Phil Ressler

In the second half of James 2, the relationship between faith and works is examined. In verse 24 James writes, “You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone.” When we understand this verse in context we understand “good works” are a natural out flowing of the faith within us. When we receive the incredible grace of God by faith, it is only natural we will want to live lives that honor the Savior. We honor the Savior through good works.

Another way to understand this section of Scripture is to understand that faith alone does not save us. There is a danger of putting our faith in faith. Putting my faith in faith will not save me. Let me explain.

Imagine you went overboard on a ship at sea. Having faith you will be alright is not going to save you. You can be hopeful all you want. Your faith needs to be put in the life preserver thrown out to you from the ship. Faith is the act of reaching out and taking hold of the life preserver. In order for faith to be beneficial, faith needs an object to grab hold of. In the case of this illustration it is the life preserver, attached to the lifeline, attached to the ship.

When it comes to our salvation from sin, having faith we will go to heaven is not enough. Our faith needs to have an object. So we put our faith in Jesus the Christ and his “good work” done upon the cross. There needs to be more than simply believing I will go to heaven. It is trusting the one who has prepared a place for me there. Jesus is my lifeline! Not my faith!

There are many people in this world who have faith they are going to heaven, but nothing more. There is nothing their faith clings and holds on to. Another way of describing this type of faith is to say they are hoping for the best. It is like holding on to a life preserver attached to nothing in the middle of the ocean. There is not much hope. I am adrift. The life preserve alone only gives me a false sense of security.

So where is your faith placed? Is it in the Savior? It it wishful thinking? Are you simply hoping for the best? Or are you trusting Jesus?

Have a great week. As a reminder our Haiti and Chile Earthquake Relief efforts kick off this Sunday. For more information check out www.lolchurch.net/haiti

I am a bit late on sending out my weekly email this week. The reason is that over the last few days I went back to being a student. Every week I am incredibly focused on preparing content to preach and to teach. But this week I had a great opportunity to simply learn and to take notes. I didn’t focus much on getting things done. My focus was simply absorbing a treasury of knowledge.

Bob and Sandy Kessler, Lynda Walker, and myself participated in a week long Crossways training in St. Paul, Minnesota. We spent three days listening to Dr. Harry Wendt. Many of you know who Dr. Wendt is. He preached at Lord of Life last year. Dr. Wendt holds a vast knowledge of the Scriptures in his mind. He has made it a lifelong passion and pursuit to learn the Scriptures. I considered it a privilege just to listen to what he had to say. I consider myself knowledgeable in regards to things related to the Bible, but when you listen to someone like him, you realize there is so much you don’t know.

After this past week, I find myself incredibly refreshed. I can describe my experience as nothing else than a gift. And it all happened because I was open to learning and to listening. I might of had 8 years of Bible training in college and seminary, and 10 more years of studying the Bible it as a pastor, but I still admit there is more I have to learn.

This is a key part of being a disciple. The number one qualification for being a disciple is being teachable. You can’t be a disciple without being a learner. The very definition of being a disciple is rooted in learning. To be a disciple means humbling yourself before another and saying I have much room to grow and to learn. The danger is that when we become competent in a given area. We stop seeking opportunities to grow. We settle for “good enough.” But Jesus desire more than “good enough” from us.

Ultimately, Jesus is the master. He is the teacher. And he puts people in our lives, like Dr. Wendt, to teach us how to grow and to become more Christlike. We all need these godly people in our lives to serve as examples and to disciple us.

Do you have someone in your life discipling you? Who is that you allow to speak into your life? Maybe you find yourself stuck in a difficult situation. Maybe the reason you find yourself in the situation is because you have not opened yourself up to the wisdom and instruction of others. You have failed to listen to others assuming you had the answers and you knew what was best. Never underestimate your ability and need to learn and to grow. Especially in the areas you find yourself most competent!

Ask yourself if you have all the answers or are you teachable? If you have all the answers you are in a dangerous place.

Ask are you the one doing the talking or do you listen to what others have to say? If you are doing all the talking you have no room to be instructed.

