Maybe it’s just me, but I seem to have “gospel amnesia” quite often. I forget that I am totally accepted by God because of what Christ has done for me. I often fall back into either legalistic or licentious patterns in my heart and I forget that all I need and all that I desire is already true in Christ.
There are two books that have been tremendously helpful for me to “preach the gospel to myself” as I suffer from “gospel amnesia”. I am recommending them to you if you see yourself falling off either the “legalist” or the “licentious” cliffs (and you know that deep down that you do). Reading them together is like a “Gospel Double Decker” for your heart. Very cool, indeed.
The second book is called “Jesus + Nothing = Everything” by Tullian Tchividjian. The title of his book may be a phrase I use often in sermons at Grace Foothills. See the interview below as Tullian (I am on a first name basis with him because I met him when he was in seminary at CIU back in the 1990′s) as he explains the distinction between the gospel and moralism.
Our friend, Catherine Morris, sent us this quote from Tim Keller last night:
“Sometimes God seems to be killing us when He is actually saving us–to follow God in such circumstances seems to some to be blind faith, but it is actually vigorous, grateful faith.”
Keller is one of those guys who continually points me to the beauty and the difficulty of authentically believing the Gospel. If you have not read or listened to Tim Keller, I would encourage you to do so by clicking here.
Ok, so we are going home today. We began this journey almost two weeks ago with the tension of hope and doubt. As we head home to Tryon, we take the same tension with us. Luke no longer has the colostomy bag, which is a good thing. However, his colon is still not working as God has designed colons to work. We will have to insert a rectal tube every few days to get the stool out. Perhaps that is only a temporary thing, but we just don’t know. Even though we are about to leave the hospital, Luke’s disability continues. Please continue to pray for his colon to “wake up”.
On a brighter note, I am ending these most recent blogs with three clips below. The first one is a clip of Enzo the Clown (I say he is a clown), coming to Luke’s room this past Thursday and goofing around. The last two of are of Jack, who has been with friends the entire time we have been here. For months, Jack has been asking for a double light saber and thanks to Patrick Harmon, who bought Luke one, I bought Jack one. At the same time Jack get his double light saber, his first tooth fell out. Oh, the memories.
I (and Luke as well) feel like the guy who wrote this:
“Give ear to my words, O LORD;
consider my groaning.
Give attention to the sound of my cry,
my King and my God,
for to you do I pray.”
–Psalm 5:1-2–
My comfort right now is that the Gospel tells me that in Christ, God has a face and a body and He walked this earth. We have a God who bled. We have a God who can sympathize with our weaknesses. We have a God who didn’t commute from the suburbs, but moved into the inner city and got His hands messy. He is both immanent (near) and transcendent (far). He is both my God and my Papa. That is my comfort right now and I ask you to pray that would be Luke’s comfort as well.
Today is day 11 in our little adventure here in Winston. Luke is doing much better today. It was rough going on Tuesday night. Here is where we stand as of this morning: the nausea and abdominal pains have stopped, he is eating light foods, the irrigations are ongoing, and last night we had to insert a rectal tube to get the gas and stool out. It looks like we may have to use a rectal tube for a season when we get home and ween Luke off of it until his colon can do the job without outside assistance. This is not what we were hoping for, but his Docs are saying that the rectal tube would be temporary.
Amy and I are beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel (not the kind of light someone may see at death, but you get the point). We don’t know when we will be coming home, but it feels like we have made it through the hardest part. Amy and I had a wonderful date last night in the cafeteria of the hospital. Good conversation and impeccable food (I had the Tilapia marinated in a sweet white wine sauce with fresh zucchini). I can’t say enough how amazing hospital food is (hmmmm, I smell sarcasm).
