"Without You, I am nothing"

I really like a new song called "Search My Heart" by Hillsong United.  Here's the lyrics from Klove.com. 

http://www.klove.com/music/artists/hillsong-united/songs/search-my-heart-lyrics.aspx

As you see, there are a lot of good words in that song, but the line that really resonates with me is "without you, I am nothing."  I thought today that I would take the opportunity to declare what Hillsong United declares: without God, I am nothing.  That's why in every blog installment, I attempt to edify God, not Kevin Bauer.

One of my favorite books by Max Lucado is the one entitled "It's not about Me".  In chapter 1 of that book, Lucado makes a statement that I echo.  It's a statement that I hope people can see in me, not simply because I quote it in a blog, but because I live it in my life.  He said, "It's not about you.  It's not about me.  It's all about him."  Can't you just picture Lucado pointing up to the heavens when he says, "it's all about him"?

Kevin Bauer

"A Night with G.K. Chesterton"

This evening, I attended a CCU event called “A Night with G.K. Chesterton.”  It was essentially a one man play.  Using our imaginations, we pretended that we were in the year 1934.  The MC for the evening then introduced G.K. Chesterton.  Of course, it was really only a man on staff at CCU dressed up as Chesterton, but let’s not ruin the fun with such trivial details!  The man walked to the front of the room to give a lecture as if Chesterton himself were giving us a lecture.  I don’t have the name of the man who was portraying Mr. Chesterton, but he did a great job.

At one point in the evening, “Chesterton” made a statement about sex.  From all my research since this event, I am confident that at one time Chesterton actually did say this; I thought it was really profound.

“Sex is not meant to be a master; it is meant to be a servant.  If you make sex your master it will become your tyrant.”

This quote really spoke to me.  From personal experience I can verify the truthfulness of this quote C.S. Lewis made in his book "Mere Christianity:" “Those who are seriously attempting chastity are more conscious, and soon know a great deal more about their own sexuality that anyone else.”  For someone who is “attempting chastity” it was great to be encouraged to not let sex become my master.

Kevin Bauer

(1 Thessalonians 4:3-4)

A thought on prayer

In my spare time, I’ve been reading a book by Ron Dunn on prayer.  It’s called: “Don't Just Stand There, Pray Something.”  The subtitle is “The Incredible Power of Intercessory Prayer.”

I was really impacted by something in chapter 3 of the book.  Dunn tells a story of when he was very busy in his role of senior pastor of a growing church.  Admirably, he wanted to spend an hour in prayer and he decided that midnight was the best time for him to do so (a night owl!  A man after my own heart).  He goes on to describe that there was one particular night when he had a very hectic day.  He writes that he had not done anything that we might call “spiritual."  He hadn’t read his Bible or prayed at all that day; he simply had been too busy.

So at midnight he prefaces his prayer in a way that I think many of us would.  Here’s Dunn on page 47 of his book, “The first words out of my mouth were, “Lord, I know I have no right to ask You for anything tonight,” and I proceeded to apologize for being too busy to pray, read the Bible, or witness - too busy to do anything spiritual.”

As I said, I think a lot of times we Christians have this kind of attitude.  I know I have fallen into this kind of thinking at times in my own life.  But listen to what Dunn goes on to describe that God seemed to say back to him...

“If you had prayed for eight hours today and read the Bible on your knees for eight hours, and led fifty people to Christ, you would have no more right to pray than you do now!”  Dunn concludes his story with these words: “I looked down at the floor of the throne room and saw that it was sprinkled, not with the sweat of my good works, but with the blood of His sacrifice."

Kevin Bauer

A thought-provoking anecdote

I really love an anecdote that I once heard from my pastor at church.  I’m not sure where this material actually originated (my pastor called it “an old tale”), but it’s worth sharing.

A man dies and he faces the angel Gabriel at the gates of Heaven.  Gabriel announces, “Here’s how it works: you tell me the good works that you have done; they are all worth points.  If all your works add up to one hundred points you are granted access to Heaven.”  “Well to begin with,” said the man.  “I was married to the same woman for fifty years, and I never cheated on her, not even in my heart.”  “That's great!”  The angel replied, and then added, “That's worth three points.”

