Pastors' Blog

I picked up a book in the Hong Kong airport while returning from Thailand last week. (Don’t get me going about my decision to save $268 by toughing it out on a wooden bench in the airport transit lounge instead of checking into the airport hotel—bad decision!) The book is Adam Grant’s New York Times best-seller, Originals: How Non-conformists Move the World. Catchy title, intriguing content.

Grant—a psychologist researcher at Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and ranked one of the world’s top twenty-five management thinkers—spends a chapter expanding his counter-intuitive suggestion that procrastination can actually heighten creativity and production. Perhaps Mark Twain was right: "Never put off till tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow."

"It may not be a coincidence that some of the most original thinkers and inventors in history have been procrastinators" (96). Take Leonardo da Vinci, for example. "Scholars estimate that da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa on and off for a few years starting in 1503, left it unfinished, and didn’t complete it until close to his death in 1519" (ibid). Turns out he procrastinated in similar fashion with his painting of The Last Supper, a masterpiece in the making for over a decade and a half. "His critics believed he was wasting his time dabbling with optical experiments and other distractions that kept him from completing his paintings"—but it was these pottering distractions that fueled "a lifetime of productive brainstorming, a private working out of the ideas on which his more public work depended" (ibid). I.e., da Vinci’s procrastinations ignited his genius for originality.

Adam Grant suggests it was the same for Martin Luther King, Jr., and his iconic "I have a dream" speech. Early in that summer of 1963 King and his advisers began hammering out a list of talking points for what they knew would be a critical speech carried on television and radio live to this nation. Over the summer they debated and scribbled. But it wasn’t until the night before that August gathering at the Lincoln Memorial that King sweated through his last feverish efforts. His wife Coretta later recalled, "'He worked on it all night, not sleeping a wink’"(92). And yet when he stepped to the lectern with his notes, the "I have a dream" segment wasn’t even there. It was the gospel singer Mahalia Jackson who shouted out from behind him part way into his speech, "Tell 'em about the dream, Martin!" And tell them he did, eventually pushing away his prepared notes to draw instead from the 275,000 miles and the 350 speeches he had already logged that year. "I have a dream" he intoned. And thus was born one of the most recognized phrases in human rhetoric, inserted into history at the last moment!

Adam Grant’s protracted point? Procrastination, coupled with deep thinking and interrupting brooding, can actually ignite originality and creativity. "Once a task is finished, we stop thinking about it. But when it is interrupted and left undone, it stays active in our minds" (99).

Though let’s be clear he isn’t suggesting procrastination is the best way to study (an important caveat on this eve of final exams here at the university)! The wise King Solomon reminds us: "A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest [procrastination]—and poverty [of income, of ideas] will come on you like a bandit and scarcity [of good grades] like an armed man" (Proverbs 6:10).

But there is one procrastination that spiritual sense forbids—and that is putting off your decision about Jesus Christ. The Roman governor Felix made that fatal mistake: "He sent for Paul and listened to him as he spoke about faith in Christ Jesus. As Paul talked about righteousness, self-control and the judgment to come, Felix was afraid and said, 'That's enough for now! You may leave. When I find it convenient, I will send for you’" (Acts 24:24-25). Procrastination. Lost.

Have you been putting off the same decision? "I tell you, now is the time of God's favor, now is the day of salvation" (2 Corinthians 6:2). Because there is no time like right now to open the door to your life and invite the Lord Jesus to be your Savior. Turns out, He, too, has a dream—the dream of a forever friendship with you. So why wait? Why not say Yes right now? (Contact me at this website, and let me help you with that Yes.)

Almighty God and Father of us all—"Hallowed be Your name. Your Kingdom Come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven" (Matthew 6:9-10). For You are the Omnipotent One whose strong hand still guides a billion billion galaxies in their soundless trek (Psalm 147:4), and yet each morning You eagerly bend low to hear the chirping gratitude of the tiny sparrows (Luke 12:7). And if You feed the birds of the air, dear Father, how much more will You care for us, who are Your children? (Matthew 6:26) As the psalmist Himself sang, teach us to sing, "I will bless the Lord at all times—Your praise shall continually be in my mouth!" (Psalm 34:1)

But dear God, it is because You have "loved us with an everlasting love" (Jeremiah 31:3), that we come humbly to You in advance of our collective Day of Prayer and Fasting. Have mercy on us, O Lord. For like our fathers and mothers, we have sinned against You (Daniel 9:4-10). We have turned to the gods of this world hoping to satisfy our appetites and slake our many thirsts (1 John 2:15-17). Like Israel of old, we have emulated the corrupted culture around us (Hosea 4:17). We have joined the clamoring rabble, "We have no king but Caesar" (John 19:15)—but dear Savior, we admit and confess Satan has deceived us and Caesar has enslaved us. How can we then cry out for the demolishing of his strongholds out there without first pleading for Your deliverance from the dark strongholds in here? You have promised, "If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed" (John 8:36). O Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, remove our sins, too, we implore You (John 1:29). Cleanse us, and we will be clean—wash us, and we will be whiter than the snow that fell this springtime week (Psalm 51:7). We must hear the Gospel's assurance, "Neither do I condemn You—go now and leave your life of sin" (John 8:11).

