Key Life Magazine | Summer 2023

Just Stop It (and you'll laugh more)

STEVE BROWN

MATTHEW PORTER FLOATING LESSONS

DAVIS JOHNSON PRACTICE DOESN'T MAKE PERFECT

ALEX EARLY GOD SERIOUSLY LOVES YOU!

JUST STOP IT (AND YOU'LL LAUGH MORE)

by Steve Brown

Jesus and laughter go together.

I think that most Christians have their underwear on too tight. We, as Christians, shouldn’t take ourselves or anything else too seriously… except for God and what he says.

I’ve never been to a wake where there wasn’t laughter. One of the things that never ceases to amaze me, especially as an old pastor, is resilience, faith, joy, and laughter in the face of some of the most devastating human circumstances. There really is no explanation for it except God.

The English word for “foolishness” in 1 Corinthians 1:18-2:5 means “foolishness” in the Greek. It refers to the mind as in a “lack of sanity.” It is the opposite of prudence (or, in the Presbyterian sense of that word, doing things “decently and in order”). In other words, a foolish person laughs when there isn’t any reason to laugh. Jesus, foolishness, laughter, and tragedy go together.

So if you really want to chill out and laugh more, there are some things you have to stop.

Stop trying to make sense of what doesn’t make sense.

“ For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing…” (1 Corinthians 1:18).

“For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles” (1 Corinthians 1:22-23).

Gerhard Forde, the late Lutheran theologian, in his book Justification by Faith , wrote this:

"The gospel of justification by faith is such a shocker, such an explosion, because it is an absolutely unconditional promise. It is not an 'if-then' kind of statement, but 'becausetherefore' pronouncement: because Jesus died and rose, your sins are forgiven and you are righteous in the sight of God! It bursts in upon our little world all shut up and barricaded behind our accustomed conditional thinking as some strange comet from goodness-knows-where, something we can’t really seem to wrap our minds around, the logic of which appears closed to us. How can it be entirely unconditional? Isn’t it terribly dangerous? How can anyone say flat out, 'You are righteous for Jesus’ sake? Is there not some price to be paid, some-thing (however minuscule) to be done? After all, there can’t be such thing as a free lunch, can there?' You see, we really are sealed up in the prison of our conditional thinking. It is terribly difficult for us to get out, and even if someone batters down the door and shatters the bars, chances are we will stay in the prison anyway! We seem always to want to hold out for something somehow, that little bit of something, and we do it with a passion and an anxiety that betrays its true source—the Old Adam that just does not want to lose control. There is something to be said for evidential and classical apologetics; but frankly, trying to convince someone of the veracity of the Christian faith is next to impossible. This thing really doesn’t make sense, but it’s true. If you believe it or not, it still doesn’t make sense."

A Friedrich Nietzsche quote: “And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”

Quit trying to make sense of it…and you’ll laugh more.

Stop trying to control what can’t be controlled.

“God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God" (1 Corinthians 1:28-29).

I hate vacations. (I’m better, but it’s always a struggle.) A friend pointed out that my real problem is control. He’s right.

A lot of religion is about control. Church discipline can be that. “Decently and in order” can be that. Protecting religious institutions can be that.

Since I’ve started wearing hearing aids, I’ve learned a lot about hearing. Did you know that hearing isn’t just about hearing? It’s about direction. With hearing aids, I never know where sound is coming from…I have absolutely no control over it. I also have no control over my ability to hear. I hate it. (I’ve told Jesus that if he really loved me, he would heal me, and he laughs.)

This week, you might find out you have cancer. You might win the lottery. Your son or daughter might reject the faith. You might be fired. Or alternatively, you might get a promotion and a raise.

What are you going to do about it? Whatever happens, God is God and God is sovereign.

Quit trying to be God…and you’ll laugh more.

Whatever happens, God is God and God is sovereign. Quit trying to be God… and you’ll laugh more.

