Robbing God Blind?

Malachi 3:8-10: Robbing God Blind?

If you could turn with me in your Bibles to Malachi 3:8-10, we'll read the text for my message:

"'Yet from the days of your fathers You have gone away from My ordinances And have not kept them. Return to Me, and I will return to you,' Says the Lord of hosts. 'But you said, "In what way shall we return?"

"'Will a man rob God? Yet you have robbed Me! But you say, "In what way have we robbed You?" In tithes and offerings.

"'You are cursed with a curse, For you have robbed Me, Even this whole nation.

"'Bring all the tithes into the storehouse, That there may be food in My house, And try Me now in this,' Says the Lord of hosts, 'If I will not open for you the windows of heaven And pour out for you such blessing That there will not be room enough to receive it.'"

And, starting out, I guess it would be a good idea to address one of the assumptions underlying this verse: Is it possible to rob God? The whole concept of robbing God might sound weird to our modern ears, because, to a large extent, we have been programmed to believe that a rich person cannot be robbed. And, as Scripture teaches time and time again, God is not poor.

In fact, in Psalm 50:9-12, God shows us some of the resources and assets in His portfolio: "I will not take a bull from your house, nor goats out of your folds. For every beast of the forest is Mine, and I own the cattle on a thousand hills. I know all the birds of the mountains, and the wild beasts of the field are Mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell you; for the world is Mine, and all its fullness."

Going one step further, God also proclaims, "The earth is the Lord's, and all its fullness. The world and those who dwell therein. For He has founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the waters."

In fact, in Ephesians 2:4, Paul describes God as being "rich in mercy". Doesn't it then stand to reason that He would not want or need to rely on us to give Him our offerings? In fact, isn't it the height of arrogance to say that God needs anything at all from us?

The best way to answer this foolishness is with a quote that I first heard attributed to Vince, who said, "The short answer is a 'yes' with a 'but'…the long answer is a 'no' with a 'because'." And by that I mean, denying God His tithes and offerings is indeed robbing God, in the sense that we are sinning against Him. It is not robbing Him, however, in the sense that we are wounding Him. It is the height of arrogance to say that we are in some way reducing or negating His strength when we refuse to give Him His due.

So then why does He command it? He commands us to give, just like all His other commands, because He knows it's what we need. He commands us to pray so that we can align our hearts with His, and that is the only cure for a sick heart; He commands us to love Him because a life spent doing anything else is wasted; He commands us to serve Him, not because He's understaffed, but because that is the only place where true fulfillment can be found; and He commands us to give back to Him because in doing so we make ourselves truly thankful for His blessings and open ourselves up to receiving further goodness from His hand.

So let me start off by giving some historical context to this passage. From my research, Malachi's prophecies took place after the sacking of Jerusalem and destruction of the Temple, but before the reforms of Ezra and Nehemiah. Some of the exiles had already returned to Israel, but the region was still under the yoke of their foreign oppressors. In essence, the people of God were under the thumb of a foreign government who didn't acknowledge Jehovah God even existed, much less was worthy of worship, and the quality of leaders ranged from those who viewed the Jewish people and their God with benevolent ignorance, to those who saw this allegiance to a sectarian religion as a threat to their political dominance. Moreover, with the beauty and fertility of the Promised Land, Israel was a bone of contention among Egypt, Assyria, Persia and Babylon, among others. The latter two especially exerted their dominance over Israel at this point in time.

And yet, the Persians and Babylonians were not entirely unlike our government today. They, especially, had legal codes and levels of governmental authority intent on changing government from a volatile art practiced by the capricious to a systematic, scientific process to churn out justice and efficiency. Without God in the picture though, this was a losing battle. As we learned in the Truth Project, a State that refuses to recognize God thinks that: they are worthy of worship, that they give us our rights and freedoms, and that they hold the keys to truth, falsehood, life and death.

This is the kind of environment that is perfect for Satan's work. In a deep despair because of God's apparent departure from Israel's future, the Israelites became sloppy and careless in their worship of God. They soon began believing they were no longer the elect of God, and began behaving like all the other nations. I know I can definitely relate to this. When I lose grasp of the vision God has given me, and for who I am in Christ and in His plan, I become so much more susceptible to temptation. I begin focusing on my own little story, and begin to convince myself that that story is the only one there is. I conveniently forget about the God who commands me to live for Him, and gives me the grace and strength to do so victoriously. I don't know about you, but for me this is a necessary reminder that my beliefs determine my behavior, and the decision to walk in the Spirit or the flesh is made in my mind well before it is lived out in my life.

Now let me tell you some about where this text falls in the book of Malachi. First, there seems to be some debate over whether the term "Malachi" is a name or a title, since it literally means "my messenger". I don't necessarily have a problem with either perspective; it was obviously delivered by someone with a yearning and passion to see God's people turn back to a spirit-filled and truthful form of worship, and not the limp, lifeless, half-hearted version it had become. I pray that we, as CBC, would continually bring ourselves back to that place of worshipping God in a way that is vibrant, humble, thankful and loving. While our citizenship in heaven might look something like filling out a birth certificate—fill it out upon birth and put it in a safe deposit box—our commitment to the Ruler of heaven looks more like filling our gas tank: relying on an outside power to keep us going, with the understanding that the vehicle doesn't go anywhere without fuel and an occasional tune-up.

This book also has an interesting symmetrical structure. In four chapters, it folds itself into mirror images right down the middle. In chapters 1 and 4, the children of Israel ask God a series of amazingly oblivious—not to mention defensive—questions that betray a serious lack of desire to understand God's heart for them.

I'm going to open this up to you: What are some of the questions we ask God, that don't make a whole lot of sense? Am I the only one whose prayers have sounded like a greedy, self-absorbed child asking Santa Claus for a pony and a swimming pool?

Now on the inside, chapters 2 and 3 are where I think God gets down to business. Chapter 2 discusses a series of grave covenants that the children of Israel, corporately and individually, have violated. In chapter 3, as is common with the prophetic Old Testament, God lays out His good plan for dealing with these broken promises. Now you and I both know that God's complete plan for dealing with the promises we break to Him is the work of Christ on the cross. While chapter 3 presents a faint shadow of things to come, God is also beginning to shade in the areas of His plan that had been thus far unrevealed in prior prophecies. The Jews call Malachi's prophecy "the seal of prophecy" because, according to Matthew Henry, "in him [Malachi] the series or succession of prophets broke off and came to a period." Note: this message is delivered within 500 years of the birth of Christ. When you're talking about thousands of years of God's history about to be fulfilled in the Messiah, this is like the 10-second countdown before ringing in the New Year.

