Need a Life Adjustment?

“Oh my aching back!”  Have you ever said or heard those words?  Many of us have had the unpleasant experience of a backache that seemed to produce pain no matter which way we moved.  If we were fortunate, it was a strain caused by postural misalignment and we were able to go to a chiropractor, who “adjusted” our spine, bringing our body back into proper alignment.  Immediately we felt improvement and breathed a sigh of relief!

Alignment is the process of adjusting parts so they come into proper relationship to each other.  If parts are not correctly aligned, performance can be negatively altered.  Take a sport like golf for instance.  A golfer can have a perfect swing, but if his feet, knees, hips and shoulders are not all lined up parallel to the target line, his ball is not going to go where he wants it to go.  If you’ve ever watched “Dancing with the Stars,” you’ve heard the judges critique the contestants’ body alignment.  The head, shoulders and hips need to be aligned vertically, so the dancer can maintain a stable center of gravity and have smooth and graceful movements.

Bodies aren’t the only things that need aligning.  If you ever experienced your car’s steering wheel pulling to the left or right, you knew that it was time for a wheel alignment.  Hopefully you had it done before the misalignment caused excessive wear on your tires.

Human relationships too can be misaligned.  Ever know a family where the 2 year-old toddler ruled?  If so, you were aware of a group of individuals under chronic stress and often in strife.  When our human relationships are not properly aligned, they become unhealthy and produce discontent and disharmony.  We feel uneasy deep inside, become irritable and uptight.  We need a life adjustment!

God created us to relate to one another by aligning in the mutual love, respect and unity that will produce peace and harmony.  He encourages us in Philippians 2:1b-3:  “Let your hearts be tender and compassionate to one another.  Agree wholeheartedly with one another, love each other, and work together with one mind and purpose.  Don’t be selfish and try to impress others.  Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves.” 

The current unrest in the Middle East demonstrates what can happen when these principles of human relationships remain misaligned at a national level for too long.  To date, 11 different nations have experienced some degree of public protest.  Each one of them is characterized by a small ruling elite class and the oppression of many citizens, resulting in poverty, anger and now, open revolt.

God’s alignment of human relationships results in leaders who seek to serve others, with people submitting to leadership they experience as loving and trustworthy.  We can not get “adjusted” in isolation. Only in proper alignment with others can we find the life adjustment that will provide us the peace and satisfaction we seek!

Please come and join us this Sunday at 10:30 AM to continue this discussion of aligning our human relationships God’s way.  My sermon “Aligning for Reformation” is Part 8 in our “reformers’ Pledge” series.

Glory Daze

Remember when first you felt “I am an adult?”  Maybe it was the first time you took the family car for a solo drive or stayed out all night.  Perhaps it was the first long trip you took by yourself, or when you stood in front of a mirror in your new football uniform. 

For many of us, it was going off to college, and the heady experience of being away from home and on our own for the first time.  No parents censoring our dress, our activities or our choice of friends. We reached a new plateau, a new position in life, and we gloried in the sense of independence and achievement being an adult conferred upon us.  A current TV series, “Glory Daze,” tries to capture this common experience.

Our desire for glory, to distinguish ourselves in some way, do something that others admire, or attain something that brings us gratification never really goes away.  It is a universal soul addiction.  Remember your first car?  It may have been new or used, but your name was on the registration slip and it was all yours!  You felt on top of the world driving it around, and you washed and waxed it frequently.  It was pristine!

Some of you can remember other moments of glory like winning the big game, getting elected to an office at school, being employee of the month, salesman of the year, landing your first “real career job, or seeing your first child born. 

All these events bring with them a sense of achievement and exhilaration that we relish and want to keep. The only problem is we can’t.  The glory of all these fades with time, sometimes very quickly.

That first car eventually gets door dings, stains on the interior and starts smelling like old pizza and fries.  There is always another game to win, another school election, another employee whose achievements rival yours.  And your first child?  Of course you love and take pride in them, but sometimes they get on your last nerve and you want to send them permanently to Grandma’s!

Fading glory is a repetitive pattern everywhere we look, and is not limited to us as individuals.  Long gone is the glory and majesty of whole cultures and civilizations, like Egypt, Greece, Rome, the British empire, the Ming dynasty of China, the mighty Watusi of Africa, or the Maya of the Yucatan Peninsula and central America.  None of it lasts! 

Two thousand years ago, the apostle John noted this pattern when he wrote: “For the world offers only a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions.  And this world is fading away, along with everything that people crave.”(I John 2: 16a, 17a)

Yet our desire for glory remains.  The apostle Paul tells us that our constant desire for temporary glory blinds us and keeps us in a daze.  He invites us to come out of our “glory daze” and see the real glory we were created for, and the only glory that can satisfy our longing.

“Peoples minds are hardened and a veil covers their minds so they cannot understand the truth.  But whenever someone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. So all of us who have had that veil removed, can see and reflect the glory of the Lord.  And the Lord, who is the Spirit, makes us more and more like Him as we are changed into His glorious image.”  (II Corinthians 2: 15a, 16, 18)

We are created in God’s image, and nothing other than reflecting His glory will ever fulfill our desire!

Please come and join us this Sunday at 10:30 AM and discover more about reflecting God’s glory.  My sermon “Going from Glory to Glory, Part II” is the 8^th  installment in our “Reformer’s Pledge” series.