Stop trying to protect what can’t be protected.

“And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom” (1 Corinthians 2:1).

Paul is saying that he has given up trying to be somebody and to protect his reputation. Jesus is enough.

I’ll never tire talking about Hurricane Andrew. We lost our house. A contractor stole from us and we had piles of liens on the house. My mother had just died. We were living in a small apartment with one window that looked out at a brick wall. And then someone stole our car.

Heading out to church, no less, I went out to my car…and it wasn’t there. I said to the Lord, “Really?”

Ordinarily I would have found my gun and started looking for the car. Instead, I went back to the apartment and said to my wife Anna, “Somebody stole God’s car.” Then we both started giggling and couldn’t stop.

Do you know what I remember most about those days? I remember the laughter and the freedom. We had lost it all…and we were truly free.

What if you no longer had to protect your stuff? What if you no longer had to protect your reputation? What if you just put it all on the altar? You would be free.

Quit trying to protect…and you’ll laugh more.

Stop feeling guilty about what has already been forgiven.

“And because of him, you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption…”

(1 Corinthians 1:30).

Do you feel guilty? It’s the guilt you felt last night or last week, the guilt you have carried all your life. It’s the

sadness and the pain of it, and the way it keeps coming back.

Dr. Paul Brand, the author (along with Philip Yancey) of Fearfully and Wonderfully Made , was an incredible scholar and a missionary doctor. He was thankful for pain because he saw it as a key to healing and protection. For much of his life, Dr. Brand worked with lepers. He discovered that the missing fingers, hands, eyes, and appendages of lepers weren’t because of the disease…but because leprosy removes all pain. So, for instance, if you put your hand down on a hot stove, you jerk it away. A leper, because there is no pain, leaves his hand there.

Guilt is like that. It is an indication that something is wrong.

The next time you feel guilty, do two things. First, run to Jesus. And then thank him for his forgiveness. What caused the pain was forgiven long before you were ever born. The guilt had only one purpose…to get you to Jesus.

Quit feeling guilty…and you’ll laugh more.

Stop trying to write a future that’s already settled.

“ For it is written, ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart’” (1 Corinthians 1:19).

That’s how this thing is going to end.

Someone has said that if you want to understand Revelation, don’t buy a commentary…just remember two words, “God wins.”

When you combine those two words, “God wins,” with the other two words, “Stop it,” there will be laughter.

So quit wondering about the end of the story…and you’ll laugh more.

You can hear it in Mercy’s words from The Pilgrim’s Progres s: “And I did laugh, and laugh and laugh.”

FLOATING LESSONS

by Matthew Porter

8:43am.

I’m getting ready, attempting to leave the house on time (won’t happen today), but our four year-old is standing next to me in the bathroom demanding ‘floating lessons’. Like, now. Right now. Backstory: we’ve been teaching him swimming lessons all summer and while he’s been picking it up quickly, he won’t be ‘swim-ready’ during the week we’re about to spend at the lake. So, for safety sake, the wifey bought him a perfectlysized lifejacket for the trip, after which we’ll resume lessons.

He’s a brave little kid (and I swear, a future MMA fighter), but he did not like me letting him go in the shallow end the first time he wore it. He’s aware enough to know his still-developing swimming skills weren’t enough to keep him alive, but he didn’t yet understand what a lifejacket is and does and thus he panicked. Eventually, a big smile broke out across his little freckled face when he realized the life jacket wasn’t just adequate to the task, it was designed to do that very thing. He could trust it.

Yes, Jesus is the life jacket; you know that and I know that you know that. But stick with me – back to this morning…

Since our little guy had experience

with swimming lessons, he was now asking for ‘floating lessons.’ And I had to smile because, as you and I both know, you don’t need any skills or knowledge to use a life jacket. It does the work, not you. Instead, you just trust it and relax and have fun. In short, there aren’t any floating lessons.

