Let me tell you about my most exciting day as a serious cyclist. I took my bike into the shop to have them look at the back wheel. I was a little concerned because it appeared to have a crack in it. The mechanic told me that over nearly 10,000 miles I had ridden so hard that the brakes had worn down the surface of the wheel and made it so thin that it was indeed beginning to crack. The wheel would have to be replaced at the expense of a couple of hundred dollars. Why would such a day be my most exciting one? Because I wore out a wheel. I actually rode so much and so hard that I wore out a wheel! Woo hoo! What would have happened had I not replaced that wheel? I probably would have crashed when the crack broke, the wheel "taco-ed" and I went down. My bike would have been worthless, because without two wheels a bike is nothing.
The cross is the most identifiable symbol of the Christian faith. When people think of Christianity they think of the cross. As believers we all thank God daily that he sent his Son into our world to die on the cross for our sins. Jesus' crucifixion was the sacrifice that paid our debt and set us free. That's what we almost always emphasize when we speak of our faith.
But Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 15 that the Christian faith is like a bicycle. It has two wheels, and one without the other is worthless. In verse 17 Paul writes: "And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins." You see, Christ's resurrection is every bit as important as his death on the cross.
If Christ died and remained in the grave, his death would not be unique. He would be one more sinner who deserved to die. But Jesus did not deserve to die. The wages of sin is death, and Jesus was without sin. He never disobeyed his Father. He never gave in to temptation. He never broke a commandment. He never sinned! How do we know that? By his resurrection! The resurrection of Christ from the dead means that his sacrifice was acceptable. He did not die in vain. And our faith is not in vain.
Most of the crosses we have on display are empty. They do not portray Jesus hanging on the cross dead. Look at the crosses you have in your house, or that you wear on a necklace. Chances are every one of them is empy. There's a good reason for that. Jesus died and rose again. If Jesus did not die his resurrection is a fake. If Jesus did not rise, his death is meaningless. But Christ did rise, the "firstfruits" of everyone who has died with faith in Jesus and will rise again to eternal life with him. So, never separate those two events. They must always go together, just like two wheels on a bicycle.
Friday, February 26, 2010
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Talkin' Smack or Talking Up
Before we went to Houston for Thanksgiving my daughter called. She used a term that I had to ask her to define, "talkin' smack". Shows you how "hip" I am... NOT! Turns out that smack talk is the same as trash talk. According to the Urban Dictionary it's "the art of telling another person off, belittling them... while in the heat of competition."
I'll never forget the first time I rode a Century. When that cycling computer read "100" miles for the first time I about jumped out of my saddle! It was exciting, especially because I was with a good friend, Michael. Mike is the one who helped me become a serious cyclist. When we first started riding together I was just a recreational bike rider. I didn't know about road bikes, jerseys, or cadence. I didn't even know enough to bring a water bottle along. But Mike never put me down. He never made fun of me. He never talked smack. He always encouraged me. In fact, he challeneged me to do more. He strengthened me by pushing me. Mike was even there the first time I rode with clipless pedals and fell and broke my arm. He comforted me in my defeat and waited patiently for me to be able to get back on the bike. He helped me choose my first road bike. I wouldn't be a cyclist without him.
I'm sure I couldn't have made it through that first century without his encouragement. Since that time, I've ridden many solo centuries. Riding a solo century is much harder than riding with a group. Not only do you have no one to pull for you, no one to draft, but you also have no one to encourage you to keep going when you get tired and sore, when the cramps come and you feel like you're going to bonk.
In 1 Corinthians 14:3 Paul writes: "those who prophesy are speaking to people to give them strength, encouragement, and comfort." Paul's words made me think about my own words. What impact do the things I say each day have on others? Do they encourage others? Do they strengthen them when they are weak. Do my words comfort others when they're hurting?
Today I encourage you to examine the words you've been using with other people. Have you been "talkin' smack" to others or have you been talking others up? Do your words tear down the people around you, or do they build them up? Are your words negative or positive?
1 John 2:1 says: "My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One." Isn't it great to know that Jesus is not talking smack to the Father about us? He is advocating for us, talking us up! So let's take to heart his words of love and encouragement and use our words to build up everyone around us.