With all of the waiting around and down time we have had in the hospital, I introduced Luke to “Lost”. I know, I am a horrible parent. I should’ve been teaching him the Westminster Shorter Catechism or something spiritual. I’ve still got time to do that with him. When I was nine, my parents took me to see “Alien”. My brother and I held each other in the lobby of the theater in the fetal position. Don’t get me wrong, my parents did an awesome job raising my brother and I, so I guess exposing Luke to a little pop culture shouldn’t mess him up too bad. Plus, as I have been saying for the past 5 years, the Gospel is all over “Lost”.
Speaking of pop culture, here is yet another version of “Friday”, shot just this morning in Luke’s hospital room:
Thanks to Libbie Johnson, I bought a copy of Relevant Magazine, with the Borders gift card she gave me. The Civil Wars are on the cover. I’ve never heard of them until now, but I like them.
Keep praying for us. We really do appreciate all of you and your prayers, emails, texts, visits, etc. God is good and we have felt His goodness through all of you.
Being reminded of the Gospel is always helpful when we are here in Winston:
“Christ’s death on the cross was not something that God came up with in response to Satan’s triumph in the garden of Eden or as a last resort when it became evident that men and women couldn’t live up to the Ten Commandments. Redeeming sinners from all nations through Jesus Christ was God’s plan from the beginning.”
–Colin S. Smith The Plan
(Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2011), 7
Just a quick update on Luke. He is not doing well. He has thrown up several times in the past two hours and has severe abdominal pains. The Docs are tinkering with him trying to figure out what is going on. The upside is that Luke’s colon does appear to be working (barely though). One of the Docs came in and showed us an xray that was taken Friday night that shows that there is activity in the colon. Now our issue is the nausea and pain. We are still not sure when we will be coming home.
So, I am asking you to pray.
A few days ago, I said to God, “This sucks. You raised a dude from the dead! All I am asking is a little help with my son’s intestines.”
This Sunday night, we will be showing “Shadowlands” as part of our church’s summer film festival. It’s about C.S. Lewis’ marriage to Joy Gresham and his loss of her to cancer. Here are some quotes from the film that we will be using in our roundtable discussion that have helped me this week. I realize that Luke does not have cancer, but all suffering in any form is used by God to make us more dependent on Him. Here are the quotes:
“Suffering is God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
“Experience is a brutal teacher, but you learn. My God, you learn.”
“Something…. something must drive us out of the nursery and into the world of others, and that something is suffering.”
“I pray because I can’t help myself. I pray because I’m helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It doesn’t change God, it changes me.”
“I’m not sure that God wants us to be happy. I think He wants us to be able to love and be loved.”
“How could Joy be my wife?… I’d have to love her, wouldn’t I? I’d have to care more for her than anyone else in this world. I’d have to be suffering the torments of the damned, the prospect of losing her.”
We are hanging in there. Yesterday was a good day for Luke. Today is not so good of a day. The nausea and the pain comes in waves. We are not sure when we will be coming home. The good news is that something is going on with his colon. He has had three bowel movements since Friday, so that is new. Amy and I are still in that place of not being so sure all is well. When Luke can eat and poop without the nausea and develop some consistency in his bowel movements, then we will feel more at peace. Continue to pray for us. We are not out of the woods yet.
As promised in an earlier post, here is our music video. Unfortunately, I am in the video way more than Luke and the video was shot sideways by my good friend, Patrick Harmon, who is doing his residency here at Baptist Hospital. Patrick and I worked together in youth ministry at Westminster PCA in Rock Hill back in 1997-2001. The girls in the video are his daughters and nieces.
So, the video. Thanks to my neighbors, Liz and Jordan, for turning me on to Rebecca Black’s classic, “Friday”. This song has not only captured my heart, but also my imagination (and has also kept me up nights). The video was shot on location from the rooftop playground on the 12th floor of Brenner Children’s Hospital in Winston-Salem, NC. So, ladies and gentlemen, I give you, “Friday” (remember, Patrick shot it sideways, so you will either have to turn your laptop sideways or crick your head to the right). Enjoy!
