Month: April 2014

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Why Camp Ministry?

This Summer will be my 15th year involved in leadership in Camp Ministry.  I believe in Camp Ministry.  Last summer I spoke at a Middle School Camp at Camp Gilead and then 2 weeks later led our High Schoolers on a 3,000 mile journey to attend Camp Regen.  Our Middle School Ministry is preparing for its’ second backpacking trip this summer.  And I’m getting ready to do it all again.

I guess you could say Camp Ministry is in my blood.  My grandpa, who used to be a pastor in Bellingham, was innovative in Camp Ministry in the 1960s.  He helped Camp Gilead continue as a Christian camp, and he led backpacking trips with youth from his church and the community when churches were not used to this type of ministry.  There are reasons that I love Camp Ministry and pour out my time and energy for it that tie into my biblical philosophy of ministry.  These reasons are deeper than tradition but tie into the same biblical reasons that my grandpa believed in Camp Ministry 50 years ago!

God Goes To Camp  Any time a group of people–any age–stop the busyness and extra noise of their daily lives and spend concentrated time in God’s creation, seeking Him through His Word and worship, God meets them.  “You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.” (Jeremiah 29:13)

Camp Ministry is a Gospel Ministry  I had the joy and privilege of preaching the Gospel & teaching God’s Word in chapel last summer at Camp Gilead. Almost always, at any camp, there are people who have never heard the Good News of Jesus. What an opportunity! Last summer when I spoke at Camp Gilead 5 Middle Schoolers professed Christ as their Savior for the first time.  The Middle School Coordinator I now work with is married to the director of a Christian Women’s Shelter who was saved at Camp Gilead as a Middle Schooler.  Need I say more about why I love Camp Ministry?

Christian Children & Teenagers Experience the Larger Body of Christ at Camp  Teenagers need to know that Jesus is bigger than their church, and even their local community. Time spent in fellowship with believers from other areas can strengthen their faith and challenge them in their walk with the Lord. I have friends today that still encourage me in Christ, who I only know because I went to camp in high school.

Camp is Purposeful Fun  Camp Ministry embodies what I believe a Youth Ministry should be:  Bible-centered, Gospel-centered & Christ-centered while having a blast!  Bringing youth to Jesus through the Bible and time spent in creation meets their need for salvation and worship of the living God, and fellowship through outdoor activities meets their social needs while helping them to experience true fellowship in the body of Christ.

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Do You Tremble at God’s Word?

open bibleIsaiah 66 holds an incredible promise and posture that we should have toward God’s Word.  The LORD God who made the Heavens and earth declares:

Thus says the LORD: Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool … All these things my hand has made; and so all these things came to be, declares the LORD.  But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.  (Isaiah 66:1a, 2)

Jeremiah Burroughs, a Puritan who preached a series of sermons around this verse in 1644, helps us today:

Who are more despised among men than those who are poor and contrite spirits, whose hearts shake and tremble at God’s Word? … All the beautiful objects in the world are not so lovely in the eye of God as a heart that trembles at the Word.  The Lord accounts nothing in all the world worthy of looking at in comparison to this object.  But at this the Lord looks with abundance of delight…

…Certainly, if you tremble at God’s Word, you shall be comforted.  Though perhaps you do not yet find comfort, yet if the Word of God can make your heart to tremble, it will comfort you.  Wait for it…

…Whenever you come to hear, do not hear it as the word of men, but as the Word of God.  Though it seems to be harsh to you, oh, it comes to your good.  And there is cause why you should do so. It is the Word from whence you had your life.  That’s the immortal seed of the Word by which you are begotten.  If your souls are begotten to God, it was by the Word…

One of the great comforts to our soul that we know Christ as our Savior and have peace with God is if our hearts tremble at God’s Word.  Only the Lord knows if your heart truly trembles at His Word.  If that is true, He looks to you!  If that is not true, beg Him to make it so!  For He loves to answer the prayer that exclaims, “For you have exalted above all things your name and your word”! (Psalm 138:2)

Source:  Burroughs, Jeremiah.  Gospel Fear: A Heart that Trembles at the Word of God.  Orlando: Soli Deo Gloria Publications, 1991.

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“Who Will Roll Away the Stone for Us?”

The Empty TombHindsight is always 20/20.  Over 2,000 years ago the pressing question for a group of Jesus-worshiping ladies Sunday morning was, “Who will roll away the stone for us?” (Mark 16:3)  It was a great question.  They wanted to anoint Jesus with spices to show honor and respect to Him but they didn’t know how they were going to get to Him.

