We were in a conversation with a person from our community.  She knows I am a pastor.  She professes to believe in Jesus.  In the conversation we had she asked me what I preached about this past Sunday at the United Church.  I said, "I preached about idols."  Her reaction almost made me smile because it was obvious that what she initially thought about when she heard the word 'idol' is more than likely what most of us think about when we hear that word.  We think about something like a statue or like the golden calf fashioned by the Hebrews when they grew impatient waiting for Moses to come down from Mt. Sinai.  But idols are much more complex and pervasive than this.  And as we continued to talk it was also clear she hadn't thought much about how idolatry can be a real issue even with the absence of so called 'graven images'.
As my friend and pastor, Bill Senyard says, "Idols are anything that you run to instead of the living God to give you value, worth, meaning, joy, rest, intimacy and life.  They are anything that you allow to measure your value, your identity, your success, your sense of being right or your honor."  Money, power, performance, approval, comfort, control, recreation, physical fitness, physical appearance all are examples of good things that can become ultimate things.
We can get at what our idols are by pondering a few questions:  1)What is my greatest nightmare?  What do I worry about most?  2)What do I rely on or comfort myself with when things go badly or become difficult?  3)What makes me feel the most self-worth?  What am I the most proud of?
The process of even thinking about this challenging subject can be of value in terms of more regularly turning our hearts toward our Lord.  It certainly will be part of the life long struggle we have against the 'world, the flesh and the devil.'
Knowing our need is a great place to be, actually.  Pleading for the power of the Holy Spirit with an open heart and mind will move us toward a more God dependent and God centered sense of being.

We are continuing to 'talk' our way through the book of Acts.  I'm amazed the number of times in these early chapters (we were on chapter 11 this week) that reference is made to 'large numbers' being added to the church.  Twice in the narrative--11:19-30--this is mentioned:  11:20-21: "...and the hand of the Lord was with them and a large number who believed turned to the Lord..."  And then again in 11:24: "...considerable numbers were brought to the Lord..."
As we continue to pray and dream about what could happen in Clear Creek County and ask for the Holy Spirit, I pondered what would happen if all of a sudden "considerable numbers were brought to the Lord."  I'm not sure we have the 'disciplers' in place to offer the nurture and training but I pray that is a challenge we have to face.
May there be conversions in our wake as we go about living our lives in our part of the world and may that be true for you as well.

During my doctrinal oral exam one of the questions we could anticipate was related to salvation.  We were told the question could take the form of something like this:  "In what aspect are you saved?"  And in our preparation I remember one person saying that a good answer would be this:  "I am saved.  I am being saved.  And I will be saved."  Romans 8:28-30 supports this view.
If the words 'saved' and  'converted' are synonymous, and I believe they are, then the narrative in Acts 10 gives us an account of one person being saved (converted) in the past tense of the word.  And one person being saved (converted) in the present tense of the word.
Cornelius is a religious God-fearer who is being relentlessly and mercifully pursued by God.  The coming of the Holy Spirit on him (Acts 10:44 ff) and his subsequent baptism confirm his conversion at a point in time.
Peter on the other hand is the example of one who is being saved, being converted.  Think of the revolutionary change in his perspective that took place as a result of his vision in Acts 10:9-16.  And then his amazing statement to Cornelius in vs. 28: "...God has shown me that I should not call any man impure or unclean..." (NIV) That is the progressive nature of conversion as God continues to work on our hearts to expand them to love as he loves.  There are other ways this expansion takes place.  But the crucial one is in our love for those who we at one time or another considered un-loveable.

I heard that Donald Trump is running for president.  It will be an interesting presidential election campaign!!
I suspect that many strong opinions exist about someone like Donald Trump.  He is a very public person and a person of strong opinions himself and great financial success.  I also suspect that not many of us reading these words have actually met Donald Trump.  I want us to play a little game together to illustrate a point.  Suppose that you are a person who has never met Donald Trump and you have formed some very strong opinions about what kind of person he might be.  You consider him to be arrogant, selfish, egotistical and filled with pride.  But then imagine that your car is broken down on the side of a busy freeway and Donald Trump just happens to come by.  For some reason he is by himself and not being driven around in a stretch limo and he stops and very kindly, unselfishly and humbly helps you.  Do you suppose your opinion of him would change?  Mine would and that would be a conversion of sorts.  We would be changed.  We would have a radically different view of this person than the one we had created in our minds based on what we had seen in the press.
This picture ran through my mind as I was reading about the conversion of Saul of Tarsus in Acts 9.  Think about the view of God he had built in his mind.  God was distant, cold, angry.  And then he had a personal encounter with the living Lord Jesus and he was literally knocked to the ground.  He was converted.  
Not all conversions are as dramatic as this.  But it at least must start  when the gods we have created in our own image come face to face with the living and true God revealed in His Son Jesus.
Regeneration, the new birth, being born again is solely and in the first place a work of God through the Holy Spirit.  But I suspect that because of the reality of the day to day struggle with the power of sin in the world and in our own hearts that there are daily, even moment by moment conversions that need to take place as the gods of our own making discover how weak they are in comparison to the living God of creation.

