Random Notes

I am a man-about-town

It has been an interesting 10 days or so.

Last Monday and Tuesday were great for discipleship.  I met with a young man I first got to know during the Asbury Revival, a young man who ended up enrolling at Asbury Seminary.  He brought some friends of his from a mission agency they work with, doing missions in some hostile and restricted nations.  These are young college kids with a passion for Christ and deep trust in His provision for them.  I love this young man’s heart.  He loves to worship and share the Gospel.  He was telling me that he has had a hard time getting some people to just go with him to share the Gospel at UK or the mall or wherever.  People say something like, “that’s just not my style of evangelism.”  He counters with, “Ok, let’s do the kind of evangelism you like to do, right now.”  And no one knows what to say or do, because what we are really saying is, “I don’t intend to share Jesus.”

I had lunch with another Asbury student, a guy in our church.  I was asking him about his plans, and he said, “I am trying not to have any personal plans that will get in the way of what God may call me to.” Let that sink in.  Think about discipleship that way.

I am beginning to think Bigfoot is not real.  I saw a sticker on a car the other day, the usual silhouette of Sasquatch, but it was rainbow colored.  I just don’t think Bigfoot is an lgbt thing.  I am starting to wonder if “believing in Bigfoot” is just semiotics. An ironic statement.  A longing for something.  An ironic longing.

I met with a pastor’s widow the other day.  She is homebound.  She had such a wonderful story about how her husband was called into ministry from a career in construction. It was great to hear about such a story of faithfulness.  The church is built on regular people, faithful pastors far from any limelight.  She confessed to feeling like she could not contribute much to the life of the church being homebound.  I told her that I believe that nothing gets done without prayer, and that as long as she can pray, she is doing more than just about anyone.  Do we believe that?

Last night in our Wednesday study, we read something pretty incredible in Dennis Kinlaw’s book, The Mind of Christ. He noted that the Hebrew word for “intercede,” has a meaning of bringing things together. So when we intercede in prayer, we bring God and man together.  One of the places that word appears, though, is in Isaiah 53:6, “The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”  “Laid,’ there in Isaiah 53 is that word for “intercede.” Dr. Kinlaw says that God caused to meet in Jesus human sin and the divine power of redemption.  I mean, I know that, but I have never heard it put quite that way.  I intercede for people in prayer, bringing them to God, asking that they might be saved. But I need to expand my sense of evangelism to think of sharing the Gospel as actual intercession… Like Andrew, in John 12, bringing people to see Jesus.

And just a little bit ago, some time with an elder saint of the church, bearing up under his own health problems and his wife’s. He was mentioning that he feels a munch closer intimacy with God and Jesus in prayer.  I suspect that is the fruit of long acquaintance with the Lord.  I gave him a short preview of my conclusion to this week’s sermon on Psalm 2.  You lot will have to wait, but this fellow said, “God always takes quite a few steps farther into a grace we could never have imagined.”  Dummy me, I was going to end my sermon with a quote from Augustine.