If you have ever seen a rolling stone tomb from the first century (picture to the left), you can immediately feel their anxiety.  Joseph of Arimathea had rolled the “great stone” to the entrance of the tomb (Matt. 27:60), and they had watched him do it (Matt. 27:61).  The flat stone blocking the entrance would have been on a sort of rough “track” so it could be rolled back and forth as needed, as most of these expensive tombs would have entire families buried there.  But it was a large stone–probably even with a mechanism to make it harder to open than it was to close, as was common–and these women, going alone early in the morning, were not sure they could budge it.

However, there was an even more daunting problem that they may have been unaware of.  On the Sabbath, the day after Jesus had died and was buried, chief priests and Pharisees had received permission from Pilate to use Roman soldiers to not only guard the tomb, but also to seal it (Matt. 27:66).

The religious leaders were concerned with somebody stealing the body and lying that Jesus had risen.  Those leaders were preoccupied with somebody going into the tomb, when they should have been preoccupied with Somebody coming out.

Meanwhile, for the women the question remained as they walked there together that morning: “Who will roll away the stone for us?”  But then it happened.  There was a great earthquake.  An angel of the Lord descended from heaven and rolled back the stone for them–and us–to see that Jesus had indeed risen from the dead!  This rolling away of the stone was so powerful and dramatic, and the appearance of the angel was so radiant, that the soldiers commissioned with guarding the tomb fainted (Matt. 28:3-4).

Large stones are heavy.  Guarded, sealed tombs are impenetrable.  But they can’t contain the risen Christ!

If you will allow me to help you apply this without being overly metaphorical, what is the stone in your heart right now?  What is it that is getting in the way of your saving belief in the risen Christ?  Assuming that you know Him as your Savior and Lord, what is it that is currently getting in the way of you living like your King truly is the risen and reigning Jesus?  Ask the Holy Spirit right now to help you see past the large stone and into the empty tomb.  For Christ is risen, He is risen indeed!

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Our King is Humble Yet All-Powerful

One of the things that I love about Jesus are the truthful paradoxes that I see in Him as I read the Gospels.  He is full of grace, yet truth.  He is fully God, yet fully man.  He is gentle, yet bold.  He is the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, yet He is the Lamb of God.

tissot-the-guards-falling-backwards-746x560Jesus’ closest disciples got a front-row seat to another seeming paradox the night that He was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane.  It is one of my favorite accounts in Jesus’ Passion Week because it reminds us of Jesus’ humility and submission to the Father’s will as an obedient man, yet of His sovereignty and power as God (I have posted more extensively about John 18:3-6 here).

The beloved Apostle, moved by the Holy Spirit, remembered that night: “So Judas, having procured a band of soldiers and some officers from the chief priests and the Pharisees, went there with lanterns and torches and weapons.  Then Jesus, knowing all that would happen to Him, came forward and said to them, ‘Whom do you seek?’  They answered Him, ‘Jesus of Nazareth.’  Jesus said to them, ‘I am He.’  Judas, who betrayed Him, was standing with them.  When Jesus said to them, ‘I am He,’ they drew back and fell to the ground.” (John 18:3-6)

Judas showed up to betray Jesus with a kiss, by bringing a “cohort” of Roman soldiers along with officers, chief priests, and Pharisees.  They had lanterns, torches, and weapons including clubs–and no doubt the regular weapons that Roman soldiers would carry.  These were not only angry religious leaders who were boldly breathing murder, these were also highly trained soldiers in an army that had battled the most powerful armies on earth and won.

But when Jesus spoke a word–when Jesus said His Name, the Name of God, “I am”–hundreds of skilled soldiers and fuming Pharisees fell to the ground.

Jesus didn’t exclaim, “See?  I am God’s Son!  I am the Messiah!  I just knocked you to the ground with my all-powerful voice, the same voice that created the world!”  Jesus was on a rescue mission.  He had just begged His omnipotent Father to remove the cup from Him.  To not place the sin of the world upon Him, to not be separated from His Father for the first and only time in all of eternity, to not be beaten and placed on the cross as an innocent man who would experience Hell in a sense for three hours.  The Father had said no, and the Son had said yes.  Jesus had declared through sweat drops of blood, “…not my will, but yours, be done.”  Nothing would deter Jesus from redeeming His people.  He would allow Himself to be arrested and the chain of events that He could already see to begin (John 18:4).

Jesus effortlessly knocked hundreds to the ground with His voice, reminding them and us of His power, but then moments later He humbly allowed them to arrest Him, reminding them and us of His saving purpose.

As we approach Palm Sunday, Good Friday, and Resurrection Sunday, will you gaze at Jesus with me?  Oh, that we would not have hard hearts and go through the motions during another Easter season!  The soldiers and religious leaders that night not only saw Jesus’ power, they felt it like cold hard ground.  But their hearts didn’t melt before the King.  Oh Jesus, just as You later saved some of those same religious leaders and soldiers, warm our hearts to You, and help us to see You for who You really are!

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