Forgiven and freed, we take courage now to boldly come before Your throne of grace with petitions for this Day of Prayer and Fasting (Hebrews 4:16). "For the weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary they have divine power to demolish strongholds" (2 Corinthians 10:4). And so Almighty God, in the name of Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior, we come with the weapon of prayer against the strongholds of our mortal enemy, the fallen Lucifer and his demonic hosts of angels (Ephesians 6:12). We possess no power of our own, but we come boldly in the might of Him who "made a public spectacle of [Satan and his hosts], triumphing over them by the cross"(Colossians 2:15).

We come on behalf of people who don't even know they are enchained in the enemy's stronghold (1 Peter 4:18-19). On this Day of Prayer and Fasting we call upon You, Father of all humankind, to deliver the masses ignorantly held in these enemy strongholds:

• We pray for Japan (the Land of the Rising Sun) and boldly claim the promise that the Sun of Righteousness will yet rise with healing in His light (Malachi 4:2)—may the 163 evangelistic events to be conducted there in May "proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners" (Isaiah 61:1);

• We pray for the secular West, where atheism and paganism's iron-fisted grip pins both young and old in their strongholds—may the cry of Creation's angels—"Worship Him who made heaven and earth"—be heard in the halls of academia, the corridors of politics and power (Revelation 14:7);

• We pray against the stronghold of racism in our country, on our campus and in our church—break down the egotism (self-worship) that lies coiled and deadly in the heart of all racism, and answer the prayer of our Lord—"That they may be one as We are one, O Father, I in them and You in Me, so that they may be brought to complete unity"(John 17:22-23)—so that as we humbly but radically love one another "everyone will know" that we are Your disciples (John 13:34-35).

And one more request, dear God. Would you please grant to us a visible sign that You have heard our prayers and have already begun to answer them (Isaiah 65:24). After all, You promised us, "In the last days I will pour out My Spirit on all people" (Acts 3:17). Send us that sign as a divine token that the strongholds we go against in the name of Christ are already beginning to crumble.

"O God of our salvation, for the glory of Your name . . . deliver us . . . for Your name's sake!" (Psalm 79:9) So that one day "at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father" (Philippians 2:10-11).

AMEN.

Shane Claiborne, the young and radical Christian activist, popular particularly among millennials, made an observation that is worth pondering: "I am convinced that if we lose kids to the culture of drugs and materialism, of violence and war, it's because we don't dare them, not because we don't entertain them. It's because we make the gospel too easy, not because we make it too difficult. Kids want to do something heroic with their lives, which is why they play video games and join the army. But what do they do with a church that teaches them to tiptoe through life so they can arrive safely at death?" (quoted in Philip Yancey's Vanishing Grace 83).Is the church guilty as charged—you and I? Are we somehow inadvertently (certainly not intentionally, I presume) communicating a no-risk, no-cost, no-peril, no-fun brand of Jesus to the young today? Cautious, calculating, conservative (as in never thinking outside the box—is that our shtick?)

A campus friend dropped by the church this week, and in the course of our conversation it comes up that he has found profound blessing in serious, extended seasons of fasting. You read that right—fasting. Profound blessings from fasting? You've got to be kidding me. Every time I venture into that foreboding spiritual discipline I can hardly wait for it to be over!

But in response, my friend tells me that Jesus' call to discipleship in fact strongly hints at the value embedded in fasting (a practice referenced 77 times in Scripture, as it turns out): "'If any want to become My followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow Me'" (Mark 8:34 NRSV). No hint of a no-risk, no-cost, no-dare brand of religion here! Plain and simple (which Jesus usually was), if you want to follow Me it'll cost you some major self-denial—meaning you're going to have to push away the natural inclination to preserve your self, to promote your interests, to protect your appetite, to presume life is a zero sum game where winning is the ultimate value. And then, He goes on, take up the cross and follow Me. One thing's for sure—nobody can accuse Jesus of offering a tiptoe-through-life-safely brand of religion!

Which begs this question: What would happen if you and I signed on to that no-tiptoe dare from our Lord? What if we plunged into the discipline of fasting as an expression of our desire to deny our self (whose loudest clamorings are always linked to appetite) and thus open up our minds, our hearts, our bodies to the radical lordship of Christ? My friend even went so far as to suggest that fasting is actually a divine gift intended to draw us closer and more intimately to God. Just look at those who fasted in Scripture, he reminded me—Moses ends up practically face-to-face with God through his fasting, Jesus is catapulted into a ministry of profound healing and deliverance after His intimate prayer and fasting with His Father, Paul—who frequently fasted—is granted visions of heaven no human had experienced. Which doesn't mean we'll all become Moseses and Pauls and Jesuses—but it does strongly hint that something deep transpires between God and the human who voluntarily chooses to fast as part of
his/her prayer walk with the Eternal.

