How to Put Your Worst First

What do you fear?

I fear needles—especially if the needles are aiming my direction at a doctor’s office.

     Some of my friends get that anxious, uneasy feeling around crowds, birds and stinging bees.

And all of us get particularly panicky when it comes to honesty.

•      We all shake with the fear of being honest.

Have you ever paid attention to the way post-apocalyptic movies capitalize on our fear of honesty?

The formula goes something like this:  The planet gets pulverized by a plague- or meteor- or war- and everyone and everything is annihilated.

Everyone except one weak, scared, selfish, lonely survivor.

We identify with the survivor at a primal level as she ambulates apprehensively from town to town, fighting to stay alive.

Then, after the sole survivor has run out of food, ammo and hope, she glimpses something scarier than anything she has yet encountered.

Another “other”.

She spots that second survivor and dives into a deep ditch praying to God that she won’t be found.

•      But then the inevitable happens.

The other person peers over the edge of the ditch.

     We all hold our breath as the eyes of both survivors meet.

          Their eyes search out the status and strength of the other.

As we watch with sweaty palms our anxiety is registering in the red.

The helpless one quivering in the ditch has only one question:

     If she reveals her faintness and frailty will the other person hurt her or help her?

She decides to put her worst first.

“I’ve got no weapon, food or intent to harm you.  I’m starving, scared and all alone.”

In her soul’s center she whispers inaudibly “Now that I’ve put my worst first in naked honesty, will you want to keep knowing me and friend me?”

She relates through vulnerability and speaks directly to the vulnerability of the “other”.

     We all exhale in joy as the other speaks tenderly:

“Come out in the open.  I’m just as scared and confused and cracked as you.  Trust me as I promise to help you even though you have nothing to offer.”

And this is why sinners clothed in Sin’s only clothing line “SHAME” take the risk of trusting Jesus.  
The divorcers, addicts, obsessives, compulsives, coveters, adulterers, sexually distorted, gossipers, idolaters, the enslaved to expectations, and self-righters---all the fearful-- can come out of hiding and huddle in the embrace of Jesus.

Have you ever realized that Jesus was the ultimate “other”?

The story of God reveals a fatal fall in the beginning of time because we mistrusted our good God (Genesis 3).

The weeds of sin, self-consciousness and doubt began to grow and enwrap the planet.

The resultant self-justifying fear of honesty crept over creation and smothered our human hearts with insecurity.

     But then God irreversibly stitched on our status and became a co-survivor.

He looked into our ditch because he himself understood our fear and fragility.

He identified with our sinful situation and shame so that the verdict of Sinless! could be stitched into our wrinkled hearts forever. (2 Corinthians 5:21; Matthew 27:28,35).

His mission was and is to speak through his vulnerability to our vulnerability.

And this frees us all from fear.

Wrapped in His resume and resources we can now relate to others by putting our worst first.

Have you tasted this fearless freedom?

Pastor Howard
Senior Pastor
Metro North Church

2 1/2 Ways to Escape Boredom

Imagine the feeling of blah that adheres to being fully full.

                Maybe you’re putting the empty, big bowl in the sink, after scratching that massive midnight itch, for the flavor and savor of those five scoops of ice cream.

                Maybe the lazy thought of getting just one more serving, at the “all you can eat” buffet, has just been tackled by that yucky state of post-buffet boredom that bubbles up and burps.

When we are fully full, all the time, we end up in the dungeon of boredom.

                And it saddens God to see His children under-living a life, stuck in a ho-hum, muffled, colorless, numbness state of boredom.

                It saddens God to see you spending your un-vivid, unliberated life with one foot on the brake as you diminish the vitality and vibrancy of His available Power.

This ancient proverb is the key that enables you to escape boredom in 2 ½ ways.

                “One who is full loathes honey, but to one who is hungry everything bitter is sweet.” (Proverbs 27:7)

Did you catch the first way of escape from the bondage of boredom?

       ·         You must believe that “Fullness turns the taster into a hater.”

In ancient times, honey was the biggest-big, sweetet, taste-bud-tickling treat. 

You just couldn’t go to the convenience store and get a Hershey’s chocolate bar or bag of Skittles.

If you happened to come across a rare hive of honey along the tasteless track of life, you licked and slurped that sticky sweet with a wild smile.

But you and I don’t live in a culture with rare hives of honey.

A constellation of comforts meet us at every turn.

       ·         We binge-watch our tastes in television or internet pleasures.

       ·         We snack on sweets and sup on succulent food.

       ·         We social snack on social media to ensure we remain “full” regarding the fading facts posted by our friends.

        ·         We track the trivial trends in sports, news and celebrity sensations.

And we wonder why the tentacles of boredom hold us frozen in a state of feeling-less-ness.

We wonder how we as tasters have been transformed into haters of these hives of honey.

Pick up this key of escape when you are bound to boredom:

        ·         Ignore the impulse to cram another comfort into your soul.

