Bowling Green Covenant Church

“You have heard that is was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. …You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”—Matthew 5.43, 48 [ESV]

An old friend from my days in Brooklyn once said, “The thing about Jesus is He don’t let nobody off the hook.” Bad grammar. Good theology. The “thing” that prompted my friend to make his streetwise observation was Jesus’ words from Matthew 5.43-48.

The Pharisees were skilled at reducing God’s commands to black and white, us v. them declarations. They practiced good grammar. They lived by bad theology. For the record, Jesus is referring to Leviticus 19.18 where God said, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” God never said, “And hate your enemy.” The Pharisees added that last bit. Apparently, they used an odd form of theological logic whereby they concluded that since God commanded us to love our neighbors (people like us) the reverse must also be true. Therefore God commands us to hate our enemies. However, to paraphrase Yogi Berra (himself known to fracture the King’s English on occasion), God didn’t’ say everything He said.

By adding to what God said the Pharisees hoped to let themselves off the hook when it came to having compassion for their enemies. But as my Brooklyn friend keenly observed, “Jesus don’t let nobody off the hook.” He demands the humanly impossible because His provision is supernatural.

Rather than hate our enemies we are to choose the way of the cross—the way of humility and the way of obedience. We are to love our enemies just as God loved us when we were His enemies. Paul knew this love and he wrote about it in Romans 5.10, “For is while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by His life.” We are to love our enemies by praying for them—not that God would annihilate them, but that He would bless them (see also Romans 12.14-21).

Remember, it was while the cross was being lifted into place—with the nails in His hands and through His feet—that Jesus prayed for His enemies, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” (Luke 23.34).

Jesus don’t let nobody off the hook. There are times when I wish He would, but He don’t, er, doesn’t. He commands me to be perfect as my Father in heaven is perfect—a variation of the command God gave to Israel in Leviticus 19.2, “You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy.” Jesus demands the humanly impossible because His provision is supernatural. The call to perfection is here put in terms of loving both my neighbor and our enemy.

In this pursuit I, we, will never be perfect. We will never reach full maturity. However, we will come much closer to the mark by following Jesus’ command than by searching for ways to let ourselves off the hook. Then again, why should we try since as my Brooklyn friend observed, “The thing about Jesus is He don’t let nobody off the hook.”

You think about that.

MM

“Above all, you must live as citizens of heaven, conducting
yourselves in a manner worthy of the Good News about
Christ…Don’t be intimidated at all by your enemies.”
-Philippians 1.27a, 28a [NLT]

The numbers stagger the mind’s ability to think in numbers
so large: 40 million! That is the number of babies estimated
to have been aborted since Roe v. Wade legalized abortion on
demand in 1973. To put that number in perspective, the
population of Canada is roughly 32 million people. According
to a 2004 census the population of California is almost 36
million and the entire population of the six New England
states (Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire,
Rhode Island and Vermont) is just over 14 million. There
are other numbers that could be used for comparison, other
statistics to give perspective but the point is clear. Forty
million deaths is forty million too many.

For us as Pro-life people, living as citizens of heaven
means reaching out to women in a crisis pregnancy. The
appropriate response to women in such situations is
compassion and truth. If we are to conduct ourselves in a
manner worthy of the Good News, we are wise to pattern our
behavior after that of Jesus rather than the Pharisees.

The history of Bowling Green Covenant Church is one of
positive activism in this area. If you visit our website,
www.bgcovenant.org you will find a link to the Bowling Green
Pregnancy Center. Go to the BGPC site, click on the history
link and there you will read the following synopsis provided
by Nancy Hollister, a former BGPC Board Member:

“…in the fall of 1985 the First Hope Pregnancy
Center was opened in its present location…A Board of
Directors was formed from some members of the research
committee and other concerned citizens…Financial support
came largely from the monthly donations of individuals,
churches and a few local businesses. Volunteers went through
a training seminar and our doors opened in October 1985.
“Since that time we have helped over 10,000 clients.
The center has seen many changes along the way including
changing the name to Bowling Green Pregnancy Center and the
addition of support groups to the original services offered.
At the same time, some things have remained the same such as
the need for our services and the support of the local
community.”