If Only...

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”  Remember being asked that question?  What was your answer?  If you were like most children, your answer changed over time.  But no matter what the answer, you always envisioned doing something important, having a significant, even heroic impact on others. 

I’ve never yet heard a child answer that question by stating: “When I grow up I want to be an ordinary person, go to my job 8 to 5 everyday and live in the suburbs.”  And yet that’s how most of us end up.  And often, we look back and say “if only……” we had made different decisions, better choices, taken more risks, our life would be in a different, more rewarding and significant place.  We feel stuck, dead-ended, or fear we will become this way.  Significance seems to slip through our fingers.

Meet someone who has a different outlook on life.  He’s Austin Gutwein, a 14 year-old freshman with sandy blond hair and blue eyes who looks like any typical young adolescent.  His passion is basketball.  He loves shooting hoops and practices all the time.  But there’s a problem.  He’s on the small side, and frankly isn’t that good a player.

His aspiration to become a pro basketball player was crushed at age 9, when he failed to make the hoops team at his grade school.  He was devastated, but not for long.  Austin had a penpal in Zambia, Africa who encouraged him to learn more about Africa.  Austin did so and discovered that the AIDS epidemic has left 15 million children orphaned, many of them in Zambia.  Schools are few and far between, and clean water is often nonexistent.

Austin decided he wanted to help.  On his own, he organized a basketball shoot-a-thon in his back yard, soliciting pledges from community members to pay him $1.00 for every hoop he sank.  He made $3000, which he donated to World Vision, an international relief organization, to provide care and education for 8 orphans.  The next year, he enlisted the help of his classmates, and they raised $35,000 to care for 100 orphans.

 Encouraged by the success. Austin formed “Hoops of Hope,” and in the last 5 years has been joined by schools and churches across the nation, raising over 2 million in funding.  To date, “Hoops” has built 2 schools in Zambia and a 3^rd one in India, 2 medical clinics in Zambia, 2 orphan centers in Swaziland, and a water system in Kenya.  Austin says this is only the beginning.  He states, “Anyone, no matter what their age or skills, can make a difference for someone.”

I suggest we take the term “if only” out of the regret column and move it to the hope column.  If only each one of us would see the need in front of us and reach out to help, what an incredible change the world would see!  Years ago, Helen Keller said, “I am only one, but still I am one.  I cannot do everything, but still I can do something.  I will not refuse to do the something I can do.”

Jesus also reminds us of the importance of the one in front of us.  “I was hungry and you fed Me, thirsty and you gave Me something to drink, naked and you clothed Me, sick and you took care of Me, in prison and you visited Me.  Whatever you did for one of these in need, no matter how insignificant they seemed, you did it for Me.”  (Matthew 25: 35, 40)

Today, be significant!  Reach out and meet the need of the one in front of you!

Please come and join us this Sunday at 10:30 AM as we discuss further how we can respond to social injustice and systemic poverty.  Our guest speaker, Kris Vallotton’s sermon, “Stopping for the One,” is part 7 in our “Reformers’ Pledge”series.

I Have a Dream

“We refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt.  Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.  I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.  This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. 

Let freedom ring. And when this happens, and when we allow freedom to ring  ….. We will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: ‘Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!’”

Most of us recognize the speaker of these famous words, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  And many of us remember the event, the civil rights march on Washington DC on August 28, 1963, when Dr. King delivered these words from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to a crowd of over 200,000.

He held onto his dream, through years of opposition, beatings, time spent in jail, and he inspired countless numbers of others to catch his vision and share his dream.  It took years of struggle and eventually cost Dr. King his life, but today we can say that a significant portion of that dream has been realized.

What are your dreams?  A better job?  More financial security?  The restoration of a marriage or other family relationship?  To get your children through college?  To see a friend healed of a catastrophic illness?  To retire by age 55?  To find your ideal life partner?

What is happening to your dreams?  Are they being realized or just gradually fading away?  Have you lost hope because they now seem impossible?  Do your dreams need reviving?

We can all learn how to revive our dreams and keep them alive from Dr. King.  He gave us the answer when he quoted Isaiah 40: 4-5:  “I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord

shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.”

Martin Luther King Jr. understood that his dream of social justice and racial equality was in harmony with God’s dream, and that God’s dream will surely be realized.  Did you know that God has a dream for all humanity and He wants to fulfill your dreams?

God stated His original dream for humanity in Genesis 1:26: “Let Us make humans in Our likeness and in Our image.  Let them subdue the earth and rule over all of it.”  His dream was that we would be happy and fulfilled in every way.  But we chose a different way that shut Him out and opened the door to every negative thing that we now dream to escape: poverty, boring toil, strife with others, sickness, fear and insecurity, loneliness etc.

But God was not willing to let His dream die.  He sent His Son Jesus Christ into this world and through His death and resurrection, God revived and restored His dream of us being in His image and ruling the earth.  He is offering to each of us the opportunity to join Him in His dream, and in doing so find all our dreams fulfilled!

Please come join us this Sunday at 10:30 AM to continue the discussion of God’s dream for us.  My sermon “Going from Glory to Glory” is Part 5 in our “Reformers’ Pledge” series.