Among pro football stars a trend started with San Francisco quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who began kneeling during our national anthem. President Trump eventually called on NFL owners to deal unequivocally with players who disrespect the American flag. Further political protests erupted, including the decision of the Pittsburgh Steelers to stay out of sight when The Star-Spangled Banner was played before their Chicago game. The Seahawks and Titans followed suit. Arms were locked. Heels were dug in on both sides.

Is this just about freedom of speech? Is this just about police brutality specifically, or racial injustice generally? I don’t think so. I think what we’re witnessing are symptoms of a nation in trouble.

What is wrong? For starters, we have lost our respect for authority. And I don’t mean this as an indictment against the kneeling players only. It is more widespread than that. And it goes both ways. We have forgotten that to respect authority is to revere God (Romans 13:1). We have also forgotten to speak of our political opponents as those who – despite perhaps deep disagreements with us – are created in God’s image (James 3:9).

We have abandoned the pursuit of godliness. We have tolerated racism in our own hearts. We have used our money and power for selfish advancement and fleeting comforts. We have failed to limit our own freedoms for the sake of harmony and peace (First Corinthians 8). Until we are willing to pray and work for the common good, how can we expect a song or a banner to unite us? We are divided.

Nobody asked my opinion but here goes. NFL players: please stand for the anthem. The rest of us: please stand up for those who can’t stand up for themselves. All of those. We must never forget that the way down ends up being the way up (James 4:10).

I was moved by the words of Alejandro Villanueva, the one dissenting Steeler: “If you’re right with God, everything else is fine; if you’re not right with God, everything else is out of place.” Jesus said something similar (Matthew 6:33): “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.”

I’ve been reading through First and Second Samuel for my personal devotions. One text particularly strikes me, and it’s when David has to flee from King Saul (First Samuel 27). In fear for his life, David escapes to the land of the Philistines where Saul can no longer pursue him. There the king of Gath protects David, David’s family, and the 600 men who are traveling with David. But think back for a moment: way back when David killed the Philistine champion Goliath, on behalf of King Saul himself, who would have imagined that the Philistine king would one day have to protect David from Saul? Here’s my point: God uses all kinds of unusual people, and all kinds of really strange circumstances, in kingdom ways which you and I would never expect.

Maybe our Lord will use the mess that is the NFL to humble all of us. After all, our national entertainment only mirrors our national values. Maybe love will break out where there has been pride and foolishness. Maybe we’ll see people kneeling, but for different reasons. If that happens, we will know that God’s Spirit and gospel are on the march!

One day you and I will sing the songs of Zion. Every voice will be raised in unison as God’s redeemed people lift high the anthem of Christ. Race and ethnicity and social status, and even football, will matter no more. And we will be home.

Pastor Charles

“Of all nations” (Jesus, Matthew 28:19)!  Romania Mission 2017 was a wonderful week, and I’ll send just a few more pics while we’re stuck here in Chicago. By God’s grace we tackled a few complications on the way home, including a power outage at the Timisoara Airport which knocked out all of their computer systems. Severe and in fact deadly thunderstorms raced though on Sunday, making all international boarding complicated and delayed.

Tom did an excellent job distributing the remainder of the Serbian and Romanian Bibles. He is an evangelist at heart, and I’m grateful for his boldness for Christ.

Saturday morning Bri and I led a children’s event. Some local pastors took our team for a cruise on the Danube in the early afternoon. That night I preached high on a hillside in an incredibly quaint Czech village. You’ll see some of the parishioners walking to and gathering outside their beautiful building. The setting was so charming, and the people so warm and gracious, that the whole night seemed surreal.

Sunday morning was the 25th anniversary service. Both local mayors were present. You’ll see pastor Claudiu translating for one of them. I preached on the subject of “moving from being a mission to being on mission.” I preached again in the evening and talked about “pressing on” in the Lord, with the hope that Grace Baptist will appreciate their past without living in the past. I pray that God will bear good fruit through His Word that I was privileged to share.

Sleep well. I think I could sleep standing up at this point. Thanks for your faithful prayers, friends.

Pastor Charles

It’s soul-satisfying to come to the end of another day on the mission field in southwestern Romania. While Tom was out delivering Serbian Bibles this morning, Julian, Briana, and I prepared super-stuffed gift bags for the ladies’ conference that happened tonight. Briana did an absolutely excellent job teaching and encouraging the women. I was so proud of her.

“Loving God Even When Life Feels Broken” was the conference theme. Sessions included “Knowing Me,” “Keeping Me,” and “Embracing Me.” Using the imagery of sea glass that was once considered “trash” but which has now been made beautiful by pressure and time, Briana explained how God’s sanctifying grace is most powerfully at work in us when life feels overwhelmingly difficult.

