Bad Things Must Happen

As I write these words, there is war in the Middle East. America is at war with Islamic extremist terrorists, Israel has been bombing Lebanon, Hezbollah Arabs have been sending rockets into Israel. In other words, things aren’t that much different than for many years.

False religions grip many millions of people, even whole nations. False teachers abound in the visible Christian church world. Violence and other crimes rise and fall in the statistics, but they never go away.

I am big on the love and grace of God. He loves us unconditionally, he has forgiven us of our sins, past present and future. He has made us a new creation, dead to sin and alive to God. He has given us all spiritual blessings in Christ. He gives us the fruit of His Spirit, love, joy, peace, and so on. He even blesses the unbelievers in many ways, causing the rain to fall on the just and the unjust.

Life in Christ is so blessed in so many ways, we might be tempted to think that bad things shouldn’t happen. We might be tempted to pray, “Lord, why all these bad things? Why war? Why bloodshed? Why all this evil? Lord please take it all away. Don’t let any bad things happen any more, please.”

But we know that is not to be, don’t we?

I want to cite a series of verses, not for the specific content of the verses, but just to ask you to do one thing. As I read these verses, I’d like to ask you to look for the word "MUST". As you look for the word "MUST" in these verses, I hope some light is shed on our topic today, and I hope some light is shed on our amazing Lord, and His ways. Look for the word "MUST" in these verses:

Matthew 16:21 From that time Jesus began to show His disciples that He MUST go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised up on the third day.

Matthew 24:6 "You will be hearing of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not frightened, for those things MUST take place, but that is not yet the end.

Matthew 26:54 "How then will the Scriptures be fulfilled, which say that it MUST happen this way?"

Mark 8:31 And He began to teach them that the Son of Man MUST suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.

Luke 17:25 "But first He MUST suffer many things and be rejected by this generation.

Revelation 4:1 After these things I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven, and the first voice which I had heard, like the sound of a trumpet speaking with me, said, "Come up here, and I will show you what MUST take place after these things."

O.K., you may be asking, “What’s your point, Terry?”

Several points:

1. God’s ways are higher than our ways, and His thoughts are greater than our thoughts. We wouldn’t do things the way He does, necessarily.

Isaiah 55:9 "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways And My thoughts than your thoughts.

2. God has a plan, and His plan is good, but... His plan includes bad. In a fallen world, there will be the evil results of fallen man, but God uses that evil for good. As Joseph said to his brothers in Gen. 50:20, “you meant it for evil, but God meant it for good”.

Few things will cause us to worship God in heaven for eternity, more than the full realization of how He turned bad to good.

These things MUST be.

3. God is sovereign in all things.
Psalms 115:3 But our God is in the heavens; He does whatever He pleases.

4. God works all things for good to His children.
Romans 8:28 And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.

What’s the application? As the question goes, “How shall we then live?”

1. If God puts on your heart to pray against some evil, by all means pray. I’m not advocating that we just not care. And sometimes, as James reminds us, we have not because we ask not.

2. We can have peace that passes understanding.
Peace is a fruit of the spirit. And after we've prayed, we need to leave the results to God, and not be anxious.
Phil 4:6,7, "Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."

3. We can praise God for His great plan, and His awesome ability to take bad, and use it for good. We can honor the Lord for His sovereignty, instead of grumbling and complaining in it. Whether it’s the geo-politics of war, or some false teaching or apostasy, or even today’s weather report, let’s rejoice that God is in control. When we pray for our thorn in the flesh to be taken away, if it isn’t, His grace is still sufficient.

These things must be. But only for now.

Operation Freedom Life, Part 2

Luke wrote both the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts. He wrote them specifically to a man named Theophilus. At the beginning of Acts, Luke tells Theophilus that his first treatise (The Gospel of Luke) was about the things that Jesus BEGAN to do and teach, until He ascended to the right hand of the Father.

This indicated that the Book of Acts was a CONTINUATION of Jesus doing and teaching things, AFTER He had already ascended. And how did He continue his doing and teaching? Well, through His Body, the Church. In the days of the apostles, and today. We are His Body, and His life is being lived through us.

This means that His mission is our mission. If you want to know what the mission of the Church is, look for the mission of Jesus Christ. And Jesus gave us a capsule version of His mission in Luke, Chapter 4.

He went into the synagogue, as was His custom, took the scroll of the Book of Isaiah, and read a portion. When He was done, he said that the passage from Isaiah was fulfilled in Him. This was His mission.

Here are what we may say are the seven points of the mission of Jesus, and therefore the mission of you and me:

1. "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me"...

