Tag: Jesus

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Ticket Home

As Albert Einstein was anxiously searching underneath and around his passenger seat during a train journey, a conductor took in the scene. Stopping then, he assured the physicist, “Dr. Einsten, don’t worry, I know who you are. We all know who you are. There’s no problem. You don’t need a ticket. I am sure you bought one.”  The famed but flustered scientist replied, “Young man, I too know who I am. What I don’t know, is where I am going!”

The amusing account strikes a chord in many who hope for deeper clarity about life and where it is meant to lead. Indeed, some feel uncertain whether they have yet boarded the train.

Followers of Jesus – people who have made an on-purpose decision to know him and be transformed by him – are often found appealing to God for help.

“Please grant to me the courage to change things about myself which you know need changing”. This is a raw, gutsy prayer. The appeal suggests that the disciple is taking seriously his call to apprentice under Jesus.

The honest Christ-follower who sees something within himself needing serious renovation moves to action. Praying has proven a good and much-traveled entryway into God, his word, his presence and help.

When, as a high school senior I defied my parent’s wise but firm counsel, my stubborn behavior resulted in a radical change of address. Moving to another town in another state more than 700 miles from home. No small matter.

In prayer we pause. We shift our attention, sometimes quite awkwardly, away from our own dysfunctional selves. The Holy Spirit is given space to work. He brings us (as we listen) toward a change of mind. And often signals to our hearts an avenue by which some troubling thing may get resolved. My “road back home” began when life started unraveling. Desperate, I called to God in prayer. A blubbering phone visit to my parents followed and soon I (and they) tasted the good fruit of my repentance and our reconciliation.

Wrongdoings that arise from our foolish or sinful choices do not make for pleasant travel companions. Then an old adage percolates in our mind, “Prayer changes things”.

Life Transformation Onramps offered us through Holy Scripture and by way of the Spirit’s guidance take us to a place that is bigger and fuller and grander than we might have dreamed. Here we find ourselves merging straight onto the thoroughfare of wholeness. It is a place where our entire being gets put right over time.  The missing ticket is found. We are coming to know who we are and where we are going.

©2022 Jerry Lout

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Changing Times

Changing Inside-Out.

We see it at every turn, especially where knick-knacks and touristy things are found.  Its eye-catching phrase shows up carved on a plaque here, a chunk of driftwood there. The Serenity Prayer invites us to pause and ponder.

“Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. . .

“the courage to change the things I can. . .

“and the wisdom to know the difference. . .”

These much-read phrases only mark the prayer’s first words.

When I saw that the earlier (Accounting) track was not for me I revisited Oklahoma State Tech – moving a different direction this time (call it  ‘course correction’).

I soon found myself perched on a chair in front of a teletype machine. That move (direct result of a changed mind) influenced my future in ways I could have never guessed. Special details of one’s future (God knows why) seem often left hidden a while.

Teletypesetter Perforator Operator. Yes, that was once the actual job title for some of us laboring in the world of print media.

Unforeseen changes were soon underway.

How often has the course of history itself been altered by the changing of some plan – a  military strategy, a legislative vote? One person’s words penned long ago speak to the reality of mystery as we aim our squinting eyes toward future horizons, “we see through a glass dimly”*.

What is true of grand historical events is equally true on the personal front. A pretty Montana girl I met during my stint in Cody, Wyoming would later become my wife and the mother of our three children. By God’s grace, she’s sticking with me these many decades later.

Change happens and we are, all of us, creatures made for change. Another way of saying it, we are people in formation. All of us are getting formed. Yet, it goes deeper than this. Ask a follower of Jesus. As image-bearers of God, all people are designed by him and are therein meant to grow to be like him. That is, meant to not be merely formed, but transformed. This is what our designer is after. It really is what we were made for.

Here is another prayer, my prayer. Yours too, maybe?

And so Lord, would you grant to me the serenity (calm readiness) to accept the things I cannot change, and please grant to me the courage to change things about me which you know need changing. You are present to help me. Let it be, Lord. Thank you

©2022 Jerry Lout                                                               *Paul, 1 Corinthians 13

 

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Train

Warm the bench.

