INTEGRITY
You Gotta Love That
(1 Cor. 5:8)
In A Father for All Seasons, Bob Welch writes:
Last summer, my son Jason was a seventh-grader playing in a seventh/eighth-grade league. A fire-armed pitcher—more than a foot taller than my 4-foot-9 son—blazed a fastball right down the pike. Strike one. The second pitch scorched across the plate for a called strike two. The third pitch, unintentionally I’m sure, came right at Jason. He turned to avoid being hit and fell to the ground. His bat went flying. His helmet bounced off. The ball seemed to have skimmed his shoulder.
“Take your base,” said the umpire.
Standing in the third-base coach’s box, I was happy just seeing Jason alive, much less getting a free base.
“It didn’t hit me,” Jason said to the ump.
“Take your base, son,” said the ump.
Our fans were most likely thinking the same thing I was thinking: Take your base, son. You’ve been wounded, soldier; your war’s over. You’re going home …
“But honest, it didn’t hit me,” Jason pleaded.
The umpire looked at Jason and out to the infield ump, who just shrugged. “Okay,” said the ump, “the count is one-and-two.”
Should I intervene? Make him take his base? Jason was already digging in his cleats in the batter’s box. I mentally shrugged and headed back to the coach’s box.
The towering pitcher rocked and fired. A bullet right down the middle—the kind of pitch that would send the kid to the dugout. Instead, Jason ripped the ball into left-center for a stand-up double. Our crowd roared. The manager of the team in the field was standing a few feet behind me. He had no idea that the kid on second base was my son. He spit out his sunflower seeds and slowly shook his head.
“Man,” he said, “you gotta love that.”
A Father for All Seasons, published by Harvest House, 1998 (Courage, Honesty)
WINNING
(2 Tim. 2:5)
A scenario, from a 1995 poll of 198 sprinters, swimmers, powerlifters and other athletes, most of them U.S. Olympians or aspiring Olympians: You are offered a banned performance-enhancing substance, with two guarantees: (1) you will not be caught, and (2) you will win. Would you take the substance? 195 athletes said yes; 3 said no.
Scenario II: You are offered a banned performance-enhancing substance that comes with two guarantees: (1) you will not be caught, and (2) you will win every competition you enter for the next five years, and then you will die from the side effects of the substance. Would you take it? More than half the athletes said yes.
Sports Illustrated (4/14/97) (Ambition, Cheating)
PLEASING GOD
(1 Thess. 2:4)
In Sold Out (Word, 1997), Promise Keepers founder Bill McCartney writes:
Recently I spoke at a large arena. The moment I stepped off the stage, I began asking friends and associates how I’d done. There were high fives, back slaps, encouraging compliments to the effect that I’d “hit a home run.” I went back to the hotel quite pleased with myself.
The next morning, early, I went to my knees. God wasn’t to be found. I asked, “Lord, where are You? I rose early to meet with You. I spoke of Your wonder and glory last night. I praised You with all of my heart. I thought You would be pleased. What have I done? Where are You?”
In that very instant, I sensed God was asking me a direct question: “Last night, when you finished your message, why didn’t you ask Me how you did? You came to Me for anointing to speak, but you went to your friends seeking their opinions. Why did you not seek Mine first?”
It broke my heart to hear it. But it was true. I’d spent weeks seeking God’s heart for that message. And it was a home run; the power of the Holy Spirit fell upon that arena—not because of anything I said, but because God showed up. And yet I didn’t seek God’s affirmation first. I sought the approval of men. I confessed my sin and repented. Immediately God’s sweetness returned. It shocked me into seeing that the only One I’ve ever needed to please is God.
(Approval, Ministry)
FORGIVENESS
(Matt. 5:38-42)
In Better Men (Zondervan, 1998), Bishop Phillip Porter, chairman of the board of Promise Keepers, writes: One time as a teenager, I accompanied my father to an IGA grocery store located some distance from the “Negro” district. My dad bent down for an item on the bottom shelf when suddenly a white man came up behind him and kicked him—a solid boot in the backside! My dad was a good-sized man of around 250 pounds, and I was already a well-developed and successful boxer.
When Dad was kicked, I was shocked—but waited to see how my father would respond. Slowly he straightened up, then deliberately faced his assailant. The man blurted out that he had wanted to “kick his butt” for a long time. I could feel the anger swelling in my chest. I just knew my dad and I could put a hurt on this man.
