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Have you heard the story of Charlie Riggs? Over 50 years ago, he came to Christ and was discipled by a young man named Lorne Sanny, who himself was being discipled by Dawson Trotman, founder of the Navigators.
Charlie was willing to grow in Christ, but he was a bit rough around the edges and didn’t seem very promising as a Christian leader. When Lorne wrote to Dawson, he told him that Charlie Riggs was the only man he was working with and he felt discouraged by the prospects. Trotman wrote back and said, “Stay with your man. You never know what God will do with him.” So, Lorne Sanny continued to work with Charlie Riggs.
A few years passed and a young man named Billy Graham came on the scene. In 1952, the Navigators “loaned” Charlie Riggs to the Graham team to handle the follow-up in their early crusades. He planned to return to the Navigators eventually. However, he worked out so well that he stayed with Billy Graham.
In 1957, on the eve of the famous New York City crusade at Madison Square Garden, the crusade director suddenly had to be replaced. Who could they get? The lay chairman suggested Charlie Riggs, but Billy Graham wasn’t sure if he could handle the job. “All he does is pray and quote Scripture.”
The layman insisted, Charlie Riggs got the job and the rest is history. The New York campaign became a model for the many crusades that would follow in later years. Billy Graham said, “I didn’t think he could do it. But I had this peace—that Charlie so depended on the Holy Spirit that I knew the Lord could do it through Charlie.”
Charlie Riggs retired after many years of effective service to the Lord. What was his secret? How could a man with little formal training rise to such a high position and hold it for so long?
He says, “I always asked the Lord to put me in over my head . That way, when I had a job to do, either the Lord had to help me or I was sunk.” God was delighted to answer this prayer time after time. He put Charlie Riggs in over his head—and then bailed him out.
So many of us dads play it safe with our families. We pray only for what we think we can handle. Our answers are small because our prayers are small.
Here’s a challenge. Let’s take Charlie Riggs’ prayer as our own: “Lord, put me in over my head.” It’s safer to stay in shallow water where you can always feel the bottom under your feet, but the real challenge is to jump in where the water comes up over your head. What are the challenges we face when we’re in over our heads? Job changes, teenagers, college costs and church schedules to name a few.
How about it, dads? Are you ready for some excitement? I am. Let’s ask God to put us in over our heads. And then, let’s watch God keep us floating just when we think we’re about to sink.
From “On the Father Front,” Vol. 8, No. 2, Summer, 1995
Tony Miano
The movie industry has made some pretty creative attempts at explaining conflict with god. For those of you that remember the movie “Caddyshack,” there is a scene toward the end of the movie in which a golfing enthusiast priest is playing the round of his life. As he makes his way around the links, the weather turns.
The movie depicts the scene as a battle between this priest in search of nirvana through a golf game and a insensitive and spiteful god that would thwart the priest’s quest for that perfect game. The scene ends with the priest defiantly raising his putter to the violent heavens and being struck down by a well-placed bolt of lighting.
I’m sure many of you have seen the movie “Forrest Gump.” Well, there is a scene in this movie about man’s conflict with god as well. In this movie, the character “Lt. Dan,” who lost both of his legs in a battle in a Vietnamese jungle, and was saved by none other than Forrest Gump, decides its time to have it out with god.
Forrest, by this time, is trying to make it on his own as a shrimp boat captain. Lt. Dan joins Forrest as his first mate. The two men manage only to salvage tires, license plates, and toilet seats from the ocean’s bottom. After several failed attempts, Lt. Dan asks Forrest, “Where’s this god of yours?”
As soon as Lt. Dan asked the question, god arrived in the form of a destructive hurricane. As the storm rages, we find Lt. Dan strapped to the top of the mast, next to an American flag, shaking his fist at god, daring god to try to destroy the boat, and cursing like a sailor. When the storm subsides, Lt. Dan and Forrest’s boat was the only one still afloat. Since no one else could harvest the shrimp, Bubba Gump Shrimp Company became a multi-million dollar industry. A few minutes later in the movie we find Lt. Dan at peace with the world. He had met god face to face, so the filmmaker would have us believe, and won.
Let me share with you one last example, one that I saw recently. The scene is found in the season finale of the popular television show “The West Wing.” President Bartlett, played by Martin Sheen, faces his major conflict with god.
The scene finds President Bartlett alone in the National Cathedral following the funeral of his secretary and long-time friend. The President orders his chief of staff to tell the Secret Service agents outside to secure the perimeter so he won’t be disturbed. After a moment or two of silence, Bartlett does battle with god.
Bartlett begins to curse god for, as he saw it, causing his friend to die in a car accident. He curses god and blames him for the other tragedies that have occurred up to this point, during his presidency. He defiantly lights a cigarette, takes a few puffs, and then tosses the cigarette to the floor, crushing it under his shoe as he gives god a dirty look.