She went on to use the account of Elijah to explain how quickly even strong believers can lose their identity in Christ, opting albeit unintentionally to believe the lies of others instead of the truths of God. As the ladies finished the third session, they were given a piece of sea glass to keep as a reminder of all that they learned. It was a rich and full day and night!

The sunset over the Danube was the Lord’s own icing on the cake. What a majestic Creator! Enjoy.

Another great day in Romania! More food distribution. Time with Pastor Claudiu, Corina, and the kids (including their new baby). The kickoff of the anniversary celebration marking the twenty-fifth year of our ministry partnership with Grace Church. You’ll be glad to know that Tom did a fantastic job remembering and reflecting on the goodness and faithfulness of God over the last quarter century!

Since I blogged about being “happy tired” last night, I thought I’d follow up with a couple of thoughts from my recent sermons on Psalm 23. One of the cool things about being in this part of the world is that you sometimes get to see a real shepherd. And real sheep. My heart is drawn to Verse 3, where I’m reminded that my Lord “restores my soul.” Don’t you just love that?

I’ve been telling God’s people here that we need our souls restored because, like those clueless sheep, we wander. We sin and stray. We lose our way. But we can always run back to the arms of a Father who loves us even when we’re far from home. Our God loves smelly sheep.

We also need a Shepherd because we forget the goodness of God. Settling far too often for lesser things, we often create chaos for ourselves through our own idolatry and rebellion. But, again, God is faithful to deliver us (from us). He is the Father of the prodigal … watching and waiting … running and embracing … kissing and celebrating!

And, my beloved fellow sheep, we need Christ to revive us because we grow weary and depleted. We get tired. We stumble and fall. I can picture a human shepherd tending patiently to the needs of his flock, even carrying a wounded animal that can’t go any further. How much more awesome is the thought of “the Word made flesh” hearing our cries for help, lifting our burdens, and replenishing our joy in Him.

If you want your soul restored, the Good Shepherd is all you need.

Pastor Charles

Have you ever been “happy tired”? What I mean by that is physically exhausted, but spiritually energized because you sense the Lord at work in spite of your human limitations? Happy tired! That’s me right now.

We arrived in Timisoara, Romania, safe and sound. A nice dinner in the historic city center was followed by finishing the trek all the way to Muldova Noua and Coronini late last night.

This morning we were up bright and early shopping for groceries and delivering much-needed food supplies in a few of the more remote areas. We also distributed Bibles in Romanian and Serbian which you helped provide. These encounters included meeting many people from an Orthodox religious heritage, but who are unaccustomed to reading Scripture themselves. Please pray that the Spirit will call these dear souls to Christ!

We also spent quite a bit of time in a new nursing home in Tom Unici’s hometown village. What God is doing there is quite remarkable, most notably building relational bridges with unbelievers in the community. It has been a full but very special day.

I preached tonight, from Psalm 23, in the villages of Radimna and Berzasca. The folks received God’s Word, and your eyeglasses and medicines, with great joy. Thank you for loving and giving.

Forgive me for not writing more, but I must turn in for the evening. I know you understand that.

The saints of the Danube River Valley send you their love. As do I.

Pastor Charles

Lord willing, this Sunday morning I’ll finish our summer preaching series “THE MISSION.” I have thoroughly enjoyed walking with you through a journey of self-understanding in light of our “in Christ” identity: Who am I? Why am I here? What has God called me to do? When I subtitled the series “a revolution of heart and mind,” I was hoping that all of us would be Spirit-awakened over the days of summer to a fresh delight in our life mission for Christ.

Let me say that another way: you matter! And that’s the grand theme that I’ll be taking up this Sunday. God cares about your future, and in fact has written every chapter of your story. When Jesus said, “It is finished,” He meant it.

Isn’t that good to know with all the “unknowns” all around us? Isn’t that good to know in an age when many people have concluded that we can’t “know” anything with certainty? Isn’t that good to know with powerful Irma brewing just to our south?

To quote the great theologian TobyMac: “I always feel like I am in waters over my head. I always feel like I’m more aware of my need than I’ve ever been in my life. I grew up in athletics, and I feel like I was taught my whole life to say ‘give me the ball, I’m going to score the game winner. I’ve got this.’ The wiser you get and the more life you live, you realize, for lack of better grammar, ‘I don’t got this.’ I have a desperate need for God. It’s beyond me.”

Friends, if you’re like me at all, even though you realize that “you don’t got this,” you desperately want your life to count. You want your legacy to matter. You want your kingdom influence to far outlive your short lifespan. I’ve got some good news for you: God wants that too! He has made a way for “right now” to matter forever.

