The Shape of Faith
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An Honest Cry
An Honest Cry: Sermons from the Psalms in Honor of Prentice A. Meador Jr., will be available January 31 from Leafwood publishers. http://tinyurl.com/yjs7a8h
I envisioned this collection more than a year ago when I repeatedly heard from ministers who had been so powerfully impacted by Prentice. Model, friend, mentor, teacher and more, Prentice touched, and helped to shape, the ministries of so many. The preachers who have contributed to this volume represent a far greater number of partners in ministry who would have gladly accepted the opportunity to honor Prentice.
An Honest Cry is dedicated to the memory of our dear friend, who has reached the goal of his life. The title captures both the heart of his preaching style and the emotion of the book of Psalms.
Prentice had a broad range of interests. But his love for preaching was always at the top. This is why a book of sermons is such a fitting tribute. The idea became clear to me on the day that hundreds of his family and friends gathered to celebrate his life. So many ministers were sharing how Prentice had impacted their preaching that a collection of sermons from some of them seemed to be an appropriate way to honor his life. Psalms was always close to the heart of this man of God. In fact, it was one of the last classes he taught in his role as professor at Lipscomb University.
Providentially, Prentice joins the list of contributors with a sermon he wrote on Psalm 150 that I discovered while this volume was being produced.
Here is the Table of Contents:
Foreword: Randy Lowry
Introduction: Bob Chisholm
Preaching from the Psalms: Dave Bland
A Man of God
God’s Change Agent – Mark Meador
Hallelujah – Word of Praise (Psalm 150) – Prentice A. Meador Jr.
From One Generation to Another (Psalm 71) – Royce Money
Psalms in Context
Living at the Seams (Psalm 89) – Jack Reese
Singing About the Lord’s Ways (Psalm 138) – Gary Holloway
Psalms of God’s Presence
Who Is My God? (Psalm 27) – Landon Saunders
Full of God or Running on Empty? (Psalm 115) – Bob Chisholm
Psalms of Distress and Hardship
Entrusting God With Our Hatreds (Psalm 137) – Mike Cope
The ‘Piñata’ Syndrome (Psalm 17) – Chris Seidman
How Long, O Lord? (Psalm 13) – David Rubio
When All You Can Say Is “Why?” (Psalm 22) – Scott Sager
Psalms of Sorrow and Change
Create in Me a Pure Heart (Psalm 51) – Tom A. Jones
A Song for Sinners (Psalm 32) – Collin Packer
Psalms of Human Frailty
Lord, Give My Life Meaning (Psalm 90) – Harold Hazelip
What’s the Use? (Psalm 73) – Jim Martin
Psalms of Trust and Unity
The Lord Is My Shepherd (Psalm 23) – Lynn Anderson
Worth the Trip (Psalm 133) – Rick Atchley
How to Handle Bad News (Psalm 112) – Jennings Davis
Psalms of Joy and Peace
Coming Home, Laughing (Psalm 126) – Ken Durham
God’s Divine Care (Psalm 34) – John York
All Is Calm (Psalm 122) – Tim Spivey
Never Beyond Hope
Each week I teach a Searchers Class for people who are exploring faith. Last week I began a discussion that touches all of us … and every relationship we have …
What is the distance
between Hope and Hopelessness?
Everyone wonders what’s on the other side of the door. It’s barely cracked open, just enough to see the brightness. Hope is looking forward, wanting the good to continue, dreaming of happy things to come, expecting the best. Some might say, “It sounds naive.” Before you give it up, consider a few great minds, like C.S. Lewis …
Those who have done the most for the present world are those who have thought the most about the next world.
Or, Norvell Young …
No one knows enough to a cynic
Or, Aristotle …
Hope is a waking dream.
Or, Albert Camus …
In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.
Or, Emily Dickenson …
“Hope” is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul.
Or, Vaclav Havel …
Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good.
Besides, what’s our alternative? Hopelessness.
Hopelessness is giving up, expecting the worst, becoming cynical and pessimistic. It grows when optimism is broken by personal failure, damaging relationships, or even our constant diet of bad news. It can be our own bad news or that of people and lands 10,000 miles away.
I remember a time when my son was young and sitting on my lap while I watched the evening news. During the broadcast, it became very clear to me that the news was scaring David. After discussing it with my wife Pam, she observed that if we applied the same principles to the news that we used for the rest of David’s television viewing, he wouldn’t watch the news! His hope was new and fresh. The nightly news was hopeless and never ending.
But while our problems seem to grow, and our awareness of them is instant, the battle between hope and hopelessness is not new.
At the close of 7th century BC, the prophet Habakkuk asked about hope and hopelessness. We know very little about Habakkuk except that he asked questions and got answers.
I will stand at my watch
and station myself on the ramparts;
I will look to see what he will say to me,
and what answer I am to give to this complaint.
