Faith for Life - The Great Shepherd

Preached on Sunday, March 26, 2017

Scripture readings: Psalm 23; John 10:1-21

A grandma gave her little grandson a big hug when he came in the door, and she said, “How’s my little lamb?” The boy’s answer was, “Grandma, I don’t want to be your little lamb any more. I want to be your little tiger!”

Walking along the Columbia River at Desert Aire, WA
March 2017

Jesus described us as his flock, with himself being our good shepherd. This has a lot to tell us about who Jesus is and what he wants us to become. It’s true that, compared to Jesus, we are pretty sheepish. But the main reason Jesus compares us to sheep in his parable of the good shepherd is to let us know that, if sheep are lucky to have a good shepherd, then how much better it is to be real human beings with Jesus as our Lord, our Savior, and our Friend. (paraphrase of Leslie Weatherhead)

The root of the Hebrew word for shepherd is the same as the root for friend. And shepherd is also one of the titles given to the ancient kings of Israel.

Jesus is our friend and our King: our Lord. He isn’t so much telling us that we’re sheep as he is telling us that he’s our friend and leader, and that we can count on him.

A good shepherd is an expert shepherd. Jesus means that he knows what he’s doing and so we’re in good hands. We’re in safe hands. Two kids were talking about their dogs. One kid had taught his dog to do lots of tricks. The other kid hadn’t, and he asked the successful dog-training-kid how he did it. His friend said, “Well, first of all, you’ve got to know more than your dog.”

A good shepherd knows more about being a sheep than the sheep do. Even if they could talk, sheep couldn’t tell you much about themselves. They could say: “I’m eating very well, thank you.” Or, “I’m playing.” Or, “I’m tired.” Or, “I’m scared.”

If you asked the shepherd how his sheep were doing, he could tell you where they were in the season, where they had come from, how long the present pasture would hold out, and where their next pasture would be. The shepherd could tell you if there were any signs of danger serious enough to worry about.

If you asked a sheep what a stream was for, they would tell you, confidently, that a stream was for drinking. The shepherd would tell you that a stream could also be for crossing to get to the next pasture, or to get back to the corral, and home.

Sheep know what they want to eat, and where they want to eat their way to. The shepherd knows whether their desires are good for them.

The sheep that’s always able to go its own way is, in the end, the lost sheep, the frightened hungry sheep, the wolf’s dinner. It’s the sheep who follow their shepherd that have the most abundant lives.

For humans following Jesus, there are two kinds of following.

The most sheep-like kind of following is the practical kind. It’s getting directions and being guiding in life’s choices. “What should be my life’s work?” “Where should I live?” “Who should I marry?”

“Shall I have a slice of the chocolate cream pie, or a slice of the coconut cream pie?” These are the questions about the mechanics of life. These are important, but not the most important questions.

After you eat the chocolate pie, you could realize your mistake and you could go back for some of that coconut pie. Although you could eat your way into the problem of having to stop eating any pie at all.

I prayed very hard for guidance before I came here, but I’m always aware of a problem about this. When I was in college, I had to make a choice between two completely different jobs. I struggled in prayer about this choice because I was a very serious Christian. I prayed, and prayed, and I felt, in the end, that God was laughing at me and saying, “Dennis, choose either job. I’ll bless you either way.”

That’s one way of following. The other way is for the more mature sheep. This means following Jesus where he goes morally and spiritually.

It isn’t so much a matter of where to go, but how you get there. After all, Jesus is more than a shepherd and we are more than sheep. Instead of leading us to pastures of grass, like different spots on the map, Jesus is leading us to pastures of fellowship and relationship with others, pastures of faithfulness, pastures of commitment, pastures of peace, pastures of involvement.

Jesus described his own best pasture to his disciples, and to the woman at the well, in Chapter Four of the Gospel of John. Jesus said, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me.” Jesus’ favorite pasture is serving his Father.

This is where Jesus really goes ahead of us and leads us. Being a sheep, in Jesus’ flock, means asking yourself, “How can I apply Jesus’ way of life, or his way of loving, or his way of praying, or his way of sacrifice?”

So, our choice of what to do and where to do it is not as important as our choice of how to live with the Lord, and with others, along the way. Things like our job and our place in life are mainly something that occupies us while we apply ourselves to serving Jesus and others, and loving Jesus and others.

