“Let the rivers clap their hands, let the mountains shout together for joy before the LORD, for He is coming to judge the earth.  He will judge the world righteously and the peoples fairly.” Psalm 98:8-9

What strikes me about this passage is this: God’s coming judgment, which often times causes us to fear and recoil, should actually bring joy and hope.  Here, nature is personified.  It claps and shouts!  Like Jesus, Who said that the rocks and trees would cry out if we failed to worship, the trees and mountains (creation) erupt in worship at the very THOUGHT that God is coming…to make all things right and good and restored….and if nature yearns for Him, how much more should WE, His blood-bought children, yearn for Him?

If the thought of God’s judgment brings great fear to your heart, perhaps it’s because of one of the following reasons:

1.  You have never repented of your sin and the sin within you must either be pardoned or punished.  So you fear God’s judgment upon you and your sin, and rightly so.  The answer is to repent and believe in Christ for the pardon of your sin.

2.  You have not yet understood the mercy of God fully, realizing that if you are His child, Jesus took your punishment on the cross.

3.  Your image of God is one of anger, rage, and evil instead of love, grace, and justice.

4.  You are secretly afraid that in His judgment of all things, Christ may somehow get it wrong, make a mistake, or miss something, and you may end up being punished when you didn’t deserve it.

Yet God’s judgments are perfect because He is altogether perfect.  He will not mess it up.  He will get it right on that final day and we can trust him, as the verses say, to judge righteously and fairly.   Do you really think God has missed something along the way?

Today, let’s be ready to erupt in worship…quietly, internally, loudly, publicly, in our car, at our desk, at the supper table…at the very thought of Christ returning to set everything straight and redeem us…how could we hold in our praise at such a glorious thought?

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Allow me to preach to myself for a few moments.  You are invited to listen if you like.

Our culture is absolutely sick with an addiction to busy-ness and I am the first one that needs to sign up for rehab.  Admittedly, I tend to work too much, take on too many tasks, and sometimes have to pry myself away from sermon notes, books, or a computer screen so that I can exercise, relax, or enjoy a meal with a friend.  I constantly strive to find harmony within my own soul: I have a creative and driven personality that likes to get things done, yet I need still and quiet time for reflection and spiritual rejuvenation.

So every morning, sometimes before 4 AM (I was awake at 2:30 today) I make a list of the projects I would like to accomplish before I retire to bed that evening.  And as the day progresses, I feel good if I can scratch items off that list.  If I get stuck on one or bogged down, I find myself feeling anxious; not because it’s a really essential task, but because my progress has been impeded.  If it looks like the list may not get completed by bed time, I have real issue on my hands.  My mind begins to race and I lay in bed constructing the list for the next day.  Some of this is my personality and some of this is sin.

Here is where I need to preach to myself.  My identity is NOT wrapped up in what I do.  My accomplishments are NOT equal to my worth as a person.  I am NOT valuable as a minister because God knows I can get the job done like a corporate hatchet man.  And it is just plain SINFUL for me to get worked up and tense because I only marked 8 things off my 11-item to-do list for the day.

Do not succumb to the tyranny of our day.  Fight it tooth and nail!  Wage war on the crippling mindset that says “you matter because you  know how to get things done.”  Don’t replace genuine relationships with people with projects.  Projects are cold, impersonal, and ultimately forgettable.  Who among us can remember an all-consuming to-do list from April of 2003?

Yet the people that we love are flesh and blood, emotions and spirit, and they need us as much as we need them.  We risk our very souls when we NEVER connect with our brothers and sisters, sacrificing genuine friendships on the altar of efficiency and industry.

So make your list.  Get to work on it.  Do it with diligence and excellence.  But put people first.  Jesus did.  They are more important than projects.

I’m not sure who coined this phrase, though it sounds like something Spurgeon would have said.  I do know that there is great truth and a little irony in it.

Simply put, pastors and preachers and ministers work all week long to serve and shepherd their flock, and the whole week they prepare for and anticipate Sunday.  As a pastor and minister, I can relate to this feeling; reading and praying and studying for the message, trying to hear from God, ready to deliver a fresh word all the while serving your wife and family and trying to maintain spiritual and physical health and hoping that when you lay your head on the pillow, you can go to sleep.  Or in my case, praying that once you fall asleep, you will stay asleep.