There is only one teacher. The rest of us are all students, learning together as we go along. Don’t fool yourself to think you are the teacher when God is calling you to be the student. Listen! Learn! Take some notes! And Grow!

Be careful that you do not forget the Lord, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. Deuteronomy 6:4

This weekend is Memorial Day weekend. It is the unofficial beginning of summer, but it is more than that. It is an opportunity for us to remember all the brave men and women who have made selfless sacrifices to win, protect, and preserve the freedom we enjoy as a country. What a great way to applaud their bravery and courage!

Remembering is so very important in many ways, but is especially important in our relationship with God. Two often repeated commands in the Bible are “remember” and “forget not. What are we called to remember? Two basic things.

The first thing we are called to remember is God’s past faithfulness. We are to remember the victories he has won for his people of old and for us. Looking back at how God demonstrated his faithfulness in the past gives us courage in the present battles we are engaged in. He came through once before, he will come through again.

We do this when we read the Scriptures. We read stories like David and Goliath and how God enabled David to defeat the mighty giant. But the ultimate story and example of this is remembering the ultimate freedom Jesus won for us by selflessly sacrificing his life on the cross of Calvary.

Beyond the stories of the Scriptures, we have our own testimonies to point to. There are certainly times when God has showed himself to be faithful in your own life. This is a good reason to keep track of prayer requests. We are so forgetful. Our minds play tricks with us. There is something about having a written testimony that speaks courage into our hearts that we will not forget God’s faithfulness.

The second thing to remember is God’s commandments. God instructs us the way to live our lives. But it is not just remembering his commandments, but also remembering the benefits of obeying his commandments. There is blessings for obedience and there are consequences for disobedience. When we forget the realities of blessings and consequences, we are easily led astray. When you are faced with a critical decision you might be tempted to compromise your integrity. You might not be able to see from your perspective any consequences to your actions. But just because you can’t see them, does not mean they are not there. Remember that! And you will do well.

Hope you all have a great Memorial Day Weekend. Safe travels to everyone who will be traveling over this holiday weekend. Even if you are traveling out of town, don’t forget to remember the one who gave his life for you. Take some time to worship him. Find a local gathering of believers to celebrate his great faithfulness. There may be no greater way to honor those who gave their lives for the cause of freedom than to exercise our freedom to worship.

Have a great week!

Jesus wept. John 11:35

It is the shortest verse of the Bible. It is the one verse that no one has an excuse for not memorizing.

Jesus’ good friend Lazarus dies. He comes to Bethany where Lazarus had lived and was buried. When Jesus arrives on the scene he sees the friends and family are gathered together in sorrow at their loss. At this sight it says Jesus was deeply troubled in spirit. He asks them where Lazarus had been laid. The people tell him to come and see. It is then at that moment the text makes note how Jesus wept.

I had read this story hundreds of times, but as I read it today, something stood out for me that I had not noticed before. I had always worked with the assumption that Jesus wept over the loss of the his good friend Lazarus. But as I read the text today I questioned that assumption.

Here is the deal. Jesus message on earth was a message of faith. Jesus healed the sick, he gave sight to the blind, made the lame to walk, fed the 5000, and calmed the wind and the waves. Jesus walked with the power and authority of God and even had the authority to raise the dead. Jesus already new he would raise Lazarus from the dead. It wasn’t Lazarus Jesus was concerned about.

As I read this text one more time, it was clear that Jesus was more grieved over the people’s lack of faith than anything else. We see many other examples where he lamented his disciples’ disbelief. There are many more times when he was anguished to be so stubbornly rejected by the religious leaders as being the Messiah from God.

The real reason Jesus was moved to tears was because he was witnessing in the flesh the consequence of sin. It was so very clear when he saw the sorrow of the people around him. The consequence of sin was evident. It was not pretty. The beautiful and wonderful creation of God had become so marred and ugly. But this was the very purpose for which he came into the world – to bring reconciliation and restoration to that which was broken.