To take such a courageous stand is not an easy thing to do
in a culture that exalts personal choice over personal
responsibility, but the founders, supporters, and staff of
BGPC chose (and continue to choose) not to be intimidated by
their opponents. On the contrary they continue to live as
citizens of heaven by extending the Good News of Jesus
Christ to women facing one of the most, if not the most,
personal and difficult choices of their lives.

This Sunday, January 22, we will recall with sad hearts a
momentous decision that continues to divide our culture
while taking life away from the most vulnerable. Thus, I
encourage us all to continue to support the BGPC with our
prayers, our finances, and even our time. It is a good work.
It is a hard work. It is a work to be done as part of our
responsibility to conduct ourselves like citizens of heaven.

You think about that.

MMalanga-
Pastor of BGCC & BGPC Board Member

Several years ago we redecorated Liz’s bedroom of our house in Canada. It was an old house so the project took longer than expected to complete—almost five weeks. We painted the windows and trim, the ceiling and part of the walls. We replaced her old light with a new combination lighting fixture and ceiling fan. The hardest job was hanging wallpaper on the crooked walls of her room. It took longer than expected but the room was transformed and the changes were a truer reflection of Liz’s personality.

There is a sense in which a New Year’s resolution is just another way of saying we want to redecorate our life. Similarly, New Year’s resolutions, like room redecoration, require time and effort to achieve. It took us over a month to finish Liz’s room. For as much as Liz was committed to having her room redecorated she need help and she had to wait. The walls in her room needed touching up before they could be painted and papered. Holes had to be filled, the last, stubborn bits of old wallpaper had to be removed. The drywall compound had to be sanded. It was tedious, time-consuming work, but without that preparation the finished product would not have looked as nice as it did.

The verse above is from a prayer in Paul’s letter to believers in Ephesus. The full text of the prayer is this:

16“I pray that from His glorious, unlimited resources He will give you mighty inner strength through His Holy Spirit. 17And I pray that Christ will be more and more at home in your hearts as you trust in him. May your roots go down deep into the soil of God’s marvelous love. 18And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep His love really is. 19May you experience the love of Christ, though it is so great you will never fully understand it. Then you will be filled with the fullness of life and power that comes from God.” [NLT]

There is a lot to unpack from this marvelous prayer. And there is much that could be said. However, let’s focus on the three “May” statements from the New Living Translation:
? 3.17May your roots go down deep into the soil of God’s marvelous love.
? 3.18And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep His love really is.
? 3.19May you experience the love of Christ, though it is so great you will never fully understand it.

I am not in the habit of making New Year’s resolutions, however after reading Paul’s words in Ephesians 3.17-19, I think it’s time I broke that habit.

And that is one resolution I am very sure I can keep.

You think about that.

MM

“Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus is calling us.”
—Philippians 3.13-14 [NLT]

Everybody has regrets about their past.

Even the apostle Paul had regrets. As a Pharisee and a Hebrew of Hebrews his knowledge of Scripture gave him tremendous insight into the person and work Jesus the Messiah. However, there were some things Paul did as a Pharisee that haunted him with regret. As Saul, the Pharisee, he gave his approval to the death of Stephen. As a Pharisee, he breathed out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples. As a Pharisee, he persecuted the church and tried to destroy it. You want to talk about regrets? Paul had a ton of them.

We all have regrets. It’s part of being human. How we handle our regrets is the issue. Paul chose to forget his, not because he thought it was a good idea, but because the blood of Jesus Christ dissolved their hold on him. Whenever Paul was tempted to wallow in his regrets God reminded him that what is past is the past. He was forgiven—as far as the east is from the west so far had the Lord God removed his sins from him.

I like what Steve Brown says about regrets. He says, “It would be nice not to have any regrets. But, then, if I had no regrets, I would never grow. Regret is a sign of two things. First, it is a sign of God’s working in my life and secondly, it is a sign that God wants me to do it different next time.” Brown suggests that we deal with our regrets by asking the following four questions:

1) What makes you think that if you did it again you would do it any better?
2) Do you think God made a mistake?
3) If things were different and you had fewer regrets, would God love you more?
4) Where do you learn? In the places where you do it right, or in the places where you do it wrong?