One day very soon, our four year-old won’t need that life jacket. Like his older siblings, he’ll learn to swim on his own. But I will never not need Jesus the way my son needed that life jacket at that moment. That panicky, primal feeling in your gut of ‘I don’t have enough – am not enough – on my own’ ? That’s real. And my trying hard and ‘being good’? Just so much splashing. Yes, we learn and grow in wisdom and understanding and clearly those are good things, but do they make me need my floatation device any less? Not even a little bit.

On some days, I white knuckle grip my ‘life jacket’ like a shipwreck victim. But selfishly, I prefer the days when, like my son, I can untense and smile and enjoy floating. Not because ‘life is good’, but because I know that God most certainly is.

If there is such thing as a ‘floating lesson’, that may be it.

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PRACTICE DOESN'T MAKE PERFECT

by DAVIS JOHNSON

a sixth grader, came from a place of experience as he recognized my two-armed form guaranteed a future spot on the bench or, when the stakes increased in the years ahead, a one-way ticket off the team.

It was here, in the sixth grade, when I first learned that practice doesn’t make perfect. Instead, it simply makes more of whatever it is you’re practicing. If you’re practicing something incorrectly, you will become better at doing said thing, incorrectly.

Bad practice makes bad outcome. A Realist & a Rabbi Walk into a Bar

In the sixth grade, my basketball coach pulled me aside after the first week of practice for a substantial correction: “you need to learn to shoot the ball with a dominant arm.” This may seem obvious to anyone who has played or even watched the game of basketball but it was devastating for someone who had only ever known how to shoot the basketball with both hands. I had played this sport since before I could walk and over the years I had learned an incorrect form of shooting to compensate for a lack of strength. My coach’s instruction, though devastating to

The principle is nearly universal but it’s especially true when it comes to reading the Bible –plainly seen in the third chapter of the gospel of John. The chapter begins by getting acquainted with a guy named Nicodemus and his resume: he’s a top dog from an authority standpoint, is well practiced in religious traditions, and knows his way around the Old Testament.

He comes to Jesus at night perhaps hoping to get a professional edge over his peers or maybe to simply engage in some intellectual sparring. In a sentence, Jesus

responds with what may appear to be a riddle to be solved:

“Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”

Puzzled, Nicodemus wonders how someone can possibly be born again when he or she is old? Nicodemus’ response seems straightforward enough, perhaps a bit naïve, but it, in fact, exposes a lifetime of bad practice.

There is a Wrong Way to Read the Bible

After circling the drain on the necessity of being born again, Jesus humbles Nicodemus with a simple question. Don’t miss this.

He says, “you are Israel’s teacher, and do you not understand these things?”

Any who teach Israel do so from one textbook: the Old Testament. Jesus reads and teaches from THE SAME textbook. It’s based on this book that Jesus challenges his conversation partner’s teaching credentials because he’s failed to understand its core message. Imagine a pilot receiving a license to fly without ever having been inside a plane – he has the title, but it means nothing! He’s never been in the sky, never taken anyone anywhere. Just a person with a piece of paper.

Like many of us, Nicodemus approaches the Scriptures as a manual for what God expects of him. It’s too easy to miss this — look again: God says the way to see His kingdom is to be born again, Nicodemus responds as if it’s part of his job description: “how do I make this happen? How could anyone possibly do that?”

A lifetime of forcing the Scriptures

onto a to-do list has caused Nicodemus to make even this message about himself and what he is supposed to do. No one plays a role in their own birth. Of course not!! When we seek to make the Bible about us, we work against the grain of the story God has been telling for thousands of years. Functionally, we form ourselves into little Nicodemi (plural? seems right…) – deaf and dull to God and his life-giving communication.

But Jesus isn’t here to belittle Nicodemus, or anyone for that matter. Instead, he’s teaching that the Bible is not about us. It’s not a life improvement plan, a to-do list, or a religious manual with a set of DIY instructions.