 The high, red-brick gymnasium overshadowed our school’s single-story classrooms.

Parked on the cold bench with fellow player-wannabees, my gaze dropped to the tennis-shoed polio foot at the end of my left leg.

My rear end’s the best thing this bench ever saw come its way. I’ll keep this wood plank warm all season.

I looked up to the scrimmage happening on court. My melancholy eased. Look at those Petit brothers. Perspiration glistened on their lithe ebony forms. Wow, amazing their fitness. . . and their moves. Effortless.

So it seemed.

* * * * * * * *

A common link binds me presently to four athletes.

Colton, the youngest and his sister, Tara (high school junior) practice lobbing free throws. Every day. They scramble after rebounds for their teams.  Moments later their coach barks, Work it inside, move the ball inside!

After practice the siblings breeze along four miles of dirt road to their Oklahoma farm home – to chores, and homework. To laughs with family at the wood-burning stove.

The third athlete in the quartet – Luke, the ninth-grader – schools in Kenya. Luke keeps fit for what’s up next. . . Rugby, volleyball? Calls made in the game of rugby land strangely on American ears. . . scrum awarded – collapsing ruck. . . Given the sport’s intensity, ‘Rugby-moms’ are known to gasp at certain calls – bleeding wound. . .

Grace rounds out athlete number four. On the Congo playing field rigorous training tunes her ears to soccer calls. Corner kick – yellow card. On it goes.

I thrill taking in games, studying pics of these my grand-athletes. Some nearby, some far.

My mind revisits the Petit brothers of Preston High. And the term so readily voiced before. Effortless.

No. The thing that is going on out there – over the squeaking shoes – the pivots, the fakes, the twirling leaps. Nothing accidental’s going on out there. Not a thing.

My thoughts shift to another dimension. To life. All of life.

Whatever goes on with a person that actually counts. Language acquisition, architecture, athletics  – or that makes for exceptional living – those actions demand something. On-purpose, precise, repetitive action. While dreaming, hoping.

My fabulous four athlete-grandkids practice. They’re keeping fit. They  train..

I’ll never suit up for the NBA. Or charge down a soccer field defying blockers and goalies. I won’t (God forbid) kick shins – or have shins kicked – in a rugby scrum.

Every athlete has an aim.

In the contest of life every follower of Jesus has an aim. Really, an aim beyond the highest aspirations of any physical athlete. The aim is dual in nature, fashioned amazingly God himself.

Being transformed by renewing the mind, the way we think.

Let Christ be formed in you – our becoming like him. In word and action.

Great, we say. So. How’s this done? How?

Good news it is possible. He will help us.

To train, to practice, to be made fit. Till new ways become, not ill-fitting, but natural. Something we call – as Jesus did –  the light burden – the easy yoke.

I lean down. Cold bench, warm bench. . . no matter. Lacing my shoes I cock my ear to the coach’s call,

Time to train.

©2016 Jerry Lout

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Defining moments

Non-sectarian.

I liked my childhood church, whose wooden benches supplied on their underside, a landing place for my thoroughly-spent chewing gum.

Before entering I studied the odd word on the church’s sign-board. I practiced sounded it out well before I knew its meaning – Non-sec-tar-i-an.

It was a bold word – a statement declaring our religious identity – holding a prominent spot on the sign. The word was printed large, straight beneath our other self-defining label – Non-denominational.

It seemed important to the leadership that visitors and passersby knew we were somehow different from most churches. Quite different. The sign provided me an early sampling of complicated words. Later, I was introduced to others, like ‘oxymoron’.

If I had been old enough to be perplexed I would have maybe wondered, Why would such a warm, loving community as ours feel a need to persuade folks that we were not divisive, that we were safe?

Over time I grappled with the fact that religion, like politics, finds dividing up an easy thing. We separate, form new and more distinctive camps. It happens perhaps in spite of ourselves – despite the fact common beliefs can be more common among us than we might think. Erecting walls demands less energy than building bridges. So it seems.

