When I first returned to the pulpit in November of 2005, I preached a series of three sermons from Psalm 116 entitled Seven Biblical Resolutions Distilled from a Battle with Cancer. You can listen to part one here. You can listen to part two here.

I articulated this theme from the text in light of the apparent deliverance enjoyed by the psalmist from some previous life-and-death threat:

Deliverance by God from desperate straits warrants renewed resolves in a relationship with God.

In the previous two posts I addressed the first two resolves: delight in God and pray to God. Now for the third.

Resolved – to rest on God (5-7).

Notice in v. 5 how he rehearses various aspects of God’s glorious character with which he has became even more fascinated. Gracious is the Lord. When God snatches you from the jaws death, what else can He be? And righteous. God was not unrighteous for permitting me to battle head and neck cancer. He does all things well. The Lord is good and righteous in all His ways. And He is merciful. Verse 6 – he preserves the simple.

The word simple means without guile or deceit, open and trusting in God. It’s similar to the idea of Jesus in Matt. 11:25 when he prayed I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children. The uncomplicated. The believing. Such God preserves. He exercises great care over. He watches and keeps. Psalm 121:5 says The Lord is your keeper, your shade on your right hand.

What difference should such truth make in our lives? How should we then live? Do we really reckon God as gracious, righteous, merciful, who watches over us such that He numbers every hair on our heads and not a sparrow drops to earth without His notice? If so how should we talk to ourselves? We must talk as the psalmist does in v. 7 – Return, O my soul, to your rest, for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you.

It’s as if his circumstances temporarily disrupted his spiritual gyroscope and led him to fret and worry. He strayed from the peace and confidence of a rest on God. Sometimes you have to talk to yourself this way. You have to remember the character of the nature of God and preach to yourself, Return O my soul to your rest, God has dealt bountifully with you. He has blessed you beyond your wildest imagination. So do not fret. Do not be anxious. Do not wig out. Do not melt down. None of those things glorify God. Psalm 37:1 says Fret not yourself because of evildoers; Verse 3 – Trust in the Lord and do good, dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness.

One of the most convicting and penetrating things I think Oswald Chambers ever wrote in his work My Utmost for His Highest has to do with this subject:

Fussing always ends in sin. We imagine that a little anxiety and worry are an indication of how really wise we are; it is much more an indication of how really wicked we are. Fretting springs from a determination to get our own way. Our Lord never worried and He was never anxious, because He was not “out” to realize His own ideas; He was “out” to realize God’s ideas. Fretting is wicked if you are a child of God.

Have you been bolstering up that stupid soul of yours with the idea that your circumstances are too much for God? Put all “supposing” on one side and dwell in the shadow of the Almighty. Deliberately tell God that you will not fret about that thing. All our fret and worry is caused by calculating without God.

How’s your self-talk these days? Take your cue from the psalmist if necessary. Tell your soul to return to your rest knowing how bountifully He has dealt with you.

That’s a resolve worth making whether He has delivered you from some desperate strait or not.

Last Sunday we met as a congregation for our midyear business meeting during the 9:30 hour.

I jotted down a few notes of significant things we covered for both review and the benefit of those who missed for one reason or another.

First, regarding the building program, God has given us favor in the neighborhood in acquiring certain easements that will definitely save us money. A water easement still needs negotiating. Pray for favor with the pertinent parties. Also we continue to move closer to signing a contract with our building contractor, Dave Eddy. Pray for wisdom in the final negotiations. Lastly, tomorrow morning’s interview with the city of Altamonte may be the final meeting with the city to open the door to pulling the various permits to enable us to break ground. Pray for favor for Ross and company before the review board.

On the building finance and capital campaign front we are investigating loan options with various lending institutions and we are working on a second-tier campaign letter to friends and former members of OGC to ask them to pray about giving a gift to the campaign. I was pleased to report that my dentist gave a generous gift recently to our building program! Pray for favor on these efforts and that God will bring us up to the $500,000 ultimate goal we would prefer for our capital campaign.

