DayBreaks for the Week of 4/28/24 – The Wrong Question

DayBreaks for the Week of 4/281/24 – The Wrong Question

From the DayBreaks archive, 2005:

This past week I was in Florida for the funeral of my sister’s husband who passed away with pancreatic cancer.  He had fought the disease to a standstill for much longer than they thought possible, but it finally overtook him on Sunday, April 10.  On Sunday, April 17, as I was attending worship in a church in the Tampa, Florida area, the preacher was bringing a message to confront the audience with questions of the utmost importance – questions that relate to our assurance of salvation.  It is a truly critical topic – and death helps to bring it into a crystalline focus.  Many of those in attendance were college kids – many had been students of my brother-in-law.  And of course, as we all know, when you’re college age, it’s hard to get your focus around a subject the size of death and eternity.

At one point the well-intentioned preacher asked the question: “Do you know if you’re saved?”  He went on to talk about how typically we might answer with phrases like these: “I think so,” or “I hope I am.”  Many might also say, “I really don’t know.  I’d like to think so, but I’m not sure.”  My experience says that more often than not, the answer someone gives is closely related to recent activities in their life.  Of course, John says that we can KNOW that we are saved.  How?  1 John 5 talks about this at length, but to put it in a nutshell, John says that it is the one who believes in the Son of God.  Believing means more than just intellectual acceptance, for other passages tell us that the demons believe – and tremble.  So it means more than just saying, “Jesus is Lord.”  That’s a start, but just a start.  It is then accepting him as the Lord of your life, letting Him lead you through the Spirit, doing the best you can to carry on the work of the Lord in a pained world.

But what really bothered me was not that question, but the next one that the preacher asked.  He said, “Do you have confidence that your faith is strong enough to save you?”  Again, many might say, “I don’t know, I hope so, it’s getting stronger,” or something to that effect.  I think that he asked the wrong question entirely.  I think that it ultimately has very, very little (if anything) to do with the strength of my faith.  If he’d asked me that question directly, I’d have answered, “No.  My faith isn’t strong enough to save me.  I have no confidence in my faith.  But I am confident that Jesus is going to save me in spite of my weak faith.” 

No where in the Bible does it say that your faith has to measure up to a certain “standard” of strength or confidence.  God doesn’t require us to put on a demonstration that we can say to a mountain, “Be moved to over there” before we are saved.  It is the fact of faith, not the strength of faith, that is the qualifying agent.  At the pearly gates, there will be no circus device that we must strike with the sledgehammer of our faith in an attempt to ring the bell to prove our faith is muscle-y enough to unlock the doorway to heaven.  God will look us over for the presence of faith in His Son.  And that is the key to the Father’s home.  If you have that, you have the key in your hand and in your heart.  And by that, you may know that you have eternal life.

PRAYER: We believe, Lord, help our unbelief! In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright 2024 by Galen C. Dalrymple.

DayBreaks for the Week of 4/21/24: Things that Go Bump in the Night

From the DayBreaks archive:

I used to not believe in monsters.  Well, let me clarify.  I don’t believe in the kind of monsters that have three eyes, breathe fire, and hide under your bed to grab your ankle and pull you down so that they can eat you.  But I do believe in monsters.

We live in a world that is truly characterized by darkness.  All one has to do is read the paper, look at the pictures, and you’ll see monsters staring at you from the pages or the TV screen.  Recently, the state of Florida and the nation grieved the deaths of two young girls who were abducted by malicious, vicious, brutal criminals.  You don’t have to look long or hard at the faces of Couey or Onstott and you’ll see a monster staring back at you.  Such things as happened to those young girls should never happen to anyone.  But they do, don’t they?

And not all monsters have faces.  With the death of my sister’s husband, who wrestled with a monster called cancer and lost, two young boys were deprived of the daddy who loved them.  And the boys had done nothing wrong, they’d not asked for this, nor did they deserve it.  And the monster of death has been loosed in their home with mortal consequences.  Now, when they hear the things that go bump in the night, who could blame them for not believing in monsters?  Death, disease, cruelty, human depravity, injustice of any kind – these and more monsters run amok, not just during the hours of darkness, but they can reach out and capture us at any time.  Yes, I believe in monsters.

