Not Alone

by Randy Schroeder

It is interesting that a person can be in a room of 200 people and still feel alone. I played in a golf tournament a few years ago with about that many people and I did not know a single person. It was a strange experience. Some people handle that situation with ease, but I think most of us struggle with the feeling of aloneness that gets stirred up. I wonder how many people visit churches like ours and feel the same thing.

It reminds me of the unique and powerful episode that took place in the garden for Adam. He was in a perfect environment. There was no sin nature involved so he had no struggle with the flesh like we do. He had a perfectly intimate relationship with God. He was given dominion over everything.  What is not to love about that? But then God declares that something is not good. I wonder if that confused Adam and made him think, but God I am not alone. I have you.

God seems to be pulling back the curtain to reveal how he had created Adam;perfect but needy. He needed air, water, food, sleep. But he was also created to need not only a relationship with God but also a relationship with people. And it is significant that sin had not yet entered the picture.

For the first 10 years of my faith journey from age 20-30, I thought that the spiritual and Biblical approach that I should have, was to declare that God was all I needed. But God showed up and took me back to the garden and revealed to me how I was created; needy. God would be the ultimate supply for all my needs. But it would be more Biblical to say that I was created to need an intimate relationship with God and with people.  That would lead me to say to my wife that I need you and I am ok with you needing me. But we will trust God as the supply and not take from each other. A little different from the message I actually gave her for the first 8 years of marriage which was, "if you are really walking well with God, he is all you will need." So, effectively I said, don't look to me for anything. That didn't work so well. Fortunately God redirected me.

More on this next week.

To Lament is Christian

By: Steve Loo

While many of us have gone through pain and trauma, the jury is out in terms of whether we have handled pain well. Pain is scary, and if we are honest with ourselves, we have not processed our pain well.

Biblical lament is the bridge between pushing our pain under the rug and pretending it’s not there, and being waylaid by our pain. You see, you can cry and vent while remaining apart from Jesus.  But lament is crying and venting to get to Jesus. 

Lament is a loud cry and passionate expression of grief. We see in the Psalms that these expressions of pain and suffering are honest, raw, even disturbing. In Lamentations for example, Jeremiah has hit rock bottom: “He has made my teeth grind on gravel, and made me cower in ashes; my soul is bereft of peace; I have forgotten what happiness is; so I say, ‘My endurance has perished; so has my hope from the LORD.” (Lamentations 3:16-18)

Ever complained like Jeremiah?  But as you look closer, he’s not just complaining, he’s praying. He’s not just crying, he’s lamenting. Even though he vents deep pain, these laments turn into a pathway of renewed hope and trust. These are the crossroads that many of us are missing. It’s almost like we have to confess our hopelessness to bring us to a place where we can hope again.  Jeremiah, in that same passage, moves from a cry of pain to an incredible cry of worship: “The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” (Lam. 3:22-23).

I never had a category for these laments. To be honest, they made me uncomfortable! I always skipped ahead to the promises. Or other times I wallowed in my pain. But as I learned that a third of the Psalter are written in individual and corporate laments, the more I began to see that the Israelites were a lamenting people. And Jesus Himself lamented on the cross, crying out those heartbreaking words of lament from Psalm 22:1: “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?”  If our King used his last breath for lament, surely we are called to be people of lament until He comes again. And as I began to see this, the more the Spirit of God opened my eyes that these laments were not optional. To lament is a necessary part of what it means to be Christian.  Not only do we need to feel the pain of a broken world that is estranged from His Maker, but we also see that this pain doesn’t have the final word in this world. Our pain gives way to the promises of God.

All of us feel pain. Some of us grieve. Very few of us lament, and then invite others to lament together. But for those who believe in the sovereignty of God and yet know the tension of a world with tragedy as the trending news each morning, lament is what helps us truly trust in a sovereign God who will put tragedy to rest. Hope, let’s invite others to lament in our pain just like Jesus did, and see if our pain gives way to a deeper and fuller worship of God.

Seeing Lament in the Psalms

By: Steve Loo

“One out of three psalms is in a minor key.”

This one line by Mark Vroegop in his book, Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy, blew me away. I’ve read through the Bible 9 times, read the Psalms constantly, and yet I’ve never realized that lament is the largest category in the entire Psalter!

