John Fischer The Catch

Sorry, no real Catch today. We are all too happily exhausted from the weekend culminating in our son’s wedding at which I officiated last night. I’ve made a list of moments I can’t wait to write about and share with you as the week unfolds. But for now, here’s the essence:

Last night, April 22, 2012, at exactly 5:39 pm Pacific Daylight Time (I am told), Elizabeth Ann Merrill (Beth) and Christopher John Fischer (Chris) became officially Mr. and Mrs. Christopher Fischer, with a nearly unanimous sense among almost 200 guests that no two people ever had a better chance of making a great marriage than these two. Congratulations Chris and Beth! And thank you to all of you who were there in Spirit and holding us up with your generosity and your prayers.

Just practicing...

My wife often tells of how she came to know Christ through the library of a Christian man she was dating, even though he was taking a little vacation from the Lord at the time. She read his books because she presumed they were important to him. She says that had they all been about baseball, she would have read them just the same (and that’s truly something because she hates baseball!). Thankfully, his books were not taking the same vacation he was on, and my wife prayed and found Christ through the power and presence of the truth about God residing in this man’s library. What he was interested in, or at least had been, became important to her.

So, what happens when I find that God is interested in the world around me? Naturally, I want to find out about that world. What happens when I discover He’s been intricately involved behind the scenes of history all along? Suddenly history takes on new meaning. What happens when I realize that all scientific and mathematical knowledge reflects a world He created and an order He intended for the universe? That can only mean I have the potential of finding His smiling face hiding behind every equation and every problem that science presents. What happens when I see His image reflected in the attempts at art and glory that come from people He has created? I want to identify that shattered image and seek to put the pieces back together so that I might know, and help others to know more intimately, what God had in mind for us from the beginning.

What happens when I see everywhere expressions of true love – hear it in songs, see it in movies, experience it celebrated in weddings and find it missing in tragic conditions? I will realize that love is of God, indeed, that God is love, and has left His mark on us and allowed us to experience His essence even when we miss Him. Every love song echoes that love. Every good deed shadows it. Every wedding makes it official. Every tragedy marks its absence.

What happens when I find out the lush rain forests He planted in South America with their intricately interwoven life forms are being systematically destroyed? What happens when I learn that men and women He created are suffering the hunger and pain of war? As a Christian, as nearly and as often as possible, I want to look at the world and think God’s thoughts. What He rejoices in becomes my joy. What breaks His heart breaks mine. I cannot love God and be detached from His world.

Christopher & Elizabeth

There’s going to be a wedding.

Weddings are full of hope and new beginnings. Those who are married remember why. Those who aren’t wonder why. And those who are getting married move to center stage. They know why. That’s why they are here.

Something has happened. Something is blossoming. Something is so strong that we have all arranged our schedules to witness it. A fire is burning and we all want to warm our hands by it. A miracle has happened. Two souls have found each other in the blurring maze of humanity and the world has stopped to take note. Two are becoming one, and then they will jump suddenly to 3… 4… 5… Who knows? It’s an odd form of math.

Right now there is invincibility to this love. If there is enough love and confidence to get these two to this point, there will be enough for life. Otherwise they wouldn’t be here. They wouldn’t have gotten this far. Doubt would have stopped them. Some small molehill would have grown into a mountain. But these two have had all barriers fly away. They only see a clear path down this aisle – two paths converging into one. They come to the altar from two separate entrances – two separate doors – but they will walk out together. There’s only one path out of here and that does not scare them because that’s the way they want it.

Of course there will be challenges; there will be difficulties. There will be failures and disappointments. There will be revelations about who this person is they married that they did not see before. But there will also be large doses of forgiveness, patience, and second chances. For in this crucible of marriage, they will each find out who they are, and what they are made of. But most importantly, they will find out that the love that got them here for this day will be enough to see them through all their tomorrows. And though today they think the love they have wears the face of the other, they will find out that face eventually blends into the face of Christ, the Son of God who is love Himself.

And of this love there is enough, and tomorrow there will be enough, and for all eternity there will be enough – enough not just for these two, but for us all… every one of us.

There is going to be a wedding.