Ok, we just irrigated Luke’s cecostomy, which basically means he just received an enema. Now we will see if his colon is working. Could y’all pray for God to “wake up” Luke’s colon, so that things begin moving through it and out. It would be cool for you to pray now and then read the rest of this later.
Last November, I wrote this post and I am copying it here again.
This idea of Luke’s intestines “waking up” make me think of two things: The Gospel and the TV show “Lost”. There was a period of time in America called The Great Awakening (1730-1740′s). From Wikipedia, “Pulling away from ritual and ceremony, the Great Awakening made religion intensely personal to the average person by fostering a deep sense of spiritual guilt and redemption, and by encouraging introspection and a commitment to a new standard of personal morality.” Two dead dudes (they were not dead at the time) that God used during this time were George Whitfield and Jonathan Edwards. What Jesus did through these guys was nothing short of the miraculous. Basically, religious people who thought they were Christians, were struck by the preaching of Whitfield and Edwards, and came to the conclusion that they were not Christians and responded to the gospel of grace with faith and repentance. They repented of their “churchianity”, something that needs to happen here in the American South.
Much like The Great Awakening, Luke’s colon needs a “great awakening”.
I also thought of the last season of “Lost”. If you haven’t seen “Lost” (and you need to, go ahead and put it in your Netflix queque), these clips may not mean much, but when I saw them last May, I was struck with how they parallel with the Gospel. The whole point of the Gospel is that our hearts need to be “awakened” with grace. Without grace, our hearts are dead and cold, so we need Someone from the outside, Christ, to come and awaken our hearts and remember who God is and who we are. Notice in these clips, that someone’s “awakening” happens when someone from the outside touches them. We are unable to spiritually awaken ourselves. That is what these clips are about (note: the pluralistic theology of the writers doesn’t quite fit with historic Christian orthodoxy, but the point of being awakened still stands).
To continue this theme of “awake” here is a little Mumford and Sons:
I am writing tonight from the 8th floor of Brenner’s Children’s Hospital in Winston-Salem. We’ve been down this road before (today was Luke’s 4th surgery in our journey of his colon disease). Everything went as planned today. The first day is always the hardest on Luke. He is very sad. As the week progresses, he will become more himself.
There is not much to report tonight. As Tom Petty says, “The waiting is the hardest part.” That is what we will be doing for the next 5-7 days. Waiting for a bowel movement. Not sure yet what we will do if that doesn’t happen.
I will have more to write about as the week progresses. I will leave you with this one nugget though. In my sermon yesterday at Grace Foothills, I gave an example of not believing the gospel when we are not showing loving-kindness (hesed in the Hebrew) to a waitress or someone in customer service when they are not serving us all that well. Wouldn’t you know it, that as we were checking into the Ronald McDonald House last night, the weekend manager was extremely condescending and rude to me (very atypical of the Ronald McDonald House, by the way). How did I respond? Let’s just say that for a moment, I was not believing the gospel for myself. I was not kind to this woman. What went down in my heart reminded me of this:
I had forgotten God’s pervasive love and grace for me. Worst of all, my kids saw my response. What was it that the Apostle Paul said? “Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7: 24-25).
This Sunday, I will begin a new sermon series at Grace Foothills for the summer. We will be looking at the book of Ruth for the next 8 weeks. Here is the intro to the series that we are using:
“Whether they are thrilled by the love story of Ruth and Boaz or encouraged by a happy ending for Naomi, many people are drawn to the book of Ruth. But though the story is indeed charming, Ruth is included in Scripture for more than our entertainment. Ruth’s message is theological, rooted in God’s oversight of the movement of redemptive history that climaxes in the person and work of Christ.”
