September 17, 2014

Posted on September 19, 2014 by jgarrott

Luke 15:7 “I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.”

To a certain degree this makes me feel less guilty for taking things for granted, because it seems like heaven does the same thing! We do get used to how things are, however that happens to be, so it is changes that impact us. It’s not at all that heaven isn’t glad about those who are already saved, but there is special joy when another is added. The major point, however, is that each individual is of great concern and value. We tend to burn out when the numbers get too big, but that never happens with God. We can’t wrap our minds around it when hundreds and thousands of people are persecuted for their faith, for example, but when we know about one woman who refuses to discard her faith even when forced to give birth while chained to a prison floor, we are moved. Jesus was here proclaiming the value of the individual. When we have that understanding, we will be committed to drawing people individually to Christ. Mass evangelism is seldom effective, and when it is effective, most of that is because of personal contacts made by individuals. The vast majority of those who are saved in large meetings came to the meeting because of a personal invitation, and their hearts were open because of having seen someone they knew demonstrate the life of Christ. Individuals are important not only to be saved, but to be involved in the process of others being saved.

This is something I have understood for a long time, but I have had great difficulty getting across to others. People automatically exclude or disqualify themselves when it comes to personal evangelism. They are convinced that God could never use them to save anyone. That’s believing that their weaknesses are more powerful than God! We want evangelism to be easy, for people to pour into the church, but it very seldom happens that way. God uses the process of evangelism not only to draw more people into His family, but also to grow and mature those who are involved in the drawing. I have been impacted, in some way changed for the better, every time I have been involved in someone committing to Jesus as Lord. I need to help the believers understand that God wants to do the same thing in them, and that He’s more than capable of doing so. We want to be “fully prepared” for the task, but I need to help people understand they are never fully prepared but God always is, so our focus needs to be on Him and not on ourselves.

Father, I keep coming back to that last point. I too am entirely too self-centered. Thank You for not giving up on me. Help me love people individually with Your love, not just treating them as an anonymous mass. May I be fully yielded to You so that You may use me without hindrance, for the salvation of many and for Your glory. Thank You. Praise God!

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September 16, 2014

Posted on September 19, 2014 by jgarrott

Luke 14:11 “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Sometimes Jesus’ teaching just seems like common sense, but that just shows how uncommon common sense is! It also explains why you get a lot of parallel teaching in various moral religions. Buddhism and Confucianism, for example, have plenty of good teachings in them. However they, and every other religion apart from Christianity, lack a Savior. There are those who try to separate the moral teaching of the Bible from the Person of Jesus Christ, but that removes the foundation for the morality. Human conscience itself is a testimony to our Creator, but unless we acknowledge that Creator, we are on shaky ground indeed. As numbers of people have pointed out, one logical extension of atheism is a total negation of morality. If we are nothing more than collections of atoms/molecules/cells, then there is no basis for saying that one action is better than another, other than survival itself. The only reason someone would seriously espouse such a philosophy is if they are trying to avoid accountability to their Creator, and that is a logical fallacy if ever there was one. If all we had was accountability, however, life would be fearful indeed, because we all slip up countless times. The unique, the crowning feature of Christian faith is that God provided the ultimate “escape clause,” so to speak, by sending His Son to take the penalty for our sin. John nailed it in his first letter as he talked about sin, confession, and forgiveness, wrapping it up by saying, “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. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.” (1 John 2:1-2 )

This is of course why I am in Japan, to tell people about this incredible plan of God to reconcile the world to Himself. (2 Corinthians 5:19) It is senseless of approach the Japanese on the basis of moral teaching, because they have plenty of it. The average Japanese is probably more polite than the average American. Jesus’ teaching on humbling yourself, as in this verse, is already ingrained in Japanese culture. However, Japanese culture doesn’t have a Savior, and there is no one on the face of the earth who doesn’t need one. As I have been reminded several times recently, I didn’t come to Omura to teach a religion, I came to introduce the Lord Jesus Christ. I’ve got to keep that in focus, living a moral life certainly, but not inviting people to become Christians on the basis of morality, but rather on the sole foundation of Jesus Christ. (1 Corinthians 3:11)

Father, thank You for this reminder. Help me have renewed focus and anointing as I share Christ with those around me, so that as many as will may open their hearts to receive Your full salvation, for Your glory. Thank You. Hallelujah!

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September 15, 2014

Posted on September 16, 2014 by jgarrott

Luke 1:74-75 “to rescue us from the hand of our enemies,
and to enable us to serve him without fear
in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.