Indeed, I don't think it's a stretch at all to point to this book, and in fact, the rest of the Old Testament, as inherently Christological. In Luke 24, Jesus is speaking with the two men on the road to Emmaus, and we're told, "And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself." Realizing this should make the Old Testament come alive. The book of Esther, although it never even mentions God's name, preaches Christ! The book of Numbers, even though it sometimes feels like reading the Hebrew Yellow Pages, preaches Christ! The book of Leviticus, with its techniques for dealing with moldy walls and unclean clay pots, preaches Christ! And finally, the book of Malachi, written hundreds of years before God became man, preaches about the one God-man, Jesus Christ! I pray that God would help me catch the vision of the Old Testament, so that I could see the Word become flesh in every page!

What are some of the unlikely places in the OT where you see Christ?

Hosea is a good example of this because we see the prophet commanded to marry a prostitute, and no matter how many times she violates their marital covenant, he takes her back. In the same way, Christ remains faithful to His church even when it lets Him down.

There's another interesting aspect to this prophecy: in the New King James, Malachi calls it a burden. There's a great correlation with the prophet Jeremiah, who definitely had similar feelings. At one point, Jeremiah is distraught with the persecution he receives because of being God's messenger. In chapter 20, verse 7, he writes, "I am ridiculed all day long; everyone mocks me. Whenever I speak, I cry out proclaiming violence and destruction. So the word of the Lord brought me insult and reproach all day long. But if I say, 'I will not mention him or speak any more in his name,' his word is like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot." Clearly, Jeremiah's flesh was crying out against his God-centered sermons. It was saying, "Jeremiah, you're too negative! Everyone will hate you because of how you offend them! You shouldn't relay messages for him anymore—in fact, you should never even mention his name again!" Thanks be to God that He chose to allow that fire to burn continually in Jeremiah's bones. And the same goes for us: if we know the message that God has laid on our hearts, we need to speak out. If it offends the ones we love, those we seek to impress, or even our own sensitive pride, we need to reckon the cost of offending God infinitely greater.

Now let's get into chapters 1 and 2. One of the questions that we encountered in The Truth Project was: "Do we believe that what we believe is really real?" Try saying that one five times fast. To me, this is a great reminder that how I would describe God in a multiple-choice test can be very different from how I describe Him with my life—and so far, I've taken the vast majority of life's tests without the aid of a #2 pencil. The children of Israel encounter the same problem in chapter 1, where God lays His grace and their sin before them. He says He loves them, and they reply with diffidence and doubt: How have you loved us? He answers that He has given them a covenant of grace, choosing them as His own special people. He then says that they have shown contempt for His name, and have defiled His table. Blind to their own shortcomings, they reply, How have we defiled Your table? He reminds them of the defiled food, and blind and lame "sacrifices" they have given him. More like half-hearted cast-offerings.

Maybe you're asking: how is it possible they could be so blind to their sin? Before I get too haughty, let me tell you. I often find myself in conversations like this with Elizabeth. She'll say, "You told me this," and I'll say, "I never told you that. I know, because that's not the kind of thing I would say." Elizabeth will then tell me what my selective memory is lacking, and, to paraphrase Job, I would say to myself, "If only I would be altogether silent! For me, that would be wisdom."

But really, blind and lame animals for sacrifices? That's like finding a broken toy in the Walmart clearance aisle, wrapping it in a torn plastic bag, and calling it a "Christmas present". Much worse, in fact, since they're presenting this gift to their Maker and Master. I hope you've never done this, but that's how I tithe sometimes. I'll say, "Well God, I don't have enough to tithe to you sacrificially or joyfully, but I'll give you whatever is left." But God wants our first and best. He has given us His first and best (Christ is His first, best, and only Son. He was given as a sacrifice for our sins.) God then asks what would happen if we tried giving a blind animal to the governor for taxes. Can you imagine what it must have felt like to get slammed by God like this? Imagine if we told the IRS, "Well, I don't have quite enough this pay period to give you your due, but here's what's leftover. Hope it helps."

So what does this questioning of God reveal about the Israelites' hearts? First, I think it shows tremendous arrogance on their part. They're really approaching the all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving, ever-present Maker of heaven and earth and saying, "I think you got it wrong." Do you remember what God said when Job was acting up like this? He said, "Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you will answer me." Here's the picture I get: I'm in the throne room from The Wizard of Oz, and God says in that booming voice, "Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge?...Put yer dukes up."

I think this questioning also shows the Israelites don't believe God is trustworthy. God says He loves them, and they respond that they just don't see it. God's response—for about the millionth time—is the covenant He made with their ancestors. My first thought is, "Don't you think He gets tired of telling them the same thing over and over? When will they learn?" This is quickly followed up by my second thought: "I'll bet God gets tired of telling me the same thing over and over. How much longer till I get this right?"

The third thing I think this reveals about their hearts is the disrespect they show Him. These subpar sacrifices: defiled food, blind and lame animals…this is clearly a relationship that has gone far wrong. This is like bringing home dead ragweed to your wife, and when she refuses to put it in a vase, you say, "What?! Was it something I said?"

Moving on to chapter 2, we see the three covenants that Israel has broken. Things look pretty bleak right now, but this is the bottom of the valley. Not only that, but this lays the groundwork for the rescue mission God has planned—from here, we can see the mountaintop, and in Christ, someday we'll be there. I love that every situation God puts us in, or we put ourselves in, has a great option whereby we can emerge victorious and give God glory; isn't that awesome? In fact, God says as much in 1 Corinthians 10:13—am I the only one who needs this verse every single day?—"No temptation has seized you except that which is common to man, and in every case"—in every case—"God provides a way out, so that you can bear up under it."

First, the priests have broken the covenant of Levi. Remembering that Malachi means "my messenger", God accuses His priests of shirking their duties. They're supposed to be knowledgeable and, above everything else, encouraging rather than discouraging. Instead, God justly accuses them of leading men to stumble. There's a passage in Isaiah where King Sennacherib of Assyria mocks Judah's worthless alliance with Egypt, saying, "Look now, you are depending on Egypt, that splintered reed of a staff, which pierces a man's hand and wounds him if he leans on it!" (36:6) That's the picture this priesthood brings to mind, a collection of walking sticks that injure the people they're supposed to support. Additionally, God accuses the priesthood of showing partiality in the law. In contrast to God, who is "no respecter of persons", these priests are playing favorites and leading their countrymen into sin. I think this is part of the reason that James states, "Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly." The teachers, or priests, with the authority, position and influence they have, should be subjected to greater scrutiny, by both God and man, because without it they run the risk of leading others into sin and error, which also endangers their own ministry and witness.