Should be a very cool sermon series. Since this is a love story, I wouldn’t be surprised if this clip didn’t find itself in the sermon:
Last Saturday, I was hanging at Harmon Field, which is THE place in Polk County to be on a Saturday. There was lots of activity and one of the highlights of the day was seeing the new band in our community, Beautiful Mess. You may be asking, “Beautiful Mess? Haven’t heard of them.” Do you remember the first time you saw U2 perform on TV? Here they are in 1980:
And now:
It got me thinking about Beautiful Mess’ first performance at Harmon Field last Saturday. Here it is:
What if Beautiful Mess were the next U2? Am I overreaching? Probably. But, hey, a dude can dream.
Their performance made me think of the first time I saw Glee cover the best song in the whole history of music:
I knew after I saw that the the creators of Glee were on to something.
I am already tinkering with my text for my next sermon, “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil (Matthew 6:13).” As always, there is plenty to say about these passages in the Sermon on the Mount. As I was surfing the net tonight, this song jumped out to me as a potential sermon illustration for this passage:
Most people are wired one of two ways: either they are a Pharisee or a Tax Collector. A Pharisee is a person who struggles with being good. Their goodness alienates them from God. They are very concerned with their outward performance and they often feel superior to those who do not measure up to their standards. The Pharisee doesn’t have intimacy with God, rather they are intimate with themselves. They live in the tension of arrogance and despair. They are arrogant because they really think they are better than others. They live in despair because when they fail, their whole identity crumbles. In the four gospels, Jesus consistently is hard on the Pharisee. The Pharisee is trapped in the cycle of sin and they need a Savior.
I am a Pharisee.
Others are wired completely different from a Pharisee. The opposite of a Pharisee is the Tax Collector. A Tax Collector doesn’t really care what others think of them. This brings a form of freedom, but the Tax Collector has traded in one form of slavery for another. The Tax Collector is a slave to being really really bad. They give into their indulgences whether that be in the form of food, lust, power, or money. The Tax Collector understands what Americans call “instant gratification”. Tax Collectors inherently know they are sinful, but they think that their sin disqualifies them from the love of God. They say, “Yes, I know that God forgives me, but I can’t forgive myself.” This is a form of idolatry and unbelief because when we say that, we are putting our own selves above God. In the four gospels, Jesus is winsomely loving to the Tax Collectors. The Tax Collector is trapped in the cycle of sin and they need a Savior.
I am a Tax Collector.
The Gospel is for the Pharisee and for the Tax Collector.
In Romans 7 and 8, Paul (who is a recovering Pharisee) says, “15For I do not understand my own actions. For(A) I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. 16Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with(B) the law, that it is good. 17So now(C) it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. 18For I know that nothing good dwells(D) in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. 19(E) For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. 20Now if I do what I do not want,(F) it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. 21So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. 22For(G) I delight in the law of God,(H) in my inner being, 23but I see in my members(I) another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. 24Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from(J) this body of death? 25Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin. 1There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.[a] 2For the law of(K) the Spirit of life(L) has set you[b] free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.”
That helps me. I need the gospel as much as a fish needs water. More than a fish needs water. In Christ, I have the eternal smile of the Father. The righteous requirement of the Law has been satisfied in the life of Jesus and the righteous wrath of God has been satisfied in the death of Jesus and the resurrection tells me that “the check cleared”. The gospel says that I am “simul justus et peccator”, which means that I am a sinner and I am declared righteous, at the same time. I live in the tension of being both a Pharisee and a Tax Collector and being declared righteous through faith alone, by grace alone, in Christ alone.
God, thank you for loving a messed up and raggedy person like me.