Yet the book of Revelation pictures the great Slayer of dragons, who makes war on the beasts, and who defeats them.  God wishes to remind us that the monsters will all be captured, caged, and destroyed someday.  But not yet.  Oh, no, not yet.  “How long, O Lord?” my cry joins with that of the martyrs pictured in Revelation.  The only answer is, “Not yet.  But someday.”

Even things that go bump in the night will answer to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.  For there is nothing that will not be put under his footrest.  And he will crush the head of the serpent in the great and glorious morning to come when monsters are no more.

PRAYER: Be our Protector and Defender, Lord!  We long for You to strike down everything that is opposed to Your rule! In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright 2024 by Galen C. Dalrymple.

DayBreaks for the Week of 3/18/24 – Living in the Resurrection

From the DayBreaks archive, 2015:

John 11:17-25 – When Jesus arrived at Bethany, he was told that Lazarus had already been in his grave for four days. Bethany was only a few miles down the road from Jerusalem, and many of the people had come to pay their respects and console Martha and Mary on their loss. When Martha got word that Jesus was coming, she went to meet him. But Mary stayed at home. Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask.”  Jesus told her, “Your brother will rise again.”  “Yes,” Martha said, “when everyone else rises, on resurrection day.”  Jesus told her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die like everyone else, will live again.”

This past week was not a really good one for several members of our church.  Two families lost loved ones from their extended family.  The cold, bony fingers of death were a little too close to home this past week.  I pray that they’ll be gone for some period of time.  Both deaths were rather sudden, and relatively unexpected.  But, when the Lord decides that our time is up, we must answer and we must go – no matter whether we are male or female, young or old, rich or poor, happy or sad – believer or unbeliever alike. 

I think that John 11 is my favorite chapter in the Bible.  The theological truths are profound, the human drama unrivaled, the full gamut of human experience, from life, to death, to resurrection, and the surprise of new life are on display.  Jesus’ compassion and his fury at death are equally visceral.  Jesus had already raised other people from the dead by the time the story of Lazarus takes place.  But Martha, bless her heart, still somewhat rebukes the Lord for dilly-dallying around instead of coming at first word of Lazarus’ illness, and then she confesses, when asked, that she believes he will rise again in the resurrection.  Was she being coy – perhaps hoping that Jesus would raise him?  I don’t think so.  I think she had no such expectation.  When confronted with death we are forced to become realists.  Death is as real as real as it gets.  That is, unless Jesus is there.

Jesus tells her an amazing truth: I AM the resurrection and the life….  He doesn’t say, “I will be responsible for bringing the resurrection someday.”  No, He’s far more than the power behind the resurrection.  He IS the resurrection.  The Resurrection was standing in their midst, eating with them, laughing with them, weeping with them, teaching them, living for them, dying for them, and then living again.

F. B. Maurice said that this story made him very sad.  How sad it is, he observed, that after 2000 years, the church has gotten most Christians only to the point to which the Pharisees got Martha: resurrection in the future, resurrection a week from some Tuesday.  Only a handful have ever gotten past that point and made the leap of faith that Jesus got Martha to make: the leap to resurrection now – to resurrection as the fundamental mystery of creation finally manifest in his own flesh.

Will we live in the resurrected body in the future?  Yes.  All, Jesus says, who believe in him, will live again.  But will we live in the power of the resurrection NOW?  Will we continue to be afraid, fearful and timid creatures with no power, or will we live in Jesus now?  (It’s the same as living in the Resurrection, since He is the resurrection!)  Jesus had no fear – he feared nothing and no one because He knew what it meant to be the Resurrection.  Nothing could hold him, nothing could stop him, nothing can ever diminish him.  May we learn the secret of living in the resurrection each day for the rest of our lives!

PRAYER: Fill us, Lord, with Your glorious resurrection power today and every day throughout eternity!  In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright 2024 by Galen C. Dalrymple.