So that’s what we’ll take up Sunday morning. Come expectant. Come to give. Come to serve. Come to love and be loved.

I’ll see you Sunday. So don’t sleep in: there’s too much good stuff going on at First Baptist Paducah!

Pastor Charles

When you live along the Texas Gulf Coast, staring a hurricane right in the eye is not all that unusual. The annual hurricane season is rarely without at least a viable threat or two. But what we’ve observed this week has nearly defied description.

Hurricane Harvey not only slammed the Lone Star shoreline with horrendous and deadly winds, but it aligned with other meteorological phenomena to dump record-shattering rainfall amounts in the Houston metro area. I don’t have to tell you about the widespread flooding and the destruction of more than 100,000 homes, as you’ve seen the footage and photographs for yourselves.

I am so grateful that our church family will be loving our friends in Houston, including a repair and rebuilding ministry in partnership with one of First Baptist Paducah’s former senior pastors, Dr. Kevin McCallon. Please contact our church office if you would like more information regarding how you can help.

Though not the place of his birth, Houston was my father’s adopted hometown. He has spent the lion’s share of the last eighty years there, practicing surgery for nearly half a century. It is my birth city, and where I attended Kolter Elementary School in Meyerland. (I remember Miss Hummel, Miss Davis, Mrs. Kidd, and Mrs. Gerver like it was yesterday.) I’m including a photo of Meyerland, where parts of town were transformed from city sidewalks to rushing rivers. You can see the street signs from our old neighborhood.

I’m also including a photo of Lakeside Country Club in West Houston, where my grandparents were charter members, and a place which I’ve enjoyed many times over the years. As well I’ll include a shot of one of the subdivisions adjacent to my sister’s house. She and her husband never lost their electricity, and their home became a refuge for others who were rescued but displaced.

In just the last few days we have seen our magnificent Creator in action, both in the beauty of a spectacular eclipse in the heavens, and in the fury of a great hurricane at sea level. He is the God of the whirlwind (Nahum 1:3). He is the Lord who calms the raging waters (Matthew 8:27). No falling sparrow escapes His eye (Matthew 10:29). Christ is worthy of all our faith and praise.

Pastor Charles

I’m attending the national conference of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) of the Southern Baptist Convention. It’s a fantastic experience, but it’s jam-packed and I won’t have much time to write today.

I do, however, want to take advantage of this opportunity to ask you to begin praying with me about an upcoming sermon series at First Baptist Paducah: UBERFAITH! Beginning Sunday morning, September 17 we will mine the spiritual riches of James 1 and 2. Please pray with me that the Spirit of God will move dynamically among us as we learn what go-the-distance faith looks like in real life!

If you’ve been feeling a little dry lately, or maybe like your spiritual life is stale or “tired,” this is for you. If you’ve slipped into a slump, or found yourself stuck in a spiritual rut, hold on! Fall refreshment is on the horizon. Never forget that we drink from a well which will never run dry (John 7:37-39).

You are loved, by Christ and by me.

Pastor Charles

Do you think that this just might have been the weirdest offering that God ever received? Five gold tumors and five gold rats! I’m not making it up. Check out First Samuel 6, which I happened to be reading last evening.

A little background … Israel was at war with the Philistines. Israel brought the Ark of the Covenant into the battle. The Philistines were afraid of the ark, because they understood that it represented the power of Israel’s God – so they fought with everything in them and managed to capture it. With the ark in their possession, they dragged it into one of their five primary cities, Ashdod. And not just into the city, but into the temple of their god Dagon. They “set it up beside Dagon” (First Samuel 5:2). The God of heaven and earth was not amused.

The next morning Dagon had fallen facedown – as if kneeling before the ark of the Lord. The Philistines propped him back up. And the next morning it happened again, only this time Dagon’s head and hands were severed. Then a plague of tumors broke out among the people: “the hand of the Lord was heavy against the people of Ashdod” (First Samuel 5:6). As the Philistines moved the ark from city to city in an effort to survive, the tumors would spread among the people wherever the ark landed.

So the Philistines finally decided to send the ark back to Israel, albeit a bit strangely. They put it on a cart and made two cows pull it. I’m not making this up. Here’s how they reasoned: if the cows pulled toward Israeli territory, it was God’s punishment; if the cows took off some other way, then this had all been a terrible mix-up “by coincidence” (First Samuel 6:9). Again, I am not making this up!

Where did the golden tumors and rats (“images of … tumors and images of … mice that ravage the land”) come in? The Philistines put these items in a box on the side of the ark as a guilt offering. Just in case.