The second covenant is what Malachi calls "the covenant of the fathers", a call to spiritual monogamy among God's people to Yahweh, who has spiritual headship. Ascribing marital language adds a whole new dimension to the description of Israel's sin. They're taking a covenant—a mutually agreed upon binding contract—that is meant to be permanent, intimate and selfless—and casting it off as if it were yesterday's fad. I really believe that far too many Christian leaders fall into this trap today. The rise of ecumenical religious gatherings, where Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, Mormons, etc., gather in supposed unity of worshipping "God" is anything but a principled allegiance to the God of the Bible. It misrepresents God because it paints Him as receiving all who claim to seek Him, even though it's only through Christ that we are able to have fellowship with our Creator.

There's a pastor out in Seattle by the name of Mark Driscoll. He said he was once invited to a gathering like this, where everyone, Buddhists, Muslims, Christians, etc., would be praying to "God" together. As he said at the time, "This isn't a conference call, we're not all dialing the same number!"

Again though, we need to be considering: Where do I get tripped up in this area? Spiritual prostitution is not always a matter of appearing with the wrong people at the wrong events. It is also—maybe usually—a matter of setting things up in our hearts to take precedence over God. In contrast, my prayer should be like Paul's statement: to "demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." (2 Corinthians 10:5)

How can we find and root out spiritual adultery in our own lives?

The final covenant that God mentions here is the marriage covenant that the men have broken by divorcing their wives. In typical ignorant fashion, the people only notice that this is a problem when God starts ignoring their offerings. All the marital strife, warning signs, and conviction from God's Word and His people were ignored, but this—this!—makes the issue unmistakable. So when they finally come around, God beats around the bush. He says, "I dislike divorce."…Isn't that what yours says? Maybe you're reading from a different translation. He says, "I'm predisposed against divorce." He continues, "I have personal qualms with divorce, but I'm not willing to force those beliefs on anyone else." No, he says he hates it. He despises it, to the very core of His being, because it rends in two the visible, earthly demonstration of His heavenly covenant with His invisible church. When I smell cigarette smoke on the clothes of someone, I can't help but wrinkle my nose; I never seem to be prepared for it. For God, divorce is like smelling the stench of violence on a person's clothing. Because of the sin of divorce, it's jarring, upsetting, grieving and distasteful all at once.

Before I get too full of myself, let me tell you what I think a spirit of divorce is. A spirit of divorce is any thought, word, action or attitude that seeks to harm our spouse rather than giving them God's best. This doesn't mean that sharing concerns or exhortations with our husbands or wives come from a spirit of divorce; in fact, if done in the right spirit, they can be encouraging and enriching. In that case, where the other spouse might be in sin, hard words from the one we love might actually be godly, and soft words might be from a desire to enable. Proverbs 27:6 says, "Faithful are the wounds of a friend, But the kisses of an enemy are deceitful."

What it does mean is that we, as husbands and wives, must act with the end goal in mind. When I find myself in a situation where I'm tempted to fight with Elizabeth, I need to ask: Is this going to make each of us more like Christ? Is this going to improve our witness to our neighbors, coworkers and friends? Is this setting an example for our children so that we can train them to be loving, humble and steadfast? If not, then what is my end goal? There's an old Steve Taylor song that includes the line, "If the Bible doesn't back it, then it seems quite clear, perhaps it was the devil who whispered in your ear." Husbands, especially, need to take their ungodly thoughts captive and put them to death; we have enough influences encouraging a spirit of divorce among us already. In fact, that's why I think it's no accident that Malachi condemns the men for dealing treacherously with the wives of their youth. My reading of Scripture teaches me that men may not be guilty of all the problems in their home, but they are responsible for them. I pray that we, the husbands of CBC, would "brace ourselves as men" and do the job God has graciously given us.

I also think it's interesting that God singles out this one sin, of dealing treacherously with our wives, as the thing that shuts off our ability to offer our acts of worship to God. Why not lying, or cheating on our taxes, or yelling at the guy who cuts us off in traffic, or talking about our boss behind his back—these are all bad enough, but God says even those don't try His patience in the same way that divorce does. I don't have a verse for this, but my hunch is the reason lies in the visible picture of heavenly reality that marriage was designed to be, and that very few other things incur His wrath in the same way.

Moving into chapter 3, we see these three covenants being repaired by our good and gracious God. The first and greatest covenant, that of the mediator between God and man (for which the Levitical priesthood was just a shadow of things to come), will be repaired by the arrival of "my messenger"—there it is again!—Jesus Christ, to bridge a gap that man, on his own, only had the capacity to burn. The use of the "messenger" term is another reminder: God will come even closer than He already is.

The second covenant, between the children of Israel and their God, will be repaired in two ways: verses 2 and 3 of chapter 3 say that some of Israel will be cleansed and purified, as if they had been scrubbed with soap or refined like metal in the fire. Then, verses 4 and 5 say that, eventually, in spite of his merciful longsuffering, God must purge the wolves from among the sheep. He has to do this, or He is not being faithful and just to the rest of the nation of Israel. Again, we see the picture of God becoming ever closer to His people, this time to cleanse them of their sin and excise the diseased portions of their body.

The third covenant, and this is possibly the most confusing part, is the marriage covenant between the men of Israel and their wives. This will be repaired when the people repent of their divorce, so that they can now worship God in spirit and in truth, by giving acceptable tithes and offerings to God. See, what I am seeing here is a vicious cycle between a spirit of divorce and a spirit of stinginess to the God who made them. The divorce makes their offerings meaningless, which prevents God from being able to bless them as He wants, which makes tithing seem impossible and the marriage relationship strained, which leads to divorce, and on and on. The picture I get is of Satan playing pinball with the children of Israel, bouncing them between one flapper and the next, until they don't know whether they're coming or going.

For those of you that are interested, that was my introduction. Now let's dig into today's text.