Several weeks ago on American Idol, Casey Abrams, who is a favorite among the judges (and also my personal fav), was eliminated before he made it to the top ten. The procedure for those who receive the least number of votes that week is to sing one last time before the judges, hoping that they will use their “save” to keep the contestant on the show. However, in this round, no one expects the judges to use the save. It’s just too early in the show. But as Casey began to sing the judges immediately said, “Stop! We don’t need to hear you sing. We know who you are and have decided to use the save.” Casey almost, well, he did fall down. You see, the stunned singer, with a dazed look eventually said in utter disbelief, “Whe would you [save] me? I can’t believe it.” That is a great question for every Christian to ask. Why would God save me? The answer is found in Ephesians 2, where Paul says, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved).” He saved us not because of our spiritual lovliness or moral obedience (after all, we were dead in our sins), but because of his mega-love. His perfect, eternal, adopting affection that went to the cross to reclaim the rebellious children so that we might glorify him for the overflow of his undeserved but lavishing agape-love. Why me? It’s not because of me. It is because of God. He loves us, well, because He loves us. The irony in this is that Casey Abrams does deserve to continue to be on American Idol because he is an awesome singer and artist. However, as Clint Eastwood says, “Deserves got nothing to do with it.” We don’t deserve God’s grace, but He gives it to us anyway. If we did deserve it, then it wouldn’t be grace. As Steve Brown would say, “You think about that.” Maybe we, like Casey, will find ourselves falling down… on our knees… in worship.
I liked Casey Abrams the first time he was on the show during the auditions. I used this clip in a sermon to make the point that Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount says, “You thought the Old Testament Law meant this (that you were supposed to try to live a life of moral performance to attain the acceptance and favor of God) and I am saying it means this (that you need a righteousness that supersedes that of the Pharisees, a righteousness that comes through faith in Christ alone) .”
I haven’t been blogging lately. I think I “overdosed” on the blog back in November/December when Luke was in the hospital. It’s healthy not to be a slave to something, you know?
It has been a crazy month and a half. Amy went to Uganda on January 8th for 12 days. And then it snowed and the boys were out of school for 5 days. I was surprised how the Lord really motivated me to be an engaged Dad with Luke and Jack.
I’m gonna be brief today. Just getting my feet wet, that’s all. So here are some things I am stoked about:
Today is our 11th Wedding Anniversary. We decided to get married on Elvis’ birthday, since Amy is from Memphis and all. “Thank you, thank you very much (in an Elvis voice).”
Here is an excerpt from my Christmas Eve Sermon that I will be preaching at Grace Foothills this Friday night:
“One of the many sides of the Gospel (the Gospel is like a diamond with many facets and sides), is that the God who created the universe and everything in it, actually entered into His creation in a Person. The Creator entered His Creation. When I was working with teens, I would always put it this way, “In Jesus, God put skin on and moved into the neighborhood.” God became a man. God became a twenty-something. God became a teenager. God became an elementary school kid. God became a pre-schooler. God became a toddler. God became an infant. God became an embryo. The God that created the universe became a single cell. This is no ordinary God. He is both majestic and humble at the same time.”
And here is some of the Christmas music I am listening to this week:
After 18 days in the hospital, Luke (and Amy) are coming home tomorrow (Saturday). I can’t tell you how grateful we are for everything that has transpired in the past 3 weeks, even the really crummy stuff. We are especially thankful for all of you who have been following our story. Your calls, emails, texts, visits, gifts, thoughts and especially your prayers have meant so much to us. I will be taking a break from the blog for a brief time, but come back and check on us from time to time. In the meantime, I leave you with this:
This afternoon, the docs did a sonogram on Luke to try to determine the source of Luke’s pain that has prevented him from a full recovery of two surgeries from last week. What they found was sludge in his gall bladder that was caused by the antibiotics that he had been receiving for the past 5 days (if you really want to know what gall bladder sludge is click here). They stopped giving him the antibiotics, so hopefully over the next few days, we should see improvement in Luke’s recovery and he should be able to return home sometime this weekend or early next week.
Of course, based on the previous two weeks, anything can happen, so please continue praying for Luke’s recovery and return home.