This passage is often used to point out Jesus’ humanness. But even more than that I believe it shows us the heart of God. It grieves our Lord for us to live in the consequence of our sin and rebellion. But it is good to know that God is so moved that he takes action. It would have been so very bad for us if God had been apathetic towards our condition. But he wasn’t. He wept. He was grieved. He was so moved that he would give his one and only Son to die on the cross. Now whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.

Here is what you need to know. As grieved as you may be over the circumstances or the tragedies you experience, God is even more grieved. He is not apathetic to your cause. He is a God of action. He will respond and bring restoration. Trust in him!

Choose this day whom you will serve . . . as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. Joshua 24:15

Life is filled with choices. We make hundreds and thousands of choices each and every day. Choices about what we will wear, choices about what we will eat, choices about what we will say or not say, choices about how we will spend our time. In every moment we are making choices. You are making a choice right now to either read this email or not.

The challenge for us is to be intentional with our choices. We must choose up front our values and priorities. If we don’t choose these upfront for ourselves, others will choose them for us. Think about going to the grocery store. Imagine going on an empty stomach without a shopping list. You will find that everything in the store is calling out your name. It becomes so very hard to resist the aromas that overload your senses. You walk out with a receipt with a price tag much larger than you ever envisioned.

Shopping at the grocery store is a very different experience when you bring in the shopping list. You choose your priorities upfront. You’ve got a plan. You’ve got a budget. You’ve got coupons. You go in with the list, and you come out with what was on that list. You cut the cost of the shopping trip by simply being prepared. The decisions were made upfront based upon your priorities. It is a much more pleasant experience.

I am not retired by any stretch of the imagination, but I will often talk with people who are. They tell me they find themselves busier in retirement than ever before. I have a theory about that. It is because when they were working, their priority was very clear. It was their occupation. A good portion of their week was taken up by their job. It was a priority that put other priorities in the background. When that one big priority is taken out of a person’s life, there are all kinds of other priorities that vie for that space that the person’s occupation once occupied. The challenge is being intentional with those priorities. If we are not intentional with our priorities, all kinds of other priorities will begin to surface and to fill our calendar.

As much as we have a to-do list, it is good to have a “not-to-do” list as well. Are we willing to put aside other priorities and activities to accomplish what God has established as a priority in our lives? Do we choose to limit our time from doing those things that are not all that important like watching TV? You likely have your own unique “not-to-do” list. Do you know what is on that list? It might be spending less time reading the latest John Grisham novel, so that you can spend more time in the Word of God. It might be less time worrying, so that you can spend more time praying. It might revolve around your finances. That you might spend less money on eating out so you can save for a family vacation or mission trip. It might be choosing to buy the used car instead of the new car so that you can stay out of debt to honor the Lord with your finances.

Be a believer that knows what you want because you know what God wants. The best choices we make are the choices we use the wisdom of God. The best choices we make are the choices we make based on the priorities we establish with God’s help through his Word and prayer. This means I know what is important before I need to choose what’s important. It doesn’t mean I will not be tempted to occupy my time with more trivial matters. The temptation is always there. But simply being aware of the competing priorities is half the battle.

“He who oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God.” Proverbs 14:31 NIV

When we look at the Scriptures, we see God has a special place in his heart for the poor. This world is filled with much hurt and much poverty. Jesus said that we would always have the poor with us.

In America, no matter how poor we are, we are blessed beyond measure. Because we have been given so much, we have a calling to help those who are in need.

I am so glad to be a part of a church that has a heart for the poor. 10% of Lord of Life’s income goes to ministries around the world, many of which work with those who are impoverished.

From June 13-26, Lord of Life will be once again be serving as a collection site for earthquake relief supplies for Haiti. You can find a list of all the supplies being collected by following this link. We will also need volunteers to serve. So keep an eye out over the next couple of weeks to find out how you can help.

Included with his email are pictures of from a recent mission trip in which John Peterson, a Lord of Life member, participated in with Lutheran Church Charities in Haiti. These pictures portray the incredible things that can happen when God’s people are faithful to his calling. These pictures are of a girl who was brought to them and from all appearances was dead. The team began to work over her and pray over her and it was not long later the girl was awake and smiling. We praise Jesus for this healing.