No spiritual mission is possible without the Spirit of God. And His Spirit is in us, ready to live through us. Jesus said, "Apart from me you can do nothing." This is especially true of spiritual things.

Gal. 2:20 teaches us that we were crucified with Christ, and that now Jesus is living through us. This is the foundation of our mission, "Christ in you, the hope of glory."

2. "To preach the gospel to the poor..."

This includes evangelism, witnessing and telling the gospel to the lost. This also includes telling the rest of the gospel to the saved, the good news that our sins are forgiven, past, present and future. The good news that we have been declared righteous in God, that God is for us, and nothing can separate us from the love of God.

3. "To heal the broken-hearted..."

There is a good chance that YOU are broken-hearted. If so, do you think you are alone? A famous preacher once taught his student preachers to always assume that the people you are preaching to are hurting. And healing is in Jesus. He is the balm of Gilead that is spread on the wounds and sores of His people.

Have your broken heart healed as you spend time with Him, in prayer and meditation, and His wonderful Word, the Bible. Then spread the word to others. Healing the broken hearted is your mission too.

4. "To preach deliverance to the captives..."

Again, this is regarding before salvation and after. Listen to Gal. 5:1 – "Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage." It’s our mission too.

5. "And recovery of sight to the blind..."

I once was blind, but now I see. Again, before and after salvation. The church develops pockets of cultic thinking that cause blindness to our freedom in Christ. We need to help each other to “see” with spiritual eyes those things which are eternal, unseen with the physical eyes. It’s our mission too. Ironically, sometimes the most blind are those who walk by sight

6. "...To set at liberty the oppressed..."

This is opposing Legalism, whether for salvation (false "works" religion), or to keep salvation (earning God’s continued favor), or for fellowship (earning God’s love and friendship, trying to make ourselves "worthy").

Are you oppressed? Are you feeling like, "How could God love me and fellowship with me when I fall so short all the time?" Let me assure you that He has already taken care of that. When Jesus cried out on the cross, "It is finished", He meant it. The curtain between you and God is torn away. The wall between you and God has been blasted away by the cross, when Jesus became sin so that you might be made the righteousness of God.

"There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus." And if there is no condemnation, then there is nothing to keep you from the sweet communion with Him. And then pass it on. It’s your mission too. To tear legalism limb from limb. To set at liberty the oppressed.

7. "To preach the acceptable year of the Lord..."

Jesus caps His and our mission off with this reference to the Year of Jubilee, spoken of in Lev. 25:10, a year of universal release for person and property.

Jesus said, "I came that they might have life and life abundantly." And it’s all through Him. "He who has the Son has Life". We just need reminding sometimes of what we have.

What Jesus BEGAN to do and teach, is now being passed on to us.

This is our mission: Operation Freedom Life.

Operation Freedom Life, Part 1

I live in an Army town, Clarksville, TN. Our suburb is Ft. Campbell, KY, most of which is actually in TN. Ft Campbell is the home of the 101st Airborne Division, along with a large contingent of the Fifth Group Special Forces, and the 160th Nightstalker Special Forces.

So I rub shoulders with a lot of soldiers. I do business with them, make friends with them, and just naturally pay more attention to news about them than someone might who doesn’t see camouflage uniforms every day at McDonald’s or the Wal-Mart checkout line.

And I love these soldiers. I admire them. I respect their dedication to their mission, whatever it may be at the time. I watched the troops come and go during Operation Desert Storm in 1991, freeing Kuwait from Saddam Hussein, Operation Enduring Freedom in Oct. of 2001 invading Afghanistan, and Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003, still ongoing.

I’ve prayed with families as they were ready to say goodbye to the dad or mom soldier in the family. We gathered with a crowd at Ft. Campbell to welcome home a Nightstalker who had been wounded, tortured and held captive in Somalia. We had a young boy and his homeschooler mom over for our son Michael’s birthday party. Not long after, that boy’s daddy lost his life in Afghanistan.

I say all that to say this: I’ve thought a lot about the concept of “mission”.

A good mission is simple. It may have a lot of complicated logistics, lots of details necessary to carry it out, but the mission itself is simple.

In Desert Storm, in 1991, the mission was “Free Kuwait from Saddam Hussein”. The mission in Afghanistan was “Capture or kill Al-Queda terrorists, bring down the corrupt terrorist-supporting Taliban, and establish an elected government.” In Operation Iraqi Freedom, the mission was “Oust Saddam Hussein and, again, establish a freely elected government.”

Huge operations, but simple in their missions.

What is our Mission as the Church of Jesus Christ? That’s the question I want to answer here. And for our purposes here, I’ll call it “Operation Freedom Life”.

(Continued in Part 2)