Remedy for Panic: October 30th Devotional

      

The Remedy for Panic

October 30th Devotional

Psalm 55

   While children were preparing for a fun Sunday evening of trick or treat the Columbia Broadcasting System was airing an updated version of H.G. Well’s “The War of the Worlds” on their 8:00 PM slot.  The year was 1938 and most Americans were gathered around their radios for their evening entertainment.  Dramatized radio theater was extremely popular during that time.  Most famous Hollywood actors were also narrators for radio stations.  The narrator for this particular broadcast was a young Orson Welles.  Welles was only 23 at the time but was already famous for his voice on “The Shadow.”  Welles theater group, the Mercury Theater, wanted to update “The War of the Worlds.”  H.G. Wells, the writer, was a famous English author who penned over fifty pieces in his lifetime, the most famous of which were his science fiction novels, which included “The Time Machine” and “The Invisible Man.”  He is considered to be the father of science fiction novels.  The broadcast started as a faux newscast; it included daily news along with a weather forecast.  Anyone who didn’t know it was a dramatization would have thought it was simply the evening news mixed in with music from Ramón Raquello and his orchestra.  But as the broadcast continued there were interruptions by explosions on Mars, interviews with scientists, and eventually a crash landing near a farm in Grover’s Mill New Jersey.  It was there that the Martians began their attack against the human race.  The program was acted so perfectly that many people felt that the broadcast was real instead of fiction.  It was reported that many people panicked.  People were calling into the station and the producers were so shocked that they had to interrupt the program to announce that it was fiction.  The damage was already done.  Police rushed to the station and attempted to stop the broadcast.  This act was investigated and highly criticized for weeks, but it made Orson Welles a household name.  He was cast as the lead in the movie Citizen Kane shortly after this program (Kane is considered to be one of the most famous films in cinematic history).

      The listeners of the program panicked.  I mean let’s be honest, if we thought Martians were attacking I’m pretty sure we would panic too.  What about panic?  The Bible doesn’t use the word panic per se, but it does give situations when people were panicked.  A good example can be Psalm 55:3-8 “My heart is in anguish within me, the terrors of death have fallen upon me. Fear and trembling come upon me, and horror overwhelms me.  And I say, “Oh, that I had wings like a dove!  I would fly away and be at rest; yes, I would wander far away; I would lodge in the wilderness; Selah I would hurry to find a shelter from the raging wind and tempest.”  This rings clear of a time of panic.  You can almost picture the writer’s blood pressure increasing, his chest tightening, his fear rising and his faith sinking.  We can picture it because we’ve been there.  We live in a world full of trouble and stress.  It can be overbearing at times.  It can almost leave us handicapped.  Some of you reading this might deal with panic regularly, maybe even resulting in panic attacks.  What do we do in the face of such a fearsome and powerful enemy?  What did the Psalmist do?  In Psalm 55:16-17 the writer tells us “But I call to God, and the Lord will save me. Evening and morning and at noon I utter my complaint and moan, and he hears my voice.”  The cause of the panic doesn’t magically go away, but the Psalmist finds his strength in the Lord.  He cries out to God, and the promise is that God listens and God will help.  It doesn’t make sense for us as Christians to act like there is nothing in this world that will cause us panic and fear.  God understands that we are prone to worry and panic, that’s why He’s always readily available to listen and aid us.  Our prayer to God helps to protect us from being overpowered by fear and panic.  It guards our hearts and minds.  Apply prayer to your panic and you will find peace.

Good Things Come in Small Packages: October 23rd Devotional

Good Things Come in Small Packages

October 23rd Devotional

Proverbs 30:25

    On this day in 1930, J.K. Scott won the first-ever miniature golf tournament.  The game of golf was invented around 600 years ago but the game of mini-golf is a relatively new invention.  The game of mini-golf was created by an entrepreneur named Garnet Carter.  Carter developed a hotel on Lookout Mountain called Fairyland Inn and wanted to create an 18-hole golf course.  The course construction took much longer than he expected and he wanted to create an attraction for his guests, thus the birth of mini golf, or as he patented it, Tom Thumb Golf.  Originally, he thought that the fairyland course with elves and gnomes would only be played by children but much to his surprise the course was overrun by adults.  Carter patented the game of mini golf and within three years of its invention, there were over 25,000 ‘putt-putt’ courses in the United States.  The game skyrocketed in popularity.  The Tom Thumb Open mini-golf tournament took place in Chattanooga in 1930.  Qualifications playoff games took place in all 48 states at the time.  The total purse available was $10,000, with $2,000 to the winner (which would be valued at $32,000 today).  Over 200 players from 30 states participated.  The game was intense and the score was close, but in the end, J.K. Scott came out as the winner.  The great depression hit miniature golf pretty hard.  Most people could not afford luxuries or entertainment during that time and it faded away into memory.  It didn’t pick up in popularity again until about the 1970s.