Often, talking with a new person reveals the things that are closest to our hearts.  After initial 'getting to know you' bits of information are exchanged, like family and where you live the conversation moves to the next level.  It is here that we discover those matters that are important to us--hobbies, a sports team, a good book we've read recently, a particular period of history we are interested in, our job.  The first thing we talk about at this point in a conversation can be quite revealing this way.
This is not a criticism or a judgment in any way.  It is just an observation.
What got me thinking about this was reading in Acts 8.  In the history of the early church, Stephen an early leader just got killed.  Severe persecution against the church breaks out under the direction of Saul.  Homes are broken into.  Residents are dragged out and thrown into prison.  Many who aren't arrested we are told are 'scattered'.  In verse 4 of chapter 8 in Acts we read this about the group that has exiled:  "...those who had been scattered went about preaching the word...".
I don't know about you, but if many of my friends and maybe family members had been put in prison, and I had been forced to leave behind my home and all that was familiar to me, I don't think the first thing I would do would be to go about preaching the very word that was getting so many people put in jail.  I think I would probably hunker down and keep my mouth shut.  And in private conversation I would more than likely have many not so nice things to say about that jerk, Saul and other religious leaders.
I find it fascinating and quite frankly, convicting that these people had been so captivated by the Lord Jesus, their lives so transformed down in the depths of their being that the first response in their new circumstances is to go about preaching the Good News!
I pray that today, the Holy Spirit will so fill me fresh with Kingdom energy and so captivate my heart with how much I am loved by my Heavenly Father, that it will be the natural and spontaneous response to go about preaching the Good News with my very presence on this earth!!

Our culture and time is one of the worst in history in preparing people for the inevitability of death and dying and pain and suffering.  Consider the euphemisms with which we talk about death.  I remember as a young seminarian talking with a woman from our church who's young husband had died.  In my naive, well-intentioned, caring way I asked her, "When did you lose your husband?"  She looked at me and with a small amount of irritation and quickly replied, "I didn't lose him.  He died and I know where he is."  This was my early and rude introduction to a world that my culture had ill-prepared me for.  
We are insulated from death in our lack of involvement even in the caring of the bodies of our loved ones who have died.  In times past it was the family who cared for the bodies of the dead, dug the graves and put them in the ground.  This didn't necessarily ease the pain but it did make death more a part of life.
In addition to this there is our cultures idolization of youth and physical attractiveness and the corresponding lack of respect for our elder population. We go to great effort and expense to prolong life and to stay looking young.  We also have way less respect for the wisdom of age than do other cultures.  Ernest Becker's book, "The Denial of Death" was and is prophetic.
I was thinking about all this as I read again the amazing account of Stephens death in the Bible in Acts 7.  Here was a good and innocent man, falsely accused who went unflinchingly to his death.  The vision given to Stephen, "...(he) looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God..." (Acts 7:55), was a great gift.  It speaks of the deep transformation that can and does take place in a person's heart when God claims that person for His own glory.  When that happens, then it is possible to have a radically different view of death and dying and pain and suffering.  When this happens is is possible to view life's circumstances through the lens of a loving Heavenly Father's ultimate care rather than viewing that Heavenly Father through the lens of life's circumstances.
May it be so!!

The responsibility of caring for a lawn is not a high priority for me.  Part of the reason for that is there has not been a lawn to care for.  Now there is and unfortunately, last year I did something that reflects great ignorance, on my part, in the field of lawn care.  I sprayed some Roundup weed killer directly on quite a few spots in our grass.  Most of you who read this will smile because you will know the result.  As I look out the window at what was a lush green patch of grass when we bought the house last July, now it looks like it has a disease!  Earlier this spring, we put some seed down in those spots but we haven't seen much result.  The concern, of course, is that the Roundup takes awhile to leach out of the soil.  I'm hoping to consult a 'lawn professional' today and maybe get some good advice.
Those patches of dead ground surrounded by lush green life look like a living illustration to me of the Church.  The Church is still God's chosen vehicle for communicating the life changing message of the gospel.  In spite of all it's faults and failures there is no plan B.  The lush green living grass that is there depicts to me the living Church.  The dry dead patches, depict both struggling and dying churches and those who have not yet been drawn to our Heavenly Father's great love for them.
Our Father is a God of redemption and it is Him and Him alone by the power of the Holy Spirit who brings life both to the Church and to those He is drawing to Himself.  We need that power as well and so each morning we ask the Holy Spirit to fill is again and empower us in big and small ways to bring a little bit of the kingdom of heaven down to kingdom of this earth.
Ephesians 3:14-21 is an amazing section of Paul's letter to the early Christians in Ephesus.  He prays for them, and us, that we might be "filled to the measure of all the fullness of God".  
What difference would it make in our lives today if we really felt full from all of the fullness of God?  I have to believe that those dead patches of grass would come back to life and that life would spill over into the lives of others.  May it be so for us today!!