This winter, I've had the immense joy of leading some men through C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity.  It's been a while since I've feasted on this rich classic.   I was surprised at how many men hadn't ever read it.  Have you read it?  If not, get to it!  

Last week, we discussed the chapter on  Cardinal Virtues (part 3, chapter 3) and, as usual, it was packed with gems.  I really loved this one on "prudence" which happens to explain my commitment to gathering men for prayer and good reads on Thursdays at 6:00 AM.  (The study is open to all men.  You are welcome.) 

In last week's message (LISTEN HERE) and the week before (LISTEN HERE), we referenced this chart that summarizes our long study of Genesis. . . . 

The life of Joseph is a story within the larger Jacob story within the larger Genesis story within the larger Biblical story within thre larger story of history.  

The Bible is not a book of rules and not a book of virtures.  The Bible is one story:  God's story of Gospel Promise.  Genesis is the beginning of that story.  The story climaxes in the person and work of Jesus Christ and the story looks forward to the coming again of Jesus to renew and reconcilie all creation.  Our stories are a part of God's larger story.  

This is how we must learn to read the Bible.   It takes time and work.   

I haven't made the time to watch Oprah's interview with Lance Armstrong.  I've heard a few snippets, but not enough to draw too many conclusions.  Is this true repentance and brokenness or just another public relations ploy?  Hard to say. Time will tell.   I just know the guy was in deep and his sins have found him out . . . as they almost always do. Consequences will be ongoing, far reaching, and long lasting.  

Ed Stetzer reflects on 4 things Christians can learn from the Lance Armstrong Debacle.  I thought these were a couple thought-provoking quotes . . . 

"Sin will take you further than you want to go, 
keep you longer than you want to stay
and cost you more than you want to pay."

Even a cursory reading of the news reveals it's true.  We overinflate the benefits and underestimate the costs of sin . . . every time.  

What we cover, God will uncover.
What we uncover, God will cover.  

The first refers to God's judgment where all our lives will be exposed, but the reality is, most of the time, what we cover is uncovered by God before judgment.  Just ask Lance.  Thank God for for His glorious Gospel in Christ that makes the covering of our sin possible. 

Repentance and brokenness is the only true prescription for forgiveness, grace and freedom.   If you've got some deep, dark secret, come to the light and come to Christ.   

Awesome Sanctity of Life Sunday yesterday together! LISTEN HERE  In my introduction to the morning, I walked through this material, which was also included in the outline.  In case you missed the service, I wanted you to see and think about this issue, too.   

What is the "Sanctity of Human Life?"  

The "Sanctity of Human Life" is the Biblical teaching that all human life is sacred, precious, valuable and worthy of our protection and care. 

Why is the Sanctity of Human Life affirmed and taught here at GraceSLO? 

1. First, because the Bible teaches the Sanctity of Human Life.  
    
2. Second, because we believe the Sanctity of Human Life is a foundational and profoundly practical issue that informs how we view, treat and care for our own lives and the lives of everyone around us.  
    
3. Third, we believe this is an "issue of our time" as the dignity of human life is being undermined and attacked in more and more ways.   
    
4. Fourth, we're committed to equipping God's people to think and live Biblically.  In the church, Biblical principles cannot be assumed, they must be passionately and clearly taught.  

What is the Biblical basis for the Sanctity of Human Life?  

The Sanctity of Human Life is rooted in these twin Biblical truths . . . 

• God alone is the author, creator and Lord of life.
  (Genesis 1, Ex. 4:11, Ps. 100:3,  Acts 17:24-25)
   
• Humankind alone, among all creation, is made in the image of God.  
  (Genesis 1:26, Gen. 9:6, Ps. 139:13-16) 

Who does the issue of the Sanctity of Human Life impact?   

The Sanctity of Human Life affects all of us at every stage of our lives, but more specifically the truth that life is sacred impacts how we view and treat those who often cannot speak for themselves or care for themselves . . .

• the unborn
• orphans
• the exploited and impoverished
• those with special needs
• the elderly

What practical issues does the Sanctity of Human Life inform? 

The Sanctity of Human Life informs how we think about and respond to a growing list of complex issues including, but not limited to . . .

