DayBreaks for the Week of 4/15/24 – The Cuddle Bunny Gospel

Psalm 34:11 – Come, my children, and listen to me, and I will teach you to fear the LORD. Twenty-first-century America is truly a consumer society.  And what is the goal of life if you believe you are descended from monkeys and that the grave will be your final destiny?  To feel good while you can.  To grab the gusto.  To live life without limits.  To live with no fear.  To try everything at least once, and if it feels good, to do it again until it no longer satisfies and then find something else.  After all, you wouldn’t want to lay on your death bed wishing that you’d tried just that one more thing, would you?  Just missing out on one single thing could spell the difference between feeling like your life was complete and fulfilled or not.  What a terrible way to live! The real danger comes when the church starts to take its cues from the world around us, instead of the other way around.  When the church accommodates to a feel-good goal and it centers its existence on programs and activities to the expense of the truth, the church is, as Chuck Colson put it, “…in danger of trivializing the holy.” Russell Kirk said: “He who admits no fear of God is really a post-Christian man; for at the heart of Judaism and Christianity lies a holy dread.”  How are you doing in your own family about teaching your children to fear the Lord, as David said he would do?  How is your church doing?  Or do you only present the feel-good, warm-and-fuzzy cuddle-bunny gospel?  God is not to be trifled with.  He never was and never will be that kind of God.  When we only teach and preach a gospel that makes us feel good, that takes away any fear of God’s discipline on us as His children, we are in serious trouble.  Hebrews 12:6 (NLT) says: For the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes those he accepts as his children.  If God loves you, He WILL discipline you when you step out of His pathway.  He doesn’t do it to be capricious, but because He loves you.  And while it may not be pleasant, we can always know He has our best at heart. PRAYER: It is good to have a Father like You who loves us enough to discipline us when we need it.  Thank You for Your gentleness! In Jesus’ name, Amen. Copyright 2024 by Galen C. Dalrymple.

DayBreaks for the Week of 7/09/23: You Will Never Know

Mark 4:8-9 (NLT) Still other seeds fell on fertile soil, and they sprouted, grew, and produced a crop that was thirty, sixty, and even a hundred times as much as had been planted!”  Then he said, “Anyone with ears to hear should listen and understand.”

One of William Barclay’s friends tells the story of a church where he worshipped that had a lonely old man, named Thomas, among the parishioners. Thomas was so old that he’d outlived all his friends and hardly anyone really knew him or paid him much mind. When old Thomas died, Barclay’s friend was concerned that no one would show up for the funeral so he decided to go just so that there would be someone who would follow the mortal remains of the old man to his final resting place.
The day of the funeral was miserable – even by English standards, and as it turned out, there was no one except this one man who bothered to show up. The service concluded and when the hearse reached the cemetery, a soldier stood waiting at the gate. The man deduced that the soldier was an officer, but there were no insignia nor rank badges on his wet raincoat. Still, the soldier came to the grave side for the ceremony and when it was over, he stepped forward and before the open grave swept his hand to a salute that was worthy of a king. The friend walked away with this soldier, and as they walked, the wind blew the soldier’s raincoat open to reveal the shoulder badges of a brigadier general.
The general said, “You will perhaps be wondering what I am doing here. Years ago, Thomas was my Sunday School teacher; I was a wild lad and a sore trial to him. He never knew what he did for me, but I owe everything I am or will be to old Thomas, and today I had to come to salute him at the end.” Thomas had no idea what he had done for this man.
The simple fact is this: no preacher or teacher, no friend who shares the good news or who lives it out in front of others ever does know what becomes of the seed that has been sown. We don’t have to know.  Our desire to know would only feed our pride and ego.  Perhaps that’s why God doesn’t let us know.  Our job is simply to keep sowing the seed, leaving the rest to God and trusting that God can see, water and nourish that seed for His glory, not for ours. We can with confidence leave the rest to God. And that is good news for all us tenant farmers who are planting seeds in the soil He created.