        ·         Yield to the self-control of the Spirit and experience his personal power (Galatians 5:23)

Look!

The second solution to breaking the blah’s of boredom is right here.

All you have to do is pick it up in your sticky fingers.

·         Hunger is the best sauce for perking up the sensations of life!

When you’re hungry, even distasteful flavors sizzle and have the snap-crackle-pop of sweetness.

Try it.

Go a week without sweets. 
       You won’t die.
            At least I don’t think you’ll die. 
                  Take the risk.

After a week without sweets grab a grape.

Wash it off, pop it in your mouth, crush that sugar ball between your teeth and then

WAIT!!!…..FOR!!!…..IT!!!….

WHAM!  

Your bored little taste buds will bludgeon the boredom right out of your being as they enjoy the feast of fireworks going on inside your mouth.

And just to make sure you don’t get too full on these boredom busters, I’ll give you just ½ more of a serving of Scripture.

·         Stay hungry and EVERYTHING will stay sweet.

          This Scripture takes aim at our overstimulated souls.

                 We were designed for hunger pangs that only God can fill.

                         He is both chef and feast.

When we gorge ourselves with excessive stuff, socializing, sex, stories, and sizzling sensations we fall down the steps into the dark basement of boredom.

The door slams behind us and the lock clicks.

BUT. 

You now hold the key.

You can close the pantry door as you hunger for that snack.

You can close the computer as you hunger for humor or romance or beauty.

You can!

            In Christ!

                        Pulsating with the power and Presence of His personal Spirit!

Because NOW you have opened your mouth and are tasting the honey of HIM.

Howard Cole
Senior Pastor
Metro North Church

How to Reverse the Irreversible

Have you heard the following anonymous quote about hope?  

“Man can live about forty days without food, about three days without water, about eight minutes without air, but only for one second without hope.” 

I don’t know about you, but the truth of that statement, like a dog whistle, captures an aching frequency of my heart.  It seems to ring true.

What direction is the needle on your heart’s “hope-ometer” pointing?  

              Towards “full and hopeful” or towards “empty and despairing”?

I hate to be a downer, but death is the ultimate hope-popper.

Day after day, month after month and year after year, it appears that this dark enemy holds onto the title: The undisputed heavyweight champion of the world.

              Why?

Philosophers and theologians call death the ultimate finality of irreversibility.

Or, to say it another way, death is that which causes good things to become irrecoverable and gone.

              Forever.

Remember the first time you fell in love?  

              You held hands.  

                       You kissed.  

                                You experienced being loved and loving another.

But then things changed. 

You weren’t good enough for him.  

              Or you lost interest in loving her because of your own broken, selfish goals.

Now that warm memory is long gone and has been thrown into the wastebasket of your life labeled: “Irreversible moments in time past that I have no hope of ever recovering!” 

Like crumpled up papers, other major memories were tossed long ago into your personal irreversible wastebasket.

That childhood memory at the beach with your family.

             The day you saw your first horizon to horizon rainbow.

                       That shameful failure you just couldn’t cover up.

That decision that determined your destiny and sent you tumbling down the stairs of life.

             And oh….the divorce, the dead-end job and financial fiasco…let’s not forget those wads of waste.  

As the philosopher Luc Ferry famously put it, these irreversible un-recoverables in life make us feel, in the pit of our soul, that some things in life will forever be “nevermore.”

But the Christian story challenges this depressing story of “nevermore.”

After reading the living stories of Jesus in Scripture, the oven of your cold heart begins to heat up and radiate with hope.

It is as if Jesus looks your direction with a sparkling squint in his eye and winks your way.

He holds up three fingers and says with certainty, “For all of your specific ‘nevermores’--Just give me three days.” (John 2:19)

You’ve heard the stories of his life and death.  Grandma and Grandpa used to speak of Jesus as if he were really real.

But many of those memories lie crumpled in your wastebasket of irreversibles.

Could it be that these historical accounts actually happened in space and time?

You read of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

              Resurrection.

                        Impossible!

And yet, five hundred people claimed it happened. (1 Corinthians 15:6—check it out!)

Women witnessed to the wonder.  In fact, the first woman that witnessed Jesus alive has been nicknamed “the apostle to the apostles!” because she sent word to the fellas who followed Jesus. What dignity.

With the truth of these stories, hope begins to warm and boil and bubble in your heart as you consider the ramifications of THE resurrection.

If the resurrection of Jesus is true, then death is dethroned and the heavyweight champion of hell is given the knock-out punch by the heavyweight champion of heaven.

                The reversal of the irreversible is now and forevermore possible.

And, if even for one second, you can hope again, all of those nevermores can become once-agains.

It’s like finding the first flower bursting with color on a mountainside after a cold snow.

If that flower can outfight freezing snow, then thousands of flowers can follow and carpet the countryside with beauty. 

Joy—endless, irrepressible joy- can occur since the fear of the irreversible is tossed into the wastebasket of irreversible finality.