• abortion
• abortificient birth control
• genetic screening
• pre-natal gene therapy
• embryonic stem cell research
• human trafficking and slavery,
• genocide
• suicide
• euthanasia

I also shared the following statistics which all illustrate the undermining of the Sanctity of Human Life in our culture and world. . .

• 50,000,000 legal abortions have been performed in the U.S.  since the Roe vs. Wade decision 40 years ago.
   
• 9 out 10 babies diagnosed with Down's Syndrome in the U.S. are aborted.  
   
• 2,500,000 people are victims of forced labor, including sexual exploitation, around the world today.
   
• 80% of elderly folks who live in assisted care facilities never receive any visitors . . no family, no friends, nobody.  

At GraceSLO we want to be a voice for life.  We believe the Sanctity of Human Life is not a political issue, but a moral and Biblical issue.   It's why we encourage, support and celebrate adoption and foster care among our church family.  It's why we visit and care for the elderly in our congregation.  It's why we celebrate the mixing of ages in our worship.   It's why we feed, shelter and give to meet the needs of the poor in our community.  

As Sanctity of Life Sunday quickly approaches, two stories grabbed my attention today as I was trolling my news . . . 

The first is this NBC story of 45 year old deaf twins in Belgium who were eauthanized at their own request this December. . . 

Their doctor, David Dofour, told Belgium’s RTL Television over the weekend that the two men had been losing their eyesight for several years and soon would have been completely blind. The prospect of being blind as well as deaf was unbearable to them, he said.

Contrast that hopelessness with the faith-filled hope of this interview with Joni Earickson Tada (Part 1, Part 2) who has been living as a quadrapelic for 45 years since a diving accident she suffered as a teenager.  Or you can just watch the interview below. . . 

Here are some questions that moved me. . . .

As you’re lying in that hospital bed, did you have suicidal thoughts?

When first injured I was overwhelmed with the prospect of being paralyzed for the rest of my life. I used to lie in bed and wrench my head back and forth violently on the pillow hoping to break my neck up at some higher level and pass out. I was hoping that when I was strong enough to sit up in a wheelchair, they’d give me a power wheelchair so I could careen off a high curb and kill myself that way. But a person can only live with that kind of despair for so long. And thankfully, Christian friends of mine were praying. Eventually God used those prayers to turn my despair Godward. It’s in the Psalms: “Why are you downcast, oh my soul. Put your trust in God.” God began to bring back to my mind and memory those verses of Scripture that I had memorized. 

If at that time there had been an assisted suicide law, would you have asked someone to kill you? 

Oh my goodness, yes. When I was depressed in the early part of my hospitalization, I begged my girlfriends to bring in their mothers’ sleeping pills, their fathers’ razors, anything. I’m grateful there was no physician-assisted suicide law around back then. I would have tried very hard to mount some court challenge to change the definition of terminal illness so that it might include spinal cord injury. I would have done anything to put me out of my misery. I was so miserable. That was 45 years ago, though. What a different world we live in now, because there really are people with disabilities trying to change the court definitions of “terminal illness” in states like Oregon and Washington. At our ministry we’re working hard to prevent that from happening and to give hope in Christ, so these people, like me, will find a way out of depression. 

Does depression still ensnare you at times? Are you happy? 

I make myself be happy. I make myself sing because I have to. The alternative is too frightening. My girlfriends will tell you, in the morning when I wake up, I know they’ll be coming into my bedroom to give me a bed bath, do my toileting routines, pull up my pants, put me in the wheelchair, feed me breakfast, and push me out the front door. I lie there thinking (gagging noise), “Oh God, I cannot face this. I’m so tired of this routine. My hip is killing me. I’m so weary. I don’t know how I’m going to make it to lunchtime. I have no energy for this day. God, I can’t do quadriplegia. But I can do all things through You as You strengthen me. So God, I have no smile for these girlfriends of mine who are going to come in here with a happy face. Can I please borrow Your smile? I need it, desperately. I need You.”