So, when we look at verses 8 through 10, why do I think marriage has anything to do with it, since it's never actually mentioned? First, as we've already discussed, I think the symmetrical structure of the book suggests it. Obviously, a literary interpretation like this is an opinion at best, so I'm not willing to live or die by this interpretation; it's just how it makes sense to me.

The second reason is this: we already know Israel has a real problem with spiritual adultery, and this unfaithfulness is just played out in their unwillingness to make God a higher priority. The lack of commitment shows up in their marriages, their worship, and eventually, in their checkbooks.

The second reason is the strong connection I've seen between marriage and money in my own life and the lives of those around me. In fact, according to financial counselor Dave Ramsey, the leading cause of marital fights in North America today is money and money problems. Moreover, I think that Elizabeth and I can trace a lot of the marital strife we had in the past to miscommunication (or lack of communication) about money. About three years ago, we started to work on that, and we found that we began communicating more effectively about it. This was not an astounding surprise, but what knocked our socks off was what happened next. We were soon amazed at all the other areas of our life that were suddenly much easier to talk about. Things that had brought on tremendous conflict in the past soon became easier to address realistically and with humility.

I want to stress that this newfound vocabulary had almost nothing to do with the amount of money I was making, although learning to work together better has enabled us to make more money. Instead, it has everything to do with priorities. When you spend money on something, you are making a value judgment of its worth to you, and you're stating where it stands in your list of priorities. A guy goes out and buys a 60-inch flat screen TV to watch the Superbowl: TV must be important to him. Another guy goes to a secondhand store and buys a TV you can fit on a nightstand: TV must not be that important to him.

So what does our checkbook say about our priorities?

Now let's look at the actual sin the children of Israel had committed. God restates His case (because He must know how much in need of repetition they are): defiled food, blind and lame animals. Let's also look at what God's Word says about these types of sacrifices. Leviticus 22:22 says, "Do not offer to the Lord the blind, the injured or the maimed….Do not place any of these on the altar as an offering made to the Lord by fire."

In Deuteronomy 15:19-21, God goes one step further, saying, "Set apart for the Lord your God every firstborn male of your herds and flocks. Do not put the firstborn of your oxen to work, and do not shear the firstborn of your sheep. Each year you and your family are to eat them in the presence of the Lord your God at the place he will choose. If an animal has a defect, is lame or blind, or has any serious flaw, you must not sacrifice it to the Lord your God. You are to eat it in your own towns." So not only is God saying not to sacrifice this kind of animal to Him, He's saying He doesn't even want them to eat this type of meat in His presence for a festival. In other words, God has provided some very clear direction.

Now we come to the test. God's test. A test will be administered which the children of Israel are unable to pass. What's more I can't pass it, and you can't pass it. Even with the power and riches of the Holy Spirit, and the redemption that comes through Christ, no man can pass this test. This is because God is the one being tested.

Now normally, this would be seen as a bad thing. Remember when Abram comes close to testing God? You can hear the fear in his voice as He says, "Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, what if only twenty can be found [in Sodom and Gomorrah]?" Later on in the Old Testament, Gideon does the same thing: "Then Gideon said to God, 'Do not be angry with me, but let me speak just once more: Let me test, I pray, just once more with the fleece; let it be dry only on the fleece, but on all the ground let there be dew." (Judges 6:39)

There's also a time that someone refuses to test God, and so God sets His own terms for the test. The passage is Isaiah 7:10-14: "Moreover the Lord spoke again to Ahaz, saying, 'Ask a sign for yourself from the Lord your God; ask it either in the depth or in the height above.' But Ahaz said, 'I will not ask, nor will I test the Lord!' Then he said, 'Hear now, O house of David! Is it a small thing for you to weary men, but will you weary my God also? Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel.'" This is a different type of testing from the previous two, because in this one, as in Malachi, we see an example of God being tested to expose the hard-heartedness of men's hearts. The irony in the Isaiah passage is, even in Ahaz's refusal to test God, he is still trying God's patience.

In Malachi, the children of Israel are using God's withholding of material blessing as a pretense for their withholding of their tithes and offerings, but as we've already seen, God has refused their tithes and offerings because: (1) they were unacceptable on their own merits, (2) they were unacceptable because the people were concurrently worshipping idols, and (3) they were unacceptable because of the marital unfaithfulness that had gone on in the community.

God's test contains the following assumption: until we give God tithes and offerings that are acceptable—and delivered in the proper spirit—He has no reason to trust us with material blessing. This is not the same thing as saying that our tithes and offerings guarantee material blessing from God, in that we would somehow be able to force God's hand, but that that is the minimum requirement for God to bless us how He wants. In other words, this is a necessary condition, not a sufficient one.

So in conclusion, let me share with you some of the objections that are floating around inside my head. First, but what about this economy? We've all seen the news stories, with the news anchors biting their nails, feverishly awaiting the newest statistics. What we need to keep in focus is that God is orchestrating all of it. He is Lord of the unemployment numbers. He is Lord of the State budget. He is Lord of a shrinking GDP. He is Lord of all, and in control of all. Since God has a purpose for everything He does, we would be mistaken to assign a purpose to these events too quickly, but we would be remiss to throw up our hands and write the situation off to "chance," "fate" or "luck." Doing so disregards God's omnipotence over our lives and avoids an opportunity He may be using to show us something.

But my circumstances have changed. One of the things that has been hard for me to understand as I've been growing in Christ is that God's rules don't change with my circumstances. For instance, God says I can't use wrathful words on someone even if they're tearing me down. God says I can't overeat even if things are going crazy at work. Believe it or not, this is ultimately a good thing, because God's law remains consistent, even while we are not. If it weren't, then we could just say: God's law applies to my life unless I'm tempted to do otherwise. That may be the rule that our society plays by, but as the people of God, we're called—I'm called—to answer to a higher authority.

So tell me…what did I miss? What do you think of all this?

Testimony

To say that I was born on January 5, 1981 in Ridgewood, NJ, is an understatement. In actual fact, you could say I survived January 5, because I'm sure most of the professionals that treated me when I was born were sure mine would be a short life. I was born premature, with underdeveloped lungs, which landed me in an incubator almost immediately. Days after I was born, my parents had to rush their new firstborn from hospital to hospital, finding one that had adequate equipment to care for me. They left one hospital when a nurse confided with them, "I could lose my job to tell you this, but if you don't get your son out of here, he won't survive until tomorrow morning."