I am a believer that all things, even the really hard things, work together for good (see Romans 8:28). Who knows what the Lord is up to through all of this. Perhaps, He will use this in Luke’s life as he matures into a young man. I often think about Luke and what he will be like when he’s 25 years old. What will he look like? Will he have a career? I think about the things he says to folks when they ask, “Dude, what’s the story with all of those scars on your stomach?” My hope is that his answer would be something like, “Dude, when I was 8 years old, I had a crazy 2 weeks. You see, my colon wasn’t working properly and my Mom and Dad decided that they would try to help me. By the way, I really love my Mom and Dad. Anyway, yeah, my recovery was a little bumpy from the first surgery and I had to have an emergency surgery to repair a leak in my colon and then I got really sick and I can go on and on. But, here’s the thing, there wasn’t one second that I didn’t feel God’s presence and God’s purpose in all of the crap I went through. Those two weeks sucked, believe me. But God used those two weeks and all of the other times I suffered with my colon, to make me a stronger man. There are these really cool verses in Romans 5 where Paul talks about suffering and when you suffer, it produces character and hope in the gospel. That was my experience and I would not trade it in for anything. These scars are a reminder to me that God loves me and He was in my suffering and in a weird way, I identified with Jesus in His sufferings for me.”
So, that’s where things are as of tonight. I am reminded of a clip from Apollo 13 that capsulizes where we are right now with Luke. We are not out of the woods yet, but may be close.
Currently, we are all trying to figure out what is causing two things in Luke: pain and nausea. The docs are running some tests today to see if they can find the source of Luke’s pain. It is possible that it it his gall bladder. Please pray for the Lord to work through these docs and their instruments to bring a resolution to all of this for Luke.
Amy is hanging in there. Jack and I came back to Tryon on Sunday afternoon. My folks arrived in Winston last night to help Amy.
“The good news of the kingdom is not freedom from hardship, suffering, and loss. It is the news of a Redeemer who has come to rescue me from myself. His rescue produces change that fundamentally alters my response to these inescapable realities. The Redeemer turns rebels into disciples, fools into humble listeners. He makes cripples walk again. In him we can face life and respond with faith, love, and hope. And as he changes us, he allows us to be a part of what he is doing in the lives of others. As you respond to the Redeemer’s work in your life, you can learn to be an instrument in his hands.
The past two weeks with Luke in the hospital are best summarized in the clip below.
We are up against something a little bigger than a shotty colon. It’s good to remember that we humans are more than just flesh and blood. We have a mind and a spirit and if one of those is out of wack, then our bodies are affected as well. It appears that this may be happening to Luke. For the past four days, Luke has not wanted to get out of bed, walk around, go to the playroom, go to the lobby, go to the rooftop playground, or eat. It’s as if his mind and spirit have given up because of what is going on in his body. One of the Docs pulled Amy into the hallway today and said that she needs to be Luke’s cheerleader. She needs to encourage him to get out of bed, no matter how bad it hurts, encourage him to eat even though he may throw it up. He said that for every day Luke spends in bed is another three days of recovery. I can’t tell you how difficult that is. When you are in the hospital with a patient, the temptation is to just sit around and watch TV, to disengage.
Please pray that the Lord would move Luke to get up, walk, play, engage his mind and heart, so that his body will recover.
I apologize for the film/television clips, but my default is both theology and pop culture. It helps me to connect my faith to things that I see in the culture. One of those art forms is “Friday Night Lights”. Amy and I call it the best show that no one is watching. This clip from season four (click here), episode one illustrates how we have all felt these past two weeks (the song in the clip is Sufjan Stevens‘ awesome cover of “Come Thou Fount”):
I will hold these lyrics from this wonderful hymn close to my heart this week as I cling to the only hope I know, Jesus, to get me and Amy and Jack and Luke through this trial.
Come, Thou Fount of every blessing,
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace;
Streams of mercy, never ceasing,
Call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
Sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I’m fixed upon it,
Mount of Thy redeeming love.
Here I raise my Ebenezer;
Here by Thy great help I’ve come;
And I hope, by Thy good pleasure,
Safely to arrive at home.
Jesus sought me when a stranger,
Wandering from the fold of God;
He, to rescue me from danger,
Interposed His precious blood.
O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.