I hate the prospect of having to face the day with paralysis. I choose the Holy Spirit’s help because I don’t want to go down that grim, dark path to depression any more. That’s the biblical way to wake up in the morning, the only way to wake up in the morning. No wonder the Apostle Paul said, “Boast in your afflictions.” Don’t be ashamed of them. Don’t think you have to hide them and gussy yourself up before God in the morning so that He’ll be happy with you and see that you’re really believing in Him. No, no, no. Admit you can’t do this thing called life. Then cast yourself at the mercy of God and let Him show up through your weakness because that’s what He promises—2 Corinthians 12:9.

What you’re saying about hard mercy makes a lot of sense to Christians—but what about non-Christians who ask you to put together a good God with terrible occurrences? How do you talk with them about God’s sovereignty in your personal situation?

Always with what the Bible calls reasonable sweetness, savoring my conversation with salt. I get into an elevator with a bunch of people who see the lady in the wheelchair, smiling and humming “Amazing Grace.” They can connect the dots: lady in wheelchair singing “Amazing Grace.” It’s a compelling support for the gospel. If people want to get into discussion with me about the sovereignty of God, I will tell them front and center that God doesn’t like spinal cord injury. He takes no pleasure in multiple sclerosis or children born with spina bifida. John Piper talks about how God looks at suffering through two lenses. He looks at the isolated incident of suffering through a narrow lens and loathes it. His heart loathes it when you go through a divorce. His heart aches when you give birth to that child with multiple disabilities. He hates the isolated lens of suffering. But He delights in the wide-angle lens. He sees the mosaic. He sees how it all fits together into this incredible pattern for not only our good, but the good of all those around us, and for His glory. I’m grateful that God is sovereign. His fingers hold back a deluge of evil in this world. I’m grateful that He only allows to slip through His sovereign fingers that which He’s convinced will help our souls and fit us better for eternity. 

That lady is courageous!  I'm glad she's alive as a walking, breathing testimony to the sovereignty of God and the sanctity of lfie.  

I think I'm still in shock  about what happened to Lou Giglio last week. . . . being invited to pray at President Obama's inauguration and then obviously being uninvited when it was discovered that he called homosexuality a sin in a message he preached some 20 years back.  

Al Mohler has suggested this represents the emergence of a "New McCarthyism" . . . 

The Presidential Inaugural Committee and the White House have now declared historic, biblical Christianity to be out of bounds, casting it off the inaugural program as an embarrassment. By its newly articulated standard, any preacher who holds to the faith of the church for the last 2,000 years is persona non grata.  

(Mohler's whole post is very much worth reading!  Will you take the time?) 

What does this mean and where does it leave Christians who believe the historic Christian faith?  How shall we now live as we are increasingly excluded from the public square and marginalized?   The winds are very rapidly shifting.  We would be naive to think otherwise.   

What does it feel like to be a minority?  I suspect we are on the verge of finding out.  How easy it is to get angry, defensive, fearful,  bitter and resentful.   

But how, instead, can we be a kind, winsome witness when we're marginalized and despised and riduled?  That is the question, it seems to me.  One thing is sure. . . we need the perspective of the ages. . . . a good primer on Christian history.  And we need to re-read our Bibles with fresh eyes.  For the great majority of Christian history, God's people have been a marginalized, despised, suffering bunch.   We ought not to expect any different.  Jesus Himself told us. . . 

This I command you, that you love one another.  If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world,because of this the world hates you.  --Matthew 15:17-19

We read this article as a staff this week and discussed the power of Gospel community in these dark days.  My great hope and prayer is that our Growth Groups are growing into bright lights of Gospel community in these dark days . . . 

The joy of friendship culminates in feasting. People who live in genuine community enjoy gathering to celebrate the things they hold dear together. They eat and drink and sing and tell wonderful tales with laughter. Marriage, the fount of community, begins with joyful, community feasting. The community of Christ gathers regularly around a feast, the Lord’s Supper, which looks forward to the great wedding feast in glory when God’s promised good life is fulfilled.

But there is no truly good life on earth apart from communion with God in heaven. You cannot truly love your neighbor while hating God. To hate God is to idolize self, which in turn corrodes every human relationship. Of course, Christ is both the bridge between heaven and earth and the bond between man and neighbor. Loving relationships are what make life good. People who are wealthy and powerful but have shattered families and have no friends are miserable. The quality of one’s life can be measured by the quality of one’s love for others. Narcissists cannot be happy.

