To Die is Gain

My aunt had cancer.

She had a hard five years that ended in death. Hard for her to endure, and hard for us to watch. Would we be happier if she had had a hard five years and then lived? Yes. We would be ecstatic. We would never stop praising God for that miracle.

Instead, she died.

But for her, as for Paul, to live is Christ and to die is gain. She had a hard five years and then was healed completely and forever. And we would have been happier if she had lived to die of old age. We would have shouted our praises to the Lord if only he would have deigned to allow her to suffer with us a little longer. We see through the glass darkly.

My aunt is in Heaven, where her entire life on earth was a blip in a place where time has no meaning. Five years of cancer? A twinkling of an eye. The 40 or 50 years we think she was shorted? A blink.

My aunt won a trip to Heaven. She did nothing to earn it. She didn't even have to enter a raffle. She got sick and got to go to Heaven 40 or 50 years earlier than anyone expected. And here in America, people work for years to make enough money to take a week-long trip to Hawaii.

When Jesus healed the paralytic, He told the crowd that the true miracle was that the man's sins were gone (Matthew 9). Healing the man's legs was only a sidebar, done to prove that He had the authority to forgive sins. We are more impressed with healing the physical body, but this only proves our short-sightedness. Once the sins of the paralytic were forgiven, the man held a promise of walking on good legs for all of eternity. Healing those same legs temporally and temporarily was only an illustration of something more real than legs. After all, even Jesus, who healed the lame man, said, “If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell” (Matthew 18:8-9). Our physical bodies are merely shadows of a reality we cannot fathom.

Why did my aunt have to go through years of cancer? I don't know exactly, but to say that the reward is in Heaven is not a shallow answer. And what's even more exciting--for me--than my aunt residing in Heaven is that I will reside there one day, too. It's as certain as death.

I Made This for You

My grandmother has, in several drawers and trunks, all of the crafts and pictures her children made in their entire lives. My dad is in his fifties, but she still has the picture of a tree he made for her when he was 5.

Until I had children of my own, I didn’t understand why my grandma had saved all that trash, and, in fact, my wife and I usually only save our children’s work until they leave the room. As soon as we’re sure they’re gone, we bury it in the trash can. We have to bury it: if one of them goes to throw something out and sees their work in the trash, it hurts their feelings. We don’t want to hurt their feelings. But we also don’t want the clutter.

Once in a while, though, one of my daughters says, “I made this for you,” and she really means it, and isn’t just saying that because she doesn’t know what to do with her wet, glue-coated, sticky craft. When that happens, I put that picture on the refrigerator--which every young child knows is the preeminent spot in the house and is to be used for the accomplishments that make parents proud of their children. 

Although I quit making crafts for my dad in a time before my memory begins, I did spend most of my life trying to impress him. He’s a brilliant thinker, a professor, a better-than-average musician and now a missionary. At one of my multiple jobs, I run into people who have known him professionally for years, and many of them have told me that he is the smartest person they know. Even if he were an idiot, though, I cannot imagine anyone being a better earthly father. So, I want to make him proud.

Recently, though, I was praying in my car, on the highway, on the way to the gym, and something in me changed. I switched from wanting to make my dad proud to wanting to make God proud. I have professed, as long as I can remember, that God is more important to me than my dad is. I have always known that He is the only one I need to please, but as I was praying that day I felt my mind, my emotions--my guts even--switch from father worship to Father worship. And then the Holy Spirit filled my jeep and I started weeping and almost wrecked my car.

Someday I’m either going to die or meet the Lord in the air, and I’m going to get a tour of His house. In one room, maybe over the mantle, I will see the mouth-sword of Revelation 19. He might show me his many crowns if I ask to see them. He probably has them in a giant closet. His living room has to be giant, too, to get the throne in there. It’s hard to even imagine what other rooms God has in His house. Maybe it’s just the one huge throne room, with some nice couches for guests. He definitely doesn’t have a bathroom, and I don’t think He has a kitchen, either. After all, He is the bread of life and a river flows from his throne. I hope He has a refrigerator door somewhere, though. Wherever that door hangs, I hope that my humble, pasted-together life will be magnet-ed to it. And someday I will point to it and say to Him, “I made that for you.”