But my dad, a “tent-making” pastor, faced the man squarely with strength and poise, then said, “As long as you’re a white guy and I’m a black man, don’t you ever raise your foot and kick me again.” Then my dad said, “Come on, Son. We’re getting out of here.” To turn and walk out without a fight didn’t seem like a proper response to me. As we rode down the street, I asked, “Dad, why? He had no right to treat you like that!”
“I know he had no right, Son,” Dad said. He explained that men like that didn’t see us as people but were ignorant and afraid. From this experience and others, I learned that I had a clear choice of action. I could be angry and bitter, or I could forgive others.
(Choices, Racism)
J U S T I C E
(Matt. 23:23, Is. 59)
Among the following defenses that have been argued in criminal cases, the percentage of people who believe that a “reasonable” excuse for criminal conduct is:
Insanity 46
Sexually abused as child 23
Physically abused as child 20
Drug abuse 11
Alcoholism 9
Caught up in mob psychology 7
USA Today (9/4/98) (Crime, Excuses)
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
(Equality, Racism)
TRUTH
(2 Cor. 13:8)
The percentage of adults who say the most important thing they learned from their father was:
Always tell the truth: 33 Importance of saving: 14 How to drive a car: 6 How to negotiate: 5 Marry for love: 4 How to play sports: 3 How to change a tire: 3
USA Today (6/19/98) (Fathers, Honesty)
One word of truth shall outweigh the whole world.
—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Prize Speech, Oslo, 1974
(Conviction, Preaching)
TEN COMMANDMENTS
Not To Be Debated
(Exod. 20:1-17)
In the N.Y. Times bestseller The Gifts of the Jews (Doubleday, 1998), Thomas Cahill writes:
[The Ten Commandments] require no justification, nor can they be argued away. They are not dependent upon circumstances, nor may they be set aside because of special considerations. They are not propositions for debate. They are not suggestions. They are not even (as a recent book would have us imagine in the jargon of our day) “ten challanges.”
They are exactly what they seem to be—and there is no getting around them or (to be more spatially precise) out from under them. But the only thing new about them is their articulation at this moment amid the terrifying fires of Sinai. They have been received by billions as reasonable, necessary, even unalterable because they are written on human hearts and always have been. They were always there in the inner core of the human person—in the deep silence that each of us carries within. They needed only to be spoken aloud.
(Morality, Righteousness)
SERVANTHOOD
(Matt. 5:14-16)
It had been a trying week at our Love & Action office. At five o’clock on a Friday, I was looking forward to having a quiet dinner with friends. Then the phone rang. “Jeff! It’s Jimmy!” I heard a quivering voice say.
Jimmy, who suffered from several AIDS-related illnesses, was one of our regular clients. “I’m really sick, Jeff. I’ve got a fever. Please help me.”
I was angry. After a sixty-hour work week, I didn’t want to hear about Jimmy. But I promised to be right over. Still, during the drive over, I complained to God about the inconvenience.
The moment I walked in the door, I could smell the vomit. Jimmy was on the sofa, shivering and in distress. I wiped his forehead, then got a bucket of soapy water to clean up the mess. I managed to maintain a facade of concern, even though I was raging inside.
Jimmy’s friend, Russ, who also had AIDS, came down the stairs. The odor made Russ sick, too.
As I cleaned the carpet around Russ’s chair, I was ready to explode inside. Then Russ startled me. “I understand! I understand!”
“What Russ?” Jimmy asked weakly.
“I understand who Jesus is,” Russ said through tears. “He’s like Jeff!”
Weeping, I hugged Russ and prayed with him. That night Russ trusted Jesus Christ as his personal Savior—a God who had used me to show his love in spite of myself.
—Jeffrey Collins, Christian Reader (Mar/Apr 1998) (Outreach, Sacrifice)
FORGIVENESS
(Isa. 1:18)
Nome, Alaska, on the edge of the Bering Sea, is like many villages of the Arctic. The ground on which the community sits is frozen, sponge-like tundra. Burying the dead is a real challange. Sanitation landfills are unheard of. Garbage trucks do not haul off the kind of refuse we leave curbside in the “lower 48.” Instead a typical front yard displays broken washing machines, junked cars, old toilets, scrap wood, and piles of nondegradable refuse.
Tourists who visit Nome in the summer are amazed at the debris and shake their heads. How could anyone live like that, they wonder. What those visitors do not realize is that for nine months of the year Nome sits under a blanket of snow that covers the garbage. During those months, the little Iditarod town is a quaint winter wonderland of pure white landscapes.
The reality of grace is that the garbage of our lives has been covered by a blanket of forgiveness. The prophet Isaiah declares that the blight of our sin, once red as crimson, is now white as freshly fallen snow. And unlike the situation in Nome, our sin is covered forever!
