Nurture Faith with Dr. Doug Hood

“From now on, brothers and sisters, if anything is excellent and if anything is admirable, focus your thoughts on these things: all that is true, all that is holy, all that is just, all that is pure, all that is lovely, and all that is worthy of praise. Practice these things: whatever you learned, received, heard, or saw in us. The God of peace will be with you.”

Philippians 4:8, 9 (Common English Bible)

Two men of similar age were hospitalized following a heart attack. Both were treated by the same doctor and both were placed on the same hospital floor. Most importantly, both men received a similar prognosis from the doctor – the damage each suffered was about the same and both received the same guidance from the doctor, change your diet, reduce stress, and exercise regularly. That is where the similarities stopped. The response of the two men were strikingly different from each other. One took a mental and emotional journey to a dark place, saying to his family and friends that his body was shot and nothing could now be done. The other told his wife that he would immediately change his diet, modify his workload, and hire a personal trainer. What was cause for despair for one was filled with challenge and opportunity for the other.

The life lesson here is that it is not what happens that matters. What matters is how you respond. How each one of us respond to unexpected – and unpleasant – challenges of life determines the outcome. Every person who face a similar circumstance have a choice to make. Either they accept defeat by the circumstance or they will see the possibility for adapting and moving forward creatively. We all struggle with challenges, changes in health, broken career paths, and disruptions that surprise us such as this pandemic, Covid-19. Often such forces move toward us without our consent. Nor can we stop them. Yet each person has the capacity to make a decision in the direction his or her life will now move. Optimism may remain out of reach for a season. However, giving-up does not have to be a choice.

This is precisely the lesson that the apostle Paul teaches the Christians in Philippi – that what we put into our mind determines what the outcome will be. Paul uses two powerful words, “focus” and “practice.” As we turn our mind toward something, the “focus,” and follow that with “practice,” what we do is program our minds with positive thoughts and behaviors that result in an optimal outcome. Both are important. It is not enough to turn our eyes toward all that is true, and holy, and just, and pure, and lovely, and worthy of praise. We must also put each of these into the practice of our life. They must be a stimulant that propels us in a new direction. Exposure alone is simply insufficient. Paul wants us to understand that as we intentionally direct our lives according to God’s word, we choose the outcome of our lives and we experience God’s peace.

Armed with Paul’s guidance, any of us can greatly improve our response to stressful and, potentially, debilitating situations. What seems to be a cruel and devastating situation to one person is an opportunity for reexamining priorities and life direction for another. As someone once observed, a virus may be all around and yet cause no infection until the virus finds access into our body. Which causes the illness – the virus or that it got inside of us? Naturally, the virus outside our body is powerless over us. It is only inside the body that the virus can wreak havoc. No one chooses for the virus to enter our bodies. That is what makes a virus so terrifying. Nevertheless, we can choose our response to every difficulty – choose whether, or not, we will “let it inside” our heads to do its worse. What we choose makes all the difference.

Joy,

From Doug Hood’s upcoming book,

Nurture Faith: Five Minute Meditations to Strengthen Your Walk With Christ, Vol. 2.

 \”As Paul and Barnabas were leaving the synagogue, 

the people urged them to speak about these things again on the next Sabbath.”

Acts 13:42 (Common English Bible)

            Tom Tewell shared with me that some years ago, the pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Pittsburgh, PA preached a sermon that so captured the hearts and minds of the congregation that the governing board passed a resolution that on the anniversary of that sermon each year, the pastor was to preach it again. Some time ago I heard an interview with Robin Roberts, a host of the morning show, Good Morning America. She spoke candidly of her Christian faith and her morning time with God before going to work. She mentioned a favorite devotional guide that she used each morning – one that provided a meditation for each day of the year. On January 1 of the following year, she started through the same devotional again.

            During my ministry in Bucks County, PA I was asked in one week to preach a Christian message of hope for two different families who were burying a loved one. Neither family had a church home or a pastor. Each service was in a different funeral home. A dear friend of mine, Bill, was close to both families and attended both services. In each service I preached the same sermon. Though both families expressed gratitude to me for my message, each saying that the message was precisely what they needed to hear, Bill shared his disappointment with me following the second service. Bill’s complaint was that he had already heard that sermon earlier in the week. I simply reminded him that I was not preaching for him.

            It has never been my practice to preach the same Sunday morning message twice in the same congregation. Yet, often I will reuse an illustration in other sermons. This is for two reasons: I believe that no other illustration has the same force to advance the message I wish to convey, and, the illustration embodies such truth within itself that I wish to impact more lives with its use. Worshipping communities are like streams – you never step into the same stream twice. The water from the first experience has now moved on. The second experience is always into new water. Likewise, the second telling of the illustration nearly always reaches persons not in attendance during the earlier usage. I’m not preaching to those who have already heard the illustration.