At the same time, the practical choices we make will set us up for a special set of opportunities and problems that we wouldn’t have had otherwise. God will use what we choose, and work it into our lives with the proper blessings, and losses, and people, that will allow us to grow the most in faith and love.

There seem to be wrong turns and detours, but the main part of following the good shepherd is following how to live, not where to live. Following Jesus is moral and spiritual, and that is the obedience of following that will allow him to make you the person he created you to be.

A sheep can never hope to become like its shepherd, but Jesus is more than a shepherd, and we are more than sheep. We will never be like Jesus in all his glory, but we can be like him in surprising ways: in humility, in simplicity, in love.

That’s what matters. Whatever your practical choices, you will look back and see that you might have done better. You might have been wiser. Yet the good shepherd always gave you the best that you were prepared to receive. You will see that Jesus has always provided for you and cared for you along the way, and he always will. Even the times when he had to correct you were right and good.

Following the good shepherd means following the love, the good faith, the strength, the courage, and the wisdom of Jesus in all your relationships. If you do this, then you will look back and see the growth and the leading that the Lord has given you.

You will look back and see the Lord’s power at work, leading you and caring for you. That is another part of following. There is power in this.

The Greek word used here for good (as in the good shepherd) also means “beautiful”. It means a beauty that is attractive and powerful. This beauty doesn’t only serve itself, it actually does something to those who see it. We have to experience this strange, and powerful, and compelling beauty, or else we won’t know anything at all, no matter how well we might follow.

Something of the beauty of Jesus has to go into our heart, or else something essential will be missing. Jesus describes the powerful beauty of his voice as the bond between him and his sheep: between him and us.

I was at a church women’s meeting once, where there were a couple of mothers with babies and there was a baby sitter in a nearby room with the babies and the older kids. We heard a baby start to cry and one of the mothers got up and left the meeting, because she knew that the sound of crying came from her own baby’s voice. Her baby’s voice had power, and that one voice moved her, and not the others, because the crying was just for that one mother.

Who Jesus is, and what he has done for us, is a unique, powerful, and beautiful voice that reaches inside us, changes us, and motivates and moves us. Who Jesus is, and what he has done for us, is a bond that ties us to him, and we are no longer the same.

Jesus is the sacrificing shepherd. His rod and his staff are the cross that comforts us, that heals us and promises that we are loved with a love that is safe and indestructible.

An ordinary shepherd would die for his sheep only because he was risking his life to keep them, and himself, alive. An ordinary shepherd wouldn’t want to die because, if he did, that would be the end of the sheep, just as much as if he had run away. The enemy would have a free hand and the flock would be defenseless and lost.

Jesus is different because he intentionally sacrificed his life for love of us. In his life, and death, and resurrection, we see how far he went to share everything that we have got to deal with it, and also to give us everything that he has for new life.

Jesus fought with, and took the punches of, all our enemies: temptation, weakness, tiredness, abandonment, sin, and even death. Jesus intentionally went all the way so that wherever we are he can come to us qualified to be our good shepherd.

The cross is his tool (his rod and his staff) because it is how he guides us to live and encourages us to trust. The cross represents a real battle that he has fought for us, and for our salvation (our rescue), because it really was the weapon of his success. The cross is how he sets us free from our sins, and our guilt, and our fears. The cross is the sign that Jesus is the best shepherd (the great shepherd), and that he will never quit, and never hold back.

Paul the apostle wrote “For all the promises of God find their Yes in him.” (2 Corinthians 1:20 RSV) On the cross, God, “made him to be sin, who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:21 RSV) These are the accomplishments that Jesus achieved by using the weapon or the tool of the cross.

When we follow Jesus, our Good Shepherd, we start out as sheep: smelly, foolish, and fuzzy. The path we take with him is changing us into something else. Instead of merely guiding us and protecting us; instead of merely planning for us; the skill and the beauty of Jesus are changing us into his children; his own sons and daughters; his own little brothers and little sisters. Jesus is much more than any good shepherd. Jesus is our Lord, and Savior, and Friend.