The ideas in these two verses are so interconnected that for grammatical reasons the Japanese blends them, putting both verse numbers at the beginning of the passage. Here Zechariah is expressing the goal of God in fulfilling His promise to Abraham. We would do well to pay close attention. God’s intent is that we serve Him. As has come out recently because of an absurd statement by a prominent Christian personality, it’s not about us, it’s about God. He loves us incredibly, but sometimes we drift into thinking He’s around to serve us, rather than us Him. We then need to remember that our service is to be holy and righteous. In other words, we can’t serve God by, or while, wallowing in the muck of the world. We live in that environment, but Jesus said that those who believe in Him are not of it, (John 17:14-16) and Paul cautioned us not to compromise with the world. (Romans 12:2) Those who insist they love and serve God, and at the same time insist on their right to worldly indulgences, don’t have their heads on straight. The last point to remember is that this applies to every day of our lives. This clearly rules out “Sunday Christians!” We can’t be “part-time Christians” and we never retire from being Christians. (Actually, I would doubt the salvation of anyone who would want to do that.) The rewards for faith and faithfulness are great, but we’ve got to be in it for the long haul. That’s why the letter to the Hebrews goes on at such length, in chapters 11-13, about this issue. We are here for God, and that’s a good thing.

This is very appropriate, coming on my 66th birthday, when my father died less that two weeks after his 64th. It’s a good time to reexamine why I am here, and the focus of my days. I know from experience that focusing on myself can produce some momentary pleasures, but genuine happiness, peace, and satisfaction never come that way. When I remember that I am here to serve God and not to make me happy, I discover that I am far happier than when I am trying to make me happy. Yesterday in speaking of how God has fulfilled His plans in my life, even when I had planned something else, I was overcome with emotion at God’s faithfulness. There are no words to describe His faithfulness adequately. I have no idea how many more days I will have on this earth, nor what they will hold. I know what is planned for today, but I have no guarantee that will happen. I am to walk in moment-by-moment fellowship with and obedience to my Lord by His Spirit, so that I may indeed serve Him in holiness and righteousness all my days, including today.

Father, thank You for this reminder. It’s a good birthday present! Help me rest, relax, and rejoice in You, allowing Your love and grace to flow through me unhindered to all I am with, for the blessing of us all and for Your glory. Thank You. Praise God!

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September 14, 2014

Posted on September 16, 2014 by jgarrott

Matthew 25:40 “The King will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'”

This story of rewards and punishments in the Last Judgment is well known, yet we stumble over it more often than not. There are various questions raised by it, such as just who is a brother by Jesus’ definition. But when we start looking for loopholes, we’ve lost the whole point. Jesus is saying here that when we relate to people on the basis of “What’s in it for me?” then we are essentially spitting in His face. We are to look at those around us as fellow recipients of the grace of God, recognizing that we ourselves could be or do nothing apart from that grace, and so rejoice to be channels of that grace to others. The Golden Rule, “Do to others what you would have them do to you,” (Matthew 7:12) has far more depth and applicability that we like to admit. Here, Jesus is extending that same rule to eternal consequences. We aren’t to be nice to people because we’re afraid we’ll get zapped if we aren’t, or to try to earn “brownie points” with God. Rather, we are to respond to others out of a recognition of God’s love for us, and that He loves those others just as much as He does us. When we do that, we will indeed serve them as we would serve Jesus, just as He talks about here.

I struggle with this at times too! As I tell couples in marriage counseling, the Golden Rule can be very dangerous if approached wrongly, especially between men and women. If we expect – demand – that others like things to be the way we do, we are guaranteeing conflict. The point is to love enough to care enough to find out what the person really needs or wants, and seek to do that for them. So much “charity” is whatever makes the person doing it feel good, rather than what the recipient really needs. Sometimes, what they really need is some discipline! However, seeing them as a little brother or sister of Jesus, as He paints the picture here, is perhaps the best guide. I’ve got to remember how much of His patience and mercy I’ve demanded by my own actions, and so be willing to let that patience and mercy operate through me toward others.

Father, thank You for this reminder. Thank You for the assurance that in the final analysis it will all be worth it. Help me never hold back, but let Your love and grace flow through me unhindered, with Your wisdom, to produce Your results for Your glory. Thank You. Hallelujah!

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September 13, 2014

Posted on September 16, 2014 by jgarrott

Matthew 23:24 “You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.”

