Tidbits from the life of a Pastoral Care Pastor

Thursday September 16, 2010
Awoken this morning by the voice of my alarm clock saying “daddy I have to go out please get up”….at first I thought I was dreaming but no I finally came into reality and it was my little Silky Terrier, as usual waking me up so she could go outside to take care of some business. Since my last entry this same scenario has played out pretty much the same each day. She is my faithful alarm clock.
This past Sunday my wife and I got a phone call that no one wants to get…our son had a heart attack. They were flying him from the local hospital at his home to Lynchburg for an emergency operation. We alerted some friends who we knew would be praying and left immediately. Now the end of the story…God healed him on the medical flight. When he arrived in Lynchburg they did a small procedure where they could look inside at the heart…the doctor’s words were…sorry don’t see any evidence of a heart attack and your heart is doing fine. They kept him overnight and sent him home…our God is wonderful and merciful. We decided to come back home instead of staying…after all nothing was wrong. On the way home Pastor Kent called and when he heard the news rejoiced with us that God did a wonderful thing. Thank you Father for you healing touch!
I am reading a book recommend by a close friend and wanted to share a small portion that touched me and reminded me of what Jesus has done for us.
From the book Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream by David Platt. Published by Multnomah.
Our understanding of who God is and who we are drastically affects our understanding of who Christ is and why we need him. For example, if God is only a loving father who wants to help his people, then we will see Christ as a mere example of that love. We will view the cross as just a demonstration of God's love in which he allowed Roman soldiers to crucify his son so that sinful man would know how much he loves us.
But this picture of Christ and the cross is woefully inadequate, missing the entire point of the gospel. We are not saved from our sins because Jesus was falsely tried by Jewish and Roman officials and sentence by Pilate to die. Neither are we saved because Roman persecutors thrust nails into the hands and feet of Christ and hung him on the cross.
Do we really think that the false judgment of men heaped upon Christ to pay for the debt for all of humankind's sin? Do we really think that a crown of thorns and whips and nails and a wooden cross and all the other facets of the crucifixion that we glamorize are powerful enough to save us?
Picture Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane. As he kneels before his father, drops of sweat and blood fall together from his head. Why is he in such agony and pain? The answer is not because he is afraid of crucifixion. He is not trembling because of what the Roman soldiers are about to do to him.
Since that day countless men and women in the history of Christianity have died for their faith. Some of them were not just on crosses; they were burned there. Many of them went to their crosses singing.
One Christian in India, while being skinned alive, look at his persecutors and said, "I thank you for this. Tear off my old garment, for I will soon put on Christ's garment of righteousness."
As he prepared to head to his execution, Christopher Love wrote a note to his wife, saying, "today they will sever me from my physical head, but they cannot sever me from my spiritual head, Christ." As he walked to his death, his wife applauded while he sang of glory.
Did these men and women in Christian history have more courage than Christ himself? Why was he trembling in that garden, weeping and full of anguish? We can rest assured that he was not a coward about to face Roman soldiers. Instead he was a Savior about to endure divine wrath.
Listen to his words: "My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me." The "cup" is not a reference to a wooden cross; it is a reference to divine judgment. It is the cup of God's wrath.
This is what Jesus is recoiling from in the garden. All God's holy wrath and hatred toward sin and sinners, stored up since the beginning of the world, is about to be poured out on him, and he is sweating blood at the thought of it.
What happened at the cross was not primarily about nails being thrust into Jesus hands and feet, but about the wrath due your sin and my sin being thrust upon his soul. In that holy moment, all the righteous wrath and justice of God due us came rushing down like a torrent on Christ himself. Some say, "God looked down and could not bear to see the suffering that the soldiers were inflicting on Jesus, so he turned away." But this is not true. God turned away because he could not bear to see your sin and my sin on his Son.
One preacher described it as if you and I were standing a short hundred yards away from a dam of water 10,000 miles high and 10,000 miles wide. All of a sudden that dam was breached, and a torrential flood of water came crashing toward us. Right before it reached our feet, the ground in front of us opened up and swallowed it all. At the cross, Christ drank the full cup of the wrath of God, and when he had downed the last drop, he turned the cup over and cried out, "It is finished."
This is the gospel. The just and loving Creator of the universe has looked upon hopelessly sinful people and sent his son, God in the flesh, to bear his wrath against sin on the cross and to show his power over sin in the resurrection so that all who trust in him will be reconciled to God forever.

Books Currently Reading: Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream by David Platt

Current Bible Readings / Studies: Currently studying more about the Fall Feasts’ of Israel.

Devotions: Still currently reading through the bible with a program that chronologically lays out the scriptures in the sequence they occurred or more likely to have occurred.