Who shot JFK?

“It is highly convenient to believe in the infinite mercy of God when you feel the need of mercy, but remember also His infinite justice.”

B. R. Haydon

On this day on November 24, 1963 in the basement of the Dallas police station, Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin of President Kennedy, was shot to death by Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub owner. Oswald had been brought to the basement of the Dallas police headquarters on his way to a more secure county jail. A crowd of police and press with live TV cameras rolling gathered to witness his departure. As Oswald entered the room, Jack Ruby emerged from the crowd and fatally wounded him with a single shot from a concealed .38 revolver. Some called Jack Ruby a hero, but he was still charged with first-degree murder.

  Did Oswald assassinate Kennedy? It appears so. Because Jack Ruby took justice into his own hands, we’ll never know for sure. It’s why there are so many Kennedy-assassination theories. Questions like: Was Oswald guilty? Did he act alone? Was there a conspiracy to assassinate the President? will probably never be fully answered. Jack Ruby impeded justice.  

  God is always just and the ultimate standard of righteousness, “For the LORD is a God of justice” (Is. 30:18). The justice of God is another way of speaking of God’s righteousness. Scripture teaches that God Himself is the ultimate standard of what is right (Ps. 119:137). God then defines what is right and what is wrong. Something is right because God says it is right, and something is wrong because God says it is wrong. God stands as the final measure of righteousness, not personal experiences/feelings, popular opinions, political majorities or any system of this world.

  Injustice is perpetuated in this world. It’s tempting to point fingers, yet even Christ-followers can be complicit in spreading injustice. It’s heinous that someone can be accused, tried and convicted in the media or the lunchroom before entering a courtroom. “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”

  In the early 1990’s Steven Cook accused Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of sexually abusing him during the 1970s. Later, Cook withdrew those charges after concluding his memories of the alleged incident which were evoked during hypnosis were “unreliable.” Though innocent with the charges withdrawn, some will no doubt always wonder if perhaps Bernardin was guilty. His name was dragged through the mud for months as he was presumed guilty by the media, the public, and even many of his parishioners. Only after a year of this abuse did the truth come out. His accuser admitted, as he lay dying from Aids, that he’d fabricated the story. Cardinal Bernardin visited Steven Cook and forgave him. A friend though of the late Cardinal shared that “the agony of having to endure those humiliating charges changed him forever.”

  Proverbs 18:13 warns, “If one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame.” If you’ve ever been a victim of a false accusation, you know how painful it is. Yet, our sinful nature is quick to believe the worst. Often we’ll gossip and spread the rumors. It’s sin! At work or in the neighborhood and even at church, we believe the worst but don’t know all of the facts. We must show others the grace that we’d want shown to us.

  The disadvantaged often are the greatest victims of injustice. The Old Testament ethic consistently defended the “quartet of the vulnerable,” (widows, orphans, immigrants and the poor). Scripture understands that these groups are disproportionately disadvantaged. They’re vulnerable, at least more so and more often than other groups because they often have little social power, influence or financial resources.

  God’s Word repeatedly commands special protection and treatment for these vulnerable groups because of their inherent disadvantages. If anyone must speak up and defend the “quartet of the vulnerable,” it should be us, as Bible-believers. This isn’t political, it’s biblical.

  Injustice is a threat to justice everywhere. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., made that observation in his famed work from a Birmingham Jail. Looking around the world we see those who are oppressed—who lack spiritual and religious freedom, who’ve never heard the gospel or have a knowledge of Jesus. It’s an injustice. We must stand up against injustice, boldly proclaiming that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

  We must share the only hope for justice – God’s mercy. The Bible confronts us with the reality that only God is righteous and we’re not, “there is none righteous, not even one” (Rom 3:10). Our condition of sin renders us separated from God, deserving of His justice and punishment.

  Wonderfully, it’s not the last word! God sent His Son, Jesus to pay the penalty for all of our sin. 1 Peter 3:18, “For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God.” The good news of the gospel is that God, because the penalty is paid can be just and forgive us if we but repent and commit our lives to the Savior. God can justly forgive sin and restore that person to a right relationship with Him, crediting to that person Christ’s righteousness (Rom 3:21-26; 2 Cor 5:21).