I feel personally a sting of shame. At my own offense. Of labeling inferior or less righteous that gathering of the faithful the other side of town, or that community down the street. My own private ‘non-sectarian’ sign, adorning a shadowy wall in a corridor of my inner self.

Ann and I found our on-ramp into the world of Christian service marked, on the other hand, by complementing, not competing camps. Baptists and Pentecostals – polar opposites in expression and style – rejoicing, celebrating, even generously giving. To a thing bigger, a lot bigger than any of us might experience if left to ourselves. Amazed. We were amazed.

A.W. Tozer* suggests we’re best off tuning our hearts to Jesus. “Has it ever occurred to you that one hundred pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to each other? They are of one accord by being tuned, not to each other, but to another standard to which each one must individually bow. . .”

We began encountering a curious cross-breed along the way. The hand of a new acquaintance would extend, a twinkle of mischievous warmth lighting their eyes. Their name. The handshake. .

“I call myself a Bapticostal”.

©2017 Jerry Lout *The Pursuit Of God

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A Stilled Mind

The prophet’s words broke over him like a great wave deluging a child at play on a calm beach – sudden and unforeseen. Overwhelming. One moment all is serene. . . all is chaos the next.

Tears surfaced from a bottled place deep within Leonard, like a long-capped reservoir straining for release. The emotion driving the tears was anguish – an all-encompassing sorrow like he had never known. Soul anguish.

The fourteen words he just read had wrecked him. The first line looped repeatedly in his mind.

“The heart is deceitful above all things” The statement – bold as it came – stripped him entirely. Between sobs he wondered, How could the mere reading of words impact me so? The puzzlement came jumbled, not tidily delivered – more a crying than a question. He felt the worst kind of pain, the pain of detecting his own dreadfulness, the deception of his own heart. Shame.

Leonard realized that for too long he had been self-deceived. He took in the remaining words. . .

“. . and desperately wicked: who can know it?” The anguish remained, coming even stronger now and in waves.

“Deceitful and wicked.” His sense of guilt brought him to the floor. Sobbing, he lay face down, prostrate. A crushing sense of unworthiness drove him further. Moving the throw rug aside he stretched himself directly to the floor. The next day came and went. When not at work or trying to sleep nights he lay at his place on the floor. He knew his misery had a name. Sin.

Years later he recounted the scene in his memoir Impossibilities Become Challenges.

“I saw myself as I had never seen myself before. Lost, undone, wicked. .It seemed as if my very clothes smelt of the awfulness of sin.” In his drive to critically dismantle the book, the book was dismantling him. In a single verse the Bible exposed him, shining its light on his own pride.

Entering his third day of misery, Leonard thought to exit his room, find a place in the back yard and go prostrate there on the bare earth. It was then something happened.

“Something arrested and stilled my mind.”

Leonard found himself looking at a cross. “It possibly was a vision”.

Affixed to the cross by sharp iron nails was a heavily bleeding man.

“I seemed to understand this blood was for my sins.” He knew the man to be Jesus. “He was saying to me, ‘I died in this way for you. I shed my blood for your sins. Just accept my work of redemption.’”

“I did so crying out, ‘I believe, I believe.’”
©2017 Jerry Lout

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Removing Stones

“See this stone in the path? Now this one too, here in the picture on the same trail. . .”

I sat with half a dozen men, some a decade or more older than me. The hut we gathered in each week was roofed with long grass. The floor consisted of smooth, hardened dirt. A semicircle of dark benches carried our weight and were worn smooth, long sense having yielded up their last dangling splinter. It was Thursday and one of this week’s T.E.E. lessons focused on a visit Jesus had with a woman at a water well.