      Most of you can remember playing miniature golf.  We would grab our favorite color ball (mine was always orange), get a putter that seemed to match our height, take a scoring card with a tiny pencil, and prepare to conquer the green.  You know how the game starts.  The first hole is typically a straight shot straight down the middle, an easy par 2.  But as the course goes on it gets incrementally harder.  Soon we are battling sand traps, rocks in the middle of the course, windmills (got me every time), jumps, and shots that only a person with an advanced math degree can figure out.  We pretended we had skills but at the end of the day, it was just pure, plain dumb luck.  Some of it might have been a bit of cheating as we scooted our ball closer to the hole (you know you're guilty).  Truly, mini golf was one of those good things that come in small packages.  The Bible talks about miniature or small things.  In Proverbs 30:24-28 Solomon writes about four small things that should astonish us, one of which is the ant.  He writes “The ants are not a strong people, but they prepare their food in the summer (verse 25).”  Biblically the ant serves as a direct rebuke against the sluggard, or the lazy man.  The ant is hard-working and prepared.  He knows the summer is short and the winter is quickly coming.  Likewise, we as a believer must be prepared people.  We might not currently be suffering through a winter season, but someone in the future will.  What should we as Christians be prepared for?  Temptations, trials, and Christ’s return.  Sadly, we spend more time preparing for vacations and retirement than serving Jesus and looking for His return.  How are you preparing yourself to live for Christ each day?  Are you intentionally setting time aside for prayer?  Are you putting on the whole armor of God?  Are you daily spending time in the Scriptures?  Are you daily decreasing yourself and increasing Christ in your life?  What, if any preparation do we have to live a Christian life?  It’s not always the ‘big’ things, somethings it’s the small things that matter most.

The Lion's Story: October 16th

 

The Lion's Story

October 16th Devotional

Revelation 5:5

      On this day the “Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” was published; this would be the first of seven different books encompassing the Chronicles of Narnia.  Narnia was the creation of C.S. Lewis, or as he was better known by his friends, Jack.  Lewis was an academic genius during his time.  He served as a professor at both Oxford and Cambridge, writing extensively.  He was also an agnostic and a critic of Biblical truth.  All of that changed in 1931.  It was in that year that Lewis miraculously trusted Christ as his Savior.  This dramatically changed his life.  His “Paul” like conversion sent waves through academia and his purpose in life changed from denying God to speaking about the existence of God.  He is considered one of the most proficient apologists of our time period.  His books Mere Christianity and The Screwtape letters are considered masterpieces in the Christian writing genre but none would compare with the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  The idea for the book came to Lewis when he was 16 years old.  He started to write about Narnia in 1939 but didn’t finish writing the book until 1949.  At the time fantasy literature was looked down on.  It was looked at as childish as best and one critic said that fantasy literature would damage young readers' minds.  Lewis's publisher, Geoffrey Bles also thought the book was going to be a complete flop.  Narnia literally opened the wardrobe for many young people’s love for reading.  We can recall the four Pevensie children who are sent to the English countryside to live with the professor because of the dangers of WW II.  It was there that Lucy entered a wardrobe during a game of hide and go-seek.  She found herself in the snow-covered woods, by the lamppost, being greeted by a friendly faun named Mr. Tumnus.  The story unfolds when all four Pevensie children enter Narnia only to discover it was under the curse of the White Witch named Jadis.  An epic battle ensues between her and the land’s creator, a Lion named Aslan.  Through a twist of fate, Aslan would lay down his life on the stone table in order to rescue Edmund, the brother who betrayed them to the witch.  You will have to read the story to find out the enchanting ending!  