Set the Gospel Free - Roads and Doors

Preached on Sunday, February 14, 2016

Scripture readings: Colossians 4:2-6; Acts 16:6-10

Along Lower Crab Creek, Near Desert Aire/Mattawa WA
January 2016

The following radio conversation was overheard between the US Navy and Canadian authorities off the coast of Newfoundland.

It was foggy: visibility zero.

The American captain radioed the Canadians: “Please divert your course fifteen degrees to the north to avoid a collision.”

The Canadians answered: “Please divert your course fifteen degrees to the south to avoid a collision.”

The Americans responded: “This is a US Navy ship. I say, again, divert your course.”

The Canadians answered: “No, I say again, YOU divert YOUR course.”

The American captain yelled: “WE ARE THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN, THE SECOND LARGEST SHIP IN THE ATLANTIC FLEET. WE ARE ACCOMPANIED BY THREE DESTROYERS, THREE CRUISERS, AND NUMEROUS SUPPORT VESSELS. I DEMAND THAT YOU CHANGE YOUR COURSE FIFTEEN DEGREES NORTH. THAT’S ONE-FIVE DEGREES NORTH, OR COUNTER MEASURES WILL BE UNDERTAKEN TO ENSURE THE SAFETY OF THIS SHIP!”

The Canadians answered back: “We are a lighthouse. It’s your call.”

Sometimes what we call the church has been compared to a ship. Actually it has been compared to an ark, like in the story of Noah and the ark. There are jokes about that.

In another way God’s people are not a single boat, but a fleet on a mission. Like any modern fleet we sail in a cloud of communications: with headquarters, with each other, with other ships at sea, with lighthouses and with other navigational networks.

For us, who gather here, this is our base. This is our home harbor. We serve as a fleet together. There are other fleets a lot like us, for their size and for the age of their commissioned ships.

Other fleets might be bigger. They might also have a lot of baby ships. Maybe we should call them training ships. I wish we had some of those, but we don’t right now. We could be given an assignment in which we have to take on a bunch of those training ships. Right now we are on a mission in which we train each other. We are training to communicate with other ships at sea, and we are authorized by headquarters to commission those independent ships into new ships of the fleet.

Of course you can already tell that I have no idea what I’m talking about. It just seemed to me that Paul, and his missionary team, and his churches, were all moving in this cloud of communication with headquarters, and with each other, and with a sea that was crowded with other ships (I mean other people).

There was a connection (for them as it is with us) between communication and navigation. For Paul, in the story we read today from the Book of Acts, conditions seemed to encourage them to chart a course in a particular direction, and each time they settled on their new destination or a mission, headquarters communicated with them (in the form of the Holy Spirit) not to go that way and not to do that thing.

Paul was smart. He was full of faithful determination and experience. Paul loved the Lord, and he loved a new mission, and he especially loved the mission to grow the fleet.

We don’t know how the communication took place. We don’t know whether headquarters communicated with Paul and his friends through circumstances, like really hot resistance that kept them from going where they wanted, or whether communication came in the form of some low-frequency inner-voice, or a deep conviction that formed within them, when they prayed. We don’t know.

Don’t you imagine that they must have felt very confused and frustrated? They may also have felt very defeated and demoralized.

Somehow, every step of their way, the Lord made all their best options impossible. Whenever they plotted the next best course, the Spirit said “no”. It was when they came to the coastal city of Troas that they literally came to the end of the road.

Their mission had taken them on the road that stopped at the shoreline. Then the Lord told them that, when you come to the end of the road, you might just take a boat. Sister Maria, in “The Sound of Music” says, “When God closes a door, somewhere he opens a window.”

Paul was relentless, and brilliant, and creative. Still he missed the point of those closed doors and the end of the road. Then God spoke, and Paul refused to learn from all his past frustrations and all his past defeats. God spoke to Paul, and Paul listened. Then Paul spoke with his team. So they went off-road. They dropped all their most carefully considered options and they took God’s way instead.

Not everyone does this. I remember, long ago, a poster with a kitten on it. The logo on the poster said, “When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hold on.”

That’s what the kitten was doing. It was very cute, of course. The problem is that, sometimes, deciding to hang on is the last decision that some people ever make.

Holding on can work for a while, until headquarters sends you the next message. I like the Disney cartoon series “Phineas and Ferb”. The main characters are very adventurous kids. For Phineas and Ferb, the next likely message will not say “hold on”. It will probably say, “Jump.”