  We who have been forgiven must be committed to justice and righteousness. We’re to “practice righteousness” and not “practice sin” (1 Jn 3:4-10). Amazingly, what God commands us to do He also enables us to do. Moral obedience doesn’t stem from some mustering up of human strength or ability. It’s God’s Spirit who dwells within every believer that empowers us to do what is holy, just and righteous (Rom 8:13). We’re freed from the penalty of sin and freed of its power to live righteously.

  Our God is a God of justice. Those who know Him must be His emissaries of justice in an evil, unjust world. Are you?   

Can we help you spiritually? Can we help you know Jesus better? Please check out more resources on our church's web page, Gracechurchwi.org. Or, call us at 262.763.3021. If you'd like to know more about how Jesus can change your life, I'd love to mail you a copy of how Jesus changed my life in "My Story." E-mail me at Carson@gracechurchwi.org to request a free copy. Please include your mailing address. 

The Field of NEW Dreams!

“Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment

until it becomes a memory.”

  It seems that nearly every snowstorm, my friend, Tim Mocarski, posts on his Facebook wall, “Pitchers and catchers report in __ of days.” As we’re having a bit of “November-mas,” let me share a story happening next summer. On August 13^th of 2020, the Chicago White Sox and New York Yankees will play in Dyersville, Iowa,—that field made famous by the movie, Field of Dreams. It’s being dubbed “MLB at Field of Dreams.”

  It’s one of my favorite movies. If you’re like me, it brings tears to my eyes every time. Though called “a baseball flick,” the real story is father-son relationships. At the end, Kevin Costner’s character asks his dad, “Have a catch?” World Magazine editor, Marvin Olasky writing on this:

  “My lifetime catches with my father: zero. He had no interest in baseball. I never played until I was 11. At that point I was a fat kid with a lazy left eye, so my batting average during one year of Little League was .182, if I generously count as hits what were probably errors. Still, I wanted to get better. Become a better fielder. So I nagged my father to come out on the street and throw me some ground balls. I said ‘street’ because we lived in urban Massachusetts and had no back yard or nearby green space. That meant a missed ball would go rolling and rolling. One day, finally, my father agreed. We stood in front of the house in which we had an apartment. I walked 20 yards away. He threw me a ball that bounced twice before it should have hit my glove—and I missed it. Embarrassed, and blaming my father rather than myself, I ran after it, yelling something like, ‘Why didn’t you throw it straight?’ By the time I reached the ball and turned around, he was walking up the steps to our front door. He went inside. That was it. We never again even started a catch. Nor did we talk much—and once I became a teenager, we spoke hardly at all.

  Cut to October, 1984. I was 34. He was 67—and dying of bladder cancer. I lived 2,000 miles away and flew to Boston with the public goal of providing some comfort and help, but my private motive was selfish: To learn how he’d transformed from a brilliant student to a person who had spent the last 30 years disengaged and defeated. One evening we sat on a Danish Modern couch in their apartment. After some perfunctory remarks I threw him a question about his dropping out of graduate school. The question was harder and curvier than a polite inquiry should have been. He got up and walked away, saying over his shoulder something like, ‘Why don’t you mind your own business?’ I put away the conversational ball and went to sleep. The next day I asked no more questions. My father and mother drove me to Boston’s Logan Airport. He wore a baseball cap because chemotherapy had left him bald. I pulled my suitcase out of the trunk, shook his hand, leaned over, and whispered in his ear, ‘I love you,’ because that seemed the right thing to say to a dying parent. I never saw him again.

  This October is the 35th anniversary of our non-conversation. It still haunts me. In the magic of Field of Dreams, the son and the dad finally have a catch. That catches my tears, every time.”

  That touched me. One of the great regrets of my own life is the fractured relationship with my Dad. During my formative years he was a great business success, yet a prescription drug addict. Later he cleaned up his life and even became very active in his church. But he and I seemed unable to ever resolve our unresolved issues. Though I’d love to point a finger at him, like Marvin Olasky, I’m sure there are many fingers pointing back at me. And now that my Dad is gone, it truly is unresolvable. There’s not anything specific that I know of, yet I’ve prayed to my Heavenly Father, “to the extent that I sinned in my relationship with my Dad, please forgive me.” Based on Scripture’s promise in 1 John 1:9, I know that God has.  