Jesus was certainly a master of descriptive language! This particular remark is so striking that it is quoted widely, but there is real question whether those using it are allowing Jesus’ words to change how they look at things. The whole issue here is priorities. It’s not that we want to make gnats a major part of our diet, it’s that trying to swallow a camel would do us major damage. (Of course, Jesus was skillfully using hyperbole here, but the point should communicate.) We do this all the time, being picky about, for example, being on time for church but being careless about what programs we watch on TV. It’s not that coming in late isn’t to be avoided, it’s that there’s a lot of rot on TV that can poison us from the inside out. Actually, as the song from H.M.S. Pinafore says, things are seldom what they seem. We need God’s help to see things as they really are. Otherwise we are blind guides, for ourselves and for others, just as Jesus says here. Deception is the devil’s forte. We need to recognize our huge capacity for being deceived and seek the Lord for Him to show us what is important and what isn’t, what is real and what isn’t.

I am not to be caught up in conspiracy theories, but neither am I to accept unquestioned the picture of reality that society tries to present to me. Rather, I am to “Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness” (Matthew 6:33) in all things, allowing God to show me what is important and what is less so. I am to recognize that we are in the middle of an intense spiritual conflict, far broader as well as far more intense than the physical conflicts we see reported on the news. As Francis Shaeffer famously asked, “How shall we then live?” I am to seek to let the Lord set my priorities and commit myself to live by them, remembering that He is the Victor, and in Christ I am too.

Father, You are giving me little lessons in this all the time. Help me learn what You are teaching me! Help me see things more and more from Your perspective, both as to what is real and what is not, and what is important and what is not. May I be Your agent to do Your will in every area of my life, whether I ever see the “big picture” or not, for Your glory. Thank You. Praise God!

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September 12, 2014

Posted on September 13, 2014 by jgarrott

Matthew 21:31 “Which of the two did what his father wanted?”

Jesus certainly had a way of getting to the point! He was dealing with people who said all the right things, but He wasn’t going to let them off the hook. With His parables and questions He forced them to expose where they were wrong, but too often they refused to acknowledge their errors even so. There are real echoes in this parable of what God said in Ezekiel 18:21-24, which is a strong warning not to presume on past righteousness, but to repent. Here, Jesus is saying very clearly that follow-through is of utmost importance. Words are very important, but words alone don’t cut it. Paul stressed verbal confession of Jesus as Lord for salvation because in those days, confessing anyone other than Caesar as Lord could get you killed. (Romans 10:9-10) Verbal confession really meant something! In America todayre you are more likely to get into trouble for saying something like, “I stand for Biblical morality.” However, even if you say that, if you are playing with sex outside of a monogamous marital context, your words are meaningless. Jesus’ specific example is of someone who repented, that is, he decided he was wrong and he did something else. We are in real trouble if, and really only if, we refuse to repent.

Growing up in church as I did, I’ve always had the right words on call. However, it was always open to question whether I was living out those words. Actually, it still is, as it is for everyone. God wants me to walk in obedience, not just parrot the right words. God sees each person’s heart, and He alone knows our true motives. I am not to go around judging, but I am to hold myself and others to the standard of Jesus Christ. By that standard we all have plenty of room to grow, but everything must always be in the context of love, for God and for one another. As a pastor I am to exhort and encourage, as indeed every believer should do for their brothers and sisters in Christ. (Colossians 3:16) I am to forgive rather than excuse, and let the Holy Spirit show me the difference. I am to walk in humility and loving obedience, and call others to do the same.

Father, You know my heart better than I do myself. Help me live out the truth You have placed in me, and not deceive myself into thinking words are the same as actions. (James 1:22) May we be a people who do Your will, whatever we might have done in the past, so that Your plans may be fulfilled through us for Your glory. Thank You. Hallelujah!

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September 11, 2014

Posted on September 13, 2014 by jgarrott

Matthew 13:41-42 “The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. They will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

The NIV tries to soften this by saying “everything that causes sin,” instead of “everyone who causes stumbling,” which is how the Japanese translates it. It is a simple fact that hell is a horrible place, and those who have failed to commit themselves to the only Savior will end up there as the natural consequence of their actions. We like to think of Jesus as all sweetness and light, but here He is saying that He Himself will send out the angels to do the “weeding” in the Kingdom. This passage should make us really examine ourselves. “Everyone who causes stumbling” would include those who deliberately dress to be sexually provocative, and there are indeed those who come to church that way. “Those who commit lawlessness,” which is how the Japanese translates the second category, would include all who ignore the Bible in order to hang onto their favorite sin. That covers a lot of people! I keep coming back to the fact that God is not mean and He desires that all come to repentance, but our actions and attitudes have consequences, and without repentance we will indeed reap what we sow. (Galatians 6:7) 1 Peter 4:17 comes to mind, where Peter says that it is time for judgment to begin with God’s household. When we take sin lightly we take grace lightly, and the loss from that is incalculable.