Second, regarding our church finances, we praise God for His faithfulness in providing for us thus far in 2010. We observed a slight downward trend this summer in our general fund giving. This past Sunday we again fell short on our budget need and for the first time in a great while fell below budget. Pray that as we move out of the summer and into the fall that our general fund giving gets back to budget and that our capital campaign pledges get met.

Third, regarding staffing issues, I reported that the leadership team recently voted to continue Evan Fairey’s role as student ministries intern and to increase his hours from 15 to 30. In addition to making more time for him to build relationships with our students and families, he will be working within our Christian education ministry to help shore up the weaknesses on various fronts.

Fourth, I talked about the 9:30 hour fall curriculum offerings, including Discover OGC, our newcomer’s orientation class, and Gospel in Life: Grace Changes Everything, a DVD and Bible study/discussion curriculum featuring Tim Keller. These kick off this Sunday, September 5. Contact the church office for more info. Click on the video below for the trailer we showed in the service Sunday for GIL.

Trailer for Gospel in Life from Redeemer City to City on Vimeo.

Finally, we had about a 25 minute Q&A with the elders. After the fact I always think of things I wish I had said. Those sessions are unnerving! Someone raised a question about any plans we in leadership might have about equipping women for ministry and helping them with their roles in the church. I answered from an entirely macro level in terms of our need for someone to own the leadership of women’s ministry in our church similar to the way Brett Bradley has recently stepped up to serve our men. I completely failed to acknowledge the efforts going on already on a micro level with the efforts of someone like Kelly Simpson with the Anchored Youth girls and the Women’s Bible Study. Other women are actively engaged in what I referred to numerous times on Sunday as “vine work,” doing discipleship and mentoring with other women in the body. The Titus 2 Moms ministry is also meeting a huge need. That being said, we still need workers in this realm, as in so many, where the harvest is great but the laborers are few. Pray with me to the Lord of the harvest that He will raise up workers (Matt. 9:38).

On a completely separate note but connected to Sunday, I continue to praise God for the way He worked in our special service of thanksgiving that evening for my being five years cancer free. Thanks to all who played a part in making that happen!

You can listen to the message here.

I summarized the sermon this way:

How then should we respond to such sovereign goodness that lays down its life for the sheep in a loving, substitutionary, particular, global, voluntary, and designed sacrifice? Don’t take your cue from Captain Miller in that scene on the bridge where, mortally wounded, he grabs hold of Private Ryan and gasps his final words. Do you remember what he said? Earn this. In other words, show yourself worthy of this by making something good out of the rest of your life. Don’t let these soldiers have died in vain. Indeed the movie ends with the aged Ryan along with his family visiting the Miller’s grave in the allied cemetery and France. It’s a gripping scene. The man is torn up with angst over whether or not he has indeed earned it. He pleads with his wife, Tell me I’m a good man.

Jesus never once said from the cross, Earn this. He did say, Father, forgive them. So what are we to do with so herculean a sacrifice by so very good a shepherd. Receive it for the priceless gift it is. You CAN’T earn it. You must believe it and trust in it as your only hope for deliverance from sin and death. Believe in Jesus as the Messiah, if you have yet to do so. Receive the gift of abundant life that only Jesus the good shepherd can give because of His death on the cross for you and His resurrection from the dead.

We begin at 8:30 AM with corporate prayer for those who can participate. As it is the last Sunday of the month, a group of us will gather for prayer on the property where we intend to build. Another group will pray in the SDA annex as usual, for those for whom  the prospect of the heat and other environmental conditions on the property seem too uncomfortable.

At 9:30 AM we have our midyear congregational meeting in the SDA sanctuary. We will begin with a building program report, followed by financial and ministry updates, and finishing with an Ask-the-Elders-Anything session. Members and regular attendees alike are welcome to join us for that meeting.