— Habakkuk 2:1 —
1st, the prophet looked at his circumstances
How long, O Lord, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you, “Violence!” but you do not save? Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrong? Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and conflict abounds. Therefore the law is paralyzed, and justice never prevails. The wicked hem in the righteous, so that justice is perverted. (1:2-4)
2nd, he waited on God
How I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior. The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to go on the heights. (3:18-19)
G. Campbell Morgan wrote, that when Habakkuk looked at his circumstances, he was confused, but when he learned to wait and listen for God, he sang.
God is in control. He is working out his own purpose, in his own time. And Habakkuk learned that he is Never Beyond Hope.
The Ultimate Hero
A man with leprosy came to him and begged him on his knees, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.” Filled with compassion, Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing.” — Mark 1:40-41
Few are willing. It has always been that way. And though the majority are not willing, they see the few who are as heroes. One such hero is leprosy physician Dr. Pfau of Pakistan. Dr. Paul Brand, himself a hero of leprosy research, told of his first encounter with her.
Long before I reached her place, a putrid smell burned my nostrils. It was a smell you could almost lean on. Soon I could see an immense garbage dump by the sea, the accumulated refuse of a large city that had been stagnating and rotting for many months. The air was humming with flies. At last I could make out human figures – people covered with sores – crawling over the mounds of garbage. They had leprosy, and more than a hundred of them, banished from Karachi, had set up home in this dump. Sheets of corrugated iron marked off shelters, and a single dripping tap in the center of the dump provided their only source of water. But there, beside this awful place … I found Dr. Pfau. – Fearfully and Wonderfully Made, 156
What makes her a hero? A fearless courage, fueled by love and compassion, aimed at human misery. All over the world people like Dr. Pfau are moving, at great personal risk, into the various forms of humanity’s plague.
But what is the root of the plague? Is there a source of all the misery? Is there an ultimate human plague? And, if there is, who is the ultimate hero?
John came, baptizing in the desert region and preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River. – Mark 1:4-5
Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptized by John. But John tried to deter him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” Jesus replied, “Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness.” Then John consented. – Matthew 3:13-15
John may have been the first, but he was certainly not the last to raise the question. Why was Jesus baptized? We can understand John’s reluctance. He was baptizing for repentance and forgiveness of sins (Matthew 3:11; Mark 1:4). For what sin did Jesus need forgiveness? What correction was required in his life?
For centuries the classic answers have proved helpful. Jesus wanted to identify with sinners. He wanted to set an example of obedience. But still, John’s question nags.
Jesus knew the aim of John’s mission. He knew the purpose of John’s baptism. He knew what kind of people came to the river. They swarmed the banks of the Jordan like lepers on the Karachi garbage dump. Wounded by greed. Diseased with lust. Infected by selfishness. Covered with the sores of human failure. All of them … except Jesus.
I have often imagined how that day at the Jordan could have gone. As the only one free of sin, the human plague, Jesus could have remained above the whole sinful scene. Imagine him, standing high in the hills surrounding the Jordan valley, separate and distinct from the human failure below. He could even have made an announcement: “You are gathered down there because you are infected with failure. I stand up here because I am free of failure. You should be like me.” Nothing would have been truer or less helpful to those infected by the human plague.
In fact, such an announcement could more easily have been made from heaven. Why stand at the edge of the lowest point on the face of the earth when you can stand at the highest place in existence? Why be born into a peasant family when your Father owns the universe? Why shield your true identity in order to grow up in obscurity? Why? Because the ultimate human plague requires the ultimate hero.
Today’s heroes commit themselves to the victims of misery. They risk their own health, but take necessary precautions. They seek a solution, but pray for personal protection. And no one expects the search for a solution to require more of them than an understandable risk.
Not so with the ultimate human plague. Jesus knew that his commitment was more than risky. He knew that the only precaution he could take was to refuse the mission. He knew that the only solution for the human plague was for him to take upon himself the sin disease of others … intentionally.
So he climbed down from his high point. He joined the mass of failure-infected people in the Jordan valley. He submitted to a rite of cleansing reserved for the terminally infected. And it shook John. It was so unusual, so unheard of, for even the greatest of heroes, that John “tried to deter him.”
John was the forerunner. He had announced Jesus’ coming. He knew of his power and his mission. But he never expected this. In fact, no one had really counted the cost of the human plague. No one had looked that far ahead … except Jesus.
Driven by love and compassion, Jesus went to the root of our disease. He aimed at the source of all misery. His baptism was a personal and public commitment, not to research and treat the human plague, but to contract it and thereby heal it.
It was a difficult and courageous choice. This is why the Father immediately affirmed Jesus’ decision: “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17). And this is also why Satan immediately attacked his decision. “If you are the Son…” (Matthew 4:1-11).
So, why was Jesus baptized? So that John could identify the Christ? Yes. So that Jesus could identify with the human race? Absolutely. To set an example of obedience? Of course. But, more than this, in a very real sense, Jesus was baptized for the forgiveness of sins … but not his own. His baptism was his decision to go to the Cross, the only permanent solution for human failure.
