Live Like You're Dying

The sermon at A Restoration Church today is Luke 21:5-38 - "Serene Living in Turbulent Times!"

The bullet points are:

• Norhing is permanent
• Nothing is easy
• Nothing is hopeless
• Live in HOPE!

How can these concepts be translated into "child language" for a children's page?

Lots of thoughts going round in my head:

• Noah's family on the ark. They were sure living in HOPE when they walked up the gangplank into that huge boat with all the smells and sounds of all the animals and birds in the world.
• Peter walking on the water toward Jesus, getting scared, starting to sink and finally taking hold of Jesus' hand. Once I took a Red Cross life-saving class. One thing they taught us was to rescue a drowning person from behind so he/she can't get a "death hold" on you and drag you down with him or her. I can only imagine how scared Peter was and how much he needed Jesus to reach out His helping hand of HOPE.
• Then there's the story Jesus told about the two contractors. Each built a house - one on sand, the other on rock. Then the rains and storms came. The house on the rock stood. The house on the sand went smash!

Well, I went with the "Three Little Pigs" instead. They each built a house: one of straw, one of sticks and one of bricks. When the Big Bad Wolf came calling, he huffed and puffed and blew down the houses of straw and sticks. Only the brick house offered HOPE and safety from the Big Bad Wolf!

In the story of the two builders, one was smart and one was stupid. In the "Three Little Pigs," two were lazy and stupid and one worked smarter and harder.

Then I checked my email and read a church planting blog giving the advice to "live like you're dying" when planting a church. I guess that was the essence for both Noah and Peter. They had to face the reality of the alternative before they could trust the HOPE!

I've had my own experience with living like I'm dying. It's scary stuff, but it's also where the most real reality of life is!

Country singer Tim McGraw wrote a song about "Live Like You Were Dying" based on his personal experience. He expresses doing all the things he shoved to the back burner to do later - doing them right now - like sky diving, rocky mountain climbing, two point seven seconds on a bull named Fu Man Chu! "And I loved deeper ... and I gave forgiveness I'd been denying"!

What happens when we "live we are dying"? What's important shifts to what's really important! Risks don't matter except to become worth the cost. People and relationships mean more. Living God's purpose becomes a matter of life or death! Time races and we race with it as we live like we were dying!

I guess it goes without saying that "living like I'm dying" means my heart changes, too! My prayer becomes: "Lord, give me dying eyes and dying ears and a dying heart to see and hear and love with life or death urgency!" That's how Jesus lived His last days, for sure!

Unconditional Love - Anyway and Always!

We had a sleep-over at our house the other night - five-year-old twins and their ten-year-old sister. As part of the bedtime ritual I let the twins select two books they wanted me to read them. One they selected was Dr. Bryan Chappel's I'll Love You Anyway and Always. It's the story of Katy.

Katy waters the plants in the backyard. Her mother tells her to water all the plants except her father's orchid (Do I hear echoes of Genesis 2:15 - 17?). Katy diligently waters all the other plants and then decides that she'll break the "rules" and water the orchid anyway. She thinks she knows more than her mom. She wants to surprise and please her dad.

The orchid dies because it was watered and the watering was too much. Dad walks in the backyard and spies the dying orchid. (More echoes of Genesis 3:8ff?) He asks, "What happened to my orchid?" Katy knows she's busted so she admits watering the orchid.

Later Katy starts to worry, "Daddy, will you still love me?"

Katy's dad answers (Dr. Chappel has a daughter named Katy.), "Because you disobeyed you and I are both sad. But nothing you do will ever make me stop loving you. I'll love you anyway and always."

The rest of the book goes through Biblical history from Adam and Eve to Noah to Abraham and Sarah to Moses to King David to the birth of God's own Son Jesus. Each page ends on the refrain, "I'll love you anyway and always." Then Katy's dad (as preachers do) goes to preaching. He tells Katy: "Katy, now you know ... why nothing you do will ever make me stop loving you. The way God loves us is the way we should love each other. ... I will love you anyway and always."

Then Katy's little brother Taylor sneaks into her room and eats her chocolate teddy bear. Katy is really mad at Taylor until she remembers what she has learned about God's love from her father's forgiveness for what she did to the orchid. It is then that Katy scoops Taylor up for a big hug and an even bigger assurance of her love, "... I'll love you anyway and always."

Like a tune that runs around and around in my head, that phrase "I'll love you anyway and always" has been making its circle in my head for two days. Only God really, really has that kind of unconditional love that always forgives, but it's the model for the kind of love He wants us to have.

Many, if not most, people we encounter have never known unconditional love either from God or another human. They have been conditioned to believe that they are only loved by their performance so they try harder and harder. Nothing works! They have never heard or understood the Gospel of God's amazing unconditional love. They have never loved or been loved that way.

Jesus said our purpose is to love God first and best and then to model God's love as we show that same unconditional, forgiving, serving love to others! (Mark 12:29-30)

Here's the real deal! Only God loves anyway and always perfectly! Only God can put that kind of "anyway and always" love in our hearts! That's part of God's process of restoration one heart at a time!