God has given us so many opportunities to make a difference. Start by doing what is necessary. Then do what is possible. And soon you will be doing what is impossible. Thank you Lord of Life for being a blessing to so many others.

This is not your typical weekly email. It is a bit longer than normal, but it is an incredibly encouraging testimony from Don Martens and his weekend in Joliet. So I commend it to your reading. Enjoy! Be encouraged!

To My Brothers and Sisters,

Greetings!

Kairos #9 at Stateville Correctional Center, Joliet, Illinois April 22-25, 2010

Our team of 31 volunteers is a group of men gathered from as far west as the Freeport area to southwest to Peoria and throughout Northeast Illinois. We were a mix of Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists, and non-denominational. We have met six different Saturdays beginning back on February 13th to train for the Kairos event. Our meetings lasted from 9am to 2:30pm. On Thursday at noon we entered Stateville to begin the Kairos weekend for what we hoped would be 42 inmates. The way things worked out, we ended up having the 36 inmates spend the entire weekend in our “short course in Christianity”.

Thursday afternoon was pretty much an introductory day with some summary comments about what the inmates could expect and we did a time of self-introductions. This is always a very interesting time as I always like to watch body language and posturing of how a man introduces himself to the group. You have to remember that it is quite normal for those in prison to build “walls” around themselves in the nature of a façade to protect themselves and not convey a weakness…one all too quickly learns that prison is a rough place with fearful dynamics. Aside from introducing themselves, we also ask the men to say why they came asked to attend. Many are quite honest and indicate they heard about homemade cookies and wanted the time out of their cell. (You see at Stateville, the inmates are regularly locked up for 23 hours a day, seven days a week. Time out of the cell is ½ hour for lunch at 10am and ½ hour for dinner at 3:00pm. Breakfast is served in their cells at 3:30am. Because of the noise in the stacked cell gallery of 250 men, most don’t go to sleep till about midnight. There are two opportunities for showers in a week and two 1-1/2 hours of exercise yard time during the week. There are opportunities to attend a few classes and there are about 400 jobs available for a permanent population of approximately 1500 inmates. If not attending a class or at work, you are in your cell.) During introductions, you can tell that most of the inmates are experiencing apprehensions and anxieties about being there…not to mention we volunteers as well. We were with the men till 7pm at which time they were collected and returned to their cells. We would continue the program on Friday morning again at 8am. Our team of 31 stayed outside the prison at Grace United Methodist Church in Joliet. We slept on the floor and used blow-up mattresses that had been donated to Kairos by Aero-Bed in Woodstock, IL.

Friday morning is when we get the formal program going. The 36 inmates were divided into 7 different groups of 5 or 6 and joined with three volunteers from our team. This 8 or 9 man group would stay together as a unit throughout the course of the whole weekend. We give each group a name and condition them to identify themselves as the “Family of …’ The names we give for families are Paul, James, Peter, John, Mark, Luke, Matthew. I was part of the “Family of Paul”. We were 5 inmates and 3 team members. The inmates at my table, even though they have all been in Stateville for 10 to 26 years, did not know each other. Rick from Lord of Life was part of a different “Family” and I believe he had 6 inmates and 3 team.

The curriculum for the Kairos weekend is very intentional in it’s progression. At the same time that we are teaching, we are also addressing an inmate’s psyche and helping them to take down the walls that they have built around themselves for emotional and physical protection. The practice of our faith necessitates honesty and vulnerability in our relationships with one another. We need to help the inmates learn how to be a “family” and build a community of trust. We use Love to break down their walls…we practice agape love. This is where you my friends have helped tremendously…through your prayer, cookies, letters to inmates, posters, and cut-out hands. These instruments of God’s love are showered upon the inmates throughout the whole weekend. There are always full bowls of cookies at the table of each family as well as inmates are served their coffee at the table by our team members who are part of our “service group”. Things like this have never happened to these men while they have been incarcerated.

Interestingly on Friday afternoon, a man in my family (who entered prison at age 18, and has been in Stateville for 18 years) had already said this was the most amount of time he had spent out of his cell in 10 years.