I often think that something will be possible if I jump. You might not believe me, but I have done this before.

This is what we must pray about. All Christians and all congregations must pray like this.

They usually don’t, because they don’t have to. They have alternatives to jumping. Most of the time, they can follow the trends and the best advice. They can listen to the experts. They can use their best judgment and their common sense. They can read the latest how-to book. But that is, somehow, not quite the same as being in communication with the Holy Spirit.

I don’t mean for us to not use our heads and to not pick other people’s brains. I love doing that. Brains are good. God made our brains; and even other people’s brains as well. Yay brains! Go brains!

You might say that, in our story in Acts, God spoke to Paul by using all of Paul’s exhaustive planning, and all of his constant course-changing, as a way of giving him a completely different plan: an unexpected plan, an unplanned plan. Paul’s frustrated planning made him receptive to God’s real plan. This can happen to us and it would be a wonderful thing.

Paul saw our navigation, as followers of Jesus and as a family of followers, as a combination of brains and Spirit. He said, “Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity.” (Colossians 4:5) There’s the brain, but remember it has to be a Spirit-filled brain.

Remember that the good news of the gospel is that God followed an unconventional, completely unexpected plan. God became a baby, and a dusty, calloused carpenter, and a convict on a cross, and an escapee from an empty tomb. The good news of the love of God (as we meet God in Jesus) is a pure and earth-shaking miracle. It is a superhuman gift that we call grace. It is a superhuman power that makes us become the humble humans that God created us to be.

We call this salvation, but it is a miracle. It is also called grace, and it has got to fill us up.

Paul told us to us to talk like people filled up with a miracle. He said, “Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” (Colossians 4:6)

Every encounter with everyone around us is a kind of miracle. It’s a kind of grace. It’s filled with a kind of wonder that makes us wiser than this world.  It really is good news and we should be able to tell it with unadulterated happiness.

It should be “tasty” to any sane person. I think that is why Paul said that it should be “seasoned with salt”. What we share with others should come out tasty for us and for them.

Paul said, “Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful, and pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains.” (Colossians 4:2-3)

The mystery is the wonderful surprising story. The mystery is this miraculous grace that fills us up, and which we could never have imagined without actually knowing Jesus. It’s that kind of mystery.

There you see the miraculous open door. Why would anyone (especially the people who were holding Paul prisoner; and especially the officials who were handling his case) listen to a prisoner’s source of joy? There was no reasonable course for Paul to follow. All he hoped for was simply a suddenly open door.

Paul said to pray and be watchful. In prayer we have dealings beyond this world and yet, in these dealings, we are supposed to be able to watch for how to live as Christians in this world. We watch for opportunities that come from God. And we are open to those opportunities because we are thankful.

Paul was thankful in chains. Paul was thankful at the end of his road, and at the end of his rope. Paul just went off-road. Paul jumped.

I had a hard prayer exercise this past week. My prayer journal instructed me to spend an hour asking God what to do next. I was instructed to ask God what to do next, that morning, at every step of the way. Should I brush my teeth next, or should I shave?

Well I always do things in the same order every morning. How could I do that by asking?

It was hard. I never thought it would be so hard. But I realized that I need to live more by asking, and not so much by habit, and not so much by planning custom, and not even by reason. I tried for more than an hour I tried all day, and the next day, but it was hard.

The people who designed that prayer journal were smart. We must learn to live by asking. I can see that this is what we all must learn to pray and to do: otherwise we will miss the open door. We will not receive the signal. This is what the church needs. God help us.

The Lord’s Supper has something to teach us about this. It requires our watchfulness. It requires us to see the strange opportunity. This is a funny meal that brings us into fellowship with all the fullness of God in a little bite of bread and in a small sip from a cup.

There’s a wonderful passage in a church document called “The Scot’s Confession” It was written by the Church of Scotland, during the reformation, in the year 1560. It says this, in its old and fancy language, about our fellowship with Jesus in this meal. “…This union…which we have with the body and blood of Christ Jesus in the right use of the sacraments is wrought by means of the Holy Ghost, who by true faith carries us above all things that are visible, carnal, and earthly, and makes us feed upon the body and blood of Christ Jesus, once broken and shed for us but now in heaven, and appearing for us in the presence of his Father.” (“The Scot’s Confession, Chapter 21)

In a sense, in this meal, we have our fellowship with Jesus not merely by him coming down to us here. It is just as much by our meeting him, in the Spirit, in heaven, and having fellowship in heaven with everything that Jesus is, and possesses, and promises, and does.

