q. shenaynayYou can pretend we're sitting in the prayer garden on the hill if it makes it easier to read this all the way to the end. You and me and two icy cold Dr. Peppers. Sound good?
I went to a wonderful meeting in Tyler over the weekend and heard some stirring-up, soul-feeding preaching. The Lord was there -- to feel His presence like that always feels oddly like surprise -- a weightless, luminous surprise.
I got to hear Elder Steven Bloyd preach for the first time in... oh goodness. I have no idea. Eons. I went to college with Bro. Steven at Texas Tech, and we both attended the Lubbock church during that time. Back then, he was the skinny, quiet, reserved fellow who was always super polite and a consummate gentleman, who always showed up for church with a car full of elderly people whom he fussed over with great tenderness, who held down a real grown-up job while going to school, and lived with his grandparents so he could take care of them -- something he did with startling devotion and patience and selflessness. Needless to say, he sincerely didn't have a spare minute in his crowded life for girls, or in fact, for much of anything social -- he didn't hang out with the other young people much. I think most of us never felt like we really knew him, but we were all secretly sort of in awe of him. He was a little scary. His quiet example was a needling reminder to the rest of us comparatively footloose college kids in that church that we actually
could be more mature... be better servants of the Lord and His people... IF we would just decide to knuckle down and grow up. But we're all sinners, which means we really don't want to be reminded of that, do we?
It was such a joy to see the manner in which he has grown over the years -- the quiet boy I knew in college is now a confident, forthright man, speaking with power and strength and conviction. It was also a joy to see that some things have not changed: he is still carrying elderly people with him wherever he goes -- he brought aged Elder Compton, who has been his steady travelling companion for many years, to Texas with him. Because of Bro. Steven's willingness to travel with an old man who can no longer see nor hear much and needs a lot of tender care which undoubtedly makes the going much slower and more complicated than it would be alone, all the rest of us were blessed to hear a 101 year old man preach the gospel with a century's worth of wisdom. Think of that. Amazing. How many people in the history of the world have ever heard a 101 year old man preach the truth? I feel blessed to the point of astonishment.
So all of this made me begin to think about those days in college and all the young people who attended the church in Lubbock during my years there. The twenty-ish, pre-preacher versions of David Pyles, Dwayne Shafer and Bro. Steven (and I think a few other future preachers besides) were all there at the same time, and a whole host of other young PBs, from twentysomethings on down to babies. It was quite a crew. And then I began to think about how many of those young people are gone now, no longer occupying a pew among us in the Lord's house. The list was stunning, sobering, and heartbreaking for me. Imagine if they had all stayed. This has affected you, whether you realize it or not. Most of those people have kids about your age. And those kids will soon grow up and start families of their own. Just think of the pews they would be filling had they not fallen away. Think of what their presence would add to our fellowship -- their children would be counted amongst your dearest friends. But they are not here. You do not know them.
Why? Because at some crucial moment -- some moment that probably seemed relatively insignificant at the time -- they began to grow just a little bit cold. And they let it happen. And the rest of us let it happen.
Perhaps they woke up a little tired one Sunday from a late night, and decided to sleep in instead of going the God's house for worship. There's always next Sunday, they told themselves. The church will still be there. Then, without really noticing the shift, they began to sing more pop songs in the shower and fewer hymns -- actually, hymns hardly ever got stuck in their heads anymore like they used to back in their middle school/high school days.
Then their lives got busy with relationships and new friends and college stuff and maybe part-time jobs and stacks of textbooks... and mom and pop were not there to make them figure out how to squeeze some time in God's Word into that new day-to-day existence. When spare time came around, the remote control was just easier to fiddle with than the pages of their Bibles.
And they began to feel comfortable with that.As they began to feel more comfortable in their spiritual numbness, they began to feel less comfortable praying. So their fervent, transparent, open-hearted prayers dimmed to quick, brief mantras of routine phrases -- just enough to make them feel better about themselves. Just enough to check off the daily prayer box. They began to feel more easy with their non-church friends than their PB buddies, perhaps because they felt less guilty around them, less convicted. And the next thing they knew, the ties were crumbling... and then they were gone.
