If a spring stops springing…

Students from the Lighthouse Christian Academy

The Dead Sea is its name because it has no outlet. All minerals and salt remain. Water evaporates, but there is drain off. The resulting salt content kills virtually all life — no fish.

My awesome colleague, Tawnie Black, who gave up a high-paying, prestigious teaching job to help kids at the Lighthouse.

As a Christian, you are not designed to retain only. You must have an outflow of all you have learned in Christ, the love, the forgiveness, the good news. You can’t clam up. You must serve and give to others the blessings God has lavished on you.

More LCA students. Don’t think Wyatt, at right, is mean. He just likes to make funny faces.

If you bottle up the blessing, it will go rank (and I’m not talking about ranking with Google). It will spoil, sour, self-corrupt, go bad. Enjoy the blessings, but pass on the blessings. There can be no such thing as a selfish Christian. It simply does not exist.

A spring is known for what it gives. So too a Christian is only a Christian if he is like Christ, who gave the utmost. We must give finances for His work, time for service, and prayer for advancing the kingdom.

It is thought that Sodom and Gomorrah are buried under the Dead Sea. Not a good fate for a Christian. Our lifeblood is to share, give, and be unselfish.

Believe in the guy who’s in a slump

Better than throwing salt on his wounds, better than mocking him, better than washing your hands of him, better than saying “He had it coming,” express confidence to the person who’s floundering. It will lift him out of his funk.

Sir Alex Ferguson believed in Wayne Rooney. The Manchester United forward had gone 9 months without a goal. Pundits were sharpening their knives: wash-out, has-been, flash-in-the-pan. Coach Ferguson, who’s had an extraordinary knack for winning teams, kept believing in Rooney until the mercurial players found his winning ways again — with a overhead backwards kick that left the world gaping and shut up critics.

from Ben Rogers blog

Believe in someone.

You may “win” the rat race, but you’re still only a rat. You may get to the top of the crab pile, but you’re still only a crab. If you help someone out, you’ve made a friend for life. And that is worth more than pounding your chest and shouting the tired I’m-the-best rant.

It’s what Jesus did. While everybody hated the odious, turncoat tax-collector Zacheus, Jesus dressed him with dignity, sharing a cappuccino with him. While accusers had stones in hand ready to hurl at the adulterous woman, Jesus defended her and didn’t accuse her. He touched the leper, ate with prostitutes, hung out with drunkards. Jesus was really into the business of accepting people.

Give love freely. Expect nothing in return.

Give and don’t stop giving. And though you may be the most unloved person on the planet, if you give love freely, you will find 10,000 people at your funeral wanting to honor your memory.

Complainers are louder than complimenters

Ignore the barking dogs.

I had a funeral — without dying. It was a good experience.

When I had to leave Guatemala, all the church members gushed about my good qualities. My defects, which previously had dominated evaluations, got forgotten. Now I know what it’s like to die.

Where flowers grow, weeds want to go.

This is the Yelp predicament. A disgruntled customer is highly motivated to post a comment. A satisfied one, not at all. Businesses have been sunk by this psychological phenomenon.

If you are given to criticizing others in the church, realize that:

• criticism is not a calling, not a charge, not a gifting from God. It lines up more with what the accuser of the brethren (Satan) does.
• you excuse and justify your own faults.
• you blow out of proportion your own merits.
• you probably are unaware of all kinds of services and sacrifices made by the very person you’re criticizing.
• the effects of your criticism will not advance the kingdom of God.
• an ounce of compliment would do more good than a ton of criticism.
• your criticism is probably motivated by envy and jealousy.

On outreach in San Diego, at one house they gave me bread. It was a nice little way for God to say, “Well done.”

If you take a lot of criticism, realize that:

• Satan’s strategy is get you to stop your labors.
• people throw stones at a tree with fruit (Spanish expression — to knock down fruit to eat, they throw stones. If the fruit tree is barren, no one throws stones at it.)
• compliments mostly go unvoiced.
• your life and ministry is in the hands of God, not of your critics.

We’re health-crazed in California

Thank you gluttony_by_angiheartsconverses

But we don’t worry about what we ingest spiritually. We don’t worry to take in God’s word, praise or prayer. We consume vast amounts of internet dross, TV junk food, music bile. And it’s killing us spiritually. Virtually no one is attuned to the damage done.

But we are intensely aware of damage done to the body. We work out at the gym incessantly. The contrast alarms me.

Too old?

Pastor Ralph smirked at my fate as he went off to the comforts of his own bed.

I’m too old for this, right? I’m almost 46.

When Karina needed someone to chaperone her boys’ sleepover on Saturday, I volunteered. My son was one of the friends. Here were eight kids aged 10 – 13, camping out in tents on the front lawn of her suburb home for a birthday. The guys woke me up every 15 to 30 minutes until 3:00 a.m. with cackling at prepubescent jokes. I was afraid they’d wake the neighbors, who’d call the police for disturbing the peace. Yeah, my peace.