Mature, practical, sincere, the upcountry pastors and elders took in the illustration on the workbook’s open page. The image struck a chord. Two stumbling-stones, one representing male pride, the other, tribalism. The students had read the lesson’s introduction:

Here a woman of a different tribe met Jesus. Sometimes we let the division of tribes hinder God’s work. Male pride also hinders. These things are like big rocks in the pathway that make people stumble. In order to give the good news to the woman, Jesus overcame these two problems.

I reviewed the scene with the men.

“See the person Jesus found at the well. She not only was a woman. She also spoke with an accent. We know this because she was of a different tribe, another people.”

I look in the face of each man in our semi-circle.

“Can one of you describe this picture for us. Can you help the rest of us see what good thing Jesus wanted bring to the woman and what Jesus did to overcome two big problems so she could be helped.”

A pastor nodded. He launched in, reviewing the narrative, raising the matter of how women are often looked down upon, mistreated. The room was quiet. The pastor then spoke of hard issues related to tribalism, the challenges to go beyond it, as Jesus did.

“Can we trust the Lord is among us today? To help us to change?”

Heads nod. Confession is voiced by two or three. We pray.

Then go our ways, trusting him, friend of sinners, to lead.

© 2017 Jerry Lout

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A Day of Thanksgiving

“Somebody from his home village sent it to him. Someone with a grudge. The envelope with that stuff inside came hand-delivered yesterday and he’s been like this since.”

I thought of the things that led up to this moment. ‘Curse updates’ don’t often happen in Oklahoma. But this thing seems really serious. 

My friend, Jerry, had summoned the unusual parcel. We noticed the opened envelope bulged a bit. In it was a strange assortment – random, spooky things not fit for having around.

“Elements of a curse. It’s what this is. Whoever sent it to Omondi wasn’t playing games. They planned real physical and mental harm for him. Even death. Take a look at these bone fragments, the ashes mixed in, these bits of rock.”

We eyed the elements warily. Something became clear in those moments. The recipient of this “gift”, the young vocational student, knew he had been cursed. His fear was real. Omondi knew he could die at the hand of a power behind these items. Invisible but real, a terribly dark force – too strong to withstand.

Jerry and I stood silently, each in our own thoughts. Both of us anxious. Each of us sensed the other was praying, groping for guidance. How do you contend with this kind of thing? In another setting one could shrug it off as a game of foolish superstition. But we sensed this to be a full-on display of an evil presence, dispatched somehow to render harm. What could we do?

A thought had begun stirring in me. Pushing past a temptation to just ignore it, I turned to my friend.

“Jerry, would you mind if we try something?” He waited for me to go on. “Can someone bring matches? I think we need to urge this young man to resist, that he fight this thing in the power of Christ.”

Only partly-sure of my instinct, I continued. My confidence grew.

“I believe he needs to break this curse and we can be there, through it with him. We can pray. But I do think he needs to set these things on fire and destroy them. It will be his statement of God’s claim on his life. If he’s willing to, that is.” Jerry nodded.

As I had been speaking the words I knew I was out of my depth. I felt I may be trembling on the inside as much as Omondi was on the outside.

Matches were brought. We moved to an enclosure and sat on the floor, Jerry and I at either side of him.

After sharing Scripture with Omondi, affirming the goodness and the truth of Jesus and the power of his name, we asked him if he agreed with Jesus’ words. “Do you believe that God has power above all?”. He nodded slightly and we pressed ahead, inviting him to offer himself fully to Jesus Christ. Slowly, deliberately he voiced a prayer of surrender to God. My friend, Jerry and I, never let up calling on the Lord from our hearts. After a moment I looked into the young man’s eyes.

“Good. OK, now Omondi, do you renounce all witchcraft, any kind of it? Do you reject all spirit forces that oppose the Lord Jesus? Can you say that you do?” In a weak response he whispered yes. When asked one more time, he came back with an assertive “Yes”.

“OK”. I raised the envelope with its contents before him. Some apprehension seemed to play at his eyes. But his fear had lessened and my friend and I sensed Omondi was choosing freedom. We kept praying, “Help him, Lord Jesus. Be near.”

“Alright now, let’s light the match.”