“Furthermore, I went to church all my life, supported it with my tithes and offerings, and served it faithfully,” said the man.  “Very good, that’s worth one point,” Gabriel responded.  “What?  One point?"  The man reacted, beginning to panic a bit.  “Well,” the man continued.  “I opened a shelter for the homeless; I fed hungry people by the hundreds.”  “Fantastic, that's worth two points!”  The angel reported.  “Two points?”  The man repeated, now clearly nervous.  “At this rate the only way I’ll get into Heaven is by the grace of God!”  “Come on in,” said Gabriel.

Do you get the moral of the story?

Kevin Bauer

My Valentine's Day blog for 2011

I want to wish everyone a happy Valentine's Day!  Some of you immediately receive that, but others are thinking, “I'm not in a romantic relationship right now, so what good is to me to be wished a happy Valentine's Day?”

The reason I am wishing everyone who reads this a happy Valentine's Day, whether you are in a romantic relationship or not, is because there is someone who loves you deeply: the God of all the universe.  He said in Jeremiah 31, “I have loved you with an everlasting love.”  Make no mistake about it: God loves you.  He loves you with a love that will last forever!

I can conceive of two objections that may come to your mind when you read that God loves you.  First, you may think, “God can't love me.  Not after what I've done.  I have done so many selfish, sinful, ungodly things.  When He looks at me, He must think, ‘OK, this one isn't worth loving.’”

Let me assure you, I understand this one.  We are all tempted to think this at times.  We forget that the love that God has for us is not based on our performance.  Someone has said, “There is nothing that we can do to make God love us less, and there is nothing that we can do to make God love us more.”  In other words, His love for us is based on who we are, not on what we do.

A second objection that comes to my mind is, “If God loves me, why do I suffer so much?”  I acknowledge that some of you reading this may be going through the worst storm of your life, a storm that is absolutely overwhelming to you.

 

In the midst of that storm, I don’t want to minimize or deny your pain.  I don’t want to deliver a trite, simple answer.  Suffering is a big subject to cover.  In fact, sometimes I feel like I bite off more than I can chew with these blog topics.  For me to adequately address some of these issues would take a 4-5 page paper, not a few paragraphs.  Just know that I hurt with you as I think about the pain you may be going through.  I don’t dismiss it as trivial or unimportant.

So all that said, I believe it was Adrian Rogers who said that when you want to gauge God's love for you, don't look at your circumstances; look at the cross.  On the cross of Calvary, Jesus Christ willingly went to the cross to show us how much God loves us.  Jesus said, “Greater love has no man than this than to lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).  It's true, dear reader, God loves you.

Kevin Bauer

(Romans 5:8)

"Spoken like a true hero"

"Superman/Shazam: The Return of Black Adam" continues to impact me in a positive way.  As you may remember, I blogged about this movie on 1/7.  At that time, I didn't get the chance to see all the special features in that film.  One of them was a fantastic episode from a show called "Batman: The Brave and the Bold."  I enjoyed it so much that I did more research on this show, because even though I had heard the title before but I didn't know much more about it.

I found out that this is a show that features Batman teaming up with a new sidekick every episode.  It might be Green Arrow one installment, and then it might be Aquaman the next.  I ended up purchasing season 1, part 1 (part 2 of season 1 is not available yet) on DVD.  It's a pretty entertaining show.

One episode that is perhaps worth the price of the season is called "Fall of the Blue Beetle."  I don't want to reveal any spoilers but it's enough to say that the new Blue Beetle, Jaime (pronounced "Hi-may") Rayes, is new in his role in a long line of previous Blue Beetle's.  He desperately wants to be heroic.  At one point in the episode, Rayes says to Batman, "I just want to do the right thing."  Batman, although clearly pleased with that statement, doesn't reply aloud, but he does think, "Spoken like a true hero."

This really ministered to me because like Jaime Rayes, I want to do the right thing.  It was nice to be able to know Batman's take on this; that when we desire to do the right thing (and when actually we do it, don't forget that Rayes was simply articulating what he had made crystal clear with his actions) we are being heroic.

Kevin Bauer

(2 Timothy 2:22)

What about forgiving yourself?

I've been on a “Full House” kick lately.  This is a TV show that ran from 1987 to 1995 starring John Stamos and Bob Saget.  I have the entire series on DVD and I decided to go through it again.  I just watched an episode where the father on that show, Danny Tanner (Saget) made this statement to Stephanie, one of his daughters: “No matter what you do wrong...I am always going to forgive you, because I love you."