Lament is the path between heartbreak and hope. As Vroegop defines lament, “lament is a prayer in pain that leads to trust.” And as I began to read Scripture, laments just started to leap off the page. It was almost like getting a new eyeglass prescription. Once you put those lenses on, everything seems brighter and clearer.

Not only laments jumped out at me, but also the four key elements that typically comprise a lament: (1) an address to God, (2) a complaint, (3) a request, and (4) an expression of trust. Vroegop summarizes it to four words: turn, complain, ask, and trust. As I committed to working through a Psalm of lament once a month, I began marking up my Bible with these elements. For example, the Psalmist turns to God and also uses the same breath to complain (you often see turn and complain together) in Psalm 13:

How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow all the day? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? (vv. 1-2)

After pouring out his complaint to God in a blunt and straightforward manner, yet keeping appropriate respect, he asks God to act:

Consider and answer me, O LORD my God; light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death… (v. 3)

Finally, he ends with a commitment to trust. This is usually signified by a conjunction: and, yet, but. The Psalmist complains how long will God forget him, followed by asking God to arise, “But I have trusted in Your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the LORD, because he has dealt bountifully with me.” (vv. 5-6)

The more I saw turn, complain, ask, and trust in the Psalms, the more I was able to see that the minor key was more prevalent than I thought.

As lament leapt off the pages, I sensed my love for God had increased. I know that in my pain, that God doesn’t stand and scoff or hide himself from me, but there are many days it feels like he is. And being able to complain has given me biblical language to say, “God, I’m trusting that You are sovereign and good, but it doesn’t feel like it today.” It’s deepened my desire to honestly offer up godly complaint to Him, knowing that our laments should bring us to worship. And to unbridled trust.

Advent Traditions for Families with Young Kids

by Steve Loo

Have you ever wondered what Advent rhythms would be like with young kids?

When Joanna and Caleb were two and four years old, respectively, Christine decided to make a giant Advent calendar out of fabric with pockets to stick things in.   We used Nancy Guthrie’s little book called Let Every Heart Prepare Him Room to prepare objects that would correspond with Scripture passages from each of the daily readings.   The kids would take out the object from the pocket, tell us what it was, and guess how it connects to that passage.  For example, when we read Mary’s Magnificat, we would stick a magnifying glass in the pocket and ask them how that related to the Christmas story. Then we would explain how Mary magnified the Lord and what it means to magnify the Lord in our lives. Then we would pray.  It was brief, memorable, and fun.

As the kids got older, we began to actually sit down and read the Scriptures and the devotional along with our Advent Calendar from Let Every Heart Prepare Him Room.  Along with the Scripture and story, there is also a Christmas song to sing, and then a spot where you can write comments made and questions asked during your family’s devotions during Advent.  As we continued the tradition year after year, it was lifegiving to record these comments and look at them each Christmas to see how our kids grew.

As the years went by, we began to alternate Let Every Heart Prepare Him Room with Marty Machowski’s Prepare Him Room family devotional.  It had only thirteen family Advent devotionals, three for each of the 4 weeks of Advent and one more for Christmas.  Each week after a warm up activity, the first devotional explored a biblical prophecy from the Old Testament that points forward to Jesus, the second highlighted an announcement of the birth of Jesus or His mission, and the third explored how the earlier prophecy or announcements find its fulfillment in Christ.  The kids absolutely loved the songs from Sovereign Grace Music’s Prepare Him Room album, and really helped to see that the Christmas story connected to a bigger story.

This year to capture all of our kids ranging from ages 0-10, we are using a new Advent devotional called Tracing Glory, which traces the story of Christmas looking back at the creation of the world in Genesis all the way to the end of the story of the new creation in Revelation, tracing the glory of Jesus Christ from start to finish. There are three questions to help you process what you have read and discuss, and there is a “Dictionary of Big Bible Words” in the back.  We listed down the devotion titles and passages each day on a Word document, and took 15 minutes to brainstorm an activity that all the kids (especially the younger ones) can do while listening to the devotion (See our list!).  For “The Son and the Sacrifice” that tells how God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac (Genesis 22:1-19), our activity is to build an edible altar using marshmallows, pretzels, and gummy bears. For “Mother by Miracle” on the announcement of the virgin birth, we will bring out some of our baby pictures.  Then we’ll connect it to the bigger story — for “The Son and the Sacrifice”, it points forward to Christ that God will not provide a ram, but His Son.  For “Mother by Miracle”, it shows how the Old Testament prophecies points back to Christ.  As you hit on the direction each story points to, your kids will see how everything in the Scriptures points to Jesus.