At 1:30 a.m. the 20-something-year-old girl across the street had some guy friends talking to her, leaning against the car. I crawled back into my sleeping bag on the porch because it didn’t look like any problem. Then at 2:30 a.m., two boys woke me up with hushed screams of terror. The guys, they said, had attempted to light the tent on fire (I think they may have thrown a cigarette or two in the street; from that, the imagined immolation). According to my boys, the guys were gangstas, hoodlums, “bad guys.”

Aw, shut up and go back to bed, I growled. It’s YOU guys who are the bad guys ‘cuz you won’t let me sleep. I curmudgeonly drilled my head into my pillow. Next thing I knew, the boys were putting their sleeping bags onto the cement driveway. I ask them why but, delirious with exhaustion, I comprehended nothing of their answer. I began to snore. The next morning I asked why they left the tent on the lawn for the bruisingly hard driveway.

“Because we were closer to you.”

This was Sunday. Hosea wanted to have a friend over. They handed out these lighted goggles at the party.

A super-groggy, trying-not-to-be-cranky Christian camp dad attempted to crack the tent-packing code. (How does something so big fit into such a small bag? Where are those tent pegs sunk into the lawn?)  I dropped half the kids off at their homes and went to take a shower and gulp down 3-4 cups of coffee before church service.

“Thank you, Mr. Ashcraft.”

I tried not to grumble in response.

Kids need activities to make them feel special, to let them know how much God loves them. It’s up to us, the older generation, to help the younger generation know Christ. Today is Monday, and three cups of coffee have NOT achieved the desired effect. Through the haze of hangover-like sleepiness, I’m planning the next sleepover.

Are you too old to help kids?

Into my kids

Rarely do the authorities catch kidnappers.

Maybe I’ve gone vicarious. I’m really into my kids.

I’m into their soccer. I take them to practices ceaselessly. I film them make goals. Since I teach at my daughter’s high school, I try to have lunch with her. Almost everything is for them. They’re my #1.

A friend didn’t like the extreme violence of the movie about Jesus’ sacrifice. But I wondered WHAT did she think happened?

Which is why I’m thunderstruck at what God did. He sent His Son to die for my sin.

Trained in Guatemala, Robert has done well in America with soccer!

I sort of had the opportunity to do something similar. At the end of almost 16 years of ministry in Guatemala, we had a kidnapping threat. I hightailed it and headed for America.

Maybe, if I wouldn’t have had kids, I would have just thumbed my nose at the threats and continued to minister, trusting in God (recklessly?). But because the threat breached the unbreachable, the holiest sanctum of my life, my children, it was intolerable.

Hosea, amid his teammates

God handed His only Son over to the horrible Roman kidnappers. Sometimes the Guatemalan kidnappers cut off a finger or tortured their victims to hurry up ransom payments. While that is frightening and nightmarish, it’s silly nonsense compared to the disfiguring whippings and bloody beatings which they subjected God’s Son to.

As I think about this right now, I’m NOT inspired to praise Him. I feel throttled, numbed by the shock of it. When I get over this, I’ll praise Him.

At left, Rebekah is with her friends, Gia and Jackie

I guess if you’ve never had a kidnapping threat, it’s easy to make light of what God did. Maybe it’s easy to trample under foot His sacrifice. It’s not easy as a human being to be understanding of you as you mock God, hate Him and blame Him for God-knows-what reason. Maybe you need to go through something like this to understand what He did. He did it for you — and despite you not taking it into account in the slightest, He still L-O-V-E-S you. So I’m doing my best to love you too. Most Christians try to reflect His perfect love, and most Christians fall short. I hope you can understand: Only His love lacks in no area.

from WhoWillYouServe.blogspot

Having kids has definitely deepened my understanding of God.  But what has really helped is my being unwilling to give up my kids to danger to be able to reach lost people. I love my kids too much to sacrifice them for others.

God loved you too much to hold back His Son.

Can’t fathom passion?

I can understand the terrorists.

I have felt their passion. I have risked my life for God. But the difference is they believe killing people pleases Allah. They need to get to know Jesus.

All this goes to show what an intellectual fraud the “comparative religion” folks have perpetrated. Maybe they should study “contrastative religion.” We are told that the older Boston bomber became more “devout,” then this.

As I become more devout as a Christian, I give of myself. I sacrifice. I love. I pray. I evangelize. I give money to the needy. I don’t kill.

Actually, atheists are all highly intelligent people, so their failing to discern between religious and economic motives behind so-called “Christian wars” is more willful than accidental.

