A Beautiful Wild Mess Of A Dog

My roommate Nate and I recently became owners of a curious and mysterious and malnourished white Siberian Husky. We don't know much about her, where she came from, or about her previous owner(s). But she has an interesting past. We're sure of it. Her frail body and her sweet (and almost clingy) personality tells us volumes. They point to a missing story of her, a story maybe saved only for the eyes of God Himself. The pages to her book are God's pages, surely full of pain and suffering, but maybe some intrigue, perhaps a few chapters of fun.

Nate named her Aurora after the Northern Lights. She has one blue eye. The other one is dark brown. She's a gorgeous animal, especially if you have an imagination. She looks like a dog that could, in 6 months or so, look as if she had jumped straight out of the pages of the novel, Call of the Wild. When she fills out and her coat grows back, she'll look legitimately exotic, especially beautiful.

But tomorrow is Tuesday. And borrowing an act of God, she will still look and act like a stray, she will still be throwing up, wetting the floor, and want to run every chance she gets. She already figured out how to dig under the fence, escape two sets of collars, attract various suiters of differing breeds, and unlatch herself from the chain in the backyard that keeps her from running to Alaska.

She is an escape artist. And I have a funny feeling, deep in my tummy, that Nate and I have a few precious days to make a few precious decisions on her future here, whether or not to make the adjustments to house and home required to keep a curious and wild dog alive and happy and safe from the wild wild world. I have this feeling because I've seen into her beautiful crazy wild eyes. She will make that decision for us if we wait much longer. She simply isn't the kind of animal to sit idly by as I wait for Nate to return home from Christmas in Missouri. She is a Husky. She's a beautiful mess. To be continued...

Christ + The American Dream

As I drove home tonight, a sign in front of a small church in my neighborhood caught my attention. It read exactly this, "Christ paid a great price so that you can have a great life."

There you have it. Christ humbled himself by being born of a poor, virgin woman, lived a life without a place to call his own, hung himself on a tree, willingly allowing himself to be murdered (maybe even screaming so loud on the cross that his voice was raw), and brought himself back to life, all in order that you and I might have the comforts of post-modern civilization. Man, what a cool dude. Thanks, Jesus!

If only the rest of the world could hear about this guy. Santa Claus got nothing on Him!

But He didn't die in order that we have a great life. That's not the Gospel. He died because God is Holy and will not be mocked by our stiff-necked pride and willingness to sell our souls for a slice of bread. He died because we deserve, in even our best days, to burn in Hell. Yes, Hell. He died in the place of sinners. He died and was raised again in order to buy back human souls. He's in the business of bringing dead men to life (to Himself). To have Jesus is to be saved from death and to be fellow heirs with Christ, to be eternally-satisfied, not in the life that we've been given, but in God Himself.

Scripture says all who wish to save their lives, will lose it. But those who wish to lose it for His sake and for the sake of the Gospel will find it. That's the Gospel! The truth is we want to twist His words to say what we want them to say. When He says, "I've come to give you life," we so desperately want Him to mean that we've won the lottery, literally. And we want to cash his death and resurrection in right now in the form of a new car, a sexy wife, 2.5 kids, relatively easy living, and a comfortable retirement traveling the country-side in a 5th wheel.

The truth is that many men in the Bible who knew Christ and trusted in Him with their lives, actually didn't find things going so well for them. They lost their lives for the sake of Christ and for the Gospel. And from all accounts, they were satisfied losing everything to prove that He, alone, is more satisfying than life itself.

To Finish Well

We are a nation in need of strong, durable, and lasting men who have a passion for Christ, especially in their golden years. O how easy it must be after working decades of hard labor to want to take a retirement check and waste away on the couch for the remainder of life.

But we were meant for so much more. I beg of you, fathers, don't waste your life channel surfing your retirement years away. We need your knowledge. We desperately need your life's example to know what it's like to be men of authentic faith (to stand firm, to endure, and to finish well).

May God's son be revealed as the all-satisfying Savior who is able to save our men from the fatal consequences of a life in pursuit of the American Dream and easy retirement living.

Fatal Success Or An All-Satisfying Savior

This short letter was written this past week (to be mailed along with other bits of encouragement from others) to those who attend Fellowship Bible Church in Tulsa, but who are away to college or serve in the armed forces. My prayer is that it encourages you as well:

I’m not that old. And I’m guessing you probably aren’t, either. But you don’t have to be of a certain age or skill level—you don’t have to achieve a great deal of success or master a lot of things—in order to make your life count. However, practically our entire educations have been devoted to get us to think otherwise, as if human achievement and success actually satisfy the longings of our souls.