If we with our young today could be challenged by the very nature of Christ's radical calling—to a life daring but not entertaining, difficult and not easy—might we and they not find in Jesus' church a cause and a Kingdom worth dying for, worth living for? But if all we offer ourselves and our children is entertainment, then Claiborne is right—we breed a generation that will turn elsewhere to satisfy the God-embedded longing for risk and the heroic—a longing most deeply fulfilled by the way of the cross. And by fasting.

PS—after my friend left, I found these two helpful links on fasting—check them out for yourself: www.allaboutgod.com/common/printable-biblical-fasting.htm and www.christianity.com/bible/9-reasons-fast-other-than-swimsuit-season.html.

"Billy Graham, America's Pastor, Has Died" intoned the USA Today headline this morning: "The world's best-known evangelist, the Rev. Billy Graham, has died. He was 99. From the gangly 16-year-old baseball-loving teen who found Christ at a tent revival, Graham went on to become an international media darling, a preacher to a dozen presidents and the voice of solace in times of national heartbreak. He was America's pastor" (www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2018/02/21/billy-graham-americas-past...).

It's no secret I have admired Billy Graham throughout my ministry (is there a preacher who hasn't?). I've read his autobiography, Just as I Am. And then on a two-day trip with my mother-in-law sitting beside me, I listened to Cliff Barrow, Graham's longtime evangelistic associate, read the autobiography on tape. Last May Cheryl Logan gave me a book, God in the Garden: The Amazing Story of Billy Graham's First New York Crusade. What a stirring first person account of that historic four-month series in Gotham City! Throw in a couple of John Pollack's biographies of the famous preacher-evangelist and a tour of the amazing Billy Graham Museum Library in Charlotte, North Carolina—and I can testify I've come to know this great man who died peacefully this Wednesday, nine months short of a century on earth.

In May, 1957, Billy Graham wrote in his diary: "'Tonight I felt probably the greatest liberty I have felt thus far [in his New York City Madison Square Garden crusade]. I doubt if there is an experience in the world quite like a minister preaching the Gospel and having liberty and power. It is beyond any other human experience. There is nothing more horrible than to preach without liberty and power. I have had ministers tell me that they never had liberty or power in preaching. . . . I think I would leave the pulpit'" (God in the Garden 132). How very true!

According to most estimates, Billy Graham through his 417 crusades and music events spoke to more human beings than any other single individual in history (popes and politicians included). In live audiences alone, he preached the gospel to more than 215 million people globally (with 3.2 million people accepting Christ in those crusades). But adding his radio and television broadcasts, Wikipedia calculates "Graham's estimated lifetime audience . . . topped 2.2 billion" (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Graham). No wonder he appeared in Gallup's list of most admired men and women sixty times since 1955, more than any other person in the world.

After reading his autobiography, I jotted down a list of life lessons for me as we counted down to something we called NET98. And I submit this list of lessons as a humble testimony to the influence this godly man has had on my own journey as a preacher (journal entry August 9, 1997):

1.  Plunge into challenge no matter how you feel
2. Bathe your campaign in prayer
3. Believe the Bible is God's Word to your world (stupendous mission—Rev 14:6, 7)
4. Surround yourself with a team of honest, devoted spiritual leaders
5.  Turn down $$ as sideline—keep all fund-raising accountable
6. Be willing to travel
7. Learn from each new experience and campaign
8. Expect setbacks and failures
9. Expect God to intervene
10. Go for the young
11. Be willing to speak to any group
12. Don't let important messages hold you back from accepting invitations
13. If God could bless Billy [Graham] & Charles [Spurgeon] & [Dwight L] Moody—why couldn't God bless me
14. Think strategically
15. Rally local pastors to your support
16. Don't be afraid of interviews, news conferences and publicity
17. Remember Who called you
18. Remember the message you found is what the world's hungry for
19. Work with a partner and a team—no Lone Rangers
20. Talk boldly—your spirit will follow—EGW
21. Pray—pray—pray
22. Drink warm water—ice water only tightens the throat muscles
23. There is absolutely no need to apologize for the gospel of Jesus Christ in academic settings—the gospel can more than hold its own
24. Jer 29:11 & Is 55:[11]
25. Always preach the cross

A great man has died. But the Christ Billy Graham preached still lives—and still issues today to all who follow Him His compelling imperative: "'Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,  teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age'" (Matthew 28:19-20).

To which I invite you to respond with me to Jesus, "Here am I—send me." Amen.