Pastors' Blog

In the latest issue of TIME magazine, the leader of the former Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, writes an op-ed piece that begins: “The world today is overwhelmed with problems. Policy makers seem to be confused and at a loss. . . . It all looks as if the world is preparing for war” (TIME February 13, 2017, p 22).

In very similar language this observation was made over a century ago: “The present is a time of overwhelming interest to all living. Rulers and statesmen, men who occupy positions of trust and authority, thinking men and women of all classes, have their attention fixed upon the events taking place about us. . . . [T]he world is on the verge of a stupendous crisis.” (Education 179-180).

Could Ellen White and Mikhail Gorbachev both be right?

I’ve been reading Jacques Doukhan’s new commentary on Genesis this new year and am now immersed in the story of Noah. Commenting on Genesis 6:11—“The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence” (NKJV)—Doukhan writes: “The word shakhat ‘corrupt’ refers to destruction and annihilation (Dan 9:26). This verb often occurs in the context of war (2 Sam 11:1; 1 Chron 20:1) and killing (Judg 20:21, 25, 35, 42; 1 Sam 26:9). . . . What makes the earth corrupt is the violence that predominates there. . . . . suggest[ing] not only the intensity of corruption, but also its totality; all aspects of corruption are implied” (Genesis 141).

Didn’t Jesus Himself predict, “As the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be” (Matthew 24:37)?

Is the world “preparing for war?” Are we on “the verge of a stupendous crisis?” Are we facing unprecedented corruption and violence globally? Is Jesus soon to return to this earth?

What if the answer were Yes? Would it make a difference in the way we live today? Racially? Last June the Pew Research Center surveyed the nation and opened its report with these words:

Almost eight years after Barack Obama’s election as the nation’s first black president—an event that engendered a sense of optimism among many Americans about the future of race relations—a series of flashpoints around the U.S. has exposed deep racial divides and reignited a national conversation about race. A new Pew Research Center survey finds profound differences between black and white adults in their views on racial discrimination, barriers to black progress and the prospects for change. Blacks, far more than whites, say black people are treated unfairly across different realms of life, from dealing with the police to applying for a loan or mortgage. And, for many blacks, racial equality remains an elusive goal. (www.pewsocialtrends.org/files/2016/06/ST_2016.06.27_Race-Inequality-Final.pdf)

And how is it in the church, the church of the Jesus who prayed: “. . . that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me” (John 17:21)?

“STORM: Finding Jesus in the Gathering Dark”—Pioneer’s new pulpit series segues with Black History Sabbath today, because the mounting evidence is inescapable. If we are saved by “the faith of Jesus,” then we will live by “the love of Jesus.” Why? Because in the end it will be the only way a secular, godless culture will recognize the divine—in a faith community where Blacks and Whites and Yellows and Browns are bound together by the radical, bold, self-sacrificing “love of Jesus” for one another. For as C. S. Lewis once observed about this faith community—“What you say about the VII Day Adventists interests me extremely. If they have so much charity there must be something very right about them” (Letters to an American Lady 109).

Really?

I listened to a fascinating report by Charles Osgood on his “The Osgood File” this week. Researchers at Lund University (Sweden) have been studying the flight patterns of the common swift, that black ubiquitous bird (about the size of a barn swallow) found across Europe and the United Kingdom. Scientists have long expected that swifts spent much time in flight, but not this much!

Mounting tiny electronic sensors on 19 swifts, biologists began tracking their flight time. And when the numbers were compiled over a period of two years, they discovered that the common swift can spend up to ten months in the air. Without stopping! Fly an airline from Chicago to Sydney, and you’re looking at over 17 hours in the air (without stopping). But these small creatures are now tracked spending two months shy of a year in constant flight. (Researchers did note a possible half a percent of those ten months on the ground in the event of storms, et al.)

Ten months of non-stop flying? When in the world (or above the world) do they sleep? The embedded sensors on the swifts indicate that at both dusk and dawn these small birds ascend to 10,000 feet and stop their wing flapping, as they begin a long slow glide earthward. Those two glides (an hour in length each) apparently are the “power naps” that provide the swifts with enough rest each day to keep flying. For ten months.

“Lead researcher Anders Hendenstrom, professor of biology at Lund University, said: ‘It’s mind-boggling that they can stay airborne for 10 months without needing to come down. Most of the time there is a trade-off between energy use and life: live hard and die young. But these birds live quite long, up to 20 years, so somehow they have beaten this rule’” (www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/10/27/common-swift-sets-new-record-by-staying-airborne-for-10-months-a/).