PRAYER: Father, produce a harvest for Your glory through our meager and paltry efforts, and help us to never, ever stop spreading the good news!! In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright 2023 by Galen C. Dalrymple, ><}}}”>

DayBreaks for 5/28/21 – Meeting Jesus at the Door

Matthew 7:14 (NIV) – But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.

As a pastor, one of the things that one traditionally does is to stand at the doorway and greet members of the congregation as they enter and leave.  It is something that I always loved to do because I loved the people and delighted in seeing them and being with them again each Sunday.  Most of the time the conversation was light and pleasant – but there were moments when it was deep and touched on areas of pain in their lives.  What a privilege to be entrusted with the details of the lives of others!

Of course, part of the welcoming conversation was to encourage people, especially guests, to come back again.  I would welcome them, and after services as they left, I’d ask if they had any questions about what we believed and practiced.  Nothing challenging – that much is for sure.

Episcopal priest and author Barbara Brown Taylor wrote, “If Jesus were in charge of an average congregation I figure there would be about four people left there on Sunday mornings, and chances are those four would be fooling themselves. Jesus would greet newcomers by saying, “Are you absolutely sure you want to follow this way of life? It will take everything you have. It has to come before everything else that matters to you. Plenty of people have launched out on it without counting the cost, and as you can see they are not here anymore. The other thing is, if you succeed, if you really follow me, it will probably get you killed. Why don’t you go home and think it over? I would hate for you to get in over your head.'” – Barbara Brown Taylor, Bread of Angels, p. 47

Many Christians and many churches have “dumbed down” the demands of Christ.  Christ never did.  Christ never will.  He will challenge us with his words to live in different ways than the world around us, and to suffer, carrying our cross daily.  I don’t know what that will mean for me (let alone for you), but of one thing I am certain: Christ will issue us a challenge that will blow us away.

PRAYER: Father, forgive me for the times I’ve not put your bold challenges in front of others and for the times I’ve failed to live up to them myself!  In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright 2021, Galen C. Dalrymple. ><}}}”>

DayBreaks for 5/18/21 – Crossing the Great Divide

Photo by Galen C. Dalrymple, all rights reserved, 2012.

Something is very wrong. The Good News, as it is presented today, stinks. Or maybe it is more correct to say that those who are sharing it stink. Scripture says to some we’ll be a sweet fragrance but to others the smell of death. But what if we smell like decaying flesh because of HOW we represent Jesus than because of the message itself?

In his book, A Month of Sundays, John Updike wrote: “In general, the churches…bore for me the same relation to God that billboards did to Coca-Cola: they promoted thirst without quenching it.” C.S. Lewis used an analogy about his struggle to communicate his faith in Britain by saying it was like the difference between courting a divorcee and a virgin: the divorcee won’t easily fall for sweet nothings because she’s heard them all before and has a basic distrust of romance. Our culture is the same. Cathy Ladman, perhaps shares a common view: “All religions are the same: religion is basically guilt with different holidays.”

How sad. It’s not that there is no good news. I’m convinced the problem is with how we live it and share it.

Philip Yancey, in Vanishing Grace, noted four common complaints about Christians: 1) we don’t listen to them; 2) we judge them; 3) our faith is confusing to them; 4) we talk about what’s wrong instead of making it right. All four of those are problems with us…not the message!

Yet, there is a hunger that persists. Theodore Dalrymple, a British writer, noted “It is not as easy as one might suppose to rid oneself of the notion of God.” He is not a believer, but argues that believing there is no God does not make the thirst go away. He wrote: “Few of us, especially as we grow older, are entirely comfortable with the idea that life is full of sound and fury but signifies nothing. However much philosophers tell us that it is illogical to fear death, and that at worst it is only the process of dying that we should fear, people still fear death as much as ever.”

In reviewing the four complaints Yancey noted earlier, he suggests that Christians fail in our efforts to communicate because we ignore basic relational principles. “When we make condescending judgments, or proclaim lofty words that don’t translate into action, or simply speak without first listening, we fail to love – and thus deter a thirsty world from Living Water. …I doubt God keeps track of how many arguments we win: God may indeed keep track of how well we love…I’ve yet to meet someone who found their way to faith by being criticized.”