At first his hand trembled with such intensity that I took his hand in mine and we gripped the match together. Thankful for his clear resolve to continue, we struck the match and lit the envelope and contents, Jerry and I voicing thanksgivings to Jesus the whole time. And a beautiful thing followed.

Witnessing the flame take over the elements, we felt a release of joy. The three of us came to our feet. Jerry and I called out in joy and conviction, praising the name of our Lord. Fear had left. Had left us all. Omondi’s head pain went away. Deliverance had come.

Afterwards, as we prepared to leave, the name of a pastor I knew from Omondi’s home area came to my mind. I sent a message to him. The two connected in coming days.

At the end of the day we were at peace. Wow.

The power of Christ had prevailed over raw evil. And two young – less-than-fearless – missionaries had been invited to take part. No wonder it’s called Good News.

We had witnessed the display on this day the authority of Christ’s name. A power greater than witchcraft, greater than fear and even death. The power of love.

It was a day of thanksgiving.

©2017 Jerry Lout

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Invitation

The membrane-cloaked calf lay still from exhaustion on the dew-soaked Bermuda grass. The little bull had, the past few seconds with the gallant aid of his mama, thrust his way outward from her womb and into Autumn’s sharp early-morning  air.

Wanting to grow to be like Jesus comes naturally for any born-anew believer. It is as natural a thing as conception – gestation – birthing and maturing are natural to reproductive life.

The progression, in fact, sounds normal. That is because it is normal. The thing that does not come naturally (automatically) for the believer, though, is the actual doing it. . . becoming like Jesus. At least not for a good while. Not for most.

Transformation to Christlikeness, however, is not unrealistic. Nor is it such a hard thing to make headway in. The issue that makes growing into the likeness of Jesus most difficult is likely our simple lack of know-how. This had been true for me, no question. I wanted change like crazy. Make me like you, Jesus. I just didn’t know how to start getting there.

Reflective musings

So, moving from being a ‘not-much-like-Jesus’ person to becoming very much like him. Are there ways to go about this, ways to understand how?  Can there be things, we press the matter further, “hands-on, practical things – I could learn to do? Could do together with Him, leading me to pleasurable rhythms of Christ’s joy, his love, service, character and life. . . For real? That I could grow to live in that curious easy yoke he seemed to matter-of-factly invite us to?”

Easy yoke? The easy had eluded me. And for quite a long time. How could I start, where to begin?

The birthing language helps me get a handle on something.

“Oh, my dear children!” Paul writes. “I feel as if I’m going through labor pains for you again, and they will continue until Christ is fully developed in your lives” (Galatians 4.19  NLT)

The fellow credited for writing much of the New Testament uses here the birthing metaphor to help us catch the idea of God’s means of bringing the change we yearn after. We catch a feeling too for how passionately the Holy Spirit wishes this for us. Labor pains. We can’t help getting the feeling he really means it. Christ – radically developing us, reproducing his nature and character within our lives. Freely. Easily. . . Remarkable.

For a good while – decades actually – I struggled over this thing. A discussion, mostly silent, went on in my head and my heart.

  1. Once a person is saved, brought to faith in Christ, a new beginning has launched, right.

The believer isn’t born into the family of faith to stay an infant. We are born to develop, to grow in the faith, to mature, be transformed. We are to get better at being a Christian. This is what he is saying, what he is after.

Every child of God, every one of us, is handed the oxygen-charged assignment. To change. And, what is more, sliding our neck into an easy yoke with Jesus us sounds more like an invitation to dance than to trudge forward under a burdensome, ever-crushing load. What if Jesus is approaching. Offering his hand, extending a question.

May I have this dance?

©2018 Jerry Lout

 

 

 

 

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Summit Destiny

While the dance idea may suit some believers as they launch into a transforming life in Jesus, the metaphor likely won’t attract others. A mountain-climbing expedition may. The apprenticing pilgrim takes on a rigorous life if he is seriously chasing the call of Jesus: Follow me.