The lesson for us? If you’re not sleeping through these first days of the New Year, then you well know that our world (this civilization) is navigating some of the most turbulent times in memory. The mini-storms across the planet are fast merging into a global storm of eventually epic proportions. “We are on the verge of a stupendous crisis” (Education 179). No wonder Jesus with prescient foresight warned those living near the end:

“Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you suddenly like a trap. For it will come upon all those who live on the face of the whole earth. Be always on the watch, and pray that you may be able to escape all that is about to happen, and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man” (Luke 21:34-36).

Again and again He admonishes His followers to “watch and pray”—and in this case “be always on the watch, and pray.” Is the Master suggesting that like the common swift we “fly” without sleep? Hardly. But He is clear enough that living in a predicted time of epic storms will necessitate a commitment to extended praying. Living in this nation and world, we have long passed the “business as usual” demarcation. Welcome to the “watch and pray” storm zone.

If you would like to join with others in collectively watching and praying, Pioneer now offers two “watch and pray” zones each week: Wednesdays at 7:00 AM (Youth Chapel) and 7:00 PM (Sanctuary). Pastors will be on hand to guide and join this “watch and pray” experience. I hope you will either begin or end your Wednesdays praying with us. But not just on Wednesdays, rather like the swift let’s keep our hearts ascending to our God and Savior all week long, interceding for those we love, for those we know—for this storm-bound church and world.

Let us swiftly “watch and pray.”

On Monday morning my beloved mother (Barbara Watts Nelson Rienderhoff) peacefully fell asleep in Jesus while resting at her home in Banning CA. The attending nurse remarked that it was as peaceful a way to die as you could wish. She was 88. I’m so grateful I got to spend three days with her on her birthday just before Thanksgiving. Her condition deteriorated rather rapidly in December. My sister Kari flew down from Sacramento twice the week before Christmas to be with her. And while we with our brother Greg and her husband Bert grieve Mother’s death, there is relief in knowing her suffering is over. For her it will be a split second between her last moment of cognition and gazing up into the spectacular panorama of Jesus in the sky, calling His friends to rise. Oh happy day of reunion!

You would’ve loved her, too, had you known her. What was she like, this woman who survived my childhood? Let me share seven of life’s great lessons I learned from my mother, and you’ll get the picture:

1. Remember three rules—read, read, read. Mom was a voracious reader, and she stimulated our appetite for good books from the beginning. In a land where children’s books in English were a rarity (she and Dad were missionaries in Japan where all three of us kids were born), she managed to find the childhood classics, and we read all the time. Junior Guides came by ship from America—we devoured and preserved every issue, eventually binding them into books for rereading. I learned to love reading because of my mother.

2. Learn to love music—it is a beautiful thing. (It’s the practicing that’ll kill you!) And oh boy, did Mom make us practice. Relentless, sometimes merciless—she was our first piano teacher, along with trombone (me), trumpet (Greg), and oboe (Kari). Born with a beautiful contralto voice, she sang at the end of Dad’s sermons all across Japan. She loved music, and music loved her.

3. Never forget God has a purpose for your life. By the age of ten I had nearly died twice (stories for another time). I can’t count how many times my mother drew me aside to remind me, “God has spared your life for a reason—He has something special for you to do.” I grew up with that compound sentence. And because of her conviction and her faith, I ended up one day actually believing her. If you’re a young mother, memorize that sentence and whisper it to your child—because it will be always be true—and one day your child may very well turn out to be true to it.

4. A domesticated mother is a wonderful gift. My mother was an award-winning cook, baker (Sabbath morning sticky cinnamon rolls [to die for]), nurse, seamstress, PE coach, handywoman, boss, and queen of the castle. In a day where perhaps such giftedness is becoming rarer, God bless the mothers who embrace the divine mission of providing for, protecting and preserving a brood of children for society and the Kingdom.

5. A liberated mother is a wonderful inspiration. While it’s true Mom was more exceptionally domesticated than the TV Mom’s we watched in black and white, she embraced her God-given uniqueness as woman and colored outside the box. Somehow she became acquainted with the producers at a local television station in Toyama (a large city in which an American woman was a standout). And before long she was hosting a weekly television program fluently in Japanese (we kids with Dad even got to be her guests once!). Using her unique, God-inspired gifts, coloring outside the box, ministering as a woman—a liberated woman is an inspiration.

6. Be a learner all your life. My mother was Exhibit A that this must be God’s intention for us all. Whisked away by Dad before she could finish nurse’s training—off to Japan and mission life—good-bye schooling—but not Mom. On our second furlough, she enrolled in a school of business to study office administration. Then with her kids finishing college, she found a school that offered her life experience credit and eventually graduated with her Bachelor’s. Before long she was enrolled in Loma Linda University’s off-campus Master of Public Health degree, graduating at the same time Kari graduated from college. Then with her MPH Mother established a community health clinic in Portland OR, for which she was feted at a downtown hotel with a Community Services award. Always learning and growing, you go, Mom!