DayBreaks for the Week of 2/18/24 – The Nature of Fear and Sin

Did you know that, according to John Ortberg, there are 366 verses in Scripture that essentially say, “Fear not!”?  That’s one verse for every day of the year, including leap years!  God must have known something, eh?  We should note that more often than not, it is stated as a direct command, and usually at the point God is asking someone to do something that will take them so far out of their comfort zone that they’d be nuts not to be at least a little afraid.  Yet He tells His servants over and over “Fear not!”, “Don’t be afraid!”

I remember how my little kids would stand on the edge of the pool and I’d encourage them to jump into the pool while I caught them.  Their little bodies stood on the edge, their arms held tightly to their little, shivering bodies, often with their fingers near their mouth so they could chew on their fingernails while they debated the invitation.  They were shivering – but not because it was cold.  It was because they were afraid.  There was a titanic struggle going on inside their little hearts and minds, a struggle between the will and the want.  You see, they wanted to jump.  They wanted to be brave.  They figured that it must be kind of fun or people wouldn’t be jumping into pools all the time.  They wanted to believe that I’d not drop them or miss catching them if they left terra firma behind.  But the will, oh, the will – it surrenders hard when fear comes around the corner! 

In If You Want to Walk on Water, You’ve Got to Get Out of the Boat, John Ortberg argues that fear is the #1 thing that keeps us from obedience to God.  It may be fear that we will be dropped, fear of failure, fear of success, fear that we’ll be revealed as something other than what we’ve pretended to be for so long – it could also be fear of the unknown. 

In sin, I think one of two things happens.  Either the want says, “God, I want to take the leap with You!”, but the will isn’t ready to jump, or both the want and the will are refusing to go with God.  Either way, when fear wins, we lose – but more important than that, God loses, too.  When we fail to do what He wants, we have made ourselves unavailable to Him as a servant.  And then what happens to what God wants to accomplish?  Oh, He’ll probably find a way to accomplish what He wants in the lives of others, but as long as we are blocked by fear, He is blocked in accomplishing what He wants to accomplish within us. 

Are you letting fear make you unavailable to God?  Consider the Father who is asking you to jump into His arms and see if He isn’t trustworthy!

PRAYER: God, help us to will and to want to leap out with You in faith!  In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright 2024 by Galen C. Dalrymple.

DayBreaks for the Week of 2/04/24 – As the World is Unraveling

Note from Galen: This is a post from the DayBreaks archives, but it seemed especially relevant to what is happening in our world.

Last week was a hard week.  As Christians, we are people who claim to live by faith, with hope, knowing that Jesus is Sovereign – not only is He Sovereign, He is a caring shepherd, not someone who doesn’t care.

And that knowledge is what makes it a bit harder to be people of hope when we saw something this past week that I think none of us could have anticipated: a captive being placed in a cage, doused with gasoline, and lit aflame.  That didn’t happen to me, but I had some moments of doubt and did some second-guessing – just like I’d thrown an interception on the one-yard line.  At times I know he loves me relentlessly…but at other times my emotions race to the edge of a cliff somewhere, my anxieties spike and I wonder how he could.  Feelings don’t always gibe with facts, or vice versa.

There is a wonderful word: shalom.  Put simply, it means the peace of God that brings about flourishing, restoration, and joy.  It is what God desires for His creation but especially for His children.  Clearly, shalom has not arrived in full force yet.  For whatever reason, God has not mandated shalom throughout the universe.  Shalom, like the curtain in the temple, has been ripped and torn.  While we have peace with God through the cross of Christ, the world and creation as a whole is not experiencing anything like shalom. 

What, then, are we to think and do about this?  Part of His plan, as crazy as it may seem to us, is that we are to participate in bringing that peace to earth…not fully, not perfectly, but in tiny, incremental ways.

How?  As we turn our eyes on Him, as we let Him change us in the inner person bit by tiny bit, we mend.  Not only has shalom been ripped, we have all been ripped and torn asunder.  When someone mends an article of clothing, it is not like it was when it was brand new, but it is once again useful.  The mending takes time, patience, thread, a needle, and a good eye.  Certainly, we are secondary in the mending process – His is the prime work.  We cannot make anything brand new, while He is the One who will one day “make all things new.”   We won’t just be made mended on that day but will be made new.  And so will all things…hope will no longer be necessary, nor blind faith.  Hope will give way to certainty, faith will yield to sight. And shalom will come to pass.