More rigorous than a climber striking out for, say, Africa’s highest mountain peak. Our family lived and served among the Chaga people in the foothills of the majestic mammoth.

School break had set in for our two oldest. “Shall we give Kili a try?”

What parent adopts a fairy-tale voice and launches into a children’s story (the Little Red Choo-choo Train) for a teenaged son or daughter? In a public setting, no less.

Maybe it can inspire them to go the full distance (Kilimanjaro’s 19,000-foot summit) once we set out from this base camp. As the fairy-tale unfolded, fourteen-year-old Scott lazered his attention to a hiking boot as if the world’s survival depended on his rightly adjusting a small stone beneath it. Anything to distance his association with the backpack-laden man prattling on with “I think I can, I think I can. . .” Julie, two years his senior, simply rolled her eyes.

The truth was, we were in for the most daunting test of our stamina and will we had ever faced.

Hiking miles upward to Africa’s loftiest point, with its scarce oxygen and precarious steeps, calls for all the reserves a climber can summons. Reaching Kili’s snowy rim demands three things. Vision, intention and means. 

A brilliant and beloved U.S.C. professor and gospel minister, Dallas Willard, strung this trio of nouns – Vision, Intention, Means – together when coaching Christ-followers toward best practices in their quest to become like Jesus. Willard often used the word apprentice when speaking of a disciple.

“An apprentice of Jesus is learning from him how to lead their life as he would lead their life if he were they.”

My own long and incompleted walk towards transformation into Christlikeness – winding trails (often upward, at other times plateaued, even descending) – stirs added memories from the 1989 Kilimanjaro venture. Our little trio in the company of our guide.

The climb would have met with failure but for our guide.

©2018 Jerry Lout

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Culture Leap

It wasn’t long and an opportunity to dismiss a house guest came my way.

Another visit to our home by Pastor Tom. Again, discussing church matters.

Twenty minutes or so into our chat – the second round of our respective tea cups nearing empty – we  each knew our time to wrap up the visit had arrived.

Though I had it on good counsel my next move was called for, this would be my first time to tell a visitor to leave my house. Taking in a slow breath I rose from the chair, and smiling broadly, took a couple steps toward him, extending my hand.

“Pastor Tom. . . it’s been good seeing you.”

Before the phrase had left my lips, I caught a look in his eyes that signaled all would be well – that sending my visitor to the door was not an act of rudeness, rejection or idiocy.

Tom’s smile flashed warmly, his gleaming eyes conveying pleasure – and likely, I gathered –  relief. I felt I could almost read his thoughts: Ah, the missionary from America finally gets it!

Taking up residence in another culture, whether across town or across the globe, brings with it mystery. Hurdles. Discomfort. Yet. . . Once sincere attempts are made to adapt, occasional doors to astonishing surprises fling open.

                               ***

“Pastor Jerry, please may we welcome you and Sister Ann. Our new child has come! Meet us at our home for tea.”

Ten months earlier the South Nyanza woman had stepped forward for prayer in our little Migori church. She and her husband wanted to grow a family but were unable to conceive. Her eyes were pleading.

“Please pray.”

We bowed. Petition went heavenward in Jesus’s name. Time moved on. Months passed, and I had all but forgotten the moment.

We got to the home mid-afternoon. The new parents, overtaken with joy, brought out folding chairs to the modest courtyard, receiving us in celebration of their newborn.

We and our hosts sipped sweet chai, helping ourselves to servings of toasty, deep-fried mandazis.

Then came the introduction – their “miracle baby” – a boy. Special expressions of honor are sometimes assigned a person deemed helpful on the occasion of a child being born. A namesake.

Common surnames among the Luo people begin with the letter ‘O’.

“Thank you, Pastor Jerry, for praying that day.” The mother paused. She and her husband smiled,

“Meet Jerry Lout Okech.” 

On any marathon journey of a missionary, special moments emerge unlike any other. Humbling. Sacred. Joyous. The mid-1970’s tea visit in Luo-land marked such a time.

© 2017 Jerry Lout