love – Jerry Lout ⚬ Writer ⚬ Speaker ⚬ Mobilizer

October 3, 2024October 2, 2024

Outrageous

“In your religion, do you believe God could forgive him?”

The questioner’s face betrayed an intense curiosity. She wanted my answer. The surname of the person in question was bin Laden.

Shortly after the September 11 attack, American intelligence agencies identified lead players responsible for the terrorist carnage. The assault here on American soil – the most brazen and vicious since Pearl Harbor (1941) – guaranteed the enshrinement of another date to “live in infamy”. The principal schemer and mastermind was revealed to the public and in a matter of hours the name Osama Bin Laden became synonymous among many with unspeakable evil.

The young woman from the Far East, whose husband was pursuing an engineering degree at our campus, had directed the question my way amidst an informal visit on life and faith. Her knowledge of Biblical Christianity – its foremost tenet being sacrificial love – was foreign to her mind and she drove the question home.

Can God forgive the bin Ladens of the world?

I responded in a quiet tone. ‘Yes’. God’s mercy was somehow big enough to cover even an evil such as this. “If he were to confess and turn from his sin, yes he would find pardon”, I responded, hoping my voice carried a conviction I did not deeply feel.

The student spouse wouldn’t buy it, “No”, she replied, “such a wrong like this done by someone cannot be forgiven!” She was not to be persuaded otherwise. Not today, perhaps not at all.

For my own part, I frankly entertained a subtle wish in the moment that it might not be true, that even divine pardon had its limitations. As with the Prophet Jonah in the Old Testament with his condemning heart posture toward the barbaric city of Nineveh and its inhabitants, I could, at least momentarily, want God’s wrath directed toward particular elements of evildoers.

But then, where would that leave me and the rest of humanity. I knew, at least in my mind, the answer. Forgiveness, indeed full pardon, extends to any and all presenting themselves in contrite repentance. Some label such mercy as outrageous. And so it likely is.

“The wages of sin is death but the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. . . Christ suffered for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.”*

June 20, 2024

Steps Forward

Sensing that another of life’s thresholds lay ahead for me – one of greater bearing than others – I texted my pastor, requesting a visit.

Not long after his ‘dumpster dive’ narrative (the lone part of the sermon I recall from that Sunday morning), Roger had begun laying the groundwork for a twelve-step venture fitting a specific niche of persons. Men serving in Christian ministry.

A Step program had already been serving our faith community for some time, yielding some beautiful fruit along the way. Through Bible-centered curricula facilitated by a compassionate, Christ-loving husband/wife team, Jim and Pam, a number of souls had – for their first time ever – drunk from springs of undiluted hope. The program, by now widely available and spreading, carried the label Celebrate Recovery (‘CR’).

Enter Roger, a “man the cloth”, who inserted a third letter, sandwiched between the C and the R. The result – a kind of hybrid version nicknamed ‘C.P.R.’ – the ‘P’ loosely representing the term ‘Pastor’.

Imagine. A recovery program concerned with hurts, habits and hangups of preachers, pastors, missionaries, youth ministers and the like. Remarkably (or not so remarkably), Roger’s CPR groups – the first followed by another, then another – never lacked for signups.

In a study spanning a recent calendar year Barna Research noted that 42 percent of pastors had considered leaving full-time ministry. While a combination of factors can give rise to such troubling data, a common theme has surfaced. A high number of leaders in the Lord’s work suffer from a sense of isolation.

Yet, men (vocational churchmen included) connecting routinely with other men in honest, redemptive dialogue are finding themselves ushered into a place of oxygen. A doorway of hope starts opening. Wounds get disclosed. Fears and hiddenness get unveiled. Healing enters. Recovery comes.

Jesus occupies such settings. Men know the empowering presence, in the company of friends. This became my story and remains so today.

By the time of my first interactive session with a CPR band of brothers, much water had passed beneath the proverbial bridge. Some with murky currents indeed. Here, in time, I would muster adequate courage to bring to light the account of a sexual assault, of unsavory influences, and a history of associated brokenness.

I was a child when *Lawrence took advantage. Hiddenness – my behavior default – had kept the incident sealed for beyond six decades.

I would learn afresh that from God there issues love that, as the hymn writer worded it, will not let me go.

May 23, 2024May 22, 2024

Not Alone

The art of love is largely the art of persistence, says Albert Ellis.

The level of persistence marking English-Corner Volunteer Jeremy, yielded up both natural and spiritual fruit for his international friend.