PRAYER: God, I pray that You will continue Your unique work of mending me, and in so doing, help me to do what little I can to mend this unraveling world.  In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright 2024 by Galen C. Dalrymple.

DayBreaks for the Week of 12/17/23 – Consider the Possible Impossibilities

Isaiah 7:14 (ESV) Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.

This is a story of impossibilities. Consider the impossibilities Mary faced in this story: She is a virgin and pregnant — she is having a child while she is a virgin. Impossible! No way! Won’t happen! Joseph has to follow through on the marriage after he discovers Mary is pregnant. Impossible! Mary must avoid being stoned to death when the neighbors hear the news. Impossible!

Consider the impossibility Elizabeth faced. She was well past the childbearing age, and yet God says she is going to conceive and bear a child. This impossible news left old Zechariah speechless. Impossible! No way! Won’t happen!

This is a story of biblical impossibilities. But, what are the impossibilities in our world? What would you label “impossible” in your life? Peace in our world. Impossible! No way! Won’t happen! Christian values returning to our nation, morality becoming the norm? Impossible! Our church reaching our surrounding community and making our world different? Impossible! Restoring relationships, healing past hurts in our lives. A relative or friend entering a relationship with Christ. Breaking an addiction and overcoming past hurts and disappointments? Impossible!

We find ourselves with the same troubled mind as Mary, wondering over the impossible (v. 29). We even ask the same question Mary asked, “How will this be?” (v. 34). To us it seems impossible! No way! Won’t happen! The real question for people today is “How can the impossible become possible?”

PRAYER: God, for all who need to believe in the impossible this day, during this season, may they find the hope they need in You! In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright 2023 by Galen C. Dalrymple.

DayBreaks for the Week of 11/13/23 – For When You Can’t Believe It

Jude 1:24-25 (NIV) – To him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy–to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power, and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen.

I suppose it is a common feeling among those of us who wear the name “Christian”, this feeling of “I’m just afraid I’m not going to make it.”  It’s a feeling born of the thousands upon thousands of failures, falls, and sins that have plagued us from the time we were old enough to know what is right and what is wrong.  It is a feeling of hopelessness, unworthiness and utter despair.  To feel like we have blown it not just one time too many, but hundreds or thousands of times. 

And when that happens, Satan has been playing with our heads.  That is precisely the way Satan wants us to think.  He wants us to believe things are hopeless.  He wants us to doubt that God could be “that” merciful, “that” loving, “that” forgiving.  He wants us to think that either God is not willing to forgive us that many times, or that He is, because of His holiness, unable to forgive us for such a huge pile of failures.  When we think those thoughts about our God, Satan smiles.

How do we know that it isn’t true?  Read today’s passage again – slowly – especially verse 24.  “To Him WHO IS ABLE to keep you from falling, and to present you before His glorious presence WITHOUT FAULT and great joy…”  Are there any sweeter or more promising words in all of Scripture? 

When we think despairing, hopeless thoughts, we are playing into Satan’s hand and his strategy.  God is neither unable nor unwilling to forgive you…over and over and over again.  And there’s another wonderful part of that passage that also very much deserves our attention and which lifts my spirits.  And here it is: not only is He able to keep me from falling and to present me before God’s glorious presence without fault…but he will do so with “…GREAT JOY…”  What does that mean?  It means that Christ won’t begrudge me that forgiveness.  He won’t look at me and shake his head from side to side and say, “Boy, it pains me to say this, but come on in.”  There will be none of that.  There will be only great joy on His face, on the face of Christ…but especially on mine.  I will know that I didn’t deserve it – but he will insist upon it, with a loving hug, a warm smile, and a pat on the back, and the words, “Well done, good and faithful servant!  Enter into the joy of your Master!”