I'll never forget the first time I rode a Century. When that cycling computer read "100" miles for the first time I about jumped out of my saddle! It was exciting, especially because I was with a good friend, Michael. Mike is the one who helped me become a serious cyclist. When we first started riding together I was just a recreational bike rider. I didn't know about road bikes, jerseys, or cadence. I didn't even know enough to bring a water bottle along. But Mike never put me down. He never made fun of me. He never talked smack. He always encouraged me. In fact, he challeneged me to do more. He strengthened me by pushing me. Mike was even there the first time I rode with clipless pedals and fell and broke my arm. He comforted me in my defeat and waited patiently for me to be able to get back on the bike. He helped me choose my first road bike. I wouldn't be a cyclist without him.
I'm sure I couldn't have made it through that first century without his encouragement. Since that time, I've ridden many solo centuries. Riding a solo century is much harder than riding with a group. Not only do you have no one to pull for you, no one to draft, but you also have no one to encourage you to keep going when you get tired and sore, when the cramps come and you feel like you're going to bonk.
In 1 Corinthians 14:3 Paul writes: "those who prophesy are speaking to people to give them strength, encouragement, and comfort." Paul's words made me think about my own words. What impact do the things I say each day have on others? Do they encourage others? Do they strengthen them when they are weak. Do my words comfort others when they're hurting?
Today I encourage you to examine the words you've been using with other people. Have you been "talkin' smack" to others or have you been talking others up? Do your words tear down the people around you, or do they build them up? Are your words negative or positive?
1 John 2:1 says: "My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One." Isn't it great to know that Jesus is not talking smack to the Father about us? He is advocating for us, talking us up! So let's take to heart his words of love and encouragement and use our words to build up everyone around us.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Moved by Love!
Love is the greatest motivating power in the world. Love will motivate people to do things they would or could never do otherwise, crazy things, hard things, sometimes even impossible things.
I love to ride my bike. I realized again just how much I love to ride on Sunday afternoon. I was out on the back roads of the Texas Hill Country. It was 80 degrees and bright sunshine and just a light breeze to keep me cool. I felt like I could ride forever. However, I remember the first few tough days of my ride from Canada to Mexico in 2008 when it was 40 degrees and raining. Then, riding was not so much fun. Or when I got really sore and tired after about a week of riding many miles a day. Then I needed something more than the love of the bike to motivate me.
What kept me riding was love for unborn babies, whose mothers would see their child on ultrasound, and with a heart filled with compassion choose life for their little one. With the help of God's people, I had raised over $10,000 for ultrasound machines for crisis pregnancy centers. But how could an "abstract" love for an unkown mother and an unborn child keep me riding through rain and pain? It couldn't. What kept me riding was a personal love for my own daughters, whose birth mothers chose life and gave me the honor of loving and raising those beautiful girls as my own. What kept me riding was a personal love for my grandson, whose mother chose life and gave me the privilege of being a godly man in his life. And now I'm blessed with two grandsons to love for the Lord.
The greater the challenge you are facing, the more love it takes to motivate you to push through. That's how we can know that God's love is greater than any other. It empowered him to send his only Son into our world to save us. It gave Jesus the courage and strength to edure suffering, to bear the cross and go to the grave in order to pay for our sins. Jesus said, "Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." (John 15:13) But how could an abstract love for "the world" motivate Jesus to suffer so much? It couldn't. There was nothing abstract about "God so loved the world..." (John 3:16) There was nothing abstract about Jesus' love on the cross. It was personal. You were God's own dear child before he formed you in your mother's womb. Jesus knew you and loved you as a friend, even before you were born. It was a personal love that enabled him to endure the cross.
In 1 Corinthians 13:8 Paul says, "Love never fails." Do you need motivation to keep going when you want to give up? Do you need strength to accomplish something that is really difficult? Take to heart the love God has for you, the love Jesus demonstrated when he died on the cross for your sins. Then you will have a love at work in your life that will never fail. A love that will move you to accomplish more than you could possibly imagine for the glory of God and the good of others.
I love to ride my bike. I realized again just how much I love to ride on Sunday afternoon. I was out on the back roads of the Texas Hill Country. It was 80 degrees and bright sunshine and just a light breeze to keep me cool. I felt like I could ride forever. However, I remember the first few tough days of my ride from Canada to Mexico in 2008 when it was 40 degrees and raining. Then, riding was not so much fun. Or when I got really sore and tired after about a week of riding many miles a day. Then I needed something more than the love of the bike to motivate me.