Reading and gossiping Lewis’ Narnia allegories together, week after week, flipped the switch to the proverbial light bulb of Nguyen’s mind and heart. The roots of conversion to faith in Christ promised to run deep from early on. The engineer scholar, together with his sweet wife, soon shifted their postures from spectator to all out players in the adventure of a vibrant faith.

“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Quotes such as this one uttered by Isaac Newton provoke mild envy (why hadn’t I said that?). One of Nguyen’s “friendly giants” was Tran.

The Tran family had years ago fled to America as refugees. Received by a loving Christian community in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma they gained first hand witness of the nature of Jesus lived out. The Tran family wholly embraced the gospel as Christ found a home in their hearts. So transformed by love, the household wasted no time throwing open the gates of their own hearts and home in Christian hospitality. (Tran family meet the Nguyens.)

Faith was never meant to be done alone. I first heard the phrase from Youth Pastor Jason Jackson. Attentive observers tend to marvel when seeing the pithy adage played out in real life.

Added players in the kingdom – common local folks yielding to Spirit-promptings – linked up with the Nguyen family. Beau and Mary Ann, Vicky, Debbie, Jeremy, Ken and Karen and others. Each adding a crucial link.

When heartbreak struck (that familiar occurrence in a fractured world) a small band of friends was in place to help cushion the blow. The Nguyens would not be going it alone.

September 14, 2023September 14, 2023

Fountain

“Real prayer comes not from gritting our teeth but from falling in love.”

By the time Richard Foster penned these words in his important book, “Prayer – Finding the Heart’s True Home”, he had gleaned some insights through years of learning to walk with Christ.

Richard had come to recognize that Christian prayer, in its most basic form, is not an exercise to enter into as a religious performance.

Many good and sincere church-goers become burdened down over time under the load of dutiful praying. Conversing with God (the actual meaning of what it is to pray), if engaged as a religious duty becomes a load that crushes.

Yes, serious praying like intercession (deep-hearted appeals for God’s watch-care over other people’s concerns) can feature intense times of wrestling in the arena of spiritual conflict. Still, when the Jesus-follower prays – even with intensity – the praying carries a quality of hope and of trust. Sitting quiet before him – recalling good that he has brought to one’s life – voicing thanksgiving. Prayer entered into in such a heart posture allows the stirring of a fountain within. The love fountain.

The reason? Communing with God in Christ, regardless the form it takes, is marked by faith and hope, of confidence and assurance in Father-God’s loving care. Unlike a vending machine where what happens is all about transaction, the relationship between Jesus and his apprentice is centered in just that. . . Relationship.

Thanksgiving mingled in worship invariably leads to prayer rising heavenward in some fashion. In fact, where these two expressions are offered up in one’s life – thanksgiving and worship – prayer is happening.

Love works that way. It is not self-seeking but generous – even when the answer we may have hoped for does not get realized. Love leans in. Navigating life out of the love fountain ensures teeth-gritting finds no place to land.

September 7, 2023

Assertive Action

“I am sorry, but your son will not walk again.”

My mom, seated in the Tulsa hospital’s polio ward, listened as the doctor offered his prognosis. Her heart sank.

It might be argued the physician’s assessment in the moment was made prematurely. Regardless, news like this coming to the parent of a paralyzed nine-year-old lying in a Hillcrest bed down the hall could not be received without emotion.

Our family was blessed to have friends. Common, blue-collar-status households marked, for the most part, the culture of our modest faith community. Upon receiving the latest troubling news of my ongoing decline, the little band of churchgoers rallied their hearts. They reset their resolve. As an earlier body of believers of ancient times had been challenged to do, they continued in prayer.*

Having been carried by Dad into the hospital weeks earlier – my legs and feet unresponsive to my very best efforts at even wiggling a toe – I was often reminded I was never forgotten by our faithful praying family.

My condition worsened still. Discussions were convened of bringing in a piece of equipment bearing a foreboding kind of name – the Iron Lung. A backup measure for my increasingly compromised respiratory system.

The actions of the small prayer band seemed a little counterintuitive. They simply kept on with their appeals. Kind people paid a visit resting kind hands* on my frail form.

It remains for me a big mystery as to why I got counted among some of the fortunate ones over time to encounter the miraculous firsthand. Looking back I recall with some wonder the astonishing shift in my condition. My terribly weakened body responding to the Lord’s gracious, powerful hand. The little company of his blue-collar intercessors had kept their petitions going. If biblical praying is anything it is love acted upon audaciously.