But success doesn’t satisfy. It can be fatal! The American Dream (of fatal success) takes many forms and claims countless lives, daily. And I pray that as your read these words, that you deeply consider the meaning of your own life. How fulfilled are you? As far as I’m concerned, in order to make your life count, you only need to know a few simple, life-changing, and eternally-satisfying truths about the depth and riches of His love toward those who believe (Eph 3:18)—and be willing to trade in your life for them—to have a truly purposeful and meaningful existence.
O brother and sister, I pray that we come to know the everlasting riches and mercy of the Cross, and that it transforms every area of our lives, so that when our time comes to meet our Father in heaven, we might not have empty hands and broken dreams to offer Him.

But rather, that our lives would be so consumed by the power and riches of the Holy Spirit, that His love flows freely through us like living water, gushing from a fountain (John 7:38). My prayer is that you be filled with the love of Christ, to know the power of Him who has called you, and to be willing to lay down that which was never yours to take in the first place, in exchange for the everlasting fulfillment found serving an all satisfying Savior.

In Him,

Sean Roberts

We Are Far Too Easily Pleased

CS Lewis' "The Weight of Glory" is a sobering reminder that God desires--and has prepared a way through His son--that we might find infinite pleasure in Him, and in Him alone. The folks at http://dontwasteyourlife.com have made a pretty cool video from an excerpt of that work.



C.S. Lewis' "The Weight of Glory" full text pdf.

Middle-Aged Friends: A Plea To Not Waste Your Life

Don't Waste Your Life from Andrew Laparra on Vimeo.

His Power To Heal & Sustain Through His Sovereign Grace

God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world ~ CS Lewis

The God of the Bible is unquestionably and completely sovereign over the universe and everything in it, including pain. For in this hope, we are saved! Romans 5:3-5, 8:24-25 and John 16: 32-34 say we can hope in God this way. He is a supreme God, sovereign over natural disasters (book of Jonah), and over Satan's hand over our sickness, disease, and oppression (Matt 8).

So why does God let pain and problems happen to good people? If I grow up doing all the right things, reading my Bible, sharing Christ with others, refusing to watch bad movies, and then experience something bad like a breakup, death, or even cancer, I might just think God is a great big lie. But here's the thing, we can't put God into our debt (see Matt Chandler video below); we have no right to force God's hand in anything. God does what he does, because He is God. But He is good (regardless of how our circumstances play out). He is good because he holds the power over death and by His power alone, holds all things together by the council of His will (Eph 1:11)



Christ answers this question plainly, for all to see. He has not come to give gifts as much as to be THE GIFT! He tells us we will certainly have problems, "In this world you will have trouble. But take heart, I have overcome the world." But He is enough, even if we are not healed. Job says, "the Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord" Job 1:21,22.

Pain is inevitable. Life is brutal and frustrating at times. John Piper once said, "the biblical categories of God's sovereignty over pain lay like land minds throughout Scripture, just waiting for someone to take it seriously. They don't kill. But they do explode trivial notions about God's will over massive suffering." The God of the Bible is wholly capable to sustain us. And He will do it! Will you take him at his word? Will you treasure him as ultimately valuable once the pain comes?

For those who love God, He promises to sustain us in two ways: either through healing or by His sustaining grace, that produces for us endurance (Rom 5, James 1). Whatever we do, we do because we've been given the grace of God to do it. For if the Lord wills, we will do this or that (James 4). Whether He heals us from sickness or keeps us in sustaining grace, both ways are equally glorious ways of showing His sovereign will over those He loves. But He is solely and independently free to choose how He displays his sovereignty to us. He sends rain on the just and the unjust (Matt 5:45). The same God heals the leper (Mark 1:4-45) who allows Satan to torment Job with boils. (Job 2:7).

God is not Santa Claus. He will not always answer our prayers to remove the pain. But He is good because He promises even in the deepest pain, He is enough. The god of fun church teaches us to be comfortable, serve him diligently, and bad things won't happen to good people. Many well intentioned, Bible believing people grow up in church and have a view God this way. But as soon as tragedy strikes, their confidence in God breaks and they turn from the very truth that was intended to not only sustain them through suffering, but to be their joy within the pain. But instead of praising God for being God, instead of worshiping Him, treasuring Him as supremely valuable and sovereign over all the universe like king David did who said "Whom in heaven have I but you? On earth there is nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail. But you are the strength of my heart and my portion forever!" (Psalm 73:25,26) some who are unprepared for suffering, lose hope and deny Him altogether because they didn't have roots that went down deep (Parable of the Soils in Luke 8).

Pain is an essential part of life. Don't waste it! The God of the universe should be ultimately more valuable to the believer than all the treasure on earth, the best health one could ask for, even better than life itself!

In Him,

Sean