The weekend can come on like a hurricane.  The energy it requires to deal with and pastor people, put out fires, patiently pray and lead the hurting and confused in your church…is simply enormous.  And the mental and spiritual focus demanded of us to stand on that stage and deliver the word God gave us is difficult to say the least.  Adrenaline levels soar.  Then they deplete.  It’s like the ocean’s tide, coming in and going out.  Preachers are often left feeling spent, fatigued, and hungover on Mondays.

So the old saying goes…”Every preacher quits on Monday.”  Oversimplification?  Perhaps.  But I know I have experienced this countless times.  I will continue to, and you will too, at times.  Just remember that if you are spent and worn out and depleted on Monday, you are not thinking straight, and if you do quit on Monday, it’s ok.  God understands.  He knows that some rest, prayer, worship, and another good night’s sleep will get you back to normal by Tuesday.  Ok, maybe Wednesday.

Your job will still be there when you decide you really didn’t want to quit after all.

I never saw The Stepford Wives. First, I didn’t want to.  Second, I didn’t need to because a quick movie review in the local paper told me everything I needed to know.  The plot was basic; wives are created to be perfect, just the way men want them to be, never having an opinion or voicing disagreement, always cooking and cleaning and being pretty much perfect in they eyes of men.

It is easy for me to make Jesus into a sort of Stepford God for myself.  It is my tendency as a fallen, sinful human to view Jesus in light of my selfishness, and my selfish nature always wants to create the easiest, most convenient scenario.  Therefore, I must fight the battle daily to not be overcome by worldliness and greed, materialism and shallownes, and in turn make Jesus my Stepford God who does what I want Him to when I snap my fingers or throw up a quick prayer with His name tagged on the end of it.

One of the most dangerous things about making God in our own image (imagining God in terms of a god we would prefer, one that we would like, or what we would be like if we were god) is that we are motivated, often times, by sin and sin alone.  This is what makes Jesus so unique.  He is not a Stepford God because HE CONTRADICTS US.  He tells us that we are NOT the big deal.

Jesus has the audacity to claim to be the greatest King of all the Kings in history and the mightiest Lord among the laundry list of rulers that spans time.  He doesn’t fit my mold.  He tells me when I am wrong, when I need to repent, and when I need to change my attitudes and actions to line up with His example and His expectations.

In other words, we don’t boss Jesus around.  We, instead, yield our ways to His commands.  When He contradicts us through His word or the Holy Spirit, He does it out of love for us in complete authority, with our best interest at heart.  Our best response is humble obedience.

I have a confession.  I hate witnessing.  I know I should love it.  After all, I am an ordained minister and an evangelist.  But I hate feeling like I need to share the gospel with every single human I lay my eyes on, or I will be held accountable if they die without Christ.  This comes from a legalistic understanding of God’s grace as well as an arrogant, secret need to save the world, of which I am not capable.

But I have another confession.  I have figured something out, and it came to me when reading 1 John 1:1-4.  Witnessing is not something I do.  It is who I am.

John says in that passage that he had heard the gospel, that he had seen Jesus with his own eyes, and that he had handled Jesus with his own hands.  It was so powerful an encounter that John had to talk about it.  He was compelled to naturally proclaim what a difference meeting and knowing Jesus had made in his life.

There are things I love, that have changed my life, and I talk about them.  It is not a job or a task, it comes naturally to talk about things that are important to me:

1.  My lovely, beautiful, Godly wife

2.  My cute, awesome, lovable boys

3.  The amazing ministry I serve at Crossroads

4.  My best friends; Matt, Perry, Steven, Burgess, Berger, Seth, Christopher, Jonathan

5.  Bear hunting

6.  The Dallas Cowboys and the Clemson Tigers

When we love something or have had our lives changed by it, we will become evangelists for whatever that thing may be.  No one has to prod us, manipulate us, or trick us into talking about what we have seen.  I have seen Jesus change my life and thousands more.  I cannot help it now; I have to proclaim it.