It's Necessary: Use Words

Have you ever heard the saying, “Preach the gospel at all times--if necessary, use words”? This is a quote often attributed to St. Francis of Assisi, but scholars say he never said it and probably never even thought it. In fact, St. Francis was known in his own time (the turn of the 13th century) for his powerful preaching.

I’m not sure where or when I first heard that slogan, but I’m sure it was at least 15 years ago. It used to bring me solace. I can show people who Jesus is just by being a good person? That means I never have to be uncomfortable!

I wonder now, though, what my life said about Jesus. I know my high school classmates knew I was a Christian. I had some great Christian t-shirts. One of my favorites was supposed to look like a Jack Daniel’s label, but said “Book of Daniel” instead, and instead of “Southern Comfort,” it said “The Great Comforter.” I also carried my Bible to every class. And I held it on the outside of my other books, where everyone could see it. If anyone asked me if I actually read the Bible, I could honestly say, “Yep. In geometry class.”

Everyone who was aware of me knew that I never got into any trouble, and I felt like everyone knew I got straight As. (I didn’t tell anyone about the Bs in chemistry and driver’s ed.) I was usually really, really, really nice to people. Several of my classmates noticed when I courageously helped out a substitute teacher who was being tricked by the rest of the class. No one saluted me, though, for standing up for right that day. Instead, one of them threw my calculator out the window. How did any of those actions tell people that Jesus died on the cross to save them from their sins? Even if my classmates noticed that I carried around a Bible, how did they know what was in the Bible?

I realize now that you do have to use words. The only way St. Francis of Assisi’s faux slogan works is if you enroll in mime classes at your local clown college. With practice, you can show--not tell--how you were trapped in an invisible box, someone died on a cross and opened the door for you, and pulled you out with a rope. Somebody else will have to tell them that the box is sin, the rope is grace, and the hero is Jesus.

While it is true that if you are a Christian the Holy Spirit will produce fruit in your life, affecting your behavior, the good news of the Gospel isn’t that you are a good person. In fact, the good news is the opposite. While you were a sinner, while you were making someone or something besides God your ultimate thing, Jesus died for you.

“And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?” (Romans 10:14, NIV).

A Story about Praying and Obeying

I took my son to McDonald's the other day. I didn't want to take him to McDonald's, but we were having a special daddy-son day to celebrate his fifth birthday, so he got to pick the place. I tried to convince him that he wanted to eat at a pizza buffet, but he knew he would get a free toy at McDonald's, along with an hour or so in the indoor play area, so he wouldn't budge on the issue. 

As we sat down with our food to eat, another man with another young child, a girl who looked younger than my son, sat down nearby. I overheard her tell the man--whom I later learned was her grandfather--that they had to pray before they ate. This reminded my son and I that we, too, needed to pray prior to eating. So we did. And they did. And our two tables ate at about the same pace, and we all ended up in the play area at about the same time. My son cautiously entered the maze of French-fry-grease-coated plastic tunnels into which the little girl had already charged. I sat down at the last empty table while the little girl's grandfather stroked his chin and paced in a worried manner, constantly craning his neck to peer into the tunnel windows to catch a glimpse of his granddaughter. I ignored him. I am on my third kid, and remembered my own worry the first time my eldest had climbed into those tunnels--before she was even two. She had gone inside and we didn't see her for over 20 minutes. (She is still alive.)

Just to pass the time, I started praying for the people in the play area. I looked at every single person, every boy and every girl and every adult, and prayed over them from my seat, that they would experience God's salvation. I prayed for the grandfather and the little girl last; I already assumed they were Christians, so I wasn’t as worried about them, but I had overheard him tell someone that she had leg braces and couldn't walk very well, which was why he was distraught over her time spent in the tunnels. I had already felt the presence of God as I prayed over other McPatrons, but when I started praying for the little girl and her grandfather, the Holy Spirit told me to approach the man and pray for him and the little girl.