      The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe launched a seven-book series that has sold millions of copies, brought forth multiple film renditions, and has stolen the heart of many a reader.  Lewis purposefully wrote the book as a Christian allegory, with Aslan, the lion, standing as a ‘type of Christ.’  The Bible refers to Christ as a Lion in Revelation 5:5 which says “And one of the elders said to me, “Weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.”  The Apostle John was given a vision of heaven while he was suffering as a prisoner on the island of Patmos.  It was here that woe-filled heaven because none of its occupants were able to open a scroll…everyone that is except for one.  There was in the midst of the heavenly host the Lion of Judah, the only one who was worthy to open the scrolls.  In verse nine we find that this lion was also the lamb of God who bled and died to ransom the people, buying them back from the clutches of sin.  This description can only refer to one person, Jesus Christ.  Christ is the Lion of Judah, which is a direct fulfillment of prophecy from Genesis 49.  The image of a lion here shows a leader who is powerful, who is a conqueror, who is victorious!  As Christians, we can rejoice that Christ isn’t just the Lamb of God but also the “Lion of God.”  He didn’t just die as a perfect unblemished Lamb, but He rose as a victorious Lion defeating sin, death, the grave, and Satan for us.  He still remains the Lion in our life, roaring out the echo that we are more than conquerors through Him.

Head of the Church: October 9th Devotional

  Head of the Church

October 9th Devotional

Colossians 1:18

      On this day in 1635, Pastor Roger Williams was banished from the Massachusetts Colony because of his ‘extreme Christian’ and separatist views.  The late 1500s and early 1600s were politically charged times in the colonies.  The Protestant Reformation was only slightly over 100 years earlier and England’s break from Catholicism even less time.  Christianity was in a moment of major flux.  While the Church of England proudly boasted its freedom from the Roman Catholic Church it still had many vestiges of Catholicism.  A group of people called the Separatists, better known as Puritans, felt a need to purify the church from what they called the rags of popery.  This particular group stood against the existence of a state-run church and felt that a church should have no authority over it except for the Bible and God.  This early group of Separatists were punished heavily for their opposition.  They would be jailed for failure to attend state-run church services, have their possessions removed, and some of them severely beaten.  One such Separatist was named Roger Williams.  Williams was born in the early 1600s.  The persecution against those that were Puritans in England was harsh.  Many were beaten and some were even burned at the stake. Williams fled to Massachusetts to find religious freedom.  He arrived in 1630, a mere ten years after the landing of the Mayflower.  Within those ten years, the Church of England dug its heel into the young colony and began to punish anyone who stood against the state church.  They claimed that the church’s independence was a doctrine of Satan.  Williams started to pastor in Boston but had to flee because of his views on the autonomy of the local church, along with his sympathy for the Native Americans.  He would then travel to Salem to pastor.  The congregation as a whole loved him but the magistrates did not.  They forced him to leave the colony under the penalty of death.  He left in the bitter winter.  He traversed 55 miles through the frigid and unforgiving terrain during a blizzard.  A group of Native Americans gave him aid and he legally purchased land from them.  It was on this site that Providence Rhode Island would be formed.  This land became a place for everyone fleeing religious persecution and seeking religious freedom.  This site would also be where the first established Baptist Church in America was formed.

      Williams's view 400 years ago was considered heretical.  It was extremely dangerous to question the state’s authority over the local church.  But, if the state isn’t the authority of the church, then who or what is?  The Bible doesn’t hesitate to tell us who is the authority of the local church.  Paul writes in Colossians 1:18, “He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything.”  Paul uses the metaphor of the head to describe Christ’s position in the local church.  The head, or brain, controls the rest of the body.  What the brain does, the body responds in obedience.  If the body does not respond to the brain's requests then there is a serious medical issue.  Christ is the head of the church which means He is the leader of the church.  He controls every part of the church.  He provides it with life and direction.  Most of you reading this wouldn’t argue with the theological truth of Christ’s headship over the church.  The issue isn’t doctrinal, it’s application.  Does Christ have absolute authority in our local church?  Do we allow Him to lead and guide the church?  Does our church look more like a New Testament Church or a business model/pyramid scheme?  How do we place Christ as the head of the local Church?  It isn’t something a pastor or a counsel does, it’s something that individual believers do.  A church cannot have Christ in His preeminent position as leader unless He is first leader of each of our lives.  He must be the Lord of our hearts and homes before He is the Lord of our churches.  Honestly, do you allow Christ to lead your life and the life of your local church?