catch. A catch made in deep water. A catch taken where there should have been no catch. A catch taken at a time of day when no one fishes! It was a miracle catch!

“Put out into the deep waters and let down your nets for a catch.” When I read those words … I can almost hear Jesus calling me to go deeper as well. “Come on, Ron; let’s dive a little deeper here,” Jesus says. “But I tried that before!” I respond. “Come on, let’s try it again,” Jesus says.
So I give Jesus control of my boat, my ministry, my relationships, my finances! I hear his call to go a little deeper, “Give and it will be given to you, a GOOD measure, PRESSED down, SHAKEN together, RUNNING over, will POUR into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”(Luke 6:38)

Sometimes we just need to head out into the deep waters and let down our nets for no better reason than Jesus has asked us to do so.
Our nets may come up empty for many days in a row but if we are obedient to God – if we are willing to listen and try the deeper things he suggests – if we are willing to venture out to the deeper truths – our nets will in the end be filled and filled so abundantly that our nets will almost break and our boats almost sink.

Ron Otto, preaching minster, Lincoln Christian Church

Silence

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.”-Deuteronomy 6:4

We live in the loudest society in the history of the world. We are inundated with noise. We hear it in our cars, our homes, our businesses. We shop with background music, we watch sports in stereo surround. Some of us even sleep with the soft purr of white noise lulling us away into the night. We lead loud lives. Much of the time this is not a problem until we want to hear something else, another sound that can’t find its way through all the noise. In these moments we can feel like we are trying to have a conversation at a concert, straining to hear the words we so desperately want over the din of rock music and the lyrical whines of the singer. In short, the noise can drown out the most important things in our lives.

And this brings us to silence. For centuries it was simply understood that people of faith would experience silence. And in their silences, people of faith experienced great things. From monastics to peasants to kings, history is rich with stories of God’s voice penetrating the silence. And so it comes to us. If we want to know what God is really up to in our lives. If we want to understand where God wants us to go. If we hope to draw ourselves closer to God then we need to spend some time being quiet. We need to make room for the still, small voice of the Lord to enter our minds and thus shape our lives. Try it this week. Turn off the radio in the car. Turn off the TV after the kids go to bed. Turn down the radio while you work in the kitchen. Be quiet and listen. Hear, O people, the Lord is your God. To know it, you have to be able to hear it.

Prayer: God, help me to be silent, help me to listen for your voice in my world and in my life. I need your help. The noise has overcome me and I feel lost from you. I need silence and I need you. Amen.

Love Your Enemies

Rejoice!