To make matters worse, I had an intestinal hernia that required three surgeries to finally fix. My point in all this is merely to state that God had already, in my first 18 months of life, been more gracious to me than I could ever deserve.

In a lot of ways, my childhood was idyllic. Until I was five, I lived with my parents and sister in a two-family house above my grandmother, aunts and cousin. Those years were a constant cycle of He-Man, Tonka trucks, apple strudel, soccer, and backyard barbeques. My parents, now married thirty-four years, loved each other enough to make our family work, no matter what it took. This wasn't considered unusual back then; this was waaaay back when divorce was still considered shameful, rather than liberating.

In other ways, my childhood was dysfunctional. I believe that my medical problems early in life caused my parents to see me as a little too fragile and a little too precious. As a kid, my dad would sometimes roughhouse with me, but this soon stopped when my mom was afraid he would hurt me. Pretty soon, I shut down the option entirely, because why would my dad do something that hurt me? I still wonder how this plays into my identity as a man, and I think it may contribute to the way I interact with other men. The fact that it's largely self-inflicted is not lost on me. I'm not saying this to blame my parents; they did the best they could, and I thank God that He gave them to me.

Noelle was born on December 16, 1986. Pretty soon, my family and I moved to Chatham, NJ, which is about 40 minutes from where I lived until age six. Both of my parents were working by this time to make ends meet, and they had decided to take day and night shifts to avoid having to send Noelle and me to daycare. Thank God for that!

A couple years after that, my mom experienced a change in her life. She was a social worker at a local hospital, when she met a man who told her about God's plan of salvation. She was convinced that he was right and that she needed to accept God into her life personally. I didn't really understand what was happening, although I knew every now and then she told me I should read the book of John. I thought they were interesting stories, a lot like the ones I heard in Catholic Sunday School, but I didn't think about them much more than that.

Fast-forward to my sophomore year of high school. I was a serious student, and I was quickly racking up awards, honors, and accelerated classes. I was on the fast track to awesomeness. This was in 1996, around when the Internet was first coming into prominence, and so we setup an account to get online for school and entertainment purposes. While there are a lot of educational uses to the Internet, I also found content that I have regretted seeing ever since.

Internet pornography is an addiction like smoking or drinking. It has a strong emotional pull like other drugs, and it can destroy your life just as capably as cocaine. And just like a recovering alcoholic, I firmly believe that thinking of myself as anything but a recovering addict-that is, failing to acknowledge my capacity to be lead right back into that sin-is the first step down the road to failure.

I couldn't see God's hand in my life at the time, but he was even then beginning to make his presence known. In the spring of my freshman year, I began getting interested in some of the programs on the Christian radio station that my mom listened to. I was studying evolution in school, so when I heard the speaker talk about it, my interest was piqued. The point of the program, Breakpoint with Chuck Colson, was to show that evolution was incompatible with the Bible. I accepted the Bible as Truth (not that I knew what to do with that), and so an argument to show that it contradicted evolution was compelling. I also liked the fact that Colson's commentaries were articulate, winsome and interesting-not like those fire-and-brimstone preachers I had seen so scrupulously mocked on cable TV.

As I began to look in the dark corners of evolution's closets, the skeletons were everywhere-not just in the theory's philosophical hangups, but in its implications. Books like Philip Johnson's Reason in the Balance demonstrated to me that naturalistic evolution meant no God, which meant no absolutes, which meant anarchy.

At about this time, a friend named Dan invited me to a Christian music festival in Mount Union, PA, called Creation. I had already been listening to Jars of Clay, so it seemed like it was possible other Christians could make music as well. (By this time, I had heard lots of evidence to the contrary.) I got to know Dan's family and was shocked to find that they were independent thinkers, fun to be around, and were serious about their faith-not like those goofy holy rollers I had seen so faithfully documented on cable TV.

So the Gillespies and I traveled out to Huntingdon County for four days of camp food, port-a-potties, and rock and roll. The first show we saw was by a band called Five Iron Frenzy. The lead singer wore a cow suit during the set; I thought they were a little too loud, but not a thing like the Gaithers. It seemed pretty much like a vacation of sorts until the second day, when a former football player named Miles McPherson spoke about how God changed his life. He had been a pro, playing for the San Diego Chargers, and was living the typical celebrity life, with all the trimmings. Some of his fellow players began leaving Bibles in his locker, and he soon repented of his sin and turned to God. Now remember, at this time I was knee deep in Internet pornography and wondering whether I would ever find a way out, so I wasn't sympathetic to the old Miles-I was the old Miles. It was like he just happened to fly by my mud pie in a helicopter, and let down a rope ladder. I knew if this wasn't my ticket out of there, I didn't have one.

So I became a born again believer in Christ. From the outset, I was determined not to become one of those stuck-up, ultra-conservative, Republican buffoons that were so rightly condemned on cable TV. I purposed to be different, and I was-sometimes because that's who I was, other times because that's who everyone else wasn't. I don't think this was all bad-Christianity is and always will be counter-cultural. We can't and shouldn't be defined by a political party or cultural movement-and heaven help us if we let the media do it for us. What we need to do-and what I was haltingly learning-is to "test everything and cling to the good." This means we need to speak the truth even if it's the same truth spoken by our opponents. This isn't associating with evil because all truth is God's truth; when we speak His truth, we associate with Him, and glorify Him.

After deciding to go to Grove City College, 350 miles away from my hometown, I once again lived an ideal life. A constant cycle of pizza parties, ultimate Frisbee, Bible study, snow football (and also some classes…in computer science, I think) convinced me that I made the right college choice. In the aftermath of September 11, a group of friends and I decided to give blood because we had heard supplies were low. I ended up giving blood for the first and last time with the Red Cross in Grove City. I got a letter a couple months later saying they had detected Hepatitis C antibodies in my blood. This started a year-long process of blood tests, doctor's appointments, and talking with Elizabeth and my family, before I decided to begin a year-long round of treatment. What that amounted to was a year of injecting myself with a needle twice a day, five pills a day, and a blood test and doctor's appointment every month. This was kind of the first factor which would eventually create for the perfect storm our Senior year.