Some four weeks after the iron lung deliberation the hospital’s exit doors opened. I was standing upright, walking with only the support of a couple crutches which would soon get discarded. Both my body and spirit responded happily to the crisp air outside.

A doubtful questioner once offered, “I believe that, instead of God answering prayer, the matter is merely coincidental. You pray. A coincidence occurs and you claim that some prayer was answered.”

The prayer practitioner offered a kind response, “Maybe you are right. Yet, what I have found is this. The more we pray – the more the coincidences happen”.

This is the way of apprentices to Jesus. They engage. Routinely – in humble trusting faith – they converse with him.

May 18, 2023May 18, 2023

Of Being Owned

Living our lives day by day in closeness to Jesus calls for desire. And intention.

Just like any healthy marriage motoring right into the sunset years, both parties – the man and the woman – make numberless small but significant choices. All along the journey each of them has grown into the habit of offering up expressions of worth and honor, the one to the other. This is the nature of what the Father had in mind in the covenant relationship – man wedded to the woman, woman wedded to the man.

In similar manner, the intentional and deliberate follower of Christ routinely offers up to him both actions and words. Expressions of love are core. It is this that sets the disciple apart. The casual Christian, meanwhile, may content himself with an occasional nod to a religious creed.

Priorities

That boy or girl, man or woman who’s growing in Christ is assured of belonging to him. They do not fear losing the relationship. Jesus their savior has redeemed them from the old kingdom of ego where Self sat perched atop the me-centered throne of the heart.

While secure in his everlasting hope, the disciple set on Christlikeness is one who is not content to merely qualify for the ‘someday upward flight’ to the afterworld. The apprentice counts the value tag of his life as a thing reflecting a far more expansive aim. While the afterlife destination means much to him, the love-smitten apprentice aspires less to owning heaven than to being owned by heaven.

May 11, 2023May 11, 2023

Vine Fed

Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardship as a pathway to peace.

The Prayer of Serenity line speaks to the resilient nature of life with God, as well as life with one another. Where tender affection and raw sacrifice must mingle.

Simeon and Rebecca’s wedding rang with the uncommon blends of sacred-and-exhilarating, of solemn-and-ecstatic. My friend Roger officiated.

Revisiting some of his prepared notes, several bits of wisdom there stirred my thinking.

. To give your lives away to another is the work of a lifetime.

. You are leaving home to find home. In some ways you are entering this union having prayed and prepared, knowing what you are saying yes to; and in other ways you have no clue what you are signing up for (here, ‘empathy-laughter’ of already-married couples rippled through the chapel).

The minister continued,

. Jesus invites all of us to walk a narrow way. Love is always a narrow way that limits our options but expands and fulfills our soul. The wedding aisle is one of those narrow ways.

Roger offered further nuggets. One especially drew me in,

. You’re in a room full of friends and family here to witness this covenant of faithful, steadfast, unconditional, and enduring love. And it’s why we invite God into this. Because only His love can empower our love to last a lifetime.

Only God’s love empowers our love to last, to flourish, to remain nurtured and sustained. To be kept alive.

Can we rally an image in our mind’s eye. . . clusters of ripened fruit suspended from an array of vine-fed branches? Lingering a moment with the picture before us we catch a whisper – an inviting voice – directed to our soul,

“I am the Vine”.

March 30, 2023

Modeling

“Do as I say – not as I do.”

Come again?

The old eyebrow-raising directive is not one you will hear rolling off the tongue of a bona fide mentor or coach. Jesus came as rescuer. . . as savior. But more than this.

Jesus routinely coached and mentored and trained these he loved – his forever companions in life and service. His mission of demonstrating the love and life of God in the earth was not to end with his return to glory. And it did not.

Jesus’ approach to forming his followers has not changed.

Like any self-respecting rabbi of his day, our Lord modeled a lifestyle his disciples were to emulate. Jesus displayed, by the things he did in his very own body the things his apprentices were to demonstrate in their very own bodies.

If Jesus were to fashion his own catch- phrase in our day to convey his aims for us, something like, “Do as I say and do as I do” might fit comfortably with him.

A touching piece of music out of the past goes, “Make me more like Thee, Jesus, make me more like Thee.” Then, more recently the group Passion released a similar number, “More like You”.

How does Jesus (mentor – coach – trainer) respond when we offer such a plea to him – “make me more like you”? Can’t we see him turning our direction and calling over to us in his thoroughly compelling manner, “Take my yoke upon you. Learn of me”. Is it not time to take up his assignment, to learn of and apply whatever varied practices he sets before us. So that now as on-board apprentices, we might implement the kinds of things he prescribes. Living the Christ-life he lived.