The main character of the Bible and your life is not you — it’s God! This is good news meant to be received. It’s an invitation out of our incessant “I need to do more” feeling. It clears away the fog of our murky understanding of God and helps us see that he is in the business of giving, not expecting; revealing, not hiding. After speaking from behind a veil for thousands of years, God brings unexpected clarity through the person of Jesus, who is the ultimate Word of God. His substitutionary death is the climax of human history, inviting all to see and say back to God, “Now you are speaking clearly.”

If bad practice makes bad outcome then the opposite is true. When we take up the Bible, the best outcome is to see the main character – the one who was lifted up in our place.

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GOD SERIOUSLY LOVES YOU!

by Alex Early

The entire message of the Bible is a message of grace, hope, forgiveness, and love – all unearned, ill deserved, and completely without condition! The love of God is reckless, pervasive, and unstoppable.

The love of God has yet to meet its limit, boundary, or match! Thus far, though billions have tried, none have been able to stop the work of God, Satan couldn’t destroy the Son of God, and what prevails in the end is the Church of God.

The love of God is not reserved for just the rich or just the poor.

It is not only for straight people, republicans, humanitarians, or Baptists.

The love of God cannot be confined to being found only within the walls of a local church building on Sunday morning. The love of God is not rhetoric or wishful thinking. It cannot be shrunk down to a coffee cup. The

love of God does not fall asleep at the wheel but is always alive, brilliant, and blazing! God’s love is not just for the world, not just for the Church, but for little bitty you in that chair right there, right now, with all of your past mistakes, all of your present skepticisms, and your ongoing stubborn “so what’s?” and “prove-it-to-me’s” going on in your head right this second. God’s love is for you. Right here. Right now.

DON’T TRY TO EARN GOD’S LOVE. YOU CAN’T.

To take it a step further, God hasn’t insisted on you getting better, trying harder, or doing more so that he’ll love you. His love isn’t fickle, moody, or affordable. The love of God is something so unbelievable that Christians need to show up to the communion table every week to see it put on display. The love of God is quite special. It must be given and received and

the only thing more offensive to God than our sin is our pithy attempts at earning his loving affection. St. Paul tells us “God is for us” and either we take him at his word or we flat don’t.

HAVE YOU GONE TOO FAR FOR GOD TO LOVE YOU?

Have you gone too far for God to love you? What’s that sin that you committed that haunts you at night? You know, the one that if everyone found out, you’d be ruined? Consider that the people who Jesus goes to battle with are not the prostitutes, the downcast, the outcast, vagabonds, or drunks. It’s not the greedy taxcollectors, the broken down peasants in the countryside, the Good Friday thieves who were crucified on either side of him or even the Roman guard who nailed him to the wood.

WHO JESUS ARGUED WITH

The people Jesus found himself arguing with were the ones who thought they were doing just fine in God’s economy because they kept all the rules, tithed out of their spice racks, and diligently worked to observe the

Sabbath. They had a monopoly on the community, Moses memorized, and God in their back pockets. And Jesus, well, he was that troublemaker out there forgiving the adulteress of her sin and giving her dignity back. Jesus was the one healing handicapped people on the Holy Day (Mark 3:1-6). Jesus rocked the religious boat by identifying himself as the Son of God (John 5:18). Jesus was the one who called their bluff and flipped their money tables over, and drove them out of the temple, shouting things about prayer.

JESUS HAS SOMETHING TO SAY TO YOU

Today, Jesus has burst on the scene and says, “You’re thirsty. I’ll be your cold drink of water.”

And “I can see that you’re hungry. I’m the bread of life.”

“I know you’re lonely. I’ll never leave you.”

“You look tired. I’ll give you rest.”

“Want to come to heaven? You have no idea how much I’m looking forward to you being here with me.”

Can you believe this?

The evil is a liar.

God is alive.

The gospel is a total scandal.

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