The next factor was supposed to be a good thing. I did very well on an entrance exam given by U.S. Steel to potential interns, and so I received the opportunity to intern with their programming department. The two options put before us were: (1) work for U.S. Steel for a year straight, and delay completing my degree, or (2) work the summer for U.S. Steel, and then Tuesdays and Thursdays over the course o the next year, inline with the rest of my classes. We eventually chose the second option. Now Grove City is an hour away from Pittsburgh, which would mean an hour of driving each way, twice a week…if you were comfortable driving in Pittsburgh, which I wasn't. So what I did instead was drive 20 minutes south, take a commuter bus into Pittsburgh, and take a city bus near the office, then walk the remaining 3-4 blocks on foot. In retrospect, learning to drive it straight would probably have been much easier, but change and bold, new experiences have never been easy for me. Also, the four hours of commuting per day gave me valuable time to study for my other classes.

So now we fast-forward again, this time to the beginning of my Senior year in college. I had been dating a lovely young girl named Elizabeth for almost a year. We had made it clear we were planning on getting engaged, but had not made it official until September of 2002. We had just gotten back from an engagement party that represented a massive clash of cultures between my family and Elizabeth's-and was a microcosm for the very real clash between our families-when my parents called to say they had some concerns about our relationship. As we began discussing these concerns with them, with each other, and with some close friends, it became clear that some concerns were valid, but others seemed a little fuzzy. In any case, the question remained: what to do about the wedding? Does it go on as planned, get postponed or get called off? I had had very little previous experience with weddings, so I understood very little of how these things worked. (I also was unaware of how common this sort of thing was.) My parents wanted to postpone the wedding indefinitely, which seemed like a bad idea from a number of angles (how long is long enough? Who decides when it'll be rescheduled? Who decides if it gets called off permanently? Who's in the driver seat?) Finally, we decided to darn the torpedoes, full steam ahead.

The thing that seemed to cause it all to blow up in our face was the bridal shower. Elizabeth sent a shower invitation, but told me that it was effectively a "token invitation", thinking that none of her family would ever drive out for a shower that distance (and that it would be too much to ask them to do so). My parents heard the word "token" and were thrown for a loop by everything they thought they saw in Elizabeth's life confirmed. I, in the meantime, was still trying to work in Pittsburgh twice a week, attend classes, and manage an aggressive, chemotherapy-like treatment for hepatitis; I had no idea what to think.

So what I decided to do was break up with Elizabeth from several hundred miles away-over the phone. In retrospect, the only good thing about this decision was that I did not opt to do so over email or carrier pigeon. Actually, that's not true; the other good thing is that, for the first time in this whole situation, I was bearing the consequences of my own decision. I told her we needed to take some time off and the wedding was off indefinitely. My dad then told her that she was not worthy to be part of our family. He felt like he needed to say this to protect our family. When I got back to college, Elizabeth and I (with our respective roommates acting as seconds) had a tearful, slobbering goodbye meeting, where she gave me back the engagement ring and I told her things were definitely off. Elizabeth had a lot of other things to give back, so she recruited poor Derek Campbell to bring them up to my room for her. So our future life together, founded on a job offer in Altoona, halfway between our families, was seemingly down the tubes.

A few days later, she managed to catch me in the student union and asked me whether I was making my parents' decision, or my own. I honestly didn't have an answer to that, and ultimately decided to take a few months to make sure my decision was the right one. I floated that past my parents, and the conspiracy theories abounded. I finally put my foot down and told them that's what I was going to do, regardless of their feelings. They told me they would never attend a wedding to see me married to Elizabeth. I think they and I both hoped the other would back down.

So I returned to New Jersey, missing my actual graduation ceremony because of how painful it would have been for everyone, feeling completely defeated by the world. One of the things my parents offered and I accepted was to send me to a Christian counselor near their house. I met with Lillian perhaps 4 or 5 times. At the end of our last meeting, Lillian said, "I think I know what you should do: You should move to Altoona, and be free of influences from both sides, and decide what you need to do." Looking back, she couldn't have been more right.

I moved out to Altoona, asking Jason Garber to once again consider me for the job I had interviewed for a couple months prior. He agreed, and I moved out to Altoona a couple weeks later. That summer was perhaps the most conflicted one of my life. It was filled with good times, like Eli Garber's first birthday party in the backyard of the Pinecroft apartment, and the discovery of Mama Randazzo's pizza miracle. It was also filled with painful times, as I continued dialoging, internally and externally, about what God wanted me to do about Elizabeth. Just before I felt confident enough to get back in touch with her, Ben felt like he needed to tell me that he had heard Elizabeth had moved down to Mississippi. This again threw me for a loop for another week or two, but I finally decided to get back in touch with her and resume a relationship.

I felt confident that this was a good decision because two important people, Ben and Lillian, had both mentioned to me over the course of a couple months that they didn't think God necessarily had one spouse in mind for a person; in fact, there might be any number of people God saw as wise marriage partners. A couple months after we had gotten back together, I was listening to Anointed for Business by Ed Silvoso, and he made a non-business comment along the same lines (paraphrased): "Perhaps some of you are thinking you are married to the wrong spouse. Let me encourage you that, by treating this person as if they were the right spouse, you might find them being transformed by your love." I think this is an important thing for married couples to keep in mind.

Things were sometimes rough between us, understandably, and were even rougher with my parents. My parents and I tried to stay off the topic of Elizabeth, but when we failed, it often led to heated arguments and debates. I'm not sure if there's anything I could have done to make them come to the wedding; I really wanted them to, but I was now convinced that, with or without them, this was the right decision.

So, after a long time spent in Pennsylvania and Mississippi, respectively, the day finally came for us to be married: June 12, 2004. It ended up being a small wedding, with lots of friends from college, some of Elizabeth's close family, and no one else. Looking back on it, everything takes on the characteristic of complete sweetness. For instance, Ben left his shoes in the hotel room and had to attend in flip-flops. Britt Pratt showed up even though he wasn't actually invited. And all the food was prepared by Elizabeth, her roommate's family, and our friends.

It still amazes me that God is able to bring so much good out of so much heartache. There are still so many stories to tell, about how my parents reconciled with us, about being free of hepatitis, and about how God is freeing us from many of the sins that still plague our marriage, but I don't want to keep you here all night.

Look Before You Speak

Jeremiah 23:34-6: Look Before You Speak

Please turn in your Bibles to Jeremiah 23:34-6 (NIV): "If a prophet or a priest or anyone else claims, 'This is the oracle of the Lord,' I will punish that man and his household. This is what each of you keeps on saying to his friend or relative: 'What is the Lord's answer?' or 'What has the Lord spoken?' But you must not mention 'the oracle of the Lord' again, because every man's own word becomes his oracle and so you distort the words of the living God, the Lord Almighty, our God." Now let's pray and ask for God's wisdom.

