Tag: resilience

A Vessel of Grace

~ Chuck Griffin ~ Leave a comment

This Sunday’s sermon will be a reflection on deep brokenness and the power of God’s grace, based on both 2 Samuel 11:1-15 and John 6:1-14. If you want to watch the sermon but cannot attend Holston View United Methodist Church, it will be available online.

Today’s text: Matthew 14:13-21 (NRSV)

By Chuck Griffin

Today’s Bible passage is one of those accounts of Jesus feeding the multitudes. These feedings communicate a very important message about God: His grace is abundant beyond human comprehension.

Sometimes that grace is so abundant that it pours through others in surprising ways. Let me tell you about an old friend of mine named Bob Loy, a fellow I really look forward to seeing again one day.

Bob had every reason to feel crushed by the world. He had lived for decades with about 30 percent lung capacity after an accident that nearly killed him. By the time I knew him, he was elderly. His wife became very ill; while staying with her at the hospital, Bob slipped and fell, breaking his leg near the hip.

While Bob was laid up, his wife died. He couldn’t go to the funeral. His sister also died about the same time. Again, he couldn’t go to the funeral. This was a man who had every reason to surrender to despair.

But not Bob. Through a haze of pain, he kept studying the people in what had become a very tiny world for him, a hospital room. He was certain every day somebody near him needed God’s grace, and he was going to be God’s vessel for that grace. I know for a fact that he brought at least one nurse to a belief in Jesus Christ while flat on his back in that hospital bed.

He also showed me a lot of grace. I was a new pastor, and he constantly was encouraging me, even as pneumonia took over those weak lungs and he had to keep pulling at his oxygen mask to speak.

There was a secret that explained his attitude, a secret he had shared with me not long after we became friends. When he was injured in that accident decades earlier, he saw a vision of an entryway to heaven.

His had been the classic case of dying on the table and being brought back. He said his experience was indescribably beautiful, a vision of a stream, a vast plain, and the most glorious mountain he had ever seen. He knew that God was there, and if he crossed the stream, he could not go back. He also knew he had a choice. A young man at the time, he chose to return to his family, he told me.

But he did not forget the vision. He had seen what eternal victory in Christ looks like, if only briefly, and from then on that vision shaped his life, even as he had intermittent struggles.

Again, I knew Bob only late in his life; when it came time to preside at his funeral, I heard story after story of the lives he changed through the decades as he shared his joyous version of Christ’s redeeming power.

I don’t think we are required to have a near-death experience to understand what Bob understood. We have embraced the truth of a Savior who shows us repeatedly that when it comes to the things that matter—love, hope, joy—there is eternal abundance. We simply need to learn to dwell in that abundance, and offer it to everyone around us.

Lord, fill us with your love so we may pour it out on a hurting world. We declare today that we have no fear of running out of the grace you offer us. Amen.

Our Time of Testing

~ Chuck Griffin ~ 2 Comments

By Chuck Griffin
LifeTalk Editor

Acts 11:19-26 (NLT)

Meanwhile, the believers who had been scattered during the persecution after Stephen’s death traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch of Syria. They preached the word of God, but only to Jews. However, some of the believers who went to Antioch from Cyprus and Cyrene began preaching to the Gentiles about the Lord Jesus. The power of the Lord was with them, and a large number of these Gentiles believed and turned to the Lord.

When the church at Jerusalem heard what had happened, they sent Barnabas to Antioch. When he arrived and saw this evidence of God’s blessing, he was filled with joy, and he encouraged the believers to stay true to the Lord. Barnabas was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and strong in faith. And many people were brought to the Lord.

Then Barnabas went on to Tarsus to look for Saul. When he found him, he brought him back to Antioch. Both of them stayed there with the church for a full year, teaching large crowds of people. (It was at Antioch that the believers were first called Christians.)

There are a lot of memes on social media saying things like, “May there never be another year like 2020.” I get it. This year has been a relatively miserable experience, particularly for those who have lost loved ones.

Our current situation makes me appreciate the story of the early Christians who fled persecution, but then continued to preach the truth that got them persecuted in the first place. The resilience of this first generation of Christians, and some generations that have followed, is amazing.

The early Christians who went to Antioch are especially worth remembering. They transported the Christian message into a new culture, the first step in making our faith a global religion. Talk about making lemonade out of lemons!

Christians of 2020, we are in a time of testing. Will we be numbered among the resilient generations, or will we fold?

The answer lies in our commitment to the same principle that drove Generation One. As we exit this year and pass through the next couple of years, time will tell whether we grew as disciples and made disciples of others.

Did we cut through the fear and political chatter and get to the main point: In good times or bad, Jesus Christ is Lord! Were people so taken by the message that they were baptized and absorbed into the life of Christ’s holy, universal church?

Christ’s message of love and forgiveness gives us hope in this life, and hope is what we most need when we feel times are tough. In many ways, nonbelievers should be more ready to hear this powerful message now than ever.

Enough of us have to be ready to deliver it, though. We know that within Generation One there were several who fell away because of hardship and discomfort, ending their commitments to the fledgling movement. Enough stood strong to change the world, though.

Will we change the world once again?

Lord, even if we as your church prove to be a remnant, may we be filled with your Holy Spirit, a seed that will sprout in mighty ways for your kingdom. Amen.