O that day when freed from sinning,
I shall see Thy lovely face;
Clothed then in blood washed linen
How I’ll sing Thy sovereign grace;
Come, my Lord, no longer tarry,
Take my ransomed soul away;
Send thine angels now to carry
Me to realms of endless day.
The past three posts have felt pretty heavy to me. Even in a really hard time, I believe the Gospel frees us up to laugh. So here is some humor that helps me:
We’ve been here at the hospital in Winston for 10 days now. Luke is progressively moving along. Today they transitioned him to a liquid diet and he was able to hold it down. Tomorrow, he may be able to eat solids. Right now, they are saying he can come home on Wednesday.
Living in a hospital for 2 weeks gets pretty exhausting, but we have moved into a routine. Amy and I have taken turns staying with Luke while the other stays at the Ronald McDonald House with Jack (the RMH is awesome, btw). Here is a typical day: around 6:00 am, the docs come in, flick on all the lights, talk really loud, and check to see how Luke is doing. Then they leave. Then we go back to sleep, kind of. Then the nurses come in and out and check on their stuff. Around 7:45, the cartoons come on. Then I get up and take a shower. Then we sit around. Then we get Luke up with all of the wires and tubes attached all over his body and walk him to the playroom. Then back to the room to sit around. Then lunch (we don’t eat in front of Luke b/c that is cruel and unusual punishment). Then we sit around. Well, you get the picture. At the beginning of the week, I was doing lots of reading (Tim Keller’s new book, Generous Justice) , but then after Luke’s second surgery, I crashed and haven’t read since then.
This week has marked something new in my walk with Jesus. Most people who know me would say that I am a very optimistic Christian. I am always telling Amy, “Don’t sweat it, God is in control.” I still believe that, really, I do. But this week, God showed me that sometimes He says, “No,” to my prayers. This shook me in a very profound way. I have been asking, “Jesus, why does Luke and our family have to go through all of this? Can’t You just fix his dad-burn colon, so we can out of this hospital and go home? Why does Luke have to go home with a “poopy bag”? Jesus, do You have any clue what our medical bills are going to be? Don’t You care for us?”
Jesus’ disciples asked similar questions when they were with Him. Have you ever asked God questions like that? If you haven’t, then your relationship with God may be fake and shallow. God takes us to the edge and He says, “Are you going to trust Me?” Jesus has taken me to the edge this week.
I once heard Tim Keller say in a sermon that Jesus understands when we get a “No” from God when we pray to Him. In the Garden of Gesthemane, the night before Jesus’ death, Jesus prayed to God the Father to remove the “cup” from Him. Jesus was asking the Father to take away the cup of wrath that God had stored up towards sin that would be dumped out on Jesus on the Cross. Jesus prayed, “Father, please figure out another way to win your rebellious kids back. There’s got to be another way, but not My will be done, but Yours.” Jesus prayed and got a “No”. Matthew 26 records that Jesus prayed this 3 times and each time He got a “No.” 3 Times! So, Jesus submits to the will of the Father with joy and He drinks every drop of the cup of God’s wrath and He accomplishes salvation and redemption for everyone who believes. That is flippin’ awesome! Amazing grace, how sweet the sound…
I write all of this to make this one point: God the Son understands what it is like to get a “No” to a prayer. I don’t know the will of God. Perhaps, God has allowed all of this to happen to Luke and us this past week (and past 5 years), so that when folks in our little church in Tryon, NC look at us, they can see what faith looks like when things are shitty in life (hope I didn’t offend anyone, but that is literally what our life has been like with illestomies, colostomy bags, etc.).
Last night, I was surfing Youtube and I found this song by a dude I have never heard of. The song resonated with me.
The past two days have been rough. I hit a wall yesterday where I had “spiritual amnesia”. The Christian life is progressive in the sense that I continually need to be reminded of the Gospel. I felt a little like one of my favorite dead preachers, Charles Spurgeon, who battled depression for most of his life. There were times when Spurgeon couldn’t get out of bed and preach to his 20,000 hearers in London and he would ask one of his elders to preach the sermon.