Christ called his followers to lay down their lives. To turn the other cheek. Those who have taken up arms in the name of Christ are following their own folly, not Jesus. Yes, Popes asked for Crusades, but the guys who actually did the fighting were mercenaries seeking fame and fortune.

God calls us to carry our cross, not arms.

Again, it is willful neglect, not genuine, to fail to discern the clear demarcation between Old Testament and New. Christ, being the conclusion of God’s progressive revelation of salvation in the Bible, represents the maximum expression of God’s plan, the finality. Thus, several Old Testament norms go outmoded and are replaced by Christ’s law of love.  Ethical conduct is reaffirmed; such things as temple rituals, sacrificing animals, and violence are suppressed. I can understand a simpleton failing to grasp this, but not a smart guy who’s academically honest.

It is with great heaviness I write: We Christians bear much responsibility for the evil surge in our world. We have become lightweights, neglecting prayer in favor of “our best life now.” Let’s pray for Boston.

And let’s pray for the gospel to advance in all the world.

The relevancy of church: a real smile beats an emoticon

Instant friendship — because we have Christ in common. On outreach in San Diego.

The handshake communicates affirmation, human warmth. A real smile always beats an emoticon. You can’t turn off the preachers just because his message is not exactly to your liking.

My colleague, Teacher Kathy Payton, holds her granddaughter in service.

In spite of futurists’ predictions, the e-church will never overtake the real church. As much as I enjoy “fellowship” on the blogosphere, I still crave that which only the local church can provide. I have yet to drink a coffee with a fellow blogger*

I’ve attended church for 33 years and haven’t found anything as vital and relevant as the living, breathing body of believers, despite its drawbacks and imperfections. The lifeblood of the church is its people — sometimes annoying, sometimes comforting, always interesting. The church is suffering no demise, even though outsiders forecast doom (but as

Everet liked the laser sound I can make. As we walked door to door inviting people to service, we cracked jokes and became friends.

“outsiders,” they simply don’t “get it” that the church is founded on Eternal Truth, not the shifting sands of popular opinion).

Here in Los Angeles, restaurants boast they serve “real food,” not processed, chemical-injected, nutritionless, unhealthy products. Yeah, get “real church.”

*If you’re ever in Santa Monica, let’s down a veinte at Starbucks!

You need to know…

This is for a dear friend, Carol. Jesus loves you!

The resurrection trumps all arguments

from thedeliverancedoctor.com

You can observe the atheists working overtime to dismiss the resurrection. It proves Christianity. Here’s why:

• The disciples had great fear (as manifested by primary sources) before it and were emboldened by it to give their lives.
• The disciples, being uneducated, would have been incapable of inventing it.
• The primary sources agree that none of the disciples thought of resurrection before Jesus’ death. They clearly expected Jesus to establish an earthly kingdom. Peter used sword to defend Jesus from his crucifiers, then denied Christ three times to protect himself. This supports the idea that the resurrection surprised and transformed them.
• It is true that religious groups have given their lives for delusions before, but an important difference must be made between those who have been duped, and those who are imposing the hoax. The atheists allege the disciples committed fraud by making it up. The trouble with this is is that it is highly unlikely they would then give their lives to martyrdom — separate from each other, with no one around to egg them on. If you create a delusion, it usually is to achieve some self-serving end, not to die for it. If you know that the resurrection is fake, it is highly unlikely that you will die for it. Maybe one would dare to give his life for a fraud, but eleven?
• It is true that religious leaders have possessed genius to invent fantastical accounts inventing religion, but these have been individuals — Mohammed, Joseph Smith. With Christianity, it is a group of 11 disciples. How could they agree unless they had actually seen Jesus resurrected?
• How did Christianity progress under persecution? The Romans were killing Christians. You don’t just convert to your death sentence — unless you know that the resurrection trumps any death sentence. Islam, by contrast, was an easy ticket to join because it was a booming success militarily and politically. The early believers joined Christianity not because they were signing with the winning team.
• It is nearly impossible to allege that the 11 disciples fell under some sort of collective psychosis. The evidence shows the contrary: Thomas was missing from the initial meeting with the resurrected Christ and was determinedly decided against believing in His resurrection.
• If the disciples got together and concocted the account, they surely would not have made women, in their patriarchal times, the first witnesses.
• Even a non-Christian historical source, Josephus, tells of Paul’s switch from persecutor to promoter. How can you possibly account for this unless he really did see Jesus?

from http://www.thedesertreview.com

Resurrection Day is a great holiday for Christianity. Though I’m not a professional apologist, I believe the raw, unadulterated evidence is highly in favor of the resurrection being true. My blog has hosted some pretty lively discussion in the past and welcomes all comers to join the debate, though I ask everyone refrain from curse words and treat each other respectfully. I believe in comparing ideas, not ad hominem attacks.