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Archive for June, 2009

Balcony People

It was in the 1970s that Baylor University in Waco, Texas hired a new football coach. They had a long history of failure. It seemed they could not win their conference or even really compete. Grant Teaff took over a team that had won less than two games a year for the previous five years. He hit town and so did the folks who were ready to tell him how to run things. The story goes that he listened to the critics and then told them that he did not respond to criticism and worked a lot better with encouragement. He was right and within two years he took that pitiful program and won the conference championship.

All of us work better with encouragement. I like to call them "the balcony people." At a successful Broadway play, when the play is over the balcony people stand and cheer. Everyone needs balcony people in their life. We need people who bless us and give us courage and encouragement.

We need our family to be our balcony people. They know our strengths and weaknesses. They can easily boo our flops, but we need them to clap at our successes. Knowing us as well as they do, surely they can find something to clap about.

We need our church family to be our balcony people. All week long we live in a world that is not friendly to our Christian values. When we walk through the church doors on Sunday morning we need to be lifted up. We need to leave with encouragement that will help us go back and face the world. When Paul wrote to his Christian family he almost always started with words of encouragement.

We need God to be in our balcony. Thankfully, He is always there for us. When God spoke to Jeremiah He promised him, "’I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you," declares the LORD." (Jeremiah 29:10-14). The promise God made to Jeremiah is a promise to us also. For us that promise is found in the words of Jesus, "I am with you always." (Matt 28:20).

Lonnie

Sometimes life tumbles in. Sometimes you really are on a bed of affliction. Sometimes the wolf is at the door. Sometimes your child is missing or sick or near death’s door. All of us have struggles and when they happen it is hard to imagine that anyone else has ever been so lost or felt so helpless.

600 years before Christ was a time when life was tumbling in for God’s people. A powerful army was bearing down upon them and would soon burn their homes, steal their property, and lead them away as slaves. Most of them would never be free again. Many of them would be killed. In times like that Habakkuk uttered these words:

“Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, will be joyful in God my Savior.” (Habakkuk 3:17-18).

If the power of this verse is lost on us, maybe it is because we do not care if the fig tree buds or whether there are grapes on the vines. Most of us never grow food in our fields, nor have any sheep or cattle. Because those things are not a part of our experiences, we may not feel the pain in this verse. It might feel different if this verse were written in modern times and said, “though every grocery stores and restaurant closes down and every factory in America is empty, though the stock market drops to zero, ‘Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, will be joyful in God my savior.’”

Habakkuk is saying that his joy does not come from things and stuff and junk. His joy comes from God. His joy is not circumstantial, but is founded in the One who can change the circumstances.

When life tumbles in, when you are on the bed of affliction, when the wolf is at the door, find your joy in the Lord. He is the only source of joy that will not change.

Lonnie Davis