Today is a new day and Luke is doing a lot better than he was yesterday. He is still confined to his bed, but by tomorrow he should be able to get up and move around and begin eating liquids and then hopefully by Saturday he will begin eating solids. Poor guy, he hasn’t eaten real food since Tuesday a week ago. But we are thankful. Thankful for many things: family and friends dropping in for hospital visits, the doctors, nurses, and staff here at Brenner’s, the Ronald McDonald House, the mochas at Border’s, Moe’s, the playroom and rooftop playground here at Brenner’s, the many cards and gifts from our church family at Grace Foothills (woo woo), and thankful for grace during this difficult time. I was reminded of this reality when I read a quote from Paul David Tripp:
“God’s grace means that I can rest assured that I’ll have everything I need to be what he wants me to be and to do what he wants me to do in the situation in which he’s placed me.
I’m no longer restricted to the limits of my own strength and wisdom. By his grace, I’ve a new identity and a new potential. I’m a child of God; the risen Christ now lives inside of me. I need no longer fear people or circumstances; I don’t have to feel weak in the face of suffering or temptation, because I no longer rest in the resources of my own ability. I’m in Christ and he’s in me.
This new identity gives me new potential as I face the realities of life in this bent and broken world. God’s grace gives me reason to ‘take heart.’”
The morning of his surgery last week, we were all in his hospital room watching the Today Show. They showed a video that morning that Luke has been asking to re-watch several times this week on Youtube. The Lord has used this video in our lives this week. It balances out where I was yesterday as I was comparing myself to George Bailey.
Just a quick update. Luke just got out of surgery (7:15) and he now has an illestomy, something he has had previously. An illestomy is a small portion of his small intestine that is poking out of his tummy and this is where his stool will come out of into a colostomy bag. It’s not the greatest of scenarios, but the illestomy became our “new normal” for over two years, so I think we will manage.
Thanks for you prayers and putting up with my doubts. As a father of another suffering child from Mark 9 said to Jesus, “I believe; help my unbelief.” (Mark 9:24). I also need that re-orientation back to the simplicity of the Gospel.
Luke just went into surgery (at 3:45). He developed an infection from the previous surgery last week. Luke was recovering quite well until last night. The NG tube was taken out yesterday and he began drinking some water. He even passed gas and had a bowel movement in his sleep. By this morning, he had sharp pains in his tummy and developed a fever of 102. He had an x-ray done around 2:00 this afternoon and the technician was alarmed at what she saw. He has air and bacteria that is leaking out of his colon, probably where the incision was made in the colon resection. Now he is back in the OR and they are looking for the leak. When he wakes up, Luke will most likely have an illestomy, bypassing the colon all together. Luke had an illestomy for 2 years, so we are accustomed to that. We can come back later this coming Spring or Summer and have the illestomy reversed if we so choose. At this point, I have no idea what’s going on.
Which brings me to God. I understand that God is sovereign, which means that He is in control of everything. I do not believe that God is distant or that God is disengaged from me, my family, or the world. I believe in a God who “puts skin on and moves into the neighborhood”. Theologians call this the Incarnation (“in the flesh” from the Latin), something that we will celebrate next month at Christmas. I believe all of that, but at this moment, I am struggling to believe all of that. I feel like George Bailey in “It’s a Wonderful Life”, when he prayed to God for some help and he got a punch in the nose.
Scott Stewart, redeemed by Jesus, husband of one, father of two, brother of many, neighbor of all. I’m also a pastor/church planter of Grace Foothills that meets in Tryon, NC.
About Grace Foothills
Grace Foothills is a new congregation of Grace Community Church. We meet every Sunday in the Tryon Theater, located downtown Tryon, NC. Cafe opens at 10:00, worship begins at 10:30. Childcare and nursery provided during the service.