What kept me riding was love for unborn babies, whose mothers would see their child on ultrasound, and with a heart filled with compassion choose life for their little one. With the help of God's people, I had raised over $10,000 for ultrasound machines for crisis pregnancy centers. But how could an "abstract" love for an unkown mother and an unborn child keep me riding through rain and pain? It couldn't. What kept me riding was a personal love for my own daughters, whose birth mothers chose life and gave me the honor of loving and raising those beautiful girls as my own. What kept me riding was a personal love for my grandson, whose mother chose life and gave me the privilege of being a godly man in his life. And now I'm blessed with two grandsons to love for the Lord.
The greater the challenge you are facing, the more love it takes to motivate you to push through. That's how we can know that God's love is greater than any other. It empowered him to send his only Son into our world to save us. It gave Jesus the courage and strength to edure suffering, to bear the cross and go to the grave in order to pay for our sins. Jesus said, "Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." (John 15:13) But how could an abstract love for "the world" motivate Jesus to suffer so much? It couldn't. There was nothing abstract about "God so loved the world..." (John 3:16) There was nothing abstract about Jesus' love on the cross. It was personal. You were God's own dear child before he formed you in your mother's womb. Jesus knew you and loved you as a friend, even before you were born. It was a personal love that enabled him to endure the cross.
In 1 Corinthians 13:8 Paul says, "Love never fails." Do you need motivation to keep going when you want to give up? Do you need strength to accomplish something that is really difficult? Take to heart the love God has for you, the love Jesus demonstrated when he died on the cross for your sins. Then you will have a love at work in your life that will never fail. A love that will move you to accomplish more than you could possibly imagine for the glory of God and the good of others.
Monday, February 22, 2010
A Winning Team
No one wins the Tour de France alone! I've been watching the Tour each year since I became a serious cyclist about five years ago. It never interested me before that, but once you've ridden 100 miles or more in a single day on your bike (or 1500 miles in three weeks) you begin to appreciate what those riders do in the Tour.
The longer I've watched the more I've come to appreciate the importance of the team to any individual's victory. If you want to win the Tour you must be a climber, and more. If you're only a climber you might win the King of the Mountains, but never the GC. And if you have only climbers on your team, no one on your team will ever win the GC. And although a sprinter could never win overall, it's good to have a wining sprinter on your team, because your sponsors like to see their logo flash across the finish line first every so often.
The body of Christ is like a winning Tour de France team. God gives different gifts to the members of the body. Some of those gifts are very evident. When the pastor is able to proclaim God's Word in a clear, powerful and relevant manner Sunday after Sunday the whole body is blessed. When the musical leadership is strong, lively and glorious the whole body rejoices. Those members are kind of like the GC contenders on the team. But there are many others gift required for the whole body to function effectively. It's easy to forget how important those other members are when their gifts are not as visible or prominent as others.
In 1 Corinthians 12:24-25 Paul says: "But God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other." Don't think too highly of yourself if your gifts happen to be evident or prominent in the body. No one wins without the whole team! And don't diminish yourself if your gifts don't seem as important or as strong as others. God gave you the gifts you have to support and strengthen the whole Body. And without your gifts the body cannot function effectively.
The fact that we all belong to each other and that together we all make up the Body of Christ should increase our love for each other. When we love each other as Christ loved us, then we will truly form a winning team.
The longer I've watched the more I've come to appreciate the importance of the team to any individual's victory. If you want to win the Tour you must be a climber, and more. If you're only a climber you might win the King of the Mountains, but never the GC. And if you have only climbers on your team, no one on your team will ever win the GC. And although a sprinter could never win overall, it's good to have a wining sprinter on your team, because your sponsors like to see their logo flash across the finish line first every so often.
The body of Christ is like a winning Tour de France team. God gives different gifts to the members of the body. Some of those gifts are very evident. When the pastor is able to proclaim God's Word in a clear, powerful and relevant manner Sunday after Sunday the whole body is blessed. When the musical leadership is strong, lively and glorious the whole body rejoices. Those members are kind of like the GC contenders on the team. But there are many others gift required for the whole body to function effectively. It's easy to forget how important those other members are when their gifts are not as visible or prominent as others.