Here’s something. I ran into a woman at the market yesterday who was from the Boston area and since we lived there for seven years in the 1980s we got to chat about the differences between New England and other parts of the country. One thing she pointed out was the result of apparently a new study that revealed the divorce rate in New England is lower than any other region in America. “At least we have that,” she said when I was recalling some of those nasty long winters. “And guess who has the highest divorce rate?” she asked.

I had a feeling what was coming, but I said, “Who?”

“The Bible Belt,” she said. “Leave it up to us liberal Democrats to show everyone what real family values are all about.”

She may have something there, at least from the standpoint that a region’s divorce rate may say more about real family values than any political platform. It also shows up the distance between what we say and what we do, which is probably one of the longest gaps in any religious measurement. Religious people may have the highest standards but they also have the hardest time reaching them.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this in relation to my son’s wedding coming up this weekend. I’ve been thinking about both the old covenant and new covenant aspects of marriage.

Marriage is definitely an old covenant institution, one of the first established by God. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24).

Marriage is a vow, a commitment… “‘Til death do us part.” And yet this does not guarantee a good marriage. A low divorce rate may only mean there are a bunch of old covenant marriages going on – people more reluctant to see divorce as a viable option to their problems. Vows alone don’t guarantee anything.

This is where the new covenant comes in. The new covenant is the old one, written on our hearts. It is what makes us new. Jesus called it “the new covenant in my blood” because it was His blood on the cross that paid for our sin and made possible our forgiveness and a new relationship with God. Suddenly there is now the possibility to be new people who live out the vows from inside out. All this comes through the Spirit of God, who becomes available to us by faith when we first believe. The Spirit is the enabler, the one who gives us the power to be who we really want to be.

Not that any of this is automatic. We have to want it, believe it and act on it; but it means the power is there. The power for the husband to love and care for his wife is available by means of the new covenant, and the power for the wife to respect her husband is available in the same way.

Do we just have committed marriages or do we have truly loving relationships in marriage? In the same way, do we have religious Christians or do we have living, thriving expressions of Christ acting in the world through His Spirit within?

There’s a lot more to marriage than the divorce rate.

God wants an interactive relationship with us. He wants a relationship with someone who wants one with him. We’re all a big part of this.

The reason I know this is because He extended an invitation to us that calls for our participation. “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you” (Matthew 7:7).

Come on, God is God; He doesn’t have to do this. He could just as easily say, “Here’s what you get, here’s what you’re looking for, and this is where you’re going,” but instead, He asks:

What do you want?
What are you looking for?
Where do you want to go?

It’s amazing to me that God wants to engage us in this manner. I’ve always got Him so big in my thinking and me so small as to be basically irrelevant. But here God is making us part of the action. He’s coming to our level. He’s involving us in the process. How about it? Do you have answers for these questions? Do you think of your relationship with God in this manner? Are you spending so much time and energy trying to find out what He wants of you that you don’t even know what you want of Him? Come on… He’s asking you right now:

What do you want?
What are you looking for?
Where do you want to go?

Jacob once found himself wrestling with his fears all night and then realizing, half asleep and half awake, that he was wrestling with a form, and then a man, and then in the light of dawn, he saw the man’s face and it was the face of God. And as soon as he recognized this, he grabbed on even harder and said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” There is a man who knew what he wanted of God.

Now what kind of God is this who would let himself be wrestled over a blessing he already given? There was never any real contest. Though Jacob may have thought so, there was never any real concern about the outcome of this obviously lopsided match. God had already decided to bless Jacob, He had already even delivered the blessing; this was simply God coming down to Jacob’s level and allowing Jacob to think he was wrestling Him for it. Why would He do this? Was it to let Jacob own his blessing? Perhaps. Was it because He enjoyed this hand-to-hand close interaction with a man of His making in His image? Perhaps even more.

We see this in the natural world all the time – cubs wrestling with their parents, sometimes getting slapped around in the process. Chandler likes to wrestle with me, and I like it too. In some ways, it is the closest I can get to him – this physical push and pull. He is 12-years-old and very strong for his age. I can still maintain the upper hand, but I can tell it won’t be long before he will have me. But do I let him win even now? Do I give him the satisfaction of pushing me out of certain positions or reversing the control? Of course I do. And if I would do this as an earthly father, why wouldn’t I expect this from my heavenly Father who made me in His image?