            It is natural to grow tired of hearing most stories over and over again. But stories that capture some truth; stories that instructs and inspires do not grow old. That is because they stir something in us each time. Much as some who read Dickens’ A Christmas Carol each Christmas, the Bible and illustrations that open the truths of the Bible clearly and powerfully are not ones we grow tired of. Inspiration for living in difficult times leak and must be refreshed. Reading a strong book of meditations that strengthen in one year can do the same the next year, just as Robin Roberts has experienced.  So, as Paul and Barnabas were leaving the synagogue, the people urged them to speak about these things again on the next Sabbath.

Joy,

The following is from Doug Hood\’s upcoming book, 

Nurture Faith: Five Minute Meditations to Strengthen Your Walk with Christ, vol. 2

 “Awake, awake, put on your strength, Zion!”

 \”Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever! Don\’t be misled by the many strange teachings out there. It\’s a good thing for the heart to be strengthened by grace rather than by food. Food doesn\’t help those who live in this context.\”

Hebrews 13:8, 9 (Common English Bible)

God’s aim for all people is that our hearts be strengthen. Not hardened, unyielding, unwilling to settle differences. This past year has produced many such hearts; hearts that are embittered by unkind political rhetoric, economic uncertainty, and fear of a virus that seems unstoppable. That is a heart that is incapable of civil, respectful discussion – only monologues, bouncing off others as though they were a hard surface. And often times they are! Hard surfaces that lack the humility to listen deeply to others, which lacks the capacity or willingness to harness disagreement for the advancement of personal thought. What God desires are hearts that are strengthen in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

Hearts strengthened by God’s grace, strengthen by a daily decision to learn of Jesus Christ and allow that instruction to direct the course of our thoughts and behavior results in a milder, more temperate, more compassionate nature! As someone once wrote, in Jesus Christ we have, “Before each of us an image of what we ought to be.”[i]In a very practical course, what this means is that the image of Jesus Christ should become a living reality within each person. That is not a person who clings to rules or some interpretation of moral conduct that is foisted upon another. It is a person that recognizes that fallibility marks each one of us and moves toward another with compassion and acceptance.

Often resolutions are made at the beginning of a New Year. Many times they are broken – and broken early – and some are kept, even if feebly. Yet, according to our lesson this morning from Hebrews, there is one desire that God has for everyone. That is the desire that we are not led in the wrong direction this New Year by any other voice or authority than what is found in the Bible, “Don’t be misled by the many strange teachings out there.” A heart that is centered, and continually strengthened, in Jesus Christ is God’s aim, God’s hope for each of us. After all, any other desire or hope we may have will end in disillusionment if not deeply rooted in a relationship with our creator. 

God’s hope for us does not depend upon our own strength of resolve, our ability to exercise absolute discipline in the course of our daily lives. We are not strong enough. This is precisely why so many resolutions in the New Year fail. Our intention is sincere and strong. Our discipline stumbles. What God promises is an uncommon strength that comes from God that helps us make Jesus Christ the pillar of our thoughts and actions. Only one thing is needed – that we say to Jesus Christ today, and each day this year, “Here I am, do with me according to your will!” God’s promise is that our heart will be strengthened. It is then that our lives will exhibit God’s commandment – the commandment of love.

Joy,

From Doug Hood’s book,

Nurture Faith: Five Minute Meditations to Strengthen Your Walk With Christ

 “Don’t fear, Zion. Don’t let your hands fall. The Lord your God is in your midst.”

From Doug Hood’s upcoming book,

Nurture Faith: Five Minute Meditations to Strengthen Your Walk With Christ, Vol. 2. 

“Glory to God in heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors.”

  The following is from Doug Hood\’s 

Nurture Faith: Five Minute Meditations to Strengthen Your Walk with Christ

“Therefore prepare your minds for action; discipline yourselves; set all your hope on the grace that Jesus Christ will bring you when he is revealed. Like obedient children, do not be conformed to the desires that you formerly had in ignorance. Instead, as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct; for it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy.’”