At 10:45 AM comes our regular service of worship. I hope to conclude the sixth in a series of messages from John 10:1-21 in the Good Shepherd discourse.

At 6:00 PM we will gather for a special service of thanksgiving to celebrate the 5th year anniversary this month of my being cancer-free. Dr. William Grow, my medical oncologist, will share his testimony. Pastor Danny Jones of Metro Life Church, himself an over ten year tongue cancer survivor will preach. We will also have a time of open sharing by the members of the congregation remembering how God worked in 2005. Pastor John Christiansen of Orlando Community Church, in many ways a pastor to me throughout my treatment, will close the celebration by leading in a prayer of thanksgiving. A reception in the fellowship hall will follow the service. Remember to bring your finger food to share! Beverages will be provided.

Would you please pray with me that God moves in a powerful way in our midst tomorrow?

I am immeasurably grateful for length of days and the continuing privilege of serving in your midst as pastor-teacher!

When I first returned to the pulpit in November of 2005, I preached a series of three sermons from Psalm 116 entitled Seven Biblical Resolutions Distilled from a Battle with Cancer. You can listen to part one here.

I articulated this theme from the text in light of the apparent deliverance enjoyed by the psalmist from some recent life-and-death threat:

Deliverance by God from desperate straits warrants renewed resolves in a relationship with God.

In the last post I addressed the first and arguably most important resolve toward God when He comes through big time in our lives – resolved to delight in God (1a). Now for the second.

Resolved – to pray to God (1b-4).

One major reason for the expanded intensity of the psalmist’s love for God comes from his experience of answered prayer. I love the Lord because he has heard my voice and pleas for mercy. Because he inclined his ear to me. The Hebrew word for inclined means to stretch out. There is something here of the condescension of our glorious God who bends down from heaven and cups a hand to His ear in order to hear even our faintest of prayers to Him.

Never is that more appropriate than in a time of crisis. Look at vv. 3-4 – the snares of death encompassed me; the pangs of Sheol laid hold on me; I suffered distress and anguish. THEN, I called on the name of the Lord (emphasis added). And he gives us the very words of his prayer – O Lord, I pray, deliver my soul! Not a particularly long prayer. Not a particularly eloquent prayer. Certainly not a difficult prayer. But prayer enough for the dire circumstances. Deliver me.

I can’t tell you how many times I lay my head down on the pillow at night during the final months of treatment and simply prayed, O Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner. It’s all I could muster.

Why night after night should any of us pray? Because God has decreed and ordained that He will work in our lives through the means of answered prayer. As a result the writer makes his first overt resolve in v. 2 – Therefore I will call on him as long as I live.

Answers to prayer in the past and present should act as impetus for faithfulness in prayer in the future. God never changes. He is faithful to answer prayer. He hears and dispatches the angels of heaven to minister to our needs.

Just consider one verse from Phil. 1:19 to see Paul’s confidence in the efficacy of prayer to bring about deliverance: (writing from prison) For I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance – speaking of his imprisonment in Rome. We need both, the prayers of God’s people and the help of the Spirit.

I shudder to think where I would be today without the steadfast intercession of saints all over the world who lifted me up to heaven during my battle with cancer – especially on the foremost of requests that I not sin against God with my lips. This is the great risk in desperate straits. We turn our backs on God. We take issue with Him. We find Him less than good because He ordains as v. 6 puts it that we be brought low. God is just as good in a biopsy that tests positive as He is in one that tests negative.

Don’t ever underestimate the role of prayer in dealing with a crisis of any magnitude. Pray yourself and solicit the prayers of others at every turn.

We only managed to cover aspect #4 of the death of Christ that makes Jesus supremely excellent as the good shepherd – a global sacrifice. Jesus died for the world, Jew and Gentile alike, people without distinction, from every tribe, tongue, nation, and people group.