At this point in the series Stephanie was six years old.  She had accidentally backed a car into the kitchen!  (Yes, if you were wondering, she did give the obligatory “maybe no one will notice” joke.)  Stephanie felt so bad that she tried to run away from home and move to Mexico.  Of course, it didn’t work; but the point is, she couldn’t forgive herself.  This led to the statement that Danny made about forgiving her, no matter what.  The lesson of the episode, at least for me, was this: what right do we have to hold on to what we’ve done, if the person we’ve hurt has already offered forgiveness?  Let me illustrate this further from another TV show.

Years ago, I watched a show where a boyfriend and girlfriend were going through a rough patch in their dating relationship.  The overarching point is that the girl had done something that she felt was so egregious, she figured her boyfriend would never forgive her.  She spent the whole episode wallowing in pity and guilt.

At the climax of the episode, this couple finally had a conversation.  The girl said something like, “We can't be together anymore.  Not after what I did to you.”  The guy replied, “We can be together, because I forgive you.”  Their relationship was restored!  This girl was intelligent enough to know that if her boyfriend forgave her, she should forgive herself.

Kevin Bauer

(1 John 1:9)

The Super Bowl everyone expected

Super Bowl 45 is now in the books.  The Green Bay Packers defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers by a score of 31-25.  It was a very exciting game.  As I said in the title, this was the Super Bowl that everyone expected, and we were not disappointed.

Congratulations to the Green Bay Packers for their victory.  I also wanted to congratulate the Pittsburgh Steelers; great job to get back to the big game again!  They played with great heart.

I love watching the Super Bowl’s postgame.  It was great to hear Greg Jennings declare “to God be the glory” both at the beginning and at the end of his interview.  Some people don’t like it when sports players do that.  But Jennings was practicing Proverbs 3:6, “In all your ways acknowledge him [that is, of course, God].”

Let me take a moment and dash a false perception.  God doesn’t affect the outcome of the game so that the team with the most Christians wins, so they can then glorify Him on the postgame show.  He doesn’t magically make the football bounce a certain way to favor one team over the other. (Furthermore, there are no fickle “football gods” either, as I’ve heard; that’s just lunacy).  The God of the universe has bigger fish to fry.  He has much bigger and much more important things to deal with in the universe than to alter the course of a trivial football game.  A football team wins a game by outplaying the other team, period.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not suggesting that God doesn’t care about football at all.  I thought that Coach Grant Taylor (the main character in the film “Facing the Giants”) put it best.  In one scene in the movie, he is addressing his team, about to make a paradigm shift.  He says, “I’m here to present you with a new team philosophy.  I think that football is just one of the tools we use to honor God.”  “So you think God does care about football?”  A player asked.  “I think He cares about your faith.  He cares about where your heart is.  If you can live your faith out on the football field then, yes, God cares about football because He cares about you.”

Later on in the scene, the coach says, “If we win, we praise Him; and if we lose, we praise Him.”  That’s what Greg Jennings did; he praised God for the win, so kudos to him for doing so.  Now if only more Christians in the NFL would publicly praise God in the midst of a difficult loss.  Pray for God to raise up such bold individuals.

Kevin Bauer

(1 Corinthians 10:31)

How's this for ironic?

I find it very ironic that one of the most profound statements I’ve ever come across from the Batman genre came from Batman’s greatest enemy, the Joker.  In the movie “The Dark Knight” the Joker (played masterfully by the late Heath Ledger) is talking about why he uses a knife and not a gun to slay his victims.  He says, “Guns are too quick.  You can't savor all the little moments.”  Then he makes this statement: “You see, in their last moments, people show you who they really are.”  Facing imminent death, according to the Joker, is the greatest window into a person’s heart and soul.  I think he's on to something.

Let me illustrate this from the Bible.  Of course, we could consider many examples of Biblical characters in the face of death (Jesus Christ Himself, our premier example, comes to mind), but one of my favorites is Stephen from the book of Acts.  As he faced the end of his Earthly life, Stephen exhibited forgiveness actually asking God in Acts 7:60 not to hold his executioner’s sin against them.  Those were his last words before he died!

It’s not all that pleasant to think about, but every time I hear Joker's statement that I’ve shared today, I always think about how I would behave facing my death.  Let me just put it this way: I want to prove the authenticity of my Christian faith when I am in my last moments of life on Earth.  I want to be like Stephen.

Kevin Bauer

(Revelation 2:10)