He began his ministry with an unavoidable baptism. He ended it with an undeserved crucifixion. It was his deliberate choice. He was moving into the heart of the human plague as the ultimate hero.
“If you are willing, you can make me clean.” Filled with compassion, Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. ”I am willing.”
If It’s Worth Doing …
In the mid 1980’s at the Pennsylvania Medical Center there was a study on productivity and emotional health. It involved 150 salesmen with incomes ranging from $10,000 to $150,000. Forty percent of the salesmen proved to be perfectionists. They were very demanding of themselves. And with high expectations of high achievement, they were an “all or nothing” kind of people. For them, if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right every time. But were they more successful? Surprisingly, the answer is “no.” Instead, they experienced much more anxiety and were much more easily depressed. But there was not one shred of evidence that they were earning any more money. In fact, discouragement and pressure hurt their productivity.
Another study at Penn State University examined gymnasts who had qualified for the Olympics. The study found that they were less likely to set perfectionist standards than those who had failed to qualify. The point? The successful athletes had accepted the fact that they didn’t always do it right. They learned from their mistakes and went on. For them, it was still worth doing, even though they didn’t always do it right.
Now, there is nothing wrong with high standards, or with an extra attention to detail and quality. But there is something fatal about being preoccupied with those few small items that never go right. You see, for the perfectionist, 99 is a failing grade. Any mistake is unacceptable. Every hair must be in place. And deep down inside, there is that constant, critical voice. It never rests. And each correction, each reminder of the one percent flaw fuels the anger that grows inside. Life becomes an obsession to fix the last problem. Eventually, the emotional drain saps the life. The spirit withers and dies. No more activity. No more trying. They would rather avoid the decision than risk the mistake.
Perhaps the old adage, “If It’s Worth Doing, It’s Worth Doing Right,” has not always been as helpful or as true as we thought. Not if I’m terrified by failure. Not if I’m paralyzed by perfection. Not if I measure my self-worth by my achievement. Not if 99 is a failing grade. Defined this way, it will never be worth doing, because I will never be able to do it exactly right.
Charlie Brown once said, “No problem is so awesome, so complicated, so fraught with danger, that the average citizen can’t run away from it.” And they do. So, I want to suggest a new form of the old adage …
“If its worth doing, its worth doing … poorly.”
Now, please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not down grading the pursuit of excellence. I’m not suggesting that we lower our standards. But I am saying that all our undertakings begin the same way – poorly. Let’s take walking for example. Tell me about your first step. Or hitting a ball, or learning to read, or write, or pray. It’s how parents teach their children. It’s how teachers encourage their students. It’s how coaches train their players. It’s how God nurtures his children.
Someone once said, “You have to go through shallow, to get to deep.” And so, if it’s worth doing, its worth starting, and when you start, and sometimes long afterwards, you will do it poorly. But keep doing it, because, “If it’s worth doing, its worth doing poorly.”
What Are You Against? …… What Are You For?
Some time ago I was privileged to hear Art Linkletter speak. Born in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada, he is currently 97 years old. I remember as a child that I had enjoyed his fun, positive personality, and especially the stories he would tell on his television program, “Kids Say the Darndest Things.” But I had never heard him in person.
In his presentation he told us the story of his daughter’s drug-related death, and his subsequent personal involvement in the anti-drug movement of the late 1960’s. As I listened to him I was impressed with his speaking ability, even as a man in his 90’s. It was easy to see how, in the 1960’s, he quickly became an “in demand” speaker, traveling the country telling his story.
What Are you Against?
As he told us his story, he explained how he was completely convinced of his cause and how he passionately pursued his purpose. And so, he was surprised to notice that his energy was beginning to wane. His enthusiasm was dissipating. He had trouble sleeping. His drive was fading.
All medical tests showed that he was fine, but still he felt terrible. And then one day, as he walked to the podium to once again make his anti-drug speech, it all became clear to him. His life had lost its energy because it was all devoted to something he was against. He had not even addressed his most important question – what was he living for? He explained to us, how at that very moment, he changed what we was going to say, and never gave the other speech again.
What Are you For?
We really have no choice. We all give our lives for something. But for what will it be? What beliefs do you live with? What vision do you live for? What cause is worth your very best?
As Paul reveals his own heart, we see the balance in his vision …
“My purpose is that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ.”
Colossians 2:1-2
As God’s representatives in our cities, towns, and schools, we are against the things that hurt people and relationships. Things like sin, selfishness, immorality, greed, arrogance, injustice, and cruelty, just to name a few. But we must also be for the things that help people and relationships. Things like forgiveness, joy, reconciliation, love, obedience, worship, generosity, commitment, and service, just to begin the list.
And so, let’s admit it. We find it easy to think of what we are against. But look at the second list. What would you add? What are you for? What is worthy of your most passionate devotion? The second list is where we offer an alternative. The second list is where we begin to change our world.