Perhaps this is the biggest mystery of all… how much God wants a relationship with us, to the extent of allowing our intimate participation with Him.

What do you want?
What are you looking for?
Where do you want to go?

I think you’d better take these questions seriously, because I think it’s pretty obvious that God does or He wouldn’t have asked.

For as long as I can remember, the emphasis of most of Christian preaching and evangelism is to get people to believe in God. Our salvation and our spiritual growth is a factor of our ability to believe, and our lack of growth or confidence spiritually is usually tied to our inability to believe. But what about the reverse of this? What about God’s belief in us? Is there such a thing? What would it do for you if you knew that God believed in you? Well, He does.

When Jesus called His twelve disciples, He said, “Come follow me,” and by asking them to follow Him, He was placing faith in them. It was common for rabbis in that time to pick their students, and they typically chose only the best. That’s why for Jesus to choose a bunch of common fishermen and a tax collector to be on His team, He was turning the system on its head. By this He was saying, “You’re my best; I believe in you. I am going to change the world with you guys!”

Because we have the benefit of scriptural hindsight, we can see that in choosing these guys, it wasn’t so much their abilities He was after as much as it was their availability, since most of what He ended up accomplishing through them was done through the power of His Holy Spirit in their lives.

As a matter of fact, Jesus picked unlikely characters (just as He does today) so that people will watch what they do in and through His strength and scratch their heads, saying, “Who are these guys anyway?” Well here’s the answer to that: They are people He believes in – people who will do what He says in spite of themselves, and reach out for Him when they need to.

If you are a believer today, it’s because God believes in you. He picked you out of a crowd and said, “Come follow me.” And like Peter, He’ll stick with you even through your lapses. He wouldn’t have chosen you if he didn’t know that you could cut it. What a vote of confidence we have! What strength of character that can give us!

Think of it today when you need fresh courage to overcome a barrier or tackle something new. Think about the fact that God believes in you. He wouldn’t have picked you if He didn’t know you could do it.

“Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:29-30).

See what I mean? You can do this. So can I!

Nightfall found five of them getting into a boat and pushing off shore – Peter, Thomas, John, Nathanial and one other unnamed disciple. Jesus had already appeared to them twice since his resurrection, but this group seemed more confused at this point than convinced. “I’m going fishing,” Peter had said and he received no argument from the other four. Going fishing for these guys was a step backwards – back to something familiar.

Three years earlier they had left fishing for an adventure like no other – following the Son of God, witnessing, and even taking part in healing the sick, raising the dead, setting free the demon possessed, overturning the religious and political establishments of the day and announcing that the kingdom of God had come. But of late it had ended in confusion, betrayal and death, and now Jesus was supposed to be risen from the dead. Peter had even seen him, but eyes can play tricks on you. Besides, Peter, of all of them, felt out of the loop. He had been the one who three times had denied even knowing Jesus, and it was eating on him. Even if Christ had risen from the dead, there would be no forgiving him for what he had done. In Peter’s mind, he was off the team.

“Friends, haven’t you any fish?” It was Jesus on the shore calling out to them in the faint light of early morning.

“No,” they answered.

“Throw your net on the right side of the boat and you will find some,” came a voice they knew from across the water. Something about this seemed vaguely familiar, especially to Peter. It was the way he first met Jesus. So they threw their net over, and they were unable to haul it in because of the large number of fish.

“It’s the Lord!” cried John and no sooner had he gotten the words out than a splash cut the water. It was Peter diving in and swimming ashore to meet Jesus, unwilling to wait for the boat towing all that fish. When he got there, he found that Jesus already had a fire going with some fish cooking on it along with some bread. It was a breakfast of forgiveness.

Three times Jesus asked Peter if he loved Him, and though it pained Peter, each time he said “Yes,” and each time he did, Jesus followed with “Feed my sheep.” One time for each denial – each rooster crow. Jesus was covering up Peter’s sin and his excuses, and reinstating him as a leader in the new church that would begin after He left them.

It’s the way God works with all of us. He forgives us, puts us in a love relationship with Him and then puts us to work. We’re often trying to prove something with our work; Go wants us to work out of what has been already proven – our forgiveness and our love relationship with Him.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in
– from “Anthem” by Leonard Cohen

For how long have we thought that the secret to a useful life was a perfect offering? We would get ourselves together, offer ourselves to God and make an impact for Christ. These were the kinds of people who were always held up as examples — you know, the ones with all their bells ringing.