Personally, I must confess, it has taken me a long time catching on to this.

I fail at it often.

Able trainer that he is, though, our master does not weary in his coaching. As Paul writes, “love is patient and kind”*.

March 2, 2023

Contagion

“Where there are prophecies, they will fail”, the writer pointedly asserts. In the same abrupt language, he follows that even faith fails. Then finally (to the readers’ glad relief no doubt) comes the apostle’s astonishing assertion, “Love never fails.”

Wow. Love never fails.

Such a breathtaking truth will mean a lot of things. Here is just one of the joyous discoveries about God’s unfailing kind of love. Love begets love.

In other words, once we welcome into ourselves God’s pure love in Jesus – repeatedly receiving it over and over – we soon find ourselves reveling in it. We never want to be without it or him. What’s more, a new dynamic has shown up on the scene.

We find it impossible to hold the agape of God to ourselves. By its nature, God’s love – like an overly-filled bucket of water – sloshes out on the surroundings. The Psalmist would not keep such news under wraps, “He restores my soul – my cup overflows”.

Love fueling love. By faith God’s much-thirsty kids simply receive. They take into themselves his generous and forgiving acceptance of them, his free-flowing affection toward them. So, Drinking. Drinking, they receive. They want never to stop receiving. Such a mindset exactly reflects the highest hope their Father above entertains. Heaven dances!

Bookshelves overflow today, and likely groan under the weight of account after biographical account of history’s multiplying disciples. In the truest sense these apprentices are pure lovers. They are being fed and fueled on the Father’s love. Such apprentices have tasted and have drunk of the Spirit’s living waters. Narrative upon narrative recounts the multiplication factor. Spanning generations and language groups – traversing mountains and deserts and plains. “Love never fails”.

It is often noted (sorrowfully and accurately) that hurt people hurt people.

By contrast, the saving love Jesus introduces into our strife-plagued world carries within it seeds of a kind of holy contagion. Like an unbridled virus on the move. From the holy contagion all those flourishing branches – linked everyone to the single common Vine – yield up succulent fruit, fruit of the Spirit. The kingdom expands. From it there springs a cycle,

Loved people love people.

February 23, 2023February 23, 2023

Receiving

The wise apprentice acquaints himself with tools of the trade.

The disciple of Jesus is a person who desires and pursues gifts – tools God has given for aiding us in whatever tasks he may assign.

Yet, Christ urges us to something even better than his wonderfully stocked toolbox. He puts before us a thing that secures for us a way of living that is best of all. The way of love.

In his letter to the Corinthians, the tentmaker/teacher – guided by the Holy Spirit – makes clear the thing we would go after above all, “So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”*

When false pride hits the wall and collapses under its own weight.

When trying and trying ends in discouragement, even despair.

Surrendering to our Lord’s best-of-all way opens before us the different kind of living he has promised. The flourishing kind, “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly”.*

If you are like me, this flourishing kind of life itself can on some days (let’s be honest) feel elusive. It is in these times that faith in Jesus recenters us to the one thing, the best-of-all thing. God’s love in Christ.

So, now that we know that love is the answer do we trade one kind of trying for another kind of trying (“I must now, out of the grit of my will, generate love”). How despairing is that! No, we get to be done with the trying. That is forever behind us. Effort yes. Purposeful motion. But not of the grinding, disheartening kind. God’s grace to the rescue!

Love, authentic love, issues out of God’s grace.

If you are a dog lover, think of the most affectionate and loyal canine you can imagine. Those special endearing qualities are simply expressions of his nature.

A common animal may not serve as the best metaphor, as we seek to illustrate a feature of the creator and sustainer of the cosmos. That said, love is God’s nature. He is himself the source, the fountain of love. Scripture condenses it down in straightforward language so that we don’t miss its impact, “God is love”*

You and I can never manufacture such a precious life-giving element. Yet, all the Christian life is to be marked by faith at work through love. The one thing that we can do, the thing we are ever called upon to do, is to receive love. And continue receiving, and receiving, love. Christ’s love alone generates love, and his love alone fuels power to do and become all that he intends for us, “Apart from me you can do nothing”.*

Receiving and living out of his love is doable. It is a case of meeting with him in simple practices. It is a faith journey in apprenticing.

*1 Corinthians 13:13; John 10:10; 1 John 4:8; John 15:5