And with this fact your crumpled, hopeless heart can now bloom like a flower in Spring.

The winds of possibility can unfurl your flagging heart and fill it with creative potentiality. 

The Christian, (the one united to the living Christ by faith) tackled by death, will recover the unrecoverable. 

              Because He resurrected, all those that are in Him by faith will live again.

All of our memories will remain.

              All that has collapsed will be restored.

                        All of the nevermores under the ledger-line of death will be transferred to remain under the ledger-line of hope. (Col. 1:13)

Do you believe it? (John 3:36)

He is risen.  Forevermore!

Pastor Howard
Senior Pastor
Metro North Church

Find Out Two Ways to Become "Un-Humpty-Dumptied" by the Cross

Do you think we each have a nursery rhyme character who could be our long, lost, identical twin? 

Personally, I find Humpty Dumpty highly relatable and relevant to my story.

I haven’t asked my mom yet, but I wonder if Humpty and I were accidentally separated at birth.

Why?

On the outside Humpty looks like a pretty dapper egg.

I grew up in suburbia, finished high school, college and grad school.  I got married, had a bunch of kids, work a job and even involve myself with a pretty cool church.

But that white, polished exterior is as thin and brittle as glass.

My heart, like yours, is so disordered and fragile.

And Humpty spends so much energy climbing up on walls.

He thinks they enable him to enjoy the high life.

But up there on those self-made walls of success, sex or salary, life can get a little shaky.

Up on a wall, leaning forward or backward just a bit too much comes with a cost.

In fact, when the wind of suffering and sin blows, Humpty falls off the wall only to blast apart in shards of gooey shell.

You might say he even feels dry and forsaken after the gravity of his situation presents itself.

Ever been there?  I’ve fallen off more walls this week than I can remember.

As we march toward Good Friday, many of us are starting to think about Christ and his God-forsaken cross.

As we ache and groan at the base of the walls we’ve fallen from, let’s take a fresh look at the cross.

When we look at the cross and listen to the words of Jesus, something surprising happens.

• We actually begin to become un-humpty-dumptied in two transformative ways.

The first way we become un-humpty-dumptied happens as we listen and believe Jesus say the following words:  “I am thirsty.” (John 19:28).

Did you hear that?  Jesus actually admitted, as he hung up there on that cross in the place of sinners, that he was dying of thirst.

I’ve heard Jesus say a bunch of “I Am” sayings like, “I am the bread of life, I am the light of the world”…etc.

Since he was fully God, those statements sound reasonable.

But to hear his say “I AM THIRSTY” magnetizes my mind and heart to trust Him in his humanity too.

As a flesh and blood guy, he actually slipped on human skin with thirst receptors and all.  His physical thirst was real and desperate as he bled to death.

Our hearts are thirsty too.

We erect so many strategic, self-salvation walls to perch on for a sense of purpose.

But endless effort and earning only make our dry, spongy hearts brittle and breakable.

I “say” Jesus saved me from my sin, and yet I “live” looking up to pseudo-saviors like possessions, people and power.

I sip on entertainment, gulp up activity after activity, and finally slurp with a straw the latest information about everything.

And yet I’m still thirsty.

As we hear Jesus scream “I AM THIRSTY” we realize that he thirsted under the righteous wrath of God in our place.

When we believe this personally, we become un-humpty-dumptied.

It’s like the cold snow, packed and pressing on the roof of our lives, becomes sun-warmed and slowly slides off.

We begin to be put back together again.

We begin to sip and swallow His love for us.  

His thirst wasn’t quenched so that my thirst would be quenched forever.

And this transaction between him and the Father, where he was penalized for my treason, becomes the very means of my transformation.

I am becoming un-humpty-dumptied!

The second way to become un-humpty-dumptied happens as we hear Jesus say “My God, my God, Why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46)

Jesus coughed these sad words through thirsty lips, three hours after he was hoisted up on the cross.  

Three hours of depressing God-forsakeness.

The savior that arrived in supernatural starlight, (see Matthew 2) hung high on a cross in the dark.

I am the one that climbs atop my achievements as I sit in the dark with a smug look of pride.

But it’s really dark up here.

I feel lonely and separated from others.

Up on my self-made wall, I feel superior to others.

But then I find someone with a wall that is just a little higher-- and begin to feel inferior.

I’m either prideful or depressed.

Either way, I feel distanced from friends and family.

Jesus hung suspended between heaven and earth, forsaken by the Father, so that I could have fellowship with God and others forever.

As I look at his forsakenness, I become un-humpty-dumptied.

I will never be fully forsaken because he was forsaken for me.

I am wanted, loved and knitted to the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit.

My cracked self is being fixed up.

I kneel at the foot of the cross gazing at my thirsting, forsaken King, and my heart suddenly flutters with hope.

Because he fell apart…

I am whole.

I’m so looking forward to Good Friday!

Pastor Howard
Senior Pastor
Metro North Church