In 1 Corinthians 12:24-25 Paul says: "But God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other." Don't think too highly of yourself if your gifts happen to be evident or prominent in the body. No one wins without the whole team! And don't diminish yourself if your gifts don't seem as important or as strong as others. God gave you the gifts you have to support and strengthen the whole Body. And without your gifts the body cannot function effectively.
The fact that we all belong to each other and that together we all make up the Body of Christ should increase our love for each other. When we love each other as Christ loved us, then we will truly form a winning team.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Warnings!
“Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did.” 1 Corinthians 10:6
If you want to ride in a peloton (a line of cyclists) there’s one thing you need to learn early on. When you’re riding on the wheel of another cyclist, it’s not always possible to spot hazards in the road ahead. You also don’t have much warning if the rider ahead of you suddenly slows or stops. So it’s very important to learn that when you ride in a peloton you need to warn the rider behind you by pointing out hazards in the road and signaling when you’re going to use your brakes. Otherwise the person behind you will probably hit the same pothole you hit, or run into your wheel as you stop suddenly. And the results can be disastrous, yes, even fatal.
As I read 1 Corinthians 10:6 this morning I thought about the person who has gone ahead providing a warning to the one who is behind. Paul tells us that the lives of God’s people in the Old Testament are recorded so that we may learn from their mistakes and not repeat them. There’s an old saying about history that appears in many different forms, but the earliest version is probably that of the 19th Century poet and philosopher George Santayana: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." This is one of the reasons God wants us to be in the Word daily.
There’s another quote, however, from Mark Twain that is not nearly so familiar, but has a grain of truth in it. “It is not worthwhile to try to keep history from repeating itself, for man's character will always make the preventing of the repetitions impossible” The truth is that everyone of us has the same sinful nature that we inherited from our parents, all the way back to Adam and Eve. That sinful nature would make it impossible for us to learn from others’ past mistakes and keep from repeating them without God’s power at work in our lives.
Paul writes: “God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.” (1 Corinthians 10:13) If we rely on ourselves to keep from repeating history when faced with temptation, we will fall. If we remember that God knows us better than we know ourselves and only permits us to endure temptations that by his power we can overcome, and if we remember that he makes a way for us out of every temptation, then we will not be doomed to repeat the sins of the past.
When we are able to overcome temptation by God’s power at work in us, then we will not cause others to stumble and fall, (1 Corinthians 10:32) in the same way that we keep others from falling in the peloton by pointing out the rock in the road, and signaling our stop.
If you want to ride in a peloton (a line of cyclists) there’s one thing you need to learn early on. When you’re riding on the wheel of another cyclist, it’s not always possible to spot hazards in the road ahead. You also don’t have much warning if the rider ahead of you suddenly slows or stops. So it’s very important to learn that when you ride in a peloton you need to warn the rider behind you by pointing out hazards in the road and signaling when you’re going to use your brakes. Otherwise the person behind you will probably hit the same pothole you hit, or run into your wheel as you stop suddenly. And the results can be disastrous, yes, even fatal.
As I read 1 Corinthians 10:6 this morning I thought about the person who has gone ahead providing a warning to the one who is behind. Paul tells us that the lives of God’s people in the Old Testament are recorded so that we may learn from their mistakes and not repeat them. There’s an old saying about history that appears in many different forms, but the earliest version is probably that of the 19th Century poet and philosopher George Santayana: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." This is one of the reasons God wants us to be in the Word daily.
There’s another quote, however, from Mark Twain that is not nearly so familiar, but has a grain of truth in it. “It is not worthwhile to try to keep history from repeating itself, for man's character will always make the preventing of the repetitions impossible” The truth is that everyone of us has the same sinful nature that we inherited from our parents, all the way back to Adam and Eve. That sinful nature would make it impossible for us to learn from others’ past mistakes and keep from repeating them without God’s power at work in our lives.
Paul writes: “God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.” (1 Corinthians 10:13) If we rely on ourselves to keep from repeating history when faced with temptation, we will fall. If we remember that God knows us better than we know ourselves and only permits us to endure temptations that by his power we can overcome, and if we remember that he makes a way for us out of every temptation, then we will not be doomed to repeat the sins of the past.
When we are able to overcome temptation by God’s power at work in us, then we will not cause others to stumble and fall, (1 Corinthians 10:32) in the same way that we keep others from falling in the peloton by pointing out the rock in the road, and signaling our stop.
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