How we disqualify ourselves for any kind of effectiveness in someone else’s life because we are not perfect yet. “When I get it together, then God can use me.” How we excuse ourselves from service because of our own brokenness.

How we falsely elevate those around us who apparently do have it together. Not good for them, and certainly not good for us. But we do it anyway. We like to believe that someone, somewhere is getting it right, so that someday soon, we might too.

But what if everyone’s broken? What if there’s a crack in everything? And even more important, what if that is the whole point?

“But we have this treasure (the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ) in jars of clay (ordinary cracked? clay pots) to show (make it obvious) that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us” (2 Corinthians 4:7).

Yes, the crack let’s the light in, as Leonard Cohen suggests, but it also lets the light out so that the real source of the power can be seen.

So you see if we try to be perfect, or simply anything other than what we are, we work against the purposes of God. If God wanted someone perfect, he’d make someone perfect, but for now, it appears He wants to use us broken things.

Remember, it’s not your ability, but your availability that counts.

Ability – the capacity to do something or perform successfully

Availability – the state of being present and ready for use

God doesn’t want your ability as much as he wants your availability. He doesn’t want you working for Him as much as He wants you in a place and attitude where He can work through you.

Ability is an Old Covenant word where everything depends on you. Availability is a New Covenant word where everything depends on God.

We shine in our abilities; God shines in our availability.

Our ability makes us strong; our availability makes us vulnerable.

People are impressed with our abilities; God is impressed with our availability.

Practice improves our ability; faith improves our availability.

Our ability makes us popular; our availability makes God popular.

Not everyone is able; but anyone can be available.

Our ability draws on our natural talents; our availability draws on our spiritual gifts.

Ability can put us in the way; availability keeps us out of the way.

Our ability is fine; our availability is better.

God teams up with our ability; He gets inside our availability.

These are all reasons why God doesn’t want our ability as much as he wants our availability. This is a reminder. I thought of more since the last time we did this. I’m sure you can too!

Join our study tonight for more on what it means to be available to God.

Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God. (2 Corinthians 3:5)

Two men walking down a road. Stuff’s been happening. Big stuff. Jerusalem is all a buzz. They’re trying to sort it all out. Suddenly some other man joins them. They’ve never seen him before. Wants to know what they’re talking about. The first two look at each other funny. “Are you the only one around here who doesn’t know?”

“Know what?” says the new guy.

And so as best as they can, they try to bring him up to speed, wrestling the story back and forth between them in a mental tug-of-war of recollection. Suddenly the new one is talking and it’s soon clear that he does know what’s been going on… knows it better than either one of them do… knows it as if he were there. Maybe he was. Then he starts telling them about all the events leading up to this, and connects the dots across a few hundreds years of history and prophecy as they make their way along the countryside. They walk and talk for hours but it seems like minutes. Where on earth did this guy come from and how does he know so much? And what’s the deal with my heart? Stupid thing is burning right here in my chest!

They get to their village and persuade the new traveler to stay. They sit down to dinner and he just keeps on talking and their hearts keep on burning. Wait a minute. Stop everything. They HAVE seen him before. And in an instant they know… it’s the resurrected Lord! And in another instant he is gone.

“Man! Did your heart burn while he talked to us?”

“The whole time.” (See Luke 24:13-32)

Marti and I love this story. I love it most for the passion — the burning hearts. Marti loves it for the walking along the way and talking as they go. She always says that’s the way people find out about Jesus. We walk alongside them, Jesus shows up, and our hearts burn.

Sometimes we know something’s happening. Sometimes we don’t. Marti is a little put out with God for not letting her in on more of this. She wants to know now. She says it’s like a tapestry of people’s lives being woven together, and we can’t always see it. But He can. That’s why we just keep on walking and talking… and burning.

“Walk with me and you will see why I need the Lord,” Marti says. The “why I need” part is really important there. It’s what makes this work. It puts us all on the same level.

The important thing is to walk and talk. Open your heart. Share your life. And when you feel your heart burning, it’s because Jesus showed up… He always does.