  Some situations, as Romans 12:19 reminds us (“If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all”), are unresolvable. Yet, many others are. And if you can, please do solve them. Still, many others should just be buried and forever forgotten.

  Looking back I truly believe my Dad did the best he could and he really did a lot for me. His own father was a drunk, horribly abusive and even ended up for a time on a Georgia chain gang. Yet, my Dad paid for his children to attend private schools and also paid for me to attend high school in Wisconsin. He didn’t have to. Yes, he was difficult to live with and left scars on our lives. Yet, I truly believe it was out of ignorance, not malice.

  Sadly, I know that I too have left wounds on my own children’s souls. All parents do. None of us are perfect. We’re all sinners. With my own children, I’ve sought to own my sinful failures and asked their forgiveness. I don’t want unfinished business between us.

  As we come into the Holiday Season old wounds tend to resurface. Many of us need to forgive and move on. As believers, we ourselves have already been forgiven an unpayable debt, so, we too must forgive, “forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you” (Eph. 4:32). Most of our parents did the best that they could or knew how to do.

  As parents, though we determined to parent better than we were parented, we too have our own failures. It’s why we all need grace and grace is not something to horde, it’s given to be given away.

  During this Holiday Season when you’re tempted to let loose, remember again how much grace you’ve received. Not only that, you and I would not be who God has shaped us into if we’d not first been wounded. Years ago I determined to have the spirit the Patriarch Joseph had toward all of the evil his brothers had done to Him, “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good…” (Gen. 50:20). That’s so freeing!

  Whether it's a parent or a sibling – choose to be a person of grace! While we can’t change yesterday’s memories, we can make new ones. If we build it, maybe they will come. Make new memories while you still can and thank God that His grace is enough for yesterday, today and tomorrow.

Can we help you spiritually? Can we help you know Jesus better? Please check out more resources on our church's web page, Gracechurchwi.org. Or, call us at 262.763.3021. If you'd like to know more about how Jesus can change your life, I'd love to mail you a copy of how Jesus changed my life in "My Story." E-mail me at Carson@gracechurchwi.org to request a free copy. Please include your mailing address. 

Change is beautiful!

“Change is the only constant in life.”

     Heraclitus

  Autumn is my favorite time of year. While I love spring with the flowers blooming and green coming back to the trees and grass, I love God’s wonderful palette of colors in the fall. I’ve always been just a tad envious of folk who are able to go on a fall color tour.

  Recently, when we visited Jane’s Mom in northern Michigan the trees were on fire with their many colors. I love the cooler nights and the crispness in the air. There’s nothing like a warm fire, hot chocolate, snuggling up and gazing into the dying embers. It all brings back fond memories for me. In the south, we rarely raked leaves but would rake together huge piles of pine straw. I remember leaping into those piles and pinecone battles with my friends.

  The Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, was right – change is inevitable. To quote the Borg from Star Trek, “Resistance is futile.” Yes, some changes aren’t good or moral, yet God’s grace is sufficient and we can trust Him even as we sail into new unchartered cultural waters. Our Heavenly Father is never surprised by any of the cultural changes, even the evil ones.

  Yet, I am so thankful that God does not leave me in spiritual comfort and what too often can devolve spiritually into stagnation. The Christian life is to be one of constant change and forward movement. There is to be no plateauing and settling for the status quo.

  Recently, I shared with our leaders God has worked in my heart and changed my commitment and dependency on prayer over the years. Please understand I have light years to go yet. If you’re looking for a “prayer warrior,” I’m not your guy. Yet my dependency and internal default setting have drastically changed. During my first years of ministry, I was a doer and program focused. I’ve learned though and am continuing to learn that if God is not in it and He’s not doing it, it’s a waste of time and effort.

  Then, God has changed my outlook on trials and difficulties. This may surprise you, but there are folk that I tick off (sometimes I think that I’m a “Professional Ticker Offer”). I don’t like to upset people. I certainly don’t like trials or deep waters, yet I’ve learned more and more that it is in the trials that my loving Heavenly Father burns away the dross from my life. In the past, I’d chafe in the fire, or moan and groan…or even become angry. God has worked in my heart (I haven’t arrived), where more often I ask Him to burn away the dross that He needs to in my life and teach me the lessons that I need to learn from the heat. I want to grow and be more like Jesus. I know that means that He has to do some pruning of my heart and life. As the Lord Jesus said in John 15, “every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit” (vs. 2).