A Kairos weekend is built around a series of talks that are prepared and presented by team members. After each talk, families are asked to discuss what was said in the talk. The team members in each family are present as facilitators. During Friday, we are to get the men to talk about what they “heard” in the talk. On Saturday, our emphasis changes and we guide the discussion into “How did what you heard make you feel?” Sunday is meant to be a day of witness and it is a day of hope. Throughout all the days we also take breaks to sing, fellowship, and eat cookies. There are also meditations given by our clergy team members. We eat our meals in the prison with the inmates, eating their regularly scheduled meals. The food really is the worst food I have been given to eat. A few meals were passable, some I only ate a portion, and with all, I got heartburn.

The talks in sequence of how they are given on Friday are titled, “Choices”, “You Are Not Alone”, “Friendship with God”, “The Church”, and “Opening the Door”. Friday is a day of “hearing” what is taught. Saturday’s talks are “Discovery”, “Action”, and “A Christian” (Rick from Lord of Life gave this talk and did an outstanding job!). The meditations given on Saturday also center upon forgiveness and confronting the “wall” of isolation each man has constructed to protect himself. Saturday is a day of “feeling” what is taught. Sunday’s talks are “Footprints in the Sand”, Tomorrow”, and “Lighting the Way” (this is the talk I presented).

On Friday and Saturday we are in the prison from 8am to 7pm. On Sunday we are there from 8am to 2:30pm. The days are long and emotionally draining. On Saturday afternoon at 2pm, the inmates were presented their bags of letters…many of you wrote letters…each man gets a bag with at least 30 letters…while the men are in their families given an opportunity to read through their mail, the team serenades them with our voices in song. It’s a pretty powerful time for many of these men…they never get mail from family or friends, let alone strangers who don’t even know them but in their letters are wishing them hope and urging them to surrender themselves to the love of Christ and claim him as Savior. A young brother at my table wanted me to tell you all…”tell them thank you for these letters, you don’t know how much these mean to me”. On some previous weekends I have seen other inmates melt into a mass of tears when they wanted to talk about how much the letters meant to them.

The curriculum we present in Kairos is really very remarkable at breaking the men down through love, opening them up, and planting the seeds of faith. Our goal is to plant Christian community and nurture it as it grows in the prison…knowing full well that it is the inmates who must do the nurturing and growing work themselves. We teach and train them to be in faith community.

On Sunday afternoon from 1pm to 2:30pm we have what we refer to as the “Closing”. This is when we ask each table family (inmates only…by this point, we are releasing them on their own as family) to discuss and answer three questions publicly to all assembled. (At this time, visitors from the outside are allowed to come in and be in attendance. If you would be interested in attending one of these in the future, please let me know…once again, the presence of Christians from the outside taking time to come and hear is a big affirmation of the men and the path they are embarking upon.) The questions are, “What did you come to Kairos expecting to learn?”, What did you find at Kairos?”, and “What do you intend on doing with what you found?”. After each “family” has given their response we have time for “open mic” and men can come up and share their personal witness. For me, this really is the point when I get satisfaction for all the effort. Just about every family said they intended to take what they had learned back to the cellhouse. Some said they felt life once again and could care about others…their fellow inmates. Thanks to God were prolific. The men who had “walls” around themselves on Thursday were now men with open arms hugging each other and us.

For the next six months, our team will return the first Saturday of every month and meet once again with this same group of men. We will train and nurture them in how to become smaller “sharing and prayer” accountability groups. This really is the core of what we do in Kairos! The weekend really is the point of getting the men ready to be in Christian community and creating the “want” to be in Christian community. The accountability groups are the “action” component to strengthening, growing, and transformational power of Christ’s presence in the prison.

I know this report has been somewhat long and maybe lacking some of the emotional thrust of some of the observations you have heard me make before. It was an exceptional weekend and once again I witnessed the living Christ quite obviously active. I have now done seven Kairos teams over the past few years. In some ways, I guess you can say I’ve matured…the mountain-tops are not as high as my first few times, but none the less just as powerful in a deep seated way. I do have an observation though that came to me about 4:30am this past Sunday morning prior to the talk I would give later that noon at the Kairos. I hope that it may give you a vision of why prison ministry is important.