How about you? We may be the fragrance of death to some, but the message we carry never should be. You aren’t going to argue someone into heaven. You may well be able to love them into heaven.

More on this to come!

PRAYER: Lord, let us live lives of loveliness and beauty so the Good News remains beautiful! In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright 2021, Galen C. Dalrymple. ><}}}”>

DayBreaks 4/26/21 – A Thirsty World and Bad Storytellers

Image from Pixabay

See to it that no one misses the grace of God…Heb. 12:15

In Philip Yancey’s book, Vanishing Grace: Whatever Happened to the Good News?, he quotes from the novel The Second Coming by Walker Percy. One of the characters is talking about Christians and makes this observation: “I cannot be sure they don’t have the truth. But if they have the truth, why is it the case they are repellent precisely to the degree that they embrace and advertise the truth?…A mystery: If the good news is true, why is not one pleased to hear it?

To my mind this raises three possibilities:

FIRST: the hearer isn’t sincerely seeking and open to the truth, having already pre-judged and determined not to accept it. This is a viable possibility.

SECOND: what we call the “good news” isn’t really good news at all and Jesus was just being deceitful and sneaky by calling it good news. This doesn’t seem feasible given Jesus’ nature and ethic – the consensus highest of any human who ever lived and would be contrary to the very soul of his teaching.

THIRD: if we grant that the good news is precisely that, then the problem isn’t with the subject matter but with the person who is telling the story and how it is told. This, to me, seems by far the most likely case. We could betray the subject matter either because we aren’t demonstrably living it out and and it is obvious therefore that we don’t really believe what we are saying about Jesus being the Lord of our lives, OR because we are really, really lousy storytellers. Again, both of those could be true – and they can be true at the same time.

There are good tellers of stories and news and those who are horrible at it. Why are they bad at it? Because the subject matter isn’t important enough to have spent time to really learn to tell it properly. And isn’t that perhaps the greatest tragedy of all time? Here we have the greatest news – and it is GOOD news – in the history of the world and those we tell it to aren’t pleased to hear it. We don’t need to get fancy with it. We just need to let the story speak for itself instead of us getting in the way either by our lifestyle or how we tell the story. The story has its own power and doesn’t need us to embellish or dress it up.

If the church is struggling to make converts the fault must lie with humans and not with the story. Let’s do all we can to be sure we aren’t the problem any longer.

PRAYER: Help us, Lord, to get out of the way of the good news and to simply tell the story of your love, mercy and grace and how we can all experience that now and forever. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright 2021, Galen C. Dalrymple. ><}}}”>

DayBreaks for 2/11/21 – The Gospel Flood

From the DayBreaks archive, February 2012:

When Jesus had tasted it, he said, “It is finished!” Then he bowed his head and released his spirit. – John 19:30

Sometimes I think we overcomplicate the most beautiful things.  Ask a botanist to describe a rose to you and you may get a detailed explanation of photosynthesis coupled with more information than you imagined possible about all the various parts of the flower.  Ask the astronomer about space and you may hear about quarks, quasars, pulsars, black holes and the space-time continuum.  All you wanted to know was what they thought about the heavenly expanse!

We can, sadly, do the same thing with the gospel.  We can talk about substitution, propitiation, justification, sanctification and the like…but miss the simple beauty of the gospel message.  In his book, Radical, David Platt captured it for me when he wrote the following:

“One preacher described it as if you and I were standing a short hundred yards away from a dam of water ten thousand miles high and ten thousand miles wide.  All of a sudden that dam was breached, and a torrential flood of water came crashing toward us.  Right before it reached our feet, the ground in front of us opened up and swallowed it all.  At the Cross, Christ drank the full cup of the wrath of God, and when he had downed the last drop, he turned the cup over and cried out, ‘It is finished.’  This is the gospel.  The just and loving Creator of the universe has looked upon hopelessly sinful people and sent His Son, God in the flesh, to bear his wrath against sin on the cross and to show his power over sin in the Resurrection so that all who trust in him will be reconciled to God forever.”

Yes, the flood of our sin was massive.  But the flood of God’s grace is greater still! 