A few days ago I watched the video testimony of a woman who shot herself in the chest in a suicide attempt and went to hell, but God in His incredible mercy brought her back. It goes without saying that her life was totally changed after that! How she described hell really clicked for me, when she said that she became pain, she became despair. We have no real words to express the totality of hell, any more than we have words to express the totality of heaven. As a pastor in Japan, I am surrounded by people who have only the vaguest ideas of heaven and hell, but then, I don’t think the situation is so different in any other country. This is a real problem, because Japanese value loyalty above almost anything else, and we have people say to us that they can’t become Christians because then they would go to heaven, and they must be loyal to their relatives who have died and are not in heaven. Logic doesn’t begin to touch that way of thinking! I need the wisdom and anointing of the Holy Spirit in order to get through, because their eyes obviously need to be opened to the truth. I am never to give up, but I am also never to think I can get the job done on my own. Rather, I am to expect to rejoice when God does the job, even through me.

Father, thank You for Your faithfulness. It is all too easy to let myself be dragged down by people’s response, or rather lack of it. Help me be faithful to You as You have been to me, so that Your Word may flow unhindered through me to accomplish that for which You send it, for Your glory. Thank You. Hallelujah!

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September 10, 2014

Posted on September 11, 2014 by jgarrott

Matthew 13:11-12 He replied, “The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. Whoever has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him.”

Here we have the mystery of election, which Paul wrote about at some length in Romans 9. Actually, there is mention of election (or choosing, depending on the translation) in several places in the Gospels and in the letters of Peter and John, as well as in the majority of Paul’s letters. There are things we do not know and cannot know, and perhaps the chief of those is why God chooses people for salvation and the degree to which we influence that choice. Actually, two major camps exist over this issue, with Calvinists coming down heavily on the side of God’s sovereignty and Arminians emphasizing human choice. I have always seen points to each, and have come to terms with the fact that we live in a tension that human intellect cannot resolve, and being dogmatic about it creates rifts in the Body of Christ that benefit no one. That said, this passage at first glance seems very “Calvinistic,” but I don’t think it excludes human will at all. We must not forget Jesus’ famous parable of the talents, recorded in Matthew 25. The big issue there is not how much each person received, but what they did with it. Different people are given varying degrees of revelation of God, which is by God’s sovereign choice, but it is their choice what they do with the revelation they have received. Those who rejoice to act on it are given more and more understanding, but those who fail to act on it find that even the understanding they thought they had is taken from them. As Paul wrote in Romans 1, God reveals Himself to some degree to all mankind, so the question becomes how we respond, and that is where personal responsibility comes into play.

I have been aware of this tension for a long time, and I have seen quite a few discussions over it. When such discussions are honestly seeking more of God, they deepen the faith of all involved. When they polarize and get into real arguments, they are destructive to the Body of Christ. I am not to tear anyone down for the sake of a theological point! What we believe is indeed of great importance, but we are all dependent on the grace of God, and pretending otherwise sets us up for major deception. Having been raised on the Bible, I have been given a huge spiritual inheritance, but I have learned the hard way that if I am not acting on it, living it out, it is meaningless. On the level of Bible knowledge, I have a real problem presuming too much prior knowledge on the part of my hearers, so the truth I am trying to communicate doesn’t penetrate. As Jesus did, I need to adjust my presentations to fit my hearers, not holding back in any way for those who are ready to receive, but not dumping on people who have no comprehension of what they are hearing. I certainly need the wisdom and anointing of the Holy Spirit for that! I am to be faithfully obedient, allowing God to work through me to draw as many as will come to Him.

Father, thank You for the very clear clear, simple point You got through to me a few years ago, that You’re smart and I’m not. Help me remember that “knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.” (1 Corinthians 8:1) May I build up all with whom I interact, drawing them to You and so destroying the works of the enemy, for Your glory. Thank You. Praise God!