Does any of this sound vaguely familiar?
I knew those people,
and I loved them. I still miss them. And now I know you, and I love you. Which is why I'm spending a whole morning writing this. I do not want to ever have to miss you. Missing people you love hurts. Mostly though, I mourn that they are missing out on so much, too.
The Word renews the mind. Which means without the Word, your mind is simply not renewed. Do you get that? It's like flesh that doesn't generate new cells when the old ones die. In other words, it rots. And without the constant fellowship of the saints, the continual sharpening of iron upon iron, we become useless weapons covered in rust.
My daddy uses the vivid analogy that faith is something we carry around in buckets full of holes, and that we must continually bring our buckets back to the Lord's house to get refilled. Holey buckets, get it? I guess you have to imagine him saying it. ;-)
The confounding thing about growing spiritually cold is that when you do, you don't care as much about it as you might think -- you sort of feel numb and satisfied with yourself at the time. That's the way the devil works.
Tell yourself the truth. Do you feel
satisfied with the condition of your spirit right now, with the state of your walk with the Lord, with the manner of your fellowship with the saints? Truly? If so, my friend, get on your knees before the sun sets on this day and ask the Lord to
disturb you, to stir you up with a blast of His reality, to knock the icicles off your heart and the blinders off your eyes.
I am left to wonder if I could have done something in my friends' lives that would have made a difference. What if I had loved them better, if I had been a better example, if we had been more faithful to hold one another accountable... would their lives have been affected by that? Would they still be on the pew come Sunday morning if we all had not been so silent about letting them go?
I don't know and I never will, but in hindsight I can say this with certainty:
It would have been worth a try. A better try than we gave it, certainly.Please listen to me. You are there. You are now who we were then. And that same roaring lion is still out there seeking whom he may devour. Don't assume that your friends in the church are going to remain strong in the Lord without those buckets being continuously refilled.
Your friends need the fellowship of the saints. That means YOU. It means your
vigilant, discernable, obvious love. And when I say love, I mean the kind of love that
shows up, love that speaks up with audible words and is ready to walk up cold mountains in all-weather hiking boots. You're in a rough world out there, a world that hates what you love, that wants to tear down everything you would die for, that wants to get in your head and rearrange your mind to make it more convenient for them to put up with you (and your inconvenient Jesus) as a citizen in the twisted global village they are designing.
And it's not just you the world hates... it's a world that also hates every friend you've got who sits on a pew on Sunday morning. Stick together, will you? I'm begging here. If you see a friend getting a little frost on the surface, ask the Lord to give you boldness and compassion and a gentle spirit. Pull that friend aside and express your care and concern, pray with them, send them emails with verses and encouragement, stick letters in the mail, pray like mad. Get in your car and drive if you have to. They may not seem to appreciate your concern. Expect that. This is love in hiking boots, like I said. Just
love them, love them, love them through it.I do not want
any of you to disappear from among us. Not one.
As I sat in church this past Sunday thinking about all these things, I started crying before the song service was even over. But I was not sad -- I was overcome with happiness over
still being here. I was crying out of an overwhelming sense of God's mercy. For reasons beyond my own merit, I was spared the hard frost. Despite my own seasons of coldness, despite how much the world has hated me, despite how hard the world tried to deceive me, despite how stubborn and stupid and hardened and prideful and selfish I have been in my life, by God's grace I AM STILL HERE!
I was loved through it by God's people.I am so happy
to be here. I cannot fathom being happy anywhere else. I cannot imagine my life without the old Baptist church and all my loved ones in this big, raucous, challenging, maddening, joyous, beloved family in the Lord.
I have never thought of you all as "the young people," like some separate category of brethren. I think of you as MY people. Age is nothing -- eternity is timeless and so are our souls. You are my brothers and sisters in the Lord, and I hope you all know that I love you. I pray for all of you. Lots of other people do, too.
Please stay strong. Please stay.
