Author Archives: ivanjamestruman

O How I Love Frost!

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O How I love frost, let me count the ways:

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven . . . a time to die . . . a time to pluck up what is planted . . . a time to kill . . . a time to break down . . . a time to laugh . . . a time to dance . . . a time to lose . . . a time to cast away . . . a time to tear . . . He has made everything beautiful in its time” (Ecc. 3:1-11).

When frost comes, my wife cries but I rejoice. Frost is proof that God wants all gardeners to take a break. It’s proof that he really does love the non-gardener, too. Frost is God’s way of saying, “Man shall not live by gardening alone, but by watching College Football, The World Series, and eating venison.”

Enjoy God’s gifts to you this weekend, but enjoy him above his gifts – worship Him who made all things, including frost, for his own glory and our delight (especially mine).

“Scientist Says Atomic Bomb of Future May Destroy 400 Square Miles at Blow”

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What if that were this mornings headline in the newspaper? It was in February, 1949, when the post-war muscle-flexing was reaching new proportions between the U.S. and Russia. These are my great-grandpa Sears sermon notes with newspaper clippings warning of what could happen if a Nuclear War breaks out between America and Communist Russia.

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That’s what was troubling then. What troubles you today in your life?

Do you believe that the same ascended King Jesus who was ruling and reigning then, is doing the same today? Hear again his words of what to do with your anxiety for today and for all your tomorrows:

“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble (Matthew 6:25-34).

I doubt that grandpa Sears is anxious about atomic bombs today; reading through his sermon notes and knowing the witness of his grandchildren, how can you be fretful standing by the One who held all your days in his hand? One day, whatever troubles you today and tomorrow will be used to show-off just how powerful the Risen Lord is – he can even old atoms in his hand (Heb. 1:1-3).

Why Does Chicago Exist?

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I really do enjoy living about an hour away from one of the mega-cities on the planet. The food and entertainment, the traffic, the sports, and the outrageous parking fees makes for a wonderful evening. The windy city has much to offer – especially to the big spender (which is not me). But why does it exist? I’ve picked my words carefully. I know how it came to be, and how transportation on water sparked a migration frenzy to this part of the great lakes, and how it survived a fire, and how its massive train and cattle yards are part of its history. But why?

Because sometimes God sends missionaries to people groups across the world to proclaim the gospel and sometimes God brings people groups across the world to hear the gospel proclaimed. Paul said it this way,

And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him.                   (Acts 17:26-27)

Chicago Exists because God determined that multiple ethnic groups would exist there in a certain time in history and with a certain boundary and location in that city. Also, one cannot speak of a perimeter of existence without implying the total number of that people. God determined that a massive amount of Jewish, Polish, Russian, ect., kinds of people would migrate here but with a limit so that the boundary of their existence would be established. And the reason God did it this way is so that they might hear the truth and seek him and come to know him, him who made them for his own glory.

Six thoughts about your heart and the big city:

1. Don’t despise the big cities of the earth. Yes – they promote massive materialism, self-centeredness, and more corruption than one can stomach. But this is God’s plan to get people near the gospel.

2. Remember that big cities are filled with lost souls, not just millionaires and pan-handlers. The millionaire and the beggar both need the gospel. Both are empty and both matter to God.

3. Give a dollar to a beggar once in a while and thank God that you were able to contribute to God’s common grace. “But he’ll just use it to buy whiskey or drugs or cigarettes.” Yes he just might. So? Have you always used the good gifts and graces of life that have come your way to the “Glory of God”? Jesus once healed nine lepers, easing their pain temporarily, giving them healthy bodies for who knows what they did that evening with their new-found freedom. But he did it anyway. It is good to give to those who have reached their zenith of joy, for when they die, it is an eternity of unfathomable misery. Have some pity! This is as good as its going to get for them.

4. Pray for the churches in the big cities that they will live and proclaim the gospel. “Lord, we ask that you would continue to equip Tim Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church and Erwin Lutzer at Moody Church with a vision, determination, and a passion to reach the lost of New York City and Chicago (respectively). Raise up men and women in these churches with various language skills to move into new areas of the city where the gospel is not proclaimed in the native language of a particular people group.”

5. Visit a big city and stop and think about what you are seeing. Then let God’s Spirit move over you with compassion as Jesus wept over Jerusalem. Turn to scripture in your mind and then pray for the people of the city. Ask God to be merciful as Abraham pleaded for the twin cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.