Instead, I kept praying quietly--ceaselessly but also motionlessly. I wanted to boldly approach the man, but suddenly I thought, “He's going to think I'm crazy.” I wanted to do it, but I kept going through a mental list of reasons not to. After about 30 seconds of this inner-battle, the grandfather (Barry) approached me.

He told me that his granddaughter’s name was Abby. She was born with stage four brain cancer. St. Jude's Children's Hospital had sent her to a hospice because they said nothing could prevent her from dying in less than a month. They found a surgeon who performed brain surgery on the infant and cut out the cancer, and followed it up with chemotherapy when she was five weeks old. It is a miracle that she is alive at all. Now, she's been cancer-free for four-and-a-half-years. After I heard the entire story, and had heard Barry give glory to God several times, I boldly stood up and told him, “I felt earlier that the Lord was leading me to pray for you.”

I am thankful to God that he caused Barry to come approach me and made it easy for me to pray with him, but I can't help but think about how much more rewarding the experience would have been if I had stepped out in faith the moment God had impressed His will into my heart. After that initial faith-filled step, it would have been a breeze. I have been praying that God will give me another chance, and that next time I would immediately obey when God tells me to share His love with a stranger.

Don't be a Tithe-wad

I know someone who tries so hard to do God’s will that he’s miserable. This someone--let’s call him Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious--is careful about what he and his wife and two daughters watch on television, what music they listen to and what books they read. His wife wears a scarf over her head at church (1 Corinthians 11). He doesn’t force her to do that; she is just as pious as he is. He even quit attending a church he liked because the person who leads worship is a woman (1 Timothy 2:12). Most of the Church today considers these verses culturally specific to those to whom Paul was writing. Culture has changed, and the cultural reasons for giving those orders don’t exist anymore.

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious follows his conscience in regard to those verses, but his conscience is strangely seared when it comes to tithing. It’s easy to put a scarf on your head when you pray, and it’s even easy to find a church where everyone on staff is male. It’s not as easy to give ten percent of all that you make to God, especially when you’re only making enough to scrape by as it is--even when you know that God has promised to bless your finances when you give the first ten percent to him.  

When God first gave the command to tithe (Leviticus 27:30), it was measured in grains and spices and wool and sheep and cattle and donkeys and anything else that an agricultural society could raise or grow. The world’s economy long ago switched from a barter system to a monetary one. Now our ten percent is measured in money. Can you imagine hauling a couple of sheep to your local church once a month? The Israelites didn’t even get to take them to the local church; they all had to take their tithe to the temple in Jerusalem. It wasn’t an easy task, and so they didn’t do it. In Malachi 3, God tells the people that their crops are dying because they aren’t tithing.

The Jews in Jesus’ time did tithe. The Pharisees loved tithing, because they could tithe in front of everyone else and prove how godly they were. What did Jesus have to say about that? “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former” (Matthew 23:23, NIV). Here Jesus reemphasizes the importance of tithing even while condemning the Pharisees for not following “the more important matters of the law.” So, we know from the Old Testament that the tithe is ten percent, and that tithing was a command from the Lord, and we know from the New Testament that Jesus told the Pharisees not to stop tithing, even while he condemned everything else they did.

Tithing is never easy, but it gets more difficult as you get older. When my wife and I were first married we felt poor. Three kids later, I look back on those days and realize that I will never again have that much extra cash. Now, my wife and I never have enough money, and yet we always have enough money. Hopefully you’ve heard this cliché before, and hopefully you’re listening this time: God can do more with 90 percent than you can do with 100. Make a good habit now; it won’t get any easier. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious will tell you that.

How to Stay Saved

Until recently, every time I came across one of Paul’s lists of the Fruit of the Spirit, I would pause and check them off like items at the grocery store. “Love, check. Joy, check. Peace, check. Patience, check -- just don't ask my sister.” I say “until recently” because my pastor has been going through the book of Galatians, and really preached to us what Galatians actually says instead of what we all thought it said when we skimmed through it.