The producers of the show set the scene the way they did in order to try to get the audience to feel sorry for Sheen’s character and respect his independence and defiance of god. It certainly didn’t work for me. In fact, I was so offended by the scene; I doubt I’ll watch the show again.
In all likelihood, and I think I’m on safe ground with this assumption, the producers of the shows I just described have spent little time studying James’ letter. From what we see often times in the media, conflict with god is portrayed as something god desires and causes.
More often than not, we find man as the hero in the conflict and god being the weak, unknowable force. In the media, when man comes to terms with god, it is more often than not due to man’s strength and god’s capitulation, not as a result of man’s submission to God’s will. Hollywood does not see conflict with God the same way James does, or the way we should.
If you go on-line and read the transcript of this portion of this morning’s message, you will see that when I describe these various scenes, I use a little “g” when I make mention of God. The reason is simple. In depicting man’s conflict with God, Hollywood shows quite brazenly that they have no idea who the God of the Bible is.
This morning, as we study God’s Word, we’re going to see what conflict with God looks like from God’s perspective, not man’s.
“A friend was in front of me coming out of church one day, and the preacher was standing at the door as he always is ready to shake hands.
The Pastor grabbed my friend by the hand and pulled him aside and said to him, "You need to join the Army of the Lord!"
My friend replied, "I’m already in the Army of the Lord, Pastor." The Pastor questioned, "How come I don’t see you except at Christmas and Easter?"
He whispered back, "I’m in the secret service. "
A story… It was autumn, and the Indians on the remote reservation asked their new Chief if the winter was going to be cold or mild. Since he was an Indian Chief in a modern society, he had never been taught the old secrets. When he looked at the sky, he couldn’t tell what the weather was going to be. Nevertheless, to be on the safe side, he replied to his tribe that the winter was indeed going to be cold and that the members of the village should collect firewood to be prepared.
Also, being a practical leader, after several days he got an idea. He went to the phone booth, called the National Weather Service and asked, "Is the coming winter going to be cold?"
"It looks like this winter is going to be quite cold indeed," the meteorologist at the weather service responded. So the Chief went back to his people and told them to collect even more wood in order to be prepared.
A week later, he called the National Weather Service again. "Is it going to be a very cold winter?"
"Yes," the man at National Weather Service again replied, "it’s definitely going to be a very cold winter." The Chief again went back to his people and ordered them to collect every scrap of woo...
One Pastor performed a baptism service in sort of a special way. He told the people before they came up to the platform to be baptized to take a piece of paper, write down a few of the sins they’ve committed, and fold the paper. When they came up to the platform, there was a large wooden cross on the stage. They were to take that piece of paper along with a pin, and pin it to the cross, because the Bible says our sins are nailed to the cross with Jesus Christ, and fully paid for by his death. Then they were to turn and come to the pastor to be baptized. I want to read you a letter a woman wrote who was baptized in one of that service. She said:
I remember my fear. In fact, it was the most fear I remember in my life. I wrote as tiny as I could on that piece of paper the word abortion. I was so scared someone would open the paper and read it and find out it was me. I wanted to get up and walk out of the auditorium during the service, the guilt and fear were that strong.
When my turn came, I walked toward the cross, and I pinned the paper there. I was directed to a pastor to be baptized. He looked me straight in the eyes, and I thought for sure that he was going to read this terrible secret I kept from everybody for so long. But instead, I felt like God was telling me, I love you. It’s okay. You’ve been forgiven. I felt so much love for me, a terrible sinner. It’s the first time I ever really felt forgiveness and unconditional love. It was unbelievable, indescribable.
George Muller was asked, “What is the secret of your service to God?” Muller’s response was this: “There was a day when I died, utterly died, died to George Muller, his opinions, preferences, tastes and will…died to the world, its approval and censure…died to the approval or blame even of my brethren and friends…and since then I have studied to show myself approved only to God.”