6. Finally, don’t besmirch the migration of people groups whether they move into your city or your back yard. God is moving people around so that they will come under the sound of the gospel. Be ready to speak and love. Be watchful for broken and lonely and homeless people. Be thankful that God put you in the path of people on the move. This is what God did with Philip in Acts 8. The sovereign Lord of immigration put an Ethiopian in his path. Philip explained the gospel of Jesus Christ from Isaiah 53, the black man repented and turned to Christ, was baptized, and went back to Africa a new man.

Remember: Immigration might be an American problem, but it is not a Church problem, or at least, it shouldn’t be.

Happy Birthday to “the wife of my youth”!

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Proverbs 5:18ff commends enjoyment with the girl you married when you were young. Yesterday, I enjoyed spending the day with her. I’m not in the dark about how this was made possible – much grace in many ways made the day. Contributors to our life together: loving family, skilled doctors and nurses, good eating and exercise habits, world-class hospitals, and an exceptional godly church family, all put together make one’s life a display of grace. For it is pure undiluted grace that explains the richness of life.

Now I’m not tell’n how old she is, I’m just say’n that . . .

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. . . she’s thrifty, enjoying some German cuisine at Prost with a $15 coupon that she found on the internet. I had pork belly and she had veal.

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. . . she’s nifty, which means she’s an enjoyable person to spend time with. She loves good tasting tea.

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. . . she’s frisky, as long as she gets her chocolates at The Fudge Pot!

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. . . she’s shifty, because no matter how hard I try to steer clear of things that grow in gardens, she suckers me in to stopping at these spots.

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. . . and she’s pithy. (that’s a synonym for “short” as clearly seen above standing beside a security guard). Visiting Hershey’s in Chicago is always a must. BTY, I just love how cinnanyms give us other options so we don’t use the same word twice – especially on sweet rolls – don’t you!?

Happy Birthday Cheryl. It was a great day in Chicago with you.

On the other hand, Death is God’s Response to our Demand to be God

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Not only did it cost us our physical and spiritual lives to seek God-like status instead of enjoying our God who made us (see previous post), but God killed an animal and clothed Adam and Eve with a covering not of their effort, work, insight, will-power, self-determination, or wits (Gen. 3:21). Why did he do this? Because they, and all of us along with them, wanted to be God. Since we all wanted to Live apart from the Giver of Life, God chose to put to death a substitute so that death would lose its full sting: Death is going to hurt but it will not totally destroy us (1 Cor. 15:56-57). Why not? Enter a lamb. Enter Jesus – he was crucified on a cross in Jerusalem nearly 2000 years ago. But why is death both the judgment upon man and the means of his salvation at the same time?

This is the mystery revealed at the cross. This is what God had planned before the world began: Christ upon the Cross would both absorb my judgment as my substitute and also become the means to eternal life (Acts 2:23, 4:28; Rev. 13:8). The one and only God-Man would suffer my death and then grant an eternal pardon by faith.

When I attend funerals, or think about people that have died in days gone by, I think about what it cost an innocent man to set me free. I’m also mystified beyond words that the Triune God would put into action this duel truth displayed in death before the world began: Judgement and Mercy at the same time, at the same junction of time upon a cross. Behold Our God and Worship!

Death is God’s Response to Our Demand to be God

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I once was a monitor-tech, reading and interpreting heart arrhythmias in a cardiac unit. To prepare for the tests to get certified, one of the text-books raised the question: “What is life?” This was the question after a long chapter on how the electricity is conducted through the heart, explaining that the beginning place is a self-conducting sinus atrial node (SA Node) in the top part of the right atrium; this is where the electricity begins. “And what sends electricity to the SA Node?” This was the next question in a standard text-book on cardiology. The answer to this two-part question: “Only God knows.” There was no text-book explanation for what starts the electrical stimulus in the heart to beat. The electricity is just there. “That’s Life” as one doctor put it.

Now, to look upon a dead person and observe such lifeless existence rattles the brain. And it should. Intuitively, we know that death is not right. Something is wrong. We accept it – we have to, but at the same time our insides scream: STOP – This is not the way it’s supposed to be!!

This raises a query: Why do we want death to stop if it is a normal part of human existence? Did you catch the operative word in that last question? Though evolutionary theory wants us to believe that death is a “normal” part of the upward path to higher living, we just can’t bring ourselves to accept it no matter how many elementary teachers and high school teachers and college teachers told us otherwise. I hate death and you can’t make me feel good about death no matter how many sympathy cards you send me. Death will never feel normal!

This brings us to what I believe is the hardest confession known to man to pay homage to: Man refuses to acknowledge that he can’t be God and be Man at the same time. It was a delicious offer, but it was a lie then and it still is now.