Wow! I can barely process this account from the Scriptures. I’m not surprised by God’s judgment in the form of plagues. What does shock me is how the Philistines at times feared Israel’s God more than Israel did. Sometimes I see this lack of fear in my own soul, and sometimes I see it in the evangelical culture at large, and sometimes I see it in my nation. As bitterness divides America, and spiritual darkness encroaches, I grieve over the petty things which seem to occupy the time and attention of the church.

I’m also fascinated by the fact that the Philistines – though they personally observed the wrath and devastation of the Lord – kept insisting on their own inferior god. They knew that God was God enough to feel obliged to appease Him – “just in case” – but they would never bow before Him as Sovereign and Supreme.

Whether it’s Charlottesville or Spain, you and I don’t need to look very far to see that our world is in a heap of trouble, friends. Whether the attackers ride the wave of white supremacy or ISIS caliphate, there is no peace without Christ. Will you and l lift His banner high for such a time as this, or will we pretend not to know that “none is righteous, no, not one” (Romans 3:10). That passage goes on to say: “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

As this once-in-a-lifetime solar eclipse approaches the Paducah area, my prayer for us is that we will see beyond the glory of the heavenly bodies to the Creator of it all: Jesus is Lord! No cheap substitutes. No second best. No idols – golden or otherwise. Not to us, O LORD, not to us, but to your name give glory, for the sake of your steadfast love and your faithfulness (Psalm 115:1)!

Pastor Charles

According to our President, the U.S. military is “locked and loaded.” Tensions are mounting here and around the world in regard to the threat posed by North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, whom The New York Times referred to as “a moody young man with a nuclear arsenal.” They got that right. There is no doubt that North Korea’s nuclear weapons program is patently illegal under prevailing international law.

Sanctions by the United Nations apparently aren’t enough to curb the North Korean dictator’s determination to show off his nuclear prowess. Several overt threats have been issued by Jong-un, including one against Guam. Could the North Korean leader really be crazy enough to fire missiles at a U.S. territory? Only the Lord knows. And what role does China actually play in this nearly global conflict? And Iran, despite the 2015 “nuclear deal”? Again, we can study and we can surmise, but only the Lord knows for sure. Apparently China would not oppose the U.S. were we to defend ourselves against a first strike by North Korea. Hopefully that theory will never be tested.

I think it’s safe to assume that North Korea’s desire is to possess a nuclear warhead that can strike the U.S. mainland. North Korea volunteered just this Tuesday that its missiles could hit New York City now. In fact Vice Admiral James Syring told the House Armed Services Committee that we “must assume that North Korea can reach us with a ballistic missile.” If I interpreted his testimony correctly, he also implied that the U.S. is not prepared for that kind of surprise scenario. In his own words, Secretary of Defense James Mattis described that kind of situation as “tragic on an unbelievable scale.”

I think it’s also safe to admit that we have very few tricks up our sleeve when it comes to countering Jong-un’s nuclear development. A scary world? Yes. But North Korea’s power and volatility are nothing new for South Korea and Japan. We have church members living in Seoul. On their last visit to Paducah I was able to hear about their regular nuclear attack drills, which they said tend to fade away as background noise against a threat which is so longstanding.

Let’s face it: there are no quick fixes or easy answers here. Under the earthly dominion of a cruel dictatorship are our brothers and sisters in Christ who are living in North Korea – despite the constant threat of persecution as real as the death penalty. Some estimates claim 10% of the population as underground followers of Christ. Not to mention over 25 million North Koreans who have no choice but to at least publicly support a tyrant. South of the border, South Korea’s capital city is home to ten million civilians. North Korea already has the power to utterly annihilate the 28,000 U.S. troops permanently stationed near the demilitarized zone. And Tokyo’s nine million are within easy reach of a madman.

Under Kim Jong-un, North Korea wrote nuclear weaponry into the nation’s constitution as a “guarantor” of their security. But, friends, you and I have a better Guarantor! Go back and read Romans 8:28-39. Then reread it. Human history will offer us more than a fair share of threats and assaults, but Christ will win. Indeed He already has won! No tribulation “will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord!”

Also check out Hebrews 7:20-25. The ministry of Jesus for us far surpasses that of any human priest. Christ has taken a divine oath on our behalf. He is our surety. Because of who Christ is, we know that God will never break a promise to us. If you ever co-signed for a loan, you became the guarantor of that loan. You accepted the legal responsibility that the debt would be repaid in full, guaranteeing the specific terms of the transaction. So not only is Christ the Mediator of the New Covenant – the one who established it – but He is also the one who has assumed full responsibility to make good on everything that the New Covenant promises those of us who are in Christ.

Ephesians 1:13-14 says that – when you and I heard the gospel and believed in Christ – we “were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.” In Christ we are as safe as safe can be!

It kind of puts the whole nuclear-arsenal-thing in its proper perspective.

Pastor Charles