7. Be friends with God. I not only learned about prayer from kneeling beside my mother mornings and evenings—I also learned from those early mornings when I’d peek around a corner to find my mother alone, quietly reading and marking her Bible and  praying. When I would look inside her Bible at the markings and writing in the margins, I instinctively knew—she never had to tell me—how important this personal daily commitment truly is. For her, religion was a friendship and prayer a conversation. How many times when I was in college was she pouring her heart out in intercessory pleadings for me, as I later learned, at the very time the battle for my own heart was raging. She knew Jesus—and He knew her—and therein was the secret to her loving heart and fruitful life.

Ellen White describes the reunion one day in heaven: “Many will raise their crowns in sight of the assembled universe, and pointing to their mother say, ‘She made me all I am through the grace of God. Her instruction, her prayers, have been blessed to my eternal salvation’” (Reflecting Christ 195). To which I bow my head this day and whisper, “Amen.”

Her nose is hardly the stuff of Christmas, to be sure. But there may be a Noel connection yet. My last blog noted that the French mathematician philosopher, Blaise Pascal, a devout Christian (1623-1662), wrote in his Pensees that had Cleopatra’s nose “been shorter the whole face of the earth would have been different” (No 413). I.e., such a small but attractive detail (her nose) left Mark Anthony’s heart smitten, plunging him into a war for her, forever changing the Roman Empire which changed the world we live in today. Etc. Seemingly small details can have enormous consequences.

In this season of gift giving and receiving, you may remember the promise of Jesus: “‘If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!’” (Matthew 7:11)

Jim Moon, a pastor friend of mine, sent me a quotation the other day—came across it during his time of worship and prayer. He’s been listening to our #RxF4Now series and in connection with the teaching “2nd Hand Faith” he texted the quotation. Throughout the fall season at Pioneer we’ve been focusing on God’s omnipotent word—so omnipotent that when He speaks it, that word immediately creates the reality it describes. Hence, “Let there be light” in half a nanosecond resulted in—no surprise—light! “For He commanded and it stood fast; He spoke and it was” (Psalm 33:6). The astounding omnipotence of the word(s) of God is chronicled throughout Scripture (see also Isaiah 55:11; John 6:63; 2 Timothy 3:16, et al.). When God breathes a word, that very word immediately creates the reality it describes.

But how does it work? Paul declares (2 Corinthians 1:20) that all of God’s promises are a mighty “Yes!” in Christ, because Jesus is both the eternal Creator and the very Word of God (John 1:1-3). In Him every promise (or word) God has ever spoken is powerfully ratified with a divine exclamation “Yes!” All we mortals need do is declare “Amen” to Jesus—“. . . and so through him [Christ] the ‘Amen’ is spoken by us to the glory of God” (2 Corinthians 1:20). When you and I declare “Amen” to one of His promises, we are simply adding our “Yes!” to God’s “Yes!” and opening ourselves to receiving that promise, that gift.

Now the quotation Jim sent me:

For the pardon of sin, for the Holy Spirit, for a Christlike temper, for wisdom and strength to do His work, for any gift He has promised, we may ask; then we are to believe that we receive, and return thanks to God that we have received. We need look for no outward evidence of the blessing. The gift is in the promise, and we may go about our work assured that what God has promised He is able to perform, and that the gift, which we already possess, will be realized when we need it most. (Education 258 emphasis supplied)

Ponder those italicized phrases: “any gift He has promised,” “the gift is in the promise,” and “which we already possess.” Take any promise God has made in Scripture—put your finger on it and with childlike faith declare “Amen!” for that promise—believe you have in that moment received that gift—thank God for the gift—and with no further “outward evidence” resume your everyday living—with the assurance that (here’s the astounding part of the quotation)  the gift you “already possess” will be “realized” (made evident, made plain, manifested) when you “need it most.” Amen!

“Yes, but I prayed and believed that God would heal me (heal my loved one), and He has not done so.” First of all, God is not through answering your prayer (no matter the circumstances). And secondly, the same God who answered Jesus’ anguished pleading in Gethsemane—“Take it away from Me, but not what I want, but what You want” (see Mark 14:36)—will just as surely answer your prayer, too—in just the way He answered Jesus’ prayer—at the precise time and through the very circumstances that both maximize His glory and save your life (and the lives of countless others through your radical faith testimony).

Read it again: “We may go about our work assured that what God has promised He is able to perform, and that the gift, which we already possess, will be realized when we need it most.”

Such a small word—but what enormous and eternal consequences for your whispered faith in God’s bountiful promises this very Christmas—“Amen!”