—Greg Asimakoupoulos (Guilt, Justification)
W O R K S
A Gift For Private Ryan
(Eph. 2:8-9)
Steven Spielberg’s movie, Saving Private Ryan, tells the story of an Army captain named John Miller (played by Tom Hanks) who in the aftermath of the World War II D-day invasion at Normandy Beach is ordered to find a solitary private among thousands of displaced soldiers. He must return Private James F. Ryan home to his mother, whose other three sons have just been killed in action.
Captain Miller and the small group of men assigned to him successfully locate Ryan, but then are forced to defend a strategic bridge against enemy tanks and troops. Captain Miller is fatally wounded. In his dying moments, he reaches out to Private Ryan, and with great emotion says, “Earn this! Earn this!”
Many years later as an old man, James Ryan stands in a veteran’s cemetery tearfully looking at the tombstone of the man who saved his life. He wonders aloud if he has indeed earned the great gift he received.
Two thousand years ago Jesus Christ died on the Cross that we might live forever. In his final words he did not suggest that we could ever earn such a gift. Instead he cried triumphantly, “It is finished!”
—Michael Lester (Grace, Salvation)
CHURCH ATTENDANCE
(Heb. 10:25)
Weekly church attendance is higher in the United States than in most other developed nations, according to the World Values Survey conducted by the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research.
Fully 44 percent of Americans attend church once a week, excluding funerals and christenings, compared with 27 percent of Britons, 21 percent of the French, 4 percent of Swedes, and 3 percent of Japanese. Not only do they go to church, but 53 percent of Americans say religion is very important in their lives, compared with just 16 percent of the British, 14 percent of the French, and 13 percent of Germans.
Ironically, American interest in religion runs counter to the trend seen in most developed countries, according to Ronald Inglehart, a researcher at the institute. “In general, the importance of religion has been declining in the developed world,” he says, “while religion remains strong in countries experiencing economic stagnation and political uncertainty.”
—Shelly Reese, American Demographics (August 1998) (Missions, Worship)
COMMITMENT
(2 Tim. 1:15—18)
In 1995, Christopher Reeve, the “Superman” actor, fell from a horse in a riding accident that severed his spinal cord and paralyzed him from the shoulders down. In the days that followed, both he and his mother considered pulling the plug on his life support system.
In his new memoir Still Me, which recounts how he battled back from the accident, Reeve said he first shared his thoughts with his wife, Dana.
“I mouthed my first lucid words to her: ‘Maybe we should let me go,'” he recalled.
But his wife, through tears, persuaded him to fight back, saying, “I want you to know that I will be with you for the long haul, no matter what. You’re still you, and I love you.”
—Sherman Lee Burford (Love, Marriage)
CONSEQUENCES
What Should I Do?
(Gal. 6:7)
In Lessons from a Father to His Son (Nelson, 1998), Missouri senator John Ashcroft writes: [My father told me], “John, I’d like you to fly this plane for a while.”
I was eight years old at the time, blue-jeaned and T-shirted and wide-eyed at the world. My father was an amateur pilot.
I looked around me at the spartan interior, which was nothing at all like the multitudinous controls, gauges, and computerized equipment in planes today. The control stick looked like a broom handle and came up between my legs.
“What should I do?” I shouted back to my father, who was seated behind me.
“Just grab the stick and push it straight forward.”
“Okay.” I took hold of that stick and did as I was told. Immediately the plane went into a straight bombing-raid dive toward a farm on the outskirts of Springfield! My stomach came up to my throat and I lost all sense of time or place as fear gripped my insides. I let go of that control stick in a millisecond, and Dad pulled the plane back up.
He had a good chuckle, and I had a good lesson: actions have consequences. I learned in a particularly vivid—in fact, terrifying—way that my decisions and actions could imperil my future.
In a positive sense, I learned that wherever I was, if I put my hand to something, I could make a difference.
(Decisions, Responsibility)
GREAT COMMISSION
(Matt. 28:18-20)
The world’s population is expected to pass 6 billion by the end of 1998. Current rates of births and deaths per:
| Births | Deaths | |
| Year | 136,967,149 | 53,282,252 |
| Month | 11,413,929 | 4,440,188 |
| Week | 2,633,984 | 1,024,659 |
| Day | 375,252 | 145,979 |
| Hour | 15,636 | 6,082 |
| Minute | 261 | 101 |
| Second | 4.3 | 1.7 |
USA Today (8/25/98) (Births, Deaths)
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