Here is the quote from John Piper and the story from him about Peter Cameron Scott, founder of the Africa Inland Mission,  that I shared to illustrate the powerful motivation that v. 16 is to global and local evangelization:

He had tried twice to serve in Africa but had to come home both times with malaria. The third attempt was especially joyful because he was joined by his brother John. But the joy evaporated as John fell victim to the fever. Scott buried his brother all by himself, and at the grave rededicated himself to preach the gospel. But again his health broke and he had to return to England utterly discouraged.

But in London something wonderful happened. We read about it in Ruth Tucker’s From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya.

He needed a fresh source of inspiration and he found it at a tomb in Westminster Abbey that held the remains of a man who had inspired so many others in their missionary service to Africa. The spirit of David Livingstone seemed to be prodding Scott onward as he knelt reverently and read the inscription,

OTHER SHEEP I HAVE WHICH ARE NOT OF THIS FOLD; THEM ALSO I MUST BRING.

He would return to Africa and lay down his life, if need be, for the cause for which this great man had lived and died.

Lord willing, next Sunday we will finish the discourse with a look at the last two aspects of the death of Christ that make Him so very good a shepherd of His sheep!

It is  two blocks down the street from where we worship.

The grandmother of the unborn baby was determined her daughter would abort, but her pregnant daughter wasn’t so sure.  Thanks to the faithful pro lifers gathered outside the facility, this new mother and the grandmother were driven to a pro life counseling center instead of keeping the appointment for abortion!

Pro Life Action Ministry  has many similar documented success stories.  I’ve been joining their worker  Judy as her prayer partner on Thursday mornings in August at AWHC  on the  public sidewalk in front of the facility.   She skillfully offers literature and words to people entering the facility.  I silently pray pray pray. We  know we are not fighting flesh and blood but spiritual forces of wickedness in heavenly places.

Will you please say a prayer or two for success in this Proverbs 24:11 -12 ministry?  “Rescue those who are being taken away to death, hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter…”  The rewards are great.   But the work is hard – and sadly, so are many hearts of  clients entering the facility.

If you can come for an hour or so, please contact me!  There are various locations and times from which to choose.

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Sweeter words a man has rarely heard.

They came from the lips of my ENT on Wednesday.

He spoke them after doing the upteenth exam on my mouth, tongue, and neck over the last five years, looking yet again for any evidences of cancer.

The verdict? I can’t find anything wrong with you. Good thing he wasn’t doing an exam on my sinful heart!

And so I graduate. I will miss the good doctor, but not the exams. He conveyed upon me the degree, Master of Life. Best one of the four I have ever gotten.

No need to see him or the radiation oncologist any more. Only my medical oncologist remains to sign off on the “cured” designation for my five year battle against head and neck cancer before the lot falls to my dentist alone to stand guard against another invasion of renegade cells.

Cool. Five years is a long time. I’ve dreamed of August 2010 many times. That God allowed me to make it and that we will celebrate that gift on the 29th at 6 PM at the SDA sanctuary AND that doc said he would come (please pray that he does) all have made for a very good month for me. I am grateful. Extremely grateful.

The poet, himself the beneficiary of his own miraculous deliverance from death, asked in Psalm 116:12, What shall I render to the Lord for all his benefits to me?

The answer comes in vv. 13-14.

13 I will lift up the cup of salvation
and call on the name of the Lord,
14 I will pay my vows to the Lord
in the presence of all his people.

Oh, Lord God, make me faithful to do the same. Faithful to do the same.

When I first returned to the pulpit in November of 2005, I preached a series of three sermons from Psalm 116 entitled Seven Biblical Resolutions Distilled from a Battle with Cancer. You can listen to part one here.

I articulated this theme from the text in light of the apparent deliverance enjoyed by the psalmist from some recent life-and-death threat:

Deliverance by God from desperate straits warrants renewed resolves in a relationship with God.

In this post I want to address the first and arguably most important resolve toward God when He comes through big time in our lives.