  Then, I’m so thankful for the changes in my marriage. Jane and I are more in love, closer and more honest with each other today than when we got married…sometime back when the dinosaurs roamed the earth. It’s very hard for me to watch couples who grow apart overtime when the Lord wants us to grow closer together as we grow closer to Him. That’s the key – growing closer to Him. As both husband and wife become more like Jesus and draw closer to Him, a wonderful outcome is growing closer to each other. Jane and I truly enjoy pleasing each other and making each other happy. Personally, I think that a healthy Christian marriage is one of the greatest witnesses for the power of the gospel. Only His grace can take two selfish sinners and make them more loving, selfless and sacrificial.

  Now that all three of our children are adults, I’m so thankful for the changes in our relationship. We’ve moved from parent and child to friends. All three of them are unique and God uses them to challenge me and be a blessing in my life. And I am so thankful that in the goodness of God (not because they had great parenting, especial a great Dad), that all three love Jesus, want to serve Him and others. Their spiritual maturity and compassion often challenge me to try to keep up with them.

  Then, I’m so thankful for the changes that God has and continues to bring about in our church. We have more and more who are committed to serving the Lord and reaching those who don’t yet know our Savior. I have the best job in the world, I have the privilege of sharing with folk how they can be forgiven, how their life can make an eternal difference and count for all eternity. I have the privilege of sharing biblical truth of how they can walk with Jesus, know His love, joy, and peace…be a better spouse, parent, employee, etc. Rarely do I hear moaning or groaning at church.

  I’m so thankful that God is working and changing in our church family. We’re more and more committed to not being some religious social club but a lighthouse of God’s love, grace and kindness to our community!

  As I’m aging, I’m even thankful for a few aches and pains. I know that may sound weird. Yet, as the writer of Ecclesiastes powerfully unpacks in his poetic description of aging and deterioration in chapter 12, it’s a constant reminder that the best is yet to come! I have a new body awaiting me! I  can’t wait to pitch my glasses once and for all. And I get to see the Savior who knew all about me and what a mess I was, yet chose to love me and die for me. As I grow older, I understand more and more what the Apostle Paul wrote in Philippians 1. Read it for yourself in verses 21-25. It’s summarized though in verse 21, “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” I long and pray for that to be true in my life!

  As a believer, the best is always ahead. The Christian life is to be one of constant godly change! I want to embrace and love change if it means that I’m becoming more like Jesus and one step closer to Home!

Can we help you spiritually? Can we help you know Jesus better? Please check out more resources on our church's web page, Gracechurchwi.org. Or, call us at 262.763.3021. If you'd like to know more about how Jesus can change your life, I'd love to mail you a copy of how Jesus changed my life in "My Story." E-mail me at Carson@gracechurchwi.org to request a free copy. Please include your mailing address. 

A Longsuffering God

“God loves each of us as if there were only one of us.” Augustine

  Popular Christian fiction author, Francine Rivers, shares that God used the Old Testament book of Hosea to bring about a radical spiritual transformation in her life. Though raised in a religious home, Francine didn’t come to Christ until she was nearly forty. Prior to committing her life to Christ she was an author and wrote historical romance novels. Yet, after she became a believer, she found that her writing: “died a swift death–not because I chose not to write, but because everything I wrote made no sense.  I struggled.  Writing was my ‘safe place,’ it was my ‘identity’…It took three years for the Lord to get through my thick skull and show me how my priorities were upside down.  I could almost hear Him saying, ‘You say you love Me, but you don’t even know who I AM.’  Sadly true.  For most of my life, I longed for a Savior, but I didn’t want a LORD.  I never bothered reading the Bible.”

  As she began reading the Bible, immersing herself in God’s Word, her death grip on her writing loosened. Finally, she let it go completely and without regret. Jesus became the center of her life. It was the book of Hosea that God used to break through her last walls of resistance. Later, she would write a bestselling novel based on Hosea, Redeeming Love. She describes it as “…the book of my heart. It is my confession of how I viewed and treated God before I knew Him, my yearning for a Savior and my deepest, life-long need for a loving, all-knowing LORD to direct my steps.”