This is what the Church has in it. This is what we have in us. In all our planning there is a course charted for us with Christ in heaven. This is how we navigate as a church and as individual Christians every day.

Our life, as Christians, comes to us by a miracle that we never could have planned. This is what we have that enables us to watch, and see, and know what to say to each other, and to our families, and to our neighbors, and to our communities.

This is how we, as a church, can know what to do and to say to reach others for Jesus, and bring them into the family of faith and life. This is how we find what to do at the end of our road or at the end of our rope. This is how we find that open door.

Q&A How Does God Tell You Things, And How Can You Be Sure?

Preached on Sunday September 6, 2015

Scripture readings: John 14:15-31; Acts 21:1-14

Woody Allen once said, “If only God would give me some clear sign – like making a large deposit in my name at a Swiss bank.”

Pictures from Fullerton Arboretum
June 2015

There are certain places in each of the four gospels that tell us that the Lord will lead us, and guide us, and help us know what to say and do. God will tell us things.

John, in his gospel, sheds a lot of light on our continuing reliance on God’s presence, and God’s communication with us. Jesus said, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” (John 14:18) In other words, Jesus will always serve as a parent to us and do what parents do; to teach us, and guide us, and go with us, and to take us with him.

Earlier in the gospel of John, Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd.” (John 10:11ff) He said he would walk ahead of us, which is another way of saying that he shows us the way. He guides us. He directs us in ways that are good for us.

Jesus said, “The Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things, and will remind you of everything I have said to you.” (John 14:26) Jesus said, “If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him, and make our home with him.” (John 14:23)

All of this means that, when we belong to Jesus, we belong to God in all his fullness (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) and this is about a rich and loving relationship. This is intimacy.

Our relationship with God will not be blind and deaf. Even if we start out not seeing well or not hearing well, we will not end that way. God wants to make us into seeing and hearing children.

God has no policy of giving us the silent treatment. The silent treatment is not what faith is about.

God tells us things all the time. The Bible tells us the story of a God who reveals himself, and searches us out. In the Book of Job it says, “God speaks in one way and in two, though man does not perceive it.” (Job 33:14, R.S.V.) In other words, God has lots of ways of always telling us things, even when we are not aware of it.

The creation is full of God telling us things: Psalm 19 says, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.” (Psalm 19:1-4)

God speaks to us through creation, and through the scriptures, and through prayer, and through music, and through fellowship with other people, and through worship. God speaks to us through the circumstances of our lives.

God speaks to us, in all of these things (usually through something we may call a still, small voice). God’s voice is almost like the voice of our own thoughts, only they are not our thoughts at all.

Long ago I served a church on the south coast of Oregon. I remember God directing me on one of my days off down there. I wanted to take a walk on the beach near Reedsport. I was looking forward to walking by the ocean.

Although I was driving to Reedsport, I suddenly felt that I needed to turn off on a road that led to a lake instead. The lake was another one of the places where I liked to go; only I didn’t want to go there that day. I wanted the ocean; but I turned anyway, and stopped at the lake. Being a creature of habit, I always started around the lake by taking the trail to the right. This time I took the trail around to the left.

There was a bench near the start of that part of the trail, and there was a man sitting on that bench. I wanted quiet, to be alone and pray. I pray well when I walk. But I stopped and sat beside the stranger, and started a conversation with him. I never do that.

The man had just gone through a divorce, and then he had been diagnosed with an eye condition that was going to make him blind. He was a Christian who had drifted away from the church and from fellowship with other Christians. He had drifted away from prayer and intimacy with God.

He told me, after we had talked for a while, that he felt the Lord was calling him back to a deeper relationship with him. He also confided that he had been driving somewhere else and had felt compelled to stop at the lake, and walk down the trail, and sit on that bench, even though there was somewhere else that he was supposed to be.

I told him that it had been the same with me. We prayed together, and parted.