The devil ghoulishly proposed to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3:4-5). Though the woman had some fortitude to speak up and tell the truth, that God said we will die if we disobey, Adam was too passive to make the truth stick and protect their lives. They rebelled. They ate. They tried to live without God. They died. Now we all die. The tantalizing offer to be like God was a sham.

When God warned with death that if you commit mutiny against all of his joy, his love, his gifts, his eternal life, his protection for your life – when you throw all this away and attempt to live forever on your own strength and self-preservation, you will surely die.

I think about these things every time I attend a funeral:

1. Death is an appropriate opposite experience compared to what we could have had. For God to show us what we lost it took more than a time out, or an “off to your room with no supper” discipline. How else is God to demonstrate the level of exquisite Life with God that we could have had if he does not respond with the most painful and mind-numbing experience that man could know? God uses death to show us what we lost with him. Death is a universal megaphone that shouts in agony, “What have we done???”

2. Death is an appropriate response to our mutiny against God. What we did in the garden and what Man still does with unregenerated heart is treason against God. Our refusal to turn to Jesus Christ who rose from the dead to give life to all who will come to him, is STILL, an all-out assault upon the God who created the heavens and the earth. In his and her rebellion to turn to the Giver of Life, men and women believe the old putrid lie that Man can live as God on his own terms. I believe if God sent his Son Jesus to earth today, with unmistakable glorious identity and presence, and offered mankind eternal life with joy and peace and no death, IF – he would love Jesus with all his heart, Man would attempt to kill him again by his own hands, if he could. (Rev. 17:14).

3. Death is unquestionable proof that I am not God. And that’s the point, for now. One day even Death itself will be put to death (Rev. 20:14). In the presence of Christ in the new heavens and new earth, nothing contrary to the person of the Triune God will ever again insult his Majesty. Never again will there be a just response from a Holy God that will demonstrate how horrible it is to “go it alone” without God. Man cannot live without God. There is no self-generating Life in Man. One day, the selfishness will stop.

Death is all around us. It’s even in our bones. But if you are reading this it means you’re alive – God is being merciful to you! Today is a good day to be alive – it’s a day to say no to the lie and believe the truth, that only in Christ there is hope for Eternal Life (John 3:16). You cannot be God. But you can live with him forever. Won’t you join me?

What I learned when I smashed my dad’s car

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What I learned when I smashed my dad’s car was something that I would later understand about my Father Who Is In Heaven. Here’s the story.

When I was about 13 or so my dad asked me to take the truck up to the garden and get some tators out of the cellar. I got in that old tan GMC, 3 speed on the column hand-me-down, put it in reverse and began to back out and – WHAM! I looked back. What I saw was my dads ’77 Chevy Malibu staggering back and forth like a beaten drunk.

Matter-of-factly, with deliberate confidence, I pulled the truck back up. Turned it off. Walked inside. Said, “Hey dad, you need to come out here and look at your car.” My dad led the way. I followed. We stopped beside the car. Observed in mournful silence. The whole left rear fender was smashed in. I said to my dad, “You should get that fixed. Sorry about that.” My dad grinned and said, better get up to the garden and get them tators. “Yep”-  I sez. End of story. I never heard another word from my dad. He didn’t hit me, or cuss me out, or call me names like: “you idiot,” “you moron”, “you stupid boy” – or anything like that. He didn’t spend the next several weeks or months reminding me of how mindless I was to not look behind before I backed up. None of that. Just lesson learned. Move on. Tomorrow is another day. One more thing to do: repair the fender at a body shop that was owned by a friend of my dads.

Now before all you militant disciplinarians out there blow a head-gasket, stick it in neutral and sit for a spell.

I’m for learning financial lessons by paying restitution. I’m for addressing repeated offenses with corresponding increasing severity. I’m for teaching our children to think before they act, respect property, and honor your parents. But I’m also for teaching our children and adults, something a little more about the character of our God.

When you fail, God does not hit, slap, or call you names. When you act before you think, and something gets broken, God does not respond with condescending self-congratulatory smirk: “When I was your age I never would have done something so stupid. And if I did, my pa would have worn me out with a strap.”

So consider the gospel. God sent his son and said, “I’ll pay for your transgressions as if my own son did them himself. I’ll pay for the repair and the damage that you did to my name, my property, my glory – and I alone will make full restitution for what you have broken.”