Our passage today has some strong words for people who claim to speak for God, and you might think that my point is to discredit human messengers with "a word from God", but it isn't. I'm one of those people who thinks that the spiritual gifts of prophecy, speaking in tongues and healing are not necessarily delusions, although I'm also very skeptical about them, because much of what I've heard, seen or read about them has been uninspiring. I don't have time to go into why I think they're still in play today, but basically, God tells us in several places that He has given us these gifts, and I haven't found any verses to say He's taken them away.

I also want you to know that this is not a verse "aimed" at anyone. As I've been reading through the Old Testament this summer, I came upon this verse a couple weeks ago, and I was riveted by the power of the language. God uses such expressive words through Jeremiah that you can almost feel his frustration at being misrepresented by these impostors. In fact, this is a good reason for me to make sure the things I say about God are true.

My point with these verses is for all of us to remember what God says about how He's being portrayed as we talk to each other, see preachers on TV, etc. Proverbs 22:1 says, "A good name is more desirable than great riches; to be esteemed is better than silver or gold." I believe God will go to great lengths to preserve the integrity of His name.

The backstory to Jeremiah's prophecy is not a pretty one. The Babylonian's have just captured Jerusalem, and in addition to capturing King Jehoiakim, they also carted off some of the Temple's treasures which the priests used to worship God. The symbolism by King Nebuchadnezzar is unmistakable here: he is asserting his dominance over not just the political rulers of Judah, but also the God they claim to trust. In Jehoiakim's place, Jehoiachin ascends to the throne. Biblical scholars aren't actually in agreement on how old Jehoiachin was when he became king: some manuscripts say he was 18, others that he was 8; suffice to say he was young. Now, if you can imagine adding an assortment of false prophets to this already tumultuous scene, you get a feel for how unsettled the people must have been, not to mention the young king. Here's what Jeremiah says earlier about these prophets:

"Do not listen to these prophets when they prophesy to you,
filling you with futile hopes.
They are making up everything they say.
They do not speak for the Lord!
They keep saying to those who despise my word,
'Don't worry! The Lord says you will have peace!'
And to those who stubbornly follow their own desires,
they say, 'No harm will come your way!'"
(23:16b-17; NLT)

When the king really needed someone to tell him the truth, Jeremiah was one of the few willing to do the job. And of course, we know these people were fakes because, not only were they dishonoring God and His word, but they would also be proved false. About 11 years after this prophecy was given, Judah, in the middle of a botched rebellion from the Babylonian empire, would see Jerusalem fall to King Nebuchadnezzar's army.

Like most Biblical prophets, Jeremiah had immediate recipients of his prophecy—his contemporaries in Judah—but we are also meant to benefit from his ministry. What is God saying to us through Jeremiah today?

I think, for one, God is warning us of the danger in pretending that our own ideas come from Him. If we think it's arrogant when one person misrepresents another, imagine how much more grating it sounds when we claim falsely to speak for the Creator and Savior of the World. We know that's not something that pleases God because God, through Christ, worked very hard to establish the authority of His prophecies. In Matthew 9:1-8, Jesus went out of His way to tell a paralytic that his sins were forgiven. When the teachers of the law see this, they take Him for a blasphemer. In response, Jesus heals the man's paralysis, demonstrating His complete dominion over physical and spiritual health.

In the familiar story of the woman at the well (John 4), Jesus demonstrates His ability to convict people of their sin, by pointing out to the Samaritan woman that she was living in sexual sin. This clearly causes a change in her, because she gets everyone else in town to listen to Him, and proclaims that He told her everything she'd ever done. The end result: many of the townspeople became believers based partly on her testimony.

Signing God's name to our ideas also has the added dangers of lawlessness and rebellion. Earlier in his ministry, God says through Jeremiah, "'A horrible and shocking thing has happened in the land: The prophets prophesy lies, the priests rule by their own authority, and my people love it this way. But what will you do in the end?'" (5:31; NIV) The Jews had utterly rejected the God-ordained systems they needed to love God and one another (which were the foundations for Israeli society). Unfortunately, we know what they did in the end: God subjected them to chastening and rebuke under the hand of the Babylonians (and yet, by the way, they still rebelled even after that). That's pretty bad, but how about us? I know I rebelled against God this week, so I can't justify feeling superior to them.

When we claim to speak for God, in addition to everything else, this is an act of rebellion. God says, "For rebellion is like the sin of divination, and arrogance like the evil of idolatry...you have rejected the word of the Lord..." It comes from 1 Samuel 15:23. It speaks boldly and forcefully about God's holiness, and how it must grieve His heart when we reject His words for our own, not even entirely because of what we do to Him, but what we do to ourselves. At times like these we can be thankful that God's high expectations for us were met by God's Son.

In this passage, Jeremiah also accuses the false prophets of "distorting the words of the living God", or as the New Living Translation renders it, is "turning God's Word upside down". Essentially, these false prophets contradict Jeremiah's message, and they contradict what would ultimately happen to the city of Jerusalem a decade later. Their words are a kind of "spiritual static" that makes it harder for people to hear what God is really saying to them. God is consistent, through and through. James says that with God "there is no variation or shadow of turning" (1:17; NKJV). This underscores the exhortation James gives later in the book:

"With our tongues we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men who were made in God's likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers, this should not be. Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring? My brothers, can a fig tree bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs?" (3:9-12; NIV)

But James's words are directed at all Christians: you, me, and every other believer in Christ. God's calling for prophets in the Old Testament is higher still. Look at his words:

"'But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in My name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die.' And if you say in your heart, 'How shall we know the word which the Lord has not spoken?'--If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the Lord does not take place or come true, that is a message the Lord has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously. Do not be afraid of him." (Deuteronomy 18:20-22; NIV)

"From early times the prophets who preceded you and me have prophesied war, disaster and plague against many countries and great kingdoms. But the prophet who prophesies peace will be recognized as one truly sent by the Lord only if his prediction comes true." (Jeremiah 28:9; NIV)

Now, am I making the very bold statement that false prophets among us today should be stoned? Absolutely not. I do think there are good reasons to argue that the Biblical office of prophet has changed because of Christ's atonement, but I think God's demand that a prophet's calling be to deliver God's messages above all else is unchanged.