First, resolved to delight in God (1a).

We needn’t look beyond the first few words of the psalm to sense the tenor of things in the sweet singer’s heart. I love the Lord. Actually the Hebrew text has no object. It begins with one word, the verb love. I love. We supply the object, Yahweh, from the clause that follows – because he has heard my voice. I love the Lord. Here is a man who is more in love with God than ever. The Law of God commands love for Him (Deut. 6:5). Passionate love. With all you heart and all your soul and all your might.

Emotions are no insignificant part of the spiritual life. The Bible has much to say about what you know AND what you feel. It mattered enough to Jesus to ask Peter three times on the shores of Galilee, Simon, do you love me more than these (John 21:15-17). Psalm 37:4 commands, Delight yourself in the Lord. You simply cannot read the psalms, a book of poetry and songs, without acknowledging the depth of emotions experienced by the believer in God.

It shocks me how indiscriminate I am with the word love. I say things like, I love food. I couldn’t say that for much of 2005. Nothing tasted as it should. Radiation had traumatized my taste buds. I forced myself to eat. I resorted to watching Emeril Live on the Food Network, imagining what it would be like to eat like that again. What astonished me about this was the level of grief I experienced over the loss of food – its taste, its fellowship, its uniqueness at a fine restaurant, its pairing with a glass of wine. The Lord took all that from me then. And the question that came to me with overwhelming force from the Spirit was, Curt, will you find your soul’s satisfaction in me even if eating is never quite the same passion for you? Do you love me more than steak, than pasta, than your wife’s to-die-for Black Magic cake?

To help me answer this, or at least put me on the road to the right answer, God gave me John Piper’s new book God is the Gospel to read at that time. He laments in the introduction:

We have turned the love of God and the gospel of Christ into a divine endorsement of our delight in many lesser things, especially the delight in our being made much of. The acid test of biblical God-centeredness – and faithfulness to the gospel – is this: Do you feel more loved because God makes much of you, or because, at the cost of his Son, he enables you to enjoy making much of him forever? Does your happiness hang on seeing the cross of Christ as a witness to your worth, or as a way to enjoy God’s worth forever? Is God’s glory in Christ the foundation of your gladness (pp. 11-12, emphasis added).

This is a God-centered psalm. Though the writer clearly appreciates God for His gifts, it is clear that he sees them as rays from the radiant beam of God’s goodness and follows them back to the source and proclaims his unadulterated love for Him first and last. No less than fifteen times he uses the personal name for God, Yahweh. He is enamored with God. God is his all-consuming obsession. He could easily sing with Asaph in Psalm 73:25-26 – Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

What song do you tend to sing these days? If God has rescued you recently in any way, shape or form, may I suggest to you that you should respond with a greater resolve than ever to delight yourself in Him?

Here’s how I concluded things, minus the quote by Matthew Henry, which I forgot to share:

We have three more specifics regarding the sacrificial death of Christ and what makes it supremely good to come – global, voluntary, and designed. These will have to wait for next time. Jesus claims to be the good shepherd who lays down His life for the sheep. That which makes Him definitively good is that He lay down His life in a most loving, certainly substitutionary, purposefully particular death for His sheep that makes possible their abundant life. Have you believed in Jesus the Good Shepherd? He invites you to come by faith to Him. Turn from your sins, your trust in self, good works, or any false shepherd and put your trust in Him. You will know Him and He will know you even as the Father knows the Son and the Son knows the Father. If you already belong to His flock, then give thanks in light of this theological survey from the lips of Jesus in the good shepherd discourse, this commentary on the laying down of his life, that He has gifted you with so supremely good a sacrifice.  As Matthew Henry put it: Jesus Christ is the best of shepherds, the best in the world to take the over-sight of souls, none so skilful, so faithful, so tender, as he, no such feeder and leader, no such protector and healer of souls as he.

May you walk this week in the shadow of your good shepherd as He leads you along with the rest of His sheep.