It has also been such a joy to sing Christmas songs with our children.  We didn’t do that when we were kids until we grew up and had our own families.  The kids would mainly listen to the songs, and these songs would spark deeper questions (“Daddy, why does ‘O Come Emmanuel’ sound so sad?”). It has been sweet to see Caleb and Joanna start leading the way every Christmas Eve, practicing on guitar and piano so they can lead our family in a few Christmas songs.

It’s been so lifegiving to develop a vision for our family and to best accomplish this through our Advent rhythms.   What is your vision for your family and how could you see it come to life through Advent rhythms?   Perhaps you have never had any meaningful Advent traditions growing up.  Now is the time to be able to give your kids a chance to behold the mystery of the Incarnation and to stir their affections for Jesus. And yes, you may have to create space and do less during this Christmas season.  But whatever you give up will never equal what your children will be left with — markers that will be indelibly imprinted in their memories forever.

:Parents, take the lead as you discuss your family Advent rhythms.  Here are some points to converse with your spouse:

• Set theme: What is our family theme for this year?

• Set frequency: How many times will we read per week?  

• Set time:  When will we read with our family? 

• Set reading:  Are our kids young and do we want to start off with a simple Advent calendar? Use Tracing Glory or Prepare Him Room as a guide?

• Simplify readings: For parents with younger children, make it simpler by focusing on just one Scripture verse from the daily readings, and drill home the main point. 

• Reflect after the reading, asking questions like:  

  • What did we learn about Jesus’ birth, ministry, or coming return?   Why is this so important? 

  • How are we like the characters in this story? 

  • How should we respond?

• Sing, sing, sing!

What is Success for a Church?

by Peter Swann

A thirst for success seems to hound all of us. We all want our lives and efforts to count. We want to be deemed successful, for success gives us worth.

The worth of a church is viewed in the same light. It’s all found in the success that a church attains, presuming that that success will be what best glorifies our Lord. We all long for successful churches. But what really is success?

The easy answer is numbers. Success as defined by growth and size. The larger, the better, and the larger, the more successful. For the masses, that’s often a plain and standard view of success. For others, it may be a subtle, but no less significant, view of success.

Matthew 28 might define it slightly differently. In the Great Commission, Jesus challenges his disciples to make disciples of others wherever they go. It’s the 2 Timothy 2:2 idea of disciples that reproduce other disciples. No disciples are true disciples unless they are reproducing themselves, so it seems the worth of a church is found in its ability to simply produce disciples.

Success, then, is in discipleship. The only challenge there is that disciples are hard to measure. How do we know if a church is producing disciples? What are the metrics? How are they measured?

The truth, it seems, is that the answer is in the stories. Discipleship is all about transformation, so discipleship is gauged by how much people are being changed. No simple measurement gives us that, except testimonies of life change. It’s the stories of transformation that are our best measurement of success.

It’s also not just in hearing any stories. It’s in the depth of transformation, the nature of the transformation, the speed of the transformation, and the longevity of the transformation. The stories must reveal those things. In the process of that communal transformation, there should naturally be numerical growth in the community, but that is simply a byproduct of the real measure of success.

One challenge for some of us is what our pride has to say about it all. That’s definitely my issue. My pride presses against this theological framework. After all, outward and measurable appearances of size are standards of success in almost every sector of our society. It’s our default, and at least in my case, flows into my pride.

And so I’m thankful that at Hope, we’ve never counted numbers. We have no idea how many people are actually coming on Sunday, or how many people have come any Sunday. What we do know is the stories. That’s what we cherish, and that’s what we hold on to. That’s what determines success, and that’s what it’s all about.

If success gives us worth, then, I’m thankful that our worth is found in the same thing that fulfills the Great Commission.

It’s all in the stories.