As Jesus and the criminals hung upon the cross, the Jews made it necessary to remove them before the start of the Sabbath. Removal meant that they needed to be dead. The legs of the criminals were broken with a clubbing thus causing them to suffocate and die. When the Roman came to Jesus it appeared he was already dead so the Roman was instructed to pierce the side of Jesus with a spear. That hole in the side of Jesus became what the Romans thought was evidence of death…little did they realize, that the light of the resurrected Christ would defeat that death. So too, Thomas in his skepticism, was directed by Jesus to place his hand in the hole to verify that it was He, the Christ. Do you remember Thomas’s response to the challenge of the resurrected Jesus? “My Lord and My God!” …it wasn’t “oh my gosh, it’s really you Jesus”…it wasn’t just, “my Lord”…it was “My Lord and My God!”

Stateville Correctional Center is a “hole of death” in Northern Illinois. It represents a place of darkness and sin. Death is the penalty for the wages of sin. When the redeemed and transformed lives in Christ of inmates in Stateville cast their light beyond the walls of Stateville to the population beyond…just like the hole in the side of Christ that once confirmed death…now will become the confirmation of resurrection…so that a doubting world can only stand in awe of what happened in Stateville and say…”My Lord and My God!”.

Thank you to you all. Rick and I took you into the prison with us and your prayers easy carried us through a most remarkable weekend. May the Christ light continue to gain heat in His children in Stateville.

Don Martens

April 26, 2010

And now these three remain. Faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love. 1 Corinthians 13:13

Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how I react to it. Would you agree or disagree with that statement?

Before there was Tiger Woods, there was Jack Nicklaus. And before there was Jack Nicklaus, there was Arnold Palmer. Palmer was considered the greatest golfer of his generation. His followers were affectionately known as Arnie’s army. He won hundreds of tournaments, with hundreds of trophies. Yet, the only trophy in his office is the cup from the 1955 Canadian Open, the first professional tournament he won. To go along with the trophy is a plaque which reads:

Although he was not a Christian, you might have heard about Victor Frankl. Frankl was a prisoner in a Nazi prison camp during World War II. He was horribly mistreated, but his attitude made him an inspiration to millions of people who would hear his story. The Nazi’s took away everything you could possibly imagine, but through it all he would not let go of his freedom to choose how he would respond to his captors. He is quoted as saying: “The one thing you cannot take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me. The last of one’s freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstance.”

We can’t always choose our circumstances, but we can choose how we respond to them. In the 1 Corinthians 13:13, we are called to put on the virtues of faith, hope, and love. When our faith is in Jesus, we have hope, that enables us to respond in love. We can choose joy because we know we have a God who is bigger than any circumstance we face, and who already holds the victory. So when others are walking with their faces downcast, we can still walk with a smile on our face.

Have a great rest of the week. This weekend I will be sharing a message on discerning the voice of Jesus. Our text will be John 10:27. Hope to see you on Sunday at 8:30 or 10am.

The teaching of the wise is a fountain of life, turning a man from the snares of death. Proverbs 13:14

Learning has always been something exciting for me. I think I am even more excited to learn today than I ever was as a student in school. I find myself ever more curious about this world God has given us.

We all have room to grow and to learn. It doesn’t matter how old we are. Success or failure is birthed out of our attitude towards learning. The moment we stop learning is the moment we stop growing and our ability to make a difference is greatly diminished? The moment we stop learning is the moment we get stuck where we are at.

Maybe you know someone who has stopped learning. Words used to identify people who have stopped learning are words like stubborn and know-it-all. These are not words we want to be identified by.

So are you teachable? Are you learning? Are you growing? No matter how you answered those questions, I would encourage you towards the following.

#1 Renew your commitment to learn. This might mean learning a new skill. It might be learning to play a musical instrument, learning to a program on the computer, or learning to communicate better with your spouse. There are always new challenges to master that will help to keep you humble. Open a book. Take a class at the community college. Sign up for a Bible Study at Church. Sign up for dancing lessons. The possibilities are endless.