And consider the implications of the gospel. God does not hold against you and remind you often of your fender-benders. He does not keep ridiculing or shaming you for what you did in the past, whether that was yesterday or ten years ago. God does not keep a tight-fisted mind, holding on to all of your reasons that sent his son to the cross. God does not accuse you of ruining his day. God does not withhold his love just because you hurt him and his fame. God does not feel contempt for you, seek revenge against you, or sponsor pity-parties for himself in your presence. God does not lock you up in an emotional tip-toe dance with him so that every time you come into his presence he loves to see you squirm with fear. God does not make fun of you in front of his friends. God does not compare you down to his other son, saying, “Why can’t you be more like Jesus – he never would do something so dumb.” God does not feel threatened in his own identity just because his children fail. God does not storm off with disgust when you act like you were born yesterday.

Here is what God did and continues to do for me through his Son:

“He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us. As a father shows compassion to his children, so the LORD shows compassion to those who fear him. For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust.” (Psalm 103:10-14)

Thanks dad for showing me something about my heavenly Father! And thanks for not getting too bent out of shape over what is certainly by now, a ton of compressed, melted-down cheap steel divided up somewhere into a thousand paper clips.

Husband, Wife, does it annoy you to consider . . .

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. . . that you will have complete admiration and love for the other in heaven? You see, if you are both in Christ and will be with Christ when you die, then this means that all that hinders love will be gone and there will be nothing but joy and delight in the other as with all other saints. Does it annoy you to think that all the contempt, anger, revenge, distrust, repudiation that you presently feel in your heart for your spouse, that when in heaven – POOF?! Gone. For not only will all the sin be obliterated in your spouse that stirred up your disdain for your spouse, but also all the sin that you justified in your heart to hold a grudge will finally be conquered by the lovely Savior. I ask again: Does it irritate you to think that in heaven you will have sweet and delightful, open and honest, generous and courteous, pleasurable and satisfying, enjoyable and stimulating, affectionate and exhilarating conversation and fellowship with your spouse?

If it annoys you to be so overwhelmed with the love of God that your relationship with your spouse will be as perfect as the Father’s is with his Son, then what does this say about your need to know more of the love of God? I fear that too many husbands and wives who say they are going to heaven but can’t fathom enjoying each other there, have not truly contemplated what heaven is and their own present need for change.

Recently I reflected again on Jonathan Edwards’ sermon that I’ve read several times over the years, “Heaven, A World of Charity or Love.” Hands down, it’s the most nourishing sermon on heaven’s love that I have ever read. Here are a few quotes from the sermon, which is found in his book, Charity And Its Fruits (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1852):

“Here I remark that the God of love himself dwells in heaven. Heaven is the palace or presence-chamber of the high and holy One, whose name is love, and who is both the cause and source of all holy love . . . and this renders heaven a world of love; for God is the fountain of love, as the sun is the fountain of light.” (pg. 326)

After taking us on a patient stroll of heaven’s love – God himself in Christ, Edwards then turns to the saints and shows us what divine love we will have for the other, reciprocated with as much delight as having been loved by the other and by the God of love himself:

“The saints shall know that God loves them, and they shall never doubt the greatness of his love, and they shall have no doubt of the love of all their fellow-inhabitants in heaven. And they shall not be jealous of the constancy of each other’s love. They shall have no suspicion that the love which others have felt toward them is abated, or in any degree withdrawn from themselves for the sake of some rival, or by reason of anything in themselves which they suspect is disagreeable to others, or through any inconstancy in their own hearts or the hearts of others. Nor will they be in the least afraid that the love of any will ever be abated toward them. There shall be no such thing as inconstancy and unfaithfulness in heaven, to molest and disturb the friendship of that blessed society. The saints shall have no fear that the love of God will ever abate towards them, or that Christ will not continue always to love them with unabated tenderness and affection. And they shall have no jealousy one of another, but shall know that by divine grace the mutual love that exists between them shall never decay nor change.” (pg. 340-41)

“There shall be no wall of separation in heaven to keep the saints asunder, nor shall they be hindered from the full and complete enjoyment of each other’s love by distance of habitation; for they shall all be together, as one family, in their heavenly Father’s house. Nor shall there be any want of full acquaintance to hinder the greatest possible intimacy; and much less shall there be any misunderstanding between them, or misinterpreting things that are said or done by each other. There shall be no disunion through difference of temper, or manners, or circumstances, or from various opinions, or interests, or feelings, or alliances; but all shall be united in the same interests, and all alike allied to the same Savior, and all employed in the same business, serving and glorifying the same God.”   (pg. 343)

When I am annoyed in loving those that I will spend an eternity with in heaven, I meditate on heaven’s love and then set my heart in line with what is to come. O how I long to experience this kind of love for all the saints, one of which is my wife. I hope you too desire to know the love of God in full measure.