PRAYER: For the flood that was swallowed at the Cross, and the flood that flows from the cross, we sing Your praise!  In Jesus’ name, Amen.  

Copyright 2021, Galen C. Dalrymple.

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DayBreaks for 10/22/20 – Standing Within Inches of God

It really happened, you know. The ten apostles (Judas was dead and Thomas was MIA) were huddled in a locked room, fearful for their lives. After all, if the one they’d hoped was the Messiah was killed, what was to stop them – mere followers – from being killed themselves? I can identify with fear – can’t you?

Then, incredulously, in the middle of the room Jesus appeared. Some might take it that he was a hallucination of fevered, grieving minds. That’s why his next appearance with Thomas added to the ten is so important – they touched him and you can’t do that with hallucinations.

What is so fascinating is how this “simple” appearance changed history. A rag-tag uneducated group of nobodies from backwater villages throughout Israel received a commission to tell the world what they’d witnessed. And you know what? They did exactly that! Not only did they tell the world, they died for the privilege of carrying that message.

What changed? Had they simple re-read the prophets and gained insight? No. They stood within inches of God. Sure, they’d stood next to Jesus, talked to him, walked with him, watched him before. But he hadn’t been dead during those encounters. And when he appears this time, he had been dead, really truly dead. But there he was! That’s something only God can do. It changed them and the world forever.

Imagine how you would feel and how you might be changed if your dead mother or father, brother or sister, friend or enemy who had died was to suddenly appear next to you!

Those eleven, plus others, went throughout the world because they could all say, “All I know is he was dead and now he is alive!”

They changed the world. Some say it would be impossible to replicate what they accomplished – that the world is just too big, complicated and evil for it to happen again.

But is it? After all, if God can die and then miraculously appear alive in the middle of a room once, couldn’t he move us all to change the world yet again?

After all, if one has stood within inches of God nothing can ever be the same again.

PRAYER: Lord, give us the faith to see you standing in our midst, sending us out to tell the world that though you were dead, yet you are alive forevermore! In Jesus’ name, Amen. Copyright 2020 by Galen C. Dalrymple. ><}}}”>

DayBreaks for 2/04/20 – Cod Liver Oil Evangelism

Jesus came preaching that “the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” What was there about that kingdom that got the fishermen and tax collector so excited that they left their livelihoods and even families behind to follow him? Maybe a more telling question is why are we not just as excited? Maybe we don’t understand what the kingdom is. Or maybe it just hasn’t been presented very well.  Maybe both.

There is a story of a woman who read somewhere that dogs were healthier if fed a tablespoon of cod liver oil each day. So each day she followed the same routine. She chased her dog until she caught it, wrestled it down, and managed to force the fishy remedy down the dog’s throat.

Until one day when, in the middle of this grueling medical effort, the bottle was kicked over. With a sigh, she loosed her grip on the dog so she could wipe up the mess. To her surprise the dog trotted over to the puddle and begin lapping up what had been spilled. THE DOG LOVED COD LIVER OIL. It was just the owner’s method of application the dog objected to.

Sometimes I think something like that has happened to the good news of the Kingdom of God. We present it so poorly that others are not captured by its attractiveness and its power. We have the most beautiful, wonderful story to tell the world. We don’t have to feel obligated to make people into Christians. The story, rightly told, has the power to do that through the Spirit. If even cod liver oil can be enjoyed, how much more the great news of God’s love for mankind! If we tell the story and no one responds, the problem isn’t with the story but in how it’s being told.

PRAYER: Let us tell the story in a way that is as beautiful and winsome as the story itself, Jesus! In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright by 2020 by Galen C. Dalrymple.  ><}}}”>

 

DayBreaks for 12/26/19 – Twice Wrapped, Twice Freed

It was during the night that the Savior was born. In the darkness. How ironic that the Light chose to be kindled in the dark, but also how meaningful!

There are those today who have set up elaborate and expensive arrays searching for life in the universe. It is a hot topic among astronomers and astrophysicists to name a few. Many movies have been made speculating on whether or not the life that might be out there is friendly or if it will be hostile toward humanity. As a Christian, though, I have to say that we already know there is intelligent life out there in the universe– and we know what that Life is like. It is not filled with hate – but it is filled with love. We know that because of the event we celebrated yesterday – the birth of a baby, wrapped in “swaddling clothes” who came to bring Light and Life, to seek and save the lost. We saw that life, that love, because we have seen Jesus.