So, for those times when you just can’t believe that this will happen to you, go back to this verse in Jude…and smile, knowing HE is able! 

PRAYER: I am so filled with hope in knowing YOU are able…and not only are YOU able, YOU will finish this according to Your promise!! In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright 2023 by Galen C. Dalrymple.

DayBreaks for the Week of 11/06/23: Where God Resurrects Dead Things

From the DayBreaks archive: Once again, confession time.  But first, a caveat: I’m going to tell you about something I’ve not done for a long, long time.  Are you ready?  I used to read Stephen King’s books.  I was a fan of his writing.  I loved the suspense and strange twists that he’d bring into play.  I also loved the cartoon strip, “The Far Side” and “Calvin and Hobbs”, and I still love “Dilbert”.  They are all a bit off the wall, and helped to take me to unexpected places – some of which were healthier than others.  But one of my all-time favorite Stephen King books was “Pet Sematary” (yes, that’s how it was spelled).  It was about a strange place out in a twisted wood behind a farm where dead things would come back to life once they were buried there – in a little pet cemetery.  I very seldom read any book more than once – but I did that one.  Of course, in true Stephen King style, the pets that came back weren’t quite like they had been previously – they were changed, and not for the better.  I won’t tell you the rest of the story…let your imagination work on it, if you wish.  

But the concept was intriguing.  As many of you know, it’s been just over 10 months since my dog, Ramses, died.  How I wish that there were a real pet cemetery where we could have taken him and gotten him back in a few hours – breathing, twisting, wagging, and playing as he had before.  But I don’t know of a pet cemetery like that.  Just last night as I was on a retreat, I told a fellow pastor about my father’s passing over 6 years ago – and I cried.  I miss him.

It is interesting that many times in scripture, we find things that were dead coming back to life.  It may have been hope that died, faith that died, trust that died, or it may have been someone that died.  Several times in the Bible, when something dies and it is going to be brought back to life, a cave is involved.  Elijah, after his trust and faith died, ran to the cave on Mt. Horeb where his hope was reborn.  David, running from Saul in fear, feeling like a failure after having been anointed, only to be chased for years by Saul who still sat on the throne, spent years in a cave regaining his hope and having God grow his trust.  Lazarus went into the cave.  Jesus went into the cave.  But none of them stayed there.  Why?  Because caves are the place where God resurrects dead things.

Not every cave is made out of rock.  Some are made out of the shambles of our hollowed-out spirits, marriages, families, and collapsed dreams.  Some are made of the demons of guilt, shame, or abuse.  Sometimes it seems as if the entry to the cave through which we entered has been sealed off by all the debris of our lives, and that we will die – alone and cold – in the hard, rocky darkness.  But then something happens.  A voice from the other side of the cave or the other side of the collapsed tangle of trees calls out to us, “Galen!  Come forth!”  And that which was dead breathes again by the grace and miraculous power of God. 

Life can, and is, a very, very long, hard, cold cave.  I know people who have lived in a cave of some kind of suffering and despair virtually every minute of their lives.  I don’t know how they do it.  But I do know that God spoke to Elijah in a cave, He led David out of the cave to the throne of Israel, He called Lazarus out of the clammy darkness, and He brought Jesus forth gloriously – never to die again. 

If you’re in a cave right now, rejoice.  You may be about to see and hear God speak life into you again.  And you’re in VERY good company.

John 11:38-44 – Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. “Take away the stone,” he said. “But, Lord,” said Martha, the sister of the dead man, “by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days.” Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?”  So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.”  When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’”

PRAYER: I am so grateful that you are a God who does amazing, impossible things – even in the darkest of times in our lives!  Glory to You now and forever! In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright 2023 by Galen C. Dalrymple.

DayBreaks for the Week of 10/29/23 – The Basis of My Hope

The day before yesterday as my wife and I drove along in the car, I asked Alexa to play the song, Amazing Grace/My Chains are Gone, by Pentatonix.