The problem of misrepresenting God's character also invalidates and trivializes the message of the Gospel that we wish to bring to a dying world. Paul says in Romans,

"You, therefore, who teach one another, do you not teach yourself? You who preach that a man should not steal, do you steal?...You who make your boast in the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law? For 'the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you'" (2:21, 24; NKJV)

If people want a religion whose core tenets contradict themselves, they can get that from Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, or a number of other choices from the spiritual smorgasbord. A relationship with God through Christ does not--and indeed should not--have any contradictions on the part of God's character, words or actions. When we're presenting this relationship--when we're being God's hands and feet--we should not do so out of hypocrisy.

I had some friends who took a missions trip to a foreign country, and they were filling out the passport papers and told me that they had stated their reasons for going as strictly "vacation purposes", so that the visa process would go more smoothly. I encouraged them to make sure they didn't sacrifice the Truth they were trying to present as missionaries.

I think there's a simple solution to all the hypocrisy and falsehood we've just discussed, and that is to judge all of our words and actions against the plumb line of Scripture. If this means sacrificing a crucial point that can't be supported or subjecting our prejudices to our own scrutiny, then so be it. None of us has a monopoly on truth, and we are all just truth-seekers, with God's Word as our foundation.

When the early church was bickering over whether Paul or Apollos was the superior leader of the church, Paul speaks to the issue with authority. In 1 Corinthians, he says, "Now, brothers, I have applied these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, that you may learn from us the meaning of the saying, 'Do not go beyond what is written.' Then you will not take pride in one man over another." (4:6; NIV)

Here are a couple practical ways I see to make that happen:

1. If the words of a prophet contradict God's Word, it can't be from God.


2. If the words of a prophet definitively claim to see inside another man's heart, or they make absolute truth claims apart from Scripture...it may not be wrong, but it's something to view warily and with trepidation. The dangers you run into in this case are: (a) judging another man's heart rather than his actions (1 Corinthians 4:5), and (b) setting up your own opinions as the words of God.


3. And above all else, the one prophesying and those prophesied to must maintain their own humility at all times. Paul says in Ephesians, "Be filled with the spirit...giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another in the fear of God" (5:18b, 21).

I saw a denominational slogan once that I think gets to the heart of this topic: "In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things, charity."

Something that I'm still learning every day, especially being married and having a family, is the power my words have. When I misrepresent false things as true, or even speak truth with the wrong intentions, I'm showing disrespect to the God of All Truth. In contrast, we have the picture of Jesus, who didn't just live by the truth of His words—He died because of them. Think of all the times near the end of His life on earth when he could have turned around and conveniently "forgotten" what He knew about God to get out of trouble with men. He chose not to--and thank God for that--because His very identity and good name was at stake.

Bringing Good out of Bad

Before I begin, I'd like to say thank you to everyone who is here today, was at the viewings yesterday, and has sent cards, called, or sent gifts or foods. Your love is comforting us at our time of need.

I'd like to read you three verses from the book of Acts today, about Saint Stephen, for whom Stephen, the patron saint of Hungary, is named.

"And devout men carried Stephen to his burial, and made great lamentation over him. As for Saul, he made havoc of the church, entering every house and dragging off men and women, committing them to prison. Therefore those who were scattered went everywhere preaching the word." --Acts 8:2-4

The verses I just read paint a very hard picture: a good man, Stephen, has just died, and a very bad man, Saul, is persecuting and imprisoning Christian believers. It appears that Satan has gotten his victory: Stephen has been silenced, and God's people are rounded up like cattle. God, however, is bigger than any circumstances life can throw at us, as the next verse testifies. Even as Christ's followers flee from Jerusalem, they take His words of hope to the ends of the earth with them.

The message I would like to give you is that God is bigger than this morning's circumstances too. In the face of Grandma's death, we have a God who is bigger, stronger, and more loving than any other force ever seen or imagined. A God who says, "I will never leave you nor forsake you." A God who lets us "lie down in green pastures and restores our soul." A God who loved us so much, He sent His Son who, by dying, shows us the way to life.

I remember when I was about five or six years old, Grandma would tell me, "You know Jason, I'm an old woman." Being just a kid, I thought she was saying she was going to die. So when she said that, I would cry and cry, and say, "Grandma, don't die!" I think that our society has the same problem I had when I begged Grandma not to die: not only can't we accept the fact of death, we can't even talk about it.

But if you can't talk about death at a funeral, when can you talk about it?

Well, this morning I want to talk to you a little about death. Ever since the Garden of Eden, you and I and every other person we've ever known are born with the curse that someday we'll die. When Adam and Eve sinned, they, and all their descendants, were doomed not just to physical but also spiritual death, and so wounded God's heart that He did everything he could to reverse this process of spiritual death. He sent us the Jewish law, with its sacrifices, blessings and cursings, so that by that Law, we would know how to please him and how to have our sins forgiven—usually by the shedding of blood by a living sacrifice.

Now when God sent His Son Jesus to the earth, he made it clear that Jesus' purpose was to: show us how to love God, live a sinless life, and then, in His most significant act, become that living sacrifice that will once and for all take away the sins of the world.

I know the name of Jesus might be unpopular nowadays, but if you can't talk about Jesus in a church, where can you talk about him?

By Jesus dying on the cross, he made a way for all of us to never taste spiritual death. This does not reverse the process of physical death, but more importantly, it undoes our spiritual sickness. As 2 Corinthians 5:21 says, "For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him."

The catch is that accepting God's forgiveness through Jesus means that God is your Lord—your master—and the rest of your life is His, to do whatever he wants with it. This doesn't mean you'll have to become a missionary to deepest Africa, but it does mean that He will take you where He wants you to go, whether that's an office, a church, a factory, or a jungle. The upside is, wherever He takes you will be the safest, best and most worthwhile place you'll ever be. As he says in Romans 10:9, "If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved."

This is the same God that Grandma confessed as her Lord. She always let her children and grandchildren know that she was praying for us and our families, and that she loved us. She cried out to God, the God of Saint Stephen, worshipping and praising him through the Rosary. Grandma leaves this world as a loving mother, an adoring grandmother, a devoted sister, a caring aunt, and a faithful friend. Whether she knew it or not, she was living out one of Stephen's life principles: "Be humble in this life, that God may raise you up in the next."

If you want to know about the God that Grandma worshipped, we're always available. We'd love to tell you how God has turned some terrible circumstances in our lives into beautiful miracles.