1 Peter 1:13-16 (NRSV)

              Ralph Waldo Emerson shared in a lecture, “We plant trees, we build stone houses, we redeem the waste, we make prospective laws, we found colleges and hospitals, for remote generations. We should be mortified to learn that the little benefit we chanced in our own person to receive was the utmost they would yield.”[i]Emerson decried the tendency of people to live below their true capacity – to chance little of their enormous potential. The life they make for themselves is not what it could be, not what it should to be. Living below the capacity available to them, they should not experience surprise that what they receive in return is little. In fact, such people should be “mortified.”

              This is Peter’s concern for the one who follows Christ: “Therefore prepare your minds for action; discipline yourselves.” The encouragement from Peter is that the Christian strive forward, stretching personal ability and gifts for maximum benefit. The “hope” Peter speaks of is not wishful thinking. Rather, it is certain expectation, which follows personal effort – expectation lodged firmly in the promises of Jesus. Careful preparation of the mind, that is, clear and focused thought, is demanded followed by intentional participation in God’s work in the world. Discipline will be required less the Christian once again is conformed to former ways that are largely unproductive.

              Success in any organization is determined by the quality of organization and effort. Similarly, the success or failure of a person depends on the way he or she manages himself or herself. We all produce things, behaviors, and attitudes that reflect our management, or lack of discipline and personal management. As such, we should gauge the quality and the importance of who we are becoming in each area of our lives – our personal growth, relational growth with family, friends, and colleagues, professional contribution, and spiritual growth.  Without determined, intentional action, we ease back into ordinariness.

              Peter asks that we claim our identity as God’s chosen people. Accordingly, God’s people are to live “holy” lives – that is, we are to separate ourselves from ordinariness and live distinctly as those who follow Jesus Christ. “Holy” does not presume that we will live perfectly, without stumbles, difficulty, and occasional rebellion and disobedience to God. It does suggest that when we stumble, it matters to us, that we expect more from ourselves, and rise and struggle forward in obedience once again. It is the intention of the heart that leads believers to behave in ways that seem strange to those who have not answered the call to be “holy” – to live into an extraordinary life as God desires for us.

 “Love is patient, love is kind, it isn’t jealous, it doesn’t brag, it isn’t arrogant, it isn’t rude, it doesn’t seek its own advantage, it isn’t irritable, it doesn’t keep a record of complaints, it isn’t happy with injustice, but it is happy with the truth. Love puts up with all things, trust in all things, hopes for all things, endures all things.”

1 Corinthians 13:4-7 (Common English Bible)

            The other day I came across a piece written by Earl Nightingale that he titled, How to Be Miserable. He provided remarkable clarity about some of the things I have been wrestling with recently, clarity about self-inflicted misery. Nightingale writes, “The first step to real, professional-type, solid, unremitting misery is to get all wrapped up in yourself and your problems – real or imagined. Become a kind of island, surrounded on every side by yourself. By turning all of your thoughts inward upon yourself, naturally you cannot spend much or any time thinking about others and other things. And so, finally, the outside world – the real world – will disappear into a kind of Hitchcock-type fog.”[i]

            Nightingale continues with a stinging observation that the type of person who chooses misery, who turns inward upon himself or herself doesn’t have much in the wisdom department. Otherwise, they simply wouldn’t do it. With the absence of wisdom, they turn inward and discover that there is not much there. There is a kind of vacuum, and they have to embellish perceived, or real, hurts and slights from others or invent things entirely. Negative – and harmful – behavior is then directed outward toward those who have caused them harm. This behavior may simply be for punishment, to cause pain equal to what they are experiencing, or to manipulate others to meet some relational expectation.

            Where Nightingale provides an unpleasant portrait of a miserable person, the apostle Paul provides divine knowledge – or wisdom – for fleeing from misery: love others, particularly when that love is difficult. Paul beautifully expresses the very nature of love by its positive attributes – “love is patient, love is kind.” Paul provides additional wisdom by sharing what love isn’t and doesn’t do – “it isn’t jealous, it doesn’t brag, it isn’t arrogant, it isn’t rude, it doesn’t seek its own advantage, it isn’t irritable, it doesn’t keep a record of complaints.” What Paul provides is a different portrait from Nightingale, a portrait of a person who actively participates in the unity and well being of relationships with another.

            It is widely embraced that the Christian faith is less to do with right beliefs and more to do with right behavior. A person may have a grasp of the Holy Scriptures that is unparalleled, able to articulate a particular theological position with uncommon clarity and yet remain untouched by God’s transforming power – the transformation that deepens love for God and love for others. Such a faith is a lazy faith because it requires no effort. Love requires effort. Love demands that we struggle against an impulse to turn inward and compile a record of complaints against another. Such love “puts up with all things, trust in all things, hopes for all things, endures all things.” It is a love that knows no misery.

Joy,