Paul wrote the book of Galatians to the people of Galatia because some Christians came to the region from Judea and taught that to be saved they had to believe in Jesus PLUS follow some of the Jewish ceremonial laws. Paul writes to tell them this is wrong, and he tells them why it’s wrong. Only one thing saves you: faith in Jesus Christ. 

Jesus died for our sins, and there is nothing we can do to help Him save us. He did it all, once for all. So, what do you have to do to stay saved? Nothing! He took care of your sins, past present and future. The freedom we have in Christ is not just freedom from Hell, but freedom from the law, freedom from a to-do list. In fact, Paul goes so far as to say in 1 Corinthians chapters 6 and 10 that while not everything is profitable, “Everything is permissible.”

“But,” you argue, “James says, ‘Faith without works is dead’” (James 2:26, NKJV). And he's right. Of course he's right. You didn't think I was going to pull a Martin Luther and call James a heretic, did you? If your faith doesn't produce good works it is dead. The important question now is, what motivates a Christian to do good works? Is it fear? No. Is it obedience? Obedience is certainly not a bad thing, but that’s not our motive, either. We don’t do good works to stay saved, but because we are saved. Christians are motivated to do good works by the Holy Spirit.

Many Christians view the Fruit of the Spirit as their to-do list. Two misconceptions accompany that view. First, the Fruit of the Spirit is not a list of fruits: it’s a description of one fruit. The one fruit is described as being love, joy, peace, patience, etc., just like an apple is red, round, sweet, crisp, juicy. Second, it's the Fruit of the Spirit, not the Fruit of the Christian. If I am a farmer, and I plant a field of corn, it is not the field's corn. It's my corn. I am the farmer. I did the work. All the field did was lay there and get rained on. In the metaphor of the Fruit of the Spirit, we are the field, not the farmer. The Holy Spirit is the farmer. So, it's not a list, and it's not your non-list.

What does all this mean? It means you don't have to focus on rule-following. You don’t have to work at staying saved. All you have to do is love God. Your faith will have works because the Holy Spirit will produce His fruit in you.

We are Buried with Him

Disciplining yourself is a constant struggle, whether you are trying to discipline your academic habits, your diet or your spiritual habits. I, for instance, try not to eat sweets, but my wife does not try not to eat them. In fact, she keeps candy and cookies around the house at all times. Last night I came home from work and ate seven Oreos. Seven Double-Stuffed Oreos. I was ashamed of myself. I was so ashamed that I proceeded to drown my inner fat guy with chocolate pudding.

It’s not always easy to stick to the plan. This is especially true spiritually because we cannot see the immediate results of the plan. Aside from reading the Bible and praying, it’s not even always clear what God’s plan for us is. But there is one thing mentioned in the Bible that is both clear and easy, and chances are pretty good that you haven’t done it yet.

Matthew 28:19 records Jesus’ command that believers be baptized in water. “Go and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit” (NIV). The Word (John 1:1), through whom all things were made, tells us to get baptized. He said "Let there be light," and there was light. And then He said, “Get baptized.”

What is baptism? Baptism is a proclamation of your faith; it is a first step in telling the world that you are a Christian. In some countries baptism is a crime punishable by death, which is terrible but also ironic, because baptism is a symbol of death. “Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life” (Romans 6:3-4, NIV). We go under the water, representing death to our old ways (pre-salvation, not pre-baptism) and come back up representing our new life in Christ.

Look back at Matthew 28:19. Notice that Jesus said to baptize the disciples, the believers. He did not say to go and baptize the babies of the believers. Nowhere in the Bible is an infant ever baptized; baptism follows a conscious decision to follow God. And if someone who was not yet saved did want to symbolize their spiritual life in a giant tub at the front of a church, they would just walk in, stand there for a while, and walk back out. Without salvation, there is no death to sin, no new life in Christ, no testimony, no symbolic dunk and no obedience. But, if you have confessed with your mouth and believe in your heart that Jesus is Lord, baptism is a clear and easy way for you to stick with God’s plan.