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September 9, 2014

Posted on September 11, 2014 by jgarrott

Matthew 10:39 “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

This verse seems more contemporary all the time, with people talking about “finding themselves” and having “me time.” The Japanese translation of this verse is helpful here. It says, “Whoever considers his life his own will lose it.” Narcissism has been around a long time, even if it is remarkably in evidence these days. It’s not that we aren’t to take care of ourselves, physically and emotionally, but that we are using borrowed property. Japanese has completely different words for “life” as in the way we live, lifestyle, and “life” in a biological sense. Here, it is biological life. Jesus isn’t talking about a change in your schedule, He’s talking about martyrdom! Very few Americans are faced with that sort of choice today, but the pace of people being killed simply because they claim Jesus as Lord is picking up around the world, so this is not some casual issue. Even in America the examples are increasing almost daily of people losing their livelihood or even their freedom because of their refusal to abandon Biblical principles. When we are focused on “ME,” after a while we discover we have nothing left. Jesus is saying that when we keep Him as Lord indeed, first in value, first in priority, first in obedience, then we lay firm hold on the eternal life that He has prepared for us, the life that is ours indeed and can never be taken from us.

As a child I knew about martyrs, but had the image of that being mostly in the early church. However, during my lifetime, which is to say, since WWII, the graph of people being martyred for their faith has looked rather like a ski jump, and courtesy of the Internet, I am more aware of it than I ever could have been before. That awareness should protect me from narcissism! However, society seems to teach us we should be narcissistic, and I deal with many who have been infected. Sometimes I even want to slap them and tell them to “get a life,” but that would be counterproductive, not to mention hardly Christlike. I am to speak the truth in love, which will sometimes mean speaking very strongly, and leave the results to God. I have had people leave this church because of my refusal to feed their narcissism. I am to teach people that they are indeed enormously valuable in God’s eyes, but that at the same time it’s not about them, but about God. I know from experience that I don’t have the wisdom to get that across by myself, so I’ve got to stay yielded and obedient to the Holy Spirit for Him to do it through me.

Father, Your timing is amazing! Thank you for the call that came in even as I was writing this, about someone who is in just such a self-centered trap. I ask for Your wisdom, for clear guidance as I minister to them, that they may stop trying to run their own life, since they obviously are making a mess of it, and genuinely yield it to You so that You may give them back the life they need, instead of the life they imagine, for their blessing and Your glory. Thank You. Praise God!

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September 8, 2014

Posted on September 9, 2014 by jgarrott

Matthew 9:12-13 On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

This is a justly famous saying of Jesus, yet I think we tend to miss a good bit of the meaning. The fact is, all mankind has a fatal disease acquired genetically, so to speak: sin. Paul speaks of this several times, perhaps most succinctly in 1 Corinthians 15:22, made famous by being part of the libretto for The Messiah: “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” Jesus is the only Physician with a cure for this disease, but unless you recognize you have it, you won’t go to the doctor. It’s not that the Pharisees weren’t sinners, it was that they didn’t recognize they were sinners. The devil tries to twist this among believers, even, and say that it’s OK to sin because Jesus came to invite sinners. Even Paul had to deal with this issue, and did so extensively in Romans 6. We don’t have to sin in order to be called by Jesus, we have already sinned, so He is calling us to come and be healed, cleansed from our sin. There are only two attitudes that would keep us from coming to Jesus to be saved. The first is what Jesus addresses here, of failure to recognize and acknowledge that we need salvation. However, there is another lie of the devil that also keeps people from Christ, and that is that our sins are too horrible for Him to forgive. The only sin that can’t be forgiven is adamant rejection of Christ and His Spirit, and someone who is there isn’t going to care any more. As has been said, if you’re worried about whether you have committed the unforgivable sin, you haven’t committed it!

This is of course of vital importance to me, both in relation to my own salvation and spiritual growth and in relation to my reaching out to draw others to Christ. I just about made a shipwreck of my own life by failing to recognize my own sinfulness, and I urgently desire that others’ eyes would be opened to recognize their own need for Dr. Jesus. The Ebola virus is mild compared to the fatality rate for sin! I am an orderly in God’s hospital, or maybe a nursing assistant. I need to help people accept the diagnosis from Dr. Jesus, and I am to participate in the therapy after He performs the necessary heart surgery. If I try to perform the surgery myself (which I am sometimes tempted to do) everybody’s in trouble!

Father, thank You for allowing me to be part of Jesus’ “medical team.” Help me be effective as a nurse/therapist, but never try to usurp the place of the Physician. May this church be a hospital with a very high “recovery rate,” so that the believers won’t drag around but be invigorated by Your Spirit, actively drawing more and more people to You for their salvation and Your glory. Thank You. Hallelujah!

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