The point is that there is this still, small voice that seems to lead us, without coming from us. God’s still, small voice is like a thought that is laid upon our thought; but it comes from outside us, or from beyond us, and often in spite of us.

In the book of Acts, we are told of many different ways that the Lord had, and may still have, of speaking to us and telling us the things that we need to know, and say, and do. The book of Acts begins with Luke addressing his readers with the purpose of his writing his gospel and the Acts. He writes this: “In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day he was taken up to heaven.” (Acts 1:1)

This means that what Jesus began to do and teach in the Gospel, he continued to do and teach in the Book of Acts. By implication, Jesus is still doing things and teaching among us now.

In the Book of Acts there are supernatural ways that the Lord speaks: through dreams, and visions, and the visitations of angels, and people speaking by the direct inspiration of the Holy Sprit: speaking as prophets. There are places, though, where the Lord speaks in humbler ways: through shipwrecks, through friendships (Acts 11:25-26), and through his people meeting together, and arguing, and discussing things when there is confusion and disagreement (Acts 15).

The Lord has spoken to me in every one of these ways, except through shipwreck. The Lord has spoken to me through you. I know this for a fact. And the Lord has spoken to you through me. I am sure of this.

But how can you be sure? How can you be sure that the Lord is telling you any specific thing with a clear message?

I would say that, even if you received the clearest possible message, you might not understand it, and you might not find it easy to follow. Even if God spelled out what he wanted to tell you in letters printed across the sky, you would have no idea of where that message would take you, or what it would mean for you as the years passed by.

This is part of what Luke is telling us, in the portion of the Book of Acts where Paul was walking into the trap that was going to close on him for the rest of his life in a long, uncertain, and dangerous imprisonment. The trap would spring a long set of legal and political trials and appeals that were going to lead to his beheading in Rome.

Paul ended up in chains, and we do not know, for sure, whether he was ever a truly, legally, free man again. We know that Paul was taken as a prisoner to Rome, and we know that he was executed in Rome.

In our reading in Acts, we see the other disciples warning Paul not to go to Jerusalem. Luke tells us that they urged Paul “through the Spirit” not to go. The words “through the Spirit” means (at very least) that the Holy Spirit told them something that made them plead with Paul not to go to Jerusalem.

The Spirit told them that Paul was in danger. Through the warning they received, and through their understanding of that warning, they tried to persuade Paul not to walk into that trap.

In the chapter before this, Paul told another group of disciples, in another city, that this kind of message seemed to follow him everywhere he went. Paul stated his case (as he saw it) this way. He said, “And now, compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there. I only know that in every city the Holy Spirit warns me that prison and hardships are facing me. However, I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me – the task of testifying to the gospel of God’s grace.” (Acts 20:22-24)

Paul felt that he was being “compelled by the Spirit”. He felt that God had a clear message for him, and this message was that he must be willing to go forward to his arrest and imprisonment, even if it led to his death.

Paul believed that God was telling him to go and suffer as a witness to the grace of God. But Paul’s friends believed that God was telling him to avoid the trap, and stay free to travel the world as a witness to the grace of God.

Luke says, “When Paul would not be dissuaded, we gave up and said, “The Lord’s will be done.” (Acts 21:14)

The way I read it, when they gave up and said, “The Lord’s will be done,” I think they meant that they reluctantly came to the conclusion that it was the Lord’s will for Paul to not make the best decision. I believe that this is what they thought.

Luke, writing years later, could look back and he could see what Jesus had done and what Jesus had taught through Paul’s decision to go to Jerusalem. I believe that Paul was right and that Paul made the best decision. I believe that Luke, looking back, could see this as well.

Paul and his friends had all been warned, by the Holy Spirit, about the dangers to come. Because of the Spirit’s’ warnings, Paul’s friends urged him not to walk into the trap.

I believe that the Spirit was at work in the warnings of the dangers to come, but the Spirit was not at work in the urgings of Paul’s friends who wanted him to escape and be safe. They thought that the Spirit was warning Paul so that he could act smartly.

Paul could tell the difference between the love of the Spirit calling him to danger and the love of his friends who wanted him to escape. The tug of war between the love of God and the love of friends was a tug of war that almost broke Paul’s heart. Paul decided to follow God’s love into risk and danger.