#2 Renew your commitment to relearn. This is similar to the first, but this is more about mastering the skills we already have. Open yourself up to relearn in an area you already consider yourself an expert. It is said that the average job will require learning 20% new knowledge every year. So if you never learn anything new, you would be 100% less effective in 5 years. It is said the knowledge in the tech industry doubles every 18 months. The moral of the story is we constantly need to be learning. If you find yourself easily threatened by other’s achievement, chances are your pride is closing the door on new possibilities, then you are stuck thinking you already know everything you need to know.

Don’t take anything for granted. As long as we are on this earth we still have not arrived.

Did you see it last night? The big fireball in the sky? I was driving home from Lord of Life shortly before 10pm and must have pulled into the garage just minutes before the flash in the sky was seen. I missed it, but when I came to Bible Study this morning and the men were talking about it. I didn’t know what they were talking about at first. Then they explained it to me.

I found it interesting how my morning devotion in the One Year Bible on this particular day took me to the end of Luke 17. In this chapter Jesus talks about the coming Kingdom of God. He says, “For the Son of Man in his day will be like lightning, which flashes and lights up the sky from one end to the other.” I just happened to read this verse the morning after this event took place. Wow!

Considering the recent earthquake in Northern Illinois and now the flash in the sky at night, I do not consider these events to be coincidences. God often makes his presence know in what is called theophanies. These are revelations of God through abnormal occurrences in nature.

When we look throughout the world, some crazy things are happening. We have volcanic ash from Iceland shutting down airports in Europe. Earthquakes in China, Chile, Haiti, Indonesia, and many other places. It brings to mind the question, “Is Jesus coming back?”

The answer to that question is “yes!” Of course he is coming back. It might be today. It might not. It might be one year from now, 100 years from now, 1000 years from now or even longer. Jesus says, “No one knows the day or the hour.” (Mark 13:32) Certainly we can interpret the signs of the times. We know we are closer to his return now than we have ever been before. But ultimately our role is not to predict, but to simply be ready.

These signs provide us several opportunities and challenges.

1) They provide us the opportunity to know that God is God and that God is in his place. They serve as a reminder he is still there. There is absolutely no human explanation for the earthquake that took place in Northern Illinois. There is no known fault line in the area. At this point there doesn’t seem to be an complete explanation for the fireball in the sky. While there may be no known human explanation, we have a divine explanation. It was put there by God!

2) These signs challenge us to be ready and to be prepared. That earthquake happened in an instant. The flash in the sky happened in an instant. There was no time to prepare. So it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. These are reminders, no matter where we are in life, to be right with God. None of us know our day or hour. If we continue to keep Jesus at arms length we may find it too late and ourselves on the outside looking in.

3) It reminds us of the urgency of the mission. God created you for such a time as this. Life is short. We only have so many opportunities. Last year about this time, we challenged everyone at Lord of Life to take the One Month to Live Challenge. A year as now passed since that challenge. You are still here. But that doesn’t undermine the message. What would you do differently if you had only one month to live? Some of the things that seem important to you now would not be all that important anymore. These signs are a reminder to continue to live with that same urgency and purpose. It might mean hugging your child a little tighter and a little bit longer, because you don’t know how many more of those opportunities you will have. It might mean going on that mission trip you have been putting off for all sorts of different reasons (excuses). It might mean just simply walking across the room to share your faith with a co-worker or friend.

4) Finally, it reminds us that life is fragile. There is nothing permanent on or about his earth. Everything we see will one day come to an end. But there is one thing that remains and that is Jesus Christ. He is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. He has given you something that you can hold on to and that is the cross. These signs remind us that earth is not our home. We are just sojourners here. Heaven is our home and it was what we were created for.

Hope you have a great week. This weekend I will will be sharing my message from John 21:1-14 and will be talking about overcoming frustration. In that story we have some frustrated fishermen, but Jesus helps them overcome that frustration. If you are frustrated or know of someone who is frustrated, the place to be is at Lord of Life on Sunday at 8:30 or 10am. Hope to see you there.