It was fun to preach yesterday after a couple of weeks away.  We continued our LIfe of Joseph series with a look at the God of Jacob in Genesis 48.  (LISTEN HERE) 

In the second hour, Pastor Al prayed a prayer adapted from an earlier Puritan prayer contained in a great collection of Puritan prayers entitled "The Valley of Vision."   I really liked the prayer and asked him to send it to me this morning for posting here at Life Together.  The second and third lines are what grabbed me.  Its worth your contemplation on this Monday.  

Blessed Lord Jesus,

No human mind could conceive or invent the gospel,

Acting in eternal grace, you are both its messenger and its message,

Lived out on earth through infinite compassion,

Applying your life to insult, injury, death – we are reminded of that insult, injury, death as we prepare to come to the Table this morning, given the visual reminder that you were nailed to a cross and your blood spilled to pay for our sin –

That we might be redeemed, ransomed, forgiven, freed.

We give thanks to You, Father, for putting your plan into place before the world began,

Eternal thanks to you, Lord Jesus, Lamb of God, for opening the way,

Praise everlasting to you, Holy Spirit, for applying this to our hearts, that we might believe and trust you.

It is because of the Gospel that we can come into the presence of Holy God approach the throne of grace with boldness and confidence.  We worship this morning, but we also come with many needs.  You know our frailties, our weakness, our brokenness, and I pray that you would meet each of us at our point of need: encourage the brokenhearted, comfort those who have experienced loss, meet the physical needs of those experiencing financial hardship, bring healing to the sick, and draw all of us closer to you, that we may all present our bodies as living sacrifices to you, holy and acceptable to you. 

We pray for those who serve in different places around the world, and we especially pray for Mark Piester this morning and his work in reaching children in Russia with the Gospel.  We pray that the recent Christmas celebrations and winter camp that he conducted resulted in many hearing and responding to the Gospel, and we pray that you would continue to be at work in those children; bless Mark in his ongoing work that many might hear the Gospel, believe and be discipled, for your namesake.

We pray for our country and our leaders at every level of government.  We live in a difficult and dangerous time.  May we not depend on the wisdom of men, but the wisdom that only comes from You.  We pray for those who serve in government who know you as Savior and Lord, that you would protect them from sin and corruption and that you would use them to advance your will.  And use us, Lord, where we are to be salt and light in our own communities.

Now, as we give offering and gifts this morning as an act of worship, bless and use these offerings to advance the Gospel, that your name would be exalted and praised.

(Adapted about the first third of “The Gospel Way” from The Valley of Vision,” p. 35, and used it as a springboard for the rest of the prayer.)

Pastor Brandon left on Monday night for a 2 week trip to Israel for a bunch of other Student Minsitry guys and gals.   The trip was put together by Hume Lake and we all thought it would be a terrific "professional development" opportunity for Brandon.  We're committed to helping our Pastors and Ministry Staff keep growing through new and stretching educational and missional opportunities.    

You can follow a blog of a trip HERE, if you're interested.  

I'm excited and just a bit envious about Brandon's opportunity, since I've never had an opportunity to go to Israel myself.  I'm sure walking where Jesus walked will make the Bible come alive in unique ways for Brandon and hopefully through Brandon for the students he teaches.  

Pray for Pastor Brandon (and his wife, Jenna, and son, Micah)  as you think about it over these next couple of weeks.  

Just before Christmas on Sunday, December 16, we took a few minutes in our worship services to look ahead to 2013.  We think this is vital information for all who call GraceSLO home . . . and for those who are just exploring GraceSLO.   In case you missed it, here's the brief audio and a few slides. . . . 

Vision 2013 Audio 

This first slide represents a picture of what we believe God is doing at GraceSLO right now and directions we want to keep moving. . . 

Slide #2 shows ongoing ministries related to the "Serve & Welcome" direction, and, below the line, some new initiaitves.  

Slide #3 shows the "Give & Go" direction. . . ongoing ministires above the line and 2013 projects below the line. 

Slide#4 shows the "Connect & Grow" direction  . . . with current and new priorities.   

We hope you're as excited about the directions God is taking GraceSLO as we are.  Thanks for your faithful service and giving to the Lord here at GraceSLO.   God is using you to accomplish His work.