God didn’t control Paul’s thoughts. The Holy Spirit didn’t forced Paul to make a choice that led to prison and execution. But God loves the kind of person Paul was. God simply chose a man who would do anything for love; for the love of God and for the love of others, whether it was wise, or safe, or prudent, or not.

We have all watched good people make bad choices for the right reasons. You know what I mean. Their motive was right and noble: but their choice was wrong, and it was completely unnecessary, and endless trouble came of it.

Maybe we have made decisions like that ourselves. And yet (and yet), given time, the Lord’s will was done. This teaches us that God is fully capable of blessing our mistakes. Thanks be to God!

There are people we love who make hard and dangerous choices for the right reasons; to join the armed forces, to become a fire fighter, and there are other such choices. Their motives are right and noble; and their choices are right, even though the people who love them will grieve because of those choices.

This is a very important lesson. Paul was thinking, and speaking, and making choices out of the depths of love. His friends were pleading with him in love, and Paul said, “Why are you weeping and breaking my heart?” (Acts 21:13) It is love that we see on every side of this story.

The very question, “How can we be sure?” sometimes comes from a desire for the wrong kind of faith. There is a kind of faith that wants to be right, above everything else. There is a kind of faith that wants to be safe, and comfortable, and smart. And then, there is another kind of faith that, above everything else, does not want to fail the ties of love and faithfulness.

I want to know what God wants because I want to be right and smart. I want to be right because I do not want to make mistakes. I hate making mistakes because I hate to be wrong. I hate to be wrong because I am always trying to be smart, and that is the most dangerous thing of all, because, above everything else, this is pride.

Sometimes we are tempted to do the opposite of smart. We are tempted to do daring and risky things to prove our faith. When I was in college, a representative from a Christian publisher contacted the Christian groups on campus to look for daring Christian kids to help distribute their products. They distributed very nice looking Bible reference books. The representative told us, when we went to his meeting, that we could make a surprising amount of money in one summer by simply appearing in some rural community with our samples and we would find someone who would put us up, and we would find a church that would help promote our work.

In this way we would provide other Christians with an excellent product and we would learn how to live by faith by stepping out in faith. In this way we would receive the joy that comes from proving our faith. We would receive the benefits that come from faith. And yet that would be another way of proving we were smart: smarter than the average Christian.

There will be times when real Christians ask you to prove your faith in this way, but they are usually wrong. We must choose faith. We must live our faith. But we are not called to prove our faith. That is a temptation that comes from pride.

It is like the adolescent game of “I Dare You”. It’s a foolish game. It’s an exciting game. It’s a game of pride.

Paul seemed proud because he was stubborn. He seemed carelessly daring.

Paul was not perfect. And Paul made mistakes. But Paul was a lover, as well as a fighter. Paul did not fight for pride. He fought for love. He would blunder for love. He was stubborn only because he loved the Lord, and he loved his people. Because of this, there was a divine protection (a powerful grace) that shed its light over his mistakes, so that even his worst mistakes were not so bad, and good came of them, and the Lord’s will was done.

This is the kind of mistake we should pray for. We should be willing to blunder into the loving and faithful choice. We should be willing to be stubborn for the sake of love.

There were people who were trying to be prophets. They were prophets. But Paul clung t

o being like Jesus, and having fellowship with Jesus; who made the dangerous choice and gave himself for the love of the world and for the love of his Father on the cross.

Here, in this fellowship, we form a part of what Jesus has begun to do and to teach in this cluster of communities. In order for Jesus to continue to work and to teach through this fellowship we have choices to make about how to use our energy and our resources to be a church and people of evangelism and mission.

The Holy Spirit has warnings for us as a fellowship and as members of this fellowship. There are dangers and risks. There are choices that will be very demanding and consuming.

The temptation for us comes from the direction of wanting to make the smart choice or the safe and comfortable choice. For the Lord’s will to be done, the smart choices and the safe choices will only work for a little while. In order to find out what Jesus wants to do and to teach through this fellowship, we have to make choices that seem costly, and dangerous.

We are not called to make such choices in order to prove our faith in order to get what we want. We are called to make such choices in order to live our faith and love. So that our faith will make us look like Jesus in the end.

We have to make decisions that look like blunders. We need to have a lot of fight in us (a lot of toughness in us) in order to live out the hard choices (like the choices that Paul made).