Now, however, Christmas is over. The baby in swaddling clothes will be packed up and stowed away for another year. But if Christmas means anything, it is in how it points forward to the next great “holy day” of the Christian calendar, Easter Sunday.

We don’t know when Christ was actually born, but we do know much more certainty about when he died. Again, the irony strikes me: at his birth he was wrapped tightly in strips of linen cloth (that’s what swaddling clothes were in the first century) and when he died, he was once again wrapped tightly in linen strips even as he was at his birth.

As with the birth, so with the death: he quickly left the swaddling clothes behind and he likewise burst forth from the second set of wrappings in great glory.

The end of Christmas starts the great story rumbling forward and points to the coming celebration of his death, burial and the defeat of death for us.

As we leave Christmas behind, let us begin even now to look forward to our next great celebration.

PRAYER: Lord Jesus, we have celebrated your birth but we cannot stay at the manger. Even as the swaddling clothes held you only temporarily, we look toward the grave wrappings that could not bind you any more than death could, in total awe and wonder for your finished work on our behalf. Help us start now to prepare for the rest of your story. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright by 2019 by Galen C. Dalrymple.  ><}}}”>

DayBreaks for 9/26/17 – Living Within a Yard of Hell

From the DayBreaks archive, 9/2007:

I feel that I’ve been very fortunate in my life in many, many ways.  One of them is that I’ve lived in quite a few different places.  I was born in Iowa and raised as a farm boy for about the first 9 years, then moved to Florida, then southern California, then northern California.  After graduating from high school, I went back to Florida for college, then back to California, then to North Carolina, then back to northern California.  We lived in several cities in northern California before moving to Maine in 2003, and now we find ourselves back in northern California once again…but in a different place. 

I have enjoyed living in all those places – different scenery, different customs, different accents, different weather, different friends and I can honestly say that I’ve enjoyed living in every place I have ever lived.  I believe that of all the places we’ve lived, that Maine takes the cake for beauty – but other places have better weather.  For example, I’ve never slipped on the ice in the shopping center in Cloverdale, CA, which is more than I can say for living in Maine!  The leaves in Maine are like nowhere else on earth when they turn color, but Cloverdale is ringed with vineyards that turn colors, too, after the grapes are harvested. 

If you could live anywhere that you wanted to live, where would it be?  I found an interesting quote that I’d like to share with you.  It’s from C. T. Studd, and here’s what they had to say: “Some wish to live within the sound of a church or chapel bell; I want to run a rescue shop within a yard of Hell.”

Wow.  That draws me up short and really makes me think about how selfish I can be (and am!)  It also forces me to take stock of what matters the most to me.  Sure, who wouldn’t love to live close to the church and be constantly surrounded by other believers who are committed to loving one another and loving God?  But, such a scenario can have its drawbacks: it’s possible to love each other and God so much, but not love the world of unbelievers around us and therefore not make an effort to reach them because of their differences from us. 

What really makes me ashamed is to ask the question: “Where would Jesus have lived?”  Think about it.  If ever anyone was living in the sound of church bells (or choirs), Jesus had that luxury in heaven for all eternity.  He could have just stayed sitting on the throne of heaven and reveling in the music and praises of the angels.  But, instead, he chose to live within a yard of Hell by coming here and living with us. 

Does this mean that you have to feel guilty and move to a slum or inner city or jungle in order to fulfill your Christianity?  No, not at all.  Hopefully, you are where you are because God has called you to that place.  Besides, everywhere in this world is within a yard of Hell – just look around and you’ll see people queuing up to pass through its gates.  And, we may be the last chance any of them get at hearing the gospel of Jesus Christ.

PRAYER:  Lord, we thank you for where you have placed us.  Help us to never grow complacent or become too introverted as your family, the church, that we forget the mission we are called to!  In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright by 2017 by Galen C. Dalrymple.