In an article entitled “Lessons from A Tavern,” Chuck Swindoll writes: “An old Marine Corps buddy of mine, to my pleasant surprise, came to know Christ after he was discharged. I say surprise because he cursed loudly, fought hard, chased women, drank heavily, loved war and weapons, and hated chapel services. A number of months ago, I ran into this fellow, and after we’d talked awhile, he put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘You know, Chuck, the only thing I still miss is that old fellowship I used to have with all the guys down at the tavern. I remember how we used to sit around and let our hair down. I can’t find anything like that for Christians. I no longer have a place to admit my faults and talk about my battles — where somebody won’t preach at me and frown and quote me a verse.’ It wasn’t one month later that in my reading I came across this profound paragraph: ‘The neighborhood bar is possibly the best counterfeit that there is to the fellowship Christ wants to give his church. It’s an imitation, dispensing liquor instead of grace, escape rather than reality — but it is a permissive, accepting, and inclusive fellowship. It is unshockable. You can tell people secrets, and they usually don’t tell others or even want to. The bar flourishes not because most people are alcoholics, but because God has put into the human heart the desire to know and be known, to love and be loved, and so many seek a counterfeit at the price of a few beers. With all my heart,’ this writer concludes, ‘I believe that Christ wants his church to be unshockable, a fellowship where people can come in and say, “I’m sunk, I’m beat, I’ve had it.” Alcoholics Anonymous has this quality — our churches too often miss it.’”
For more from Chuck, visit http://www.insight.org
Pastor Lee Strobel shares this account:
We were doing a baptism service. We told people before they came up to the platform to be baptized to take a piece of paper, write down a few of the sins they’ve committed, and fold the paper. When they come up to the platform, there was a large wooden cross on the stage. Take that piece of paper, take a pin, and pin it to the cross, because the Bible says our sins are nailed to the cross with Jesus Christ, and fully paid for by his death. Then turn and come to the pastor to be baptized.
I want to read you a letter a woman wrote who was baptized in one of those services. She said:
I remember my fear. In fact, it was the most fear I remember in my life. I wrote as tiny as I could on that piece of paper the word abortion. I was so scared someone would open the paper and read it and find out it was me. I wanted to get up and walk out of the auditorium during the service, the guilt and fear were that strong.
When my turn came, I walked toward the cross, and I pinned the paper there. I was directed to a pastor to be baptized. He looked me straight in the eyes, and I thought for sure that he was going to read this terrible secret I kept from everybody for so long. But instead, I felt like God was telling me, I love you. It’s okay. You’ve been forgiven. I felt so much love for me, a terrible sinner. It’s the first time I ever really felt forgiveness and uncon...
Television psychic Sylvia Brown, who appears regularly on the Montel Williams show, fared even worse. On the December 27, 2006 airing of Montel, Sylvia made her predictions for 2007. They were all wrong. Every last one of them. For instance, Ms. Brown predicted that a tsunami would cause flooding in the United States in 2007. No such flooding occurred. She suggested that a tsunami might hit New York City. It didn’t. She said that there would be a major volcanic eruption in Mexico. There wasn’t. She said that she worried about some type of terrorist attack involving trucks and trains in the United States. None occurred. All told, Sylvia Brown made 13 concrete predictions for 2007 on the December 27, 2006 episode of Montel, none of which came true. Yet she is regarded as an accurate psychic.
(http://www.progressiveu.org/192215-alleged-psychic-sylvia-brownes-2007-predictions-success-rate (last visited Feb 25, 2008)).
Of course, the best known psychic-predictor of modern times was Jean Dixon. She rose to fame by predicting in 1956 that the winner of the 1960 presidential contest would die in office, and when President Kennedy was assassinated, her popularity was assured. Of course, what was overlooked was the fact that she had also predicted that Richard Nixon would win the presidency in 1960, not JFK. Undaunted, Ms. Dixon convinced herself and the rest of America that she was a modern-day prophet. Every year until her death in 1997 she would issue her list of predictions for the coming year. Most people assume that most of her predictions came true. The reality is that most didn’t. For instance, she predicted that World War III would begin in 1958 and that the Soviets would land the first man on the moon. She predicted that the first George Bush would beat his challenger, Gov. Bill Clinton of Arkansas. For 1997, the final year of her life, she predicted that actor Alec Baldwin would become terribly ill, comedian Ellen DeGeneres would have a run-in with the Secret Service when she crashed the presidential inauguration; and a plane would crash in late October. None of these things occurred. Yet she is regarded as the greatest of the modern psychics.
(http://www.cnn.com/SHOWBIZ/9701/26/dixon/ (Last visited on Feb 25, 2008)).
Standing in stark contrast to these modern prophets are the prophets of the Bible. Time after time the biblical authors said that something would occur; and then, it occurred, exactly as they said.
A SPECIAL VISITOR
This past Tuesday, it was difficult to drive in and out of our church parking lot because of a barrage of traffic down Webster Street. Where did this traffic come from? Downtown was blocked off because President Obama and Vice-President Biden were speaking at a closed meeting a few blocks away from the church. City, county, state, FBI, and secret service agents were among the security team hopping to their tasks.
But 2,000 years ago, someone special came to visit our planet, and his security team consisted of angels, his mother and step dad, and a few nearby shepherds. Who was this most special of guests, and what was his purpose in visiting we mortal humans? That is the very question John addresses in chapter one of his Gospel.