If you’ve not heard or watched the official video, I’ll attach a link below. When I hear them sing it, I almost invariably find a tear running down my cheek. I am struck over and over again at the wonder of grace, and on this particular day as we drove along, I was struck afresh with the incredible amount of grace that I need if I am ever to be saved. That, in itself, is not a new thought. I believe that I have taken the title from the apostle Paul of the “chiefest of sinners”.

But what really struck as was a new thought: yes, grace is essential, but what really cements my, and your, salvation is God’s faithfulness. Sure, he could tell us he will be gracious to us, he could promise to save those who believe in Jesus, but if he wasn’t faithful to his word, all would be lost.

Can I trust that God will be faithful to me? I admit that there are days when I think I’m too big of a sinner and that God will not be faithful because my sin is too great. As I think about that, though, I realize how and why that thinking is so flawed: it’s because I am thinking that God is like a human. He isn’t. While it is possible for us to be faithless, he cannot be.

How often have I, and you, been unfaithful? We’ve been unfaithful in our promises to our children, to our boss, to our neighbors, perhaps to our spouses. We have broken promise after promise after promise…day in and out, week in and out, month in and out, year in and out, decade in and out. Those acts of unfaithfulness were not planned. They are not things we are proud of. They are human. God is Divine. If he has ever been faithful to a promise he made, he will always be faithful to all promises he has made because he cannot be untrue to himself and his nature.

Amazing grace, my chains are gone, my God my Savior has ransomed me!

Do you want to be more Godly? Practice faithfulness today!

Know that Yahweh your God is God, the faithful God who keeps His gracious covenant loyalty for a thousand generations with those who love Him and keep His commands. Dt. 7:9

Let us hold on to the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful. – Heb. 10:23

Link: (69) Pentatonix – Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone) (Official Video) – YouTube

PRAYER: Almighty and faithful Father, glory, glory, glory to you now and forever!!! In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright 2023 by Galen C. Dalrymple.

DayBreaks for the Week of 10/15/23: Our Hope Through All Our Terrors

Saw this story and thought it worth sharing:

“Several summers ago I spent three days on a barrier island where loggerhead turtles were laying their eggs. One night while the tide was out, I watched a huge female heave herself up on the beach to dig her nest and empty her eggs into it. Afraid of disturbing her, I left before she had finished. The next morning I returned to see if I could find the spot where her eggs lay hidden in the sand. What I found were her tracks leading in the wrong direction. Instead of heading back out to sea, she had wandered into the dunes, which were already as hot as asphalt in the morning sun.

“A little ways inland I found her: Exhausted, all but baked, her head and flippers caked with dried sand. After pouring water on her and covering her with sea oats, I fetched a park ranger who returned with a jeep to rescue her. He flipped her on her back, wrapped tire chains around her front legs, and hooked the chains to a trailer hitch on his jeep. Then I watched horrified as he took off, yanking her body forward so that her mouth filled with sand and her neck bent so far back I thought it would break.

“The ranger hauled her over the dunes and down onto the beach. At the ocean’s edge, he unhooked her and turned her right side up. She lay motionless in the surf as the water lapped at her body, washing the sand from her eyes and making her skin shine again. A wave broke over her; she lifted her head slightly, moving her back legs. Other waves brought her further back to life until one of them made her light enough to find a foothold and push off, back into the ocean. Watching her swim slowly away and remembering her nightmare ride through the dunes, I reflected that it is sometimes hard to tell whether you are being killed or saved by the hands that turn your life upside down.

“Our hope, through all our own terrors, is that we are being saved. But this does not mean we lie down before the terrors. For as long as we have the strength to fight, it is both our nature and our privilege to do so. Sometimes God’s blessing does not come until daybreak, after a full night of emptying ourselves and wandering in the wrong direction. Our job is to struggle with the terrors, neither surrendering nor stealing away until they have yielded their blessings.” – Barbara Brown-Taylor

Psalm 30:5 (NLT) – For his anger lasts only a moment, but his favor lasts a lifetime! Weeping may last through the night, but joy comes with the morning.

PRAYER: Thank you for the rest and relief you give us as we struggle here in this world!  Give us the good sense to stay close to our Shepherd!  In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright 2023 by Galen C. Dalrymple.