God intends our past to be a tutor to help us grow not a prison from which we cannot escape. Press on. The surest way to grow in our knowledge of Christ is to forget the past at the same time we press on toward the future. Some things that have happened to us in the past may simply hurt too much to just say, “Forget it and move on.” Yet even they must be let go if we hope to press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called us heavenward in Christ Jesus. The prize for which God has called us heavenward in Christ Jesus is the final achievement of our faith. It is the moment when God calls us by name to stand before Him and be welcomed into His eternal presence with the words: “Well done, you good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your master.”

We can press on toward the prize and reach for the glory of what God has in store for those who love Him and follow Him in faith, or we can wallow in the regrets of past failures. Here is good news: what God commands us to do He empowers us to achieve. He calls us to forget what lies behind so we can press on toward what lies ahead. We can press on toward our future in Christ because God has made it possible for us to know Jesus Christ and the power of His resurrection.
God is sovereign. His grace can erase our regret. Our future is secure in Christ. By the power of His resurrection we have the freedom to confess our failures well as the courage, to press on in spite of them.

You think about that.

MM

“Everyone who comes to Me and hears My words and does
them…is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid
the foundation on the rock.”-Luke 6.47 [ESV]

In a past issue of the comic strip, Calvin and Hobbes, the
two companions are walking in the snow.
“Are you making any resolutions for the New Year?” asks
Hobbes.
“Resolutions? Me?” Calvin snaps back. “Just what are you
implying? That I need to change? Well, buddy, as far as I’m
concerned I’m perfect the way I am. For your information,
I’m staying like this, and everyone else can just get used
to it! If people don’t like me the way I am, well, tough
beans! It’s a free country! I don’t need anyone’s permission
to be the way I want! This is how I am-take it or leave it!
By golly life’s too darn short to waste time trying to
please every meddlesome moron who’s got an idea how I ought
to be!”
Calvin is about to go on when he notices that Hobbes has
left, leaving him to rant by himself. “Humph!” grunts
Calvin, “He should resolve to be more attentive when someone
is speaking!”
Despite Calvin’s humbug attitude toward New Year’s
resolutions, many people still make them. New Year’s
resolutions represent the hope a fresh start. Calendars are
clean. Goals are set. Plans are made. Diets will be kept.
The irksome thing about New Year’s resolutions is they are
more easily made than kept. The spirit is willing but the
flesh is weak. The old adage “Wishin’ don’t make it so,”
must have been uttered by someone who made then broke their
New Year’s resolution.
With apologies to Calvin, I propose we make the following
New Year’s resolution: let us resolve that in 2006 we will
seek the Lord’s help to be wise by practicing what Jesus
preaches. Practicing what Jesus preaches is not complicated,
but it does require hard work-digging down deep always does.
“All hard work brings a profit,” says Solomon in Proverbs
14.23, “but mere talk leads to poverty.” In 2006 let us
resolve to talk less and do more.
Let us be joyful in our worship. Let us be humble in
confessing of our sins. Let us be grateful for our
participation at the Communion table. Let us be fervent in
prayer. Let us be diligent in reading and studying the
Bible. Let us be gracious to forgive others as Christ has
forgiven us. Let us be courageous in telling people about
Jesus. Let us be compassionate to those who have neither
received nor shown any knowledge of mercy and grace. Let us
prove that we love Jesus by doing what He says.
Jesus said there are many who call Him ‘Lord’ but few do
what He says. It takes a God-given faith to call Jesus
‘Lord’ and practice what He preaches. It is a faith that
believes it’s better to keep digging than toss in the
shovel. Only fools toss in the shovel. Once they stop
digging all they have to show for their effort is a hole in
the ground and speculation as to what might have been.
So build well.
People who practice what Jesus preaches know that the
ultimate building inspection does not take place in this
life. Death comes to us all and on that day when we stand
before Jesus He will ask us whether or not we put His words
into practice. There is no cheating then. He knows the
answer before we speak. He knows whether we have built well
or built cheap.
So build well.
The reward may not come in this life, but it will most
certainly come in the next. Even more importantly, the test
of your life’s quality may not come in this life, but it
will come in the next.
So build well.

Happy New Year.

MM