  Today we’re beginning a several week study, Relentless Love, from the book of Hosea. If you asked most Christians to find the Hosea in their Bibles, they’d have to check the index. The most minor thing about what’s known as the Minor Prophets is their place in the life of the contemporary church. Many have never read the Minor Prophets and most have read or studied Hosea (it takes about half an hour to read it).

  It’s common for even Christians to develop their own view of God. Yet, the only way to truly know who God is to read God’s description of Himself as found in His Word. As we make our way through Hosea, we’re going to discover several truths about God. First, and primary…

  God is so longsuffering. I’m so thankful that He is. Being longsuffering is a little different from being patient. While longsuffering is similar to patience, it has more to do with the longevity of patience. It’s patience with muscles. The Bible uses a word for longsuffering that means “forbearance or the disposition to endure long under offenses.” God’s longsuffering is an expression of His unrestrained love and grace! The idea is that if God followed the desire of His heart immediately, He would bring an end to all sin, suffering and this world…including us.  

  As Hosea illustrates God’s longsuffering, it’s a shocking book! God commands iHIsHHis prophet to marry someone who is going to be unfaithful to him. It was a marriage doomed for heartbreak before the “I do.” But it doesn’t end there. Hosea is to forgive and restore his wife, and marriage.  

  Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessings is one of my favorite hymns. Robert Robinson wrote the words for it when he was only 22. I love the poetry, which so often describes my own journey of faith: “O to grace how great a debtor daily I’m constrained to be.”

  Robinson became a pastor in England, but that wasn’t the end of the story. At the end of his life, Robinson had wandered away from God again. The story goes that one day he was riding in a coach with a woman, who was humming the hymn that he wrote many years before, “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing.” She asked him if he was familiar with it and he replied, “Madam, I am the poor unhappy man who wrote that hymn many years ago, and I would give a thousand worlds, if I had them, to enjoy the feelings I had then.” The last verse described his own heart that had abandoned his relationship with God.  

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it
Prone to leave the God I love.

  Too often that’s my heart and no doubt, your heart. Hosea is God’s reminder to us that He loves us even when we run away from Him to chase other lovers. As Hosea honestly deals with the nation of Israel’s sin, idolatry and the promise of God’s chastening, he repeatedly draws out the gracious nature of God who continues to plead with those who have repeatedly gone after other lovers. From this message of judgment, the bright beam of God’s love and faithfulness breakthrough.

  Hosea reminds us of God’s nature. Our God is a forgiving and pursuing God who chases after His people even in their sin. At the same time, we’re confronted with the horror of sin and its consequences.

  This book teaches us that we all, like Israel, are spiritual Gomers (Hosea’s wife). We too easily give ourselves to other loves and idols of the heart. We minimize our sin and think of our sin as doing bad things, or saying wrong words or thinking evil thoughts. The book of Hosea teaches us that sin is first a matter of the heart and that sin is not just evil, it’s spiritual adultery. It’s only when we see ourselves as spiritual adulterers that we see the heinousness of our sin and yet the overwhelming love of God.

  All roads lead back to our hearts. It doesn’t matter whether we’re fighting against anger, addiction, doubt or discontent. The book of Hosea illustrates the truth confessed by David: “Against You, You only, have I sinned and done what is evil in Your sight” (Psalm 51:4). Our greatest need isn’t behavior modification or an attitude adjustment, it’s a heart transplant (2 Cor. 5:17). I don’t like seeing the evil sin in my own heart. Do you? Yet, I know if I don’t surrender and allow Jesus to heal me, sin will destroy me.

  Hosea repeatedly confronts us with the noxiousness of our sin, yet the overwhelming longsuffering and grace of God! It’s a message we need! God’s loving call doesn’t cease even as He pronounces judgment, His love beckons us again and again. The question is: Will we heed His call?

Can we help you spiritually? Can we help you know Jesus better? Please check out more resources on our church's web page, Gracechurchwi.org. Or, call us at 262.763.3021. If you'd like to know more about how Jesus can change your life, I'd love to mail you a copy of how Jesus changed my life in "My Story." E-mail me at Carson@gracechurchwi.org to request a free copy. Please include your mailing address.